THE SATURDAY REVIEW' ON "GROWN UP DAUGHTERS."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 190, 17 November 1876, Page 15

THE SATURDAY REVIEW' ON "GROWN UP DAUGHTERS."

Nothing *( sa y s the ' Saturday Keview') can be more intolerable than the mismanagement and discomfort to be found in countless households where there are plenty of grown-up daughters, who have really little to do but grumble at the dreariness of their lives and fret themselves into permanent ill-health. Perhaps they take sufficient interest in the housekeeping to wonder contemptuously how their mother can be troubled with) such inefficient servants " creatures" -who cannot even make palatable coffee or keep the silver bright. They have no patience with the shortcomings of the overworked housemaid, from whom they expectjas much personal attendance as if she had only a lady's-maid's work to perform. They cannot think why the gardener does not show more taste in his arrangements of the flower-beds, and why he does not cut off the withered roses. Half the young women one meets in the country sink into a state of semi-imbecility from idleness and want of interest in their surroundings. From mere thoughtlessness and j ignorance they grow up exacting and unreasonable. From want j of active exercisethey become the ready prey to hysteria, dyspepsia, and spine complaints. They marry any one who will have them, simply because they are so bored that any chance is welcome. J They make bad wives, because they have never learnt the rudi- ; ments of domestic economy. When the unfortunate mother of | such daughters allows herself to be persuaded to add a lady help ;to the establishment, the height of absurdity is reached. Four or j five plain, commonplace, stupid girls may lounge about the house | — one with a piece of soiled fancy-work, another playing snatches of dance music, and a third reading French novels on the sofa, j while perhaps a pretty, graceful lady lays the fire, dusts the room, I and endeavors, probably in vain, to bring order in the uncomfort1 able and chaotic establishment.