I remarked, in passing, that this was before Bigelow's
mechanical genius had unlocked for America the
higher secrets of carpet-weaving, and made it possible
to have one's desires accomplished in Brussels or velvet.
In those days, English carpet-weavers did not
send to America for their looms, as they now do.

“But now to return to my analysis of John's rooms.

“Another thing which goes a great way towards
giving them their agreeable air is the books in them.
Some people are fond of treating books as others do
children. One room in the house is selected, and
every book driven into it and kept there. Yet nothing
makes a room so home-like, so companionable, and
gives it such an air of refinement, as the presence of
books. They change the aspect of a parlor from that
of a mere reception-room, where visitors perch for a
transient call, and give it the air of a room where one
feels like taking off one's things to stay. It gives the
appearance of permanence and repose and quiet fellowship;
and next to pictures on the walls, the many-colored
bindings and gildings of books are the most
agreeable adornment of a room.”

“Then, Marianne,” said Bob, “we have something
to start with, at all events. There are my English
Classics and English Poets, and my uniform editions
of Scott and Thackeray and Macaulay and Prescott
and Irving and Longfellow and Lowell and Hawthorne

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

and Holmes and a host more. We really have something
pretty there.”

“You are a lucky girl,” I said, “to have so much
secured. A girl brought up in a house full of books,
always able to turn to this or that author and look for
any passage or poem when she thinks of it, does n't
know what a blank a house without books might be.”

“Well,” said Marianne, “mamma and I were counting
over my treasures the other day. Do you know, I
have one really fine old engraving, that Bob says is
quite a genuine thing; and then there is that pencil-sketch
that poor Schöne made for me the month
before he died, — it is truly artistic.”

“And I have a couple of capital things of Landseer's,”
said Bob.

“There 's no danger that your rooms will not be
pretty,” said I, “now you are fairly on the right track.”

“But, papa,” said Marianne, “I am troubled about
one thing. My love of beauty runs into everything.
I want pretty things for my table, — and yet, as you
say, servants are so careless, one cannot use such
things freely without great waste.”

“For my part,” said my wife, “I believe in best
china, to be kept carefully on an upper-shelf, and taken
down for high-days and holidays; it may be a superstition,
but I believe in it. It must never be taken
out except when the mistress herself can see that it is

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

safely cared for. My mother always washed her china
herself; and it was a very pretty social ceremony,
after tea was over, while she sat among us washing
her pretty cups, and wiping them on a fine damask
towel.”

“With all my heart,” said I; “have your best china,
and venerate it, — it is one of the loveliest of domestic
superstitions; only do not make it a bar to hospitality,
and shrink from having a friend to tea with you, unless
you feel equal to getting up to the high shelf where
you keep it, getting it down, washing, and putting it
up again.

“But in serving a table, I say, as I said of a house,
beauty is a necessity, and beauty is cheap. Because
you cannot afford beauty in one form, it does not follow
that you cannot have it in another. Because one
cannot afford to keep up a perennial supply of delicate
china and crystal, subject to the accidents of raw,
untrained servants, it does not follow that the every-day
table need present a sordid assortment of articles
chosen simply for cheapness, while the whole capacity
of the purse is given to the set forever locked away
for state-occasions.

“A table-service, all of simple white, of graceful
forms, even though not of china, if arranged with care,
with snowy, well-kept table-linen, clear glasses, and
bright American plate in place of solid silver, may be

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

made to look inviting; add a glass of flowers every
day, and your table may look pretty; — and it is far
more important that it should look pretty for the
family every day than for company once in two
weeks.”

“I tell my girls,” said my wife, “as the result of
my experience, you may have your pretty china and
your lovely fanciful articles for the table only so long
as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As
soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into
the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning
creature is sure to break her heart and your
own and your very pet darling china pitcher all in one
and the same minute; and then her frantic despair
leaves you not even the relief of scolding.”

“I have become perfectly sure,” said I, “that there
are spiteful little brownies, intent on seducing good
women to sin, who mount guard over the special idols
of the china-closet. If you hear a crash, and a loud
Irish wail from the inner depths, you never think
of its being a yellow pie-plate, or that dreadful one-handled
tureen that you have been wishing were
broken these five years; no, indeed, — it is sure to
be the lovely painted china bowl, wreathed with morning-glories
and sweet-peas, or the engraved glass goblet,
with quaint old-English initials. China sacrificed
must be a great means of saintship to women. Pope,

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I think, puts it as the crowning grace of his perfect
woman, that she is

`Mistress of herself, though china fall.'”

“I ought to be a saint by this time, then,” said
mamma; “for in the course of my days I have lost
so many idols by breakage, and peculiar accidents that
seemed by a special fatality to befall my prettiest and
most irreplaceable things, that in fact it has come to
be a superstitious feeling now with which I regard
anything particularly pretty of a breakable nature.”

“Well,” said Marianne, “unless one has a great
deal of money, it seems to me that the investment in
these pretty fragilities is rather a poor one.”

“Yet,” said I, “the principle of beauty is never so
captivating as when it presides over the hour of daily
meals. I would have the room where they are served
one of the pleasantest and sunniest in the house. I
would have its coloring cheerful, and there should be
companionable pictures and engravings on the walls.
Of all things, I dislike a room that seems to be kept
like a restaurant, merely to eat in. I like to see in a
dining-room something that betokens a pleasant sitting-room
at other hours. I like there some books, a
comfortable sofa or lounge, and all that should make
it cosey and inviting. The custom in some families,
of adoping for the daily meals one of the two parlors

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

which a city-house furnishes has often seemed to me
a particularly happy one. You take your meals, then,
in an agreeable place, surrounded by the little pleasant
arrangements of your daily sitting-room; and after
the meal, if the lady of the house does the honors of
her own pretty china herself, the office may be a pleasant
and social one.

“But in regard to your table-service I have my
advice at hand. Invest in pretty table-linen, in delicate
napkins, have your vase of flowers, and be guided
by the eye of taste in the choice and arrangement of
even the every-day table-articles, and have no ugly
things when you can have pretty ones by taking a
little thought. If you are sore tempted with lovely
china and crystal, too fragile to last, too expensive to
be renewed, turn away to a print-shop and comfort
yourself by hanging around the walls of your dining-room
beauty that will not break or fade, that will meet
your eye from year to year, though plates, tumblers,
and tea-sets successively vanish. There is my advice
for you, Marianne.”

At the same time, let me say, in parenthesis, that
my wife, whose weakness is china, informed me that
night, when we were by ourselves, that she was ordering
secretly a tea-set as a bridal gift for Marianne,
every cup of which was to be exquisitely painted with
the wild-flowers of America, from designs of her own,

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

— a thing, by the by, that can now be very nicely executed
in our country, as one may find by looking in at
our friend Briggs's on School Street. “It will last her
all her life,” she said, “and always be such a pleasure
to look at, — and a pretty tea-table is such a pretty
sight!” So spoke Mrs. Crowfield, “unweaned from
china by a thousand falls.” She spoke even with tears
in her eyes. Verily, these women are harps of a thousand
strings!

But to return to my subject.

“Finally and lastly,” I said, “in my analysis and
explication of the agreeableness of those same parlors,
comes the crowning grace, — their homeliness. By
homeliness I mean not ugliness, as the word is apt to
be used, but the air that is given to a room by being
really at home in it. Not the most skilful arrangement
can impart this charm.

“It is said that a king of France once remarked, —
`My son, you must seem to love your people.'

“`Father, how shall I seem to love them?'

“`My son, you must love them.'

“So to make rooms seem home-like you must be at
home in them. Human light and warmth are so wanting
in some rooms, it is so evident that they are never
used, that you can never be at ease there. In vain
the house-maid is taught to wheel the sofa and turn
chair towards chair; in vain it is attempted to imitate
a negligent arrangement of the centre-table.

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

“Books that have really been read and laid down,
chairs that have really been moved here and there in
the animation of social contact, have a sort of human
vitality in them; and a room in which people really
live and enjoy is as different from a shut-up apartment
as a live woman from a wax image.

“Even rooms furnished without taste often become
charming from this one grace, that they seem to let
you into the home-life and home-current. You seem
to understand in a moment that you are taken into
the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and
not revolving at a distance in some outer court of the
gentiles.

“How many people do we call on from year to year
and know no more of their feelings, habits, tastes,
family ideas and ways, than if they lived in Kamtschatka!
And why? Because the room which they call a
front-parlor is made expressly so that you never shall
know. They sit in a back-room, — work, talk, read,
perhaps. After the servant has let you in and opened
a crack of the shutters, and while you sit waiting for
them to change their dress and come in, you speculate
as to what they may be doing. From some distant
region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird,
reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do
they love plants? Do they write letters, sew, embroider,
crochet? Do they ever romp and frolic?

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What books do they read? Do they sketch or paint?
Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled room
says nothing. A sofa and six chairs, two ottomans
fresh from the upholsterer's, a Brussels carpet, a centre-table
with four gilt Books of Beauty on it, a mantel-clock
from Paris, and two bronze vases, — all these
tell you only in frigid tones, `This is the best room,'—
only that, and nothing more, — and soon she trips
in in her best clothes, and apologizes for keeping you
waiting, asks how your mother is, and you remark that
it is a pleasant day, — and thus the acquaintance progresses
from year to year. One hour in the little back-room,
where the plants and canary-bird and children
are, might have made you fast friends for life; but as
it is, you care no more for them than for the gilt clock
on the mantel.

“And now, girls,” said I, pulling a paper out of my
pocket, “you must know that your father is getting
to be famous by means of these `House and Home
Papers.' Here is a letter I have just received: —

“`Most Excellent Mr. Crowfield, — Your
thoughts have lighted into our family-circle, and
echoed from our fireside. We all feel the force of
them, and are delighted with the felicity of your treatment
of the topic you have chosen. You have taken
hold of a subject that lies deep in our hearts, in a

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

genial, temperate, and convincing spirit. All must
acknowledge the power of your sentiments upon their
imaginations; — if they could only trust to them in
actual life! There is the rub.

“`Omitting further upon these points, there is a
special feature of your articles upon which we wish
to address you. You seem as yet (we do not know,
of course, what you may hereafter do) to speak only
of homes whose conduct depends upon the help of
servants. Now your principles apply, as some of us
well conceive, to nearly all classes of society; yet
most people, to take an impressive hint, must have
their portraits drawn out more exactly. We therefore
hope that you will give a reasonable share of your
attention to us who do not employ servants, so that
you may ease us of some of our burdens, which, in
spite of common sense, we dare not throw off. For
instance, we have company, — a friend from afar, (perhaps
wealthy,) or a minister, or some other man of
note. What do we do? Sit down and receive our
visitor with all good-will and the freedom of a home?
No; we (the lady of the house) flutter about to clear
up things, apologizing about this, that, and the other
condition of unpreparedness, and, having settled the
visitor in the parlor, set about marshalling the elements
of a grand dinner or supper, such as no person
but a gourmand wants to sit down to, when at home

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and comfortable; and in getting up this meal, clearing
away, and washing the dishes, we use up a good half
of the time which our guest spends with us. We have
spread ourselves, and shown him what we could do;
but what a paltry, heart-sickening achievement! Now,
good Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed and
despairing, wilt thou not descend into our purgatorial
circle, and tell the world what thou hast seen there of
doleful remembrance? Tell us how we, who must do
and desire to do our own work, can show forth in our
homes a homely, yet genial hospitality, and entertain
our guests without making a fuss and hurly-burly, and
seeming to be anxious for their sake about many
things, and spending too much time getting meals,
as if eating were the chief social pleasure. Won't you
do this, Mr. Crowfield?

“That 's a good letter,” said Jenny.

“To be sure it is,” said I.

“And shall you answer it, papa?”

“In the very next `Atlantic,' you may be sure I
shall. The class that do their own work are the
strongest, the most numerous, and, taking one thing
with another, quite as well cultivated a class as any
other. They are the anomaly of our country, — the

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

distinctive feature of the new society that we are
building up here; and if we are to accomplish our
national destiny, that class must increase rather than
diminish. I shall certainly do my best to answer the
very sensible and pregnant questions of that letter.”

