The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-06
WOMEN AND BOREDOM.

# s WOMEN AND BOREDOM. Y.
 A recent French weekly treats the subject of the boredom of women with much solemnity and not little vitupe- ration Woman 2 it says, "is bored by reason of the indulgence of her nature and the inferiority of her social condi- ton. Her boredom Is innate and or ganic, and is due to the essential pow erty of her sensations and the lack of continuity of her impulses. Few roads are open to her: she has access to few crafts or professions By birth she is relegated to mediocre empIoyments and posts without applause;, she lives un- der the surveillance of opinion; she can never call herself free; she cannot go where she chooses, nor appear alone where she pleases; she is condemned to the management of house and the guardianship of home. It is rahd fate. To bearit without impatience one must be endowed with talent for me- cf1anical activities and habitual sleepi- ness. The domestic affair to be reor- ganized daily is veritable web of Pen- elope, wearisome to an lnspeakable de- gree" s.s6. -., .. E
 The article gives itself to the most de- spondent statement of the case, and of fers no.remedy. America, the soil upon which most problems are solving. is again the place where this question of the scope of wornans freedom is being tried. It is fair to say that In thickly populated districts more women suffer from nervous prostration than from en- nuye. Certainly here, almost all the crafts and many of the professions are open to women mot ,begrudgingly open, but freely and fairly open. Medicine and literature have thrown the gates wide; only the more conservative sects debar the right of public preaching, and If she has attained little in the legal profession, she would be the first to ad- init that logic and legality are not of the native bias of the feminine mind.
 . As to Penelope's web, the years are lesening the burden by mechanical de- vices for Tightening work, by domestic conveniences innumerabIe, and ulti- mately, doubtless, the great servant question will be solved Servants, un- fortunately, are not trained to their craft. They take place, trusting to luck that they will know what to do, and manage somehow to do 1t. Some of them resent their position and do their work grudgingly without a stand ard. If domestic schools inspired the zeal for domestic service that normal colleges and kindergarten training schools do for the work they teach, the millennium would be heaying over the horizon line. And if there were train ing-schools for lnistresses where they were taught patience, system, conside- ration, respect for interiors and care for detail-who knows but the millennium would come sailing over seas to us. Domestic servants can only be supposed to feel real interest in their work where they feel a real interest in their mistress; therefore, the first rule laid down in the mistress trainings school should be: "Be charming to your ser- vants." To be charming to husband and children is an old creed, but to be loved by the rest of ones household is
 
 Many of the wheels of the domestic ma cllinery would be oiled if the mistresses were schooled in having an eye to the comfort and the diversion of their ser wants. Harriet Martineau used to call in her donestics every morning, and spend half-hour reading and discuss ing with them the foreign news in the daily, papers. But if this is carrying theologyfar afieid, at least it ought to be as much a part of domestic economy for servants to have a tidy place to rest in, with cards and games and a few books and a pictorial paper or two as it is forthemistress to have sitting room. And this is not extravaganza; 1t can be done as easily in a fiat at four hundred dollars year as in a manor house. .a '@
 These details, the care to diffuse charm and harmony over given space in the universe-who cares how big or how little the plot, provided it is exqui- site as far as it goes--these create an interest as vital in the domestic rou- tine as the passion for fidelity did, in the web of Penelope. Mrs. Wiggs nev- CT knew ennuye in the cabbage-patch: we have seen the very family the High CT Journalist depicts with so much feel ing, of twelve children, where they keep one girl, and the washing is done at home, and found them ignorant of the meaning of the word boredom.
 Wherever life is lived with zeal, wherever there is standard striven for and gradually approached, there-be the conditions what they 1nay-boredonl is strangled.--Harper's Weekly.