The evening herald. [volume] (Shenandoah, Pa.) 1891-1966, 1892-05-23
AFTER sCHOoL-wHATq

How Thousands of Young Women Have
Their Ambitions Chained.
We have a recollection of having met
this query in print before, but as it ex-
presses our own present anxiety, have
no hesitation in appropriating it.
Our sympathies are called into fullest
action by the struggles and discourage
ments in the path of a certain young
woman of our acquaintance. AS her
case is hat of thousands, we will cite
1t as a text for a very short sermon.
Sara Bartlett's- parents are active, en-
ergetic, Woodworking, ambitious peo-
pie, whose aims TO make money and
achieve a certain prominence in their
village have been more than usually
successful. The mother had some ma
tive refinement, but the narrowness of
her life and the society Of a coarse and
vulgar husband have not developed her
best qualities. The father, albeit as
destitute of refinement as one well can
be who has no vices and has a strong
desire to receive the respect of his fell
lows, is a man of great force of charac-
ter, and some rather unusual, though
uncultivated powers of mind.
Sara has inherited the best of both
parents, and the education their efforts
have enabled her to gain has developed
mental faculties to a degree far beyond
that of the most of even bright or for
tunate young women Her ambition
and hat of her parents have led her to
seek the society of people above their
own social position, and her talents and
accomplishments have enabled her to do
1t successfully. She is welcome wher-
ever she chooses to go.
This satisfies the parents, but not
Sara. Ambition, the ruling passion Of
her parents, is hers also, but its ideals
are higher. Her mental vision is as far
sighted as theirs is short. From the
height she has already reached, she sees
other and greater heights, and she longs
to scale them. Her vigorous young ma
ture pants for the efforts it is so able to
make. But the parents, who have
hitherto aided, now repress. Now Sara
is held back by all the force of their
strong but ignoble natures. They re-
fuse her permission to leave home, or
money to prosecute her studies at home,
or to forward her aims in any way. and
they claim from her warm flial affec-
tions a hard tribute of enforced graft
tude. Their cry is: "After all we have
done for you, will you desert usP We
have made you a good home. No home
in the village is finer or more prettily
furnished. Stay here; receive your
friends; introduce us to the society you
are in; marry to please us. 1t is your
duty"
What can poor Sara do? She is
twenty-five years old. The men whom
she might marry if left to herself, avoid
her, because they would not wish to be
associated with her relatives. The men
to whom this association would not be
Objectionable, and whom her parents
would not refuse, are not acceptable TO
the daughter. She is like a bird chained
by the foot. The chain is long-for a
chain-and she is allowed TO take short
in any direction; but at a certain
limit the chain is felt, the fight is
checked, and weary, chafed and
dispirited, the poor bird returns to
earth.
What shall be done for the girls thus
chained? Much has been said of the
selfshness an~d1ingratitute of children
who abandon OF neglect in their old age
the parents who by dint of greatest
sacrifices have enabled them TO soar far
above the parental nest. Sometimes,
perhaps often, the blame is deserved;
but are there not many other cases
where the selishness is on the part of
the parents, who have educated their
children not that these might be wiser,
better or happier than they, but that
they should rise upon their children's
TO social heights which unaided
they could not have hoped to reach?-
Harper's Bazaar