Year: 1876

Society, are the ideas which fill the brain be.
hind that pretty show of pink and white inno-
cence. We might content ourselves with the
sight of the pretty pink and white, careless
that it hid all manner of stale and useless
fOolishness were it not that these girls are the
wives and mothers of the fast coming ycars
That she is at fourteen sad little firt care.
less of everything beyond beaus, and the
knowledge of all that a girl in her station
ought to know, is not of so much importance.
but that at fOrty-fiye the mother of growing
boys and girls should be destitute of common
sense, deicacy, and religion matters much TO
her own household and to the country.


The girls mother, this October morning
no doubt means to make of her daughter a
good and useful woman. She is not of that
extreme class who choose school because Of
the fashionable acQualntances her child viii
make there. She Is particular in finding good
teachers, in urging the girl TO study, in lead
ing her whole family to church and Sunday
school. Meanwhile she is on nettles hourly
lest her own dress and her daughters should not
be "in the style.r If she has not much money
the two spend days at the machine frilling
and decorating dresses for the street AT the
table or about the fire. it is not the great sub
jects of public interest which she discusses
with zest, but her neighbOr's new pOlOnase or
the expediency of visiting the Smiths, whom
"nObOdy knows" She makes each child on
Sunday drop money in the poOr-box, and
teaches them how "blessed are the poor in
esprit" while through the whole week her
every word and action are based upon views
o,,1 f11~
world into which she leads her children out
side of the church doors is made up of cark-
ing cares for money and tawdry anxiety for
appearances its God is in reality not the
lowly Divine Master, but Society" the poor
little clique which she has chosen for a ruler.


How are we going to help this matter? How
do we propose that our schoolgirls shall be
rescued from the vulgarizing, enfeebling inhu-
ence, the universal love of show and sham
which has well nigh wrecked the whole cOm-
try in the last five years. The only hope is
in their mothers. A sudden shock in her jog.
trOt life, death perhaps. will usually rouse a
woman to q consciousness of the true meaning
of life, and to the paltriness of her aims.
Something less might do it. If any we'll
meaning but foolish mother will read a chap





dressing table, heartily striving to comprehend
it, ,he will rise to higher levels of thought
and action. The cure is an old one, almost
out of date, but certain one. There is
a different class of mothers, who no doubt
read such structures as these with cOmpla-
cency, the refOrmers, whose daughters are in
training to take certlm place in the world
as its workers and helpers. Such vanities as
dress, lOYe-malling, etc, etc, are hidden to
take the lowest room in their lives work, or
some especial hobby Of reform is made its in
forming motive. The mistake made by these
good women is, we think, that their daugh-
ters are placed in advance, in a belligerent
attitude toward the world especially the other
sex. 1t is an unnatural attitude, and one which
costs a woman sooner or later loss of dignity
and power. In short, as what our daughters
shall be depends upon their mothers, mother
has no more right to weaken her child's future
life in order to crafty her own whims than
her own vanity.