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Many persons who act from generous impulses
are soon checked and disheartened in a course of
benevolence, merely from not having judiciously
surveyed the ground before them and estimated
the necessary amount of efforts, that is, counted
the cost. Those who are true disciples of that
devoted friend of man, whose whole life was a
succession of painful efforts and self-sacrifice,
will not become wearied with a duty because it
demands labor and self-denial. The Barclays
knew that two additional members of their family
must bring them additional anxiety and toil; and
when it came, they endured it cheerfully, yes,
thankfully, as faithful servants, who are zealous
to perform well an extra task for a kind master.

Emily Norton, daintily bred and petted from her
infancy, had the habits, though not the vicious
dispositions, that sometimes grow out of indulgence.
Her pride and little vanities had
taken but slight root in her heart, and they were
swept away by the storm that passed over her
father's house. But never was a little fine lady
more thoroughly helpless and good for nothing
than Emily, when she entered the Barclay

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family; but, once in that hive, where every little busy
bee did its appointed task, where labor was rendered
cheerful by participation, and light by regularity
and order, she gradually worked into the
ways of the household, and enjoyed, through the
whole of her after-life, the happy results of well-directed
effort. But this was not achieved without
much watchfulness and patience on the part of
her benefactress, much good-natured forbearance
on the part of the children, and many a struggle
and heart-ache on the part of the poor child.

Many a scene resembling the following, occurred
after she entered the family.

“You have promised to be one of my children,
dear Emily,” said Mrs. Barclay, at the close of a
long conversation with her; “I intend to treat you
precisely as I do them.” She then went through
with the enumeration of various household offices
which she expected Emily to perform, and concluded
with saying, “The girls take care of their
apartment week and week about. I hold any
want of neatness and order in a young lady's
room to be an abomination, and I never excuse it.
This is Alice's week; the next Mary's; the week
after will be yours. In the mean time, observe
how they manage, and when it comes your turn,
you will have learned their way. Remember,
dear, there is a right and a wrong way to do every
thing.”

Emily was sure, that before her turn came, she
should know how to take care of the room as well
as the other girls; but Emily was yet to learn
that “practice alone makes perfect.” Her week

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came. Alice entered her mother's room, and
shutting the door after her, and lowering her
voice, “Do mother,” she said, “let Mary go and
do our room, and let Emily come and tend the
baby; — it 's the only thing she is fit for.”

“She certainly does that better than either you
or Mary. She gives her undivided attention to
it, while you and Mary must always be doing
something else.”

“I know that, mother, but then — ”

“Then what?”

“Tending baby is a lazy sort of business that
just suits Emily.”

“She is not lazy about it; on the contrary she
is indefatigable in trying to please Effie and
Effie's mother.”

“So she is, ma'am, I own; and so I wish you
would keep her at it, and let us do what she can't
do, and we like best.”

“That would be hardly just to either Emily
or you, as there is a great deal besides tending
baby that a woman ought to know how to do, and
tending baby every woman must know how to
do.”

“Well, I suppose she must learn, but I don't
know when, nor how. To tell the truth, mother,
she is a real cry-baby. It is almost school-time,
and she has not touched the beds yet. They are
just as we left them, this morning, — the bed-clothes
stripped off, the pillows on the window-sill
airing, and she sitting down and crying. I
cannot get one word out of her.”

“Perhaps she cannot turn over the mattresses,
Alice.”

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“Mother! — those light mattresses!”

“Light to you, my dear, but you must remember
that Emily probably never made a bed in her
life, and that what is light to you, is an Herculean
task to her. Suppose, Alice, you were to go to
live in another family, and were required to do
something you had never done.”

“I should try, mother; I should not sit down
and cry.” And so she would have done; for
Alice, though by some months younger than Emily,
had been in the habit of using all her faculties
of mind and body. She was a Hebe in
health, and the very spirit of cheerfulness, so that
no task looked formidable in her eyes.

“Alice,” said her mother, “if you were to see
a poor child whose hands had been tied up from
her birth, who by gross mismanagement had been
robbed of the energy of her mind, and half the
health and strength natural to her, would not you
be grieved for her, and take pains to restore her
to the use of her faculties?”

“To be sure I should, mother.”

“Then go back to Emily. Do not ask her
what troubles her. She will be ashamed to tell
you, but offer to help her turn over the mattresses,
and assist her in whatever else seems to come
awkwardly to her. Help her bear her burden at
first, and after awhile she will be able to bear it
all herself. Be delicate and gentle with her, dear.
Above all, do not laugh at her. Don't come to
me again. Settle the matter yourself. It is best
I should not interfere.”

From the moment Alice felt that the

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responsibility of getting Emily on, rested on herself, she
felt at once eager for success; and, more good-natured
than the god in the fable, she hurried
back to put her shoulder to the wheel.

“Emily, dear,” she said kindly, “I don't think
you feel very well this morning.”

“Yes, I do, Alice, perfectly well,” replied
Emily, in a voice that sounded as if it came from
the tombs.

