Illustration 5V. THE IDEAL HOME.Chapter 5 decorative initial Ahouse is not a home, although it has sometimes to pass as such. There are imposing mansions, replete with magnificence and luxury, which if realised would provide the outward trappings of many modest domiciles, but which offer shelter and nothing more to their possessors.Home is made by those who dwell within its walls, by the atmosphere they create; and if that spirit which makes humble things beautiful and gracious be absent, then there can be no home in the full and true sense of the word.While each member of the household contributes more or less to the upbuilding of the fabric, it is, of course, those at the head whose influence makes or mars. A lesser influence may be felt in a degree great enough to modify disagreeable elements, or intensify happy ones, but it cannot, save in very exceptional circumstances, set aside the influence of those at the head.It is to them, then, that our few words under this heading must be addressed; and, to reduce it to a still narrower basis, it is the woman's duty and privilege, and solemn responsibility, which make this art of home-making more interesting and important to her than any other art in the world. Her right to study it, and to make it a glorious and perfect thing, will never be for a moment questioned, even in this age of fierce rivalry and keen competition for the good things of life. In her own kingdom she may make new laws and inaugurate improvements without let or hindrance, and as a rule she will meet with more gratitude and appreciation than usually fall to the lot of law-givers and law-makers. She will also find in her own domain scope for her highest energies, and for the exercise of such originality as she may be endowed with. I do not know of any sphere with a wider scope, but of course it requires the open eye and the understanding heart to discern this fact.It seems superfluous, after the chapters preceding this, to say again that the very first principle to be learned in this art of home-making must be love. Without it the other virtues act but feebly. There may be patience, skill, tact, forbearance, but without true love the home cannot reach its perfect state. It may well be a comfortable abode, a place where creature comforts abound, and where there is much quiet peace of mind; but those who dwell in such an atmosphere the hidden sweetness of home will never touch. There will be heart-hunger and vague discontents, which puzzle and irritate, and which only the sunshine of love can dispel.Home-making, like the other arts, is with some an inborn gift,—the secret of making others happy, of conferring blessings, of scattering the sunnylargesseof love everywhere, is as natural to some as to breathe. Such sweet souls are to be envied, as are those whose happy lot it is to dwell with them. But, at the same time, perhaps they are not so deserving of our admiration and respect as some who, in order to confer happiness on others, themselves undergo what is to them mental and moral privation, who day by day have to keep a curb on themselves in order to crucify the "natural man."It is possible, even for some whom Nature has not endowed with her loveliest gifts, to cultivate that spirit in which is hidden the whole secret of home happiness. It is the spirit of unselfishness. No selfish man or woman has the power to make a happy home.By selfish, I mean giving prominence always to the demands and interests of self, to the detriment or exclusion of the interests and even the rights of others. It is possible, however, for a selfish person to possess a certain superficial gift of sunshine, which creates for the time being a pleasant atmosphere, which can deceive those who come casually into contact with him; but those who see him in all his moods are not deceived. They know by experience that a peaceful and endurable environment can only be secured and maintained by a constant pandering to his whims and ways. He must be studied, not at an odd time, but continuously and systematically, or woe betide the happiness of home!When this element is conspicuous in the woman who rules the household, then that household deserves our pity. A selfish woman is more selfish, if I may so put it, than a selfish man. Her tyranny is more petty and more relentless. She exercises it in those countless trifling things which, insignificant in themselves, yet possess the power to make life almost insufferable. Sometimes she is fretful and complaining, on the outlook for slights and injuries, so suspicious of those surrounding her that they feel themselves perpetually on the brink of a volcano. Or she is meek and martyred, bearing the buffets of a rude world and unkind relatives with pious resignation; or self-righteous and complacent, convinced that she and she alone knows and does the proper thing, and requiring absolutely that all within her jurisdiction should see eye to eye with her.It is no slight, insignificant domain, this kingdom of home, in which the woman reigns. In one family there are sure to be diversities of dispositions and contrasts of character most perplexing and difficult to deal with. She needs so much wisdom, patience, and tact that sometimes her heart fails her at the varied requirements she is expected to meet, and to meet both capably and cheerfully. If she has been herself trained in a well-ordered home, so much the better for her. She has her model to copy, and her opportunities before her to improve upon it.Every home is bound to bear the impress of the individuality which guides it. If it be a weak and colourless individuality, then so much the worse for the home, which must be its reflex.This fact has, I think, something solemn in it for women, and it is somewhat saddening that so many look upon the responsibilities that home-making entails without the smallest consideration. Verily fools rush in where angels fear to tread! If they think of the responsibility at all, they comfort themselves with the delusion that it is every woman's natural gift to keep house; but housekeeping and home-making are two different things, though each is dependent on the other.This thoughtlessness, which results in much needless domestic misery, is the less excusable because we hear and read so much about the inestimable value of home influences, the powerful and permanent nature of early impressions, even if we are not ourselves living examples of the same. Let us each examine our own heart and mind, and just ask ourselves how much we owe to the influences surrounding early life, and how much more vivid are the lessons and impressions of childhood compared with those of a later date. The contemplation is bound to astonish us, and if it does not awaken in us a higher sense of responsibility regarding those who are under the direct sway of our influence, then there is something amiss with our ideal of life and its purpose.Illustration 6VI. KEEPING THE HOUSE.Chapter 6 decorative initial Making the home and keeping the house are two different things, though closely allied. Having considered the graces of mind and heart which so largely contribute to the successful art of home-making, it is not less necessary that we now devote our attention to the more practical, and certainly not less important, quality of housekeeping.Ignorance of the prosaic details of housekeeping is the primary cause of much of the domestic worry and discomfort that exist, to say nothing of the more serious discords that may arise from such a defect in the fitness of the woman supposed to be the home-maker.For such ignorance, or lack of fitness, to use a milder term, there does not appear to me to be any excuse; it is so needless, so often wilful.Some blame careless, indifferent mothers, who do not seem to have profited by their own experience, but allow their daughters to grow up in idleness, and launch them on the sea of matrimony with a very faint idea of what is required of them in their new sphere.It is very reprehensible conduct on the part of such mothers, and if in a short time the bright sky of their daughters' happiness begins to cloud a little, they need not wonder or feel aggrieved. A man is quite justified in expecting and exacting a moderate degree of comfort at least in his own house, and if it is not forthcoming may be forgiven a complaint. He is to be pitied, but his unhappy wife much more deserves our pity, since she finds herself amid a sea of troubles, at the mercy of her servants, if she possesses them; and if moderate circumstances necessitate the performance of the bulk of household duties, then her predicament is melancholy indeed.To revert again to our Angelina and Edwin of the comic papers, we have the threadbare jokes at the expense of the new husband subjected to the ordeal of Angelina's awful cooking. At first he is forbearing and encouraging; but in the end, when no improvement is visible, the honeymoon begins to wane much more rapidly than either anticipated. Edwin becomes sulky, discontented, and complaining; Angelina tearful or indignant, as her temperament dictates, but equally and miserably helpless.The chances are that time will not improve but rather aggravate her troubles, especially if the cares of motherhood be added to those of wifehood, which she finds quite enough for her capacities.True, some women have a clever knack of adapting themselves readily to every circumstance, and pick up knowledge with amazing rapidity. If they are by nature housewifely women, they will triumph over the faults of their early training, and after sundry mistakes and a good deal of unnecessary expenditure may develop into fairly competent housewives.But it is a dangerous and trying experiment, which ought not to be made, because there is absolutely no need for it. It is the duty of every mother who has daughters entrusted to her care to begin early to train them in domestic work. That there are servants in the house need be no obstacle in the way. There are silly domestics who resent what they call the "meddling" of young ladies in the kitchen; but no wise woman will allow that to trouble her, but will take care to show her young daughters, as time and opportunity offer, every secret contained in the domesticrépertoire.One of the primary lessons to be learned in this housekeeping art is that of method; viz.