Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1890-04-09
The Managing Mother.

The Managing Mother.
by Scrutator, of the London TRUTH
The ambitious mother who has quiverful
of undesirable daughters has difficult cards
to play in the great game of life and matri-
mony. If the elders do not 60 off before
the youngers come on, and If they are not oi
kind to set Troy's towers in flames, block
is created which defies the best social engi.
neering to remove. Then the perplexed ma
tron, who has to trail through society three
or four dull, plain, unpretentious girls, feels
as if she were in deep water with so many
millstones around her neck. She regrets the
change of faith and feeling which has shut
the door of the convent against these pre-
destined matrimonial failures and kept them
exposed in the open market to their shame.
rather than niching them securely in quasi
sacred shrine.
LIKE A GAME OF WHIST.
If after the advanced guard Of the duller
elders comes a Benjamin of brighter mien
and more personable appearance, the case is
almost more desperate. No one will invest
In those homely first fruits. ALL wait for
the second crop, of which reports, highly
exaggerated, have got about. With her
beauty coming on and her undesirables not
going off, the mother feels like whist play.
er who holds the ace for his sole trump card.
It makes one trick certain; the game is an
other matter. For this four or five minor
trumps, containing perhaps an honor of the
second rank, would have been more to the
purpose. But mothers, like whist players,
have to be content with what fate or provi-
dence deals out to them; and hand of in
ferior cards, with only one trump sure to
take trick, like a quiverful of undesirable
daughters whom no man wishes to marry,
has to be accepted patiently, fresh deal be-
ing impossible.
The players skill is shewn in making this
inferior hand available for the general pur.
poses of the game; and the clever mother
the managing mother par excellence-has to
drill her undesirab1es into doing that myste-
rious duty called STRENGTHENING their part
ner's hand" which is the triumph of skilful
manipulation over weakness of material.
Their role is to improve the charms Of the
better favored by every species OF self sac
ri6ce possible. They are to efface them
selves that these Others may shine forth.
But perhaps in this self -effacement they find
their own future account. For some men
are still go bourgeois as to prefer goodness
even to obeauty-refecting that in the long
run an amiable temper wears better than q
lovely face, and that the capital which can
be destroyed by an accident or disease is not
quite 90 safe as that which resists time itself
to touch.
HOW THE DULL GIRLS ARE MARRIED.
With men who would be good enough for
their elders, but who are by no means up to
the standard of the Benjamin, the mother
throws the limelight on that younger while
shedding milder, softened and more sedue-
tive ray over the others. She loudly vaunts
the spirited qualities of her youngest; she
quietly alludes to the lovely virtues of her
eldest. The youngest is charming, but dith-
cult-the eldest has no outside recommends
tion, but she is saint in mind and charac-
ter. If these men who are too old for Beau
ty-too old and not rich enough for the
trump card of the hand to take-so far for
get themselves as to venture on the trial,
they are promptly extinguished. But as the
mothers endeavor has been to awaken in
them quasi paternal-or, at the least, an
elder brotherly-kind of feeling. they do
not often make that mistake, and they do
very often fall into the line desired.
They admire but do not love par amour
the somewhat troublesome, somewhat dill
cult and wayward beauty of the house; but
that good, devoted, generous hearted elder,
who gives herself up to this bright young
thing and never thinks Of herself! Well,
she is not pretty, certainly, but man might
do worse than secure to himself companion
for life who will devote herself to his COM
fort and never give him a moments uneasi-
ness. If he is philosopher, and not desfr-
GUS of attracting that kind of envy which to
some men is as the recognition of their su-
psr1ority, he thinks it better on the whole
that his friends should have the handsome
wives and he the good and stable working
companion.
MARRIED IN SPITE OF HIMSELF.
Some mothers seem to have certain fas-
cinating quality over good parts. They
make up their minds to get so and so for
Edith, say; and SO and so is got. He may
all the same he is landed. The
lures are too fine and delicste to be suspect
ed. He gives himself away before he knows
his danger. 1t seems almost as if the eter-
nal fitness of things had arranged such and
such circumstances-such and such combina.
tions. He does not want to marry Edith.
He wants, rather, to marry Amy, her rival
over the way. Nevertheless, he is in some
strange manner compelled, and that mater
nal eye both fixes and holds him.
Like the futtering bird, his fruitless Zap.
pings and endeavors to escape subside into
the charmed quiescence of the doomed crea-
ture fascinated by the superior force. He
stands still and helpless; the bird is caught
and Edith's future is secured. She has got
her we'll married and settled before the next
daughter comes out, and go far the way is
clear.
This Is the triumph of the true managing
mother-to marry off her daughters as they
are introdued-one before the other, SO as
never to have more than one on hand at q
time. If she has graduated in the highest
school of management, and her daughters
are not hopelessly plain and undesirable, she
marries them all well-brilliant1y indeed.
If she is handicapped she marries them ir-
regularly-some we'll and some i'll, according
to the pressure of circumstance and the need
of the moment But she married them, and
this is the grand desideratum of the mana
ging mother of all times and places.
A CoNsCIENCELEss MOTHER.
The managing mother cares for none OF
the spiritual graces which once made wo-
mans claim to consideration. She cares as
little for the personal fitness of the we'll en-
endowed quinquagenarian whom she chooses
as the life's partner of her moist Tipped, full
eyed young daughter, just eighteen. The
quinqusgenarisn is as dry as q withered
palm tree in the desert. He never had much
lifo, much cap in him, but what he had has
all gone into so much hard and gnarled bark,
and he and his young wife are, if not Janua-
ry and May, then November and June.
What cares the mother: She has got rid
of her superfuous child, aud the result of
|Hnnn'S m