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THE HOUSEHOLD
All communications for this department should be
addressed to Miss Ada Louise Bryan, Clarkston, Ga.
K
CHAT.
My dear friends, it gives me much pleasure to
welcome into our circle this week several new mem
bers.
Eglantine begs leave to differ with Mrs. Wilman
as to the country. She is enthusiastic in the praises
of life on a little farm. Her letter and an apprecia
tive one from Herbert Fambrough will be published
next week. T. C. Townsend taks up pluckily for the
“backwoods folks” and shows us that their detract
ors are behind time. Little Mollie Willis has some
thing cheering to say although she is a shut-in. To
Mr. Furman Cooper we extend a warm greeting.
Many of us know him a poet and as a
journalist and we feel honored to have him
as a member of our Household. He frankly
disapproves of the young woman who works
outside her home, and he gives a doleful —
and alas in many instances —true picture of the girl
whose feminine instincts and youthful effervescence
are bottled up and sealed with the stamp that makes
her a business woman. “She can’t even giggle,” de
clares Mr. Cooper—and reading this climax we feel
sure that he has studied the business girl and knows
whereof he speaks. The dear privilege of giggling
is hard for a girl to forego. Also the exchanging
of girlish confidences and the pretty pastimes of fan
cy work and flower culture —and even the more
serious diversions of making custards and tarts —the
latter, you know, is a royal as well as feminine vo
cation if we may trust to Mother Goose whose Queen
of Hearts made tarts of such fine quality that they
were stolen and ran away with by that naughty
knave. But there is another side of the question,
and I am sure that we and also Mr. Cooper, will
be glad to hear the views of a number of business
girls. Also, I fear he has forgotten that the incentive
which sends the girl from her home to find outside
work is often not inclination, but necessity, that grim
master of mortals.
But I must not take up too much time with my
chatting when there are so many other interesting
talkers I want you to hear. With love,
ADA L. BRYAN.
, With ®ur Correspondents
Dear Miss Bryan: It is a favorite expression of the
writer that “there is more in the man than there is
in the environment"; in some instances he has,
when occasion seemed to warrant it, advanced the
somewhat heterodox premise that “there is more in
the man than there is in the creed.” This asser
tion has, of course, been duly careful to qualify in
such manner as the subject matter might demand. In
the same sense the same dictim might be made of
the girl with respect to her vocation. Given a girl
of the proper equipoise, and, through all difficulties,
temptations, dangers, we shall expect to see in the
finale a woman triumphant —this with little regard
for her environment, for “there is more in the girl
than there is in the environment!” However, it is
not of a given type of girl that we must speak
(else were we tempted to select from our acquaint
ance the personal embodiment of that type), but of
“all sorts and conditions” of girls as they appear and
as they do and as they appear to do, under “all sorts
of conditions.” So back to the question: “Does busi
ness occupation for girls tend to destroy the love of
home and home employment?”
It is surely a self-evident truth that woman’s
sphere is the home —that through her far-reaching in
fluence in that sphere she attains the true glory of
perfect womanhood. However well she may be fitted
for other vocations, it matters not how great things
she may accomplish, nor how greatly she may dis
tance man in his own chosen field —she who resists
the call of the home misses yet the opportunity of
the greatest usefulness and of her own supreme beau
ty in the cosmos of humanity. Woman should strive
not so much to be (what she is, naturally and without
striving) the admiration of man, as (what she often
is and always should be) the inspiration of man!
Nor can illustrations drawn from history, or from
everyday life, shed any great light on the question
a 4 to whether or not woman is the equal of man in
.any given field of activity.
What man has accomplished in the broad field of
A Department of Expression Tor Those Who Teel and Think.
The Golden Age for June 13, 1907.
endeavor has been a result of applied, personal intel
ligence, and is not a matter of sex; what woman
has brought to pass in the world of events we must
regard as attributable to her mental and moral in
tegrity independently of her femininity. Goodness is
not a matter of sex, neither is intelligence (though
doubtless this view has its adherents, of both sexes),
and therefore it cannot be assumed that one sex is
better or more intelligent than the other. Nor can
it be justly assumed that either sex has immoderate
burdens or exceeding virtues as compared with the
othe?; for there can be no just comparison where
the objects or attributes in question are infinitely
variable. Therefore let us not base our judgment
upon the fallacy that all men and all women must
be placed upon the plane which has been attained
only by few of either men or women.
In the beginning of this article the force of the
extraneous was depreciated—this in reference to a
particular type over which circumstance exerts lit
tle control. But, dropping the type and taking up an
active, ambitious really-truly girl from the world
(and you can get ’em from no better place), ’twould
be foolish to decry the influence of environment
on such an one. And what is the environment of
the girl who “seeks a business occupation”? Merely
the “business” environment —that’s all. And what
is it? Any “rift of dawn,” and “reddening of the
rose” here? Not any discernible. Any beauty, any
music, any poetry, any flowers? No beauty, no mu
sic, no poetry, no flowers. Any friends who love the
things she loves? None —at least, so far as she can
tell, for their tongues are tied —tied to “business,"
and on “business” they wag from morn to dewy
eve. Any little, gladsome respites, any pleasant little
interludes wherein to make love to the world, to
smile at nature and smiling receive her smiles? Very
few and very short —if she attends conscientiously
(which heaven forbid!) to “business.” Any place
in this “business” life for the airing of her fancies
and fads and foibles —for little seasons of pouting
which otherwise were irresistible —for a few wee
tears silently shed —any place even for a few subdued
but appreciative giggles when the manager upsets
the inkstand in too close proximity to light-colored
trousers?
