252 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
TO AMERICAN WOLUEN- — THE PKOPERLA' 
Qualified Housewife. 
Miss Catharine M Sedgwick gives utteranee to the 
following sensible views upon the proper education of 
our daughters: 
Many parents expect their daughters to marry and 
thus be provided for; the daughters themselves expect 
it. But it may be well for both parent and child to con- 
sider the chances against the provision. Marriage may 
come, and a life of pecuniary adversity, or a widowhood 
of penury may follow ; or marriage may not come at all. 
As civilization (so called) goes on, multiplying wants, 
and converting luxuries into necessities, the number of 
single women fearfully increases, and is in greatest pro- 
portion where there is most refinement, whereby women 
are least qualified to take care of themselves. 
In the simple lives of our ancestors, men were not de- 
terred from marriage by the difficulty of meeting the ex- 
pense of their families. Their wives were helpmates. 
If they could not earn bread they could make it. If they 
could not comprehend the “ rights of women,” they prac- 
ticed her t'uties. If they did not study political econo- 
my and algebra, they knew the calculation by which 
the penny saved is the penny gained.” Instead of 
waiting to be served by costly and wasteful Milesians, 
they “ looked well to the ways of their household, and 
ate not the bread of idleness.” The puritan wife did not 
ask her husband to be decked in French gauds, but was 
truly, 
“ The gentle wife who decks his board, 
And makes the day to have no night.” 
In giving the reasons that restrain men from marrying 
at the present, and thereby diminish the chances of this 
absolute provision for women, we beg not to be misun- 
derstood. We would not restrict women to the humble 
offices of maternal existence. The best instructed and 
most thoroughly accomplished women we have ever 
known, have best understood and practised the saving 
arts of domestic life. 
If parents, from pride, or prejudice, or honest judg- 
ment, refuse to provide their daughters with a profession 
or trade, by which their independence may be secured ; 
if they persist in throwing them on one chance; if daugh- 
ters themselves persevere in trusting to this “ neck-or-^ 
nothing” fate, then let them be qualified in that act and 
craft in which their grandmothers, and which is now, 
more than any preceding time, the necessary and bound- 
en duty of every American wife, whatever be her condi- 
tion. 
Never by women in any civilization was this art so 
needed, for never, we believe, were there such obstruc- 
tions to prosperity and comfort as exist in our domestic 
service. And how are the young women of the luxu- 
rious classes prepared to meet them ? How are the wo- 
men of the middle classes fitted to overcome them? And 
how are the poorer class trained to rejoice in their ex- 
emption from them ? 
If a parent look forward to provision by marriage for 
his daughter, he should at least qualify her for that con- 
dition, and be ashamed to give her to her husband un- 
less she is able to manage her house, to educate her chil- 
dren, to nurse her sick, and to train her servants — the in- 
evitable destiny of American housewives. If she can. 
do all this well, she is a productive partner, and, as Ma- 
dame Bodichon says, does as much for the support of her 
household as her husband. 
It may, or may not be the duty of a mother to educate 
her children in a technical sense. But if her husband 
is straining every nerve to support his family, it would 
be both relief and help if she could save him the immense 
expense of our first-rate schools, or the cost of governess. 
If she is skilled in the art of nursing, she may stave off 
the fearful bill of the phy.Mcian. 
If she knew the cost and necessary consumption of 
provision, the keeping of accounts, and, in short, the 
whole art and mystery of domestic economy, she will 
not only preserve her husband from an immense amount 
of harassing care, but secure to him the safety, blessing, 
Tnd honor of living within his means. 
If she be a qualified houseioife^ the great burden, per- 
plexity, and misery of house-keeping, from the rising to 
the setting sun, from our Canadian frontier to far South of 
Mason & Dixon’s Line, will be — we will not say over- 
come, but most greatly diminished. 
FASHIONABEE WOMEN. 
Fashion kills more women than toil and sorrow. Obe- 
dience to fashion is a greater transgression of the laws of 
woman’s nature, a greater injury to her physical and 
mental constitution, than the hardships of poverty and 
neglect. The slavewoman at her tasks will live and 
grow old, and see two or three generations of her mis- 
tresses fade and pass away. The washerwoman with 
scarce a ray of hope to cheer her in her toils, will live to 
see all her fashionable sisters die around her. The kitch- 
enmaid is hearty and strong, while her lady has to be 
nursed like a sick baby. It is a sad truth that fashion- 
pampered women are almost worthless for all the great 
ends of human life. They have but little force of char- 
acter; they'haye still less power of moral will, and quite 
as little physical energy. They live for no great purpose 
in life; they accomplish no worthy ends. They are only 
doll-forms in the hands of milliners and servants, to be 
dressed and fed to order. They dress nobody, bless no- 
body, and save nobody. They write no books and set 
no examples of virtue and womanly life. If they rear 
children, servants and nurses do all, save to conceive 
and give them birth. And when reared, what are they 1 
What do they amount to, but weaker scions of the stock ? 
Who ever heard of a fashionable woman’s child exhibit- 
ing any virtue or power of mind, for which it became 
eminent? Read the biographies of our great and good 
men and women. Not one of them had a fashionable 
mother. They nearly all sprang from strong minded 
women, who had about as little to do with fashion, as 
with the changing clouds, • 
Making Fence-Posts Durable. — All posts will rot, 
sooner or later, and no method will put off the period of 
decay very long, Yet something can be done. Charring 
the lower end before setting it, is not labor lost although 
it must be remembered that the charring process often 
cracks the timber, and so allows the moisture to pene- 
trate the post and thus induce decay. Boring small holes 
near the ground, and filling them with salt once a year, 
is sometimes recommended. Perhaps the salt thus intro- 
duced, and diffused through ihe wood, may retard decay, 
but we cannot, from theory or ooservation, vouch for 
such results. Coating the lower end and six inches 
above the ground with coal-gas tar answers a good pur- 
pose, and is, we think, the cheapest and most effectual. 
A correspondent suggests soaking the lower ends in a 
solution of blue vitriol, (sulphate of copper) — all that will 
dissolve in water — and says that this has been used with 
success on shingles, spouts, bean-poles, and wood in 
other forms exposed to the weather. We do not under- 
stand the chemical action of such a fluid, but it may be 
good for fence-posts for ought we know . — American Agri- 
culturist. 
|^“The. Boston Traveller says, with great truth, that 
“It is easier to get twenty good writers than one good edi- 
tor.” The fact is not, however, generally appreciated. 
