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Worth Womans While
Lo, here hath been dawning another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?
Out of eternity this new day is born,
Into eternity at night will return.
Behold it aforetime no eye ever did;
So soon it forever from all eyes is hid.
Here hath been dawning another blue day:
Think, wilt thou let it slip useless away?
- —Thomas Carlyle.
The Question of Going Away.
“ Where are you going this summer?”
ft/is the question heard on all sides just now,
everybody taking it for granted that everybody else
is going away. The habit which has been growing
upon us for spme years has become almost universal,
until the wdman who stays at home is the rare and
aggrieved exception. Men, if they take vacation at
all, am content to find their pleasure in
the
their And the most of the going is
done in when, of all seasons, the heat
and incline us to lounge and return
to the forms of taking comfort.
We w^- e Hiking*, it over last summer when in
the where we were staying the
crow ds, were’ there was not possible ac
commodation, were compelled to lodge as
many as six^ n^, e igbt iff one room, and that by no
means the best?" Little babies and children were
forced int o and uncomfortable quarters with
older people, deprived of the everyday necessi
ties which a t home contribute to health of body and
temper.
There is no denying the gains from change of
scene and air; travel, whether far or near, is broad
ening, and contact with our fellow creatures is cal
culated to relieve us of the narrowmess and self
centeredness w’e fall into associating too much with
ourselves. But consider what w r e give up! The
indulgence of physical comfort is only one thing.
The tending of the sacred fires of home; the con
tributing to the pleasure of those who could not
have gone with us, but must have remained behind;
the-exercise of hospitality, cardinal virtue, and chief
of all the home-making and home-preserving quali
ties—all the home privileges which all the year
round are ours, their joy only heightened with the
glory of summer. And the stress and strain w T e go
throws'll in the acquirement of pleasure found in
variably to have been not unmixed!
One young woman of our acquaintance has been
since before Christmas getting her clothes ready.
Three or four dressmakers living in as many dif
ferent directions have necessitated endless trips
to and from, miles and miles of walking and riding,
and hours and hours of time. And when at last she
is ready, what is it all for? Four months of pulling
around from one summer resort to another; those
piles of clothes strewn about her room, and
put on and off several times with each day, and
every now and then packed up again for a move
to fresh fields. What living is this? All the little
duties and cares and loving deeds which at home
make for her own benefit and that of others, aban
doned for four months of —what ?
But what is hers to the case of the poor little
delicate woman whose husband, supposing she need
ed a change, induced her to leave her delightful
North Carolina home for a spot farther up in the
mountains. The poor sick creature sewed and
w T orked for weeks, getting herself and her four
children ready—for they would need so many
clothes at a resort, —and when at last they were
off it was full time, for if she was not sick before
The Golden Age for June 7, 1906.
By FLORENCE TUCKER
she was now. And sickness accompanied and stayed
with them, and they came home little better than
they went for health and considerably poorer for
money. And all the time she was seeing that her
children and self were properly dressed and sitting
up with other misguided ones in doubtful enjoy
ment of their clothes and society and certain weari
ness of body, the sweet, comfortable home with its
shade and quiet was shut up and tenantless.
There is no doubt about it, we have more com
forts at home—more room, more freedom, more of
our own way. Arid here, if anywhere in the world,
we can choose our associates and those of our chil
dren. If the children on the block are not desirable
companions, then ours can be kept within our own
dooryard. But can it be so away from home? When
the little ones are allowed to run all day and into
the night, subject to influences as unwholesome as
their food? That is another consideration—at home
they are fed as children should be, but in boarding
houses and hotels as their elders are. Which makes
us marvel, and wonder why it is the children are
brought to these places at all.
On the car the other day a woman radiant with
the importance of her husband’s lately acquired
prosperity was dilating on her plans for the summer.
“Mr. R has been begging us to go to .”
She named a popular place, frequented by fashion
ables. And we recalled her last summer’s outing
when she came home with two of her children look
ing like wraiths, due, she explained, to the fact that
they insisted upon eating ham for supper, a diet
which so outraged their already irritated stomachs
serious illness was the result. But the experience
would not deter her from another visit of the kind,
just as it has not taught her wisdom in infantile
dietetics.
There is another feature which was impressed
upon us ast year by the remark of a mother who
for the first time in years of summer pilgrimages
had elected to take a cottage, which left her and her
family as much to themselves as they chose. “I
will go home,” she said, “so much cleaner this
year. There is always so much gossip among women
at hotels, and this year I will go home without hav
ing been guilty of any sort in it.” There was some
thing in that; as in the complaint she made that
card-playing, which w T as not permitted her daugh
ters at home, she could not keep them from in a
place where it was all around them.
