Chapter III: Part 3

Just here it is well to make a slight digression on this subject. I have already spoken of the injurious effects of washing-soda in laundry-work. It cuts and perforates the linen on which it is used, but it is so potent in taking out dirt that I have known laundresses to bring it with them in their pockets when its use was forbidden by a housekeeper. Washing-soda is possibly the most destructive of these agencies, but there are others on the market, sold as patented preparations, which are hardly less harmful. Of a number of them it is true that they are helpful if used in moderation. The trouble is that the unskilled worker is likely to imagine that where a little is good much would be better, and to apply the powder or fluid with a liberality that has disastrous results.

Even when borax or ammonia--probably the least deleterious of all detersives--is used, it should be in small quantities when the clothing is to be left with it for any length of time. Therefore there should be very little put in the tub in which the raiment is to be soaked.

Woolens, cotton and wool, or silk and wool, colored clothes, and stockings are not given this soaking, but left to one side until the next morning.

When the actual washing begins flannels should have the first attention. They should be given especial care, since upon this depends their coming from the wash smooth and soft instead of thickened and rough. Soap should not be rubbed upon them unless there are badly soiled spots, and then these should be soaped without applying soap to the rest of the garment. A little ammonia should be added to the water in which they are washed, and this should be lukewarm and made into suds by the addition of shaved soap before the flannels are put in. They should not be rubbed on the board but between the hands, with frequent dipping up and down in the water until they look clean.

The flannels are then squeezed between the hands until as much water as possible is gone from them, when they are thrown for rinsing into water of the same temperature as that from which they were taken. This is essential. Water which is either colder or hotter will thicken and shrink the flannels. After a thorough rinsing they are again wrung out and hung to dry at once, in the shade, if an outdoor drying-place is used. They look better if they are ironed while still slightly damp. When both colored and white flannels are to be washed the latter should come second, that specks of lint from them may not disfigure the colored articles.

The second water from the flannels will answer very well for the first washing of the other clothes. It is not necessary to practise this economy in a flat furnished with hot water from the cellar, but the fact is worth recalling when the supply of warm water is insufficient.

Too many pieces should not be put into the tub at once, as the clothes cannot be washed properly if crowded together, and plenty of water is demanded to get them clean. The water should be warm and the clothes which have been soaked overnight will require little rubbing on the board in order to make them clean. It may be mentioned that clothing which is worn long enough to become badly soiled will need an amount of hard rubbing which will wear it out much sooner than garments that have been thrown into the wash before they are very dirty.

The boiler, half full of cold water, should be at hand. Colored clothes are never boiled, and they may be washed separately if this seems more convenient. After the soiled spots on the white clothes have been well soaped the pieces should be dropped into the boiler. The addition of a tablespoonful of kerosene to the water is beneficial. The boiler should be put on the stove and the water brought to a boil, stirring the clothes up from the bottom with a clothes-stick from time to time. The boiling should not continue long, but the clothes be removed as soon as the water has fairly boiled. Too long on the fire yellows the clothing.

Clean hot water should be at hand and into this each article should be dropped as it comes from the boiler. Careful rinsing is one of the secrets of having clothes a good color after washing. Each piece should be turned inside out to rinse it sufficiently. The garments to be blued should be transferred from the rinsing water to cold water to which a few drops of bluing have been added. Judgment must be used in this addition or the clothing will be too blue. A favorite trick of careless laundresses is to save themselves the scrubbing which would make the garments clean, and cover their fault by making them very blue.

After the bluing the unstarched pieces may be wrung and hung out to dry. The other pieces must be starched as will be directed a little further on.

The rinsing water in which the clothes were dipped after coming from the boiler will serve for the first washing of the colored garments. As these need no bluing, such of them as do not require starching may be rinsed and hung out at once to dry. Those that must be stiffened may be dipped into the starch, wrung out, well shaken, and dried.

