Maids, Wives, and Bachelors

Who shall deliver children from the unwise indulgences, fanciful theories, and inherited mistakes of their parents? This is not the province of religion; a mother may be intensely religious, and at the same time cruelly ignorant in the treatment of the child, – whom yet she loves with all her heart.

When men and women lived simply and naturally Nature in a large measure took care of her own; but in our artificial life we must seek the aid of Science to find our way back to Nature. And if science has been able to teach us how to improve our breed of horses, and bring to a state of physical perfection our cattle and sheep, by simply selecting nutriments, she can also give the seeking mother directions for building up a strong and healthy body for the immortal soul to tarry in and work from. For, humiliating as we may regard it, we cannot battle off this fact of God, that the vital processes in animals and men are substantially the same.

In the dietary of children the two great mistakes are over-feeding and under-feeding; but of the two evils the last is the worst. Repletion is less injurious than inanition; and according to my observation gluttony is the vice of adults rather than of children. If they do exceed, the cause may generally be traced to the fact that they have suffered a long want of the article they revel in. For instance, if at rare intervals candies and sweetmeats are within their reach, they do generally make themselves sick with an over supply of them; but this is but the Nemesis that ever follows unnatural deprivations of any kind.

Nothing is more necessary to a child than sugar. Its love of it is not so much to please its palate as to satisfy an urgent craving of its necessity. Sugar is so important a substance in the chemical changes going on in the body that many other compounds have to be reduced to sugar before they are available as heat-making constituents. In fact the liver is a factory for transforming much of the nutriment we take, in other forms, into sugar.

It may be said, “If sugar is a great heat-maker, so also is fat meat, which most children very much dislike.” The one fact proves the other. Fat meat and sugar are both great heat-producers, but the child craves sugar and dislikes fat because its weak organism can deal with the sugar, but cannot manage the fat. Every mother must have noticed that delicate children turn sick at fat meat and usually crave sweets. Poor little things! they want something to make the vital fire burn more rapidly. Sugar in proper proportions is fuel judiciously added; fat is fuel they have not strength to assimilate, and therefore reject. Of course no mother understands me to say that children should therefore be fed on sugar; but only that they should have a fair and regular proportion of it in some form or other; in which case they would feel no more temptation to exceed in occasional opportunities.

Another dominant desire with growing children is fruit. They will eat fruits, ripe or unripe; a sour apple or a ripe strawberry seems equally acceptable. It is common to attribute summer complaints of all kinds to them, and to carefully limit children in their use. The fact is that all fruits contain a vegetable acid which is a powerful tonic and one peculiarly acceptable to the stomach. Fruits ought to form a part of every child’s food all the year round, – fresh fruits in summer, apples and oranges in winter. But they must be given regularly with the meals, and not between them. They will then fulfil their tonic office in the system, and never under ordinary circumstances do the least harm.

How often have we seen children in mistaken kindness largely restricted to bread and milk, puddings and vegetables; nay, told in answer to their craving looks that “meat was not good for little boys and girls.” Now, consider first why adults eat meat. Is it not to repair the loss we suffer from active work, the exhaustion from mental efforts, and to supply afresh the vital warmth, much of which is lost every day by simple radiation? In all these ways children usually exhaust life quicker than adults. They run where we walk, they jump, they skip, they are seldom still. Their studies are as severe a mental strain to them as our business cares to us. Their bodies are quite as much exposed to loss of heat by radiation as ours – in some cases more so. But children have a most important demand on their vitality which adults have not: they have to grow. Who, therefore, needs strong and nutritious food more than children? They ought to have meat, plenty of it, as much as they desire; and with the meat, bread and vegetables, milk, sweets, and fruits. For variety is another grand condition of healthy food, – no one kind of food (however good) being able to supply all the different elements the body needs for perfect health and fine development.

If children have any urgent desire for some particular diet it would be well for parents to hesitate and investigate before denying them. They have no means of coming to any secret understanding with the child’s stomach; but Nature generally asks pertinaciously for any special necessity, and Nature is never wrong. Neither is it well to limit the quantity any more than the kind of food given to children. Their necessities vary with causes too involved for any parent constantly to keep in view. The state of the weather, the amount of electricity, or moisture in the atmosphere, study, sleep, exercise, the condition of digestion, even the mental temper of the child might differently influence the condition and demands of nearly every meal. No dietary theory that did not consider all these and many more conditions would be reliable. What, then, are we to do? Have more confidence in natural instincts. If children ask “for more,” ten to one they feel more truly than we can reason on this subject.

