A Domestic Problem | Page 9

sister's little ruffles were all fluted, then would she seize the opportunity to stitch, to plait, to flounce, to pucker, and to braid. Wherever a hand's breadth of the original material was left visible, some bow, or band, or queer device, was fashioned and sewed on. This zealous individual, by improving every moment, by sitting up nights, by working with the baby across her lap, accomplished her task. The dress was finished, and worn with unutterable complacency. It is this last part which is the worst part. They have no misgivings, these mothers. They expect your warm approval. "I can't get a minute's time to read," said this industrious person; and, on another occasion, "I'll own up, I don't know any thing about taking care of children." Swift, speaking of women, said that they "employ more thought, memory, and application to become fools than would serve to make them wise and useful;" and perhaps he spoke truly. For suppose this young mother had been as eager to gain ideas as she was to accomplish a bias band, a French fold, or a flounce. Suppose that, in the intervals of baby-tending, instead of fluting her little girls' ruffles and embroidering their garments, she had tried to snatch some information which would help her in the bringing up of those little girls. The truth is, mothers take their leisure time for what seems to them to be first in importance. It is easy to see what they consider essentials, and what, from them, children are learning to consider essentials. The "knowingness" of some of our children on subjects connected with dress is simply appalling. A girl of eight or ten summers will take you in at a glance, from topmost plume to boot-tap, by items and collectively, analytically and synthetically. She discourses, in technical terms, of the fall of your drapery,--the propriety of your trimmings, and the effect of this, that, or the other. She has a proper appreciation of what is French in your attire, and a proper scorn of what is not. She recognizes "real lace" in a twinkle of her eye, and "all wool" with a touch of her finger-tips. Plainly clad school-children are often made to suffer keenly by the cutting remarks of other school-children sumptuously arrayed. A little girl aged six, returning from a child's party, exclaimed, "O mamma! What do you think? Bessie had her dress trimmed with lace, and it wasn't real!"
The law, "No child shall walk the street in a plain dress," is just as practically a law as if it had been enacted by the legal authorities. Mothers obey its high behests, and dare not rebel against it. Look at our little girls going to school, each with her tucks and ruffles. Who "gets time" to do all that sewing? where do they get it, and at what sacrifices? A goodly number of stitches and moments go to the making and putting on of even one ruffle on one skirt. Think of all the stitches and moments necessary for the making and putting of all the ruffles on all the skirts of the several little girls often belonging to one family! What a prospect before her has a mother of little girls! And there is no escape, not even in common sense. A woman considered sensible in the very highest degree will dress her little girl like other little girls, or perish in the attempt. How many do thus perish, or are helped to perish, we shall never know. A frail, delicate woman said to me one day, "Oh, I do hope the fashions will change before Sissy grows up, for I don't see how it will be possible for me to make her clothes." You observe her submissive, law-abiding spirit. The possibility of evading the law never even suggests itself. There is many a feeble mother of grown and growing "Sissys" to whom the spring or fall dressmaking appears like an avalanche coming to overwhelm her, or a Juggernaut coming to roll over her. She asks not, "How shall I escape?" but, "How shall I endure?" Let her console herself. These semi-annual experiences are all "mission." All sewing is "mission;" all cooking is "mission." It matters not what she cooks, nor what she sews. "Domestic," and worthy all praise, does the community consider that woman who keeps her hands employed, and is bodily present with her children inside the house.
But her bodily presence, even with mother love and longing to do her best, is not enough. There should be added two things,--knowledge and wisdom. These, however, she does not have, because to obtain them are needed what she does not get,--leisure, tranquillity, and the various resources and appliances of culture; also because their importance is not felt even by herself; also because