96 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



mothers SO? Where are their many daughters ? Search through 

 the land, and we shall lind them fleeing here and there, preferring 

 to seek life's toils and pleasures away from their homes. Why do 

 these daughters tlee from their homes? Have they been rightly 

 educated — educated for their home life? 



If we may believe the stories we hear of the olden time, the 

 time of the spinning wheel and quilting frame, the daughters did 

 not then, as now, leave their homes ; else how had there been 

 those chests of linen, those piles of bed-quilts, those blankets and 

 sheets, all spun and woven and made, and laid away with " sweet 

 marjoram and lavender," to await the marriage day and the jour- 

 ney to the new home, then the almost only going awa}' of the 

 vouua daughter. The remnants of such collections — tokens of 

 the thrift and happy labor of those days — are precious heirlooms 

 in many a family now. The dear old great-grandmother's blank- 

 ets and quilts, the chests of yellow linen, — how carefully we cher- 

 ish them ; for the days are long gone by when love and duty created 

 them. Who knows whether days like those can ever come again? 

 Our girls, in their homes of today, can have no call for such work, 

 and machinery, man's invention, has taken all this work from 

 woman's home and hands, and left nothing, absolutely nothing, to 

 fill its place. 



What, now, can be given to them instead? Is all being done 

 for them then that ought to be done — all that can be? Should 

 not some new avenue be opened for the minds as well as hands of 

 these girls — these daughters ? They see the work around them — 

 who teaches them that they could make it lighter and convert it 

 into a pleasure? They feel the want around them — who shows 

 them that there need not be want and privation in their homes? 

 They contrast the little they have with the luxury which their 

 father's work carries to the homes of others, and they wonder, 

 these bright-eyed, irresponsible girls, and flee from a life that seems 

 dark and hard ; l)ut they flee to a world that is dangerous, and 

 harder. 



Let us look at these girls at a later period. The}' have been 

 hurrying through school, only to be free ; and then aimlessly 

 striving to support themselves away from home ; turning to teach- 

 ing, if soft-hearted committees will let them experiment in district 

 schools ; if not, then turning to the next best thing which seems to 

 them exciting ; probably the shop or the factory. 



