THE MANAGING MOTHER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 37, 13 September 1890, Page 1

THE MANAGING MOTHER.

Some mothers seem to haven certain fascinating quality over good partis. They make up their minds to get So-and-so for Edith, say ; and So-and-so is got. He may struggle ; all the same he is landed. The lures are too fine and delicate to be suspected. He gives himself away before he knows his danger. It seems al most as if the eternal fitness of things had arranged such and such circumstances. He does not want to marry Edith. He wants, rather, to marry Amy, her rival over the way. Nevertheless, he is in some strange manner compelled, and that maternal eye both fixes and holds him. Like the fluttering bird, his fruitless flappings and endeavours to escape subside into the charmed quiescence of the doomed creature fascinated by the superior force. He stands still and helpless ; the bird is caught, and Edith's future is secured. She has got her well married and settled before the next daughter comes out, ami so far the way is clear.

This is the triumph of the true managing mother—to marry off her daughters as they are introduced -one before the other, so as never to have more than one on hand at a time. If she has graduated in the higher school of management, and her daughters are not hopelessly plain and undesirable, she marries them all well brilliantly, indeed. If she is handicapped, she marries them irregularly—some well and some ill, according to the pressure of circumstances and the need of the moment. But she marries them, and this is the grand desideratum of the managing mother of all times ami places. The managing mother cares for none of the spiritual graces which once made a woman’s claim to consideration. She cares as little for the personal fitness of the wellendowed quinquagenarian whom she chooses as the life’s partner of her moist-lipped, full-eyed young daughter just eighteen. The quinquagenarian is as dry as a withered palm-tree in the desert. He never had much life, much sap in him, but what he had has all gone into so much hard ami

gnarled bark, ami he and his young wife are, if not January and May, then November and June. What cares the mother ? She has got rid of her super fluous child, and the result of such a mismatch does not touch her. Her fears are asleep, her conscience is dead, so is her foresight. When the miserable association, which was never a true union, dissolves into nothingness in the Divorce Court, the mother laments, condemns, abjures. Her daughter's disgrace stings her deeply, so she says. Iler own part in the transaction does not disturb her. She has no uneasiness from a guilty conscience and its reproaches. She acted for the best, she says, ami she thought that a 4 good ’ man like that dry old stick that gnarled old November—would be the best guide and companion for her moist-lipped, soft-eyed June. We shudder at the marriage- market of the Easterns. We think it 4 awful ’ that women should be bought and sold to the highest bidder like so much cattle at a fair. We deprecate the savage customs which allow a young brave to steal his wife by first knocking her on the head and club

bing her male relations. We hold blankets ami cows to be not fit equivalent for human flesh ; ami we imagine sweet little idyls of youths ami maidens, scantily clothed, wandering by the river’s side or th rough the dark aisles of a tropi cal forest loving, innocent ami free. But here in our rc fined ami civilized country we sell our daughters to tin* highest bidders, all the same as in the open Eastern market. We exchange their fair young flesh for the local equivalent of cows ami blankets. We suppress their natural repug nance by arguments quite as conclusive ami irresistible as the savage's club; ami with these same arguments we knock on the head all the lovers ami all the protectors who would, if they could, save the girl from such a fate. (>ur managing mothers are women without compassion, conscience or even true knowledge of human nature*. Their god is gold — their Apollyon whom they must overcome is the celibacy of their daughters. To vanquish the one and carry their living tiilmte to the other constitute the gram! success of life : and let the means be what it w ill Novem her for .June, ora Borgia for a Saint Agnes it matters nothing to the mother; she has managed to marry all hei daughters, ami she may now sing her shrill ami discordant ‘ Te Deuin.’