On general principles it may be assumed children ask as directed by Nature; they desire what she needs and as much as she needs. Of course, all advice must be of a general nature; special limitations are supposed in the power of every thoughtful mother. But the great principle is to remember that energy depends on the amount, not of food, but of nutritive food; for if a pound of one kind of food gives as much nutriment as four pounds of another, surely that is best for children (and adults too) which tries their digestion least.

What the next generation will be depends upon the physical, mental, and moral training of the children of to-day. These children are the to-morrow of society. Are they to be puny and dyspeptic, fretting and worrying through life as through a task? Or, are they to be finely developed, sweetbreathed, clear-eyed, light-spirited mediums for divine aspirations and intellectual and material works?

O mothers! do not despise the humble-looking foundation-stone of life – good health. You have the earliest building up of the body; see that you spare no elements necessary for its perfection. Be liberal; doubt your own theories rather than Nature; trust the child where you are at a loss, just as a lost man throws the reins on his horse’s neck and trusts to something subtler than reason – instinct.

In whatever light the subject of children’s food is regarded, the great principle is we – cannot get power out of nothing. If the child is to have health, energy, intellect, there must be present the necessary physical conditions. These are not the result of accident, but of generous consideration.

Intellectual “Cramming” of Boys

A little girl, who made a study of epitaphs, was greatly puzzled to know “where all the bad people were buried.” Perhaps just as great a puzzle to a reflective mind is, What comes of all the promising boys?

We will allow, first, that a great deal of “promise” exists only in the partiality of parents; that a bright, intense childhood is frequently so different from the mechanical routine of adult life that the simple difference strikes the parent as something remarkable, whereas it is, perhaps, only a strong case of contrast between the natural and the artificial. This is proven by the fact that as the boy becomes part and parcel of the every-day world he gradually falls into its ways, adopts its tone, and in no respect attempts to rise above its level.

Fortunately, however, the change is so gradual that parents scarcely perceive when or how they lost their exalted hopes; and by the time that Jack or Will has imbibed a fair amount of knowledge, and settled contentedly down to his desk and high stool, they also are well pleased and inclined to forget that they had ever dreamt the boy might sit upon the bench, or, perhaps, fill with honor the Presidential chair.

Allowing such boys a very respectable minority, and allowing also a large margin for that unfortunate class who there is still good reason for us to ask, What becomes of all the promising boys?

“Wise so young, they say, do ne’er live long,”

We are inclined to arraign as the first and foremost of deceivers and defrauders in this matter the modern educational art of Cram. It is to education what adulteration is to commerce. It is far worse, for here it is not money that is stolen, it is a parent’s best and highest hopes; it is a boy’s whole future life and its success. For the system rests upon a fallacy, namely, that it is possible for boys of twenty to know everything, from the multiplication-table to metaphysics, from Greek plays to theological dogmas.

To the average boy such intellectual feats are simply impossible; but he is plucky and fertile in expedients; he is neither disposed to be beaten nor able really to overtake his task, so he uses his brains carefully, and makes the greatest possible show on the greatest possible number of subjects.

Perhaps nothing in our present system of education is so demoralizing and unjust as the custom of public examinations. In them interest and vanity play into each other’s hands; genuine acquirement and principle “go to the wall.” The teachers and the boys alike know that they are never true criterions of progress, that they are seldom even fair representations of the actual course of study. Weeks, months are spent in preparations for the deceitful display; even then true merit, which is generally modest by nature, does itself injustice, and vain self-assurance comes off with flying colors.

The Cram teacher scatters seed over a large amount of mental surface, instead of thoroughly cultivating the most promising portions; and he brings before the parents and the public the few ears gleaned on all the acres as samples of crops which he knows never will be gathered. Yet to his own pedantic vanity, or his self-interest, he sacrifices the prime of many a fine boy’s life. Therefore we are disposed to believe that if parents would inexorably refuse to sanction these pretentious public displays, there would be probably a much less accumulation of bare facts, but a far greater cultivation of natural abilities, and a far more thorough development of decided aptitudes.

Mechanical drudgery, instead of intelligent labor, is the inevitable method where cramming a boy, instead of educating him, is the favorite system. No mental faculties, except the memory, receive any discipline, and the knowledge disappears as fast as it was gained. All taste for laborious habits of thought are lost, and if a boy originally possessed a love for learning he is soon disgusted at what his simple nature tells him is pretence and unreal, and judging the true by a false standard he conceives an honest disgust for intellectual labor, and pronounces it all a sham.

Few boys can even mentally go through a course of “cramming” and come out uninjured. The majority of the finest intellects develop tardily, and their superiority is in fact greatly dependent upon the staying powers conferred by physical strength and wisely considered conditions. There are of course exceptions, where an inherited force of genius stamps the boy from the first and defies all systems to crush it. But it is the average boy, and not the exceptional one, that must be considered in all methods of education.

