WEARY WOMEN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3076, 6 May 1881, Page 3

WEARY WOMEN.

Nothing is more reprehensible, and thoroughly wrong than the idea that a woman fulfils ncr duty by doing an amount of work that is far beyond her strength. She not only does not fulfil her duty, but she most signally fails in it; and the failure is. truly deplorable. There can be no sadder sight than that of a' broken-down, overworked, wife and mother—a woman who is tired all her life through. If the work of the household cannot be accomplished by order, system, and moderate work, without the necessity of wearing, heart breaking toil —toil that is never ended and never begun —without making life a treadmill of labour, then, for the sake of humanity, let the work. , go. Better live in the midst of disorder than that order should be purchased at so high, a price—the cost of health, strength, happiness, and all that makes existence endurable. The woman who spends her life in unnecessary [labour is unfitted for the highest duties at home. She should be the haven of rest to which, both liusband and children turn for peace and refreshment. She should be the careful, intelligent advise, and guide of the one, the tender confidant and helpmate of the other. How is it possible for a woman exhausted in body, as a natural consequence in mind also, to perform either.of, these ©Sices. No; it is not possible. * The constant strain ia too great. Nature gives way beneath it. She loses health and spirits and hopefulness, and, more than all, her youth ! —the last thing that a woman should allow to slip from her; for, no matter how old she is in years, she should be young in heart ancl feeling, for the youth of age is sometimes more attractive than youth itself. To the overworked woman this green old age is out of the question ; old age age comes on her, sere and yellow before its time. Her disposition is ruined, her temper is soured, her very nature is changed by the burden which, too heavy to carry, is dragged along as long as weary feet and tired hands can do their part. Even her affections are blunted, and she becomes merely a machine —a woman without the time to be womanly, a mother without the time to train and guide her children as only a mother can, a wife without the time to sympathise and cheer her husband, a woman so overworked during the day that, when night comes, her sole thought and most intense longing is for the rest and sleep that very probably will not come, and, even if it should, that she is too tired to enjoy. Better by far let everything go unfinished, to live as best she can, than to entail on herself and family the curse of overwork.