From the pages of John Gower, a correspondent of the New York _Evening
Post_ takes the following passage, in the hope that the trials of a
housekeeper in the fifteenth century may bring consolation to the
householder of today. Says the worthy Gower:
Man is so constituted as to require above all else food and drink. So
it is no wonder if I speak of victualers, whose principle it is to
deceive and to practice fraud. I will begin, as an instance, with the
tavern-keeper and his wine-cellar.... If his red or white wine loses
its proper color, he mixes it freely to procure the proper shade....
If I stop in to fill my flask, he gives me of his best wine to taste,
and then fills my flask with some cheap stuff. He pretends to have any
foreign vintage that one desires, but under divers names he draws ten
kinds from the same barrel.... The poor people complain with reason
that their beer is made from an inferior quality of grain, while good
beer is almost as dear as wine. If you give an order for beer to be
delivered at the house, the inn-keeper will send a good quality once
or twice until he gets your trade, and then he sends worse at the same
price.... Every one in the city is complaining of the short-weight
loaves the bakers sell, and wheat is stored with the intention to
boost the price of bread.... Whether you buy at wholesale or retail,
you have to pay the butcher twice the right price for beef and lamb.
Lean beef is fattened by larding it, but the skewers are left in and
ruin the carver’s knife.... To fetch their price, butchers often hold
back meat until it is bad, when they try to sell it rather than cast
it to the dogs.... Poulterers sell as fresh game what has been killed
ten days before(!)... For my own part, I can dispense with partridges,
pheasants, and plovers. But capons and geese are almost as high
nowadays as hens.
Yet, if all those of whom I have spoken agreed to be fair and just,
there would still be unfairness in the world. For even laborers are
unfair, and will not willingly subject themselves to what is
reasonable, claiming high wages for little work; they want five or six
shillings for the work they formerly did for two. In old times
workingmen did not expect to eat wheat bread, but were satisfied with
coarser bread and with water to drink, regarding cheese and milk as a
treat. I cannot find one servant of that sort now in the market (_i.
e._, intelligence office!). They are all extravagant in their dress,
and it would be easier to satisfy two gentlemen than one such ill-bred
servant. They are neither faithful, polite, or well-behaved. Many are
too proud to serve like their fathers.... The fault lies with the
lethargy of the gentry, who pay no heed to this folly of the lower
classes; but, unless care be taken, these tares will soon spring up,
and the insurgence of these classes is to be feared like a flood or a
fire.
The trouble is that no one is satisfied with his own estate; lord,
prelate, commoner—each accuses the other. The lower classes blame the
gentleman and the townsman, and the upper classes blame the lower, and
all is in confusion.... The days prophesied by Hosea are come to pass,
when there shall be no wisdom in the earth. I know not if the fault
lie with laymen or churchmen, but all unite in the common cry: “the
times are bad, the times are bad.”
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Annie Laws (_Kindergarten Review_) believes that she can trace the
social spirit of the kindergartner as an important factor in
stimulating, and in some cases, even initiating, many of the social
movements of today, among them playgrounds, social centers, vacation
schools, public libraries, mothers’ clubs and school and home gardens.
The relation between the kindergarten and the big world outside the
kindergarten Miss Laws states as follows:
Some one has said that “the primary aim of the kindergarten is to
create a miniature world which shall be to the child a faithful
portrait of the greater world in its ideal aspects.”
If the kindergarten can bring to each and all of us its aid in helping
us to create for ourselves a miniature world, which shall be a
faithful portrait of the greater world in its ideal aspects; and if it
can aid in making us content to give to our communities the service
for which we are best fitted, and can teach us to so live that not so
much social efficiency as social reciprocity shall be our aim and
purpose, then we shall all agree to give to the kindergarten its true
place as one of the most valuable factors of social life and social
work of the present time, one worthy of our best thought and effort.
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