A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

How To Write Special Feature Articles by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

W >> Willard Grosvenor Bleyer >> How To Write Special Feature Articles




What a joy it was to me during that rosy-sweet early period of our union
to watch Carl, like a proud mother, as he grew and exfoliated--like a
plant that has been kept in a cellar and now in congenial soil and
sunshine is showing at last its full potentialities. Through me my boy
was attaining the full stature of a man; and I, his proud mate, was
jealously glad that even his dear dead mother could not have brought
that to pass.

His wit became less caustic; his manner more genial. People who once
irritated now interested him. Some who used to fear him now liked him.
And as for the undergraduates who had hero-worshiped this former tennis
champion, they now shyly turned to him for counsel and advice. He was
more of a man of the world than most of his colleagues and treated the
boys as though they were men of the world too--for instance, he never
referred to them as boys.

"I wouldn't be a damned fool if I were you," I once overheard him say to
a certain young man who was suffering from an attack of what Carl called
misdirected energy.

More than one he took in hand this way; and, though I used to call
it--to tease him--his man-to-man manner, I saw that it was effective. I,
too, grew fond of these frank, ingenuous youths. We used to have them at
our house when we could spare an evening--often when we could not.

None of this work, it may be mentioned, is referred to in the annual
catalogue or provided for in the annual budget; and yet it is often the
most vital and lasting service a teacher renders his students--especially
when their silly parents provide them with more pocket money than the
professor's entire income for the support of himself, his family, his
scholarship and his dignity.

"Your husband is not a professor," one of them confided shyly to
me--"he's a human being!"

After the success of our book we were called to another college--a full
professorship at three thousand a year! Carl loved his Alma Mater with a
passion I sometimes failed to understand; but he could not afford to
remain faithful to her forever on vague promises of future favor. He
went to the president and said so plainly, hating the indignity of it
and loathing the whole system that made such methods necessary.

The president would gladly have raised all the salaries if he had had
the means. He could not meet the competitor's price, but he begged Carl
to stay, offering the full title--meaning empty--of professor and a
minimum wage of twenty-five hundred dollars, with the promise of full
pay when the funds could be raised.

Now we had demonstrated that, even on the Faculty of an Eastern college,
two persons could live on fifteen hundred. Therefore, with twenty-five
hundred, we could not only exist but work efficiently. So we did not
have to go.

* * * * *

I look back on those days as the happiest period of our life together.
That is why I have lingered over them. Congenial work, bright prospects,
perfect health, the affection of friends, the respect of rivals--what
more could any woman want for her husband or herself?

Only one thing. And now that, too, was to be ours! However, with
children came trouble, for which--bless their little hearts!--they are
not responsible. Were we? I wonder! Had we a right to have children? Had
we a right not to have children? It has been estimated by a member of
the mathematical department that, at the present salary rate, each of
the college professors of America is entitled to just two-fifths of a
child.

Does this pay? Should only the financially fit be allowed to survive--to
reproduce their species? Should or should not those who may be fittest
physically, intellectually and morally also be entitled to the privilege
and responsibility of taking their natural part in determining the
character of America's future generations, for the evolution of the race
and the glory of God?

I wonder!

* * * * *

(_Boston Transcript_)

A PARADISE FOR A PENNY

MADDENED BY THE CATALOGUES OF PEACE-TIME, ONE LOVER OF GARDENS YET
MANAGED TO BUILD A LITTLE EDEN, AND TELLS HOW HE DID IT FOR A SONG

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

War-time economy (which is a much pleasanter and doubtless a more
patriotically approved phrase than war-time poverty) is not without its
compensations, even to the gardener. At first I did not think so.
Confronted by a vast array of new and empty borders and rock steps and
natural-laid stone, flanking a wall fountain, and other features of a
new garden ambitiously planned before the President was so inconsiderate
as to declare war without consulting me, and confronted, too, by an
empty purse--pardon me, I mean by the voluntarily imposed necessity for
economy--I sat me down amid my catalogues, like Niobe amid her children,
and wept. (Maybe it wasn't amid her children Niobe wept, but for them;
anyhow I remember her as a symbol of lachrymosity.) Dear, alluring,
immoral catalogues, sweet sirens for a man's undoing! How you sang to me
of sedums, and whispered of peonies and irises--yea, even of German
irises! How you spoke in soft, seductive accents of wonderful lilacs,
and exquisite spireas, and sweet syringas, murmurous with bees! How you
told of tulips and narcissuses, and a thousand lovely things for beds
and borders and rock work--at so much a dozen, so very much a dozen,
and a dozen so very few! I did not resort to cotton in my ears, but to
tears and profanity.

