“Well,” Virginia added devoutly, “satchet bags may be well enough in their place; but they won’t feed missionaries, or clothe them, or save souls, you know, Mrs. Burke.”
“Did anybody say they would?” Mrs. Burke inquired. “I shouldn’t particularly care to see missionaries clothed in sachet bags myself; the smell might drive the heathen to desperation. But do we always limit our spending money to necessary clothes and 76 food? The truth is, we all of us spend anything we like as long as it goes on our backs, or down our throats; but the moment it comes to supportin’ missionaries we think ’em worldly and graspin’ if they show any ambition beyond second-hand clothes.”
“Do you live up to your preachin’, Mrs. Burke?” a little sallow-faced woman inquired from a dark corner of the room.
“Oh, no; it hits me just as hard as anybody else, as Martin Luther said. But I’ve got a proposition to make: if you’ll take these things you brought, back with you, and wear ’em for a week just as they are, and play you’re the missionaries, I’ll take back all I’ve said.”
As, however, there was no response to this challenge, the box was packed, and the cover nailed down.
(It is perhaps no proper part of this story to add, that its opening on the other side of the world was attended by the welcome and surprising fragrance of patchouli, emanating from a little silk sachet secreted among the more workaday gifts.)
The ladies then adjourned to the front piazza, where the supper was served.
When the dishes had been cleared away, the guests adjusted their chairs and assumed attitudes of expectant 77 attention while Virginia stood up and shyly unrolled her manuscript, with a placid, self-conscious smile on her countenance. She apologized for her youth and inexperience, with a moving glance towards her pastor, and then got down to business. She began with the original and striking remark that it was the chief glory and function of woman to be a home-maker. She continued with something to the effect that the woman who forms the character of her children in the sanctity of the home-life rules the destinies of the world. Then she made a fetching allusion to the “Mother of the Gracchi,” and said something about jewels. Nobody knew who the “Gracchi” were, but they supposed that they must be some relatives of Virginia’s who lived in Boston.
She asserted that the modern methods of bringing up children were all wrong. She drew a striking picture of the ideal home in which children always stood modestly and reverently by their parents’ chairs, consumed with anxiety to be of some service to their elders. They were always to be immaculately neat in their attire, and gentle in their ways. The use of slang was quite beneath them.
These ideal children were always to spend their evenings at home in the perusal of instructive books, and the pursuit of useful knowledge. Then, when 78 half-past seven arrived, they were to rise spontaneously and promptly, and bid their parents an affectionate good-night, and retire to their rooms, where, having said their prayers and recited the golden text, they were to get into bed.