Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1910-10-14
The GIRL WHO HAS
NOTHING TO DO

kuIHING IU DU.
When agirl finishes school she is usu-
ally in sort of perplexed quandary as
to what to do next After the first
| breath of relief from study is drawn
she begins to wonder with the next
breath how she is going to pass her time
for the rest of her life.
IL she has been educated with some
! special end in view, business or a pro-
tesslon, her course is pretty well map
ped out for her; but if she looks for
ward only to leisure and self enjoyment
and self-irdulgence, then she needs all
patient persistence and tact of those
who love her to induce her to look at
this little matter of life and its respon-
sibilities from another viewpoint.
There are lots of girls in the world
whose circumstances render it unneces-
sary for them to work. At the end of
school days they plunge into social life
and sink or swim. survive or perish.
according to their own charm or the
amount of energy and time to be a
thorough social success. The best and
brightest faculties of mind and body
are often engaged in the struggle, and
the girl who is striving to be more pop
ular than any other girl she knows will
soon find that she has to work harder
than ever she worked at school to set a
hotter pace than her rivals. After a
bit she marries and settles down, or
safety faces her and she settles up, as
well as she can, old scores of health and
| nerves, headaches and heartaches. for
she usually has to pay dearly for the
| long, heartbreaking race she has run.
But between the busy worker and the
equally energetic queen bee is a middle
class of drones that clog the hive and
are good for nothing save to loll and eat
the bread of idleness. These are the
girls who make party the night before
an excuse for spending half the next
day IN bed to the decentralization of
househould duties. who spend their days
ION the bum" who have no interests
within their homes and few outside. and
who lead perfectly aimless, useless, dis
contented, shallow lives. They have no
home duties and are apt to resent any
that are urged on them. They are
loafers just as much as the idler who
stands all day on a corner with a cigar
in his mouth, and they have just about
as much more right to waste their time
as he has.
One doesn't have to travel hundred
miles from home to find some shining
examples of girl loafers. The habit is
most insidious one To break away
from it at once is the only remedy: to
ind something to do, something to be
busy about.
Every girl should know how to cook
how to keep house. how to sew and how
to swim. 1t doesn't really matter if
she has no other accomplishments, these
four will safeguard her through life.
Nor is it worth girls while to con-
slider her education complete merely
because she has stopped school. She
has only learned how to learn. She has
probably had very little time to read
any one author enough to know his
style. and here is a capital moment to
make literary acquaintances as well as
to carry out the little resolution that all
girls make to keep up their French or
their German or their music.
If physical culture is her fad. let her
try simple household work Instead of an
elaborately artificial system of muscle
culture. In housework there is a def
mite object in view and the result is
gratifying to the mind whereas the
meaningless and monotonous exercises
to which physical culture condemns her
soon grow tedious. In short, there are
hundred things that the girl who has
nothing to do can do if she puts her
mind to it, and any one of them is far
more satisfying and far more enlighten-
ing than the dailyand hourly loaf which
some girls fancy is all that life expects
of them when their school DAYS are
over Cally Ryland, in Virginian- Pilot.
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