A DEFENSE OF PATCHES by Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1897

A DEFENSE OF PATCHES.

By Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher

What Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher Has to Say.

“A GIRL who can put on a square patch may not be as accomplished as one who can make a green worsted dog on a yellow ground, but she is of far more value in the community.”

In olden times it is possible that too much stress was laid on the importance of training girls to mend and darn so exquisitely that it would be difficult to discover that there had been any necessity for the labor, but if there was an error in teaching and exacting such perfect work it was a fault “that leaned to virtue’s side,” and far more praiseworthy than the wretched work to be found on the raiment of some—of many—of the girls of the present day. The laundresses in some of our girls’ seminaries could and sometimes do make strange revelations of the neglect and careless repairs of the garments that come to them for cleansing.

If a stitch is broken and allowed to run down until so large a hole is made that the stocking can not be worn until it is repaired, and is then, instead of being neatly mended, drawn into an ugly bunch, or if a rent in a dress is pulled together with thread so coarse as to deface and injure the cloth, who is to blame, the mother or the daughter? When the young lady was a winsome little girl was she ever taught to watch for the beginnings of evil in her wardrobe, to darn or mend every hole or rent as soon as discovered, and shown how to do it neatly?

Ah! no. With many the music, dancing, the French or German, must not be neglected for so common a thing as mending a stocking or sewing up a rent in a dress.

When the mothers of these young ladies were girls of ten or twelve they would have been ashamed to be proved such useless members of the home circle. Then, why should they now dwarf and defraud their own children? “Hard times” may come to all, and the practical knowledge which may be needed is quite as important for our daughters as for our sons. Give your children every accomplishment—and of the highest order—that can be secured, but take not the smallest fraction from the far more practical instructions that in mature age may save them from great mortification, suffering and perhaps ruin.

There are none so prosperous that they may not be placed in positions where they would gladly exchange the rarest accomplishments for the executive ability which in their youth they so lightly esteemed. In such cases parents must see that their daughters will suffer more than their sons if the practical part of their education has been neglected.

If a young lady has what in these days is the rare skill of compelling her needle to assist her, with scant materials by some simple and appropriate trimming, until she makes an old, dilapidated garment look “amaist as weel as noo,” she will have cause to bless the mother all the days of her life who led her from her youth in the way she should go. Whatever changes and vicissitudes in her mature age may come upon her, she will have little to fear compared with those, who, in prosperous days, were only the fanciful ornaments of their homes. These, when confronted by adversity, are, through their ignorance, only oppressive burdens upon those who are compelled to provide for their support.

—Thrice a Week World.