Here Marianne shivered and drew up a shawl, and
Jenny gaped; my wife folded up the garment in
which she had set the last stitch, and the clock
struck twelve.

Bob gave a low whistle. “Who knew it was so
late?”

“We have talked the fire fairly out,” said Jenny.

p701-138 VI. THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK.

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

“MY dear Chris,” said my wife, “is n't it time
to be writing the next `House and Home
Paper'?”

I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels
luxuriously propped on an ottoman, reading for the
two-hundredth time Hawthorne's “Mosses from an
Old Manse,” or his “Twice-Told Tales,” I forget
which, — I only know that these books constitute
my cloud-land, where I love to sail away in dreamy
quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and
flour, the rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of
gold. What do all these things matter, as seen from
those enchanted gardens in Padua where the weird
Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gorgeous
daughter fills us with the light and magic of
her presence, and saddens us with the shadowy allegoric
mystery of her preternatural destiny? But my
wife represents the positive forces of time, place, and
number in our family, and, having also a chronological
head, she knows the day of the month, and

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

therefore gently reminded me that by inevitable dates the
time drew near for preparing my — which is it now,
May or June number?

“Well, my dear, you are right,” I said, as by an exertion
I came head-uppermost, and laid down the
fascinating volume. “Let me see, what was I to
write about?”

“Why, you remember you were to answer that letter
from the lady who does her own work.”

“Enough!” said I, seizing the pen with alacrity;
“you have hit the exact phrase: —

“`The lady who does her own work.'”

America is the only country where such a title is
possible, — the only country where there is a class of
women who may be described as ladies who do their
own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education,
cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and
ideas, who, without any very material additions or
changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle
of the Old World or the New.

What I have said is, that the existence of such a
class is a fact peculiar to American society, a clear,
plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine
of universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of
however mixed ingredients their ranks might have

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

been composed, and however imbued with the spirit
of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the
wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level;
the gentleman felled the wood for his log-cabin side
by side with the ploughman, and thews and sinews
rose in the market. “A man was deemed honorable
in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high
trees of the forest.” So in the interior domestic
circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin together,
became companions, and sometimes the maid,
as the more accomplished and stronger, took precedence
of the mistress. It became natural and unavoidable
that children should begin to work as early
as they were capable of it. The result was a generation
of intelligent people brought up to labor from
necessity, but turning on the problem of labor the
acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone
in sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her
superiority by skill and contrivance. If she could
not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods
which made lifting the pail unnecessary, — if she
could not take a hundred steps without weariness,
she could make twenty answer the purpose of a hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced
into New England, but it never suited the genius of
the people, never struck deep root, or spread so as to

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were
opposed to it from conscientious principle, — many
from far-sighted thrift, and from a love of thoroughness
and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled
work of barbarians. People, having once felt
the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which
came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could
not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus it came
to pass that for many years the rural population of
New England, as a general rule, did their own work,
both out doors and in. If there were a black man or
black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically
only the helps, following humbly the steps of master
and mistress, and used by them as instruments of
lightening certain portions of their toil. The master
and mistress with their children were the head
workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country,
because years ago the first English travellers
found that the class of persons by them denominated
servants were in America denominated help or helpers.
But the term was the very best exponent of the
state of society. There were few servants, in the
European sense of the word; there was a society of
educated workers, where all were practically equal,
and where, if there was a deficiency in one family
and an excess in another, a helper, not a servant, was

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

hired. Mrs. Browne, who has six sons and no daughters,
enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has
six daughters and no sons. She borrows a daughter,
and pays her good wages to help in her domestic toil,
and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones.
These two young people go into the families in which
they are to be employed in all respects as equals and
companions, and so the work of the community is
equalized. Hence arose, and for many years continued,
a state of society more nearly solving than
any other ever did the problem of combining the
highest culture of the mind with the highest culture
of the muscles and the physical faculties.

Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome,
strong females, rising each day to their in-door
work with cheerful alertness, — one to sweep the
room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared
the breakfast for the father and brothers who were
going out to manly labor; and they chatted meanwhile
of books, studies, embroidery, discussed the last
new poem, or some historical topic started by graver
reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off
the next week. They spun with the book tied to
the distaff; they wove; they did all manner of fine
needlework; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in
short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention,
and perfect health, set themselves to any

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

work they had ever read or thought of. A bride in
those days was married with sheets and table-cloths
of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toiletcovers
wrought in divers embroidery by her own and
her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work done
in our days by girls who have nothing else to do will
not equal what was done by these, who performed besides,
among them, the whole work of the family.

For many years these habits of life characterized
the majority of our rural towns. They still exist
among a class respectable in numbers and position,
though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction
and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness
of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above
all things — lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract
that exertion which brings out all the powers
of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but
practicaly most people do all they can to get rid of
it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than
circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not
write this article, were not the publication-day hard
on my heels. I should read Hawthorne and Emerson
and Holmes, and dream in my arm-chair, and
project in the clouds those lovely unwritten stories
that curl and veer and change like mist-wreaths in the
sun. So, also, however dignified, however invigorating,
however really desirable are habits of life

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

involving daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon
at every one's elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to
bear its weight with sullen, discontented murmurs.

I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak
very moderately, a hundred houses where these humble
lines will be read and discussed, where there are
no servants except the ladies of the household. I
will venture to say, also, that these households, many
of them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and
refined elegance to many which are conducted by the
ministration of domestics. I will venture to assert,
furthermore, that these same ladies who live thus find
quite as much time for reading, letter-writing, drawing,
embroidery, and fancy-work as the women of
families otherwise arranged. I am quite certain that
they would be found on an average to be in the enjoyment
of better health, and more of that sense of
capability and vitality which gives one confidence in
one's ability to look into life and meet it with cheerful
courage, than three quarters of the women who
keep servants, — and that on the whole their domestic
establishment is regulated more exactly to their
mind, their food prepared and served more to their
taste. And yet, with all this, I will not venture to
assert that they are satisfied with this way of living,
and that they would not change it forthwith, if they
could. They have a secret feeling all the while that

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

they are being abused, that they are working harder
than they ought to, and that women who live in their
houses like boarders, who have only to speak and it is
done, are the truly enviable ones. One after another
of their associates, as opportunity offers and means
increase, deserts the ranks, and commits her domestic
affairs to the hands of hired servants. Self-respect
takes the alarm. Is it altogether genteel to live as
we do? To be sure, we are accustomed to it; we
have it all systematized and arranged; the work of
our own hands suits us better than any we can hire;
in fact, when we do hire, we are discontented and uncomfortable, —
for who will do for us what we will do
for ourselves? But when we have company! there 's
the rub, to get out all our best things and put them
back, — to cook the meals and wash the dishes ingloriously, —
and to make all appear as if we did n't
do it, and had servants like other people.

There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect, —
an unwillingness to face with dignity the
actual facts and necessities of our situation in life, —
this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature
of the case. It is the same sort of pride which makes
Smilax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves,
and get up a circuitous dinner-party on English principles,
to entertain a friend from England. Because
the friend in England lives in such and such a style,

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

he must make believe for a day that he lives so too,
when in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment
equal to a removal or a fire, and threatens the
total extinction of Mrs. Smilax. Now there are two
principles of hospitality that people are very apt to
overlook. One is, that their guests like to be made
at home, and treated with confidence; and another is,
that people are always interested in the details of a
way of life that is new to them. The Englishman
comes to America as weary of his old, easy, family-coach
life as you can be of yours; he wants to see
something new under the sun, — something American;
and forthwith we all bestir ourselves to give him
something as near as we can fancy exactly like what
he is already tired of. So city-people come to the
country, not to sit in the best parlor, and to see the
nearest imitation of city-life, but to lie on the haymow,
to swing in the barn, to form intimacy with the
pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to eat baked potatoes
exactly on the critical moment when they are done,
from the oven of the cooking-stove, — and we remark,
en passant, that nobody has ever truly eaten a baked
potato, unless he has seized it at that precise and fortunate
moment.

I fancy you now, my friends, whom I have in my
eye. You are three happy women together. You are
all so well that you know not how it feels to be sick.

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You are used to early rising, and would not lie in bed,
if you could. Long years of practice have made you
familiar with the shortest, neatest, most expeditious
method of doing every household office, so that really
for the greater part of the time in your house there
seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise
in the morning and despatch your husband, father,
and brothers to the farm or wood-lot; you go sociably
about chatting with each other, while you skim the
milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The forenoon
is long; it 's ten to one that all the so-called
morning work is over, and you have leisure for an
hour's sewing or reading before it is time to start the
dinner preparations. By two o'clock your house-work
is done, and you have the long afternoon for books,
needlework, or drawing, — for perhaps there is among
you one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you
reads aloud while the others sew, and you manage in
that way to keep up with a great deal of reading. I
see on your book-shelves Prescott, Macaulay, Irving,
besides the lighter fry of poems and novels, and, if
I mistake not, the friendly covers of the “Atlantic.”
When you have company, you invite Mrs. Smith or
Brown or Jones to tea; you have no trouble; they
come early, with their knitting or sewing; your particular
crony sits with you by your polished stove while you
watch the baking of those light biscuits and tea-rusks

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for which you are so famous, and Mrs. Somebodyelse
chats with your sister, who is spreading the table
with your best china in the best room. When tea is
over, there is plenty of volunteering to help you wash
your pretty India teacups, and get them back into the
cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in
all this, though you have taken down the best things
and put them back, because you have done all without
anxiety or effort, among those who would do precisely
the same, if you were their visitors.

But now comes down pretty Mrs. Simmons and her
pretty daughter to spend a week with you, and forthwith
you are troubled. Your youngest, Fanny, visited
them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook
and chambermaid, and the servant in white gloves that
waits on table. You say in your soul, “What shall we
do? they never can be contented to live as we do;
how shall we manage?” And now you long for servants.

This is the very time that you should know that
Mrs. Simmons is tired to death of her fine establishment,
and weighed down with the task of keeping the
peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly
loving her ease, and hating strife; and yet last week
she had five quarrels to settle between her invaluable
cook and the other members of her staff, because
invaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how to get

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

up state-dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries
which her mistress knows nothing about, asserts the
usual right of spoiled favorites to insult all her neighbors
with impunity, and rule with a rod of iron over
the whole house. Anything that is not in the least
like her own home and ways of living will be a blessed
relief and change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet
house, your delicate cookery, your cheerful morning
tasks, if you will let her follow you about, and sit
and talk with you while you are at your work, will
all seem a pleasant contrast to her own life. Of
course, if it came to the case of offering to change
lots in life, she would not do it; but very likely she
thinks she would, and sighs over and pities herself,
and thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how
snugly and securely you live, and wishes she were as
untrammelled and independent as you. And she is
more than half right; for, with her helpless habits,
her utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning
the reciprocal relations of milk, eggs, butter, saleratus,
soda, and yeast, she is completely the victim and slave
of the person she pretends to rule.

Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and rehearsals
in her family. After many trials, she at last
engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect
treasure, — neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited.
The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven.

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

Illusive bliss! The new-comer proves to be no favorite
with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates evolve
the catastrophe, as follows. First, low murmur of
distant thunder in the kitchen; then a day or two of
sulky silence, in which the atmosphere seems heavy
with an approaching storm. At last comes the climax.
The parlor-door flies open during breakfast. Enter
seamstress, in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook with a
face swollen and red with wrath, who tersely introduces
the subject-matter of the drama in a voice trembling
with rage.

“Would you be plased, Ma'am, to suit yerself with
another cook? Me week will be up next Tuesday,
and I want to be going.”

“Why, Bridget, what 's the matter?”

“Matter enough, Ma'am! I niver could live with
them Cork girls in a house, nor I won't; them as likes
the Cork girls is welcome for all me; but it 's not for
the likes of me to live with them, and she been in the
kitchen a-upsettin' of me gravies with her flat-irons
and things.”

Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of
denial, and the altercation wages fast and furious, and
poor, little, delicate Mrs. Simmons stands like a kitten
in a thunder-storm in the midst of a regular Irish row.

Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows
that a great dinner is to come off Wednesday, and

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

that her mistress has not the smallest idea how to
manage it, and that, therefore, whatever happens, she
must be conciliated.

Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor
Mrs. Simmons dismisses her seamstress with longing
looks. She suited her mistress exactly, but she did n't
suit cook!

Now, if Mrs: Simmons had been brought up in early
life with the experience that you have, she would be
mistress in her own house. She would quietly say
to Madam Cook, “If my family arrangements do not
suit you, you can leave. I can see to the dinner
myself.” And she could do it. Her well-trained muscles
would not break down under a little extra work;
her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity with everything
that is to be done would enable her at once to
make cooks of any bright girls of good capacity who
might still be in her establishment; and, above all,
she would feel herself mistress in her own house.
This is what would come of an experience in doing
her own work as you do. She who can at once put
her own trained hand to the machine in any spot
where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave
of a coarse, vulgar Irishwoman.

So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be
expected of servants in a given time, and what ought
to be expected of a given amount of provisions, poor

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one
six months in her life she had been a practical cook,
and had really had the charge of the larder, she would
not now be haunted, as she constantly is, by an indefinite
apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps
of the disappearance of provisions through secret channels
of relationship and favoritism. She certainly
could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity
of so many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens
of eggs, not to mention spices and wine, as are
daily required for the accomplishment of Madam
Cook's purposes. But though now she does suspect
and apprehend, she cannot speak with certainty. She
cannot say, “I have made these things. I know
exactly what they require. I have done this and that
myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a
certain time.” It is said that women who have been
accustomed to doing their own work become hard
mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the
ground they stand on, — they are less open to imposition, —
they can speak and act in their own houses
more as those “having authority,” and therefore are
less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less
willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness.
Their general error lies in expecting that any servant
ever will do as well for them as they will do for themselves,
and that an untrained, undisciplined human

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

being ever can do house-work, or any other work, with
the neatness and perfection that a person of trained
intelligence can. It has been remarked in our armies
that the men of cultivation, though bred in delicate
and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships
of camp-life better and longer than rough laborers.
The reason is, that an educated mind knows how to
use and save its body, to work it and spare it, as an
uneducated mind cannot; and so the college-bred
youth brings himself safely through fatigues which
kill the unreflective laborer. Cultivated, intelligent
women, who are brought up to do the work of their
own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make
the head save the wear of the muscles. By forethought,
contrivance, system, and arrangement, they
lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less
expense of time and strength than others. The old
New England motto, Get your work done up in the
forenoon, applied to an amount of work which would
keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to
sunset.

A lady living in one of our obscure New England
towns, where there were no servants to be hired, at
last by sending to a distant city succeeded in procuring
a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense
bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain.
In one fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

and old Night in the kitchen and through the house,
that her mistress, a delicate woman, encumbered with
the care of young children, began seriously to think
that she made more work each day than she performed,
and dismissed her. What was now to be
done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring
farmer was going to be married in six months, and
wanted a little ready money for her trousseau. The
lady was informed that Miss So-and-so would come
to her, not as a servant, but as hired “help.” She
was fain to accept any help with gladness. Forthwith
came into the family-circle a tall, well-dressed young
person, grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not in
the least presuming, who sat at the family-table and
observed all its decorums with the modest self-possession
of a lady. The new-comer took a survey of the
labors of a family of ten members, including four or
five young children, and, looking, seemed at once to
throw them into system, matured her plans, arranged
her hours of washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, rose
early, moved deftly, and in a single day the slatternly
and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance
that so often strikes one in New England
farm-houses. The work seemed to be all gone. Everything
was nicely washed, brightened, put in place,
and stayed in place; the floors, when cleaned, remained
clean; the work was always done, and not

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat neatly
dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing
letters to her betrothed, or sewing on her bridal outfit.
Such is the result of employing those who have been
brought up to do their own work. That tall, fine-looking
girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a
fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will,
we fear, prove rather an exacting mistress to Irish
Biddy and Bridget; but she will never be threatened
by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or
two have tried the experiment.

Having written thus far on my article, I laid it
aside till evening, when, as usual, I was saluted by
the inquiry, “Has papa been writing anything to-day?”
and then followed loud petitions to hear it;
and so I read as far, reader, as you have.

“Well, papa,” said Jenny, “what are you meaning
to make out there? Do you really think it would be
best for us all to try to go back to that old style of
living you describe? After all, you have shown only
the dark side of an establishment with servants, and
the bright side of the other way of living. Mamma
does not have such trouble with her servants; matters
have always gone smoothly in our family; and if we
are not such wonderful girls as those you describe,
yet we may make pretty good housekeepers on the
modern system, after all.”

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

“You don't know all the troubles your mamma has
had in your day,” said my wife. “I have often, in the
course of my family-history, seen the day when I have
heartily wished for the strength and ability to manage
my household matters as my grandmother of notable
memory managed hers. But I fear that those remarkable
women of the olden times are like the ancient
painted glass, — the art of making them is lost; my
mother was less than her mother, and I am less than
my mother.”

“And Marianne and I come out entirely at the
little end of the horn,” said Jenny, laughing; “yet I
wash the breakfast-cups and dust the parlors, and have
always fancied myself a notable housekeeper.”

“It is just as I told you,” I said. “Human nature
is always the same. Nobody ever is or does more
than circumstances force him to be and do. Those
remarkable women of old were made by circumstances.
There were, comparatively speaking, no servants to be
had, and so children were trained to habits of industry
and mechanical adroitness from the cradle, and
every household process was reduced to the very minimum
of labor. Every step required in a process was
counted, every movement calculated; and she who took
ten steps, when one would do, lost her reputation for
`faculty.' Certainly such an early drill was of use in
developing the health and the bodily powers, as well

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

as in giving precision to the practical mental faculties.
All household economies were arranged with equal
niceness in those thoughtful minds. A trained housekeeper
knew just how many sticks of hickory of a
certain size were required to heat her oven, and how
many of each different kind of wood. She knew by
a sort of intuition just what kinds of food would yield
the most palatable nutriment with the least outlay of
accessories in cooking. She knew to a minute the
time when each article must go into and be withdrawn
from her oven; and if she could only lie in her chamber
and direct, she could guide an intelligent child
through the processes with mathematical certainty. It
is impossible, however, that anything but early training
and long experience can produce these results,
and it is earnestly to be wished that the grandmothers
of New England had only written down their experiences
for our children; they would have been a mine
of maxims and traditions, better than any other traditions
of the elders which we know of.”

“One thing I know,” said Marianne, — “and that
is, I wish I had been brought up so, and knew all that
I should, and had all the strength and adroitness that
those women had. I should not dread to begin housekeeping,
as I now do. I should feel myself independent.
I should feel that I knew how to direct my
servants, and what it was reasonable and proper to

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

expect of them; and then, as you say, I should n't
be dependent on all their whims and caprices of temper.
I dread those household storms, of all things.”

Silently pondering these anxieties of the young
expectant housekeeper, I resumed my pen, and concluded
my paper as follows.

In this country, our democratic institutions have
removed the superincumbent pressure which in the
Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit.
They come here feeling that this is somehow a land
of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of
what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw,
untrained Irish peasantry, and the wonder is, that,
with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the
Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness,
there should be the measure of comfort and success
there is in our domestic arrangements. But, so long
as things are so, there will be constant changes and
interruptions in every domestic establishment, and
constantly recurring interregnums when the mistress
must put her own hand to the work, whether the hand
be a trained or an untrained one. As matters now
are, the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest.
She has very little strength, — no experience to teach
her how to save her strength. She knows nothing
experimentally of the simplest processes necessary to

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

keep her family comfortably fed and clothed; and she
has a way of looking at all these things which makes
them particularly hard and distasteful to her. She
does not escape being obliged to do house-work at
intervals, but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused
way, that makes it twice as hard and disagreeable
as it need be.

Now what I have to say is, that, if every young
woman learned to do house-work and cultivated her
practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first
place, be much more likely to keep her servants, and,
in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would
avoid all that wear and tear of the nervous system
which comes from constant ill-success in those departments
on which family health and temper mainly
depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our American
life which require a peculiar training. Why not
face it sensibly?

The second thing I have to say is, that our land is
now full of motorpathic institutions to which women
are sent at great expense to have hired operators
stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They lie
for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed,
and all the different muscles of the body worked for
them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the
powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite
as cheerful and less expensive a process, if young

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

girls from early life developed the muscles in sweeping,
dusting, ironing, rubbing furniture, and all the
multiplied domestic processes which our grandmothers
knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified
the intervals with spinning on the great and
little wheel, never came to need the gymnastics of
Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which
really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor
economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow
feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for
us? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in
a week went over every movement that any gymnast
has invented, and went over them to some productive
purpose too.

Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain, if those
ladies who have learned and practise the invaluable
accomplishment of doing their own work will know
their own happiness and dignity, and properly value
their great acquisition, even though it may have been
forced upon them by circumstances.

p701-148 VII. WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

WHILE I was preparing my article for the “Atlantic,”
our friend Bob Stephens burst in upon
us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper in his
hand.

“Well, girls, your time is come now! You women
have been preaching heroism and sacrifice to us, —
`so splendid to go forth and suffer and die for our
country,' — and now comes the test of feminine patriotism.”

“Why, what 's the matter now?” said Jenny, running
eagerly to look over his shoulder at the paper.

“No more foreign goods,” said he, waving it aloft,—
“no more gold shipped to Europe for silks, laces,
jewels, kid gloves, and what-not. Here it is, — great
movement, headed by senators' and generals' wives,
Mrs. General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry
Wilson, and so on, a long string of them, to buy no
more imported articles during the war.”

“But I don't see how it can be done,” said Jenny.

“Why,” said I, “do you suppose that `nothing to
wear' is made in America?”

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

“But, dear Mr. Crowfield,” said Miss Featherstone,
a nice girl, who was just then one of our family-circle,
“there is not, positively, much that is really fit to
use or wear made in America, — is there now? Just
think; how is Marianne to furnish her house here
without French papers and English carpets? — those
American papers are so very ordinary, and as to
American carpets, everybody knows their colors don't
hold; and then, as to dress, a lady must have gloves,
you know, — and everybody knows no such things are
made in America as gloves.”

“I think,” I said, “that I have heard of certain
fair ladies wishing that they were men, that they
might show with what alacrity they would sacrifice
everything on the altar of their country: life and limb
would be nothing; they would glory in wounds and
bruises, they would enjoy losing a right arm, they
would n't mind limping about on a lame leg the rest
of their lives, if they were John or Peter, if only they
might serve their dear country.”

“Yes,” said Bob, “that 's female patriotism! Girls
are always ready to jump off from precipices, or throw
themselves into abysses, but as to wearing an unfashionable
hat or thread gloves, that they can't do, —
not even for their dear country. No matter whether
there 's any money left to pay for the war or not, the
dear souls must have twenty yards of silk in a dress,—
it 's the fashion, you know.”

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

“Now, is n't he too bad?” said Marianne. “As if
we 'd ever been asked to make these sacrifices and
refused! I think I have seen women ready to give
up dress and fashion and everything else, for a good
cause.”

“For that matter,” said I, “the history of all wars
has shown women ready to sacrifice what is most
intimately feminine in times of peril to their country.
The women of Carthage not only gave up their jewels
in the siege of their city, but, in the last extremity,
cut off their hair for bow-strings. The women of
Hungary and Poland, in their country's need, sold
their jewels and plate and wore ornaments of iron and
lead. In the time of our own Revolution, our women
dressed in plain homespun and drank herb-tea, — and
certainly nothing is more feminine than a cup of tea.
And in this very struggle, the women of the Southern
States have cut up their carpets for blankets, have
borne the most humiliating retrenchments and privations
of all kinds without a murmur. So let us
exonerate the female sex of want of patriotism, at any
rate.”

