Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1893 — Untrained. [ARTICLE]

Untrained.

She was dressed so showily that everybody’s attention was arrested by her the moment she entered the car. She was very thin,, very pale, and her voice was weak and high-pitched. She sank into a seat with a sigh and a murmur of discontent, and at once took from her a sachel a lemon and began eating it. By this time it wfas discovered that she was a young girl. She ate the lemon, and announced to her companion that it was the third she had eaten thatr day. Her complexion suggested pastp, she was so nervous as to arouse sympathy, so irritable as to produce a feeling of pity for anyone who had to live with her. A few years will find her a physical wreck. She quoted from “mamma” so loudly as to make one familiar with that unwise person’s views on every subject, and at the end of two hours one knew the condition of her wardrobe. The journey began early in the morning, and for the lover of lemons ended about four In the afternoon, and she never stopped talking for longer than five minutes, and she ate lemons in that Interval. Temper, voice, manners, appetite, all were left untrained by unwisely indulgent parents. One shuddered when one thought of the kind of woman that must result from such a method, or lack of method, of rearing. Shame on the mothers who allow their children to develop so unnaturally. The end of each child’s training should not only be the developing of that child, but should look forward to the educating of the fathers and mothers of the next generation. The benefit conferred on posterity is not confined to tree-planting.