What Our Girls Read.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 30, 29 December 1883, Page 6

What Our Girls Read.

Is is very unusual to find a mother who is indiffei'ent to her daughter's clothes. Even when that daughter is but a wee tot the petty details of costume are scrupulously looked after, and the maternal mind allows itself to be painfully disturbed over incongruousness of tint between the ribbons serving as fillet and necktie and by meagreness of garniture on frock and apron. Practical-minded women will eve r , in spite of girlish remonstrance, insist on low heels, loose clothes, and warm wraps, and with wise saws and hygienic maxims crush the fashionable yearnings of budding womanhood for French heels, a genteel waist and sleeveless jackets. But what can be said about the endeavour to provide for cur daughter's' mental nourishment and intellectual adornments ? To develop in them a taste for great and noble thoughts and the capacity to enjoy companionship with pure and elevating writers and association in ideal worlds filled with honest men and pure women ? To arouse that instinct for pure knowledge which is indeed the main purpose of education, certainly of that kind of education which is "the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them ?" There is no more amazing phase of nineteenth century feminine development than its passionate and enervating indulgence in nauseous mental pabulum and the appalling extent to which an unlimited supply of such stuff is furnished to the young. The same woman who is conscientiously careful of the school companionship of her daughter of 12 or 13 years is apparently criminally indifferent to the character of her associates in the world of books. She will watch what boy carries her girl's books home from school, but forgets to look below the cover of the new novel that same daughter has brought back from the circulating library, stopping there for it on the way home, Now this apathy of ignorance in regard to what young girls read is responsible for the destruction of the finer tone of character of many of our children developing into womanhood and explains a good deal of the frivolity, demoralizing coquetry, and unfortunate " affairs" which from time to time startle the community and bring sorrow and disgrace on highly x'espectable families. During the formative period of life, when both mind and body are changing and unfolding from tin? chrysalis state of the child into the completeness of the woman, the future stamina— moral powers of resistance and physical capacity of endurance, the purer mental tone and healthy bodily muscles — are dependent upon the manner in which both body and mind are exercised, fed and trained, and to the quality and quantity of the nutritious particles of matter, material and intellectual, which go to make the substance of the one and the spirit of the other. Feed your child on pickles and sweetmeats, allow her to wear paper-soled shoes and an insufficiency of flannel, and we all know what the consequences will be — dyspepsia and a hectic cough. Does it never occur to you that the analogy applies to her mental sustenance and equipment ? That if we feed her uninformed and emotional nature with high-spiced, morbid, unreal fiction she will become incapable of digesting better literature, and that by the time I she is a woman anything solid will be rejected by the pampered appetite? Have you ever seen this, you mothers ? Good fiction is truly a legitimate, healthful and improving means of pleasure and profit. By the perusal of clever novels of real and idealising pictures of human life our mental range of vision is extended, the focus of our intellectual glasses is truly adjusted, our sympathies enlarged, our prejudices driven away, our knowledge of and due regard for the just value of life increased and verified, were amused, improved, touched, warmed, helped and urged to help others. There is no better means of impressing on our minds the value of human nature than by the historical or critical novel. But such are not the results which usually follow the perusal of " the light literature of the day," which library people prove young girls devour yearly in unlimited quantities. ;

All that I am my mother made me. — John Quinoy Adams. ' ! ''Were you'in.the late war?" asked a Veteran of a badly demoralised citizen who came hobbling down the steeet on a crutch. "I don't, know how late you mean," was the sad" reply. "She, gave me this one las*t aight before 'tea. 1111 '• " ' [ '' ' ' !