OLD SAMPLER MAP (1810).
We often say that in those days—which, after all, are not so very long ago—girls were delicate and unhealthy, took but little exercise, and were too much given to sedentary occupations. But it was only the foolish (who carry everything to excess) of whom this was true. There was a good deal of running about the house, and the sons and daughters would have known very little of their relations and friends a few miles off, if they had not walked to see them, perhaps to spend the day, or to go one day and return the next. Few families were without sundry poor people in whom they were interested, and if they lived at the other end of the parish, it was an object for a walk to take an old woman a milk pudding, or a little delicacy to a sick child. Houses were more roomy than they are now, certainly the population was not quite so thick on the ground, and in persistent bad weather, when outdoor exercise was impossible for the girls, there were fine games of battledore and shuttlecock in the hall or schoolroom or some half-empty apartment cleared for the purpose. And it was a point of skill, as well as honour, to see who could keep up longest with a skipping-rope, and, though the little ones shared the fun, it was by no means confined to them.
Small daily duties well done, and the change of work that is as good as play, made life satisfactory as well as pleasant. Amusements were rare and costly; they are not invariably cheap now, but apparently we must have them, whatever may be neglected in consequence. We cannot exactly go back to all the ways of our "foremothers," but we need not despise them, and already there are signs that the finger of common-sense is pointing back to that lost era of domesticity in which so many English virtues grew up and nourished.
E. C.
TEMPERANCE NOTES AND NEWS
By a Leading Temperance Advocate.
Photo: Gillman and Co., Ltd., Dublin.