She does not escape being obliged to do house-work
at intervals, but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused way,
that makes it twice as hard and disagreeable as it need be.
Now, if every young woman learned to do house-work, and cultivated her
practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first place, be
much more likely to keep her servants, and, in the second place, if
she lost them temporarily, would avoid all that wear and tear of the
nervous system which comes from constant ill-success in those
departments on which family health and temper mainly depend. This is
one of the peculiarities of our American life, which require a peculiar
training. Why not face it sensibly?
Our land is now full of motorpathic institutions to which women are
sent at a great expense to have hired operators stretch and exercise
their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their feet twigged,
their arms flexed, and all the different muscles of the body worked
for them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the powers of
life do not go on. Would it not be quite as cheerful, and a less
expensive process, if young girls from early life developed the muscles
in sweeping, dusting, starching, ironing, and all the multiplied
domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all
these, and diversified the intervals with spinning on the great and
little wheel, did not need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish
Movement Cure, which really are a necessity now.
Pages:
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467