Confused and Distressed?

'Women have great reason to be thankful for their ignorance on some topics.   Our heads are not confused and distressed with the mists and mazes of politics; with a few painful exceptions, we are blessedly unaware that the country will be shipwrecked and the world overturned if B. is elected and C. is not; we do not have to contend at elections; we know that the country has gone on and the Government endured though B. was made an MP and C was not.'   Home Notes, 1894.


In Norway, some time ago, the women supporters of the Temperance movement asked the authorities to forbid the employment of women and girls in public-houses.   The petition has been granted, and now no alehouse-keeper can employ any other woman than is wife to help him in his business.  What a good thing it would be if this most excellent example were followed here.   I know nothing more pitiful or more derogatory to the dignity of womanhood than to see a girl behind a bar over which dissolute half-drunken men are lounging, and indulging in coarse conversation.   Home Notes, March 1894.


A woman's desire to look nice is a right and natural instinct, and even amongst criminals it is said to be very strong.
A prison wardress, in telling of her charges, relates that the hardest punishment of all to the majority of women is being obliged to wear the coarse, ugly, prison garb.  Even the most hardened female convicts never quite lose the desire to look nice.   Home Notes, March 1894.



Busy women are invariably the happiest.   It is in the idle women that we find hysteria, depression, melancholy, and morbid feeling of all sorts arise.   Those who are not obliged to earn a living, and have not much work to do in the house, should take up a hobby, and occupy themselves steadily in one way or another.
Outdoor exercise for at least two hours daily should be taken.  Teaching poor children, making clothes for the poor, visits of charity, and visiting the sick are occupations in which all may feel that they are doing good.
Every woman should make a point of taking lessons in cookery, for the talent of cooking does much to promote happiness in life, as well as economy, should she have to set up housekeeping on her own account.   Home Notes, 1894


Coloured stockings are pretty, but not always harmless, as the Archduchess Maria Immaculata, widow of Archduke Charles Salvator, has lately discovered to her cost.  A slight scratch on her right foot was poisoned by the dye from her stocking, and she had to undergo a very painful operation in consequence.    Home Notes, 1894


Drunkeness is such a terrible affliction both to the drunkard and to all his family, that anything which tends to prevent it must be welcomed.   The feeling of craving for a drink may be obviated by making a decoction of half an ounce of ground quassia bark in a pint of vinegar.
A teaspoonful of this may be drunk in a little water every time the drink craving comes on.   Home Notes, April, 1894


BEWARE   OF   BUTTONED   BOOTS
Why do women who haven't got pretty feet, and who know they haven't, wear the boots that make their feet look their very worst?   A woman with big, shapeless feet, or crooked feet, can afford to wear but one kind of boot - a laced one, and never a low shoe under any circumstances.  Home Notes, 1894

This is boy, my younger son's cat.   Don't worry, he wasn't confused or distressed, merely grumpy.


I could be posting about the mincemeat which I made, the mince pies I baked, sousing the Christmas Cake with alcohol, or decorating the house and making it jolly for the season, for I have done all of that, but what I am most enjoying at the moment, is reading my battered copy of Home Notes, 1894.   

I hope you enjoy what is left of the weekend.
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