The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-09-27

our frlendS Dear our SuuerlnSS, Wnen tney
are of kind known to be only temporary
and never fatal only a
Concerning toothachew only a sick
the Blues. headache,'' "Only the
bluesr' These are the
comments made on some of the severest
forms of suffering. physical and mental.
"Only the blues." That means one of three
conditions of misery and despair-which one
depends on the kind of person you are Ii
may mean that the government is mass OF
corruption, that the church is all dead for
mality and hypocrisy, that all the world Is
deteriorating and going backward. Or IL
may mean that all your friends are false
and time-serving. that your family Is
thoughtless and selfish, that everybody
sights you, wrongs you, persecutes You.
Or it may mean that you yourself are a
failure, mistake in nature. person who
always does the wrong thing, one who
brings misfortune and misery on everybody
one loves. Any of these calamities is GER
tainly severe enough, and some one of them
is perfectly real to the victim of the blues.
Is there any remedy? If possible. drop all
your work, no matter how pressing, and get
out into the sunshine. if nature interests
see your jolliest friend. If neither Of these
helps is available neither efficacious, at
least hold on to yourself. Do not for one mo-
ment believe that such mood is either true
or virtuous. Keep telling yourself that this
is only the blues, that although for the mo-
ment everything seems to be black. and you
cannot help seeing 1t black, yet really
Gods in His heaven,
Ais right with the world"
and that tomorrow or next week you will
see things rainbow-tinted again-and that
always, always, the rainbow tints are true
and the blackness illusion.
One reads of how woman wears herself
out with needless work and worry over de-
tails, how she hires cook and housemaid
and nurse, and then does not
Needless CD trust them to do their work,
Work. but constantly supervises it:
how she hires a typewriter
and then corrects the work herself. etc.
Welli one may confess the work and worry
and wearing out over details. but need
less?' Unless one has professional chef,
what sort of meals would be served, IL there
were no supervision of the cook. and what
would the house be like IL nobody oversaw
the housemaid? And the babies! Imagine
them left to the unmatched skill and faith
fulness Of an ordinary nursemaid!
And the author of the sapient paragraph
either never employed a typewriter, or else
is singulariy Indifferent to the correctness
of her English. A typewriter At to write and
correct literary work is not found, unless
she is one capable of producing literature
Typewriting is not nearly so careful and ac-
curate as printing. and the work of the best
printer needs a proofreader. Work and wor-
ny and wearing out and wrinkles and all
the rest of the woful ''ws" 1 fear must all
be endured, If woman's realm is to continue
to be administered with even it's present
degree of success. Hard work is not so
easily DONE" says the Irishman in the pro-
verb, and not all our labor-saving inven-
tons have shown us any way for life to be
successfully carried on without hard work.
They only enable us to do more Of it In
given time, not to escape it In fact, ma
chimes leave us less leisure than we had
without them Once women whose only duty
was to look pretty-a duty which nature
had accomplished for them-formed a leis-
ure class, but now, what with manicuring
and massaging, hair treatment and dem
tistry, dressing and redressing, with ath-
letic exercises and Delsarte practice thrown
in, they must be the busiest Of US all.
"A good name is rather to be chosen than
great riches" in more senses than Solomon's.
1t is difficult to estimate the value, all
through life. to almost any
Naming individual, Of having a rea
the Baby. sonably agreeable name
not too common, so that
it becomes useless for purposes of identif-
cation, as John Smith or William Jones;
not so uncommon as to be odd and puzzling
and dificult to be understood by strangers;
not ugly and not too romantioally pretty.
Surnames are a fixed fact In the universe.
If ones patronymic is a jawbreaker. or
ugly, or absurd. or painfully commonplace.
it is a misfortune for which there is no
remedy, except as a woman is sometimes
rescued by marriage; and even then it so
often happens that the right man has en-
phatically the wrong name!
But in the matter of the baptismal name,
parents may do much to make or mar the
future happiness and success in life of the
helpless and unconscious victims. Between
preposterous ancestral ugliness on the one
hand, or silly romanticism on the other,
the poor infant has numberless perils to
face in gaining his legal designation among
men.
The changes of fashion in this respect are
curious During the first half of the nine
tenth century there were three classes OF
names bestowed upon those infants who
were not called George Washington or
Thomas Jefferson-the Biblical, which Of
fered a chance for a few beautiful names
John and Paul, Mary, Ruth and Rachel,
for instance. and broad and bewildering
liberty of choice among cognomens of fan
tastic ugliness-a girl might be Abb or
boy, Jehiel or Tiglath-
pileser. Then there the classical
names; the boy might be named out of
''Plutarch's Lives" and the girl receive
some such Greek or Latin appelation as
Chloe, Samantha or Philomela Melissa or
Amanda. Then there were the Christian
graces and virtues the girl was Thankful
Or Prudence. Perseverance or Patience
Thankful was the favorite among names of
this class; rarely, indeed. did the girl have
the good luck TO be Grace or Faith or Hope.
Lent and Preserved were two of the pious
names of this kind for boys. There is a man
still living in North Dakota whose parents
twisting 1T up tightly, place IL I'm the oven
The rolls will plump up as soft and fresh as
when first purchased.
The ruffied muslin curtain is being re-
placed In the popular favor by that with a