Even such accomplishments as music and painting are most cultural when
pursued as if the intention of the student were to teach them. Knowledge
of technique and of the methods by which its difficulties are overcome
is the foundation of all appreciation of art. The only true connoisseur
is the one who can enter into the delight felt by the artist in creating
his work. Exercise leads to invention. The ancients well said that the
contortions of the sibyl generated her inspiration. Critics have been
sneeringly defined as "those who have failed in literature and art,"
but this is not true of the greatest critics, who never carried their
creative work to the point of success simply because they had found a
better vocation in criticism before reaching such a point. What a loss
to the world it would have been had Ruskin developed into a painter,
even a great one, instead of the master interpreter and teacher of
painting that he did become!

Household employments, such as cooking, needlework, etc., as vocations
for the unmarried woman, no less than the married, need only be
mentioned here, as their appropriateness for the girl at home is
obvious, and they are fully discussed elsewhere in this series. It
should be suggested, however, that the greater leisure of the unmarried
woman enables her to try experiments in these subjects while the married
housewife is too fully occupied by the routine of her duties to
undertake them. Indeed, if a woman become a notable cook after marriage,
it is often a sign that she is not a notable wife or mother.

It is an old saying that,

"My son's my son till he gets him a wife,
But my daughter's my daughter all her life."