“Certainly,” said my wife; “and if our Northern
women have not retrenched and made sacrifices, it
has been because it has not been impressed on them
that there is any particular call for it. Everything has
seemed to be so prosperous and plentiful in the

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

Northand States, money has been so abundant and easy to
come by, that it has really been difficult to realize that
a dreadful and destructive war was raging. Only occasionally,
after a great battle, when the lists of the
killed and wounded have been sent through the country,
have we felt that we were making a sacrifice. The
women who have spent such sums for laces and jewels
and silks have not had it set clearly before them why
they should not do so. The money has been placed
freely in their hands, and the temptation before their
eyes.”

“Yes,” said Jenny, “I am quite sure that there are
hundreds who have been buying foreign goods, who
would not do it, if they could see any connection
between their not doing it and the salvation of the
country; but when I go to buy a pair of gloves, I naturally
want the best pair I can find, the pair that will
last the longest and look the best, and these always
happen to be French gloves.”

“Then,” said Miss Featherstone, “I never could
clearly see why people should confine their patronage
and encouragement to works of their own country.
I 'm sure the poor manufacturers of England have
shown the very noblest spirit with relation to our
cause, and so have the silk-weavers and artisans of
France, — at least, so I have heard; why should we
not give them a fair share of encouragement,

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

particularly when they make things that we are not in circumstances
to make, have not the means to make?”

“Those are certainly sensible questions,” I replied,
“and ought to meet a fair answer, and I should say,
that, were our country in a fair ordinary state of prosperity,
there would be no reason why our wealth should
not flow out for the encouragement of well-directed
industry in any part of the world; from this point of
view we might look on the whole world as our country,
and cheerfully assist in developing its wealth and
resources. But our country is now in the situation of
a private family whose means are absorbed by an expensive
sickness, involving the life of its head; just
now it is all we can do to keep the family together,
all our means are swallowed up by our own domestic
wants, we have nothing to give for the encouragement
of other families, we must exist ourselves, we must
get through this crisis and hold our own, and that we
may do it all the family expenses must be kept within
ourselves as far as possible. If we drain off all the
gold of the country to send to Europe to encourage
her worthy artisans, we produce high prices and distress
among equally worthy ones at home, and we
lessen the amount of our resources for maintaining
the great struggle for national existence. The same
amount of money which we pay for foreign luxuries,
if passed into the hands of our own manufacturers

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

and producers, becomes available for the increasing
expenses of the war.”

“But, papa,” said Jenny, “I understood that a
great part of our Governmental income was derived
from the duties on foreign goods, and so I inferred
that the more foreign goods were imported the better
it would be.”

“Well, suppose,” said I, “that for every hundred
thousand dollars we send out of the country we pay
the Government ten thousand; that is about what our
gain as a nation would be; — we send our gold abroad
in a great stream, and give our Government a little
driblet.”

“Well, but,” said Miss Featherstone, “what can be
got in America? Hardly anything, I believe, except
common calicoes.”

“Begging your pardon, my dear lady,” said I,
“there is where you and multitudes of others are
greatly mistaken. Your partiality for foreign things
has kept you ignorant of what you have at home.
Now I am not blaming the love of foreign things; it
is not peculiar to us Americans; all nations have it.
It is a part of the poetry of our nature to love what
comes from afar, and reminds us of lands distant and
different from our own. The English belles seek after
French laces; the French beauty enumerates English
laces among her rarities; and the French dandy piques

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

himself upon an English tailor. We Americans are
great travellers, and few people travel, I fancy, with
more real enjoyment than we; our domestic establishments,
as compared with those of the Old World, are
less cumbrous and stately, and so our money is commonly
in hand as pocket-money, to be spent freely
and gayly in our tours abroad.

“We have such bright and pleasant times in every
country that we conceive a kindliness for its belongings.
To send to Paris for our dresses and our shoes
and our gloves may not be a mere bit of foppery, but
a reminder of the bright, pleasant hours we have spent
in that city of Boulevards and fountains. Hence it
comes, in a way not very blamable, that many people
have been so engrossed with what can be got from
abroad that they have neglected to inquire what can
be found at home; they have supposed, of course, that
to get a decent watch they must send to Geneva or to
London, — that to get thoroughly good carpets they
must have the English manufacture, — that a really
tasteful wall-paper could be found only in Paris, —
and that flannels and broadcloths could come only
from France, Great Britain, or Germany.”

“Well, is n't it so?” said Miss Featherstone. “I
certainly have always thought so; I never heard of
American watches, I 'm sure.”

“Then,” said I, “I 'm sure you can't have read an

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

article that you should have read on the Waltham
watches, written by our friend George W. Curtis, in
the “Atlantic” for January of last year. I must refer
you to that to learn that we make in America watches
superior to those of Switzerland or England, bringing
into the service machinery and modes of workmanship
unequalled for delicacy and precision; as I said
before, you must get the article and read it, and if
some sunny day you could make a trip to Waltham,
and see the establishment, it would greatly assist your
comprehension.”

“Then, as to men's clothing,” said Bob, “I know
to my entire satisfaction that many of the most popular
cloths for men's wear are actually American fabrics
baptized with French and English names to make
them sell.”

“Which shows,” said I, “the use of a general community
movement to employ American goods. It will
change the fashion. The demand will create the supply.
When the leaders of fashion are inquiring for
American instead of French and English fabrics, they
will be surprised to find what nice American articles
there are. The work of our own hands will no more
be forced to skulk into the market under French and
English names, and we shall see, what is really true,
that an American gentleman need not look beyond
his own country for a wardrobe befitting him. I am

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

positive that we need not seek broadcloth or other
woollen goods from foreign lands, — that better hats
are made in America than in Europe, and better boots
and shoes; and I should be glad to send an American
gentleman to the World's Fair dressed from top to toe
in American manufactures, with an American watch
in his pocket, and see if he would suffer in comparison
with the gentlemen of any other country.”

“Then, as to house-furnishing,” began my wife,
“American carpets are getting to be every way equal
to the English.”

“Yes,” said I, “and what is more, the Brussels
carpets of England are woven on looms invented by
an American, and bought of him. Our countryman,
Bigelow, went to England to study carpet-weaving in
the English looms, — supposing that all arts were generously
open for the instruction of learners. He was
denied the opportunity of studying the machinery and
watching the processes by a short-sighted jealousy.
He immediately sat down with a yard of carpeting,
and, patiently unravelling it, thread by thread, combined
and calculated till he invented the machinery
on which the best carpets of the Old and New World
are woven. No pains which such ingenuity and energy
can render effective are spared to make our fabrics
equal those of the British market, and we need only
to be disabused of the old prejudice, and to keep up

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

with the movement of our own country, and find out
our own resources. The fact is, every year improves
our fabrics. Our mechanics, our manufacturers, are
working with an energy, a zeal, and a skill that carry
things forward faster than anybody dreams of; and
nobody can predicate the character of American articles,
in any department, now, by their character even
five years ago.”

“Well, as to wall-papers,” said Miss Featherstone,
“there you must confess the French are and must be
unequalled.”

“I do not confess any such thing,” said I, hardily.
“I grant you that in that department of paper-hangings
which exhibits floral decoration the French designs
and execution are and must be for some time to come
far ahead of all the world, — their drawing of flowers,
vines, and foliage has the accuracy of botanical studies
and the grace of finished works of art, and we cannot
as yet pretend in America to do anything equal to it.
But for satin finish, and for a variety of exquisite tints
of plain colors, American papers equal any in the
world; our gilt papers even surpass in the heaviness
and polish of the gilding those of foreign countries;
and we have also gorgeous velvets. All I have to say
is, let people who are furnishing houses inquire for
articles of American manufacture, and they will be
surprised at what they will see. We need go no

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

farther than our Cambridge glass-works to see that
the most dainty devices of cut-glass, crystal, ground
and engraved glass of every color and pattern, may be
had of American workmanship, every way equal to
the best European make, and for half the price. And
American painting on china is so well executed both
in Boston and New York, that deficiencies in the finest
French or English sets can be made up in a style not
distinguishable from the original, as one may easily
see by calling on our worthy next neighbor, Briggs, who
holds the opposite corner to our “Atlantic Monthly.”
No porcelain, it is true, is yet made in America,
these decorative arts being exercised on articles imported
from Europe. Our tables must, therefore, per
force, be largely indebted to foreign lands for years
to come. Exclusive of this item, however, I believe
it would require very little self-denial to paper, carpet,
and furnish a house entirely from the manufactures
of America. I cannot help saying one word here in
favor of the cabinet-makers of Boston. There is so
much severity of taste, such a style and manner about
the best made Boston furniture, as raises it really quite
into the region of the fine arts. Our artisans have
studied foreign models with judicious eyes, and so
transferred to our country the spirit of what is best
worth imitating, that one has no need to import furniture
from Europe.”

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

“Well,” said Miss Featherstone, “there is one
point you cannot make out, — gloves; certainly the
French have the monopoly of that article.”

“I am not going to ruin my cause by asserting too
much,” said I. “I have n't been with nicely dressed
women so many years not to speak with proper respect
of Alexander's gloves, — and I confess, honestly, that
to forego them must be a fair, square sacrifice to
patriotism. But then, on the other hand, it is nevertheless
true that gloves have long been made in
America and surreptitiously brought into market as
French. I have lately heard that very nice kid gloves
are made at Watertown and in Philadelphia. I have
only heard of them, and not seen. A loud demand
might bring forth an unexpected supply from these
and other sources. If the women of America were
bent on having gloves made in their own country, how
long would it be before apparatus and factories would
spring into being? Look at the hoop-skirt factories,—
women wanted hoop-skirts, — would have them or
die, — and forthwith factories arose, and hoop-skirts
became as the dust of the earth for abundance.”

“Yes,” said Miss Featherstone, “and, to say the
truth, the American hoop-skirts are the only ones fit
to wear. When we were living on the Champs Elys
ées, I remember we searched high and low for something
like them, and finally had to send home to
America for some.”

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

“Well,” said I, “that shows what I said. Let
there be only a hearty call for an article, and it will
come. These spirits of the vasty deep are not so
very far off, after all, as we may imagine, and women's
unions and leagues will lead to inquiries and demands
which will as infallibly bring supplies as a vacuum will
create a draught of air.”

“But, at least, there are no ribbons made in America,”
said Miss Featherstone.

“Pardon, my lady, there is a ribbon-factory now in
operation in Boston, and ribbons of every color are
made in New York; there is also in the vicinity of
Boston a factory which makes Roman scarfs. This
shows that the faculty of weaving ribbons is not wanting
to us Americans, and a zealous patronage would
increase the supply.

“Then, as for a thousand and one little feminine
needs, I believe our manufacturers can supply them.
The Portsmouth Steam Company makes white spoolcotton
equal to any in England, and colored spoolcotton,
of every shade and variety, such as is not made
either in England or France. Pins are well made in
America; so are hooks and eyes, and a variety of
buttons. Straw bonnets of American manufacture are
also extensively in market, and quite as pretty ones as
the double-priced ones which are imported.

“As to silks and satins, I am not going to pretend

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

that they are to be found here. It is true, there are
silk manufactories, like that of the Cheneys in Connecticut,
where very pretty foulard dress-silks are
made, together with sewing-silk enough to supply a
large demand. Enough has been done to show that
silks might be made in America; but at present, as
compared with Europe, we claim neither silks nor
thread laces among our manufactures.

“But what then? These are not necessaries of life.
Ladies can be very tastefully dressed in other fabrics
besides silks. There are many pretty American dressgoods
which the leaders of fashion might make fashionable;
and certainly no leader of fashion could wish
to dress for a nobler object than to aid her country in
deadly peril.

“It is not a life-pledge, not a total abstinence, that
is asked, — only a temporary expedient to meet a
stringent crisis. We only ask a preference for American
goods where they can be found. Surely, women
whose exertions in Sanitary Fairs have created an era
in the history of the world will not shrink from so
small a sacrifice for so obvious a good.

