A TALK WITH GIRLS AND THEIR MOTHERS by Washington Gladden

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, June 10, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 24

A TALK WITH GIRLS AND THEIR MOTHERS.

By Washington Gladden

(Concluded.)

I will mention only one more sad mistake which some, I hope not many, of our girls are making, and it shall be described for you in the language of one who has had the amplest opportunity for knowing whereof she speaks.

“The most common defect in the training of girls is, in my judgment, the ignoring of the command to honor and obey parents. From the age of thirteen, girls and parents alike seem to regard this commandment as a dead letter. The girl of thirteen regards herself as her own mistress; she is already a woman in her own estimation, and has a right to do as she likes. If she prefers to go to parties, sociables, etc., three or four evenings in the week, rather than to spend her evenings in study, she does so. Both she and her parents, however, expect and demand that she is to be ranked at graduation as high as the laborious, self-denying, faithful workers in her class.

“Again, in one congregation in this city I know of four cases well worthy of thoughtful consideration. The four families are all respectable, such people as form the majority of your own congregation. In each of three of these families is only one child. Each one of these three girls left school when she chose to do so, went into society when she pleased, spent as much time on the street as she liked, and all three, still under twenty, have now become a by-word and reproach among all who know them. In the fourth family there were three girls, two of whom cast off all restraint, while father and mother were regularly taking part in prayer-meetings. This father and mother excused themselves by saying they did not know what their girls were doing, yet the girls lived at home all the time and their neighbors knew all about their conduct.”

This habit of running loose, of constantly seeking the street for amusement, and even of making chance acquaintances there, is practiced by some of the girls of our good families, and it is not at all pleasant to see them on the public thoroughfares, and to witness their hoydenish ways. I know that they mean no harm by it, but it often results in harm; the delicate bloom of maiden modesty is soiled by too much familiarity with the public streets of a city, and a kind of boldness is acquired which is not becoming to a woman.

Such are some of the errors which are frequently committed in the training of our girls, and some of the dangers to which they are exposed; I am sure that you will see that none of them are imaginary, but that all of them are serious. I know that many of our girls, and mothers, too, are fully aware of them, and on their guard against them. If I have succeeded in drawing the more careful attention of any of you to any of them, I shall not have written in vain.

I have left myself small space to speak of the principles and habits requisite to the development of a noble womanhood. These, however, have been suggested in what I have said already. In avoiding the mistakes to which I have referred, you will be guided to the right principles of conduct. Let us speak very briefly of some of the elements which go to make up a beautiful womanly character:—

The first is industry. The willingness and ability to work, lie, as I have said already, at the basis of all good character. The moral discipline, the patience, the steadiness of purpose, the power to overcome, that are gained in work, and only in work, are just as necessary to women as to men; and the girl who is given no chance of learning these traits is sadly defrauded. Besides, there are certain strong reasons why girls ought to be well trained in that particular kind of work which they are most likely to be called to perform. “All women, however situated,” writes one of my correspondents, “should have a practical knowledge of manual labor; should know how to cook, how to purchase household stores, how to avoid waste, how to buy, cut, and sew garments, how to nurse the sick. All these things should be a part of a thorough education, and few women can pass through life, no matter what their means or station, who will not find the time when such knowledge will help others, even if they personally may get on very well without it.” So say a great many of them, and it is all true.

“I would train my daughter,” writes one, “to regard all work, in the broadest meaning, as honorable. Whatever is necessary to be done is honorable work, for highest and lowest alike.”

