Year: 1868

Gossip for the Ladies',


The Saturday ReUielO has tile fol.
lowing on WOman's work which is full.
ly as applicable to the women Of
America as to those Of England, for
whom the article was written:


II is strange to see into what uns
reasonable disrepute active house.
keeping, woman's first natural duty,
has fallen in England. Take 4 fami.
ly with four or Eve hundred a year
and We know how small d sum that
is for agenteel humanity in these
days, the wife who will Be an active
housekeeper, even with such an in
come, viii be an exception to the
rule; and the daughters who will be
anything more than drawing room
dolls waiting for husbands to transfer
them to home Of their own, where
they may be as useless as useless as
they are now, wiz be rarer still. For
things are getting worse, not better,
and our young women are less useful
than their mothers.


What is there in practical house.
keeping less honorable than the or.
dinary work Of middle class gentle
women2 And why should women
shrink from doing for untility, and
for the general comfort Of the family,
what they would do at any time for
vanity or idleness2 No ono need 60
into extremes, aud wish our middie-
class gentlewomen to become Cinder.
elias sitting among the kitchen ashes;
Nausicaas washing linen, or Pene>
lopes spending their lives in needle.
work only. But, without undertak.
ing anything unpleasant to her senses
or degrading to her condition, q lady
might do hundreds Of things that
are now left undone in a house alto-
gether, or are s ven up to the coarse
handling Of servants, and domestic
life would gain infinitely in conse-
quence. What degradation, for in
stanee, is there iu eoOkery2 and how
much more home happiness would
there not be if wives would take 10
hand the great cold.muttOn question.


The whole scheme Of woman's life
at this present time is untenable aud
unfair. She wants to have all the
pleasure and none of the disagreea-
bles. Her husband goes to the city
and does monOtonOus and unpleasant
work there; but his wife thinks her
self in evil ease If asked to do mo-
notonous housework at home. Yet
she does nothing more eleVating or
more advantageous. Novel reading,
fancy work, skating, letter writing,
sum up her ordinary occupations; aud
she considers these moro to the point
than practical housekeeping. In fact,
it becomes a serious question what
women think themselves sent into the
world for, what they hold themselves
designed by God to be or do. Fancy
a brilliant creature foregoing an even
ing's conversational glory abroad for
the sake Of a prosaiC husbands more
prosaic dinner,
I He comes home tired from work,
and desperately in need Of a good
dinner as q restorative, but the plain
cook gives him cold meat and pickles
or an abomination which she calls
hash, aud the brilliant creature, full Of
mind, thinks the desire for anything
else rank sensuality. Il seems little
hard, certainly, on the unhappy fell
low who works at the mill for such q
return, but women believe that men
are made only to work at TIE mill
that they may receive the grist ae.
cruing; ard be kept in idleness and
uselessness all their lives. They have
no idea Of tightening the labor of
that mill round by doing their own
natural work cheerfully and diIigent-
ly. They viii do everything but
what they ought to do; they will
make themselves doctors, committee
women, what not, but they won't learn
cooking, and they don't keep their
own houses. There never was time
when women were less the helpmates
than they are at present; when there
was such a wide division between the
interests and the sympathies of the
sexes IN the endeavor, on the one side
to approximate their pursuits.