CHAPTER VI.

DOMESTIC DUTIES.

Home is woman's proper sphere and empire. It is the scene for the display of her excellences and her worthiness. Does woman desire to be useful?—where can she be more useful than at home? Would she be respected ?—how more so, than in faithfully discharging her domestic duties? Would she display her accomplishments, and substantiate her claims upon the confidence and affection of man?—in what sphere can she more perfectly reveal her valuable characteristics, than at home? Would she be happy ?—where can she seek the pure happiness of the heart, if it is not to be found at home? Home is the fountain of woman's enjoyments, and the common centre around which should cluster her sweetest hopes and anticipations! There she can shine and excel—there she can instruct and purify those who are within the sphere of her influence. When woman neglects home, under the promptings of ambition, to mingle, and shine, and excel,

in other scenes and in other pursuits, she launches her frail bark upon a tempestuous ocean, where the dangers of shipwreck and ruin are scattered around on every hand.

Home being the natural and proper field of woman's duties, how important, how necessary, that she should become acquainted, to a good degree, with the character and demands of these duties. Under the sanctions of the marriage covenant, home is the scene over which most of the young ladies whom I address, will ere long be called to preside. This change in your circumstances, you have undoubtedly anticipated. But have you reflected deeply and seriously upon its nature ?--have you meditated upon the varied responsibilities which will rest upon you, in directing the internal interests of the family circle? It is to be feared, that too many expecting soon to become wives, are sadly deficient in a knowledge of those home duties, upon a faithful discharge of which depend, in so great a degree, the enjoyments of the domestic fireside. They can twang a guitar, drum upon a piano, and glide with gracefulness through the mazes of the giddy waltz—but of what avail are these accomplishments, in discharging those important trusts which devolve upon the mistress of the household, the wife and the mother?

"There are in the United States, one hundred thousand young ladies, as Sir Ralph Abercrombie said of those of Scotland, 'the prettiest las

sies in a' the world,' who neither know how to toil nor spin, who are yet clothed like the lilies of the valley—who thrum the piano, and a few of the more dainty, the harp—who walk, as the Bible says, softly, lest brisker movements might snap tapes drawn to their utmost tension—who have read romances, and some of them seen the interior of theatres—who have been admired at the examination of their high schools—who have wrought algebraic solutions on the black-board— who have shown themselves no mean proficients in the casuistry of Paley—who are, in short, the very roses of the garden, the attar of life—who yet, horresco referens, can never expect to be married; or, if married, can not expect to live without—shall I speak, or forbear ?—putting their own lily hands to domestic drudgery! into the interior villages of our recent wooden country. The fair one sits down to clink the wires of the piano. We see the fingers displayed on the keys, which, we are sure, never prepared a dinner, or made a garment for their robustious brothers......We need not enter in person. Imagination sees the fair, erect on her music stool, laced, and pinioned, and bishop-sleeved, and deformed with hair torn from others' scalps, and reduced to a questionable class of entomology, secundo more, dinging, as Sawney would say, at the wires, as though she could, in some way, hammer out of them music, amusement, and a husband. Look at her taper and cream

We go

colored fingers. Is she a utilitarian? Ask the fair one, when she has beaten all the music out of the keys, 'Pretty fair one, canst talk to thy old and sick father, so as to beguile him out of the headache and rheumatism? Canst write a good and straight-forward letter of business? Thou wast a chemist, I remember, at the examination—canst compound, prepare, and afterward boil or bake a good pudding? Canst make one of the hundred subordinate ornaments of thy fair person ? In short, tell us thy use in existence, except to be contemplated as a pretty picture.' And how long will any one be amused with the view of a picture, after having surveyed it a dozen times, unless it have a mind, a heart, and we may emphatically add, the perennial value of utility ?......I have no conception of a beautiful woman, or a fine man, in whose eye, in whose port, in whose whole expression, this sentiment does not stand embodied—1I am called by my Creator to duties. I have employment on earth. My sterner but more enduring pleasures, are in discharging my duties.' Compare the sedate expression of this sentiment in the countenance of man or woman, when it is known to stand as the index of character, and the fact, with the meretricious gaudiness of a simple, good-for-nothing belle, who disdains usefulness and employment— whose empire is a ball-room, and whose subjects, dandies as silly and as useless as herself. Who of the two, has most attractions for a man of

sense?......Parents of thought, and virtue, and example, are called upon to look to this evil. Instead of training your sons to waste their time as idle young gentlemen at large--instead of inculcating on your daughters, that the incessant tinkling of a harpsichord, or a scornful and lady-like toss of the head, or dexterity in waltzing, are the chief requisites to make their way in life; if you can find no better employment for the one, teach him the use of the grubbing-hoe, and learn the other to make up garments for your servants."*

This language is deserving of great weight. The enjoyment and prosperity of woman, and those connected with her, depend much more upon her skill in domestic affairs, than many young ladies seem to imagine. And young men of sense and discretion view this qualification as by no means a trifling one. They will take measures to ascertain the amount of domestic knowledge possessed by ladies, before they choose them for wives. They will not select a "painted butterfly, fit only for the sunny days of prosperity," who fade into ill-tempered termagants when adversities come, and are unprepared for any of the useful duties of life. But more wisely, they will choose her who will become a

help-mate indeed--one who can smile in adversity as well as in prosperity—one who can

* Western Monthly Review.