NOTHING TO DO | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 9, 1880

NOTHING TO DO.

MANY mothers, accustomed to hard work themselves, allow their daughters to grow up in comparative idleness. These unfortunate girls, with no special purpose before them, are in danger of learning only how to dress, to play the piano, possibly to cook a dinner—although that is not very common—but with no more idea that they are important factors in the great plan of humanity than if they were not human beings at all.

If they ever do any work in the world through necessity, it is likely to be inefficient and unsystematic work; or, if they do achieve anything really good, it is done with the pain and difficulty which those must suffer who work without proper discipline or knowledge. They are not contented and happy, for they have nothing to do with the time, which often hangs heavily upon their hands.

All girls should be occupied; if housework is distasteful, let them learn some trade. Useful work has a marked effect on character; and it will be a great stride toward that earthly millennium, for which some cherish vague hopes, when every woman, as well as every man, shall enter mature life, prepared by a training in useful work, to feel that she is one member of a great human family mutually dependent, and yet with an individual independence—where each has a part to do.—Sel.