A Plea for Plain Baby-Clothes.
By Mrs. Alice E. Ormsbee
Custom is indeed relentless. No less power could enforce a manner of living so little conducive in many respects to health, comfort, and convenience as that often seen. Women with many cares, young children, slender purses, at best but one servant, often none, yet wishing to be bright, cheerful, and companionable, secretly sigh for the time to rest, think, and read in order not to become household drudges. They must save time—it cannot be bought. I wonder to how many weary mothers it has occurred to gain time and means by dressing baby plainly. Baby with her smiling face hardly needs the aid of tucks and ruffles to make her attractive. The principle requisite is to keep her warm and clean. Then let there be plenty of soft flannels and little dresses. But why should the former be embroidered and the latter a mass of tucks and lace? It takes six times as long to put six tucks into a little dress as it does to make the plain wide hem and the weary heap of sewing (for the easy-running machine deludes the mother) is made endless. Baby will smile just as sweetly in a plain white dress finished with a bit of lace at the neck and sleeves. Every mother knows that the cost of handsome little dresses is no small drain on the family purse, and baby upsets the ink-bottle on her embroideries as calmly as on a plain dress. Bridget, too, has her trials with these little dresses. In summer the ironing is long and hot, and in winter the drying is vexatious, oftentimes making washing meet washing. Make the dresses perfectly plain, and you will realize that a willing kitchen maid is better than ruffles and temper therewith. And why should baby's two-a-day dresses be starched? They look better when fresh, perhaps, but with a young child they will keep spotless hardly fifteen minutes longer, which is a small gain contrasted with the time taken in ironing. This may seem to be more of a comfort for the servant than for the mother, but this is only the outside aspect. With work lighter Bridget's temper is sweeter, the order to watch the baby for a little is less liable to meet with sullen acquiescence, and the child's hour with her is all the merrier. After many hours of patient care and labor how welcome this little rest and change to the mother! Welcome, doubtless, to baby too, who has felt grieved in her baby fashion with the impatience which will come, but which expresses fatigue rather than the lessening of the mother-love. A rest in a twofold way to the mother, an equally clean, perhaps happier baby, a pleasanter servant, and a calmer home. Are not these objects worth the sacrifice? If a mother is willing to bear the extra burden of sewing ungrudgingly for the sake of having her pet "look like other children," she should remember that it is not so well for the child. Nothing can compensate to the little one for the loss of that calm and equable government, which can only come with sound body and unworn nerves. As a mother once sung for Saint Nicholas:— "Would you know the baby's skies?
Baby's skies are mother's eyes;
Mother's eyes and smile together
Make the baby's pleasant weather.
"Mother, keep your eyes from tears,
Keep your heart from foolish fears,
Keep your lips from dull complaining
Lest the baby think 'tis raining."
—Mrs. Alice E. Ormsbee, in Good Housekeeping