For boiled starch, a half-cupful of the dry starch is needed in proportion to a quart of boiling water. The starch is made to a paste with cold water, the boiling water poured upon it, and the mixture stirred over the fire until it is clear and smooth. Some laundresses insist upon boiling the starch an hour, but good results may be gained with the preparation made as just directed. This starch is of the right consistency for shirts, aprons, etc., but it must be thinned to use for either table-linen or for delicate underwear until it is little thicker than single cream. If shirt bosoms or cuffs or the cuffs of shirtwaists are to be stiffened, raw starch must be added to the boiled. Raw starch is prepared by moistening a handful of the raw starch to a paste with a little cold water, increasing the water until a quart of it has been used, and stirring it with a piece of fine white soap.

The pieces which have already been passed through the boiled starch may be dipped into the raw starch for additional stiffening, after the first starch has dried in them. They are well moistened in the raw starch, rolled up and left for half an hour or so, and ironed while damp. The quantity for which direction has just been made is rather large for a small family, but the proportions may be used in smaller measure.

Cheap soap and starch should never be employed; they are an extravagance in the end. The soap should be bought, in a small family, about a dozen cakes at a time and dried. One cake is enough for a small wash, unless left floating in the tub after its use is over.

All stains should be looked to before the clothes are washed at all. Fruit and wine stains, like those from coffee and tea, may be taken out by stretching the spotted part over a basin and pouring boiling water through the fabric. The process should be repeated several times or until the stain is gone. Soap will often “set” a spot which would come out if washed in clear water. Fruit stains, rust stains--such as iron-mold--and sometimes ink stains may be removed by wetting the spots with lemon-juice, sprinkling salt upon this, and laying the article in the sun. The operation must be done more than once before the spot will come out entirely. The same treatment will sometimes obliterate mildew stains, but if these prove obstinate, boiling in buttermilk the article marked will perhaps take them out. Turpentine will remove paint stains, and oil marks must be washed with cold water and a good white soap. Grass stains are sometimes taken out by rubbing with butter and then washing this out. All spots or stains are far harder to get rid of after they have once been put through the regular wash.

Fine pieces of linen like doilies, centerpieces, embroidered and lace-trimmed handkerchiefs, or very delicate lingerie underwear should never be washed with the ordinary clothing unless the housekeeper gives her special attention to them. They should under no circumstances be rubbed on the wash-board, but rubbed between the hands in a good suds made of warm water and a fine white soap, and rinsed very carefully. If they are to be stiffened at all the starch water through which they are passed should be no heavier than milk. While still warm such articles should be pressed on the wrong side; and if embroidered, a thick woolen cloth must be laid under the ironing-sheet. By this method the work on the article stands out well.

A little experience with ironing is worth more than instruction. When the clothes have been well sprinkled and folded, the work done evenly, and each piece rolled up tightly when dampened, a strong arm and steady, smooth strokes will give good results; but practice is needed to make the work entirely satisfactory. Experience will tell when the iron is the right heat. For starched clothes a greater heat is needed than for flannels; the iron must be tried on a piece of paper to make sure it is not too hot. Each piece pressed should be ironed until dry to make a smooth finish. Table and bed linen should be ironed lengthwise. Always the irons should be well wiped off before using, and when not in service they should stand on end on a shelf. Never should they be left on the range when not in use; this roughens the surface.

The electric iron is a great aid, but this must be used with care or it will be short-circuited and burned out. Always the power must be turned off when the iron is laid aside for even a few minutes.

No advice as to laundry-work would be complete that did not speak a word relative to mending. The woman who does her own work will be on the alert for breaks or thin places in any article and will lay pieces thus damaged to one side as they are pressed. As a matter of course it is well to make repairs before the washing is done, when this is possible, but many garments are far pleasanter to mend after laundering than before. Stockings do not gain enough harm by being washed before darning to offset the unpleasantness of having to mend them while they are still soiled.

When possible, fine articles which have to be darned or carefully mended with a patch or by piecing are best repaired before they are ironed. After they have been washed they can be put aside until the housekeeper has time to mend them properly, and they can then have an iron run over them and the mended spot smoothed.

The life of fine table-linen can be prolonged indefinitely by attention to the first break in the hemstitching, the first wear of a thread in the fabric, the first hole in lace. After the material once begins to go, even long and careful mending will scarcely save it, but watchfulness for the earliest symptoms of wear will postpone the evil day.

