LADIES' COLUMN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 952, 7 May 1879, Page 4 (Supplement)

LADIES' COLUMN.

LETTERS TO FARMERS' DAUGHTERS. CULTURE OF THE BEAUTIFUL. j My De.vii Gikls, —Did you ever think how the Creator must love beauty 1 What lavish expenditure of taste meets the eye on every hand ! Every mountain, rock, and tree, is a statue of beauty. Every outspread landscape is a picture of beauty. The carpet of green at our feet—every leaf, vine and flower, is a form of beauty —'' God's smiles to man !" Every floating mist-wreath is a shadowy reflection of beauty. Every stream and ocean bed is a glassy mirror of beauty. Every star above us is a blazing face of beauty. What beauty in motion ! Winds, waves, clouds, and trees, as well as the myriads of insects and all animate creation, seems to dance their eternal cotilion of glory. None of us love beauty too well; they who court it most devoutly, are nearest kin to One who has no love of beauty—if indeed such a one could be found—is very near the brute-creation. To cultivate, then, most assiduously—in our persons, characters, and homes—every form of beauty, becomes a duty of privilege. A healthy body, joined to a peaceful mind, a cultivated intellect, aud a lovely, unselfish disposition, will impart a charm to the face, in spite of irregular features ; neatness in the simplest dress, joined to graceful, winning manners, beautifies any figure. That home, unadorned with costly etagere, elegant mirrors and Brussels carpets, yet possesses undescribable charms, contrived from a mother and sister's delicate and fertile taste. My dear girls, are any of you inclined to envy your more wealthy neighbor, or the cosily city home of some elegant schoolmate 1 Do some of yon feel your sense of beautiful stifled and starved in a barren homo ] Let me remind you that every woman's nature possesses some in nate power to beautify and adorn, if she will but cultivate it. Let me tell you what I saw last month in a pleasant.rural home, where the daughters have narrow means, and many difficulties to compass, not the least of which is a father, whom it is not always easy to bring to their ways of thinking.

As it is early in the forenoon, we may suppose our friends to be engaged in the duiry, or kitchen, or preparing for dinner ; so if you have a mind to follow, we will enter by this pleasant south door, into the near sitting-rooin. A glimpse into the cool wide kitchen, looks as if all work had been accomplished there some day last week—so still and clean does it seem.

Did you observe that woodbine over the door as we entered, with that climbing clematis, and that stand of plants under the east window 1 That elegant foliage plant, and those varieties of geraniums were procured for a mere nothing, as they were slips which were cast under foot by a gardener in the next town ; and those sweet monthly roses can easily be obtained from some friend who has thrifty ones. A few minutes each day to turn them round to the light, sprinkle and dust them, with an occasional addition to the earth, will cause them to flourish, ensure their growth, fill your house with fragrance, and your heart with pleasure I amid the pause 3of toil. See those hanging shelvea ; are they not beautiful 1 Miss Emma watched her chance, after her father built that nice carriage-house aciOfS the garden to gather some bits of board, and sent them by Dick to get planed and stained, and afterwards the leather work to put on the edges, sides, and top, with a chain of the same fanciful festooning, and the result is that beauty. In that corner is a catch-all, for father's papers. It is three-cornered in shape manufactured from pasteboard, and is covered with shells. Miss Emma has takeu time to gather, clean, and color them crimson and purple, which, mixed with white, cause a brilliant effect. These she has glued to the pasteboard, and with cords for hangiug, this article of taste and convenience is completed. We might take a peep into every room, and find scattered everywhere articles combining convenience and beauty—the charming results of fertile tastes and ingenioHs fingers/ No home need be barren of attractions if a well directed energy and improved opportunities are made instruments to this end. Ah ! girls, for the sake of joys you may impart and receive—for the sake of homes waiting you as mistresses—that you may bo like all that is fairest in earth and sky, cultivate beauty. If there be any lack in your home, and in yourselves, strive the more earnestly to make up these defects, by removing that which is offensive, covering that which is imperfect, and adorning that which is plain. If your tea-table lacks in quality and quantity, place flowers upon it. Garry out this principle in every department, and your homes will lie beautiful and your lives yield a fr.igiunC'j than the rose.— Yours heartily, T. S. H. WHAT A WOMAN CAN" DO.

As a wife and mother, woman can make the fortune and happiness of her children ; and, even if they do nothing else. Binviy tins would be sufficient destiny. By her thrift, prudence, and tact, she can secure to her partner and herself a competence in old age, no matter how small their beginning, or how adverse a

fate occasionally be theirs. By her cheerfulness she can restore her husband's spirits, shaken by the anxiety of business.

By her tender care she can often restore him to health, if disease has seized upon his over-tasked powers. By counsel and her love she "can win him from bad company, if temptation in an evil hour has led him astray. 'By her example and her precepts', apd her sex's insight into character, she can mould her children, however diverse their dispositions, into sjood men and women. And by leading In all things a true and beautiful life, she call refine, elevate, and spiritualise all who come within reach, so that with others of her sex emulating and assisting her, she can do more to regenerate the world than all the statesmen or reformers that over legislated. She can do as much —.das ! poriia| 8 even more —to degrade 111:111. if .she ch'HKjv.s to do it. Wim cin estimate the evil that woman has tho power t'i dn \ As a wire, sh * c 111 rti.n her Imsi.and l>y extravagant:-, f ,]!>-. u,' want i.f itlL-cHuii. Shu c-m uiak-.i :k (k-v:l all outcast of a man, *vh" mi ''.: *>'„•:<!:• * - is! Ii n-o become a g 111 s..cl -ty. Kh-s cm bring !.:c!c.-r-Mi:i ulkier into >vli ii h i.-? lieu:', a happy iinniv. >!i--c.i'i e L:;in:>• ' Ui wh->iu (.<0 1 hxuisinisr.' d !n-r oh n\;oiu:.i vile an.: .veil vil.i "omen. Slu: call low>;r even the iiii.rai ione of society itself, and tiins as the .spring head. tShe c 'H, in fine, '.'-jeoine an ills!runient of evil, instead "f an angel of good. Instead of linking ILnvers of truth, purity, and spirituality spring up Uit " footsteps ti>: the whole earth smiles with loveliness that is almost celestial, she can transform it to a black and blasted desert, covered with the scorn of all evil passions, anu swept by the bitter blast of everlasting death. This is what a woman can do for the wrong as well aa for the right. Is her mission a little one ? Has she no " worthy work," as has become the cry of late ? Man may have a harder task to perform, a rougher path to travel, but he has none more influential than woman's.