“Here is something in which every individual woman
can help. Every woman who goes into a shop
and asks for American goods renders an appreciable
aid to our cause. She expresses her opinion and her
patriotism; and her voice forms a part of that demand

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

which shall arouse and develop the resources of her
country. We shall learn to know our own country.
We shall learn to respect our own powers, — and
every branch of useful labor will spring and flourish
under our well-directed efforts. We shall come out
of our great contest, not bedraggled, ragged, and
poverty-stricken, but developed, instructed, and rich.
Then will we gladly join with other nations in the
free interchange of manufactures, and gratify our eye
and taste with what is foreign, while we can in turn
send abroadour our own productions in equal ratio.”

“Upon my word,” said Miss Featherstone, “I
should think it was the Fourth of July, — but I yield
the point. I am convinced; and henceforth you will
see me among the most stringent of the leaguers.”

“Right!” said I.

And, fair lady-reader, let me hope you will say the
same. You can do something for your country, — it
lies right in your hand. Go to the shops, determined
on supplying your family and yourself with American
goods. Insist on having them; raise the question of
origin over every article shown to you. In the Revolutionary
times, some of the leading matrons of New
England gave parties where the ladies were dressed in
homespun and drank sage-tea. Fashion makes all
things beautiful, and you, my charming and accomplished
friend, can create beauty by creating fashion.

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

What makes the beauty of half the Cashmere shawls?
Not anything in the shawls themselves, for they often
look coarse and dingy and barbarous. It is the association
with style and fashion. Fair lady, give style
and fashion to the products of your own country, —
resolve that the money in your hand shall go to your
brave brothers, to your co-Americans, now straining
every nerve to uphold the nation, and cause it to
stand high in the earth. What are you without your
country? As Americans you can hope for no rank
but the rank of your native land, no badge of nobility
but her beautiful stars. It rests with this conflict to
decide whether those stars shall be badges of nobility
to you and your children in all lands. Women of
America, your country expects every woman to do her
duty!

p701-177 VIII. ECONOMY.

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“THE fact is,” said Jenny, as she twirled a little
hat on her hand, which she had been making
over, with nobody knows what of bows and pompons,
and other matters for which the women have curious
names, — “the fact is, American women and girls
must learn to economize; it is n't merely restricting
one's self to American goods, it is general economy,
that is required. Now here 's this hat, — costs me
only three dollars, all told; and Sophie Page bought
an English one this morning at Madame Meyer's for
which she gave fifteen. And I really don't think hers
has more of an air than mine. I made this over, you
see, with things I had in the house, bought nothing
but the ribbon, and paid for altering and pressing,
and there you see what a stylish hat I have!”

“Lovely! admirable!” said Miss Featherstone.
“Upon my word, Jenny, you ought to marry a poor
parson; you would be quite thrown away upon a rich
man.”

“Let me see,” said I. “I want to admire

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

intelligently. That is n't the hat you were wearing yesterday?”

“O no, papa! This is just done. The one I wore
yesterday was my waterfall-hat, with the green feather;
this, you see, is an oriole.”

“A what?”

“An oriole. Papa, how can you expect to learn
about these things?”

“And that plain little black one, with the stiff crop
of scarlet feathers sticking straight up?”

“That 's my jockey, papa, with a plume en militaire.”

“And did the waterfall and the jockey cost anything?”

“They were very, very cheap, papa, all things
considered. Miss Featherstone will remember that
the waterfall was a great bargain, and I had the feather
from last year; and as to the jockey, that was made
out of my last year's white one, dyed over. You know,
papa, I always take care of my things, and they last
from year to year.”

“I do assure you, Mr. Crowfield,” said Miss Featherstone,
“I never saw such little economists as your
daughters; it is perfectly wonderful what they contrive
to dress on. How they manage to do it I 'm sure I
can't see. I never could, I 'm convinced.”

“Yes,” said Jenny, “I' ve bought but just one new

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

hat. I only wish you could sit in church where we
do, and see those Miss Fielders. Marianne and I
have counted six new hats apiece of those girls', —
new, you know, just out of the milliner's shop; and
last Sunday they came out in such lovely puffed tulle
bonnets! Were n't they lovely, Marianne? And next
Sunday, I don't doubt, there 'll be something else.”

“Yes,” said Miss Featherstone, — “their father,
they say, has made a million dollars lately on Government
contracts.”

“For my part,” said Jenny, “I think such extravagance,
at such a time as this, is shameful.”

“Do you know,” said I, “that I 'm quite sure the
Misses Fielder think they are practising rigorous economy?”

“Papa! Now there you are with your paradoxes!
How can you say so?”

“I should n't be afraid to bet a pair of gloves,
now,” said I, “that Miss Fielder thinks herself half
ready for translation, because she has bought only six
new hats and a tulle bonnet so far in the season. If
it were not for her dear bleeding country, she would
have had thirty-six, like the Misses Sibthorpe. If we
were admitted to the secret councils of the Fielders,
doubtless we should perceive what temptations they
daily resist; how perfectly rubbishy and dreadful they
suffer themselves to be, because they feel it important

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

now, in this crisis, to practise economy; how they
abuse the Sibthorpes, who have a new hat every time
they drive out, and never think of wearing one more
than two or three times; how virtuous and self-denying
they feel, when they think of the puffed tulle, for
which they only gave eighteen dollars, when Madame
Caradori showed them those lovely ones, like the
Misses Sibthorpe's, for forty-five; and how they go
home descanting on virgin simplicity, and resolving
that they will not allow themselves to be swept into
the vortex of extravagance, whatever other people
may do.”

“Do you know,” said Miss Featherstone, “I believe
your papa is right? I was calling on the oldest
Miss Fielder the other day, and she told me that she
positively felt ashamed to go looking as she did, but
that she really did feel the necessity of economy.
`Perhaps we might afford to spend more than some
others,' she said; `but it 's so much better to give the
money to the Sanitary Commission!'”

“Furthermore,” said I, “I am going to put forth
another paradox, and say that very likely there are
some people looking on my girls, and commenting
on them for extravagance in having three hats, even
though made over, and contrived from last year's
stock.”

“They can't know anything about it, then,” said

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

Jenny, decisively; “for, certainly, nobody can be
decent, and invest less in millinery than Marianne
and I do.”

“When I was a young lady,” said my wife, “a well-dressed
girl got her a new bonnet in the spring, and
another in the fall; — that was the extent of her purchases
in this line. A second-best bonnet, left of last
year, did duty to relieve and preserve the best one.
My father was accounted well-to-do, but I had no
more, and wanted no more. I also bought myself,
every spring, two pair of gloves, a dark and a light
pair, and wore them through the summer, and another
two through the winter; one or two pair of white kids,
carefully cleaned, carried me through all my parties.
Hats had not been heard of, and the great necessity
which requires two or three new ones every spring
and fall had not arisen. Yet I was reckoned a well-appearing
girl, who dressed liberally. Now, a young
lady who has a waterfall-hat, an oriole-hat, and a
jockey, must still be troubled with anxious cares for
her spring and fall and summer and winter bonnets,—
all the variety will not take the place of them.
Gloves are bought by the dozen; and as to dresses,
there seems to be no limit to the quantity of material
and trimming that may be expended upon them.
When I was a young lady, seventy-five dollars a year
was considered by careful parents a liberal allowance

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

for a daughter's wardrobe. I had a hundred, and was
reckoned rich; and I sometimes used a part to make
up the deficiencies in the allowance of Sarah Evans,
my particular friend, whose father gave her only fifty.
We all thought that a very scant allowance; yet she
generally made a very pretty and genteel appearance,
with the help of occasional presents from friends.”

“How could a girl dress for fifty dollars?” said
Marianne.

“She could get a white muslin and a white cambric,
which, with different sortings of ribbons, served
her for all dress-occasions. A silk, in those days,
took only ten yards in the making, and one dark silk
was considered a reasonable allowance to a lady's
wardrobe. Once made, it stood for something, —
always worn carefully, it lasted for years. One or two
calico morning-dresses, and a merino for winter wear,
completed the list. Then, as to collars, capes, cuffs,
etc., we all did our own embroidering, and very pretty
things we wore, too. Girls looked as prettily then as
they do now, when four or five hundred dollars a year
is insufficient to clothe them.”

“But, mamma, you know our allowance is n't anything
like that, — it is quite a slender one, though not
so small as yours was,” said Marianne. “Don't you
think the customs of society make a difference? Do
you think, as things are, we could go back and dress
for the sum you did?”

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

“You cannot,” said my wife, “without a greater
sacrifice of feeling than I wish to impose on you.
Still, though I don't see how to help it, I cannot but
think that the requirements of fashion are becoming
needlessly extravagant, particularly in regard to the
dress of women. It seems to me, it is making the
support of families so burdensome that young men
are discouraged from marriage. A young man, in a
moderately good business, might cheerfully undertake
the world with a wife who could make herself pretty
and attractive for seventy-five dollars a year, when he
might sigh in vain for one who positively could not
get through, and be decent, on four hundred. Women,
too, are getting to be so attached to the trappings and
accessories of life, that they cannot think of marriage
without an amount of fortune which few young men
possess.”

“You are talking in very low numbers about the
dress of women,” said Miss Featherstone. “I do
assure you that it is the easiest thing in the world for
a girl to make away with a thousand dollars a year,
and not have so much to show for it either as Marianne
and Jenny.”

“To be sure,” said I. “Only establish certain formulas
of expectation, and it is the easiest thing in the
world. For instance, in your mother's day girls talked
of a pair of gloves, — now they talk of a pack; then

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

it was a bonnet summer and winter, — now it is a bonnet
spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and hats like
monthly roses, — a new blossom every few weeks.”

“And then,” said my wife, “every device of the
toilet is immediately taken up and varied and improved
on, so as to impose an almost monthly necessity
for novelty. The jackets of May are outshone by
the jackets of June; the buttons of June are antiquated
in July; the trimmings of July are passées by
September; side-combs, back-combs, puffs, rats, and
all sorts of such matters, are in a distracted race of
improvement; every article of feminine toilet is on
the move towards perfection. It seems to me that an
infinity of money must be spent in these trifles, by
those who make the least pretension to keep in the
fashion.”

“Well, papa,” said Jenny, “after all, it 's just the
way things always have been since the world began.
You know the Bible says, `Can a maid forget her
ornaments?' It 's clear she can't. You see, it 's a
law of Nature; and you remember all that long chapter
in the Bible that we had read in church last Sunday,
about the curls and veils and tinkling ornaments
and crimping-pins, and all that of those wicked daughters
of Zion in old times. Women always have been
too much given to dress, and they always will be.”

“The thing is,” said Marianne, “how can any

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

woman, I, for example, know what is too much or
too little? In mamma's day, it seems, a girl could
keep her place in society, by hard economy, and
spend only fifty dollars a year on her dress. Mamma
found a hundred dollars ample. I have more
than that, and find myself quite straitened to keep
myself looking well. I don't want to live for dress,
to give all my time and thoughts to it; I don't wish
to be extravagant; and yet I wish to be lady-like; it
annoys and makes me unhappy not to be fresh and
neat and nice; shabbiness and seediness are my aversion.
I don't see where the fault is. Can one individual
resist the whole current of society? It certainly
is not strictly necessary for us girls to have half
the things we do. We might, I suppose, live without
many of them, and, as mamma says, look just as well,
because girls did so before these things were invented.
Now, I confess, I flatter myself, generally, that I am
a pattern of good management and economy, because
I get so much less than other girls I associate
with. I wish you could see Miss Thorne's fall dresses
that she showed me last year when she was visiting
here. She had six gowns, and no one of them could
have cost less than seventy or eighty dollars, and
some of them must have been even more expensive;
and yet I don't doubt that this fall she will feel that
she must have just as many more. She runs through

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

and wears out these expensive things, with all their
velvet and thread lace, just as I wear my commonest
ones; and at the end of the season they are really
gone, — spotted, stained, frayed, the lace all pulled
to pieces, — nothing left to save or make over. I
feel as if Jenny and I were patterns of economy,
when I see such things. I really don't know what
economy is. What is it?”

