There are, on the other hand, certain households admirable in every respect but one—that on an average they discuss dress four or five hours a day. The mother of the family is a woman of great merit and virtue; she dresses with great simplicity; and yet there are no preoccupations so serious, no anxieties or sufferings so pressing, that they cannot be dissipated at least for the moment by the interest of ordering a new gown or bonnet.
These affairs are of vast importance; life slips away while the mind is wasting itself in their service.
Mothers of great merit teach their daughters to consider dress as one of their interests and principal duties, discussing and letting them discuss toilette for hours every day, and judging every earthly thing from the standpoint of toilette. The business of dressing, shopping, choosing materials, talking with shopkeepers and dressmakers, and the time passed by young girls, and even young women, with lady's maids in more confidential intercourse than is becoming; these are in truth the great obstacles to habits of industry.
But leaving the subject of frivolous persons and unoccupied lives, how, you will ask, can a mother who owes all her time to her family find leisure to study?
It is hardly necessary to remark that I am speaking of women in easy circumstances, for the reason that they especially have the means of putting in practice these suggestions. Poor women who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, are not less precious in the eyes of God or in our own than the favorites of fortune; but daily toil can hardly leave them opportunity to cultivate their minds. And yet even among them there are many not called upon to support their families who, without being rich, keep one domestic, or do the housework themselves with ease and quickness, and thus have nearly as much leisure as women of wealth. How many women there are in business, shop-girls, for instance, or bookkeepers, who surely have time for reading, since they do read—and read—what?
It is well known that a taste for reading is now penetrating even into country villages, affording a means of spending pleasantly the long winter evenings. There are useful directions, an elevated impulse to be given to the class of women of whom we have just spoken; but however worthy of interest such a subject may be, it is not our present theme. Perhaps we may enter on it at some future day.
We address ourselves then to women in easy circumstances. Can the head of a grand establishment, a wife, a mother, find time to study.
Beyond a doubt, yes! To begin with, she can devote to study the time that other women give to worldly entertainments that consume their nights, and to personal adornments that devour their fortunes. They can lay aside all the pursuits that, while absorbing them without offering any advantage, prepare them ill for the duties toward their children that belong to them as mothers of immortal souls.
Does not the secret of living lie in the reconciliation of apparent difficulties? Do not duties, tastes, affections often appear to contradict each other? I have often seen that habits of orderly activity combined with a simplicity that suppresses useless exactions multiply an industrious woman's hours and make it possible to meet every demand. It is a woman's science to understand how to give herself and yet reserve herself: a science composed of gentleness and activity, of devotion and firmness, whose first result is the retrenching of idle indulgences, and the keeping within due bounds the tribute to be paid to the claims of society.