How Homes are Made.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 173, 9 October 1886, Page 5

How Homes are Made.

It is often said in disparagement of women that they have not originated or invented much. They have not ; but it is their devotion to the minor details of life which has set men so fiee to distinguish themselves, and in all men's achievements woman have an unacknowledged part. Home, especially the English home, has inspired volumes of poetry and floods of oratory. It is a subject on which we can all speak from the heart. But when we come to consider any one home in particular, we soon realise how entirely its essential character, its home likeness, depsnds on the details of comforts supplied by the women who care for ifc. The fanaily Benae of well being doea not consiat in the romantic surroundings or architectural beauty, or artistic furnishing ot a house, so much as in the cleanliness, the order, the serving of the meajs, the homely work— in fact, stocking darning o f the establishment. It is impossible to conceive of perfect family love permitting a state of perpetual discomfort, or of mutual affection remaining unruffled and undiminiahed amid the friction which such a state would occasion. That home can only be serenely happy where the daily homely duties are well done — not intermittently, not in a whirlwind of bewildering activity that scares the male population from the scene, but — I need not say how ; I appeal to the inner consciousness of women. What dignity, what beauty and delight it gives our humblest work to think of it as essential to the peace and comfort of our English homes, and as enabling those to labour undisturbed who win our bread, and create our literature, and rule and teach our people ! And verily women need some such coneolation. Consider how much of their work perishes in the day that it is done, and has all to be repeated, day after day, and then say whether it is matter for great marvel that some of them have been ill-advised enough to talk occasionally about their 14 narrow sphere." The changes are rung on washing and ironing and cleaning and mending days, while every morning the same familiar objects demand washing or dusting that have been washed or dusted thousands of time3 before. Tangible results are not what woman chiefly accomplishes, and she often works long and hard without having " anything to show " in the end. There is poetry in her life, it is true, but there is an enormous amount of prose. And sometimes I wish, when a man expresses horror at some woman's escaping from her housework to a wider field of action, that he would "try a continued course of dusting, washing up and mending stockings, and see if he ever found it at all monotonous. — 1 ' Cassell's Magazine. "