What Shall We Do With Our Daughters?
By Squire Sensible
Teach them self-reliance. Teach them to make bread. Teach them to make shirts. Teach them to foot up store bills. Teach them not to wear false hair. Teach them to wear thick, warm shoes. Bring them up in the way they should go. Teach them how to wash and iron clothes. Teach them how to make their own dresses. Teach them that a dollar is only a hundred cents. Teach them to cook a good meal of victuals. Teach them how to darn stockings and to sew on buttons. Teach them every day, dry, hard, practical common sense. Teach them to say, No, and mean it; or, Yes, and stick to it. Teach them to wear calico dresses, and do it like queens. Give them a good, substantial, common school education. Teach them that a good rosy romp is worth fifty consumptives. Teach them to regard the morals and not the money of their suitors. Teach them all the mysteries of the kitchen, the dining room, and the parlor. Teach them that the more one lives within his income the more he will save. Teach them to have nothing to do with intemperate young men. Teach them that the farther one lives beyond his income the nearer he gets to the poor-house. Rely upon it that upon your teaching depends, in a measure, the weal or woe of their after life. Teach them that a good steady mechanic without a cent is worth a dozen loafers in broadcloth. Teach them the accomplishments, music, painting, drawing, if you have time and money to do it with. Teach them that God made them in his own image, and no amount of tight lacing will improve the model.—Squire Sensible.