IX

WHEN COMPANY COMES

Elaborate entertaining should not be undertaken by a young couple of moderate means. Hospitality should be a matter of course, but never on a scale that makes it a burden to carry out at the time or to pay for afterward.

Perhaps the best and in many respects the most agreeable form of hospitality is that which calls in the occasional guest to an informal meal--a sort of improvised party. The husband asks a crony to dine on a certain night, the wife invites a friend to meet him. Little change is made in the family meal--perhaps a salad added as well as a sweet, or more unusual items ordered, or a special dessert prepared, but nothing which would bring the repast into the line of a dinner-party. There is no state and ceremony and everything is pleasant and jolly. Such little dinners are among the most charming forms of entertainment that can be achieved by young people of moderate means. When it seems well to widen the circle of invited guests, all to be done is to increase the provision made without departing from the simplicity which is one of the features of this kind of entertaining.

In the properly regulated home, where the observances of polite society are followed as much when the family is alone as when there is company, guests have no terrors. When the unexpected visitor arrives the table is found spread for two in the same style that it would be for ten. The napery is fresh and well laundered; the silver, glass, and china are shining--clean and arranged in correct order--the knife at the right of the plate with the soup or bouillon spoon, the fork at the left with the napkin; the bread-and-butter plate, with its slice of bread or roll and the butter-ball, near the fork, to correspond with the water-glass on the other side.

In such a home the maid is taught to follow the orderly sequence of courses, changing the plates and crumbing the table with as much pains for one as for half a dozen. Little by little she becomes accustomed to the routine, so that when a more formal entertainment is planned her work seems to her merely an amplification of that to which she has grown wonted.

At the same time a warning should be uttered to the housekeeper of small ménage against attempting to ape the hospitality of those whose incomes far exceed her own. Pretense is always absurd, and the woman who undertakes to imitate the style of the wealthy and fashionable hostess only renders herself ridiculous without in the least impressing those with whom she is striving to compete. Such entertaining strains her income and is in reality far inferior to the little parties she might give that would possess a merit all their own.

The hostess who aspires to give dinners should make them small, in the first place. Six is an excellent number--four besides the man and woman of the house--and it is rarely safe for the beginner to have more than eight all told, unless she is prepared to hire extra service. Fully as much attention should be bestowed upon the selection of the guests as upon the items of the bill of fare. Friends may be unexceptionable taken alone or in their own environment who do not mix with those from another circle, and in these conditions even the most delightful develop unexpected powers of boring and being bored. To get the right persons together at a dinner and to seat them in the proper combinations requires a good deal of social skill, and for this reason it is better for the tyro in entertaining to start with small parties and only work up to the larger affairs as she becomes more accustomed to exercising general hospitality.

Experiments in food should never be tried on company. Only those articles should be served which the maid has proved her ability to prepare perfectly and to serve correctly. When innovations are to be presented it should be in the privacy of the family circle. A dinner that is confined to a few courses should be remarkable rather for their excellence than for their unusual character or for their costliness. I have known housekeepers who won themselves a reputation for their dinners when the items of these were of the simplest character, but were beautifully cooked and served with a touch of unusualness which redeemed them from the commonplace.

Again let me warn the hostess against attempting too much on such occasions. In any establishment not supplied with a corps of trained servants a great deal of the work of even the quietest dinner falls upon the hostess. To her it comes to see that the table is set, the many small and fussy details looked after; generally she must give the final touches of seasoning or blending to soup, sauces, and salad-dressing. It is no wonder if sometimes she comes to the table too tired either to enjoy the food or to lead the talk of the board and play the part so important for a hostess who desires to have her guests enjoy their evening.

Such fatigue is not necessary if the rules I have laid down are followed. If, for example, the cook can make an unapproachable tomato or oyster bisque; if she can roast a leg of lamb so that it will melt in the mouth, prepare candied sweet-potatoes to tempt an epicure, and spinach with the knack of a French chef; if there is some special sweet dish for which she has made herself famous, whether this be a prune soufflé with whipped cream, or a frozen mousse or ice--then let the hostess confine herself to these items for her company dinners until her maid has acquired further accomplishments. What difference does it make if precisely the same dinner was served to a knot of friends last week? The guests are different this time, even if the dishes are unchanged, and these are good enough to stand repetition though they appear half a dozen times in succession!