“There is the same difficulty in my housekeeping,”
said my wife. “I think I am an economist. I mean
to be one. All our expenses are on a modest scale,
and yet I can see much that really is not strictly
necessary; but if I compare myself with some of my
neighbors, I feel as if I were hardly respectable.
There is no subject on which all the world are censuring
one another so much as this. Hardly any one
but thinks her neighbors extravagant in some one or
more particulars, and takes for granted that she herself
is an economist.”

“I 'll venture to say,” said I, “that there is n't a
woman of my acquaintance that does not think she
is an economist.”

“Papa is turned against us women, like all the rest
of them,” said Jenny. “I wonder if it is n't just so
with the men?”

“Yes,” said Marianne, “it 's the fashion to talk as
if all the extravagance of the country was perpetrated

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

by women. For my part, I think young men are just
as extravagant. Look at the sums they spend for
cigars and meerschaums, — an expense which has n't
even the pretence of usefulness in any way; it 's a
purely selfish, nonsensical indulgence. When a girl
spends money in making herself look pretty, she contributes
something to the agreeableness of society;
but a man's cigars and pipes are neither ornamental
nor useful.”

“Then look at their dress,” said Jenny; “they are
to the full as fussy and particular about it as girls;
they have as many fine, invisible points of fashion,
and their fashions change quite as often; and they
have just as many knick-knacks, with their studs and
their sleeve-buttons and waistcoat-buttons, their scarfs
and scarf-pins, their watch-chains and seals and sealrings,
and nobody knows what. Then they often
waste and throw away more than women, because
they are not good judges of material, nor saving in
what they buy, and have no knowledge of how things
should be cared for, altered, or mended. If their cap
is a little too tight, they cut the lining with a penknife,
or slit holes in a new shirt-collar, because it
does not exactly fit to their mind. For my part, I
think men are naturally twice as wasteful as women.
A pretty thing, to be sure, to have all the waste of the
country laid to us!”

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

“You are right, child,” said I; “women are by
nature, as compared with men, the care-taking and
saving part of creation, — the authors and conservators
of economy. As a general rule, man earns and
woman saves and applies. The wastefulness of woman
is commonly the fault of man.”

“I don't see into that,” said Bob Stephens.

“In this way. Economy is the science of proportion.
Whether a particular purchase is extravagant
depends mainly on the income it is taken from. Suppose
a woman has a hundred and fifty a year for her
dress, and gives fifty dollars for a bonnet; she gives
a third of her income; — it is a horrible extravagance,
while for the woman whose income is ten thousand it
may be no extravagance at all. The poor clergyman's
wife, when she gives five dollars for a bonnet,
may be giving as much, in proportion to her income,
as the woman who gives fifty. Now the difficulty
with the greater part of women is, that the men who
make the money and hold it give them no kind of
standard by which to measure their expenses. Most
women and girls are in this matter entirely at sea,
without chart or compass. They don't know in the
least what they have to spend. Husbands and fathers
often pride themselves about not saying a word
on business-matters to their wives and daughters.
They don't wish them to understand them, or to

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

inquire into them, or to make remarks or suggestions
concerning them. `I want you to have everything
that is suitable and proper,' says Jones to his wife,
`but don't be extravagant.'

“`But, my dear,' says Mrs. Jones, `what is suitable
and proper depends very much on our means; if you
could allow me any specific sum for dress and house-keeping,
I could tell better.'

“`Nonsense, Susan! I can't do that, — it 's too
much trouble. Get what you need, and avoid foolish
extravagances; that 's all I ask.'

“By and by Mrs. Jones's bills are sent in, in an
evil hour, when Jones has heavy notes to meet, and
then comes a domestic storm.

“`I shall just be ruined, Madam, if that 's the way
you are going on. I can't afford to dress you and the
girls in the style you have set up; — look at this milliner's
bill!'

“`I assure you,' says Mrs. Jones, `we have n't got
any more than the Stebbinses, — nor so much.'

“`Don't you know that the Stebbinses are worth
five times as much as ever I was?'

“No, Mrs. Jones did not know it; — how should
she, when her husband makes it a rule never to speak
of his business to her, and she has not the remotest
idea of his income?

“Thus multitudes of good conscientious women

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

and girls are extravagant from pure ignorance. The
male provider allows bills to be run up in his name,
and they have no earthly means of judging whether
they are spending too much or too little, except the
semi-annual hurricane which attends the coming in
of these bills.

“The first essential in the practice of economy is a
knowledge of one's income, and the man who refuses
to accord to his wife and children this information has
never any right to accuse them of extravagance, because
he himself deprives them of that standard of
comparison which is an indispensable requisite in
economy. As early as possible in the education of
children they should pass from that state of irresponsible
waiting to be provided for by parents, and be
trusted with the spending of some fixed allowance,
that they may learn prices and values, and have some
notion of what money is actually worth and what it
will bring. The simple fact of the possession of a
fixed and definite income often suddenly transforms
a giddy, extravagant girl into a care-taking, prudent
little woman. Her allowance is her own; she begins
to plan upon it, — to add, subtract, multiply, divide,
and do numberless sums in her little head. She no
longer buys everything she fancies; she deliberates,
weighs, compares. And now there is room for self-denial
and generosity to come in. She can do

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

without this article; she can furbish up some older possession
to do duty a little longer, and give this money
to some friend poorer than she; and ten to one the
girl whose bills last year were four or five hundred
finds herself bringing through this year creditably on
a hundred and fifty. To be sure, she goes without
numerous things which she used to have. From the
stand-point of a fixed income she sees that these are
impossible, and no more wants them than the green
cheese of the moon. She learns to make her own
taste and skill take the place of expensive purchases.
She refits her hats and bonnets, retrims her dresses,
and in a thousand busy, earnest, happy little ways, sets
herself to make the most of her small income.

“So the woman who has her definite allowance for
housekeeping finds at once a hundred questions set
at rest. Before, it was not clear to her why she should
not `go and do likewise' in relation to every purchase
made by her next neighbor. Now, there is a clear
logic of proportion. Certain things are evidently not
to be thought of, though next neighbors do have
them; and we must resign ourselves to find some
other way of living.”

“My dear,” said my wife, “I think there is a peculiar
temptation in a life organized as ours is in
America. There are here no settled classes, with
similar ratios of income. Mixed together in the

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

same society, going to the same parties, and blended
in daily neighborly intercourse, are families of the
most opposite extremes in point of fortune. In England
there is a very well understood expression, that
people should not dress or live above their station;
in America none will admit that they have any particular
station, or that they can live above it. The
principle of democratic equality unites in society people
of the most diverse positions and means.

“Here, for instance, is a family like Dr. Selden's,
an old and highly respected one, with an income of
only two or three thousand, — yet they are people
universally sought for in society, and mingle in all the
intercourse of life with merchant-millionnaires whose
incomes are from ten to thirty thousand. Their sons
and daughters go to the same schools, the same parties,
and are thus constantly meeting upon terms of
social equality.

“Now it seems to me that our danger does not lie
in the great and evident expenses of our richer friends.
We do not expect to have pineries, graperies, equipages,
horses, diamonds, — we say openly and of
course that we do not. Still, our expenses are constantly
increased by the proximity of these things,
unless we understand ourselves better than most people
do. We don't of course, expect to get a fifteen-hundred-dollar
Cashmere, like Mrs. So-and-so, but we

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

begin to look at hundred-dollar shawls and nibble
about the hook. We don't expect sets of diamonds,
but a diamond ring, a pair of solitaire diamond earrings,
begins to be speculated about among the young
people as among possibilities. We don't expect to
carpet our house with Axminster and hang our windows
with damask, but at least we must have Brussels
and brocatelle, — it would not do not to. And
so we go on getting hundreds of things that we
don't need, that have no real value except that they
soothe our self-love, — and for these inferior articles
we pay a higher proportion of our income than our
rich neighbor does for his better ones. Nothing is
uglier than low-priced Cashmere shawls; and yet a
young man just entering business will spend an eighth
of a year's income to put one of his wife, and when
he has put it there it only serves as a constant source
of disquiet, — for now that the door is opened, and
Cashmere shawls are possible, she is consumed with
envy at the superior ones constantly sported around
her. So also with point-lace, velvet dresses, and hundreds
of things of that sort, which belong to a certain
rate of income, and are absurd below it.”

“And yet, mamma, I heard Aunt Easygo say that
velvet, point-lace, and Cashmere were the cheapest
finery that could be bought, because they lasted a
lifetime.”

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

“Aunt Easygo speaks from an income of ten thousand
a year; they may be cheap for her rate of living,—
but for us, for example, by no magic of numbers
can it be made to appear that it is cheaper to have
the greatest bargain in the world in Cashmere, lace,
and diamonds, than not to have them at all. I never
had a diamond, never wore a piece of point-lace,
never had a velvet dress, and have been perfectly
happy, and just as much respected as if I had. Who
ever thought of objecting to me for not having them?
Nobody, as I ever heard.”

“Certainly not, mamma,” said Marianne.

“The thing I have always said to you girls is, that
you were not to expect to live like richer people, not
to begin to try, not to think or inquire about certain
rates of expenditure, or take the first step in certain
directions. We have moved on all our life after a
very antiquated and old-fashioned mode. We have
had our little old-fashioned house, our little old-fashioned
ways.”

“Except the parlor-carpet, and what came of it, my
dear,” said I, mischievously.

“Yes, except the parlor-carpet,” said my wife, with
a conscious twinkle, “and the things that came of it;
there was a concession there, but one can't be wise
always.”

“We talked mamma into that,” said Jenny.

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

“But one thing is certain,” said my wife, — “that,
though I have had an antiquated, plain house, and
plain furniture, and plain dress, and not the beginning
of a thing such as many of my neighbors have
possessed, I have spent more money than many of
them for real comforts. While I had young children,
I kept more and better servants than many women
who wore Cashmeres and diamonds. I thought it
better to pay extra wages to a really good, trusty
woman who lived with me from year to year, and
relieved me of some of my heaviest family-cares,
than to have ever so much lace locked away in my
drawers. We always were able to go into the country
to spend our summers, and to keep a good family-horse
and carriage for daily driving, — by which means
we afforded, as a family, very poor patronage to the
medical profession. Then we built our house, and
while we left out a great many expensive commonplaces
that other people think they must have, we
put in a profusion of bathing accommodations such
as very few people think of having. There never
was a time when we did not feel able to afford to
do what was necessary to preserve or to restore
health; and for this I always drew on the surplus
fund laid up by my very unfashionable housekeeping
and dressing.”

“Your mother has had,” said I, “what is the great

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

want in America, perfect independence of mind to go
her own way without regard to the way others go. I
think there is, for some reason, more false shame
among Americans about economy than among Europeans.
`I cannot afford it' is more seldom heard
among us. A young man beginning life, whose income
may be from five to eight hundred a year,
thinks it elegant and gallant to affect a careless air
about money, especially among ladies, — to hand it
out freely, and put back his change without counting
it, — to wear a watch-chain and studs and shirt-fronts
like those of some young millionnaire. None but the
most expensive tailors, shoemakers, and hatters will
do for him; and then he grumbles at the dearness of
living, and declares that he cannot get along on his
salary. The same is true of young girls, and of married
men and women too, — the whole of them are
ashamed of economy. The cares that wear out life
and health in many households are of a nature that
cannot be cast on God, or met by any promise from
the Bible, — it is not care for `food convenient,' or
for comfortable raiment, but care to keep up false appearances,
and to stretch a narrow income over the
space that can be covered only by a wider one.

“The poor widow in her narrow lodgings, with her
monthly rent staring her hourly in the face, and her
bread and meat and candles and meal all to be paid

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

for on delivery or not obtained at all, may find comfort
in the good old Book, reading of that other
widow whose wasting measure of oil and last failing
handful of meal were of such account before her
Father in heaven that a prophet was sent to recruit
them; and when customers do not pay, or wages are
cut down, she can enter into her chamber, and when
she hath shut her door, present to her Father in
heaven His sure promise that with the fowls of the
air she shall be fed and with the lilies of the field she
shall be clothed: but what promises are there for her
who is racking her brains on the ways and means to
provide as sumptuous an entertainment of oysters and
Champagne at her next party as her richer neighbor,
or to compass that great bargain which shall give her
a point-lace set almost as handsome as that of Mrs.
Crœsus, who has ten times her income?”

