A girl has, indeed, eaten of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil when her eyes are opened in such
wise that she is ashamed of her plain, honorable, old-fashioned parents,
or, if not ashamed, is still willing to let them retire to the
background while she shines in the front.
I did not write this article for the purpose of saying what I hold to be
the bounden duty of every father and mother in the land; viz., to
educate the daughter as they educate the son, to some practical,
bread-winning pursuit. That should be the rule, and not the exception. A
girl should be trained so that with either head or hands, as artist or
artisan, in some way or other, she will be able to go into the world's
market with something for which the world, being shrewd and knowing what
it wants, will pay in cash. Rich or poor, the American father who fails
to give his daughter this special training is a short-sighted and cruel
man.
My thought was rather of the girls themselves. Some of them will read
this. So will some of their mothers-Mothers and daughters often, not
invariably, are so truly _en rapport_ that their mutual comprehension is
without a flaw. There are homes in which, with the profoundest regard
and the truest tenderness on both sides, they do not understand each
other. The mother either sees the daughter's discontent, recognizes and
resents it, or fails to see it, would laugh at its possibility, and pity
the sentimentalist who imagined it.
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