Courtship and Marriage, and the Gentle Art of Home-MakingSwan, Annie S.
General
Courtship and Marriage, and the Gentle Art of Home-Making
Swan, Annie S.
Family life; Home economics; Marriage
Regularity in meals is another thing the wise housekeeper will insist
upon in her abode. Regularity and punctuality, how delightful they are,
and how they ease the roll of the domestic wheels! A punctual and tidy
woman makes a punctual and tidy home. We know the type who dawdles away
the forenoon in idle talk or listless indolence, and rushes to prepare a
hasty and only half-cooked meal when perhaps her husband or children are
on their way home from school or workshop; and this is a very fruitful
cause of domestic dispeace, and at the root even of much of the
intemperance which has ruined so many homes. If a man has no comfort at
his own fireside, then he is compelled in self-defence to seek it
elsewhere.
To recur to the question of buying in cheap markets, the principle that
what is good and costs something to begin with will inevitably prove the
cheapest in the end is even more clearly demonstrated in the matter of
clothing than of food. The best will always wear and look the best, even
when it has grown threadbare. Then when we hear so constantly of the
appalling misery endured by men and women who make the garments sold in
the cheap shops, we are bound to feel that these things are offered at a
price which is the cost of flesh and blood. This is a very pressing
question, and one which many Christian people do not lay to heart. There
appears to be in every human breast the instinct of the bargain-hunter,
and there is a placid satisfaction in having got something at an
exceptionally low price which charms the finer sensibilities.
To gratify this peculiar and morbid craving, witness the system of
buying and selling which prevails in Italy; the shopkeepers there, with
few exceptions, invariably asking double the money they are willing to
accept. And to this craving in our own country is due the system of all
cheap sales in the shops, and mock auctions in the sale-rooms, in which
many a shortsighted person of both sexes fritter away both time and
money. It is a rotten system, and shows that there is great need for
reform in this matter of buying and selling, which occupies so much of
our time, means, and thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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