—a place for everything, and a time. It is the key to all domestic comfort. Most of us are familiar with at least one household where the genius of method is conspicuous by its absence; where regularity and punctuality are unobserved, if not unknown. The household governed by a woman without method is to be pitied. Her husband is a stranger to the comfort of a well-ordered home; and her children, if she has any, hang as they grow, as the Scotch say; while her servants, having nobody to guide them, become careless and indifferent, and so suffer injustice at her hands.It is such women who are loudest in complaints against servants, and who are in a state of perpetual warfare against the class. Of course this method must be kept within bounds, and not carried to excess, thereby becoming an evil instead of an unmixed good.We are familiar with that other type of women, who make their housekeeping an idol, at whose shrine they perpetually worship, regardless of the comfort of those under their roof-tree. With them it is a perpetual cleaning day, and woe betide the luckless offender who has the misfortune to mar, if ever so slightly, the immaculate cleanliness of that abode! He is likely to have his fault brought home to him in no measured terms.The woman possessed of the cleaning mania, who goes to bed to dream of carpet-beating and furniture polish, and who rises to carry her dreams into execution, is quite as objectionable in her way as the woman who never cleans, and for whom the word dirt has no horrors. Although it is doubtless pleasant to feel assured that no microbe-producing speck can possibly lurk in any corner of the house, and to be certain that food and everything pertaining to it is perfect so far as cleanliness is concerned, there is a sense of insecurity and unrest in the abode of the over-particular woman which often develops into positive misery and discomfort. It is the sort of discomfort specially distasteful to the male portion of mankind. Although they may be compelled to admit, when brought to bay, that "cleaning" is a necessary evil, it requires a superhuman amount of persuasion to make them see any good in it. The way women revel, or appear to revel, in the chaos of a house turned topsy-turvy is to them the darkest of all mysteries. It is long since they were compelled to treat it as a conundrum, and give it up.I think, however, that, with few exceptions, women dislike the periodical household earthquake quite as much as men, and dread its approach. The housekeeper who considers the comfort of those about her will do her utmost to rob it of its horrors. This can be done by a judicious planning, and by resort to the method of which we spoke in the last chapter.Let "One room at a time" be her motto, and then the inmates of the house will not be made to feel that they are quite in the way, and have no abiding-place on the face of the earth.This may involve a little more work, and a great deal of patience; but she will have her reward in the grateful appreciation of those for whom she makes home such a happy and restful place.Illustration 7VII. THE TRUEST ECONOMY.Chapter 7 decorative initial In these days many new phrases have been coined to give expression and significance to old truths; thus we hear of the "sin of cheapness," the fault attributed to those shortsighted bargain-hunters who waste time and energy and money hunting the length and breadth of the land for the cheapest market. The true and competent housekeeper knows that there is no economy in this method of marketing, but the reverse.Of course, where the family is large and the resources limited, it is absolutely incumbent on the purveyor to seek the most moderate market; and those of us who dwell in cities know that prices vary with localities, and that West-enders must pay a West-end price. But it is reprehensible always to hunt for cheap things simply because they are cheap, because we ought not to forget that this very cheapness has caused suffering, or at least deprivation, somewhere, since it would appear that some things are absolutely offered at prices under the cost of production.In the matter of food, so important a factor in the health and well-being of the family, it can seldom be a saving to buy in the cheap market, because cheapness there is too often a synonymous term with unwholesomeness; and a small quantity of the very best will undoubtedly afford more sustenance than an unlimited supply of inferior quality. In small and working-class homes the tea and tinned-food grievance is an old one, but one which does not appear to be in the way of mending.If the wives and mothers of the working-class could only have it demonstrated to them, beyond all question, that a small piece of excellent fresh beef, made into a wholesome soup flavoured with vegetables, would give three times the nourishment of this tinned stuff, which, good enough as an occasional stand-by, has become the curse and the tyrant of the lazy and thriftless housewife, what a step in the right direction that would be! The mere salting and preserving process destroys the most valuable nutritive elements of the meat; and though it may be tasty and palatable, it is practically useless as a strength-producer or strength-imparter.Milk, too, we fear has not its proper place in very many homes where children abound; though no mother of even ordinary intelligence can shut her eyes to the fact that it is Nature's own food for her children in their early years, when it is so important to build up the elements of a strong constitution. I would here put in a plea for oatmeal, in former days the backbone of my country's food, and which has of late years fallen sadly into disuse, especially in quarters where its very cheapness and absolute wholesomeness recommend it asthefoodpar excellencefor old and young. We have replaced it with tea and toast, to the great detriment of limb and muscle and digestive power. It is in the palace now we find oatmeal accorded its rightful place, not in the cottage; and the change is to be deplored.Regularity in meals is another thing the wise housekeeper will insist upon in her abode. Regularity and punctuality, how delightful they are, and how they ease the roll of the domestic wheels! A punctual and tidy woman makes a punctual and tidy home. We know the type who dawdles away the forenoon in idle talk or listless indolence, and rushes to prepare a hasty and only half-cooked meal when perhaps her husband or children are on their way home from school or workshop; and this is a very fruitful cause of domestic dispeace, and at the root even of much of the intemperance which has ruined so many homes. If a man has no comfort at his own fireside, then he is compelled in self-defence to seek it elsewhere.To recur to the question of buying in cheap markets, the principle that what is good and costs something to begin with will inevitably prove the cheapest in the end is even more clearly demonstrated in the matter of clothing than of food. The best will always wear and look the best, even when it has grown threadbare. Then when we hear so constantly of the appalling misery endured by men and women who make the garments sold in the cheap shops, we are bound to feel that these things are offered at a price which is the cost of flesh and blood. This is a very pressing question, and one which many Christian people do not lay to heart. There appears to be in every human breast the instinct of the bargain-hunter, and there is a placid satisfaction in having got something at an exceptionally low price which charms the finer sensibilities.To gratify this peculiar and morbid craving, witness the system of buying and selling which prevails in Italy; the shopkeepers there, with few exceptions, invariably asking double the money they are willing to accept. And to this craving in our own country is due the system of all cheap sales in the shops, and mock auctions in the sale-rooms, in which many a shortsighted person of both sexes fritter away both time and money. It is a rotten system, and shows that there is great need for reform in this matter of buying and selling, which occupies so much of our time, means, and thought.All good housekeepers know that those who buy in the ready-money market fare best; and besides, the paying out of ready-money is undoubtedly a check on expenditure, and is to be specially recommended to people of small means. It is easy and tempting to give an order, and though it can no doubt be paid for sooner or later, somehow the sum always seems to assume larger proportions as time goes on. We very seldom get in a bill for a less amount than we expect. My own view of the case is, that I grudge to pay for food after it is eaten, or clothes after they are worn; and in my own housekeeping I have found ready-money, or, at the outside, weekly accounts, the best arrangement, to which I adhere without any exceptions. Short accounts, also, give one another advantage, the choice of all markets. Thus the money is laid out to the best possible advantage, and the highest value obtained.All thrifty and far-seeing housekeepers know that it is cheaper to buy certain household stores, as sugar, butter, flour, soap, etc., in quantities, provided there is a suitable storeroom where the things will be kept in good condition. There are indeed innumerable methods whereby the good housewife can save her coppers and her shillings, and a wise woman is she who takes advantage of them to the utmost.This art of housekeeping is not learned in a day; those of us who have been engaged in it for years are constantly finding out how little we know, and how far we are, after all, from perfection.It requires a clever woman to keep house; and as I said before there is ample scope, even within the four walls of a house (a sphere which some affect to despise), for the exercise of originality, organising power, administrative ability. And to the majority of women I would fain believe it is the most interesting and satisfactory of all feminine occupations.Illustration 8VIII. ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES.Chapter 8 decorative initial In these very words lurks a danger likely to beset our young couple, on the very threshold of their career.All eyes are upon them, of course; their house and all it contains, their way of life, the position they take up and maintain, are, for the time being, topics of intense concern to all who know them, and to many who do not. There is no doubt that we need to go back in some degree to the simpler way of life in vogue in the days of our grandmothers; that pretentiousness and extravagance have reached a point which is almost unendurable. We are constantly being informed by statistics which cannot be questioned that the marriage rate is decreasing; and we know that in our own circles the number of marriageable girls and marriageable youths who for some inexplicable reasondon'tmarry is very great.Whatisthe reason? Is the age of romance over? is it impossible any longer to conjure with the words love and marriage in the garden of youth? or is it that our young people are less brave and enduring, that they shrink from the added responsibility, care, and self-denial involved in the double life? My own view is that this pretentiousness and desire for display is at the bottom of it; that young people want to begin where their fathers and mothers left off, and that courage is lacking to take a step down and begin together on the lowest rung of the ladder.I have heard many young men say that they are afraid to ask girls to leave the luxury and comfort of their father's house, and to enter a plainer home, where they will have less luxury and more care; and though I grant that there are many girls who would shrink from the ordeal, and who prefer the indolent ease of single blessedness to the cares of matrimony on limited means, yet have I been tempted sometimes, looking at these young men, to wonder in my soul whether it was nottheywho shrank from the plain home and the increased responsibility marriage involves. The salary sufficient for the comfort and mild luxury of one is scarcely elastic enough for two.It would mean giving up a good many things; it would mean fewer cigars, fewer new suits, fewer first nights at the theatre,—in fact, a general modification of luxuries which he has begun to regard as indispensable; and he asks himself, Is the game worth the candle? His answer is, No. And so he drifts out of young manhood into bachelor middle age, passing unscathed through many flirtations, becoming encrusted with selfish ideas and selfish