In a neighborhood where dinner is usually served in the middle of the day and the period for social festivity is in the evening, supper may take the place of dinner and be no less attractive. When this is the case, I would advise the hostess to adopt some specialty and stick to it, with only a few variations.

For instance, I know one housekeeper who was transplanted from the South to another section of the country, and who there became famous for the meals she served from her mother’s cook-book. Fried chicken with cream gravy, Southern sweet-potatoes, beaten biscuit, Sally Lunn, waffles, fried oysters, batter-bread, syllabubs, were among the dainties she offered her appreciative guests. Not that she had all these at one time, but she rang the changes on them, to the delectation of the company.

Another woman I know who was born and raised in New England made a success much farther south than this by feasting her friends on such delicacies as genuine baked beans, cooked in a bean-pot (she made the fireless cooker take the place of the ancient brick oven), Boston brown bread--she called it “rye ’n’ Injun”--fried pork with cream gravy, even creamed codfish and boiled potatoes, made to taste as no one had ever before dreamed such things could taste. Of course doughnuts and coffee were included in her menus, and pumpkin-pies and other dishes of that sort. It was amusing and, in a way, pathetic to see the joy of the exiles from New England before whom were placed the viands they had been used to in the long-ago.

The simplicity of the provision should not be made an excuse for departing from the orthodox methods of service. A supper such as I have described can be served with as much daintiness as a formal dinner, and the courses should follow one another in as orderly a style.

As strict in the lines of its etiquette as a dinner is the lunch, where usually women are the only guests. Such a meal as this may also be limited in its items. It may begin with bouillon or soup in cups and, without pausing for an entrée, may go directly on to a solid course, such as chicken in some form, chops, cutlets, and the like, with a vegetable or two; this be followed by a salad with crackers and cheese, and the meal wind up with a sweet of light character, and coffee. When one has a well-enough trained maid to introduce such an entrée as oyster pâtés, crab meat _au gratin_, eggs _à la Bénédictine_, or something of the kind, and can reconcile the extra cost to her economical conscience, the guests will probably enjoy the additional provision, but no hostess can feel she is guilty of social stinginess if she omits these features and follows the simpler lines.

The same caution may be given here as with the dinner--to introduce no novelties for the first time. Use the family as an experiment station before presenting the new dishes or the untried fashion of serving them to outsiders.

Like the luncheon is the breakfast-party, with this difference--that men are frequently invited to the latter, while they are seldom at the formal luncheon. For such a breakfast, to be served at twelve-thirty or one, the first item may be fruit; the soup may be omitted and the meat course, consisting of some such dish as broiled or fried chicken, chops or steak or fish, should be accompanied by a good hot bread as well as by potatoes daintily cooked; and coffee in large cups may be served the same time. A sweet to wind up a meal like this is rather out of place unless it takes the form of waffles or griddle-cakes of a delicate variety with maple syrup or honey. Sometimes the breakfast concludes as it began, with fruit, although of a different kind from that with which the meal opened. When oranges or grapefruit prelude the repast, grapes, etc., may end it.

All these affairs I have mentioned are for a small number. The afternoon tea is the best method of entertaining guests on a larger scale, and with a minimum of expense.

I do not need to go here into the details of sending out cards for such an affair. Whether the tea be a single one, given for the amiable purpose of wiping out social obligations, or as a means of introducing a visitor to the local friends of the hostess; or a series of three or four afternoons, the method followed is the same and the guest who comes expects nothing beyond a light refreshment. At the more elaborate affairs of this sort coffee or chocolate may be served as well as tea, or a bowl of punch offered. The edible provisions are always practically the same and cover a range of sandwiches of different kinds--piquant, solid, and sweet--varied by toast buttered plain or sprinkled with cinnamon, hot scones, small buttered biscuit and similar cates, followed by cakes of various kinds, plain or fancy, and in some cases bonbons and salted nuts. The last are not really necessary.

