The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-07-26
A GIRLS MINUTES.
Did You Ever See a Girl who Knew What
Became Of Them?

Does anybody know what becomes Of q
girls time? Was there ever a girl who
could tell what she did with it, or where
she put it, or account in any reasonable way
for its mysterious disappearance
Are the girls minutes like the lost pins of
which nobody ever finds trace, though the
factories have been at work so long that one
would think that the dropped ones would
constitute in themselves an adequate source
of supply.
There are some things which have this
capacity for utter humiliation. Wild ami
mails are never found dead in the forests !;
watering-place friendships vanish into wind
swept space; the hole in the stocking speaks
OF a texture which once was there, but is
there no longer; yet these things get out of
the world no more quietly and unaccount-
ably than the hours and minutes of good
proportion of young women.
There is a theory, which is commonly &C
cepted, that girls time is all spent upon
dress. Certainly little of 1t goes in that
way, but the amount must be small. Older
women, with many social and domestic
cares, dress quite as we'll as young girls and
usually better.
They cannot give ali their time, or even
any appreciable part of it, to the planning
and purchase of their raiment, SO there is
evidently falacy III the idea that feminine
attire is capable of engrossing the entire at
tention of q womaa.
There is another theory that girls time
is spent IN entertaining members Of the
other SEX but this is absolutely unteuable.
| Even the mildest of fiirtations calls for two
tllrters, and, as the student OF our social
system is never weary of pointing out, we
have no class of men whose time is their
own.
a girl may spend her evenings and Sun
days in amusing the masculine half of clea-
fIDn hut hUS hours S1PrpI from
| her invasion. Her will might be good to so
| spend the hours from sunrise till midnight
but i'll the nature of the ease her opp0rtuni-
| ties are limited.
| Is it domestic cares which are so absorb
| ing? The newspaper paragrapher would
| say hat and | think on the whole he is
| right. This Is not because most girls are I'M
willing to share the household responsible
! ties. but because, during the time OF their
| education, home life goes on without their
assistance, and once out of school they find
| no place readY-made in which they can be
| useful
| 1t is about as easy for the camel to go
| through the needles eye as for the daugh-
ter of a well-to-do family to find any do
| nestle duties worthy the name in her
| fathers house.
! There are yet other ways in which it is
| popularity supposed a girls time is eu-
! ployed such as study and correspondence.
! But did you ever 90 TO a morning class? If
/ 81, you hubN pclitCtlS NCil Tie
| Il was so busy / hadn't minute to spare
| for PREPARATION"
| Have you any women among your corre-
| spOndents, and did enc of them ever write a
| letter without explaining how busy she was,
and had been for weeks past and would be
| for weeks to come? Whatever the mysteri-
| Gus, grinding tasks which fate imposes upon
| the young women who have apparently
nothing to do, by their own confession
studying and writing are not among the
| things sought.
| Perhaps the subject is worthy of scientific
| investigation. 1t would be as useful TO the
races as the discovery of the North Pole :;
and though the inquiry might be as long and
| tedious as an Arctic exploration, won Id
not be so dangerous. 1ndustrially it might
be of value.
Here is a vast amount of labor of which we
| know, on the testimony of every girl in the
land, is put forth daily, yet without visible
result. Would not experiments to make it
| productive be as legitimate as those for the
reduction Of aluminium or the utilization of
the solar force?
Anthropologists might spare little time
| from the study of cranial development aud
| turn their attention to finding out what be-
| comes of girls time. 1t ought surely to
| be done, if for no other reason than to graf
| ify the dear girls themselves, who certainly
are as much in the dark on this question as
| any one else.-kate Fields Washington.