aims, and gradually less fit for domestic life. And all the time, while he imagines he has a fine time of it, he has missed the chief joy, the highest meaning of life.The conditions of modern life are certainly harder than they were. Competition in every profession and calling is so enormous that remuneration has necessarily fallen; and it is a problem to many how single life is to be respectably maintained, let alone double. Then the invasions of women into almost every domain of man's work is somewhat serious in its consequences to men. A woman can be got to do a certain thing as quickly, correctly, and efficiently as a man; therefore the man goes to the wall. While we are glad to see the position of woman improve, and the value of her labour in the markets of the world increase, we are perplexed as to the effect of this better condition of things on the position of men. The situation is full of perplexities, strained to the utmost.There is no doubt whatever that this improvement in the position of woman, the increased opportunities afforded her of making a respectable livelihood, has had, and is having, its serious effect in the marriage market. A single woman in a good situation, the duties of which she has strength of body and strength of mind to perform, is a very independent being, and in contrast with many of her married sisters a person to be envied. She has her hours, for one thing; there is no prospect of an eight hours' day for the married woman with a family to superintend. Then she, having earned her own money, can spend it as she likes—and has to give account of it only to herself; and she is free from the physical trials and disabilities consequent upon marriage and maternity. If you tell her that the sweet fulness of married life, its multiplied joys, amply compensate for the troubles, she will shake her head and want proof.Altogether, the outlook matrimonial is not very bright. Now, while we deplore, as a serious evil, hasty, improvident, ill-considered marriages, and hold that their consequences are very sad, we would also, scarcely less seriously, deplore that over-cautiousness which is reducing the marriage rate in quarters where it ought not to be reduced,—our lower middle-class, which is the backbone of society. There is no fear of a serious reduction in other quarters: where there is no responsibility felt, there is none to shirk; and so, among the very poor, children are multiplied, and obligations increased, without any thought for the morrow, or concern for future provision. There is a very supreme kind of selfishness in this over-cautiousness which is not delightful to contemplate, the fear lest self should be inconvenienced or deprived in the very slightest degree; and all this does not tend to the highest development of human nature, but rather the reverse, since the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice is one of the loveliest attributes of human character.That it is possible for two people to live together almost as cheaply as one, and, if the wife be careful, thrifty, and managing, with a great deal more comfort, is hardly disputed; and surely love is yet strong enough to take its chance of falling on evil days, and when they come of making the best of them. Our girls must exhibit less frivolity, less devotion to dress and idle amusements, if they wish for homes of their own; because at present it is partly true that men are afraid to take the risk and responsibility of them as partners in life.And this brings us back to the heading of our chapter, the subject of keeping up appearances. This fearful rivalry to make the greatest show on inadequate means, to outshine our neighbours in house and dress and everything else, is really a tremendous evil, the scourge of many middle-class families. And what, after all, is its aim or outcome; what its rewards?To begin with, it is a pandering, pure and simple, to the baser part of human nature—the desire to out-rival your neighbour, to be able to soar over him at any price; and more, it is both hypocritical and immoral. Hypocritical, because it is pure pretence to a station which has no means to support it; and immoral, because you cannot afford to pay for it, and thereby suffering is entailed somewhere and somehow. How many of us number among our acquaintances (if not absolutely guilty ourselves), persons who, possessed of a small and limited income, live in a large house, the rent of which is a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over them for ever?You know them by their hunted, eager, restless look, which tells of inward dispeace, of worry too great almost to be borne. Their servants do not stay long, perhaps because the larder of the big house is kept very bare, and comfort is sacrificed to outside show. They never have anything to give away, and their excuse is that they do not believe in indiscriminate charity. And they look back with a painful longing, never expressed, however, to the days when they lived at peace in a little house, and had enough and to spare for man and beast, and a penny for the beggar at the gate. The big house is but one thing; the struggle to keep up appearances is observed in many other ways—in expensive and not always efficient education of the children, in party-giving, extravagant dress, frequent going out of town, and many others too numerous to mention. And what, after all, is the advantage of it? Is there any advantage gained? You may succeed in exciting in the breast of your neighbour a bitter envy which will probably find expression in some such remark as this—"I only hope it is all paid for."And you never will have any peace of mind, without which the outward trappings are but a mockery.Oh, let us be simpler! Let us at least not pretend to be what we are not. In a word, let us not try to humbug ourselves and the world at large.Illustration 9IX. MOTHERHOOD.Chapter 9 decorative initial It is a great theme, which I approach with fear and trembling; yet—is the home complete without the child? Can even an unpretentious book of this sort be written without some attempted treatment of the same?The first year of married life is often very full, as well as specially trying, a record of new and very crucial experiences such as are bound to prove the grit of our young housekeeper. She has many things to learn in her new sphere, both in the department of ethics as well as of housekeeping. She has a husband to study, for even though they have seen a great deal of each other before marriage, there yet remains much to learn of many little peculiarities before undreamed of, which in the full glare and test of daily life sometimes stand out with a certain unpleasant prominence, which both find trying. There are new tastes to discover and consider, new likes and dislikes to be studied—in a word, the situation is a severe ordeal, especially if our young wife be very young and inexperienced. Of course she has an adoring and approving love to aid her, and all her efforts to please will be appreciated at their full value, and perhaps a little over, and that is much.If in addition to all the trying amenities of her new position there be added early in her married life the prospect of motherhood, with its attendant cares, anxieties, and fears, then our young housekeeper may be granted to have hand and heart full. That it is a prospect full of joy and satisfaction, the realisation of a sweet and secret hope, nobody will deny. There are a few women, we are told, who do not desire motherhood, preferring the greater freedom and ease of childless wifehood; but it is not of such we seek to write, because the vast majority agree with me that motherhood is the crown of marriage, as well as the sweetest of all bonds between husband and wife.It is the great, almost awful, responsibility of this bond which makes thinking people deplore the prevalence of early and improvident marriage between persons who seem to lack entirely this sense of responsibility, and who undertake the most solemn duties in the same flippant mood as they go out on a day's enjoyment. The idea that they have in their power the making and marring of a human soul, to say nothing of the influences which in fulness of time must go forth from that same soul, does not trouble them, or indeed exist for them at all. They have no ideas—they never think. If the child comes, good and well—it has to be provided for; welcome or unwelcome it arrives; and is tolerated or rejoiced over as the case may be.We need a great deal of educating on this particular point, and the fact that a child may have rights before it is born is one which presses home to the heart of every man and woman who may give the matter any serious attention whatsoever.If we marry, then as surely do we undertake the possible obligations of parentage; and if we do not see that we are fit physically, mentally, and morally for this undoubtedly greatest of all human obligations, then are we blameworthy, and answerable to God and man for our shortcomings.Heroism is a word to stir the highest enthusiasm in every heart, and we Britons are not supposed to lack in that glorious quality. While not despising nor making light of that heroism which shows an unflinching front on the battlefield, or in the face of any danger, and while recognising also and glorying in that other heroism of which the world hears less, but which is nevertheless very rich and far-reaching in results—I mean that brave heart which does not sink under adverse circumstances, which makes the best of everything, which can do, dare, and suffer for others, without notice or applause—there is yet another phase of heroism of which the world knows not at all, but which in my estimation is as great, if not greater, than any of these. It is a delicate theme, and yet in such a book as this are we not justified in touching upon it, reverently and tenderly as it deserves? There are some—more, I believe, than we dream of—who, being afflicted physically or mentally, and who, fearing some hereditary moral taint for which they have to suffer, though entirely blameless, deliberately abstain from marriage for the highest of all reasons—that they fear to perpetuate in their own children the weaknesses which are already so stupendous a curse to mankind. Oh that such examples could be multiplied, and that we were once thoroughly awakened to the solemn significance of the fact that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children!But when we look around we see the innocent made to suffer daily for the guilty; we see children whose lives even in infancy are but a burden to them, and whose later life can only be a cross, and we pray for a great baptism of light on this painful subject, for a great awakening to that personal, individual responsibility which is the only solution of a difficulty which concerns the future and the highest interest of the race.To return to the question of rights as affecting the unborn babe: the mother has then so much in her power that she can not only determine to a great extent what kind of infancy the child shall have, but also whether her own duties therein shall be heavy or light. By attending strictly to her own health, adhering to natural laws, living simply and wholesomely, she can almost ensure the bodily health of the child; and by keeping her mind calm and even, avoiding worry, and cultivating cheerfulness and contentment, she thus moulds the disposition of the child to a