WHAT ONE MAN THINKS ABOUT IT.
By Laicus
I had occasion to make an early call upon Mr. Hardcap on my way to the station the other morning. I knocked at the door, and Mrs. Hardcap opened it. I thought I never saw her look more becoming; a white handkerchief tied around her head, a common calico gown on, and broom in hand; but she was evidently greatly perturbed. “Laws-a-mercy, Mr. Laicus! is that you?” said she, flushing to the roots of her hair, or rather to the bounds of her handkerchief. “To think you should ha’ caught me in this fashion. I tho’t it was the butcher boy with the meat for dinner, and I wouldn’t keep him a-waitin’.” I made my apology as well as I could for having so surprised her, and asked for Mr. Hardcap, whom she told me I would find in the stable. So I followed the path around to the stable, and there I found Mr. Hardcap with overalls on, cleaning out the last night’s bedding from the stall. “Good mornin’, Mr. Laicus,” said he. “I’m right glad to see you. Either you’re early or I’m late this mornin’. You don’t generally catch me doin’ this work arter breakfast, anyhow; but I kinder overslept myself this mornin’.” Whereupon he pulled off his buckskin glove and shook hands with me cordially; then, pushing back his hair, he leaned on his dung-fork, resting while I told him my errand. As I came away I meditated on the difference which was a puzzle to me then, and has not become a whit less puzzling since. Why should Mrs. Hardcap be ashamed of her broom, and Mr. Hardcap not be ashamed of his dung-fork? Why should her handkerchief be any worse than his slouch hat, or her calico gown require any more apology than his overalls? Why should work be an honor to a man and a disgrace to a woman? Why should the husband not be ashamed to be caught in his garden, or his stable, or his counting-room, but the wife thinks it necessary to blush and apologize if she is caught in her kitchen or her chamber work? The notion that work is disgraceful I can understand, though I don’t believe a bit of it. I can comprehend the consistency of the old-time aristocratic idea, which still lingers in England to-day, and which counts all industry as a symbol of the second class, and luxurious laziness as the mark of a noble birth. I can even see how the nobleman’s son should be willing to enlist as a midshipman on board the navy, and yet look down on the mechanic who helps build the ship on which he is to sail. He is at least self-consistent; he dishonors all toil. But by what process of subtle reasoning we draw a line and give honor to the male chemist in his laboratory, and refuse it to the female chemist in hers—the kitchen; give honor to the man who makes the garden beds out of doors, and refuse it to the woman who makes children’s beds indoors, I know not. Is medicine of more value than food? or are flowers worth more than children? There is another distinction I am equally perplexed over: useful work seems to be regarded as dishonoring, ornamental work as very creditable. If I call on Mrs. Greer, and she is sewing on her husband’s shirts, she hustles them away—no, she doesn’t when I call, but she does when any one else calls; but Mrs. Wheaton does not put by her crochet work or her embroidery. When I found Mrs. Wheaton one evening last summer setting out flowers in the garden with her own white hands, she brushed off the dirt and reached out the tip of one finger to shake fingers with me in the most charming way and without the least embarrassment; but if I had caught her dusting or sweeping or cooking, she would never have forgiven me. Being a man, I cannot be expected to understand these mysteries; but it is my private opinion, publicly expressed, that the ladies have themselves partly to thank for their endless troubles about servants. There is very little difficulty in getting good gardeners and even tolerable grooms and coachmen, and none whatever in getting clerks and salesmen and errand boys. We men regard work as honorable. But women conspire together to stigmatize all domestic work as a sort of disgrace. If they engage in such work at all, it is secretly, and they are humiliated if they are caught at it; and they do not allow their daughters to do it if they can help themselves; and then they wonder that it is so hard to find good cooks and housemaids. Pride, madam, is the greatest incentive to good work. The men enlist it on their side; you women enlist it against yours; and then you wonder that your servants take no pride in their work. It seems to me one of the incidental disadvantages of what people call the “higher education for women” that it tends to increase this feeling. A young girl goes to boarding school—I beg pardon, to a female college—for three or four years. During all that time she is waited on by servants. They cook her meals; they wait on her at table; they make her bed; they sweep her room; and when she goes home she has a dressmaker to do her sewing; and all this time she is learning to look down upon the common work of housekeeping as a menial kind of drudgery. When at last she is married and begins life for herself, she has to unlearn a considerable part of her four years’ course, unless her husband can afford to provide her with servants to do all the housework, and even then she needs to unlearn her habit of thought and feeling about it in order to inspire her servants with the pride which is essential to success in any toil. For this reason I would like to see every public school adopt the fashion of Wellesly and South Hadley, and give their pupils some part of their own work to do. Perhaps they would learn a trifle less of Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics; but this loss would be more than compensated for if they acquired the characteristics of King Lemuel’s virtuous woman, who “worketh willingly with her hands.” There! that’s what one man thinks about it. And whatever the women may say, they may depend upon it, that’s what a great many men think about it who have not my privilege of saying what they think, and hiding their real name under a nom de plume.—Laicus in Christian Union.