ascribing that title to a woman, in words that might fitly be inscribed over many a mother's grave: Turning from my comrade's eyes, Of the bravest of the brave. Motherhood, thus extolled by men as above all other earthly occupations, is the glorious goal of every girl, to win which worthily is infinitely more honorable than any goal your boy friends can achieve in their athletics. Motherhood! Success in which may be more useful to the world than success in business or professions or politics! Motherhood! More satisfying, despite its pains and cares, than any sinful substitute, or any "career" in movies or in society or elsewhere that shall take the place of training your own children for faithful service of God and man. Home-making is the business for which every girl should train, and refuse to accept the lazy conception of it common among society women today. Mothers at Morning Card Parties1 VICE-PRESIDENT. "No woman of my acquaintance plays bridge for money," remarked a woman in one of the smaller cities a few years ago, "unless you consider that time is money. If it is, then the losses at cards, in social circles here, are great enough to shock any moralist. I remember when it was usual to play cards only in the evenings. The whist craze brought the afternoons into play, literally, and now the morning, twice a week, is common for bridge 'teams' to choose. Women, of course, are the leisure class in America; but what would be thought of a business man who left his office twice a week for the whole morning to play bridge, or had friends. See Hutchinson's "This Freedom," published by Little Brown & Co., Boston. in to play with him there? And if our homes are not our business, what is?" That was before dancing claimed not only the evening but often the afternoon and even earlier hours of the day. Abolish the "Cave Man" Courtships Courtship, the vestibule of marriage, also needs the corrective hand of the girls of the upper teens. The motion pictures, by daily showings of the "primitive love" of the cave men and Mohammedan barbarians, and frenzied kissing of people dressed like gentlemen and ladies, have unconsciously broken down modest reserve in many young people, who have been still further drawn. into bold and brutal love-making by the animal dances that abound, in which there is so little of manly or womanly reserve that naturally there is none at all in the privacy of the rural auto ride. It is time the "inner circles" should say "Whoa" to these runaway human animals. Love-making should not be merely physical. The beautiful sex attraction God put in us for great and noble purposes should be kept in the subliminal consciousness, not proclaimed hotly by eyes and lips and hands. If a young man and young woman, drawn to each other, have a mind and soul, let them reveal them to each other by such conversation, such reading as will show whether they could "keep company" for life, in which there will be need for something more than hugging and kissing to make it tolerable. I therefore quote an instructive extract from Senator Beveridge's life of John Marshall, describing his manly and successful courtship of one who became his strong and lovely wife. "So every door in Yorktown was thrown open to Captain John Marshall. But in Jacquelin Ambler's house was the lodestone which drew him. April had come and the time of blossoming. On mellow afternoons, or by candlelight when the sun had set, the young lover spent as much time as the proprieties would permit with Mary Ambler, telling her of the war, no doubt; and, as her sister informs us, reading poetry by the hour. Through it all he made love as hard as he could. He wooed as ardently and steadily as he had fought. The young lover fascinated the entire Ambler family. "Under the slouched hat, testifies Mary Ambler's sister, "there beamed an eye that penetrated at one glance the inmost recesses of the human character; and beneath the slovenly garb there dwelt a heart replete with every virtue. From the moment he loved my sister he became truly a brother to me . . Our whole family became attached to him, and though there was then no certainty of him becoming allied to us, we felt a love for him that can never cease. There was no circumstance, however trivial, in which we were concerned, that was not his care." He would "read to us from the best authors, particularly the poets, with so much taste and feeling, and pathos too, as to give me an idea of their sublimity, which I should never have had an idea of. Thus did he lose no opportunity of blending improvement with our amusements, and thereby gave us a taste for books which probably we might never otherwise have had." TREASURER. Here is a story apropos to mothers who neglect their home "business." It is credited to the Houston Post, but it fits the East better than the South. "What a sweet little girl" exclaimed Mrs. Societie, coming down the front steps. "Haven't I seen you before, dear?" "Yes'm!" "I thought so. Where?" "In your house." "Oh, to be sure!" "You come to play with my little Gladys sometimes, I presume?" "No'm; I'm Gladys." Specific Training for Wifehood and Motherhood SPEAKER (resuming). It is amazing that so little is done to prepare either girls or boys for a successful marriage, especially when one-fifth of the marriages are wrecked and not all the others satisfactory, and when one in every twelve children born dies in the first year. It would seem self-evident that mothers' clubs and other women's clubs should gather fiancées in training classes lest they become fiascos. All girls in the upper teens, whether "engaged" as yet or not, should meet to prepare themselves, physically, mentally, socially and spiritually for making the best possible home. They should study the question why nearly one third of babies born die before the 5th birthday, and why so many marriages end in divorce. Both these tragedies are preventable. They should learn to cook skilfully that they can make the plainest food both artistic to the eye and pleasant to the taste. They should prepare themselves to entertain the household at the evening round table as skilled story tellers and expressive readers and reciters. They should learn for the sake of their own. homes how to make social fellowship with cherished neighbors in their homes a real feast of friendship and not a mere ceremony of "sassciety." To do all this with abounding vitality, a woman, before and after marriage, should adopt the regimen and habits of an athlete. Shall a woman be unwilling to give up for the sake of her home the unhealthy indulgences that prize fighters renounce for mere victory and money? Many a marriage has been wrecked because the mother was "sicklier than she had any business to be.” What Sciences Should Girls Be Taught Preparatory to Motherhood? "Chiefly biology, hygiene, psychology and sociology," says Mary L. Read in The Outlook. "Not that all that is commonly taught under these captions will be useful to the mother. Moreover, she may have 'passed' in all of them with slight value to her mother work. To suggest only a few of the subjects within these sciences that are particularly important for her training, these would include, in sociology, the importance of the family in social welfare, the history of human marriage, the development of monogamy, the experiments in other forms of marriage and why they have been abandoned, the value of courtship, the fundamental causes of divorce and of infant mortality, the conditions that have produced more of comradeship between husband and wife, the wife's share of responsibility in the home. In psychology, she should learn how to study the developing mind and spirit of the little child, how to observe and make the most of the characteristics that are predominant in each stage in infancy, childhood, and adolescence, how habits are formed, how appetites and emotions are trained -and she and her family might be spared many a trial of spirit, perhaps even tragedy, by teaching her to appreciate the differences in the way mind and emotions work in men and in women and how emotions are weakened or strengthened. In biology she should gain a clear understanding of the wonderful processes of reproduction, what is known of heredity and congenital influences, the influence of sunlight, food, and temperature upon growth. In hygiene she should realize the close relation between physical condition and the life of the spirit; how her own life should be lived to meet adequately the physical requirements of motherhood, the actual physical care of the baby and the little child. "Unless she is one of the few who have gone on to college, or at least to high school, she has had little study of any of these sciences. Yet the fundamental principles of them all might be taught her profitably in the elementary grades, through nature study, geography, physiology, history and literature. "To be sure, these many problems involve vastly "Healthy, Happy Womanhood" is the title of a booklet for girls prepared by the Wisconsin State Board of Health, which the U. S. Health Service, Washington, D. C., values so highly that it keeps a supply as the best thing for girls who wish to prepare themselves by self-knowledge to be strong and beautiful home makers. Sent free on request. |