“But, papa,” said Marianne, with a twinge of that
exacting sensitiveness by which the child is characterized,
“I think I am an economist, thanks to you and
mamma, so far as knowing just what my income is,
and keeping within it; but that does not satisfy me,
and it seems that is n't all of economy; — the question
that haunts me is, Might I not make my little all
do more and better than I do?”

“There,” said I, “you have hit the broader and
deeper signification of economy, which is, in fact, the

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

science of comparative values. In its highest sense,
economy is a just judgment of the comparative value
of things, — money only the means of enabling one
to express that value. This is the reason why the
whole matter is so full of difficulty, — why every one
criticises his neighbor in this regard. Human beings
are so various, the necessities of each are so different,
they are made comfortable or uncomfortable by such
opposite means, that the spending of other people's
incomes must of necessity often look unwise from
our stand-point. For this reason multitudes of people
who cannot be accused of exceeding their incomes
often seem to others to be spending them foolishly
and extravagantly.”

“But is there no standard of value?” said Marianne.

“There are certain things upon which there is a
pretty general agreement, verbally, at least, among
mankind. For instance, it is generally agreed that
health is an indispensable good, — that money is well
spent that secures it, and worse than ill spent that
ruins it.

“With this standard in mind, how much money is
wasted even by people who do not exceed their income!
Here a man builds a house, and pays, in
the first place, ten thousand more than he need, for a
location in a fashionable part of the city, though the

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

air will be closer and the chances of health less; he
spends three or four thousand more on a stone front,
on marble mantles imported from Italy, on plate-glass
windows, plated hinges, and a thousand nice points
of finish, and has perhaps but one bath-room for a
whole household, and that so connected with his
own apartment that nobody but himself and his wife
can use it.

“Another man buys a lot in an open, airy situation,
which fashion has not made expensive, and builds
without a stone front, marble mantels, or plate-glass
windows, but has a perfect system of ventilation
through his house, and bathing-rooms in every story,
so that the children and guests may all, without inconvenience,
enjoy the luxury of abundant water.

“The first spends for fashion and show, the second
for health and comfort.

“Here is a man that will buy his wife a diamond
bracelet and a lace shawl, and take her yearly to
Washington to show off her beauty in ball-dresses,
who yet will not let her pay wages which will command
any but the poorest and most inefficient domestic
service. The woman is worn out, her life made a
desert by exhaustion consequent on a futile attempt to
keep up a showy establishment with only half the
hands needed for the purpose. Another family will
give brilliant parties, have a gay season every year at

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

the first hotels at Newport, and not be able to afford
the wife a fire in her chamber in midwinter, or the
servants enough food to keep them from constantly
deserting. The damp, mouldy, dingy cellar-kitchen,
the cold, windy, desolate attic, devoid of any comfort,
where the domestics are doomed to pass their whole
time, are witnesses to what such families consider
economy. Economy in the view of some is undisguised
slipshod sloveliness in the home-circle for
the sake of fine clothes to be shown abroad; it is
undisguised hard selfishness to servants and dependants,
counting their every approach to comfort a
needless waste, — grudging the Roman-Catholic cook
her cup of tea at dinner on Friday, when she must
not eat meat, — and murmuring that a cracked, second-hand
looking-glass must be got for the servants'
room: what business have they to want to know how
they look?

“Some families will employ the cheapest physician,
without regard to his ability to kill or cure; some will
treat diseases in their incipiency with quack medicines,
bought cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the
doctor's bill. Some women seem to be pursued by an
evil demon of economy, which, like an ignis fatuus in
a bog, delights constantly to tumble them over into
the mire of expense. They are dismayed at the quantity
of sugar in the recipe for preserves, leave out a

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

quarter, and the whole ferments and is spoiled. They
cannot by any means be induced at any one time to
buy enough silk to make a dress, and the dress finally,
after many convulsions and alterations, must be thrown
by altogether, as too scanty. They get poor needles,
poor thread, poor sugar, poor raisins, poor tea, poor
coal. One wonders, in looking at their blackened,
smouldering grates, in a freezing day, what the fire is
there at all for, — it certainly warms nobody. The
only thing they seem likely to be lavish in is funeral
expenses, which come in the wake of leaky shoes and
imperfect clothing. These funeral expenses at last
swallow all, since nobody can dispute an undertaker's
bill. One pities these joyless beings. Economy, instead
of a rational act of the judgment, is a morbid
monomania, eating the pleasure out of life, and haunting
them to the grave.

“Some people's ideas of economy seem to run simply
in the line of eating. Their flour is of an extra
brand, their meat the first cut; the delicacies of every
season, in their dearest stages, come home to their
table with an apologetic smile, — `It was scandalously
dear, my love, but I thought we must just treat
ourselves.' And yet these people cannot afford to
buy books, and pictures they regard as an unthought-of
extravagance. Trudging home with fifty dollars'
worth of delicacies on his arm, Smith meets Jones,

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

who is exulting with a bag of crackers under one arm
and a choice little bit of an oil painting under the
other, which he thinks a bargain at fifty dollars. `I
can't afford to buy pictures,' Smith says to his spouse,
`and I don't know how Jones and his wife manage.'
Jones and his wife will live on bread and milk for a
month, and she will turn her best gown the third time,
but they will have their picture, and they are happy.
Jones's picture remains, and Smith's fifty dollars' worth
of oysters and canned fruit to-morrow will be gone
forever. Of all modes of spending money, the swallowing
of expensive dainties brings the least return.
There is one step lower than this, — the consuming
of luxuries that are injurious to the health. If all the
money spent on tobacco and liquors could be spent
in books and pictures, I predict that nobody's health
would be a whit less sound, and houses would be
vastly more attractive. There is enough money spent
in smoking, drinking, and over-eating to give every
family in the community a good library, to hang everybody's
parlor-walls with lovely pictures, to set up in
every house a conservatory which should bloom all
winter with choice flowers, to furnish every dwelling
with ample bathing and warming accommodations,
even down to the dwellings of the poor; and in the
millennium I believe this is the way things are to be.

“In these times of peril and suffering, if the inquiry

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

arises, How shall there be retrenchment? I answer,
First and foremost retrench things needless, doubtful,
and positively hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the
meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the
same. Second, retrench all eating not necessary to
health and comfort. A French family would live in
luxury on the leavings that are constantly coming from
the tables of those who call themselves in middling
circumstances. There are superstitions of the table
that ought to be broken through. Why must you
always have cake in your closet? why need you feel
undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea-table?
Do without it a year, and ask yourselves if
you or your children, or any one else, have suffered
materially in consequence.

“Why is it imperative that you should have two or
three courses at every meal? Try the experiment of
having but one, and that a very good one, and see if
any great amount of suffering ensues. Why must
social intercourse so largely consist in eating? In
Paris there is a very pretty custom. Each family has
one evening in the week when it stays at home and
receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter
and cake, served in the most informal way, is the
only refreshment. The rooms are full, busy, bright,—
everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous
supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake,

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

were waiting to give the company a nightmare at the
close.

“Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife
in a social circle of this kind, `I ought to know them
well, — I have seen them every week for twenty years.'
It is certainly pleasant and confirmative of social enjoyment
for friends to eat together; but a little enjoyed
in this way answers the purpose as well as a great
deal, and better too.”

“Well, papa,” said Marianne, “in the matter of
dress now, — how much ought one to spend just to
look as others do?”

“I will tell you what I saw the other night, girls,
in the parlor of one of our hotels. Two middle-aged
Quaker ladies came gliding in, with calm, cheerful
faces, and lustrous dove-colored silks. By their conversation
I found that they belonged to that class of
women among the Friends who devote themselves to
travelling on missions of benevolence. They had just
completed a tour of all the hospitals for wounded soldiers
in the country, where they had been carrying
comforts, arranging, advising, and soothing by their
cheerful, gentle presence. They were now engaged
on another mission, to the lost and erring of their own
sex; night after night, guarded by a policeman, they
had ventured after midnight into the dance-houses
where girls are being led to ruin, and with gentle

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

words of tender, motherly counsel sought to win them
from their fatal ways, — telling them where they might
go the next day to find friends who would open to
them an asylum and aid them to seek a better life.

“As I looked upon these women, dressed with such
modest purity, I began secretly to think that the
Apostle was not wrong, when he spoke of women
adorning themselves with the ornament of a meek
and quiet spirit; for the habitual gentleness of their
expression, the calmness and purity of the lines in
their faces, the delicacy and simplicity of their apparel,
seemed of themselves a rare and peculiar beauty.
I could not help thinking that fashionable bonnets,
flowing lace sleeves, and dresses elaborately trimmed
could not have improved even their outward appearance.
Doubtless, their simple wardrobe needed but
a small trunk in travelling from place to place, and
hindered but little their prayers and ministrations.

“Now, it is true, all women are not called to such
a life as this; but might not all women take a leaf at
least from their book? I submit the inquiry humbly.
It seems to me that there are many who go monthly
to the sacrament, and receive it with sincere devotion,
and who give thanks each time sincerely that they are
thus made `members incorporate in the mystical body
of Christ,' who have never thought of this membership
as meaning that they should share Christ's sacrifices

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

for lost souls, or abridge themselves of one ornament
or encounter one inconvenience for the sake of those
wandering sheep for whom he died. Certainly there
is a higher economy which we need to learn, — that
which makes all things subservient to the spiritual and
immortal, and that not merely to the good of our own
souls and those of our family, but of all who are knit
with us in the great bonds of human brotherhood.

“There have been from time to time, among well-meaning
Christian people, retrenchment societies on
high moral grounds, which have failed for want of
knowledge how to manage the complicated question
of necessaries and luxuries. These words have a signification
in the case of different people as varied as
the varieties of human habit and constitution. It is a
department impossible to be bound by external rules;
but none the less should every high-minded Christian
soul in this matter have a law unto itself. It may
safely be laid down as a general rule, that no income,
however large or however small, should be unblessed
by the divine touch of self-sacrifice. Something for
the poor, the sorrowing, the hungry, the tempted, and
the weak should be taken from what is our own at the
expense of some personal sacrifice, or we suffer more
morally than the brother from whom we withdraw it.
Even the Lord of all, when dwelling among men, out
of that slender private purse which he accepted for

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

his little family of chosen ones, had ever something
reserved to give to the poor. It is easy to say, `It
is but a drop in the bucket. I cannot remove the
great mass of misery in the world. What little I could
save or give does nothing.' It does this, if no more,—
it prevents one soul, and that soul your own, from
drying and hardening into utter selfishness and insensibility;
it enables you to say I have done something;
taken one atom from the great heap of sins and miseries
and placed it on the side of good.

“The Sisters of Charity and the Friends, each with
their different costume of plainness and self-denial,
and other noble-hearted women of no particular outward
order, but kindred in spirit, have shown to
womanhood, on the battle-field and in the hospital,
a more excellent way, — a beauty and nobility before
which all the common graces and ornaments of the
sex fade, appear like dim candles by the pure, eternal
stars.”

p701-208 IX. SERVANTS.

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

IN the course of my papers various domestic revolutions
have occurred. Our Marianne has gone
from us with a new name to a new life, and a modest
little establishment not many squares off claims about
as much of my wife's and Jenny's busy thoughts as
those of the proper mistress.

