By the next number, April, which will come out March 25, there ought to be a fair number of questions and suggestions from our readers. Don’t forget that the best suggestion or bit of information sent in each month entitles the sender to a year’s free subscription, to any name and address desired. And remember that another free year’s subscription goes every month to the person, man or woman, who sends us the best true story of heroic living in common everyday life. The notices elsewhere in our Department give the particulars.
How are we going to get “something outside to think about?” Well, there are plenty of things outside and there are plenty of ways of bringing them into our lives. Each of us will find some things and some ways—all by herself if she will try and then she can tell the rest of us about them—but in our Department each month we can take one set of things, see whether there isn’t something of value there for us, ask questions, make suggestions, try experiments, offer bits of information, talk about it with our families, think about it while we are working and while we are resting or amusing ourselves, bring new things into our lives. I am not going to set up as a teacher and there isn’t going to be any course of study. There is only one thing I claim to know that some of you don’t know—that we, any of us, can make our lives brighter and more valuable by feeding our minds as well as our bodies. I know this by experience—not only by my own experience and that of my two daughters but also by the experiences of scores and hundreds of other women I have known and, perhaps, helped a little. I never talked to anyone in print before, but for many, many years, ever since one golden day when I discovered that I was actually making my own life happier and fuller and less ugly by an effort to feed my starving mind in my few spare moments, I have never missed a chance to do what I could to show other women how they could get the same blessing for themselves.
In this number we will talk and think about reading and what it can do for us if we go about it right. Next month we will consider woman’s interest in politics. After that there are many more subjects—flowers, trees, gardens, stock, other animals, history and women in history, business and women in business, painting and women artists, women’s clubs and study circles, customs of other nations, food, correspondence courses, music and women musicians, and hundreds of other subjects. I want you to help me select the subjects as we go along.
IS READING WORTH WHILE?
“In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and redecorate new ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.”—Bulwer.
What is reading worth to a busy housewife? “Well,” says one, “it may be worth a good deal, but I haven’t time to find out.” If this woman knew there was a twenty-dollar gold-piece to be picked up at the end of a few minutes walk, would she have time to stop her housework long enough to go and get it?
What can we get by reading? Maybe only rest, amusement and a “change.” Maybe this and also some knowledge. Maybe some valuable experience. Are any of these worth taking time from housework for?
There is surely no need of saying that rest, amusement and change are necessary in the long run for any kind of work. You save time by taking a vacation. Somebody has said that anyone can do twelve months work in eleven, but that no one can do eleven months’ work in twelve, meaning that we can accomplish more in a year by devoting one month of it to a sensible vacation.
There can be no doubt that we can gain much knowledge from books. It is one of the chief sources from which the world gets all that it knows. But is any of this knowledge worth while for a housewife? If anyone doubts it, stop and think. How about the Bible, the newspapers, the cook-book? Is this the only reading from which we can profit? In your own experience surely you can recall at least a few other books that told you something you were glad to know.