Mind Amongst the Spindles. A Miscellany, Wholly Composed by the Factory Girls
General
Mind Amongst the Spindles. A Miscellany, Wholly Composed by the Factory Girls
American literature -- Massachusetts -- Lowell; American literature -- Women authors; Working class women -- Literary collections
Physiology, Astronomy, Geology, Botany, and kindred sciences, are not
now, as formerly, confined to our higher seminaries of learning. They
are being introduced into the common schools, not only of our large
towns and cities, but of our little villages throughout New-England.
Hence a knowledge of these sciences is becoming general. It needs not
Sibylline wisdom to predict that the time is not far distant when it
will be more disadvantageous and more humiliating to be ignorant of
their principles and technicalities, than to be unable to tell the
length and breadth of Sahara, the rise, course and fall of little rivers
in other countries, which we shall never see, never hear mentioned--and
the latitude and longitude of remote or obscure cities and towns. If a
friend would describe a flower, she would not tell us that it has so
many flower-leaves, so many of those shortest things that rise from the
centre of the flower, and so many of the longest ones; but she will
express herself with more elegance and rapidity by using the technical
names of these parts--petals, stamens, and pistils. She will not tell us
that the green leaves are formed some like a rose-leaf, only that they
are rounder, or more pointed, as the case may be; or if she can find no
similitudes, she will not use fifty words in conveying an idea that
might be given in one little word. We would be able to understand her
philosophical description. And scientific lectures, the sermons of our
best preachers, and the conversation of the intelligent, presuppose some
degree of knowledge of the most important sciences; and to those who
have not this knowledge, half their zest is lost.
If we are so situated that we cannot attend school, we have, by far the
greater part of us, hours for reading, and means to purchase books. We
should be systematic in our expenditures. They should be regulated by
the nature of the circumstances in which we find ourselves placed,--by
our wages, state of health, and the situation of our families. After a
careful consideration of these, and other incidentals that may be, we
can make a periodical appropriation of any sum we please, for the
purchase of books. Our readings, likewise, should be systematic. If we
take physiology, physiology should be read exclusively of all others,
except our Bibles and a few well-chosen periodicals, until we acquire a
knowledge of its most essential parts. Then let this be superseded by
others, interrupted in their course only by occasional reviews of those
already studied.
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