At such a tea as this, if it comprise more than a few intimates, the maid is usually in attendance to open the door, direct the guests to the drawing-room, bring hot tea or hot water when needed, remove soiled cups and perhaps pass the food. In the latter service the hostess may have the aid of her friends, who usually appreciate the honor of being asked to “pour” or to help act as hostesses in introducing new-comers, looking after the comfort of strangers and making sure that no one is neglected in the distribution of refreshments.

Thus far reference has been made to hospitality exercised in the home where a maid is kept. Far more numerous are those establishments in which no regular service is employed. Even in these one’s friends may be entertained as delightfully, if not as formally, as in the houses supplied with hired domestics.

The regulation dinner is practically out of the question, and it is wiser not to attempt it. But merry informal suppers, luncheons, and breakfasts can be compassed and often these are greater successes than those parties given under the supervision of a staff of trained servants. The main point to be guarded against is the attempt at anything which cannot be put through well. As soon as struggle is made to do the impossible the effort becomes not only a burden to the host and hostess, but a sort of nightmare to the guests. Better have a roast-oyster party in the kitchen, where selected members of the company do the cooking over the gas-stove, while others take upon themselves the responsibility of serving the eaters, and the whole affair is a jolly picnic, than to endeavor to manage a stately function with insufficient aid and appurtenances.

The same sort of informality may mark the afternoon-tea party in the home where no maid is kept. All the making ready can be done in advance, the sandwiches cut and piled, the cakes arranged, the china and tea equipage set out, so that nothing is needed but to start the kettle to boiling and make the tea when it is needed. A friend will preside at the tea-table, other friends will look after other details and leave the hostess free to welcome and entertain her guests. Such a party as this is one of the pleasantest, least costly, and generally satisfactory ways of gathering one’s friends about one for a social hour or two.

The hostess of small means and no maid should concentrate upon some such line of entertaining as this and stick to it. She should aspire to become known for her merry afternoon teas, her pleasant Sunday-night suppers, her gay and informal after-theater spreads, where the chafing-dish is the principal feature and where her guests are so well amused that they think far less of the simple food put before them than they do of the good-fellowship they have enjoyed. Formal entertaining may have to be foregone, but the substitutes she offers are more genuinely satisfactory both to the guests who share them and to the host and hostess who have to pay for them!

X

THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE

With the introduction of a baby into an establishment the whole general management of the place is changed.

That is to say, it is changed for a while. A serious mistake is made when even so important an event as the arrival of a new member of the family is permitted to cause a permanent alteration in the conduct of the home. The most devoted of husbands and fathers will yield his position as first-and-foremost for a while to the latest advent; will take it for granted that his wife shall be absorbed in the needs of the baby, shall have no conversation but that which deals with its joys and woes, its accidents and accomplishments; but eventually any man worth a row of pins will recollect that after all he was a human being, a husband, and a householder before he was a parent, and will claim a few of the rights coming to him in those capacities.

The prospective mother who grasps this truth and puts it into practical service after the baby comes is much more likely to make a success of her wifehood and matronhood than the one who is all mother and nothing else. If the child is well and is properly trained there is no reason why it should not be a satisfactory member of society and a joy to the household and to all about it instead of a nuisance to every one except its most devoted parent.

A great deal more of the comfort of the child and its future good habits is settled within the first month of its life than is suspected by those who have had little to do with the care of babies. If it is started with regular habits of eating and sleeping, is from the beginning accustomed to lie in its cradle or crib instead of being held in the arms constantly and lifted and rocked at its first whimper, it takes such treatment for granted and forms no habit of making demands for that which is difficult for the attendant always to supply and does no good to the child to receive.

With a delicate or sickly babe the same strict rules cannot be enforced as with a healthy infant, and yet even a puny child is better off if kept to a steady regimen than if fed, taken up, and put down at uncertain intervals, and allowed to accumulate a crop of irregular fashions of eating and sleeping. Sometimes the struggle to implant a sense of law and order is a difficult undertaking when the ill health of the child or the carelessness of the first nurse has brought it into bad ways, but persistence in the effort is worth while for the sake of the comfort success is bound to bring later to all concerned.