It reminded us of a young girl, reared by a wise
and devoted mother, seeing life full enough of
beauty and high mental and spiritual pleasure with
out cards or dancing’, who was soon led into both
at pleasure resorts. “I have to,” she declared with
emphasis. “If I don’t I’ll be left out. I’ll be a
wall flower, and I can’t be that!” Not that hers
is an unusual case. The same may be said to be of
almost daily occurrence; it is simply mentioned
here as the most painful instance which has come
under our own observation of the power of temp
tation to worldly pleasure to overcome the teachings
of a Christian mother, whose voice, though she is in
heaven, still speaks in the heart.
Home is as good a place in summer as any other
season. The time was when people—good people,
the best, if you will—never thought of going reg
ularly away summer or winter, but lived all the
year round at home, with only such occasional jour
neys away as were seen fit or desirable. Travel
and change have their advantages, but we would
go on record as of those who protest against too
much of this sort of thing, and make appeal for
the better cultivation of home, and of ourselves out
of the environment which goes to make us—the
place where Providence has set us, and around us
that which will conduce to our best development.
Let all who will and who must, go; but let not
those who remain consider it a i opportunity lost.
Outside are pleasures and delights alluring enough
in prospect, but within the sacred portals of home
the comforts and joys will outweigh them all; and
if a true and exact comparison could be made when
the summer is over, she who staid under her own
pleasant roof-tree will, if she was wise, have gar
nered more of strength and good than her neighbor
who went seeking it in strange places.
It is hardly too much to say that the late Henrik
Ibsen’s fame was in large part notoriety, and that
both were owed as much to morbid sensationalism
and perverted taste and morals on the part of the
public as to the virile talent and power of the
author. A bold and dauntless personality, coupled
with a mighty mind, will have a following, whatever
his tenets; but whether the possessor of so much,
his work, the public that follows after both, are any
one of them worthy—that may be a question. We
are not in sympathy with that class of writers who
lay bare the wickedness and ugliness of life, and
use their talents to hold up for men’s inspection
the things they had best turn their eyes and thoughts
away from. Apostles of truth (it is claimed Ibsen
was one) may be of two kinds—-he who uncovers
what truly exists, as well as the messenger of truth
itself. But of what good were the first? What
good to say that evil is, and to lay it bare in veri
fication—how is evil remedied or removed? And
how is it spread and enlarged and deepened and
strengthened by the roots struck into fresh minds!
Ibsen’s influence on the world of mankind in
literature may be as widespread as now believed,
but it behooves the world of women to turn away
from following after any such teacher, to leave his
books unopened, his plays unattended, and keep
their lips closed to any word of praise or commen
dation. If women were mindful of one truth that
Ibsen himself declared, the world would be a dif
ferent place—if they had been alive to the truth,
how different had been the sphere into which this
great soul was sent! Alas! and how different his
work, and the impress left upon humanity!
“The women will solve the question of man
kind,” he says; “but they must do it as mothers.
Herein lies the great task of women.”
0 mothers, Mothers! What avail all the work of
wives, teachers, or any of womankind but such as
mother the race! Who can ever make up what you
have failed to do, or undo what you have done?
And what is the power of the stronger parent, the
father, as against yours? And how helpless is he
against you! A good mother may rear her sons
worthy men for her country and her God, and this
without the father’s help; but no father, whatever
he be, can have worthy offspring unless he first give
that offspring a worthy mother. And how pitiful,
how more than pitiful, it is that strong men must
suffer for the lack in their mothers. That man who
would reproach his own mother—be it said to man’s
everlasting credit—is yet unborn; yet with what
reason might he do it! Poor foolish mothers, some
of them, that have never realized that as God made
them the weaker He made them also the stronger,
and gave to them responsibility and power that man
himself acknowledges superior.
Alas, when women would turn their faces away
from what Ibsen would reveal to them, let them
hide them for very shame that the world, because
of women, is not better, and that minds such as
his must be diverted from their best achievement
because the influence of women—of mothers—has
fallen short of what Heaven intended it!
“In a world where duty and inclination should
perfectly agree, we should indeed never err, but the
living power of virtue could not be developed. Do
not complain then of life’s trials. Through these
you may gain incomparably higher good than in
dulgence and ease.”