Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1897-12-30
MISCELLANEOUS.
HOME THOUGHTS.
THE HOMELESSNESS OF CERTAIN
YOUNG MARRIED WOMEN.

Opportunity has come to me of
late, says Il writer in the EueninQ
Post, to meet an unusual number of
homeless young married people.
They haYe good though moderate
incomes, they are clever, in excel
lent health, active, energetic young
men and women, and yet they have
elected to live in boarding. houses
and hotels. Elevators carry them to
upper stories of huge caravansaries,
where they take possession of bed
room, a parlor, and dresSing-room.
Here they add to the rich and I'M
mistakable hotel furniture the pretty
trsties, easily transported, which
were among their wedding presents,
and they declare themselves content.
The wife has no duties; nothing in
their lives exercises her skill, her
brain power, or her ingenuity. Her
husband receives no help or delight
from the labor Of her hands or as the
result of her good judgment. After
her husband leaves her for his office,
she has to think out some occupation
for the day. She shops and visits :;
If she is musical, she practices a lit
tie; II she is bookish, she goes, per-
haps, to literary class or lecture.
Worse still, to my thinking, is life
in smaller boarding houses, where
the independence and isolation pos
sible in large hotels is lost, and the
elements of criticism and gossip find
such congenial soil in which to lodge
their fast-growing seeds.
L know no sadder words than
homeless and childless. There is a
mournful reflection in their very
sounds, and yet these prettiIy dressed
eager, restless young women are both
these sorrowful things.
What causes deliberate choice of
this narrow life which entails so
many deprivations is incomprehen-
sible 10 me. The semblance Of great
luxury is certainly to be found in
the mirrors, the gliding, the deep
piled velvet carpets; but does all
this expensive show give any pleas
ure when it loses all personal inter-
est, and stretching this way and that
can sometimes be measured by
miles? To walk five hundred feet
down the long corridors between
doors which seem countless in num-
Der, and right and left to libel ate
strangers who pass you as if you
were to be avoided as carefully as if
you had the smallpox, cannot be a
pleasure. To open your door and
see five or six conventional pieces of
furniture standing about at precisely
the same angles as in every other
room you have passed, so that, if
you did not chance to know that your
legitimate number of square feet
were known as number 499, you
might readily think you were in your
own quarters, until you saw that
where your walls were blue your
neighbours were pink, cannot he en-
couraging to the sense of individual
possession which is half of life's joy.
Why choose these ways Of living
when open to every woman, accord
ing to her means, lies the door of a
home-a place which is for the time
at least your very own, to be source
OF comfort and peace to your hus-
cSnd and ofjoy In proportion to your
endeavors; a place where color, ar
rangement, every adornment, every
deta1l, from the delicate draperies
at the windows TO the well-chosen
implements in the kitchen, express es
your tastes, your judgment, your
Judicious economies, your thought of
others, your love for your husband (:
where no one enters but at your bid.
ding, and then comes to be made
happy by your society or refreshed
by your hospitality.
No matter how small it NAV be.
no matter how many difficulties of
arrangement and adaptation present
themselves, these, like all obstacles,
only enhance success and in these
days of apartments and moderate
houses built especially to tempt
young housekeepers, no one who can
afford to live as | have described can
be too restricted i'm their means to
find 1t hard to select from one Of
these classes of domiciles what is
suitable and pleasant. And having
chosen, can there be many pleasures
more sure and satisfying than max
Ing of those vacant rooms and bare
walls home? That vital spark of
vanity and dissatisfaction without
which no woman's life is really de.