CHAPTER XVIII.
EMPLOYMENTS.
Influence of mothers over daughters. Anecdote of Benjamin West. Anecdote of a poor mother. Of set lessons and lectures. Daughters under the mother's eye. Why young ladies, now-a-days, dislike domestic employments. Miserable housewives—not to be wondered at. Mistake of one class of men. Mr. Flint's opinion.
One important and never-to-be-forgotten employment of the young is the cultivation of their minds; and another, that of their morals. But my present purpose is only to speak of those employments denominated manual, or physical.
It is obvious, at the first glance, that the influence of the mother, in our own country, at least, will be less over boys than over girls. We leave it to savages and semi-savages to employ their females, and even their mothers, in hard manual labor. Here, in America, what I should say on the employment of boys would be more properly addressed to the YOUNG FATHER.
There are some exceptions to the general truth contained in the last paragraph. Many a mother has—unconsciously at the time, but with no less certainty than if she had done it intentionally—given a direction to the whole current of her son's life; and this, too, at a very early period. The mother of Benjamin West, the painter, if she did not give the first tendency to his favorite pursuit, while he was yet a mere child, at the least greatly confirmed him in it, by the manner of expressing her surprise at one of his early performances. "My mother's kiss," on that occasion, said he, "made me a painter." Nor are facts of the same general character by any means uncommon.
I know a poor mother who, in the absence of her husband at his weekly or monthly labors, used to detain her eldest boy, then almost an infant, from going to bed in the evening till her day's work was finished—because, in her loneliness, she wanted his company—by telling stories of eminent men, and especially of distinguished philanthropists, until she had unconsciously kindled in him a philanthropic spirit, which will not cease to burn till his death.
But it is in forming the predilections of daughters for their destined employments, that mothers are especially influential. Not so much by their set lessons or lectures, however, as by the force of continued example. No mother who sends her child away to be nursed, and subsequently to her return seizes on every possible opportunity to keep her out of the way and out of her sight, will be likely to give her any choice of employment, or indeed any fondness for employment at all.
Nor is it sufficient that she keep her daughter constantly under her eye, with a view to qualify her for the duties of a housewife, if the daughter see as plainly as in the light of mid-day, that the mother dislikes the employment herself. She must love what she would have her daughter love, and even what she would have her understand. Nor is it sufficient that she affect a fondness for the employment; her love for it must be real. Little girls have keener eyes and better judgments than some mothers seem willing to believe or to admit.