The elements of characterWare, Mary G. (Mary Greene)
Philosophy
The elements of character
Ware, Mary G. (Mary Greene)
Character
The women who belong to these several classes are characterized in like
manner, though their more retired lives prevent them from displaying
their traits so conspicuously. Those of the first class are dress-makers
whose work never fits, milliners whose bonnets look as if they were
not intended for the wearers, servants who do nothing rightly unless the
eye of their mistress is upon them, teachers whose pupils are taught
as if they were beings without life or reason; and in their highest
relations, as wives and mothers, they are those with whom nothing goes
as it should, whose daily lives are but a succession of mistakes and
catastrophies, whose husbands never find a comfortable home to which
they may return for repose after a day of toil, whose children are
"dragged up, not brought up."
In the second class are servants who have a quick perception of what is
to be done, and who make all that is directly apparent to the eye
look well, but a closer observation shows many an unswept corner and
neglected duty; dress-makers and milliners whose work is ornamental,
tasteful, and becoming, though the ornamentation is apt to be too great
for the value of the material, and the work will now and then come
in pieces for lack of being thoroughly finished; teachers who infuse
brightness and quickness into their scholars, but whose instructions are
more showy than solid. In their housekeeping they understand "putting
the best foot foremost," and making a great deal of ornament where there
may be but little of anything else; but they lack the practical skill
that makes a housekeeper successful in the essentials that constitute
comfort. They will seek to make their children accomplished ladies and
gentlemen, who will be agreeable in society, rather than well-trained
men and women, capable of meeting the duties and emergencies of life.
The third class of women are the reliable ones, wherever they may be
found. They do everything they attempt well, because there is a sense of
fitness and propriety in them which is disturbed by things badly done,
and which gives them an almost intuitive faith, that if a thing is worth
doing at all, it is worth doing well. They are not eye-servants, but
faithful in all things. Thoroughness pervades whatever they do, in all
departments of life. They are not satisfied with making a dress or a
bonnet that is becoming, unless it is well finished and appropriate.
They are the thorough teachers who are willing to have their schools
examined every day in the year, who seek to know the capacities of their
pupils, and to educate them accordingly. They are the mothers whose
children are obedient and trained for the uses of life no less than for
its pleasures; the wives whose husbands are happy in their homes if they
are capable of being happy anywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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