In this matter boys are not to be blamed. They naturally accept the master’s opinions as to the value of his plan; they rather enjoy a neck-and-neck race with each other in superficial acquirements, and the whole tendency of our social life supports the tempting theory. Every one wants to possess without the trouble of acquiring; every one would have a reputation without the labor of earning it. In an age which prides itself upon the speed with which it does everything, which makes a merit of doing whatever is to be done in the shortest and quickest way possible, it is easy to perceive how a certain class of teachers, and parents too, would be willing to believe that the old up-hill road to knowledge might be graded and lined and made available for rapid transit.

But nothing can be more illogical than to apply social rules and conditions to mental ones. The former are constantly changing, the latter obey fixed and immutable laws. There is not, there never has been, there never will be, any short cuts to universal knowledge; and the boy who is made to waste time seeking one will have either to relinquish his object altogether, or else, turning back to the main road, find his early companions who kept to it hopelessly ahead of him. Learning is a plant that grows slowly and whose fruit must be waited for. It is a long time, even after having learned anything, that we know it well.

The Servant-Girl’s Point of View

A great deal has been said lately on the servant-girl question, always from the mistresses’ point of view; and as no ex-parte evidence is conclusive, I offer for the servant-girl side some points that may help to a better understanding of the whole subject.

It is said, on all hands, that servants every year grow more idle, showy, impudent, and independent. The last charge is emphatically true, and it accounts for and includes the others. But then this independence is the necessary result of the world’s progress, in which all classes share. Steam has made it easy for families to travel, who, without cheap locomotion, would never go one hundred miles from home. It has also made it easy for servants to go from city to city. When wages are low and service is plenty in one place, a few dollars will carry them to where they are in request.

Fifty years ago very few servants read, or cared to read. They are now the best patrons of a certain class of newspapers; they see the “Want columns” as well as other people; and they are quite capable of appreciating the lessons they teach and the advantages they offer. The national increase of wealth has also affected the position of servants. People keep more servants than they used to keep; and servants have less work to do. People live better than they used to live, and servants, as well as others, feel the mental uplifting that comes from rich and plentiful food.

But one of the main causes of trouble is that a mistress even yet hires her servant with some ancient ideas about her inferiority. She forgets that servants read novels, and do fancy work, and write lots of letters; and that service can no longer be considered the humble labor of a lower for a superior being. Mistresses must now dismiss from their minds the idea of the old family servant they have learned to meet in novels; they must cease to look upon service as in any way a family tie; they must realize and practically acknowledge the fact that the relation between mistress and servant is now on a purely commercial basis, – the modern servant being a person who takes a certain sum of money for the performance of certain duties. Indeed the condition has undergone just the same change as that which has taken place in the relation between the manufacturer and his artisans, or between the contractor and his carpenters and masons.

It is true enough that servants take the money and do not perform the duties, or else perform them very badly. The manufacturer, the contractor, the merchant, all make the same complaint; for independence and social freedom always step before fitness for these conditions, because the condition is necessary for the results, and the results are not the product of one generation. Surely Americans may bear their domestic grievances without much outcry, since they are altogether the consequences of education and progress, and are the circumstances which make possible much higher and better circumstances.

For just as soon as domestic service is authoritatively and publicly made a commercial bargain, and all other ideas eliminated from it, service will attract a much higher grade of women. The independent, fairly well-read American girl will not sell her labor to women who insist on her giving any part of her personality but the work of her hands. She feels interference in her private affairs to be an impertinence on any employer’s part. She does not wish any mistress to take an interest in her, to advise, to teach, or reprove her. She objects to her employer being even what is called “friendly.” All she asks is to know her duties and her hours, and to have a clear understanding as to her work and its payment. And when service is put upon this basis openly, it will draw to it many who now prefer the harder work, poorer pay, but larger independence, of factories.

Servants are a part of our social system, but our social system is being constantly changed and uplifted, and servants rise with it. I remember a time in England when servants who did not fulfil their year’s contract were subject to legal punishment; when a certain quality of dress was worn by them, and those who over-dressed did so at the expense of their good name; when they seldom moved to any situation beyond walking distance from their birthplace; when, in fact, they were more slaves than servants. Would any good woman wish to restore service to this condition?

On the servant’s part the root of all difficulty is her want of respect for her work; and this, solely because her work has not yet been openly and universally put upon a commercial basis. When domestic service is put on the same plane as mechanical service, when it is looked upon as a mere business bargain, then the servant will not feel it necessary to be insolent and to do her work badly, simply to let her employer know how much she is above it. Much has been done to degrade service by actors, newspapers, and writers of all kinds giving to the domestic servant names of contempt as “flunkies,” “menials,” etc., etc. If such terms were habitually used regarding mechanics, we might learn to regard masons and carpenters with disdain. Yet domestic service is as honorable as mechanical service, and the woman who can cook a good dinner is quite as important to society as the man who makes the table on which it is served.