far greater extent than she dreams of. The woman who lives in a condition of perpetual nervous excitement and worry before the birth of her child, who is fretful, complaining, impatient of the discomfort of her condition, need not be much surprised if her baby be fretful and difficult to rear. Of course this is all very easy to write down, and most difficult—in many cases of physical and nervous prostration impossible—to bear in mind; nevertheless, it is worth the trial, worth the self-denial involved, even looking at it from the most selfish standpoint, one's own ultimate comfort and ease. The gain to the child is too great to be estimated.And surely taking into consideration the enormous number of miserable, weakly babies who have never had a chance, the day of whose birth, like Job's, is sadder than the day of their death, it is not too much to ask from thoughtful Christian women, who at heart feel their responsibility and their high privilege, that nothing shall be lacking on their part to make the child given to them by God a moral, mental, and physical success. We are careful in all other departments of life to try and obtain the best—why not here? Is human life less precious, human souls of less account, than merchandise?I do not see why mothers should not seek to impress upon their daughters, and fathers upon their sons, as they approach maturity, the solemnity and sacredness of such themes, which involve all that is most important in human life. I consider that the ignorance with which so many young girls are allowed to enter matrimony is nothing short of criminal; and I do not myself see that a plain, straight, loving talk from her mother beforehand, which will prepare her for her new obligations and make them less a surprise and a trial when they come, can possibly take the edge off that exquisite and delicate purity which we would wish to be our daughters' outstanding characteristic, and which every right-thinking man desires in his wife. There are many who do not share this opinion, and hold that the wall of reserve should never be broken. But the issues are great, and I cannot but think that in this case ignorance is more likely to be fruitful of anxiety and foreboding, to say nothing of mistakes, than is a little knowledge wisely imparted by those whom experience has taught.Illustration 10X. THE SON IN THE HOME.Chapter 10 decorative initial The son is peculiarly the mother's child, and the bond between them, seen at its best, is one of the loveliest, and, to the woman who has suffered for her firstborn, one of the most soul-satisfying on earth. I suppose most women given choice would wish their firstborn to be a son; and her pride in the boy as he grows in grace and strength and manliness is a very exquisite thing in the mother.As a rule, a boy is more difficult to rear. He has more strength of limb and will, and shows earlier, perhaps, the desire to be master of the whole situation, as very often he is. It is amazing at how early an age a child can begin to discern between the firm will and the weak will of those who guide him, and to profit thereby; and she is a wise woman who begins as she means to end, and who teaches her child that her decision is absolute from the earliest stage. The moment he begins to understand that though you say no a yell will probably convert it into a yes, your occupation is gone, so to speak—you have lost your hold, and Baby is master of the situation and of you.There is no doubt, I think, that the woman who has a nurse to relieve her of the child has a better chance than the one who has to fight the battle single-handed—for this reason, that extreme weariness of body, which nothing brings about more quickly than the perpetual care of a baby, is apt to weaken the will; the desire for peace at any price becomes too great to be resisted, and so the citadel is lost. It is impossible also for the ordinary woman, who has the care of a baby all day long, in addition to a multitude of other duties, not to become nervous, irritable, and excitable, and the probability is that the child becomes a reflex of herself. I know of no more self-denying and harassing life than that of the mother of many children, whose limited means prohibit much assistance in her labours. It would require the strength of a Hercules and the patience of a Job. Yet how many go on from day to day with an uncomplaining and heroic cheerfulness which does not strike the onlooker, simply because it is so common, like the toothache, that it attracts but little sympathy or attention.In one day such a mother may win moral victories beside which the brilliant engagements of the battlefield would pale. It is not one that she has to consider and contend with, but many; the diversity of disposition in one family is truly amazing, and affords a most interesting psychological study. If she be a thoughtful and conscientious woman she knows that she is sowing the seeds of future good and ill, that early impressions are never erased, and that her own influence is the one which will leave the strongest, the most indelible mark on the future of the little ones she has under her wing. To this there is no exception whatever; it is a fact nobody attempts to dispute. Who shall say, then—who shall dare to say—that a woman's work is slight, her sphere narrow, her influence feeble? Have we not yet with us the proverb, "She who rocks the cradle rules the world"? as true to-day as it was a hundred years ago, as it will be in a hundred years to come.But though the anxieties and responsibilities of the nursery are great, they increase, especially in the case of some, as the years go by; though as the boy grows older his mother may be somewhat relieved by the wise guidance of the father. There comes a time when the lad wants to emancipate himself from his mother's jurisdiction, and begins to look to his father, seeing in him the image of what he may yet become. He will not love his mother any less, but he will be impatient a little, perhaps, of her careful supervision; he wants to be a man, to imitate his father, to show that he is a being of another order. It is always amusing to look on at this subtle and inevitable change, but sometimes touching as well. It is the strong soul seeking his heritage, the first stirring of manhood in the boy, who will never be other than a bairn to his mother. Happy then the mother, blessed the boy, who has a good, wise, and tender father to take him by the hand, and show him at this critical stage the beauty of a noble, pure, and honest manhood, and how great is its power to bless the world.There are some men who never grow old, who, while doing a man's part better than most in the world, keep the child-heart pure within them. Happy are the children who call them father! The ideal father (since we are writing of what we all know to be the highest in home relationship, we may call him so) will be a boy in the midst of his boys all his days; he will share the pastimes, the interests, the absorbing occupations of his boys, in the schoolroom and the recreation-ground, just as he did not disdain to join sometimes in the frolic of the nursery. He will understand cricket and football, and hounds and hares, and know all the little points of schoolboy honour, so that he may at once grasp the situation when his lad brings his grievance or his tale of victory to him. And through it all, without preaching, which the soul of the average boy abhors, he will seek to inculcate the highest moral lessons, thus accentuating and deepening the teaching of the nursery still fresh in the boy's mind.This is the ideal which we would wish to see in every home, but the real is rather different, and sometimes perplexing to deal with. We have seen homes where the boys do not "get on" with their father, who seem to rub each other the wrong way, and to have no sort of kinship with each other—in a word, who are not chums, which is a boy's definition of the jolliest possible relationship, and which is very beautiful existing between father and son. But there are fathers who have no patience with the boy who, feeling in him the promptings of a larger life, begins to give himself little airs, and to adopt a manly and masterful manner; no sympathy with his desire for freedom; and who, instead of wisely guiding all these accompaniments of young manhood into fresh and legitimate channels, seeks to curb them, to restrain every impulse, and to enforce an authority the boy does not understand, and inwardly, if not outwardly, kicks against.I know many mothers who have difficulty in pouring oil on such troubled waters, and who see that the father and the boy do not understand each other, and cannot get on—and she is powerless to help. Out of this strained relationship many evils may arise. The young heart, bounding with a thousand buoyant impulses, eager to see life and taste its every cup, deprived of sympathy and outlet, and thrown back upon itself, becomes reserved, self-contained, and morbid. Then, again, there is a temptation to concealment, and even to prevarication, over mere trifles. When censure is feared—and the young heart is fearfully sensitive—little fibs are told to escape it, and so a great moral wrong is inflicted, which can undoubtedly be laid at the unsympathetic parent's door.The mother, by reason of her gentler nature (to which, of course, there are the usual exceptions), is not so feared, and is made the go-between."Mother, willyouask father for so-and-so?" is an everyday question in many homes; and why should it be? Why should sympathy and confidence be less full and sweet between father and son than between mother and son? Nay, rather, it might be fuller, since the father, being of the same sex, can the better understand the boy nature, making allowance for its failings, which were also his, if, indeed, they are not in an aggravated form still characteristic of him. Some men forget that they have ever been young; looking at them and witnessing their conduct in certain circumstances, one finds it difficult to believe that they everwereyoung. They have been fossils from their birth. That is the grand mistake—to fix such a great gulf betwixt youth and maturity that nothing can bridge it. It is more love, more sympathy we want; it is the dearth of it that is the curse of the world. Yet how dare we, being responsible for the advent of the child into the world, deny him his heritage, starve his heart of its right to our affection and regard? The Lord sent him? Well, He did undoubtedly, and His commands with the gift. There is no hesitation or ambiguity about the Lord's mandate regarding little children.In homes where this lovely sympathy exists, anxiety regarding the moral welfare of the boy is reduced to a minimum. Where the youth can come to his mother, and still better to his father, in every dilemma, sure of advice and aid, he will not go very far wrong. The world is full of pitfalls, and it is sure nothing short of the grace of God can keep young manhood in the right way; but very certain am I that parents have much, ay, more than they dream of in their power.Let them at least see to it that they do not fall short. Let the boy feel that the home is his, that his friends are welcome to it, and that he need not go out always to seek liberty and enjoyment. In one word, let him have room to breathe and to live, and the chances are that he will repay you by becoming all you could desire even in your fondest dreams.
