02.25.07
Editorial Comments of 1879
In Godey’s Lady’s Book, November 1879, the “editorial chit-chat” column featured these words:
… (preceding text and then a quote) “Our mothers used to pride themselves on their housekeeping and fine needlework. Why should not we?”
The editor answers: “To all which we say, “Why not?” Many a husband goes to ruin because his home is slovenly, his food badly cooked, his wife out of temper because out of health. Yet all these, even the last, could be avoided, as a rule; for work, when not too great, is healthy; and “nerves” are very often but the result of idleness and imagination. Feed a man on bad food, and ten to one he takes to drinking: first, to digest the trash he has been forced to eat; and finally, because alcohol has become a habit with him. On the other hand, the wife and children, because of the same wretchedly-cooked food, have to be physicked constantly. And generally the wife ends by getting “nerves.”
“Of course, there are some households in which the opposite to all this prevails: households in which the husband is a tyrant and brute, and the wife an overworked slave. It is not of such that we speak now. Of them we may have something to say on a future occasion.”
I don’t know about you, but I found this bit of writing to be highly amusing. I do believe that columns of this kind must have been forerunners to “Dear Abby.”
Yours,
Patricia
