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6 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.”