The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-04-03
FOR FEMININE READERS
yHE CLASH IN THE INDIVIDUALITY
or PARENTS AND CHILDREN.
How one Woman solved n social
probIem-Fitness In china DecOra-
tfon-The summer shirt Waist.

we are SO helpless before our children.
exclaims a mother. writing in the New York
Post Of an eternal parental problem. What
craving is like it, what deep-rooted desire
exceeds Il, this yearning for the admiration,
the confidence, the respect of our sons and
daughters? Lovers are all very well in their
time-honored role; there is reason that they
should fall captive to feminine charm and
sweetness; the husbands fond. sympathetic
praise is the harvest of love which has
endured a I'D never grown critical. But the
Judgment of our children is Ca woman feels
this 30 her hearts eore) the true tribunal
before which to set ones character for a
real test of its worth. il the father is a
hero to his sons and the daughters are
eagerly initiative of their mother, their
characters need no other eulogy. And to a
mother who, leaning on the arm of son,
knows that he is proud and glad to own
mis- lineage, life's best laurel has been won
Perhaps in no other way does the strange
thing which we call individuality, the thing
which dwells apart in the heart and mind
and makes the real man or woman, sfew
itself so wildly as in the marriages Our
children make For what reason does that
vigorous, athletic, breezy fellow find his
ideal In a feeble Ianguid listless girl whose
interests are never reused by anything but
a new bonnet, and whose only efforts arise
from desire TO show that she is beautiful?
Yet he will forget everything to watch her
cross a room, and think her attitude, as her
tall gracefulness poses on sofa, something
Oil which to pin the happiness OF life.
Why does the man who has lived from his
birth in an atmosphere pure and elevating
and fastidiously refined find charm in noisy
vulgarity, and devote himself to a woman
devoid of all that makes home lovely or life
worth living? What is there in his nature,
which his mother has watched since iirst
his eyes showed that he knew her (yet hid
den all these years., which gives charm to
coarse coquetry and brainless folly?
And the daughters! How many a sad old
heart has beaten feverishly from dread and
sorrow, as the father, helpless to hinder,
had to lay his daughters hand in the
greedy, unclean grasp of man ne de-
spised? The worthy, the generous, the CHI
choice. That integral self, which has lived
through education, and training, and force
of example, has at last declared itself.
There is something in the hidden heart
which makes this choice, and the child has
been all along a stranger to him, while he
thought he knew her inmost thoughts.
Yet from this individual expression have
come the fOrceful natures of the world, and
were we able to form our children on
pattern shaped by ourselves. neither heroes,
nor inventors, nor discoveries, nay, not
even poets, would have enriched human his
tory. Mercifully, even pain and mistakes
contribute 10 mems greatness and women'S
larger nobility. 1 have known even sin,
with its bitter experience and after deep
regret, lift q man into heroism, and there
is a time in the development of every
family of children when in their maturity
parents must stand aside and let nature
assert itself.
Respect for what is q child's strongly
declared bent is too little thought of. If
your boy was meant to SWIM o suffer-
ing mother, let him launch himself upon
the element God fitted him for, and do not
lie him to the shore.
Nothing has made so many lives abortive
as the measuring of lines along which they
must run The weary hours spent y young
girls and women in the endeavor to &C
quire traditional accomplishments for
which they have neither taste nor talent,
when their true vocation has been active
participation in outdoor life while children,
and the stirring work of social and civil
amelioration in their womanhocd, can never
be numbered, but they have swelled the
record of lost happiness
The dedication Of a girls whole life to the
social round that she abhors because her
family have always been prominent in it's
festivities is surely as warping and harden
ing as real yet needless suffering always
is. The pain God sends, the curb He fits to
our lives. borne patiently, ennoble, but the
fret of useless thwarting ruins character.
I am far from advocating that our chill
themselves peculiar" that barrier to SYM
patty and hindrance to success, nor that
the whilns Of early youth should be taken
too seriously, but / stand as the sturdy
champion of heaven-gfven tendency and
purpose