The Republican., 1894-01-25
HOMEMAKlNG.
rhs Duties of the Wife in the Domestic
System.

System.
Virtues, like roses, have thorns that
protrude and promote discomfort
piercing when and where you are un-
prepared. The virtue of homemaking
may be sadly marred in various ways.
Every woman knows in her inner con-
sciousness to just what extent her
home is a burden. If she carries it on
her shoulders, as Atlas did the world,
she is then battling with one of the
opposing forces which fate stations at
every corner ostensibly to thwart her
designs. Home should be haven of
rest, resort to which we may all re-
pair to escape the conflict and strife
of the outside world. 1t should be a
place where everything is free and
everyone in it should be individualized
and the motto should be unity in di-
versity."
The woman who works about in the
peck measure of home all day, seeking
only the diversion which one duty
acting as a foil to another duty can
furnish, is on the wrong track. She is
growing a thorn on the roseate virtue
of home devotion that will one day
turn of itself and prick her own fin
gers and more than likely pierce her
tender heart. She will feel a pang
when her children tell her she is be-
hind the times, for in the minds of the
progressive young iconoclasts of the
family she has perhaps forgotten to
graft the quality of unselfishness. II
! won't t do for the mother to be a mo-
nopolist in this matter of unselfishness.
1t is a demonstra BILE fact that the
woman who is thoroughly absorbed in
her home, living for a domestic sys-
tenn, chasing up speclls of dust plod-
! ding along like plow horse in the
same groove her mother and grand
mother did before her, is not the wo-
man who instills into her children the
greatest love of home. Self-sacrifce as
a maternal monopoly is a very thrifty
thorn on the virtue of homemaking.
The mental, moral, physical and
financial slavery of mothers to chill
dren is another thorn. There is dis
tinction to be made between devotion
and slavery, The tendency of the
American woman to lose sight of her
duties of wife, allowing herself to be
| absorbed in the capacity of mother, is
one of the forces that threaten to un-
dermine our social and domestic sys-
tenn. England has a race of homelov-
ing people, and the world over there
revolves for the grown-ups more than
here. The children live in a nursery,
and the boys go away to school, and
reunions are feature of the annual
round of events Individual interest
in things without the home is a great
cement to the bond within it. There
is woman in this city who has put
that idea into practical execution by
sending the children to different
places in the summer time for their
outing. Each child has well-selected
friend, and in pairs they separate, one
to the mountains, one to the seashore,
another to the plantation and so on.
They are glad to go and infinitely hap.
| pier to return, and then such visiting
| as there is and such relating of expert
ences! 1t takes year to tell all they
have absorbed.
Too much OF home is an abomination
Freedom in it is the alto be-desired
quality. Freedom in it is more apt tc
generate self-respect and self-reliance
outside of it than subsection to auto
cratic rules of method and system that
vie with the old-time laws of the Medes
| and Persians.
The mother, of all persons, has the
least right to become self-centered
Concentration of thought and energy
is to certain degree necessary to the
success of the home, but that the minC
of the mother be in a receptive state tc
outer conditions and events is equally
! essential. The home must reach out
and allow its sympathies to expand
for the world needs it. The circum
scribed love which does not penetrate
beyond the four walls of home is a
negative force which initiates against
the science of home-making.- .-Balti
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