Illustration 5
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house is not a home, although it has sometimes to pass as such. There are imposing mansions, replete with magnificence and luxury, which if realised would provide the outward trappings of many modest domiciles, but which offer shelter and nothing more to their possessors.
Home is made by those who dwell within its walls, by the atmosphere they create; and if that spirit which makes humble things beautiful and gracious be absent, then there can be no home in the full and true sense of the word.
While each member of the household contributes more or less to the upbuilding of the fabric, it is, of course, those at the head whose influence makes or mars. A lesser influence may be felt in a degree great enough to modify disagreeable elements, or intensify happy ones, but it cannot, save in very exceptional circumstances, set aside the influence of those at the head.
It is to them, then, that our few words under this heading must be addressed; and, to reduce it to a still narrower basis, it is the woman's duty and privilege, and solemn responsibility, which make this art of home-making more interesting and important to her than any other art in the world. Her right to study it, and to make it a glorious and perfect thing, will never be for a moment questioned, even in this age of fierce rivalry and keen competition for the good things of life. In her own kingdom she may make new laws and inaugurate improvements without let or hindrance, and as a rule she will meet with more gratitude and appreciation than usually fall to the lot of law-givers and law-makers. She will also find in her own domain scope for her highest energies, and for the exercise of such originality as she may be endowed with. I do not know of any sphere with a wider scope, but of course it requires the open eye and the understanding heart to discern this fact.
It seems superfluous, after the chapters preceding this, to say again that the very first principle to be learned in this art of home-making must be love. Without it the other virtues act but feebly. There may be patience, skill, tact, forbearance, but without true love the home cannot reach its perfect state. It may well be a comfortable abode, a place where creature comforts abound, and where there is much quiet peace of mind; but those who dwell in such an atmosphere the hidden sweetness of home will never touch. There will be heart-hunger and vague discontents, which puzzle and irritate, and which only the sunshine of love can dispel.
Home-making, like the other arts, is with some an inborn gift,—the secret of making others happy, of conferring blessings, of scattering the sunnylargesseof love everywhere, is as natural to some as to breathe. Such sweet souls are to be envied, as are those whose happy lot it is to dwell with them. But, at the same time, perhaps they are not so deserving of our admiration and respect as some who, in order to confer happiness on others, themselves undergo what is to them mental and moral privation, who day by day have to keep a curb on themselves in order to crucify the "natural man."
It is possible, even for some whom Nature has not endowed with her loveliest gifts, to cultivate that spirit in which is hidden the whole secret of home happiness. It is the spirit of unselfishness. No selfish man or woman has the power to make a happy home.
By selfish, I mean giving prominence always to the demands and interests of self, to the detriment or exclusion of the interests and even the rights of others. It is possible, however, for a selfish person to possess a certain superficial gift of sunshine, which creates for the time being a pleasant atmosphere, which can deceive those who come casually into contact with him; but those who see him in all his moods are not deceived. They know by experience that a peaceful and endurable environment can only be secured and maintained by a constant pandering to his whims and ways. He must be studied, not at an odd time, but continuously and systematically, or woe betide the happiness of home!
When this element is conspicuous in the woman who rules the household, then that household deserves our pity. A selfish woman is more selfish, if I may so put it, than a selfish man. Her tyranny is more petty and more relentless. She exercises it in those countless trifling things which, insignificant in themselves, yet possess the power to make life almost insufferable. Sometimes she is fretful and complaining, on the outlook for slights and injuries, so suspicious of those surrounding her that they feel themselves perpetually on the brink of a volcano. Or she is meek and martyred, bearing the buffets of a rude world and unkind relatives with pious resignation; or self-righteous and complacent, convinced that she and she alone knows and does the proper thing, and requiring absolutely that all within her jurisdiction should see eye to eye with her.
It is no slight, insignificant domain, this kingdom of home, in which the woman reigns. In one family there are sure to be diversities of dispositions and contrasts of character most perplexing and difficult to deal with. She needs so much wisdom, patience, and tact that sometimes her heart fails her at the varied requirements she is expected to meet, and to meet both capably and cheerfully. If she has been herself trained in a well-ordered home, so much the better for her. She has her model to copy, and her opportunities before her to improve upon it.
Every home is bound to bear the impress of the individuality which guides it. If it be a weak and colourless individuality, then so much the worse for the home, which must be its reflex.
This fact has, I think, something solemn in it for women, and it is somewhat saddening that so many look upon the responsibilities that home-making entails without the smallest consideration. Verily fools rush in where angels fear to tread! If they think of the responsibility at all, they comfort themselves with the delusion that it is every woman's natural gift to keep house; but housekeeping and home-making are two different things, though each is dependent on the other.
This thoughtlessness, which results in much needless domestic misery, is the less excusable because we hear and read so much about the inestimable value of home influences, the powerful and permanent nature of early impressions, even if we are not ourselves living examples of the same. Let us each examine our own heart and mind, and just ask ourselves how much we owe to the influences surrounding early life, and how much more vivid are the lessons and impressions of childhood compared with those of a later date. The contemplation is bound to astonish us, and if it does not awaken in us a higher sense of responsibility regarding those who are under the direct sway of our influence, then there is something amiss with our ideal of life and its purpose.
Illustration 6
Chapter 6 decorative initial M
aking the home and keeping the house are two different things, though closely allied. Having considered the graces of mind and heart which so largely contribute to the successful art of home-making, it is not less necessary that we now devote our attention to the more practical, and certainly not less important, quality of housekeeping.
Ignorance of the prosaic details of housekeeping is the primary cause of much of the domestic worry and discomfort that exist, to say nothing of the more serious discords that may arise from such a defect in the fitness of the woman supposed to be the home-maker.
For such ignorance, or lack of fitness, to use a milder term, there does not appear to me to be any excuse; it is so needless, so often wilful.
Some blame careless, indifferent mothers, who do not seem to have profited by their own experience, but allow their daughters to grow up in idleness, and launch them on the sea of matrimony with a very faint idea of what is required of them in their new sphere.
It is very reprehensible conduct on the part of such mothers, and if in a short time the bright sky of their daughters' happiness begins to cloud a little, they need not wonder or feel aggrieved. A man is quite justified in expecting and exacting a moderate degree of comfort at least in his own house, and if it is not forthcoming may be forgiven a complaint. He is to be pitied, but his unhappy wife much more deserves our pity, since she finds herself amid a sea of troubles, at the mercy of her servants, if she possesses them; and if moderate circumstances necessitate the performance of the bulk of household duties, then her predicament is melancholy indeed.
To revert again to our Angelina and Edwin of the comic papers, we have the threadbare jokes at the expense of the new husband subjected to the ordeal of Angelina's awful cooking. At first he is forbearing and encouraging; but in the end, when no improvement is visible, the honeymoon begins to wane much more rapidly than either anticipated. Edwin becomes sulky, discontented, and complaining; Angelina tearful or indignant, as her temperament dictates, but equally and miserably helpless.
The chances are that time will not improve but rather aggravate her troubles, especially if the cares of motherhood be added to those of wifehood, which she finds quite enough for her capacities.
True, some women have a clever knack of adapting themselves readily to every circumstance, and pick up knowledge with amazing rapidity. If they are by nature housewifely women, they will triumph over the faults of their early training, and after sundry mistakes and a good deal of unnecessary expenditure may develop into fairly competent housewives.
But it is a dangerous and trying experiment, which ought not to be made, because there is absolutely no need for it. It is the duty of every mother who has daughters entrusted to her care to begin early to train them in domestic work. That there are servants in the house need be no obstacle in the way. There are silly domestics who resent what they call the "meddling" of young ladies in the kitchen; but no wise woman will allow that to trouble her, but will take care to show her young daughters, as time and opportunity offer, every secret contained in the domesticrépertoire.
One of the primary lessons to be learned in this housekeeping art is that of method; viz.—a place for everything, and a time. It is the key to all domestic comfort. Most of us are familiar with at least one household where the genius of method is conspicuous by its absence; where regularity and punctuality are unobserved, if not unknown. The household governed by a woman without method is to be pitied. Her husband is a stranger to the comfort of a well-ordered home; and her children, if she has any, hang as they grow, as the Scotch say; while her servants, having nobody to guide them, become careless and indifferent, and so suffer injustice at her hands.
It is such women who are loudest in complaints against servants, and who are in a state of perpetual warfare against the class. Of course this method must be kept within bounds, and not carried to excess, thereby becoming an evil instead of an unmixed good.