After industry comes thoroughness. It is not enough to be busy; we ought to do well whatever our hands find to do, else we may be forced to say what Hugo Grotius said when he came to the end: “Alas! I have spent my life in laboriously doing nothing.” To be thorough in study, to be thorough in all work, ought to be the aim of every girl, not less than of every boy. Our methods of female education have encouraged superficiality rather than thoroughness; we have given our girls smatterings of many things, and mastery of few things. We teach them a little Latin, and a little French, and a little Italian, and a little German, and a little Spanish, and a little English—precious little, too, generally; we give them a few lessons on the piano (not often too few, however, of these), and a few lessons on the organ, and a few on the harp, and a few on the guitar, and a few, perhaps, on the violin or the banjo; we let them take oil-painting for a quarter, and water-colors for a quarter, and crayons for a quarter, and china decoration for a quarter, and so on, and so on; and the poor things, when they are done with it all, know a little of everything, and not much of anything. Don’t do it, girls; life is short and art is long; you cannot be mistresses of all the arts. It is better to confine yourselves to a single branch and make yourselves proficient in that. It is much better to say, “This one thing I do,” than to say, “These forty things I dabble in.”

After thoroughness, independence. A habit of relying on your own judgment, a habit of thinking for yourself, and caring for yourself, not selfishly, but in a true womanly fashion,—a habit of taking responsibility and bearing it bravely,—is one of the habits that women as well as men need to cultivate. Your parents ought to give you some chance to form this habit; it is a great mistake to shield a girl from all

care, and then, by-and-by, when the helpers on whom she has leaned fall by her side, to leave her with judgment untrained and powers undisciplined, to carry the burdens of life.

Respect for character, for manhood and womanhood, more than for money, or rank, or even genius, is another of the first lessons that every girl ought to learn. Virtue, truth, fidelity—these are the shining things that every true woman honors, and she who values above these a coat-of-arms or a bank account, degrades herself. There is a silly snobbery among some of our girls that is the reverse of lovely. I see them now and then spurning association with worthy young men and women who are poor, and hear them talking in a large way about blue blood, when all the blue blood that is in their veins flowed into them from the veins of tanners or woodchoppers. Shame upon the girl who cannot recognize and honor in others the same qualities that lifted her father or her grandfather to wealth and station!

I might speak of many other elements of character indispensable to the truest womanhood, such as truthfulness, and conscientiousness, and purity, and modesty, and fidelity, but I will only name one more which sums up much of what my friends have written, and that is,—

Consecration. It is a great word. It means many things. It means, to begin with, that God has some purpose concerning you, some good work for each of you to do. It means that he has given you the power to serve in some way, and that he wishes you to devote that power which he has given you to that service for which he created you. What kind of work he has for you to do I cannot tell; but I know that he has called every one of you with a high calling, to some ennobling work. Not to be butterflies, not to be drones, not to be sponges, has he called any of you; but to be helpers, and ministers, and friends of all good; to wait with ready hands and loving hearts for the service that you can do for him. Most of you will be called, by-and-by, to the dignity of wifehood and motherhood; there is no greater dignity than that, and no nobler work.

One of the ladies asked me to describe the successful woman. There is more than one type, I answer, but among them all is none more illustrious than that of the wife and mother; the woman who builds and rules a beautiful and happy home; who holds the honor of her husband and the reverence of her children; who leads those whom God has given her up to vigorous and virtuous manhood and womanhood, imparting to them by daily communion with them her own wisdom and nobleness, and sending them forth to do good and brave service in the world.

But marriage is not for all of you, and should not be for any of you the chief end. “I try to teach my daughter,” writes one, “that while happy wifehood is the glory and blessing of every true-hearted woman’s life, and maternity the crown of this, more to be desired than queendom, she should hold herself too pure and dear a thing to marry for home, or position, or because it is expected of her.” Many women are living happily and nobly out of wedlock, and no one is fit for it who is not fit to live without it.

To what kind of service our Lord has called you, then, I cannot tell; but I know that for you as for him, the joy of life must be, not in being ministered unto, but in ministering. God help you to understand it, girls, before it is too late. There is so much good in living, if one knows how to live; there is so much delight in serving when one has learned to serve, that I do not like to see any of you going on aimlessly and selfishly, and laying up in store for yourselves a future of disquietude and gloom. There is a better and brighter way than this, a way that has never been pointed out more clearly than in the simple words of our good friend, Mr. Hale: “To look up and not down; to look forward and not back; to look out and not in; and to lend a hand.” Set your feet in that path, and follow it patiently, and you will find it the path “that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”—Washington Gladden, in St. Nicholas.