American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
The writer has never known any system for dispensing charity so
successful as the one by which a town or city is divided into districts;
and each district is committed to the care of two ladies, whose duty
it is, to call on each family and leave a book for a child, or do some
other deed of neighborly kindness, and make that the occasion for
entering into conversation, and learning the situation of all residents
in the district. By this method, the ignorant, the vicious, and the
poor are discovered, and their physical, intellectual, and moral wants
are investigated. In some places where the writer has known this mode
pursued, each person retained the same district, year after year, so
that every poor family in the place was under the watch and care of
some intelligent and benevolent lady, who used all her influence to
secure a proper education for the children, to furnish them with
suitable reading, to encourage habits of industry and economy, and to
secure regular attendance on public religious instruction. Thus, the
rich and the poor were brought in contact, in a way advantageous to
both parties; and if such a system could be universally adopted, more
would be done for the prevention of poverty and vice than all the
wealth of the nation could avail for their relief. But this plan can
not be successfully carried out, in this manner, unless there is a
large proportion of intelligent, benevolent, and self-denying persons,
who unite in a systematic plan.
But there is one species of "charity" which needs especial
consideration. It is that spirit of kindly love which induces us to
refrain from judging of the means and the relative charities of other
persons. There have been such indistinct notions, and so many different
standards of duty, on this subject, that it is rare for two persons
to think exactly alike, in regard to the rule of duty. Each person is
bound to inquire and judge for himself, as to his own duty or
deficiencies; but as both the resources and the amount of the actual
charities of others are beyond our ken, it is as indecorous as it is
uncharitable to sit in judgment on their decisions.
XIX.
ECONOMY OF TIME AND EXPENSES.
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