Year: 1878

BY MRS. SALLlE A. RAMAGE.


With the new year host of good resolu
tons are generally jotted down in ones note


ook. These are for the most part vows of
decided abstinence from besetting sins, and
a careful array of virtues to be cultivated.
They embrace a recapitulatIon of ones
faults, grievous list, and meager array of
ones goodness. They are the mile stones
that annually are erected by conscience, and
as regularly covered blythe hands of forget
fulness and neglect. For, as they refer to
things of the past continually, they are
- themselves little more than memorandums
of what we have done in the way of harm,
sometimes of good, with here and there
free thought, plan for future change. 1t


has occurred to me that If this New Year we


would make an additional resolution, q
practical suggestion of work for the year
1878, we might be enabled to keep it at least
IN some measure. Our resolutions in past
years have been broken one by one. We
have let them go without single impulse
to keep them; or if there has been an honest
purpose to abide by them it has been fritz
tered away by the slow process of days and
weeks and months. In some instances this
may not be true. / am aware that people do
adhere to these selfsame vows, but
speak in general terms when 1 say New
Year promises to ourselves are rarely kept


they seem made to be broken. One reason
for this is they are too vague, too underlined; ;
they are almost without limit. And this is
the very bugbear that frightens US from
eleaving to our vows. We write in our new
diaries on the 1st of January, II have re


solved TO be better woman" or "a better
child / acknowledge this embraces all of
ones mental and spiritual growth, but
would it not be better to so appOrtion this
that we would be reminded of the things in
which we are most liable to err. Suppose
a child, larger or smaller, twelve, twenty
or forty, writes II will try to control my
temper" and that the line is written on the
heart and conscience as well as on the clear,
white page of the book, would not its very
directness aid in the performance of the
task2 But following this comes another
idea that has been suggested to me by little
paragraph l have noted in a paper: Would it
not be well this year TO undertake to learn
some one thing thoroughly; to be so posi-
tive In your knowledge that you are willing
30 stand any test? And let me tell you why
] have thought this Of so much importance.
Take any number of men and women who
apply for a situation, and carefully sift out
those who have doubts as to their capacity
and knowledge, and see how many you have
lafE -
pay ever so small, and yet only few will be
able to retain the situation; the great multi
tude will fail, not always from lack of
knowledge, but discipline and skilled train
ing. Women apply for vacant places as
servants, laundresses, clerks bookkeepers,
teachers, writers and managers, and they
have some idea of the duties that will de-
volve upon them, but at an important point
they fail; they must stand aside; they must
lose that for which they were only partially
fitted. They have neither been taught or
trained to thoroughuess; they have a smat-
tering of the requisite knowledge, but they
have neither grasped their work entirely or
in detail, nor are they able 10 perfectly and
completely TO meet the demands upon them.
There is no pleasure in the life of a woman 1
believe, so great as the feeling of perfect
dependence, of reliance upon her secure
footing 1t is virtually the strength of life,
and the absence Of it has thrown hundreds
of women out INTO the darkness of disgrace.
They held high positions, but as their
ignorance and their inability to perform
their duties became manifest they gradually
sank step by step, until chagrin or despair
urged them to abandon the path of reeti-
tude. 1t would SET m that with the poverty
that exists all over the country, with men
and women begging food, or dying from
starvation that it would be possible to get
capable servants who would be willing to
work almost for the comforts of a home. If
you think this is SO. attempt the feat, and if
out of twenty women selected from the mass
you secure two who will keep your kitchen
clean, common food deceDtly cooked and
served, you are lucky. II you hire one to
sew for you how will the garments be made!