HOME-KEEPING WOMAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 25 February 1914, Page 2

HOME-KEEPING WOMAN.

OTHER KINDS USEFUL

BUT SHE'S THE ONE WE NEED

(By Helen Dare.)

It may not come amiss when a girl —on the edge of the nest, as it wero, wondering which way to fly—studies the market as to supply and demand, for her to note that the home-keeping woman ranks as a staple. All the world over the demand is—■ yet, the cry iy—for: Bread ; and the woman in the home!

From the humblest to the highest there can bo no homo without the permeating warmth and care of a woman's presence, any more than there can be built an arch without a keystone.

The home-making—or, if you like with aie the other terra, the homekeeping—woman in tho home structure is the cement that makes the parts cohede. She binds them together—the four walls to the family, and the family within the four walls. She, alone, can do this. FEMININE GE\ r IUS INDISPENSABLE.

A man can provide for a home; he can even assemble all the parte of a ' home—sometimes most skilfully, t tastefully, and with excellent judgment- but whtn it comes tt- making a home out of them —as one would a salad out of the prescribed, ingredients, or a lovely evening gown out of the velvets and chiffons and laces and garnitures, at command—it takes the hand of special genius; for the* making of the home the woman's hand.

A woman can—when hard necessity, or unkind fortune, or a stoical resignation to "Hobson's choice" compels —make a home without the aid or cooperation of a man; but no man can without a woman. 'Tig therefore thai the man, baffled, cheated, chilled and awe-stricken by his efforts to keep that anomalous institution, "bachelor's hall," hires a housekeeper to bring into his environment, at a price, the needed .."wo* •man's touch," to produce that mysterious, mellowing atmosphere, that sense of magically produced comfort, security and continuity that he craves. "lis therefore that he sometimes marries bis housekeeper—to the consternation of his friends and the violent disapproval' of his expectant heirs—so that he may be assured of this necessity of life. HELPLESSNESS OF THE WIDOWER. We see constantly the affirmation of this truth in the success with which the woman, widowed, makes a home for her fatherless children, gathering them into her cai'e and holding them safe and snug as a hen dqesvher brood under her hovering wings; while the poor, helpless widower, whatever his fortune, has to cast about for woman's help or scatter his orphaned offspring among the boarding-schools or charitable institutions.

Even the woman quite alone and self-dependent can- make a home for herself, .however small her means, Ayith her riclieg of feminine endow-, merit, the home-making instinct. It isn't the sort of home she can make for another, to; be sure, for her .effort lacks the main incentive, that of loving service; r'o>- a woman's self-love (in the most selfish of woman, even) seldom equals her power of self-isac-rifice. In ispite of all the purely intellectual theorists who have figured out the tremendous saving in time and money that would result from cooperative living, in spite of all the appallingly logical and practical advocates of communism, the common human need and preference for a home —an "own 1 ' home for our own "family —persists. Jt is tlio dream of the young, the haven of the aged. Humanity resists, almost savagely, being housed, fed, reared find handled wholesale. We've found out that especially—and emphatically—in the case or' little children. You can't make them thrive in an

institution, even tTie most modern, , scientific and sanitary, by grading") them as you would oliveg according to i size, and administering to their needs methodically. ' MINISTRATIONS REQUIRED BY CHILDREN. They demand—and perversely, refuse to livo without—that indefinable, intangible essence that they absorb and flourish on in :home life; and learning this (from certain lessons in infant mortality) the administrators of public charity have had to conform to the .stubborn childish requirements and put the homeless children into- real homes, where they can bo mothered by the real home-keepers. f It offers a wonderful object lesson to the mothers whose children should not be homeless —and to The restless women-at large; too much at large, perhaps. It is evident—from this ineradicable human desire for the home —chat the ii-'ine-maker is not likely to be a drug on the market. All the other kinds- of woman may be useful —the brilliant and dazzling woman of genius and talent and beauty; the women who have shown and are showing that they can beat the men at their own game; the women who shine in the arts, the professions, in philanthropy and social service, who labour bravely and patiently at trades and humble toil; but the one woman we cannot get along with-> out is the home-making, home-keep-ing woman, the woman who is as necessary as warmth and light.

, And no girl, whatever her talents, can be quite futile who prepares herself to be that kind of a woman.