Then two things happened. I got a letter from a Boston architect who had
passed by and seen my unfinished place; and I took a walk up a back road
where the Massachusetts Highway Commissioners hadn't sent a gang of
workmen through to "improve" it. The architect said, "Keep your place
simple. It cries for it. That's always the hardest thing to do--but the
best." And the back-country roadside said, "Look at me; I didn't come
from any catalogue; no nursery grew me; I'm really and truly 'perfectly
hardy'; I didn't cost a cent--and can you beat me at any price? I'm a
hundred per cent American, too."

I looked, and I admitted, with a blush of shame for ever doubting, that
I certainly could not beat it. But, I suddenly realized, I could steal
it!

I have been stealing it ever since, and having an enormously enjoyable
time in the bargain.

Of course, stealing is a relative term, like anything else connected
with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a
city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once
described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the
wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford,
half a mile in any direction, and I pass roadsides where, if there are
any farmer owners of the fields on the other side of the fence, these
owners are only too glad to have a few of the massed, invading plants or
bushes thinned out. But far more often there is not even a fence, or if
there is, it has heavy woods or a swamp or a wild pasture beyond it. I
could go after plants every day for six months and nobody would ever
detect where I took them. My only rule--self-imposed--is never to take a
single specimen, or even one of a small group, and always to take where
thinning is useful, and where the land or the roadside is wild and
neglected, and no human being can possibly be injured. Most often,
indeed, I simply go up the mountain along, or into, my own woods.

I am not going to attempt any botanical or cultural description of what
I am now attempting. That will have to wait, anyhow, till I know a
little more about it myself! But I want to indicate, in a general way,
some of the effects which are perfectly possible, I believe, here in a
Massachusetts garden, without importing a single plant, or even sowing a
seed or purchasing any stock from a nursery.

Take the matter of asters, for instance. Hitherto my garden, up here in
the mountains where the frosts come early and we cannot have anemone,
japonica, or chrysanthemums, has generally been a melancholy spectacle
after the middle of September. Yet it is just at this time that our
roadsides and woodland borders are the most beautiful. The answer isn't
alone asters, but very largely. And nothing, I have discovered, is much
easier to transplant than a New England aster, the showiest of the
family. Within the confines of my own farm or its bordering woods are at
least seven varieties of asters, and there are more within half a mile.
They range in color from the deepest purple and lilac, through shades of
blue, to white, and vary in height from the six feet my New Englands
have attained in rich garden soil, to one foot. Moreover, by a little
care, they can be so massed and alternated in a long border (such a
border I have), as to pass in under heavy shade and out again into full
sun, from a damp place to a dry place, and yet all be blooming at their
best. With what other flower can you do that? And what other flower, at
whatever price per dozen, will give you such abundance of beauty without
a fear of frosts? I recently dug up a load of asters in bud, on a rainy
day, and already they are in full bloom in their new garden places,
without so much as a wilted leaf.

Adjoining my farm is an abandoned marble quarry. In that quarry, or,
rather, in the rank grass bordering it, grow thousands of Solidago
rigida, the big, flat-topped goldenrod. This is the only station for it
in Berkshire County. As the ledges from this quarry come over into my
pastures, and doubtless the goldenrod would have come too, had it not
been for the sheep, what could be more fitting than for me to make this
glorious yellow flower a part of my garden scheme? Surely if anything
belongs in my peculiar soil and landscape it does. It transplants
easily, and under cultivation reaches a large size and holds its bloom a
long time. Massed with the asters it is superb, and I get it by going
through the bars with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.