Yet, whether mistresses will recognize the change or not, service has in a great measure emancipated itself from feudal bonds. Servants have now a social world of their own, of which their mistresses know nothing at all. In it they meet their equals, make their friends, and talk as they desire. Without unions, without speeches, and without striking, – because they can get what they want without striking, – they have raised their wages, shortened their hours, and obtained many privileges. And the natural result is an independence – which for lack of proper expression asserts itself by the impertinence and self-conceit of ignorance – that has won more in tangible rights than in intangible respect.

Mistresses who have memories or traditions are shocked because servants do not acknowledge their superiority, or in any way reverence their “betters.” But reverence for any earthly thing is the most un-American of attitudes. Reverence is out of date and offensively opposed to free inquiry. Parents do not exact it, and preachers do not expect it, – the very title of “Rev.” is now a verbal antiquity. Do we not even put our rulers through a course of hand-shaking in order to divest them of any respect the office might bring? Why, then, expect a virtue from servants which we do not practise in our own stations?

It is said, truly enough, that servants think of nothing but dress. Alas, mistresses are in the same transgression! This is the fault of machinery. When servants wore mob-caps and ginghams, mistresses wore muslins and merinos, and were passing fine with one good silk dress. Machinery has made it possible for mistresses to get lots of dresses, and if servants are now fine and tawdry, it is because there is a general leaning that way. Servants were neat when every one else was neat.

To blame servants for faults we all share is really not reasonable. It must be remembered that women of all classes dress to make themselves attractive, and attractive mainly to the opposite sex. What the young ladies in the parlor do to make themselves beautiful to their lovers, the servants in the kitchen imitate. Both classes of young women are anxious to marry. There is no harm in this desire in either case. With the hopes of the young ladies we do not meddle; why then interfere about nurse and the policeman? service is not an elysium under the most favorable circumstances. No girl gets fond of it, and a desire to be mistress of her own house – however small it may be – is not a very shameful kicking against Providence.

The carrying out of three points, would probably revolutionize the whole condition of service: —

First. The relation should be put upon an absolutely commercial basis; and made as honorable as mechanical, or factory, or store service.

Second. Duties and hours should be clearly defined. There should be no interference in personal matters. There should be no more personal interest expected, or shown, than is the rule between any other employer and employee.

Third. If it were possible to induce yearly engagements, they should be the rule; for when people know they have to put up with each other for twelve months, they are more inclined to be patient and forbearing; they learn to make the best of each other’s ways; and bearing becomes liking, and habit strengthens liking, and so they go on and on, and are pretty well satisfied.

Extravagance

The Anglo-Saxon race is inherently extravagant. The lord and leader of the civilized world, it clothes itself in purple and fine linen, and lives sumptuously every day, as a prerogative of its supremacy.

This trait is a very early one, and the barbaric extravagance of “The Field of the Cloth of Gold” only typified that passion of the race for splendid apparel and accessories which in our day has reached a point of general and prodigal pomp and ostentation.

No other highly civilized nations have this taste for personal parade and luxurious living to the same extent. The French, who enjoy a reputation for all that is pretty and elegant, are really parsimonious, and it is as natural for a Frenchman to hoard his money as it is for a dog to bury his bone, while a Dutchman or a German can grow rich on a salary which keeps an American always scrambling on the verge of bankruptcy.

Some time ago Lord Derby said: “Englishmen are the most extravagant race in the world, or, at least, only surpassed by the Americans.” And the “surpassing” in this direction is so evident to any one familiar with the two countries that it requires no demonstration, – an American household, even in the middle classes, being a model school for throwing away the most money for the least possible returns.

American women have a reputation for lavish expenditure that is world-wide, but they are not more extravagant than American men. If one spends money on beautiful toilets and splendidly dreary entertainments, the other flings it away on the turf, on cards or billiards, or in masculine prodigalities still more objectionable. In most fashionable houses the husband and wife are equally extravagant, and the candle blazes away at both ends.

To foreigners, the most noticeable extravagance of Americans is in the matter of flowers. Winter or summer, women of very modest means must have flowers for their girdle. They will pay fifty cents for a rose or two when half-dollars are by no means plentiful, and it is such a pretty womanly taste that no man has the heart to grumble at it; only, if the women themselves would add up the amount of money spent in this transitory luxury, say during three months, they would be astonished at their own thoughtlessness.