HOUSEWIFE S DEPARTMENT. 355 



THE HOUSEWIFE'S DEPARTMENT. 



In our last, gentle readers, we gave a little more space to this Department 

 than can be promised for it generally ; and return to it now with a sense of our 

 inability to sustain it in a manner worthy of the obligation it implies ; for what 

 trust iu the circle of social duties can be more imposing and responsible than that 

 of undertaking to share in offering advice, and providing appropriate intellectual 

 food for the minds of daughters who aim to be the pride and consolation of their 

 parents ; and for mothers on whose example and virtues the happiness and pros- 

 perity of their families depend — mothers who shall merit to have it said of them : 

 " Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth 

 her." 



One perplexity in the management of this interesting department is in consid- 

 ering what is adapted to the position and duties of housewives, differing so much 

 as they do — according to difference in the social habits and domestic economy of 

 different parts of our country. Our own observation ijj early life has made us 

 most familiar with, and anxious about the lot of Woman as she is placed in the coun- 

 try, acting the most engaging part of the domestic circle of well bred, well inform- 

 ed gentlemen farmers and planters, as they are found in that middling and 

 moderate condition as to fortune and circumstances in life, which, in the main, 

 seems to offer the best chance for such true mdependence, respectability and hap- 

 piness as may be reasonably hoped for iu our country. It is to them that we 

 shall generally address what we may have to store away in this corner of the 

 Farmers' Library, in the hope that even though we may fail to benefit by wise 

 counsels, we may yet propitiate their good will by the manifestation of our own. 

 Trite as the saying may be, it is no less true, that regard for the feelings of Wo- 

 man and the melioration of her condition has kept pace with advancing civiliza- 

 tion, yet in no country has she received her full measure of consideration and respect, 

 when we reflect that in full proportion to the progress of civilization her duties 

 become more elevated and her responsibilities enhanced. With some opportuni- 

 ties to judge, both in town and country, the first remark we have to make is, 

 that while the public sentiment is evidently improving on that point, the educu' 

 tion of females is yet, too generally, either grossly neglected or egregiously mis- 

 managed, with reference to the arduous and delicate station which every young 

 woman is expected to occupy ultimately, and earlier in ours than in any other 

 country in the world. Not that they come to maturity so soon as in some others, 

 but that the means of independent support are so much more abundant or more 

 easily acquired. Where every member of a family is brought up to labor, pa- 

 rents are too apt to calculate the money value of their children's time, and thus 

 never being educated up to that point which begets a fondness for reading, for 

 the sake of intellectual acquirement and recreation, they are not only cut off, in 

 after life, from a cheap resource, that might enable them to fill up many an idle 

 and dangerous moment, and to beguile many a sad one ; but are also disqualified 

 to perform that highest office of a noble mother — the instruction of her offsprino-. 

 On the other hand, where the means and even the will exists to bestow a libe- 

 ral education, it is too apt to be so often perverted in the conduct of it as toqual- 



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