together take every domestic care off their hands; they have abundance of time and nothing to occupy it; plenty of money, and little use for it; pleasure without end, but not one definite object of interest or employment; flattery and flummery2 enough, but no solid food whatever to satisfy mind or heart?if they happen to possess either?at the very emptiest and most craving season3 of both. They
have literally nothing whatever to do. 4 * *
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And so their whole energies are devoted to the massacre of old Time. They prick him to death with crochet and embroidery needles; strum him deaf with piano and harp playing?not music; cut him up with morning visitors, or leave his carcass in ten-minute parcels at every 'friend's' house they can think of. Finally, they dance him defunct at all sort of unnatural hours; and then, rejoicing in the excellent excuse, smother him in sleep for a third of the following day. Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, perfectly natural death; and they will
1. Posy: small bouquet of flowers. dessert). 2. Nonsense (literally, a sweet and insubstantial 3. Seasoning, salt and pepper.
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MULOCK: A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN / 1597
never recognize his murder till, on the confines of this world, or from the unknown shores of the next, the question meets them: 'What have you done with Time?'?Time, the only mortal gift bestowed equally on every living soul, and excepting the soul, the only mortal loss which is totally irretrievable.
# #
But 'what am I to do with my life?' as once asked me one girl out of the numbers who begin to feel aware that, whether marrying or not, each possesses an individual life, to spend, to use, or to lose. And herein lies the momentous question.
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A definite answer to this question is simply impossible. Generally?and this is the best and safest guide?she will find her work lying very near at hand: some desultory tastes to condense into regular studies, some faulty household quietly to remodel, some child to teach, or parent to watch over. All these being needless or unattainable, she may extend her service out of the home into the world, which perhaps never at any time so much needed the help of us women. And hardly one of its charities and duties can be done so thoroughly as by a wise and tender woman's hand.
ft ft *
These are they who are little spoken of in the world at large. * * * They have made for themselves a place in the world: the harsh, practical, yet not ill- meaning world, where all find their level soon or late, and where a frivolous young maid sunk into a helpless old one, can no more expect to keep her pristine position than a last year's leaf to flutter upon a spring bough. But an old maid who deserves well of this same world, by her ceaseless work therein, having won her position, keeps it to the end.
Not an ill position either, or unkindly; often higher and more honourable than that of many a mother of ten sons. In households, where 'Auntie' is the universal referee, nurse, playmate, comforter, and counselor: in society, where 'that nice Miss So-and-so,' though neither clever, handsome, nor young, is yet such a person as can neither be omitted nor overlooked: in charitable works, where she is 'such a practical body?always knows exactly what to do, and how to do it': or perhaps, in her own house, solitary indeed, as every single woman's home must be, yet neither dull nor unhappy in itself, and the nucleus of cheerfulness and happiness to many another home besides.
# ft ft
Published or unpublished, this woman's life is a goodly chronicle, the title page of which you may read in her quiet countenance; her manner, settled, cheerful, and at ease; her unfailing interest in all things and all people. You will rarely find she thinks much about herself; she has never had time for it. And this her life-chronicle, which, out of its very fullness, has taught her that the more one does, the more one finds to do?she will never flourish in your face, or the face of Heaven, as something uncommonly virtuous and extraordinary. She knows that, after all, she has simply done what it was her duty to do.
But?and when her place is vacant on earth, this will be said of her assuredly, both here and Otherwhere?'She hath done what she could.'
1858
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1 598
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
In 1854 Nightingale (1820?1910) became famous for organizing a contingent of nurses to care for sick and wounded soldiers during the Crimean War, an event that provided an outlet for her passionate desire to change the world of hospital treatment. But Nightingale achieved her dream of an active and productive life only after many years of waiting; at the age of thirty-two she was still living at home, unmarried (having declined several proposals). Some members of her well-to-do family, in particular her mother, strongly opposed her nursing ambitions and pressured her to remain at home. In 1852, so bored with family and social life that she thought of suicide, she began writing Cassandra, which she called her 'family manuscript'; it records her frustrations before she escaped into a professional world where there was 'something to do.' In 1859 she revised the manuscript, and a few copies were privately printed that year, but it was not published until 1928. The title refers to the Trojan princess whose true prophecies went unheeded by those around her because she was judged insane.
From Cassandra
[NOTHING TO DO]
Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity?these three?and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offense. To
God alone may women complain without insulting Him!
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