“Why, you would hardly believe it if I should tell you all I compassed that summer before Charley was born. I wove a whole piece of butternut, and made my husband a complete suit—a new one for Johnny, too. I put up sweet pickles, and preserves, and apple butter enough to last more than a year. We only had Aunt ’Liza and that lazy, fat Tish in the kitchen, and Jake for out-doors, and Aunt ’Liza wasn’t much account that summer, for she had her little Ben a month before Charley came. But nothing seemed to trouble me. Husband wrote that he was doing right well, and every time put in some nice words for me, and how he longed to see us all. So I worked and worked. I remember how tired I was when night came. I was always accounted a sound sleeper, but that summer I could not sleep. I heard the big clock in the entry strike one and two half the time.”
Here, you see, the mother’s activity gave the large head, while what should have filled it with compact brain went into the butternut and preserves.
I have known women stand at the ironing-table ready to drop with fatigue, while they smoothed out the last crease from the kitchen towel.
It is a growing custom to embroider under-garments, night-dresses, etc. Such work is extremely fascinating, and women who can not afford to purchase it, will often allow themselves to stitch far into the night. This tends to make a child narrow-chested and short-sighted, and is unfavorable to good looks, and the embroidered garments do not make it as attractive as would a serene and sunny disposition. Grace is said to depend on excess of power. Insufficiency of power precludes this quality, which is even more fascinating than beauty itself.
There are, unfortunately, among all classes, women who can not, or do not, extend their thoughts beyond the trimming on their skirts, or the last small scandal. Alas! for the high-minded, true-hearted man who unites his destiny with one of these. Her aims are paltry, and his fine traits in her keeping are changed to littleness. She clings to her petty interests, and he can no more inspire her with larger views than he can mould a marble image. She represents herself in her children. His descendants through her progress backward, and he is obliged to admit that woman has the greater power in the formation of character.
After what has been said it will be seen that no greater mistake can be made than for a mother, while creating immortals, to drudge and scrimp for the sake of being some day well, or better off. While she has thus slaved, sparing herself no restful hours in which to enjoy the beauty of flower or field, in which to contemplate a beautiful face or graceful figure in real life or picture, in which to enjoy music or the creations of genius in literature, she has fixed irrevocably for this world the unsatisfactory status of her children who will so poorly adorn the new house when it is one day built.