HOME MAKERS AND HOUSEKEEPERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3464, 2 March 1912, Page 10

HOME MAKERS AND HOUSEKEEPERS.

We so often hear it said of a woman •'•Wliat a lovely housekeeper -she is!” and, knowing more of that house of which she is the keeper, we sigh with regret that she is not a homemaker as well. The services of a housekeeper may be hired—excellent services—and she will see that all requisite dusting and catering are faithfully done according to contract, but the homemaker's talent is one called forth and exercised solely by the love of those for whose happiness the home exists, and tire mere making of things spick and span is alwas secondary and subservient to the ingiiei needs of the household. Tho -% i■ i* and mother who is the rmil homemaker differs from the wife «ii n.oth*>r >vbr i-, above all things, the rood c oiiu '•» eper, just as comfort ’*ffers from discomfort. The most untutored Nora is equal to making fetishes of scrubbing brushes and .brooms, and to considering a frequent upheaval of furniture and rugs as indisputable evidence of Taunted good housekeeping; but it is the woman of different and fines perceptions who sets up a higher home deity than a feather duster, though the maker of the ideal home is by no means indifferent- to order and cleanliness, which are conditions absolutely essential to the enjoyment of the home’s benefits. But there are too many housekeepers among the masses of women who mistake the lesser for the greater; who have no sense of proportion as to whatconstitutes the trivial or the important phases of the homemaking art.

In some households a footmark on a new carpet or a blur' on the window pane is magnified almost to the extent of being, a blot on the family escutcheon, and there are many mothers whose daughters made hasty and injudicious marriages because of a mania for keeping everything and everybody stirred up and on the move in ceaseless house-cleaning. These mothers —could they have ordered it so—would' have had people remove their shoes befoi-e crossing the threshold, like a Turk entering the sacred mosque.

If the word home does not carry with it the consciousness of*the place where one is privileged to do as lie likes, to a reasonable extent, it fails of its full meaning. If there is no spot where a man may smoke his cigar or pipe without being reminded that he is ruining the curtains, lie is to be pitied as one who is debarred from the full enjoyment of ownership.