"A HOUSEWIFE'S OPINIONS."*
THIS is a reprint from the Exasamer of a number of plea- santly written articles upon a variety of social subjects, which are treated at the same time with sportive play of fancy and admirable good-sense. In assuming, however, that "every one" reads these light papers in the weeklies, Mrs. Webster very probably goes a good deal too fax, although the pleasing delusion may have its use, in stimulating a writer to put forth whatever brilliancy he may possess. In this present case it is not too much to say that, as a rule, the "housewife's opinions" are deserving of perusal, and that, gathered together, they form an agreeable little volume. There is a pleasant originality in her way of looking at and putting things, and she contrives half jestingly to draw attention to many neglected subjects of real importance, although it must be confessed that, like many others, she is more prone to indicate an evil than to suggest a remedy. Perhaps this is just one reason why her little papers are specially attractive ; they place the finger in a droll way upon our social shortcomings and domestic miseries, and leave it to ourselves to effect our own deliverance or amendment, or to hug our chains, if that be the course which most commends itself to us, so that we do not feel that we are listening either to a sermon, or the harangue of a social reformer. Very much of what Mrs. Webster talks about must have occurred to every one, but we are such creatures of habit, and conventionality is so much a part of our being, that we, at least the greater number of us, are perfectly content to go on as we have always been doing, and would rather bear an irksome yoke, than endanger our re- putation for propriety by casting it away. Perhaps, however, there may be a sagacious regard for prudence in that "vicarious vigour "with which the writer credits us, the desire to see ex- periments—as, for instance, co-operative housekeeping—tried by others, before we ourselves embark in it, more especially as she with great justice complains of the high rents of "the factories of domestic bliss." At the same time, there does not, indeed, seem to be any reason why home should not be "horizontal as well as vertical," and why it should not exist "without a separate front door on the street." The chief difficulty consists in getting the average Briton to believe in such a possibility. Now and then, Mrs. Webster seems a little inclined to take the wrong side of a question, partly in order to write entertainingly, and partly not to administer too great a shock to our insular pre- judices. Thus, in her paper on "English Extravagance," while • Housev(fe's Opiitioxs. By Augustus Webster. London : Macmillan and Co.
she objects to the criticism of M. Taine, and contends that "our hospitalities, our servants, and even our confortable, are no matters of choice, but are imposed upon us as necessities of our social position, indispensable for maintaining it," and that outward expenditure is most frequently compensated for by counter-parsimony, she might have pointed out that thrift— opposed alike to extravagance and penuriousness—as it is practised by our neighbours across the Channel, is a virtue for the most part not only neglected, but actually uncomprehended by our people, from the lowest to the highest grade ; and it is a virtue that almost more than any other needs to be inculcated, since the want of it lies at the base of many a crime. On the other hand, we most heartily commend the advice with which she concludes this same chapter, that we should criticise each other less, and live more after our beliefs. Nothing can be wiser than the suggestion in the chapter on "The Dearth of Husbands," that failing the capacity for a profession, daughters should be taught to pursue some employment by which, in case of necessity, they would be able to earn money, such as engraving on glass, painting on china, and many other arts which are open to and can be practised by women. Such an acquirement need never be useless, even in the event of the girl's making an advantageous mar- riage—and marriage is quite recognised by Mrs. Webster as the most desirable profession for a young woman, although necessarily beyond the reach of so many—for it might, as the author remarks, very properly take the place of useless fancy needlework, a portion of that "futile laboriousness" and. "industrious waste of time," against which she enters so strenuous a protest. She objects very fairly to the old saying,. "Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well," pointing out that the latter word should rather be "fitly," since there are many necessary and serviceable tasks which do not need to be executed with careful precision, and upon which "taking pains" is just so much time thrown away.
In the chapter on vocations and avocations, Mrs. Webster, after remarking upon the oft-forgotten but widely dif- ferent meaning of the two words, sets forth in a feeling manner, no doubt from personal experience, the unnumbered trials of the literary man or woman, arising from the way in which their time is supposed to be the property of every one who chooses to make demands on it, because brain-work "is carried on in the worker's private home, with no visible re- minder of customer or client," and is supposed to be "so easy,— what everybody can do at any time;" while in truth "the slave of the pen" is just the one who most suffers from such injus- tice, seeing that ideas are evanescent, and a train of thought not to be conjured up at will. The sketch of the unfortunate woman whose vocation may be said to consist of avocations, and whose duty it seems to be "to let her acquaintances make tatters of her time, and to make tatters of theirs in re- turn," can scarcely be called a caricature. Although ndt consecutive, another very good paper may be mentioned upon "Waiting to be Ready." This concerns that large class of persons who, neither idlers nor procrastinators, are continually preparing themselves for a future work which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, never comes to them, and who fail to find their tree vocation until the time for adopting it has passed :—
" They are waiting," says the writer, "to be ready to begin. They need some particular combination of circumstances, some vantage- point, which is to come to them instead of their going to it ; they need more leisure, more money, more health, more something, which is not yet theirs, and likeliest never may be. Whatever the something is,
it is no fancied requirement, but really what to begin without is so difficult as to be justly discouraging, and even, perhaps, to threaten impossibility But, many times the waiting is none the wiser for that. If the thing needed is too long of coming, and life is going by, with what is to be done unbegun ; or, if the thing
needed is, from the first, out of natural probability, it is worse than folly to wait, and we should begin the enterprise unready,. or we should resolutely put away the thought of it. Nothing is so weakening, morally, to energy as to be spending our time in one sort of duties, while, all the while, we are counting on different and future sort of duties as our real outcome, and judging what we do now as only our accidental use, apart from the realities of our purpose It is one thing to feel that you are setting a seed which is to be a tree, and another to feel that you are setting a seed which is to be a little plant with scarcely a summer's life, and be rooted up, to make room when you have your tree ready to plant in fit season."
There is much justice in these remarks, and no doubt that, as Mrs. Webster says, this idea of waiting for the true work of life is to blame, not only for much of the desultoriness of young women, but also of that of older persons of both sexes, and that what is wanted for success in most instances is, indeed, "quiet strenuousness, and step-by-step determination, in the teeth of -wind and weather."
Another point on which we fully agree with the writer is as to what she says about children's toys and children's books. "A toy is a plaything, a plaything is a thing to play with." This is the children's definition, and not a bad one either, and while an honest plaything is a delight, " teaching-traps " are very naturally a horror to the juvenile mind. While, however, Mrs. Webster would let play be play, and the merrier the better, she would also teach the child to work, to like to do difficult things, and to learn "the joy of endeavour, the triumph of difficulty overcome." She certainly hits the point in saying that children's books should not be about children, and that while the most popular of the literature of this class—such as Robinson Crusoe, the Pilgrim's Progress, the Arabian Nights, and Gulliver's Travels—were written for adults, it is the greatest possible mistake to make little heroes and heroines in their teens, and to develope instead of repressing the mental histrionism which is naturally common to children. As soon as a child could read with pleasure, Mrs. Webster would allow it, with some slight reservation, the run of a library, only keeping out of its way such books as confuse right and wrong; and the little student will easily pitch upon something which will afford it much more amusement than a book specially written for the purpose, and will, at the same time, expand and strengthen its ideas. It is certain that those children are not usually either the happiest or the cleverest, who have been the most liberally provided with the fashionable child-literature of the day in which we live.
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