The Youthful Wanderer eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 214 pages of information about The Youthful Wanderer.

The Youthful Wanderer eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 214 pages of information about The Youthful Wanderer.
In this great revolutionary era, the authority of the past and even the respect naturally due to parents is very generally disregarded.  This latter sad feature of failing to do homage to the aged, is not more the result of a lack of love and esteem, on the part of children for their parents, than of the want of confidence which parents have in themselves.  We can take an illustration from our young ladies.  A few generations ago, the traditional white cap constituted the head-dress of the young maidens among the catechumens, when they presented themselves for the first time at the altar; now, in place of having all the heads look alike, every head must present a different phase.  We still find sections in the Old World, where all the dresses of the young are “cut out of the same piece,” so to say, and made after the same pattern, so that all the individuals of a company are almost as nearly dressed alike, as soldiers in uniform.  Rev. Bausman, in his Wayside Gleanings, page 141, in describing the appearance of people at church in a certain section of Germany, portrays one feature in these words:  “Very pleasant was it to see every lady, old and young, having her hymn book carefully folded in her white handkerchief.”  The clergy, and the monks and nuns in Europe display like uniformity in their dress.  In every old picture or painting, representing a group or company of persons, it will be observed that all the individuals are dressed and combed after the same fashion.

This incessant yearning and seeking for something new is of recent date, and the key-note of a universal system of revolutions.  Every season brings a new style of dress, and what is true of fashion is true of everything else.  As it would ill become mothers to leave their family for a time and learn the milliners’ trade, she makes choice of one of her daughters to be educated in that trade.  This young girl after she has learned dressmaking takes the place of the mother in the matter of providing clothes for the family, and becomes in a large measure the mistress of the house.  The same thing happens to the baking department of the family.  A score of new kinds of pies and cakes have become fashionable in our day, and it is the daughters that have the greatest opportunity to earn this baking of pastries the quickest.  The consequence is that the mother soon turns out to be only a second rate cook! Fully aware that she can neither cook nor make dresses, she resigns her position as head of these departments, respectively to her daughters, who, when once master of the culinary and millinery, affairs, will soon be master of the balance of the household affairs.  Need I say that the fathers of this generation are served about the same way by their sons?  And it is the same between the teacher and the pupil.  “Old fogy teacher” or “he has the old ways yet” are expressions that are too common to require any explanation.  Happily, most old teachers have cleared the turf, and yielded their

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The Youthful Wanderer from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.