But a garden of goldenrod and asters would be somewhat dull from May to
mid-August, and somewhat monotonous thereafter. I have no intention, of
course, of barring out from my garden the stock perennials, and, indeed,
I have already salvaged from my old place or grown from seed the
indispensable phloxes, foxgloves, larkspur, hollyhocks, sweet william,
climbing roses, platycodons and the like. But let me merely mention a
few of the wild things I have brought in from the immediate
neighborhood, and see if they do not promise, when naturally planted
where the borders wind under trees, or grouped to the grass in front of
asters, ferns, goldenrod and the shrubs I shall mention later, a kind of
beauty and interest not to be secured by the usual garden methods.

There are painted trilliums, yellow and pink lady's slippers, Orchis
spectabilis, hepaticas, bloodroot, violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, masses
of baneberries, solomon's seal, true and false; smooth false foxglove,
five-flowered and closed gentians, meadow lilies (Canadensis) and wood
lilies (Philadelphicum), the former especially being here so common that
I can go out and dig up the bulbs by the score, taking only one or two
from any one spot. These are but a few of the flowers, blooming from
early spring to late fall, in the borders, and I have forgotten to
mention the little bunch berries from my own woods as an edging plant.

Let me turn now for a moment to the hedge and shrubbery screen which
must intervene between my west border and the highway, and which is the
crux of the garden. The hedge is already started with hemlocks from the
mountain side, put in last spring. I must admit nursery in-grown
evergreens are easier to handle, and make a better and quicker growth.
But I am out now to see how far I can get with absolutely native
material. Between the hedge and the border, where at first I dreamed of
lilacs and the like, I now visualize as filling up with the kind of
growth which lines our roads, and which is no less beautiful and much
more fitting. From my own woods will come in spring (the only safe time
to move them) masses of mountain laurel and azalea. From my own pasture
fence-line will come red osier, dogwood, with its white blooms, its blue
berries, its winter stem-coloring, and elderberry. From my own woods
have already come several four-foot maple-leaved vibernums, which,
though moved in June, throve and have made a fine new growth. There will
be, also, a shadbush or two and certainly some hobble bushes, with here
and there a young pine and small, slender canoe birch. Here and there
will be a clump of flowering raspberry. I shall not scorn spireas, and I
must have at least one big white syringa to scent the twilight; but the
great mass of my screen will be exactly what nature would plant there if
she were left alone--minus the choke cherries. You always have to
exercise a little supervision over nature!

A feature of my garden is to be rock work and a little, thin stream of a
brooklet flowing away from a wall fountain. I read in my catalogues of
marvellous Alpine plants, and I dreamed of irises by my brook. I shall
have some of both too. Why not? The war has got to end one of these
days. But meanwhile, why be too down-hearted? On the cliffs above my
pasture are masses of moss, holding, as a pincushion holds a breastpin,
little early saxifrage plants. From the crannies frail hair bells dangle
forth. There are clumps of purple cliffbrase and other tiny, exquisite
ferns. On a gravel bank beside the State road are thousands of viper's
bugloss plants; on a ledge nearby is an entire nursery of Sedum acre
(the small yellow stone crop). Columbines grow like a weed in my mowing,
and so do Quaker ladies, which, in England, are highly esteemed in the
rock garden. The Greens Committee at the nearby golf club will certainly
let me dig up some of the gay pinks which are a pest in one of the high,
gravelly bunkers. And these are only a fraction of the native material
available for my rock work and bank. Many of them are already in and
thriving.

As for the little brook, any pond edge or brookside nearby has
arrowheads, forget-me-nots, cardinal flowers, blue flag, clumps of
beautiful grasses, monkey flowers, jewel-weed and the like. There are
cowslips, too, and blue vervain, and white violets. If I want a clump of
something tall, Joe-pye-weed is not to be disdained. No, I do not
anticipate any trouble about my brookside. It will not look at all as I
thought a year ago it was going to look. It will not look like an
illustration in some "garden beautiful" magazine. It will look
like--like a brook! I am tremendously excited now at the prospect of
seeing it look like a brook, a little, lazy, trickling Yankee brook. If
I ever let it look like anything else, I believe I shall deserve to have
my spring dry up.

Probably I shall have moments of, for me, comparative affluence in the
years to come, when I shall once more listen to the siren song of
catalogues, and order Japanese irises, Darwin tulips, hybrid lilacs, and
so on. But by that time, I feel sure, my native plants and shrubs will
have got such a start, and made such a luxuriant, natural tangle, that
they will assimilate the aliens and teach them their proper place in a
New England garden. At any rate, till the war is over, I am 100 per cent
Berkshire County!

