Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1891 — What to Do with the Hands. [ARTICLE]

What to Do with the Hands.

It is a great problem with a certain class of people to know what they shall do with their hands. They are unwilling to work at anything worthy the name of work, tired of ordinary amusements, and really worried to find some way of passing the time. A leading fashion paner contains the following advice on the use of the hands, which illustrates what some people do with theirs: “My dear fellow,” said a society woman of great candor to an awkward, timid young Harvard graduate whom she was to present, “you have any amount of talent, you have position, you have money, but you never will be at your ease, never show at your best, until you know what to do with your hands and feet. You must lose them, forget them, be unconscious of them.” We hope that none of the Farm, Field and Stockman boys and girls will ever have to forget that thev have hands. We believe that these hands of ours were given us for some better use than to sit with them gracefully folded in our laus or hanging in “unconscious” idleness at our sides. God meant them for work, and gave us all our duties to perform. Every bov or girl who fails to do his duty is a. shirk and deserves nothing but disdain. It is not only ours-elves that we are to look out for in this world, but others who need care and help, and if we haven t all our hands can do working for ourselves, the part of every noble boy or girl is to “lend a hand” to some one else. A button sewed on brother’s coat, a half-hour’s spading in sister’s flower-bed, an armful of wood brought for tired mother, an afternoon given up to taking care of baby, these are ways of using th? hands which are open to all boys and girls every day, and it is by doing these things that they amount to something in this world. " “Hand” some is as “hand” some does is a proverb that recognizes a better use for the hands than merely to look well. Handsome really means handy or useful, and only came to mean beautiful because people understood that nothing could be really beautiful that did not have some useful occupation. Our hands are wonderful instruments and capable of almost any work to which we may put them, "from the mighty fist of the blacksmith, which he could use if necessary for a hammer, to the dainty trained hand of the watchmaker, accurate and sensitive to the finest degree. So never be ashamed to use your hands.— Farm, Field and Stockman.