The periods of feeding are determined by the doctor, to begin with, and the space between them is gradually widened as the child grows older. The system which should be the guide of the housekeeper in her home has as large a field of usefulness applied to children as anywhere else. The baby should be washed and dressed at a regular hour; the time for its meals and its outing should be invariable; the hour for undressing it, washing it, and making it ready for bed should never vary except in cases of rare exigency. If it is a healthy child it will fall naturally into the habit of taking a morning nap after the bath and the meal, of waking at a certain time, and then of lying comfortably in the bed or on a couch or in its carriage with no wails to be lifted and walked with. Modern medical science has declared that the less handling a little baby receives the better for it, and that for some months its growth should be in most respects as much like that of a vegetable as possible.

As the child gets older and begins to use its limbs it will be good for it to be exercised rather more, but nature is a pretty safe guide to follow in this respect. The baby who is well and normal is not slow to show its growth and progress, and it is far wiser for the parent to be led by these than to attempt to hurry development either of body or of mind. The child will assert itself soon enough, and so decidedly as to leave no room for doubt as to its proclivities.

Possibly it may sound a trifle absurd to say that from the first the child should have the habit of obedience implanted, yet this is no absurdity, but a serious and important fact. At an astonishingly early age the infant endeavors to pit its small will against that of its seniors, and the initial step in revolt is promptly followed by others unless the attempt is checked at once.

Neither time nor place is sufficient here to go into the reasons why the training of a child in obedience, even at the cost of suffering and punishment, is not the exercise over the weak of the tyranny of the strong, but the display of superior wisdom for the benefit of the inexperienced. It is enough to remind those who think that a child should be allowed to grow up naturally, unrestrained by rule and severity, when severity is required to enforce discipline, that all through life the human being must conform to constituted authority as exemplified in the laws of health, of the state, of teachers and employers, of morality, of religion. In view of this the sooner the child learns to defer to those in whose charge it is the better for it later on, the less cruel the lessons life holds in store for it.

Apart from this there can be no doubt that the well-trained child is actually happier than the one with no law but its own whim. Also it is much pleasanter company than the self-willed, undisciplined infant who follows its own sweet will regardless of the comfort or preference of others.

The same kind of regimen established for a child in babyhood should be pursued when it grows older and begins to share more actively in the life of the household. The mistaken custom of permitting a child to keep the same hours, eat the same diet, and follow practically the same life as its elders cannot be sufficiently condemned. The habit of going to bed early after a light meal, of having the heaviest repast in the middle of the day, of partaking of such food as is particularly suited to the needs of a growing child, of being debarred rich and indigestible articles of diet, of having postponed until more advanced years exciting amusements and pursuits instead of being hurried into them while hardly out of infancy, should all be enforced. A child is not a miniature man or woman, but an immature human being who must develop naturally, as plants grow, and is wronged by being forced into premature bloom or fruition, mentally or emotionally as much as physically.

The child’s food should be carefully considered by the mother and she should not regard the time wasted she bestows in studying food values and devising the best sort of diet for the nursery. Not until the first teeth begin to come should starchy food of any sort be given, and then with caution. Until the saliva flows freely to help digest starch, bread in any form, crackers, etc., should be withheld. As the child reaches the stage where solid food is allowed this should continue to be simple in character. A child does not have the longing for variety common to more sophisticated palates.

For the breakfast of the child of two or more years of age a cereal, well cooked, with plenty of milk, should be given. Sugar should not accompany it. When sweet is desirable, as it often is, it should be taken in some other way than as an adjunct to a regular article of diet. With the cereal and milk the child seldom needs anything more, but if the consumption of the porridge is not sufficient, a soft-boiled egg or a poached egg may be supplied, with a little toast. Milk should be the drink.

In the middle of the morning a supplementary meal may be taken, and this may consist of a piece of bread and butter and a glass of milk. Whole-wheat bread is better than that made from the bolted flour. When there is a tendency to constipation Graham bread is good.