* * * * *

WANTED: A HOME ASSISTANT

(_Pictorial Review_)

One illustration made by a staff artist, with the caption, "The New Home
Assistant is Trained for Her Work."

WANTED: A HOME ASSISTANT

BUSINESS HOURS AND WAGES ARE HELPING WOMEN TO SOLVE THE SERVANT PROBLEM

BY LOUISE F. NELLIS

WANTED: A HOME ASSISTANT--Eight hours a day; six days a week. Sleep and
eat at home. Pay, twelve dollars a week.

Whenever this notice appears in the Help Wanted column of a city
newspaper, fifty to one hundred answers are received in the first
twenty-four hours!

"Why," we hear some one say, "that seems impossible! When I advertised
for a maid at forty dollars a month with board and lodging provided, not
a soul answered. Why are so many responses received to the other
advertisement?"

Let us look more closely at the first notice.

Wanted: A Home Assistant! How pleasant and dignified it sounds; nothing
about a general houseworker or maid or servant, just Home Assistant! We
can almost draw a picture of the kind of young woman who might be called
by such a title. She comes, quiet, dignified, and interested in our home
and its problems. She may have been in an office but has never really
liked office work and has always longed for home surroundings and home
duties.

I remember one case I was told of--a little stenographer. She had gladly
assumed her new duties as Home Assistant, and had wept on the first
Christmas Day with the family because it was the only Christmas she had
spent in years in a home atmosphere. Or perhaps the applicant for the
new kind of work in the home may have been employed in a department
store and found the continuous standing on her feet too wearing. She
welcomes the frequent change of occupation in her new position. Or she
may be married with a little home of her own, but with the desire to add
to the family income. We call these Home Assistants, Miss Smith or Mrs.
Jones, and they preserve their own individuality and self-respect.

"Well, I would call my housemaid anything if I could only get one,"
says one young married woman. "There must be more to this new plan than
calling them Home Assistants and addressing them as Miss."

Let us read further in the advertisement: "Eight hours a day; six days a
week." One full day and one half day off each week, making a total of
forty-four hours weekly which is the standard working week in most
industrial occupations. At least two free Sundays a month should be
given and a convenient week-day substituted for the other two Sundays.
If Saturday is not the best half day to give, another afternoon may be
arranged with the Home Assistant.

"Impossible," I can hear Mrs. Reader say, "I couldn't get along with
eight hours' work a day, forty-four hours a week." No! Well, possibly
you have had to get along without any maid at all, or you may have had
some one in your kitchen who is incompetent and slovenly, whom you dare
not discharge for fear you can not replace her. Would you rather not
have a good interested worker for eight hours a day than none at all?
During that time the Home Assistant works steadily and specialization is
done away with. She is there to do your work and she does whatever may
be called for. If she is asked to take care of the baby for a few hours,
she does it willingly, as part of her duties; or if she is called upon
to do some ironing left in the basket, she assumes that it is part of
her work, and doesn't say, "No, Madam, I wasn't hired to do that," at
the same time putting on her hat and leaving as under the old system.

The new plan seems expensive? "Twelve dollars a week is more than I have
paid my domestic helper," Mrs. Reader says. But consider this more
carefully. You pay from thirty-five to fifty dollars a month with all
the worker's food and lodging provided. This is at the rate of eight to
eleven dollars a week for wages. Food and room cost at least five
dollars a week, and most estimates are higher. The old type of
houseworker has cost us more than we have realized. The new system
compares favorably in expense with the old.

"I am perfectly certain it wouldn't be practical not to feed my helper,"
Mrs. Reader says. Under the old system of a twelve to fourteen-hour
working day, it would not be feasible, but if she is on the eight-hour
basis, the worker can bring a box-luncheon with her, or she can go
outside to a restaurant just as she would if she were in an office or
factory. The time spent in eating is not included in her day's work.
Think of the relief to the house-keeper who can order what her family
likes to eat without having to say, "Oh, I can't have that; Mary
wouldn't eat it you know."

