Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1881 — Providing for Daughters. [ARTICLE]

Providing for Daughters.

The way of happiness and comfort for single middle-aged women would be mbch easier if a different method was .pursued by parents toward their daughters while they are still young. Nothing, of course, can recompense a woman for the loss in her life of the love of husband and children, but there is no reason why, added to this bitterness, she should always have the humiliation of dependence. Half the terrors of a single life of a woman lie in the fact that she will never have aJhome of her own, but must remain a dependent on father and brothers ; the one too many in the household,; .the beneficiary on sufferance in the family, though she work twice as much as the actual members. A father naturally sets his boy dn-hls'bWfc&t at corning of age, but as naturally keeps his daughter dependent on himself. It is a pleasure, perhaps, to him to give her gowns and pin money at SO as when she was 3. He does not reflect that she has the longing,. equally natural to every man and woman, to take her own place in the world, to be a rooted plant, not a parasite. The difficulty is easily solved- If the father js wealthy f let him

settle absolutely upon his daughter, when she is of marrying age, the amount he would have given her as a dower, instead of doling out the interest as constant gifts ; if he is a poor man, let him give her some trade or occupation by which she can earn her own money. This eonnw would obviate the mercenary necessity of marriage which rises wjghfc and day before the penniless, dependent woman.— The, Housekeeper.