THE WOMAN WHO TRIES BUSINESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6144, 2 April 1898, Page 3

THE WOMAN WHO TRIES BUSINESS.

, (Fortnightly Review.) If a •woman is ever to retain her present position in the business world, she must look to it that she makes her value felt. She has many advantages, she is punctual, painstaking, patient of monotony, amenable to discipline, ready, and willing ; indeed, she errß as a rulej rather from excess of zeal than from its defect. But she has two things to learn : First, that her health is her only capital, and secondly, that to rise above mediocrity it is. necessary to think I for yourself. For this last shortcoming her educators have much to answer for ; but : it cannot be too clearly understood that in I the struggle for existence there is no room for the typist who has not at any rate the intelligence of the average compositor, nor for the secretary who forgets to post important letters, or encloses the letter to " Dear Mr A." in the envelope addressed to " Mrs B." It is lapses of this sort which mar at present so much of women's work, and to which apparently all but the very few are so singularly liable, largely, I fancy, because they have been studiously^ taught to leave out of account physiologi-' .cal facts. What wonder, then, if they insist upon ignoring the most elementary laws of health, and show a tendency to look upon eating and drinking as a criminal form of self-indulgence ? I don't say that a proper supply of blood to the brain would free the world of folly, but it would- be at least worth trying whether more meat and the disappearance of all prejudice against sofas would not go a long way toward securing that desirable consummation.