"I can't afford a Home Assistant or a maid at the present wages," some
one says. "But I do wish I had some one who could get and serve dinner
every night. I am so tired by evening that cooking is the last straw."

Try looking for a Home Assistant for four hours a day to relieve you of
just this work. You would have to pay about a dollar a day or six
dollars a week for such service and it would be worth it.

How does the Home Assistant plan work in households where two or more
helpers are kept? The more complicated homes run several shifts of
workers, coming in at different hours and covering every need of the
day. One woman I talked to told me that she studied out her problem in
this way! She did every bit of the work in her house for a while in
order to find out how long each job took. She found, for instance, that
it took twenty-five minutes to clean one bathroom, ten minutes to brush
down and dust a flight of stairs, thirty minutes to do the dinner
dishes, and so on through all the work. She made out a time-card which
showed that twenty-two hours of work a day was needed for her home. She
knew how much money she could spend and she proceeded to divide the work
and money among several assistants coming in on different shifts. Her
household now runs like clockwork. One of the splendid things about this
new system is its great flexibility and the fact that it can be adapted
to any household.

Thoughtful and intelligent planning such as this woman gave to her
problems is necessary for the greatest success of the plan. The old
haphazard methods must go. The housekeeper who has been in the habit of
coming into her kitchen about half past five and saying, "Oh, Mary, what
can we have for dinner? I have just come back from down-town; I did
expect to be home sooner," will not get the most out of her Home
Assistant. Work must be scheduled and planned ahead, the home must be
run on business methods if the system is to succeed. I heard this
explained to a group of women not long ago. After the talk, one of them
said, "Well, in business houses and factories there is a foreman who
runs the shop and oversees the workers. It wouldn't work in homes
because we haven't any foreman." She had entirely overlooked her job as
forewoman of her own establishment!

"Suppose I have company for dinner and the Home Assistant isn't through
her work when her eight hours are up, what happens?" some one asks. All
overtime work is paid for at the rate of one and one-half times the
hourly rate. If you are paying your assistant twelve dollars for a
forty-four-hour week, you are giving her twenty-eight cents an hour. One
and one half times this amounts to forty-two cents an hour, which she
receives for extra work just as she would in the business world.

"Will these girls from offices and stores do their work well? They have
had no training for housework unless they have happened to do some in
their own homes," some one wisely remarks. The lack of systematic
preparation has always been one of the troubles with our domestic
helpers. It is true that the new type of girl trained in business to be
punctual and alert, and to use her mind, adapts herself very quickly to
her work, but the trained worker in any field has an advantage. With
this in mind the Central Branch of the Young Women's Christian
Association in New York City has started a training-school for Home
Assistants. The course provides demonstrations on the preparation of
breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and talks on the following:
House-cleaning, Laundry, Care of Children, Shopping, Planning work,
Deportment, Efficiency, and Duty to Employer. This course gives a girl a
general knowledge of her duties and what is even more important she
acquires the right mental attitude toward her work. The girls are given
an examination and those who successfully pass it are given a
certificate and placed as Trained Home Assistants at fifteen dollars a
week.

The National Association would like to see these training-schools
turning out this type of worker for the homes all over the country. This
is a constructive piece of work for women to undertake. Housewives'
Leagues have interested themselves in this in various centers, and the
Y.W.C.A. will help wherever it can. There are always home economics
graduates in every town who could help give the course, and there are
excellent housekeepers who excel in some branch who could give a talk or
two.

The course would be worth a great deal in results to any community. The
United States Employment Bureaus are also taking a hand in this, and,
with the cooeperation of the High Schools, are placing girls as trained
assistants on the new basis. I have talked with many women who are not
only using this plan to-day but have been for several years.

It has been more than six years ago since Mrs. Helene Barker's book
"Wanted a Young Woman to Do Housework" was published.

This gave the working plan to the idea. Women in Boston, Providence,
New York, Cleveland, and in many other cities have become so
enthusiastic over their success in running their homes with the Home
Assistants that a number are giving their time to lecturing and talking
to groups of women about it.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

P. H. Ditchfield - "Vanishing England"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891"

Thomas Purney - "A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717)"

Freeman E. Miller - "Oklahoma and Other Poems"