OCR Text |
Show AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS The shirk thrives upon the industry of his fellows. When any particularly unpleasant task is to be accomplished the shirk is very busy about things that are necessary to be done, to be sure, but not virtually essential to the issue in hand. The feminine shirk will occupy herself with arranging the parlor, with dusting the dining room, with pruning the house plants, with "tidying" up the kitchen, while her "esteemed contemporary" plunges into the thickest of the work, washes the dishes, scrubs the floor, trims the lamps, blackens the stove, and performs the drudgery that nobody likes to perform but which somebody must do. The feminine shirk has perhaps a "weak back" or a "delicate stomach" or a "sensitive nature," or an unconquerable aversion to certain things, she must sleep into the morning, and therefore somebody else must get the breakfast, she cannot be found on her feet longer than just such a time: and her self-sacrificing mother and sister fill the gap and bear the burden which she so coldly shifts to these shoulders. The domestic masculine shirk contrives a way to be absent just when unpleasant takes must be done, or he sits quietly at his ease and utterly ignores them. But he can always tell just how a thing should be done, and point out improvements in the methods of others. When the masculine shirk happens to be the head of the family, woe betide his unfortunate wife. Either she must make up his deficiencies or let them entail wretchedness and suffering upon the whole family. If she can make them up she is the chief sufferer, and becomes the early victim of overwork and excessive care. The essential nature of every shirk, masculine and feminine, domestic, social or civil, is unmitigated selfishness. This should not be encouraged if justice is to be done. The mother who permits her daughters to array themselves in the clothes and sit in the parlor at fancy work while she drudges in the kitchen does them no less than herself an irreparable injury, and the daughters who permit themselves such indulgence are utterly incapable of making good wives and mothers, and of this let all young men take note. |