The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99,
September 6, 1890, by Various

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Title: Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890

Author: Various

Release Date: May 20, 2004 [EBook #12393]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 99.

September 6, 1890.

MODERN TYPES.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S OWN TYPE WRITER_.)

NO. XVIII.--THE UNDOMESTIC DAUGHTER.

The race of daughters is large, but their characteristics, vocations,
and aptitudes, are but little understood by the general public. It
is expected of them by their mothers that they should be a comfort,
by their fathers that they should be inexpensive and unlike their
brothers, and by their brothers that they should be as slaves,
submissively attached to the fraternal car of triumph. The outside
public, the mothers and fathers, that is to say, of other daughters,
look upon them vaguely, as mild and colourless beings, destitute alike
of character, of desires and of aspirations. And it must be said that
daughters themselves, before matrimony absorbs their daughterhood and
relieves them of their mothers, seem to be in the main content with
the calm and limited existence which their relations and the voice of
tradition assign to them. Most of them after they have passed through
the flashing brilliance of their first season, and the less radiant
glow of their second, are happy enough to spend the time that must
elapse ere the destined knight shall sound the trumpet of release
at the gates of the fortress, in an atmosphere of quiet domestic
usefulness. One becomes known to fame, and her friends, as being above
all others, "such a comfort to her mother." She interviews the cook,
she arranges the dinners, she devises light and favourite dishes
to blunt the edge of paternal irritability by tickling the paternal
palate, she writes out invitations, presides at the afternoon
tea-table, and, in short, takes upon herself many of those smaller
duties which are as last straws