No place for her fads and fancies and her pretty
little idiosyncrasies —no prettily pouting lips can stir
the stone heart of the god (demon) of “business”—
no tear-lit eyes can add many columns of figures
which cannot be added and would not stay added
if they were added —and giggles: Os course, they are
co-existent with her life, and to suppress the one
would mean to extinguish the other —but even her
smiles, like pagan apologetics, must be hidden from
the view of the faithful —to “business"!
What, then? Is there nothing for her to do but
simply to be still, to giggle as little as possible, and
to keep back the tears —if she can? Oh, yes, bless
you! She may occupy her mind with “business.”
She may go over those invoices which must be
paid today —here are some letters to write, too—
there are numberless notices, statements, bills and
bills of lading; it she happens to be a bookkeeper
(which the fates forbid!), and perchance finds an
idle moment (which she would never do if she were
a bookkeeper), she may spend that moment in very
profitable and very miserable (for we are taught that
we only profit by what makes us miserable) anxiety
as to the probable outcome of the next trial-balance.
If she be a stenographer (“which peril heaven for
fend! ), she may take a melancholy pleasure (as of
a whipped child who whimsically attempts a smile
as he cries) in a silent attack on the grammar of the
dictated letter on her notebook —a letter which, by
the way, she has to re-word largely in order to make
it presentable; for, notwithstanding the smiles that
have gone ’round at the expense of blundering sten
(igiapher!. in a {.real many instances the stenogia.
phers have as great learning as and a vast deal more
intelligence than their employers, and more smiles
than were ever smiled at stenographers would
be smiled at employers were their stenographers al
ways to write their letters just as they dictated
them.
Business life is antithetical to home life. We may
need women in business, but more greatly we need
them in the home in order that the balance between
the two ideals of human usefulness, with the in
creasing demand for every applied talent, the path
of woman need not lead behind the counter or the
desk. Say what you will of the commercial life,
with its absolute adherence to logic and its tremen-
Conducted by
Ada Louise Bryan
dons impetus to the progress of a nation, we cannot
ignore the fact of its tendency to crush our weak
ness and with weakness much of the tenderness of
life; business employment means business cares,
business fears —and all for a material and not a
moral or an ethical end! It means a close supervis
ion of the details of the day, the constantly, progress
ing arrangement of these details as data for the fu
ture conduct of business.
Business? Yes, in its best sense and its true
sense, a business career commends itself, to me, as
being an honorable and a highly useful one. But,
then, lam not a girl. “Does business employment
for girls tend to destroy the love of home and home
employment?”
“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to answer that ques
tion, aren’t you?”
FURMAN L. COOPER.
Gainesville, Ga., June 2, 1907.
*
FROM THE AUTHOR OF “A LITTLE SUNBEAM.”
I am coming right into the cosy parlor of The
Golden Age since Miss Ada Bryan and “Brother
Willie” have kindly opened the door of welcome to
all. I am one of Mrs. Bryan’s shut-ins of her large
family in the dear, dead Sunny South. She was a
good mother to all her band, and I, like all the rest,
deeply regretted that we had to lose her and the
dear old Sunny South to the new magazine. But we
will dry our tears since Earnest Willie has given us a
home in his Golden Age. I have very tender sym
pathy for all shut-ins, for I am a helpless cripple my
self and it is always true that “one touch of nature
makes the whole world kin.” lam writing now in
my wheel chair. I send out every copy of The Gol
den Age as soon as 1 can get postage to mail it, and
1 have been able to secure a few subscribers for the
paper. I dearly loved the Sunny South, though I
usually, being such a little soul, was put into a small
corner of the Household room, but I en joyed listening
to the others all the same. Dear friends, let us
all rally around Miss Bryan and make The Golden
Age Household the best in any paper, radiating the
sunshine of encouragement and cheer to all who
need it.
I am a little creature, weighing only 45 pounds
and have never walked a step. When I was a child
I used to cry to go out and play with the other
children, but now I have become reconciled to my
lot. lam an orphan and poor. I try hard to sup
port myself by making fancy articles and selling
a little book 1 have written which contains, with
other little stories and poems, a true story of my
life. It is a cheerful book and is called A Little Sun
beam. The new, enlarged edition has a beautiful
introduction written by our dear Earnest Willie, who
knows me personally. Also it has my picture. The
price for the book, nicely bound in cloth, is $1; in
paper cover it is 50 cents. If you would like to read
it, please send the price and I will gladly mail it to
you With best wishes,
MOLLIE E. WILLIS.
Barnesville, Ga., R. F. D., No. 3.
I?
“BACKWOODS FOLKS.”
So much has been said about the illiteracy, the
lack of refinement and the “outlandish lingo” of
backwoods people, that I would like to tell these
critics that they are about to lose the material for
their sarcasm, as the dwellers in the mountains and
the piney woods are fast becoming as enlightened as
those in other localities. Anyone who has noted
the progress made in the ’’far back rural districts”
during the last ten years can tell you that we have
now small school houses scattered all over the coun
try in which children are learning just as well as
if they were being taught in the fine brick buildings
of the city. You can scarcely find a child in these
(so-called) benighted districts who cannot read and
write, which I fear is more than can be said of the
children in some parts of our large cities. It is a
fact that we are fast advancing. We are sending
our boys and girls to college, some of them attaining
important positions as lawyers, doctors, teachers,
etc. It is quite possible that in the next half cen
tury we may become “really respectable people" and
it is a matter for speculation what the imagination
of some of our story writers will do for material for
their “true” backwoods stories.
T. L. TOWNSEND.
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