A Sermon for Girls

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 15, 1877

A Sermon for Girls.

I am sick of this cant and twaddle, for I can call it by no better name. It is all nonsense—no girl need throw herself away. Couldn't support herself! And so she married that man with no moral stamina, no more fit for her to mate with, than an eagle is to mate with a crow!

“Why, what could she do? She couldn’t teach—she had no gift in the way of business. She had to marry.”

“Do,” said I, “why she could do housework?”

“Do housework!” My companion lifted her hands in horror and amazement. “Do housework! Who would recognize her, and then she is not able to do housework.”

“Is there caste in this land? I would recognize her none the less because she made my bread and washed my dishes. Not able to do housework! What has she taken upon her but housework? Will not the vows of wifehood and the care she has assumed be housework? Working out, as you term it, would be nothing to the responsibility she has taken.”

“Oh, well, the world does not look at it in this light.”

“Does that make the work any easier? I fail to see the point.”

“You always do put things so queerly. I for one would do just as Emma Haze did, if I were situated in the same manner.”

Would you, reader? The circumstances were these:

Emma Haze was an orphan. She had a home at an uncle’s, if such a place can be called home. She was tolerated there because she was a brother’s child. She worked for her board and was grudgingly allowed the clothes she needed. Although her education was good, she had no tact for teaching. She had no taste for business, as has been already said. Her forte was doing housework, but rather than support herself in that way—for fear of what Mrs. Grundy and her train of followers would say—she married a man who had no mind, no principle, no education, but a little money.

Would you have done it? I put the question to each girl who reads this—would you have done it? If you would, then you are—must I say it?—a coward.

And now I want to preach a sermon to every girl in this land. Perhaps there will be nothing beautiful in it, nor any poetry, but it will have this merit, there will be truth in it. This is the text: “Girls, your life will be just what you make it.”

Nothing is lowering to your dignity, if you do not let it lower your dignity. Keep in the path of virtue and you are in the right. It is no worse for you to go into the kitchen of another, and do the work, and be paid twenty shillings a week for it, than it is for you to marry and do the same work, and get nothing for it but what you eat and the clothes you wear.

I went in search of a servant last summer. For seven long weeks I searched sorrowing. One pretty looking girl told me that if I only lived in the town, instead of the country, she would help me, but she was afraid that she would soil her complexion, and then country work was such dirty work. Yet her father was a drunkard, and her mother earned their daily bread by going out at day’s work, scrubbing, washing, and the like. And there the daughter was content to sit with folded hands, waiting, hoping that some one would come and marry her.

“But,” says one, “I don’t want to think that I must work out all my life, for a living.”

You need not, but you will need courage, perseverance, and a will to do. Let me tell you a story. Mary Barnum and her brother were left orphans. She was sixteen, he fourteen. The father had been a shiftless, inefficient sort of man, and had laid up nothing for the future, so they were obliged to support themselves. Fortunately for her, she knew how to do housework, and any one who secured Mary, secured a treasure. So she went to work. She sent her brother to school. At the age of sixteen he went to learn a trade. Soon after she came to me.

“I am tired of doing housework, tired of scouring knives and cooking dinners, and now I am going to school,” she said.

“Going to school! What are you going to live upon?”

“I’ll earn my living.”

And she did. She worked at one place for a year. She earned twenty shillings per week. She spent fifty cents a week, so that at the end of the year she had one hundred and four dollars. Now she was ready to start for school. She selected the best school in the State—the State Normal. She rented a room for fifty cents a week. The school term for the year is forty weeks. Twenty dollars of her money was gone. Some few friends seeing that she was determined to go to school, furnished her room very plainly and cheaply.

She then resolved to live on one dollar a week; this necessitated the strictest economy. Thus sixty dollars of her money was spent. That left her but forty-four dollars with which to pay her tuition, buy her books, and get the needfuls.

To be sure she was not noted for the number of her dresses, nor was her hair frizzled and puffed in just the latest style, nor did she appear at every social; but one thing she was noted for, perfect lessons. She gave such attention to her studies that at the end of the year her scholarship was such that she received a training certificate, entitling her to teach without a public examination. Whatever she undertook she did well. Her motto was, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”

The next two years she taught, receiving four hundred dollars per year. At the end of the two years she managed to save four hundred dollars to send her to school the remaining two years. With the utmost economy it served her purpose. She had so little left that she had not enough to buy a new dress in which to graduate.

But when the bouquet was thrown her at the close of reading her essay, I hardly think she thought as to whether her dress was new or not. Afterward I heard the Governor and the State Superintendent congratulating her.

The next year she was offered an excellent situation in one of our union schools. But her health having failed somewhat during the last term she was in school, she went out doing housework, instead of accepting the position. Did it degrade her any? No; she did her work just as faithfully as if it were the chosen business of her life.

At the end of six months, her health being established, she commenced teaching. She was a successful teacher.

Where is she to-day? The wife of an eminent professor in one of our Western colleges.

I know another lady who borrowed the money to carry her through school, and paid it after she commenced teaching. To-day she is one of our successful writers.

Another who had no means of her own, had a brother who was a farmer. He had not much ready cash, but he gave her enough provisions from his farm for herself and a little girl boarder. For the board of the little girl she received five dollars per week. That five dollars per week carried her through school. After graduating, she taught. Her health failed, and the physician advised her to give up teaching and go to doing housework. Fortunately for her, she knew how to do housework.

She had a piano, and was very fond of music. So her next thought was, could she not find some place where she could earn her board and a little more, and take music lessons? She went here and there to find such a place. She succeeded at last, and was offered one dollar a week. She accepted the situation, and did her work so faithfully and well, that the lady of the house paid her two dollars instead of one. She told her she earned it. Was not that better than to have sat down and folded her hands, and bemoaned her fate?

At the end of the year her health was established, and to her other attainments, she had added that of music. Do you think she lost one womanly grace during the year she did housework? Far from it. She had gained in many things that make the true woman, and to-day few are her equals.

Girls, you need not say, “mother was to blame; she never taught me to work.” Put your mind to it, and your heart in it, and in a year’s time you will be mistress of housework.

Mary Mead was left penniless; she was then seventeen. A few days after the death of her parents she came to me.

“What shall I do,” she said. “I absolutely know nothing which will enable me to take care of myself.”

And it was so. She could sing a little, play a little, and paint a little. Her mother had done all the work, just as a good many other mothers are now doing, and left Mary to romp and play, and have a good time generally.

“What shall I do?” said she, bursting into sobs. “If I knew of any one who would teach me housework, I would work one year for my board.”

I told her I would find her such a place, and did so, and so thoroughly and well did she learn, that at the close of the year, the lady of the house was glad to keep her and give her wages. She stayed six years.

At the end of that time, the son, a noble, young man, who had just entered into business with his father, astonished his mother one morning by saying:

“I am going to ask Mary Mead to be my wife. Mother,” said he, “not a word. Do not say anything you will wish unsaid. If I mistake not, Mary will be just as astonished as you are.”

And Mary was. But why should she have been? She had a good deal of leisure, and she had improved that leisure. Sometimes she read, sometimes she played, sometimes she painted. The lady of the house had seen that she was lady-like and reserved, and had given her access to the library and piano at proper times—privileges which are not usually given to servants; nor do they usually deserve them, if they know what to do with them. She never intruded, but made the most of her privileges. She had saved her

money, and when they were married—for married they were—she had enough to plainly furnish their home, and over it she presided with grace and dignity.

Now I would not have you girls go out doing housework for the sake of getting a husband, for you might fail if that were your intention, but I would have you all remember, your life will be just what you make it.