Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1875 — Slovenly Girls. [ARTICLE]

Slovenly Girls.

I was visiting a young motiuer lately, in company with a lady erf singular strength and wisdom. Our hestess, Mrs. French, was a high-spirited, nervous woman, with large ideality and constructiveness. She had two little girls, of ten and twelve years—bright, winning children, but organized quite differently from their mother. My friend, Mrs. Jackson, and myself were often pained during the visit by the tone of criticism and coldness that characterized almost everything said by Mrs. French to her children. One day the mother complained openly to us of the carelessness of the little girls, saying: “They are so different from what I was at their age (hat I cannot understand them or have any patience with them. Why, when I was twelve years old I made a dress for myself; and I used to keep my room and my, bureau-drawers so neat that everybody praised me for my good order. I am really afraid Belle and Annie will grow up slovenly and idle, in spite of all that I can do.” Mrs. Jackson heard her through, and then she said: “ My dear Mrs. French, did your mother never feel dissatisfied with you on some other score, or were you perfect in every respect?” “Oh, no! Satisfied? No, not by any means. Mother was a great student, and she was worried to death for fear I should grow up a dunce.” “Then I suppose she made you miserable by perpetually mourning over your dullness.” “You are wrong there; she was the most patient woman in the world. She gave all the opportunity I wanted to practice my housekeeping and dressmaking skill, and then she coaxed me to study; if she hadn’t led me gradually to take an interest in books I never should have known anything.” “Your mother was a wise woman,” replied Mrs. Jackson; “but you must pardon me if I say that you are taking exactly the opposite course with your daughters.”

“My daughters! Why, they are crazy for books; they take after their grandmother.” “Very true; but can’t you see what I am aiming to show you? You were undeveloped In one part of your nature and developed In another; your mother kept you happily and usefully employed by allowing you to do that which was easy and natural for you to do; then she skillfully and gradually encouraged the part of you which had the poorer start, If I may so express It Now If you were to pursue the same course In regard to your girls you would encourage and praise them im their studies, and then when they were glowing with the delight of congenial labor you would direct their attention gently to the necessity of cultivating every part of the character. Instead of that you assume that your daughters are to blame for not being developed as you were.” “You are right,” said Mrs. French; “ I am not acting as my mother did; hut it has always seemed to me that it was unnatural for a girl to be careless about her room and her clothes.” “ I don’t think we well understand what we mean when we say unnatural. There are-many gradations and phases of nais also unnatural, if you will use that expression, for a girl to be dull at her arithmetic and botany. We are to consider our children and our friends as farms; the productive parts we must profit by, the rest we must cultivate; that is the way your mother acted, and that is the way you must do if you would not harden the soil till it is too late for seed-sow-ing.” Mrs. French was silent hut deeply attentive, and Mrs. Jackson went on:

“ I have known many cases of sad alienation in families from the lack of wise sympathy with the order of nature in children. Some children develop one quality or set of qualities first, and some another. What is wanted is sympathy and tenderness with the actual child. You cannot produce new growths by fault-finding; instead, you must concentrate the sun of love upon the very places that are most sterile. Suppose the sun should refuse to shine except upon blossoms Snd fruit?” At the end of this speech Miss Bell came rushing in, her apron full of flowers for analyzing, her dress torn, and her boots muddy. The mother opened her mouth to speak, but, warned by a look, she was silent Mrs. Jackson called the sweet-faced girl to her side, helped her to classify her specimens, and then asked her gently how she got so torn and soiled. Belle looked a little ashamed, and, meeting a smile from her mother instead of a frown, she owned that she had been very careless, and had been practicing leaping ditches with her sister, without thinking anything about her nice boots. Then it was her turn for a lesson; and Mrs. Jackson explained to her how necessary it was for a lady to adapt her actions to the occasion and to her dress. “It is really a serious fault,” she said, “to spoil your expensive boots in this way.” “ You must wear your old boots when you go botanizing,” said Mrs. French, indulgently.

At this Belle ran to her mother, "and throwing her arms around her neck promised to fry very hard to be all she wished if she would only let her go for flowers and stones, and not mind if she looked ‘‘like a pauper’s child” when she was “ on a tramp.” When Belle went out Mrs. Jackson said: “ You see the child is not careless because she lacks perception of order and beauty, but because her mind is directed exclusively to one set of ideas. Her vigorous body calls for open-air exercise, and her thoughts turn involuntarily to the subjects presented to her at school. She does not think about her room or her clothes. It is your business to develop her in that direction; but you must go to work in the same way that you would to teach her Latin or geometry. Above all, don’t begin by assuming that ignorance iB guilt in that department more than in any other. The child knows better, intuitively, and will lose faith in you and love for you in proportion as your management is unskillful and unsympathetic. ” — Mrt. M. F. Butte, in Phrenological Journal. The industrious fanner of the land has now begun to ait up nights, watching and ■watering the “ best pumpkin,” which is tq " tarry off the prize at the fair,**