We are familiar with that other type of women, who make their housekeeping an idol, at whose shrine they perpetually worship, regardless of the comfort of those under their roof-tree. With them it is a perpetual cleaning day, and woe betide the luckless offender who has the misfortune to mar, if ever so slightly, the immaculate cleanliness of that abode! He is likely to have his fault brought home to him in no measured terms.
The woman possessed of the cleaning mania, who goes to bed to dream of carpet-beating and furniture polish, and who rises to carry her dreams into execution, is quite as objectionable in her way as the woman who never cleans, and for whom the word dirt has no horrors. Although it is doubtless pleasant to feel assured that no microbe-producing speck can possibly lurk in any corner of the house, and to be certain that food and everything pertaining to it is perfect so far as cleanliness is concerned, there is a sense of insecurity and unrest in the abode of the over-particular woman which often develops into positive misery and discomfort. It is the sort of discomfort specially distasteful to the male portion of mankind. Although they may be compelled to admit, when brought to bay, that "cleaning" is a necessary evil, it requires a superhuman amount of persuasion to make them see any good in it. The way women revel, or appear to revel, in the chaos of a house turned topsy-turvy is to them the darkest of all mysteries. It is long since they were compelled to treat it as a conundrum, and give it up.
I think, however, that, with few exceptions, women dislike the periodical household earthquake quite as much as men, and dread its approach. The housekeeper who considers the comfort of those about her will do her utmost to rob it of its horrors. This can be done by a judicious planning, and by resort to the method of which we spoke in the last chapter.
Let "One room at a time" be her motto, and then the inmates of the house will not be made to feel that they are quite in the way, and have no abiding-place on the face of the earth.
This may involve a little more work, and a great deal of patience; but she will have her reward in the grateful appreciation of those for whom she makes home such a happy and restful place.
Illustration 7
Chapter 7 decorative initial I
n these days many new phrases have been coined to give expression and significance to old truths; thus we hear of the "sin of cheapness," the fault attributed to those shortsighted bargain-hunters who waste time and energy and money hunting the length and breadth of the land for the cheapest market. The true and competent housekeeper knows that there is no economy in this method of marketing, but the reverse.
Of course, where the family is large and the resources limited, it is absolutely incumbent on the purveyor to seek the most moderate market; and those of us who dwell in cities know that prices vary with localities, and that West-enders must pay a West-end price. But it is reprehensible always to hunt for cheap things simply because they are cheap, because we ought not to forget that this very cheapness has caused suffering, or at least deprivation, somewhere, since it would appear that some things are absolutely offered at prices under the cost of production.
In the matter of food, so important a factor in the health and well-being of the family, it can seldom be a saving to buy in the cheap market, because cheapness there is too often a synonymous term with unwholesomeness; and a small quantity of the very best will undoubtedly afford more sustenance than an unlimited supply of inferior quality. In small and working-class homes the tea and tinned-food grievance is an old one, but one which does not appear to be in the way of mending.
If the wives and mothers of the working-class could only have it demonstrated to them, beyond all question, that a small piece of excellent fresh beef, made into a wholesome soup flavoured with vegetables, would give three times the nourishment of this tinned stuff, which, good enough as an occasional stand-by, has become the curse and the tyrant of the lazy and thriftless housewife, what a step in the right direction that would be! The mere salting and preserving process destroys the most valuable nutritive elements of the meat; and though it may be tasty and palatable, it is practically useless as a strength-producer or strength-imparter.
Milk, too, we fear has not its proper place in very many homes where children abound; though no mother of even ordinary intelligence can shut her eyes to the fact that it is Nature's own food for her children in their early years, when it is so important to build up the elements of a strong constitution. I would here put in a plea for oatmeal, in former days the backbone of my country's food, and which has of late years fallen sadly into disuse, especially in quarters where its very cheapness and absolute wholesomeness recommend it asthefoodpar excellencefor old and young. We have replaced it with tea and toast, to the great detriment of limb and muscle and digestive power. It is in the palace now we find oatmeal accorded its rightful place, not in the cottage; and the change is to be deplored.
Regularity in meals is another thing the wise housekeeper will insist upon in her abode. Regularity and punctuality, how delightful they are, and how they ease the roll of the domestic wheels! A punctual and tidy woman makes a punctual and tidy home. We know the type who dawdles away the forenoon in idle talk or listless indolence, and rushes to prepare a hasty and only half-cooked meal when perhaps her husband or children are on their way home from school or workshop; and this is a very fruitful cause of domestic dispeace, and at the root even of much of the intemperance which has ruined so many homes. If a man has no comfort at his own fireside, then he is compelled in self-defence to seek it elsewhere.
To recur to the question of buying in cheap markets, the principle that what is good and costs something to begin with will inevitably prove the cheapest in the end is even more clearly demonstrated in the matter of clothing than of food. The best will always wear and look the best, even when it has grown threadbare. Then when we hear so constantly of the appalling misery endured by men and women who make the garments sold in the cheap shops, we are bound to feel that these things are offered at a price which is the cost of flesh and blood. This is a very pressing question, and one which many Christian people do not lay to heart. There appears to be in every human breast the instinct of the bargain-hunter, and there is a placid satisfaction in having got something at an exceptionally low price which charms the finer sensibilities.
To gratify this peculiar and morbid craving, witness the system of buying and selling which prevails in Italy; the shopkeepers there, with few exceptions, invariably asking double the money they are willing to accept. And to this craving in our own country is due the system of all cheap sales in the shops, and mock auctions in the sale-rooms, in which many a shortsighted person of both sexes fritter away both time and money. It is a rotten system, and shows that there is great need for reform in this matter of buying and selling, which occupies so much of our time, means, and thought.
All good housekeepers know that those who buy in the ready-money market fare best; and besides, the paying out of ready-money is undoubtedly a check on expenditure, and is to be specially recommended to people of small means. It is easy and tempting to give an order, and though it can no doubt be paid for sooner or later, somehow the sum always seems to assume larger proportions as time goes on. We very seldom get in a bill for a less amount than we expect. My own view of the case is, that I grudge to pay for food after it is eaten, or clothes after they are worn; and in my own housekeeping I have found ready-money, or, at the outside, weekly accounts, the best arrangement, to which I adhere without any exceptions. Short accounts, also, give one another advantage, the choice of all markets. Thus the money is laid out to the best possible advantage, and the highest value obtained.
All thrifty and far-seeing housekeepers know that it is cheaper to buy certain household stores, as sugar, butter, flour, soap, etc., in quantities, provided there is a suitable storeroom where the things will be kept in good condition. There are indeed innumerable methods whereby the good housewife can save her coppers and her shillings, and a wise woman is she who takes advantage of them to the utmost.
This art of housekeeping is not learned in a day; those of us who have been engaged in it for years are constantly finding out how little we know, and how far we are, after all, from perfection.
It requires a clever woman to keep house; and as I said before there is ample scope, even within the four walls of a house (a sphere which some affect to despise), for the exercise of originality, organising power, administrative ability. And to the majority of women I would fain believe it is the most interesting and satisfactory of all feminine occupations.
Illustration 8
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n these very words lurks a danger likely to beset our young couple, on the very threshold of their career.
All eyes are upon them, of course; their house and all it contains, their way of life, the position they take up and maintain, are, for the time being, topics of intense concern to all who know them, and to many who do not. There is no doubt that we need to go back in some degree to the simpler way of life in vogue in the days of our grandmothers; that pretentiousness and extravagance have reached a point which is almost unendurable. We are constantly being informed by statistics which cannot be questioned that the marriage rate is decreasing; and we know that in our own circles the number of marriageable girls and marriageable youths who for some inexplicable reasondon'tmarry is very great.
Whatisthe reason? Is the age of romance over? is it impossible any longer to conjure with the words love and marriage in the garden of youth? or is it that our young people are less brave and enduring, that they shrink from the added responsibility, care, and self-denial involved in the double life? My own view is that this pretentiousness and desire for display is at the bottom of it; that young people want to begin where their fathers and mothers left off, and that courage is lacking to take a step down and begin together on the lowest rung of the ladder.
I have heard many young men say that they are afraid to ask girls to leave the luxury and comfort of their father's house, and to enter a plainer home, where they will have less luxury and more care; and though I grant that there are many girls who would shrink from the ordeal, and who prefer the indolent ease of single blessedness to the cares of matrimony on limited means, yet have I been tempted sometimes, looking at these young men, to wonder in my soul whether it was nottheywho shrank from the plain home and the increased responsibility marriage involves. The salary sufficient for the comfort and mild luxury of one is scarcely elastic enough for two.
