WORK FOR WOMAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1865, 19 August 1887, Page 32

WORK FOR WOMAN.

" Men must work and women must weep.'' So the old song says ; but every day life shows that women have to work as well as weep. Of the two work is preferable. When the curse fell upon the world men were to labour and women suffer, but things have got into such a complicated state that through weakness and suffering many women must toil.

The natural sphere for the woman is in the home. Discharging its duties faithfully, there is ample scope for both skill and energy, and unless these duties are too burdensome a woman is in better health in the performance of them than she would be doing nothing. The exercise, thought, free movement that they demand give back to her body all that they require, unless, as I before said, the toil is more than her constitutipn can bear A carriage horse would make a sorry sight at the plough, yet how often we see women whose muscular strength is unequal to the task doing work that should really be performed by a manl Heavy weights have to be lifted, so she lifts them ; wood has to be chopped, so she chops it. From morning till night, and from night almost till morning some woman are at work pne way or , another, and many a weak woman feels broken down and weary before her life has reached its prime.

These duties do not all oome upon her at orice. She marries, and for the first few years there is no more to do than a healthy young woman can easily undertake; but child after child arrives, and duty after duty puts in , its claim, so that at length the strain is almost too hard.

"I'd die gladly enough," I heard a poor, wqrn-out creature say once, " only I oan't find the time to do it decently." Suoh lives know no pleasure, but there are many who find a happy medium — hours for rest and recreation coming in between the work ; and these lives are happier and healthier than those which are spent in idleness, for idleness of mind and body is a fruitful source of disease and misery. An unoccupied mind has plenty of room for fancied trouble, and it. is a real pity for all concerned that those who do no work at all cannot be compelled to relieve the overburdened ones of part of their burden.

Young girls should never be allowed to spend their whole time' in idleness. • Even if circumstances allow it it is a' great mistake,

for morally and physically they suffer* Work in reason is the tonic and salt of life, It revives and refreshes' the' drooping ' spirit, and seasons all the pleasures of life. It lifts the mind out of itself, and ■ gives the character force and excellence.

So varied are the fields of labour that a lady is not obliged to soil her hands or stoop to what some call the indignity of earning her bread, but in a hundred ways can make herself a blessing to those whose lives have no rests by the way. What harm could it do the lady of ease to make an occasional garment for one of her poor and weary sisters? The strong young lady of society would lose none of her dignity by asssisting to teach her widowed friends' children.

In these days of advanced education most parents hope to do better by their daughters than make domestic servants of them. Yet I question in many instances if they will be so well off, as a well-behaved, well paid servant girl. Many men prefer to seek an industrious servant girl for a wife, in preference to girls who have been employed in factories, &c, because they reason, with much truth, that these girls, though clever in other ways, are very ignorant of that essential to a workinginan's wife— practical housekeeping. The women most to be pitied are those who have been tenderly reared, but whom adverse and unforseen circumstances have cast upon a world they have never learned to battle with. "It is so difficult to know what to do," they say. It is difficult. The young ladies who have passed the examination for teacher — those who can give lessons in music or drawing — those who have learned any business are well provided for. They may or may not be called upon in after life to earn their bread, but if they are they are always safe. Many indulgent parents, whose chief care has been to shelter their daughters from the world, have been suddenly snatched away, and their girls have been forced to face the question — how to earn their daily bread ; or a reverse of circumstances may have compelled it. Even after the loving guardians have seen their daughters well married, widowhood or a bad husband may have made it imperative that they should work not only for themselves, butalso for their children. And many such a one, bowed down by anxiety, has exclaimed, "If my father and mother could see me now it would break their hearts." It is not the work that kills, but the harassing, worrying, daily question what to do to make ends meet. Such women look with envy upon those fortunate sisteis who in their early youth, either from necessity or through the kind forethought of their parents, were taught to exert themselves in the direction in which their individual talents lay.

.It is a duty that parents owe their girls to discover the natural aptitude or talent of each one, and see that it is so developed and trained that she is put beyond the awful possibility of being cast upon life's rough sea without an oar. There is, I know, a difficulty to overcome in the fact that young ladies do not like to have it thought that they are working for their bread ; but if they could embrace the idea that they are fortifying themselves against the possibility of such a sad condition as I describe, and instances of which life furnishes every day, those at least who are possessed of common sense would see rather dignity than degradation in adopting the course recommended. They would start life with the lantern and oil that would give them light should they be left in darkness. Each one has some ability, and girls themselves should take a pride in developing it. As teachers, nurses, and in many other ways there is a field, if false pride does not stand in the way. A lady is always a lady. Nothing can spoil her. She never becomes menial, but rather dignifies the post she occupies ; and a wise mind will look ahead and prepare in the present a garment for the storm that she possibly may have to encounter hereafter.