“Well, come then, Emily, you had better
make haste, — it is past eight, — come, jump up,—
I will give you a lift. These mattresses are
too heavy for you, till you can get used to them,
and then they will seem as light as a feather;”
and, suiting the action to the word, she threw over
the mattresses, while Emily crept languidly to the
other side of the bed.

“Now let 's beat it up, Emily, and then we
will have the clothes on in an instant. There,
smooth that sheet down, dear. Mother makes us
as particular as old women about making up the
beds, — lay the pillow straight Emy, — plummet
and line, you know, — now, hem over the sheet
this fashion, — there, it is done! and I defy a
Shaker to make a bed better.”

Emily was inspired by Alice's cheerful kindness,
and when they went to the other bed, she
begged Alice to let her try to do it alone. She
tried, as if she had a mountain to move, but all in
vain. Alice looked the other way to hide her
smiles.

“I can't possibly do it!” said Emily, despairingly.

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“Poor thing!” thought Alice, “her hands,
as mother says, have indeed been tied; but we 'll
contrive to loosen them.” “Take hold here,
Emily,” she said; “not with just the little tips of
your fingers, but so, — with your whole hand, —
there it goes! — O, you 'll soon learn.”

“Do you really think I ever shall, Alice?”

“Ever! Yes, indeed, very soon. I will show
you a little every day and you will edge on by
degrees. The world was not made in a day, you
know, as Aunt Betsey says.”

“But the sweeping, Alice? Do not, pray, tell
any body, but I never swept a room in my life.”

A girl of her own age, who did not know how
to sweep a room, seemed to Alice an object of
equal wonder and commiseration. She, however,
suppressed the exclamation that rose to her
lips, and merely said, “Well, that is not your
fault, Emily; take the broom and I will show
you.”

Emily took it. “O not so, Emily, — no, not
so; — just see me.” Again Emily began, and
looked so anxious and worked so desperately hard,
that Alice could scarcely forbear laughing out-right.
She did however, and very kindly and
patiently continued to instruct Emily, till the
mighty task was finished.

“O, you will learn after a while,” she said, as
poor Emily set down the broom and sunk into a
chair, out of breath and looking at her reddened
palms. “I will teach you to sweep, and you
shall teach me to dance, Emily.”

“O, you are very, very kind, Alice. I am sure

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I think it is worth a great deal more to know how
to sweep, than how to dance.”

“And so do I,” said Alice; “and yet we take
a great deal of pains for the one, and the other
we learn, we don't know how.”

Alice spoke truly. We learn we don't know
how the arts of domestic life, — the manual of a
woman's household duties.

Some among Mrs. Barclay's friends wondered
she did not “get more out of Martha,” and they
never could exhaust their astonishment at what
they called her inconsistency (a very convenient
indefinite word) in giving her girls accomplishments,
strictly so called, and putting them to the
humblest domestic employments. The Barclays
neither saw, nor had they ever occasion to feel,
this incompatibility. They believed that there was
no way so certain of giving their boys habits of
order, regularity, and neatness, and of inspiring
them with a grateful consideration for that sex
whose lot it is to be the domestic ministers of boy
and man, as the being early accustomed to receive
household services from their mother and
sisters, — from those they respected and loved.
They believed too, that their girls, destined to play
the parts of wives and mothers, in a country
where it is difficult and sometimes impossible to
obtain servants, would be made most independent
and consequently most happy, by having their
getting along faculties developed by use. These
little operatives, by light labors which encroached
neither upon their hours of study nor social
pleasure, became industrious, efficient, and

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orderly and were trained to be the dispensers of comfort
in that true and best sphere of woman, home.
Equal, too, would they be to either fortune; if mistresses,
capable, just, and considerate towards those
who served them; and if, perchance, obliged to perform
their own domestic labor, their practical acquaintance
with the process would make it light
and cheerful.

Never, we believe, was there a pleasanter domestic
scene, than the home of the Barclays; —
Martha, the queen bee, in her kitchen, as clean
as any parlour, or as (to use the superlative degree
of comparison) the kitchen of the pale, joyless Shakers;
her little handmaids in her school of mutual
aid and instruction, with their sleeves rolled up
from their fat, fair arms, their curls tucked under
their caps, and their gingham aprons, learning
the mysteries of cake and pastry manufacture,
pickling, preserving, and other coarser arts; while
another little maiden, her eyes sparkling and her
cheeks flushed with exercise, might be heard plying
her broom “up stairs and down stairs and in
the lady's chamber,” and warbling songs that
might soothe the savage breast, for they breathed
the very soul of health and cheerfulness.

Nor were they in the least disqualified by these
household duties for more refined employments;
and when they assembled in the evening, with
their pretty work-boxes and fancy-work, their
books and drawing, they formed a groupe to
grace any drawing-room in the land.

Their labors and their pleasures were transitory,
but the vivifying spirit of love and intelligence

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that informed them was abiding, and was carrying
them on to higher and higher stages of improvement,
and preparing them for that period to
which their efforts and hopes pointed, when the
terrestrial shall put on the celestial.