It would mean giving up a good many things; it would mean fewer cigars, fewer new suits, fewer first nights at the theatre,—in fact, a general modification of luxuries which he has begun to regard as indispensable; and he asks himself, Is the game worth the candle? His answer is, No. And so he drifts out of young manhood into bachelor middle age, passing unscathed through many flirtations, becoming encrusted with selfish ideas and selfish aims, and gradually less fit for domestic life. And all the time, while he imagines he has a fine time of it, he has missed the chief joy, the highest meaning of life.
The conditions of modern life are certainly harder than they were. Competition in every profession and calling is so enormous that remuneration has necessarily fallen; and it is a problem to many how single life is to be respectably maintained, let alone double. Then the invasions of women into almost every domain of man's work is somewhat serious in its consequences to men. A woman can be got to do a certain thing as quickly, correctly, and efficiently as a man; therefore the man goes to the wall. While we are glad to see the position of woman improve, and the value of her labour in the markets of the world increase, we are perplexed as to the effect of this better condition of things on the position of men. The situation is full of perplexities, strained to the utmost.
There is no doubt whatever that this improvement in the position of woman, the increased opportunities afforded her of making a respectable livelihood, has had, and is having, its serious effect in the marriage market. A single woman in a good situation, the duties of which she has strength of body and strength of mind to perform, is a very independent being, and in contrast with many of her married sisters a person to be envied. She has her hours, for one thing; there is no prospect of an eight hours' day for the married woman with a family to superintend. Then she, having earned her own money, can spend it as she likes—and has to give account of it only to herself; and she is free from the physical trials and disabilities consequent upon marriage and maternity. If you tell her that the sweet fulness of married life, its multiplied joys, amply compensate for the troubles, she will shake her head and want proof.
Altogether, the outlook matrimonial is not very bright. Now, while we deplore, as a serious evil, hasty, improvident, ill-considered marriages, and hold that their consequences are very sad, we would also, scarcely less seriously, deplore that over-cautiousness which is reducing the marriage rate in quarters where it ought not to be reduced,—our lower middle-class, which is the backbone of society. There is no fear of a serious reduction in other quarters: where there is no responsibility felt, there is none to shirk; and so, among the very poor, children are multiplied, and obligations increased, without any thought for the morrow, or concern for future provision. There is a very supreme kind of selfishness in this over-cautiousness which is not delightful to contemplate, the fear lest self should be inconvenienced or deprived in the very slightest degree; and all this does not tend to the highest development of human nature, but rather the reverse, since the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice is one of the loveliest attributes of human character.
That it is possible for two people to live together almost as cheaply as one, and, if the wife be careful, thrifty, and managing, with a great deal more comfort, is hardly disputed; and surely love is yet strong enough to take its chance of falling on evil days, and when they come of making the best of them. Our girls must exhibit less frivolity, less devotion to dress and idle amusements, if they wish for homes of their own; because at present it is partly true that men are afraid to take the risk and responsibility of them as partners in life.
And this brings us back to the heading of our chapter, the subject of keeping up appearances. This fearful rivalry to make the greatest show on inadequate means, to outshine our neighbours in house and dress and everything else, is really a tremendous evil, the scourge of many middle-class families. And what, after all, is its aim or outcome; what its rewards?
To begin with, it is a pandering, pure and simple, to the baser part of human nature—the desire to out-rival your neighbour, to be able to soar over him at any price; and more, it is both hypocritical and immoral. Hypocritical, because it is pure pretence to a station which has no means to support it; and immoral, because you cannot afford to pay for it, and thereby suffering is entailed somewhere and somehow. How many of us number among our acquaintances (if not absolutely guilty ourselves), persons who, possessed of a small and limited income, live in a large house, the rent of which is a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over them for ever?
You know them by their hunted, eager, restless look, which tells of inward dispeace, of worry too great almost to be borne. Their servants do not stay long, perhaps because the larder of the big house is kept very bare, and comfort is sacrificed to outside show. They never have anything to give away, and their excuse is that they do not believe in indiscriminate charity. And they look back with a painful longing, never expressed, however, to the days when they lived at peace in a little house, and had enough and to spare for man and beast, and a penny for the beggar at the gate. The big house is but one thing; the struggle to keep up appearances is observed in many other ways—in expensive and not always efficient education of the children, in party-giving, extravagant dress, frequent going out of town, and many others too numerous to mention. And what, after all, is the advantage of it? Is there any advantage gained? You may succeed in exciting in the breast of your neighbour a bitter envy which will probably find expression in some such remark as this—"I only hope it is all paid for."
And you never will have any peace of mind, without which the outward trappings are but a mockery.
Oh, let us be simpler! Let us at least not pretend to be what we are not. In a word, let us not try to humbug ourselves and the world at large.
Illustration 9
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t is a great theme, which I approach with fear and trembling; yet—is the home complete without the child? Can even an unpretentious book of this sort be written without some attempted treatment of the same?
The first year of married life is often very full, as well as specially trying, a record of new and very crucial experiences such as are bound to prove the grit of our young housekeeper. She has many things to learn in her new sphere, both in the department of ethics as well as of housekeeping. She has a husband to study, for even though they have seen a great deal of each other before marriage, there yet remains much to learn of many little peculiarities before undreamed of, which in the full glare and test of daily life sometimes stand out with a certain unpleasant prominence, which both find trying. There are new tastes to discover and consider, new likes and dislikes to be studied—in a word, the situation is a severe ordeal, especially if our young wife be very young and inexperienced. Of course she has an adoring and approving love to aid her, and all her efforts to please will be appreciated at their full value, and perhaps a little over, and that is much.
If in addition to all the trying amenities of her new position there be added early in her married life the prospect of motherhood, with its attendant cares, anxieties, and fears, then our young housekeeper may be granted to have hand and heart full. That it is a prospect full of joy and satisfaction, the realisation of a sweet and secret hope, nobody will deny. There are a few women, we are told, who do not desire motherhood, preferring the greater freedom and ease of childless wifehood; but it is not of such we seek to write, because the vast majority agree with me that motherhood is the crown of marriage, as well as the sweetest of all bonds between husband and wife.
It is the great, almost awful, responsibility of this bond which makes thinking people deplore the prevalence of early and improvident marriage between persons who seem to lack entirely this sense of responsibility, and who undertake the most solemn duties in the same flippant mood as they go out on a day's enjoyment. The idea that they have in their power the making and marring of a human soul, to say nothing of the influences which in fulness of time must go forth from that same soul, does not trouble them, or indeed exist for them at all. They have no ideas—they never think. If the child comes, good and well—it has to be provided for; welcome or unwelcome it arrives; and is tolerated or rejoiced over as the case may be.
We need a great deal of educating on this particular point, and the fact that a child may have rights before it is born is one which presses home to the heart of every man and woman who may give the matter any serious attention whatsoever.
If we marry, then as surely do we undertake the possible obligations of parentage; and if we do not see that we are fit physically, mentally, and morally for this undoubtedly greatest of all human obligations, then are we blameworthy, and answerable to God and man for our shortcomings.
Heroism is a word to stir the highest enthusiasm in every heart, and we Britons are not supposed to lack in that glorious quality. While not despising nor making light of that heroism which shows an unflinching front on the battlefield, or in the face of any danger, and while recognising also and glorying in that other heroism of which the world hears less, but which is nevertheless very rich and far-reaching in results—I mean that brave heart which does not sink under adverse circumstances, which makes the best of everything, which can do, dare, and suffer for others, without notice or applause—there is yet another phase of heroism of which the world knows not at all, but which in my estimation is as great, if not greater, than any of these. It is a delicate theme, and yet in such a book as this are we not justified in touching upon it, reverently and tenderly as it deserves? There are some—more, I believe, than we dream of—who, being afflicted physically or mentally, and who, fearing some hereditary moral taint for which they have to suffer, though entirely blameless, deliberately abstain from marriage for the highest of all reasons—that they fear to perpetuate in their own children the weaknesses which are already so stupendous a curse to mankind. Oh that such examples could be multiplied, and that we were once thoroughly awakened to the solemn significance of the fact that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children!
But when we look around we see the innocent made to suffer daily for the guilty; we see children whose lives even in infancy are but a burden to them, and whose later life can only be a cross, and we pray for a great baptism of light on this painful subject, for a great awakening to that personal, individual responsibility which is the only solution of a difficulty which concerns the future and the highest interest of the race.
To return to the question of rights as affecting the unborn babe: the mother has then so much in her power that she can not only determine to a great extent what kind of infancy the child shall have, but also whether her own duties therein shall be heavy or light. By attending strictly to her own health, adhering to natural laws, living simply and wholesomely, she can almost ensure the bodily health of the child; and by keeping her mind calm and even, avoiding worry, and cultivating cheerfulness and contentment, she thus moulds the disposition of the child to a far greater extent than she dreams of. The woman who lives in a condition of perpetual nervous excitement and worry before the birth of her child, who is fretful, complaining, impatient of the discomfort of her condition, need not be much surprised if her baby be fretful and difficult to rear. Of course this is all very easy to write down, and most difficult—in many cases of physical and nervous prostration impossible—to bear in mind; nevertheless, it is worth the trial, worth the self-denial involved, even looking at it from the most selfish standpoint, one's own ultimate comfort and ease. The gain to the child is too great to be estimated.
