Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-05-09


meaning herself with work when she
might have reclined on the hillside near
her fathers tent and plucked buttercups
and dreamed out romances and sighed
idly to the winds and wept over imag
mary songs to the brooks? No, she knew
that work was honorable and that ev
cry girl ought to have something to do,
and SO she starts with the bleating and
lowing and believing and neighing
droves to the we'll for the watering.
Around every home there are hocks
and droves of cares and anxieties, and
every daughter of the family, though
there be seven, ought to be doing her
part to take care Of the focks. In many
households not only is Zipporah. but all
her sisters, without practical and use
full employments. Many of them are
waiting for fortunate and prosperous
matrimonial alliance, but some lounger
like themselves will come along and
after counting the large number of IA
Their Jethro's sheep and camels will
make proposal that will be accepted,
and neither of them having done any
thing more practical than to chew chOco-
late caramels the two nothings will
start on the road Of life together, every
step more and more failure. That
daughter of the Midianitish sheik will
never find her Moses. Girls of America,
initiate Zippnrah. Do something practi-
cal. Do something helpful. Do some
thing we'll. Many have fathers with
great fiocks of absorbing duties, and
such a father needs help in home or
Office or field. Go out ard help him
with the fiocks. The reason that SO
many men now condemn themselves to
unbalanced and solitary life is because
they cannot support the modern young
woman, who rises at half past 10 in
the morning and retires after midnight,
one of the trashiest of novels in her
hands most of the time between the late
rising and the late retiring-a thousand
of them not worth one Zipporah.
There are questions that every father
and mother ought to ask the daughter
at breakfast or tea table and that all
the daughters of the wealthy sheik
ought to ask each other: "What would
you do if the family fortune should fail.
if sickness should PROSTATE the bread
winner, if the focks of Jethro should
be destroyed by a sudden excursion of
wolves and bears and hyenas from the
mountain? What would you do for a
living? Could you support yourself?
Can you take care of an invalid mother
or brother or sister as we'll as yourself?"
Yea, bring it down to what any day
might come to prosperous family.
"Can you cook dinner if the servants
should make a strike for higher wages
and leave that morning?' Every minute
of every hour Of every day of every year
there are families flung from prosperity
into hardship, and, alas, if in such ext
gency the seven daughters of Jethro can
do nothing but sit around and cry and
wait for some one to come and hunt
them up situation for which they
have no qualification Get at something
useful, get at it right away. Do not
say. eff were thrown upon my own
resources, I would become a music
teacher There are now more music |
teachers than could be supported if
they were all Mozarts and Wagners and
Handles. Do not say, 81 will go to en-
broidering slippers. - There are more
slippers now than there are feet. Our |
hearts are every day wrung by the story |
of elegant women who were once aff1u- |
ent. but through catastrophe have fall
Ell helpless, with no ability to take care |
of themselves.
Our friend and Washingtonian towns
man, w. W. Corcoran, did a magnifi. |
cent thing when he built and endowed |
the Louise home for the support of the |
unfortunate aristocracy of the south
the people who once had everything, but
have come to nothing. We want anoth-
er W. w. Corcoran to build Louise |
home for the unfortunate aristocracy of |
the north. But institutions like that in |
every city of the land could not take |
care of One-half the unfortunate aristoc-
racy of the north and south whose large |
fortunes have failed and who, through |
lack of acquaintance with any style of |
work, cannot now earn their own bread.
There needs to be peaceful yet rad
ical revolution among most of the pros
porous homes of America by which the
elegant do nothings may be transformed
into practical do something's. Let use
less women go to work and gather the
focks. Come, Zipporah. let me intro
duce you to Moses. But you do not
mean tlat this man affianced to this /
country girl was the great Moses of his
tory, do you? You do not mean that he
was the man who afterward wrought
such wonders there? Surely you do not
mean he whose staff dropped, wriggled
into serpent and then, clutched, stiff
ened again into staff? You do not
mean the challenger Of Egyptian thrones
and palaces? You do not mean he who
struck the rock SO hard it went in
stream for thirsty hosts? Surely you do
not mean the man who stood alone
with God on the quaking Sinaitic
ranges, not him of that most famous
funeral of all time, God coming down
out of the heavens to bury him? Yes,