656
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Glasgow, by Mrs. John Elder, in 1885. They form a technical school for the wives and daughters of artisans, and are in the midst of a large ship-building population. All their incidental expenses are paid by the generous founder. The cookery demonstration class, attended by some two hundred women and girls, is the most popular. It is supplemented by the cookery practice class, at which their clever teacher, Miss Gordon, shows her pupils how to turn out the best possible Sunday dinner from the materials they bring on Saturday night. Eighty to a hundred women attend the Monday evening sewing and mending class; a large number also appreciate that the starching and ironing class will fit them for a useful calling; and lastly, forty-two girls are carefully trained to be kitchenmaids, and never fail to find good places. During the summer months housewives who choose to enter their names on a list, are visited by intelligent and specially trained women of their own class, and shown how to cook and clean and arrange their houses. This kind of help is most eagerly sought.
The Little Servants’ Home, in connection with Brownshill High School, Stroud, was founded by Miss Winscombe. This attempt to prepare young girls for domestic service by training them under upper servants, might be imitated in other large households, for every effort that tends to raise the status of domestic servants, and the standard of qualification for domestic service, is a real benefit to girls in humble homes.
For the third time a village in Scotland claims our attention. The Misses Fer- gusson, with the occasional help of their own servants, have, since 1881, organized and carried on most successful evening classes for joinery, basket-work, fret-work, carving and drawing among the men; and for knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc., among the women of West Linton, Prebleshire. Their last sale realized about one hundred and five pounds, all profit to the workers.
In Cumberland, the loveliest district in England, under the fostering care of Mrs. Hardwicke Rawnsley, wife Of the vicar of Crosthwaite (that picturesque vale, or thwaite, where St. Kentigern reared the cross in the earliest age of England’s religious history), has grown up, since 1883, the Keswick Industrial School of Art, and a Linen Industry, which has Mr. Ruskin’s leave to bear his name. Both are endeavors to reduce to practice his characteristic teaching, that a love of the beautiful lies hidden in every human soul, and that things made by hand, and bearing the impress of human individuality, are incomparably more beautiful than those which can be turned out by machinery. There is something quite mediaeval about the whole undertaking, so little trace can be found in it of the modern commercial spirit, and so lovingly do these northern peasants linger over the details of their work. From seventy to eighty men now belong to the carving and brass-work classes. The linen industry was started by Miss Twelves; the spinning is all done with the old-fashioned wheels, and the weaving is all done by hand. These earnest and artistic workers in the land of two nineteenth century laureates, lately had the satisfaction of doing honor to a third, by weaving a pall of wondrous beauty for Lord Tennyson’s coffin.
We turn now to schemes that aim at imparting knowledge, at informing the head, and according to our threefold being of body, soul and spirit, take these as they successively deal with the physical, mental and moral welfare of mankind.
Canon Kingsley, Bishop Wilberforce and others, have taught our generation the whole meaning of the old phrase, mens sana in corpore sano. Two societies, both dwelling in Berners street, London, and both owing their existence to the insight and energy of women, are waging successful war, not with flourish of trumpets, but by quiet persistent work, against the arch-enemy ignorance, and teaching rich and poor that the essentials of wholesome life are pure water, nourishing food, daily bathing and daily exercise; that our homes must stand on high ground and dry soil, give abundant entrance to light and air, and be thoroughly cleansed, not only above but below ground. The Ladies’ Sanitary Association, founded in 1857, grew, so Lady Knightley, of Fawsley, tells us, out of a suggestion made by Dr. Roth, and has now about four hundred members. Countless lectures have been given through it to all