And surely taking into consideration the enormous number of miserable, weakly babies who have never had a chance, the day of whose birth, like Job's, is sadder than the day of their death, it is not too much to ask from thoughtful Christian women, who at heart feel their responsibility and their high privilege, that nothing shall be lacking on their part to make the child given to them by God a moral, mental, and physical success. We are careful in all other departments of life to try and obtain the best—why not here? Is human life less precious, human souls of less account, than merchandise?
I do not see why mothers should not seek to impress upon their daughters, and fathers upon their sons, as they approach maturity, the solemnity and sacredness of such themes, which involve all that is most important in human life. I consider that the ignorance with which so many young girls are allowed to enter matrimony is nothing short of criminal; and I do not myself see that a plain, straight, loving talk from her mother beforehand, which will prepare her for her new obligations and make them less a surprise and a trial when they come, can possibly take the edge off that exquisite and delicate purity which we would wish to be our daughters' outstanding characteristic, and which every right-thinking man desires in his wife. There are many who do not share this opinion, and hold that the wall of reserve should never be broken. But the issues are great, and I cannot but think that in this case ignorance is more likely to be fruitful of anxiety and foreboding, to say nothing of mistakes, than is a little knowledge wisely imparted by those whom experience has taught.
Illustration 10
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he son is peculiarly the mother's child, and the bond between them, seen at its best, is one of the loveliest, and, to the woman who has suffered for her firstborn, one of the most soul-satisfying on earth. I suppose most women given choice would wish their firstborn to be a son; and her pride in the boy as he grows in grace and strength and manliness is a very exquisite thing in the mother.
As a rule, a boy is more difficult to rear. He has more strength of limb and will, and shows earlier, perhaps, the desire to be master of the whole situation, as very often he is. It is amazing at how early an age a child can begin to discern between the firm will and the weak will of those who guide him, and to profit thereby; and she is a wise woman who begins as she means to end, and who teaches her child that her decision is absolute from the earliest stage. The moment he begins to understand that though you say no a yell will probably convert it into a yes, your occupation is gone, so to speak—you have lost your hold, and Baby is master of the situation and of you.
There is no doubt, I think, that the woman who has a nurse to relieve her of the child has a better chance than the one who has to fight the battle single-handed—for this reason, that extreme weariness of body, which nothing brings about more quickly than the perpetual care of a baby, is apt to weaken the will; the desire for peace at any price becomes too great to be resisted, and so the citadel is lost. It is impossible also for the ordinary woman, who has the care of a baby all day long, in addition to a multitude of other duties, not to become nervous, irritable, and excitable, and the probability is that the child becomes a reflex of herself. I know of no more self-denying and harassing life than that of the mother of many children, whose limited means prohibit much assistance in her labours. It would require the strength of a Hercules and the patience of a Job. Yet how many go on from day to day with an uncomplaining and heroic cheerfulness which does not strike the onlooker, simply because it is so common, like the toothache, that it attracts but little sympathy or attention.
In one day such a mother may win moral victories beside which the brilliant engagements of the battlefield would pale. It is not one that she has to consider and contend with, but many; the diversity of disposition in one family is truly amazing, and affords a most interesting psychological study. If she be a thoughtful and conscientious woman she knows that she is sowing the seeds of future good and ill, that early impressions are never erased, and that her own influence is the one which will leave the strongest, the most indelible mark on the future of the little ones she has under her wing. To this there is no exception whatever; it is a fact nobody attempts to dispute. Who shall say, then—who shall dare to say—that a woman's work is slight, her sphere narrow, her influence feeble? Have we not yet with us the proverb, "She who rocks the cradle rules the world"? as true to-day as it was a hundred years ago, as it will be in a hundred years to come.
But though the anxieties and responsibilities of the nursery are great, they increase, especially in the case of some, as the years go by; though as the boy grows older his mother may be somewhat relieved by the wise guidance of the father. There comes a time when the lad wants to emancipate himself from his mother's jurisdiction, and begins to look to his father, seeing in him the image of what he may yet become. He will not love his mother any less, but he will be impatient a little, perhaps, of her careful supervision; he wants to be a man, to imitate his father, to show that he is a being of another order. It is always amusing to look on at this subtle and inevitable change, but sometimes touching as well. It is the strong soul seeking his heritage, the first stirring of manhood in the boy, who will never be other than a bairn to his mother. Happy then the mother, blessed the boy, who has a good, wise, and tender father to take him by the hand, and show him at this critical stage the beauty of a noble, pure, and honest manhood, and how great is its power to bless the world.
There are some men who never grow old, who, while doing a man's part better than most in the world, keep the child-heart pure within them. Happy are the children who call them father! The ideal father (since we are writing of what we all know to be the highest in home relationship, we may call him so) will be a boy in the midst of his boys all his days; he will share the pastimes, the interests, the absorbing occupations of his boys, in the schoolroom and the recreation-ground, just as he did not disdain to join sometimes in the frolic of the nursery. He will understand cricket and football, and hounds and hares, and know all the little points of schoolboy honour, so that he may at once grasp the situation when his lad brings his grievance or his tale of victory to him. And through it all, without preaching, which the soul of the average boy abhors, he will seek to inculcate the highest moral lessons, thus accentuating and deepening the teaching of the nursery still fresh in the boy's mind.
This is the ideal which we would wish to see in every home, but the real is rather different, and sometimes perplexing to deal with. We have seen homes where the boys do not "get on" with their father, who seem to rub each other the wrong way, and to have no sort of kinship with each other—in a word, who are not chums, which is a boy's definition of the jolliest possible relationship, and which is very beautiful existing between father and son. But there are fathers who have no patience with the boy who, feeling in him the promptings of a larger life, begins to give himself little airs, and to adopt a manly and masterful manner; no sympathy with his desire for freedom; and who, instead of wisely guiding all these accompaniments of young manhood into fresh and legitimate channels, seeks to curb them, to restrain every impulse, and to enforce an authority the boy does not understand, and inwardly, if not outwardly, kicks against.
I know many mothers who have difficulty in pouring oil on such troubled waters, and who see that the father and the boy do not understand each other, and cannot get on—and she is powerless to help. Out of this strained relationship many evils may arise. The young heart, bounding with a thousand buoyant impulses, eager to see life and taste its every cup, deprived of sympathy and outlet, and thrown back upon itself, becomes reserved, self-contained, and morbid. Then, again, there is a temptation to concealment, and even to prevarication, over mere trifles. When censure is feared—and the young heart is fearfully sensitive—little fibs are told to escape it, and so a great moral wrong is inflicted, which can undoubtedly be laid at the unsympathetic parent's door.
The mother, by reason of her gentler nature (to which, of course, there are the usual exceptions), is not so feared, and is made the go-between.
"Mother, willyouask father for so-and-so?" is an everyday question in many homes; and why should it be? Why should sympathy and confidence be less full and sweet between father and son than between mother and son? Nay, rather, it might be fuller, since the father, being of the same sex, can the better understand the boy nature, making allowance for its failings, which were also his, if, indeed, they are not in an aggravated form still characteristic of him. Some men forget that they have ever been young; looking at them and witnessing their conduct in certain circumstances, one finds it difficult to believe that they everwereyoung. They have been fossils from their birth. That is the grand mistake—to fix such a great gulf betwixt youth and maturity that nothing can bridge it. It is more love, more sympathy we want; it is the dearth of it that is the curse of the world. Yet how dare we, being responsible for the advent of the child into the world, deny him his heritage, starve his heart of its right to our affection and regard? The Lord sent him? Well, He did undoubtedly, and His commands with the gift. There is no hesitation or ambiguity about the Lord's mandate regarding little children.
In homes where this lovely sympathy exists, anxiety regarding the moral welfare of the boy is reduced to a minimum. Where the youth can come to his mother, and still better to his father, in every dilemma, sure of advice and aid, he will not go very far wrong. The world is full of pitfalls, and it is sure nothing short of the grace of God can keep young manhood in the right way; but very certain am I that parents have much, ay, more than they dream of in their power.
Let them at least see to it that they do not fall short. Let the boy feel that the home is his, that his friends are welcome to it, and that he need not go out always to seek liberty and enjoyment. In one word, let him have room to breathe and to live, and the chances are that he will repay you by becoming all you could desire even in your fondest dreams.