The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1890-11-09

HOuse-Do Not Constantly Try to Fin
ish Your Work.
Copyright by American Press Association
There are housekeepers and house
keepers.
There are housekeepers who keep
house too much, housekeepers who keep
mouse too little and housekeepers who do
not keep house at all. There are also
heusekeepers who keep house for the
sake of the house and housekeepers who
keep house for the sake of the house
keeping. With so great variety there
must also be wide difference Of opinion
rs to which housekeeper is the best one.
Housekeepers of today cannot go wrong
for lack Of instruction. If anything they
are instructed too much. They are in
structed to death, so to speak, for if all
the precise and detailed directions con-
tinually hurled at the head of the Amer
lean housekeeper were attended to by
her there would speedily be an end to
any housekeeping at all. Chaos would
come again to the house, and confusion,
dismay and utter rout to the unfortu-
nate people who endeavored to live in it.
Indeed, housekeepers are instructed
about every part of their business and
each detail of their work in such pain
fully exact and particular manner that
it is often impressed on the mind of the
writer, who IS also a housekeeper her.
self, that these instructors must imagine
they are teaching children or idiots, or
perhaps women who have recently been
civilized, and to whom the ordinary ar
icles in use in a civilized community
are so novel that special tutoring in their
use is required.
The great mass of the people, more
over, have made their beds and slept in
them, have set their tables and eaten at
them, all their lives and long before
domestic journals arose to tell them
how it should be done.
instruction given through these papers
is good, of course, and the writer would
not decry a moderate amount of it, bat
has it not been carried rather to excess?
1t is doubtful whether the majority of
people read carefully the directions as to
how to make their bed before they make
it, or how to sweep their room before
they go to work and do it. The women
who spend their time reading the in
structions and porting over the pages of
the domestic papers, singularly enough,
are generally those who have been taught
and brought up all their lives to do these
things in neat and orderly way, and
the women who do their work after a
slovenly and careless fashion are not the
ones likely to read, much less to follow,
the teachings given by the domestic au-
thority.
But there is a side light which can be
flashed on this question of housekeepers
and housekeeping that does not seem
often turned on the subject. 1t may be
broadly stated that there is too much
housekeeping and too little housekeeper
considered in this matter. After all,
what is the housekeeping for? Why
does the housekeeper dig and delve and
toll and drive? Why does she rise early
and go to bed late, sit up a-night to
patch Johnnies trousers and get up in
the morning to give an extra sweeping
to the parlor and to gain few minutes
to put up the curtains or to clear out
the closets? For she does do all these
things The great majority of American
women are hard working. palnstaldng
housekeepers, who give themselves up
after marriage to their homes and chill
dren in an entirely self sacrificing way.
They do all this work for the father and
the children that the family may be
comfortable and live happily together.
Then let the housekeeper pause and
consider the question as to whether she
does not sometimes "housekeep' too
much.
The sitting room is for the comfort
and delight of the family, but if the sit
ting room is so fashionably furnished or
even so painfully clean and orderly that
the family cannot move or seat them
selves on chair without warnings to be
careful not to disarrange anything, what
has the housekeeper accomplished? She
has made the family so uncomfortable
and unhappy that it We're better for
them to sit in the coal cellar and that the
sitting room were cast into the depths Of
the sea.
If her mo-her works early and late 20
embroiderand bedizen katie's new dress,
so that the child may present a good APP
pearance before other children, and
when poor Katie in the new dress wishes
to enjoy herself she is continually
snubbed and headed Off from all her
pleasure that the new dress may be
kept in fine state, it We're better to
hang Katie's dress on hook and display
it to the company and put the child into
a calico apron.
How often mother with the best in
tentions viii turn off the baby who tries
to climb into her lap. because she is so
hard at work finishing an article Of
clothing for him that she has no time
to stop to give him love or attention!
And which viii do him the most good?
she VIII hurry 20 make cookies or pies,
or to concoct some particularly trouble
some dish for dinner; or she VIII dust
and clear up the room vet another time
before night, after which the children
have to sit down in careful stiffness lest
they should 'musS it up" again; and if
this extra pains and trouble only results
in unhapp.ness and seedlings and gen
eral discomfort for the children in
shrinking out of the way whenever
mamma" appears. for fear they should
be run down or chided for being there,
what reward has she: Does the careless
and untidy housekeeper DO worse:
Do not yeN vour soul and ruin YOUR