At noon the substantial provision of the day is to be served and a cup of soup may begin the dinner, followed by a very small piece of steak or chop cut up fine, or by an egg, if one has not been taken at breakfast, a baked potato, well mashed, with butter or cream and salt upon it. Rice is also excellent when served with plenty of good butter. A plain sweet, like stewed fruit, a milk pudding, one of rice, of arrowroot, tapioca, or a custard, will answer. Milk may again be drunk unless the child has eaten a meat soup or broth and meat besides.

Generally the little one who has taken so substantial a meal as this at noon will need nothing more until supper-time, when bread and milk, crackers and milk, or something of the sort may be provided; or bread and a good plain jam or stewed fruit, like prunes or apple-sauce, with a glass of milk. After this comes the child’s bed-time, and it should be put to sleep in a quiet room, alone, with the door open if symptoms of nervousness declare themselves, but without a nurse or other attendant. This may sound hard-hearted, but the child who is accustomed to such solitude from infancy will not feel it an infliction, and the saving of inconvenience to the parents in the habit of going to sleep unattended is incalculable.

The good manners of the child should receive early consideration. The habit of courtesy implanted in infancy gives a finish of manner in later life that no surface polish can impart. It is as easy for a little boy and girl to be taught to rise when elders come into the room, to take their turn at the table, to handle a knife, fork, and spoon properly, to eat in a decent fashion, to say, “Thank you,” “If you please,” and the like, and to show the thoughtfulness for the feelings and comfort of others which is the foundation of all good breeding, as it is to let the youngsters grow up as they will and hammer superficial manners into them when they are older. The good old rule that “children should be seen and not heard” is sadly in need of a revival in many homes, and parents cannot wonder at the unpopularity of their offspring when they reflect upon the disagreeable qualities these often possess.

All this does not mean that children should constantly be snubbed and repressed until individuality and initiative are crushed out of them. In most children these characteristics are strong and triumphant. But a certain measure of deference to elders should be inculcated--a respect which will prevent a child from interrupting the conversation of his seniors, a regard for the conventions which, after all, have more to do with peace and amity in the family than many of us are willing to admit.

As the child grows older and begins school and kindergarten, other children will be associated with him, and from them he will learn many things it would never occur to his parents to teach him. Sometimes it seems as though the least that children acquire at school is their regular lessons. These become almost a side issue. The influence of the strange boy or girl often carries more weight with a child than all the precepts of father, mother, and teacher. Part of this effect is transitory, but much of it sticks through life; and while the children are little more than babies it becomes incumbent upon the parents--by which is usually meant the mother--to strengthen the bond between herself and her child so that she may the more effectually offset the outside forces that sway him.

The sooner the mother recognizes that this is her lifelong “job” and a most important one, the better for all concerned. The mere animal care of the child any competent nurse could bestow, and sometimes it seems as if the charge of a specialist who understood the ins and outs of dietetics and was able to study the child’s constitution impersonally might perhaps be better than the attention received from the average parent. With regard to the question of instruction in book learning there is little doubt that a well-qualified teacher is far more capable than the most devoted father or mother. All such duties as these can be delegated to those who are trained and paid for the work.

When it comes to the companionship, however, it is another matter. Here is something only the mother can give. It is “up to her” to study the ins and outs of her child’s nature; to know where and how to bring pressure in order to counterbalance another influence; to make herself so one with him that he turns to her instinctively, with complete confidence in her ability to meet his need; to be so close in his intimacy that she grasps his thoughts almost before they are formulated; to persuade him unconsciously to rely upon her judgment, her companionship, her understanding to an extent that will hold him in temptation and move him to range himself on the side of right against wrong.

Of course it is not always easy. The mother does not resign her own individuality by the mere fact of motherhood; she does not lay aside her special interests when she takes up those of her child. Yet if she lets him suspect that anything comes ahead of his well-being in her heart she makes a fatal mistake; she starts the rift between them which may widen into a chasm not to be bridged by all her agony and tears.

It may sometimes be hard to yield up one’s own will and preference in this way, and yet the mother gets her pay as she goes along, and her labor brings its reward in a fashion unequaled in any other vocation in the universe. Nothing in the whole world pays so well as being a mother!

THE END

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.