An Untidy Girl by Emily P. Collins

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 1, 1883

An Untidy Girl.

By Emily P. Collins

"O dear, Aunt Patty, I am perfectly discouraged in trying to make Mary a neat, orderly girl. A month ago I told her that she must take care of her own room, and wished her to keep it in nice order. 'Yes, mamma, I will do so,' said she; and now, I just went into her room, and such a looking place! Her bed, just as she crept out of it this morning; every chair loaded with shawls, wraps, dresses, and skirts, all wrinkled and tumbled together; her toilet-table strewed with dirty combs fill'd with hair; also hair-pins, nail-brushes, caramel papers, cologne, face powder, partly eaten pears and peaches; and on the stand was her best bonnet, gloves, and parasol, with her ink-stand and paint brushes; and everything was in confusion and covered with dust. In her shoe-bag, mixed with slippers and dirty stockings, were several cambric handkerchiefs, point-lace collars, and this elegant embroidered sacque, that I believe she has worn while working at her painting lessons, and has wiped her brushes on it. It is entirely ruined. She begins a dozen pieces of work and never finishes anything. Just so with her studies. She has a little smattering of everything, and is proficient in nothing. To think that a daughter of mine should be such a careless, wasteful, inefficient slattern. And I have talked and talked to Mary, and it does no good; I am utterly discouraged."

This was all addressed by Mrs. Smith, a notably energetic wife and excellent housekeeper, to her old aunt Patty, who sat quietly knitting, arrayed in a high, starched cap and spotless white neck-handkerchief and apron; and when she had adjusted her spectacles and carefully taken up a dropped stitch, she looked up and remarked:

"Do you think it is all Mary's fault? Have you always done your whole duty by the child?"

"Have I done my whole duty by her? what an idea! Was there ever a mother who slaved herself for a child as I have done for her? and I have never denied her anything in the world that she wanted."

"And right there lies your fault," said aunt Patty; "you always waited upon her when she was a child, and did everything for her, when she should have done it for herself. You let her go to your bureau drawers and put everything in disorder, and to your work-basket, and scatter its contents about the room, throw nutshells on the floor, and leave partly munched fruit and apple-cores on the window-sills; and, instead of making her replace the articles that she had disordered, though she was quite old enough to have done so, and to have cleaned the room that she had littered, which would have been the best reproof you could have given her, you merely said, 'Mary, you shouldn't have done so,' and let her then go off to her play, while you went to work and put things to rights again. When she came in from school you permitted her to throw her books, bonnet, and cloak on a chair, or anywhere, and never made her put them in the proper place, but did it yourself. You have never made her repair a rent in her clothes, darn a stocking, or take a stitch for herself, though she is now sixteen. When she complained, as children will, that the teachers in the public school were 'cross and hateful,' you withdrew her and sent her to Miss Brown's school, and from that to another, and so you let her change according to her own fancy or caprice, and how could she become proficient in any study? When she went into the kitchen to try her hand at some kind of cookery, instead of encouraging her to persevere, you said, 'Mary, you are so awkward, let me finish it.' And why should she be saving and careful of her clothes, so long as she is not made to realize their cost, and has nothing to do but to express her wish, and it is granted? In short, you, yourself, are responsible for Mary's careless and untidy habits."

Mrs. Smith winced under the severe lecture; her face flushed, but she held her peace to the end, for she feared a revision of Aunt Patty's 'last will and testament,' and only remarked, though a little sarcastically, as she left the room, 'It is very singular that folks who never had any children are the only people that could train them exactly right.'—Emily P. Collins, in Pacific States Watchman.