OCR Text |
Show A GIRL'S MINUTES. What I It That Touuc Women Do Thit Cuoipsli Them to Ue Always "Bmj?" Does anybody know what becomes of a girl's time? Was there ever a girl who could tell what she did with it or where she put it, or account iu any reasonable way for its mysterious disappearance! Are the girls' minutes like the lost pins of which nobody ever finds a trace, though the factories have been at work so long that one would think that the dropped ones would constitute in themselves an adequate source of supply f There are some things which have this capacity for utter annihilation. Wild animals ani-mals are never found dead iu the forests; watering place friendships vanish into wind swept space; the bole in tiie stocking speaks of a texture which once waa there, but is there uo longer; yet these tbiuys get out of the world uo more quietly and uu-, uu-, accountably than the hours aud minutes of a good proportion of young women. There is a theory, which is commonly accepted, that a girl's time is all speut i upon dress. Certainly a little of it goes in that way, but the amount must be i small. Older women, with many social and domestic cares, dress quite as well as young girls, aud usually belter. They cannot give all their time, or even any appreciable part of it, to the planning and purchasing of their raiment, so there is evidiiutlv a fallacy in the idea that femi- nine attire is capable of engrossiug the enure en-ure attention of a womau. There is another theory that a girl's time is spent in entertaining members of the other sex, but this is absolutely untenable. Even the mildest of flirtation calls for two Itinera, and, as the student of our social system is never weary of pointing out, we have no class of men whose time is their own. A girl may spend her evenings and Sundays Sun-days in amusing the masculine half of creation, cre-ation, but- business hours are sacred from her invasion. Her will might be good to so spend the hours from suurise till midnight, but in the nature of tho case her opportunities oppor-tunities are limited. Is it domestic cares which are so absorbing? absorb-ing? The newspaper paragrapher would say not, and 1 think ou the whole be is right. This is not because most girls are unwilling to share the household responsibilities, responsi-bilities, but because, during the time of their education home life goes on without their assistance, aud once out of school ' they find no place ready made in which they can be useful. It is about as easy for the camel to go through the needle's eye as for the daughter of a well to do family to find any domestic duties worthy the name in her father's house. There are yet other ways in which it is popularly supposed a girl's time is employed, em-ployed, such as study aud correspondence. But did you ever go to a morning class? If so yon know perfectly well the formula: "I was so busy 1 hadn't a minute to spare for preparation!" Have you any women among your correspondents, cor-respondents, and did one of them ever write a letter without explaining how busy she was, and had been for weeks past and would be for weeks to come? Whatever What-ever the mysterious, grinding tasks which fate imposes upon the young women who have apparently nothing to do, by their own confession studying and writing are not among the things sought. Perhaps the subject is worthy of scientific investigation. It would be as useful to the race as the discovery of the north pole; , and, though the inquiry might be as long and tedious as an arctic exploration, it wonld not be so dangerous. Industrially it might be of value. Here is a vast amount of labor which we know, on the testimony of every girl in the laud, is put forth daily, yet without visible result. Would not experiments to make it productive be as legitimate as those for the reduction of aluminium or the utilization of the solar force? Anthropologists might spare a little time from the study of cranial development find turn their attention to finding out what becomes of a girl's time. It ought surety to be done, if for no other reason than to gratify the dear girls themselves, who cer-I cer-I tainly are as much in the dark on this question as any one else |