Marianne, as I always foresaw, is a careful and
somewhat anxious housekeeper. Her tastes are fastidious;
she is made for exactitude: the smallest
departures from the straight line appear to her shocking
deviations. She had always lived in a house
where everything had been formed to quiet and order
under the ever-present care and touch of her mother;
nor had she ever participated in these cares more than
to do a little dusting of the parlor ornaments, or wash
the best china, or make sponge-cake or chocolatecaramels.
Certain conditions of life had always appeared
so to be matters of course that she had never
conceived of a house without them. It never occurred
to her that such bread and biscuit as she saw at the

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

home-table would not always and of course appear at
every table, — that the silver would not always be as
bright, the glass as clear, the salt as fine and smooth,
the plates and dishes as nicely arranged as she had
always seen them, apparently without the thought or
care of any one, — for my wife is one of those housekeepers
whose touch is so fine that no one feels it.
She is never heard scolding or reproving, — never
entertains her company with her recipes for cookery
or the faults of her servants. She is so unconcerned
about receiving her own personal share of credit for
the good appearance of her establishment, that even
the children of the house have not supposed that there
is any particular will of hers in the matter, — it all
seems the natural consequence of having very good
servants.

One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected
on, — that, under all the changes of the domestic cabinet
which are so apt to occur in American households,
the same coffee, the same bread and biscuit, the same
nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table always
gladdened their eyes; and from this they inferred only
that good servants were more abundant than most
people had supposed. They were somewhat surprised
when these marvels were wrought by professedly green
hands, but were given to suppose that these green
hands must have had some remarkable quickness or

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored
ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits
could be made by a raw Irish girl, fresh from her
native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the genius of
the race; and my wife, who never felt it important to
attain to the reputation of a cook, quietly let it pass.

For some time, therefore, after the inauguration of
the new household, there was trouble in the camp.
Sour bread had appeared on the table, — bitter, acrid
coffee had shocked and astonished the palate, — lint
had been observed on tumblers, and the spoons had
sometimes dingy streaks on the brightness of their
first bridal polish, — beds were detected made shockingly
awry, — and Marianne came burning with indignation
to her mother.

“Such a little family as we have, and two strong
girls,” said she, — “everything ought to be perfect;
there is really nothing to do. Think of a whole batch
of bread absolutely sour! and when I gave that away,
then this morning another exactly like it! and when I
talked to cook about it, she said she had lived in
this and that family, and her bread had always been
praised as equal to the baker's!”

“I don't doubt she is right,” said I. “Many families
never have anything but sour bread from one end
of the year to the other, eating it unperceiving, and
with good cheer; and they buy also sour bread of the

[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]

baker, with like approbation, — lightness being in
their estimation the only virtue necessary in the article.”

“Could you not correct her fault?” suggested my
wife.

“I have done all I can. I told her we could not
have such bread, that it was dreadful; Bob says it
would give him the dyspepsia in a week; and then
she went and made exactly the same; — it seems to
me mere wilfulness.”

“But,” said I, “suppose, instead of such general
directions, you should analyze her proceedings and
find out just where she makes her mistake, — is the
root of the trouble in the yeast, or in the time she
begins it, letting it rise too long? — the time, you
know, should vary so much with the temperature of
the weather.”

“As to that,” said Marianne, “I know nothing. I
never noticed; it never was my business to make
bread; it always seemed quite a simple process, mixing
yeast and flour and kneading it; and our bread at
home was always good.”

“It seems, then, my dear, that you have come to
your profession without even having studied it.”

My wife smiled, and said, —

“You know, Marianne, I proposed to you to be our
family bread-maker for one month of the year before
you married.”

[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]

“Yes, mamma, I remember; but I was like other
girls; I thought there was no need of it. I never
liked to do such things; perhaps I had better have
done it.”

“You certainly had,” said I; “for the first business
of a housekeeper in America is that of a teacher.
She can have a good table only by having practical
knowledge, and tact in imparting it. If she understands
her business practically and experimentally,
her eye detects at once the weak spot; it requires
only a little tact, some patience, some clearness in
giving directions, and all comes right. I venture to
say that your mother would have exactly such bread
as always appears on our table, and have it by the
hands of your cook, because she could detect and
explain to her exactly her error.”

“Do you know,” said my wife, “what yeast she
uses?”

“I believe,” said Marianne, “it 's a kind she makes
herself. I think I heard her say so. I know she
makes a great fuss about it, and rather values herself
upon it. She is evidently accustomed to being
praised for her bread, and feels mortified and angry,
and I don't know how to manage her.”

“Well,” said I, “if you carry your watch to a
watchmaker, and undertake to show him how to
regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his

[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]

own way; but if a brother-machinist makes suggestions,
he listens respectfully. So, when a woman who
knows nothing of woman's work undertakes to instruct
one who knows more than she does, she makes
no impression; but a woman who has been trained
experimentally, and shows she understands the matter
thoroughly, is listened to with respect.”

“I think,” said my wife, “that your Bridget is worth
teaching. She is honest, well-principled, and tidy.
She has good recommendations from excellent families,
whose ideas of good bread it appears differ from
ours; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience,
she will come into your ways.”

“But the coffee, mamma, — you would not imagine
it to be from the same bag with your own, so dark
and so bitter; what do you suppose she has done
to it?”

“Simply this,” said my wife. “She has let the
berries stay a few moments too long over the fire, —
they are burnt, instead of being roasted; and there
are people who think it essential to good coffee that
it should look black, and have a strong, bitter flavor.
A very little change in the preparing will alter this.”

“Now,” said I, “Marianne, if you want my advice,
I 'll give it to you gratis: — Make your own bread for
one month. Simple as the process seems, I think it
will take as long as that to give you a thorough

[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]

knowledge of all the possibilities in the case; but after that
you will never need to make any more, — you will be
able to command good bread by the aid of all sorts
of servants; you will, in other words, be a thoroughly
prepared teacher.”

“I did not think,” said Marianne, “that so simple
a thing required so much attention.”

“It is simple,” said my wife, “and yet requires a
delicate care and watchfulness. There are fifty ways
to spoil good bread; there are a hundred little things
to be considered and allowed for that require accurate
observation and experience. The same process that
will raise good bread in cold weather will make sour
bread in the heat of summer; different qualities of
flour require variations in treatment, as also different
sorts and conditions of yeast; and when all is done,
the baking presents another series of possibilities
which require exact attention.”

“So it appears,” said Marianne, gayly, “that I must
begin to study my profession at the eleventh hour.”

“Better late than never,” said I. “But there is
this advantage on your side: a well-trained mind,
accustomed to reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an
advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience.
Poor as your cook is, she now knows more
of her business than you do. After a very brief
period of attention and experiment, you will not only

[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]

know more than she does, but you will convince her
that you do, which is quite as much to the purpose.”

“In the same manner,” said my wife, “you will
have to give lessons to your other girl on the washing
of silver and the making of beds. Good servants do
not often come to us; they must be made by patience
and training; and if a girl has a good disposition and
a reasonable degree of handiness, and the housekeeper
understands her profession, she may make a
good servant out of an indifferent one. Some of my
best girls have been those who came to me directly
from the ship, with no preparation but docility and
some natural quickness. The hardest cases to be
managed are not of those who have been taught nothing,
but of those who have been taught wrongly, —
who come to you self-opinionated, with ways which
are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of
your housekeeping. Such require that their mistress
shall understand at least so much of the actual conduct
of affairs as to prove to the servant that there are
better ways than those in which she has hitherto been
trained.”

“Don't you think, mamma,” said Marianne, “that
there has been a sort of reaction against woman's
work in our day? So much has been said of the
higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done
to find some better work for her, that insensibly, I

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think, almost everybody begins to feel that it is rather
degrading for a woman in good society to be much
tied down to family affairs.”

“Especially,” said my wife, “since in these Woman's-Rights
Conventions there is so much indignation
expressed at those who would confine her ideas
to the kitchen and nursery.”

“There is reason in all things,” said I. “Woman's-Rights
Conventions are a protest against many former
absurd, unreasonable ideas, — the mere physical and
culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with
puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal
burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon
the sex. Many of the women connected with these
movements are as superior in everything properly
womanly as they are in exceptional talent and culture.
There is no manner of doubt that the sphere
of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that republican
governments in particular are to be saved
from corruption and failure only by allowing to woman
this enlarged sphere. Every woman has rights as a
human being first, which belong to no sex, and
ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were
a man, — and first and foremost, the great right of
doing anything which God and Nature evidently have
fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural
orator, like Miss Dickenson, or an astronomer, like

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Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the
technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way
of her free use of her powers. Nor can there be
any reason shown why a woman's vote in the state
should not be received with as much respect as in
the family. A state is but an association of families,
and laws relate to the rights and immunities which
touch woman's most private and immediate wants
and dearest hopes; and there is no reason why sister,
wife, and mother should be more powerless in the
state than in the home. Nor does it make a woman
unwomanly to express an opinion by dropping a slip
of paper into a box, more than to express that same
opinion by conversation. In fact, there is no doubt,
that, in all matters relating to the interests of education,
temperance, and religion, the state would be a
material gainer by receiving the votes of women.

“But, having said all this, I must admit, per contra,
not only a great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in
these conventions, but a too great tendency of the
age to make the education of women anti-domestic.
It seems as if the world never could advance, except
like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too
far, now in this direction, and now in the opposite.
Our common-school system now rejects sewing from
the education of girls, which very properly used
to occupy many hours daily in school a generation

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ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are
put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the
higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that
learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A
girl cannot keep pace with her class, if she gives
any time to domestic matters; and accordingly she
is excused from them all during the whole term of
her education. The boy of a family, at an early age,
is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father
becomes impatient of his support, and requires of
him to care for himself. Hence an interrupted education, —
learning coming by snatches in the winter
months or in the intervals of work. As the result,
the females in our country towns are commonly, in
mental culture, vastly in advance of the males of
the same household; but with this comes a physical
delicacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain
and a neglect of the muscular system, with great
inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race
of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up
in country places, and made the bright, neat, New
England kitchens of old times, — the girls that could
wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him,
no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and
read innumerable books, — this race of women, pride
of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead
come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a

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modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of
common things. The great danger of all this, and
of the evils that come from it, is that society by and
by will turn as blindly against female intellectual
culture as it now advocates it, and, having worked
disproportionately one way, will work disproportionately
in the opposite direction.”

“The fact is,” said my wife, “that domestic service
is the great problem of life here in America; the
happiness of families, their thrift, well-being, and
comfort, are more affected by this than by any one
thing else. Our girls, as they have been brought
up, cannot perform the labor of their own families,
as in those simpler, old-fashioned days you tell of;
and what is worse, they have no practical skill with
which to instruct servants, and servants come to us,
as a class, raw and untrained; so what is to be done?
In the present state of prices, the board of a domestic
costs double her wages, and the waste she makes is
a more serious matter still. Suppose you give us an
article upon this subject in your `House and Home
Papers.' You could not have a better one.”

So I sat down, and wrote thus on

Servants and Service.

Many of the domestic evils in America originate
in the fact, that, while society here is professedly

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based on new principles which ought to make social
life in every respect different from the life of the
Old World, yet these principles have never been so
thought out and applied as to give consistency and
harmony to our daily relations. America starts with
a political organization based on a declaration of the
primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every
human being, according to this principle, stands on
the same natural level with every other, and has the
same chance to rise according to the degree of power
or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil institutions
are designed to preserve this equality, as
far as possible, from generation to generation: there
is no entailed property, there are no hereditary titles,
no monopolies, no privileged classes, — all are to be
as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.

The condition of domestic service, however, still
retains about it something of the influences from
feudal times, and from the near presence of slavery
in neighboring States. All English literature, all the
literature of the world, describes domestic service in
the old feudal spirit and with the old feudal language,
which regarded the master as belonging to a privileged
class and the servant to an inferior one. There
is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history,
that does not present this view. The master's rights,
like the rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his

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being born in a superior rank. The good servant
was one who, from childhood, had learned “to order
himself lowly and reverently to all his betters.” When
New England brought to these shores the theory of
democracy, she brought, in the persons of the first
pilgrims, the habits of thought and of action formed
in aristocratic communities. Winthrop's Journal, and
all the old records of the earlier colonists, show
households where masters and mistresses stood on
the “right divine” of the privileged classes, howsoever
they might have risen up against authorities
themselves.

The first consequence of this state of things was
a universal rejection of domestic service in all classes
of American-born society. For a generation or two,
there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of family
strength, — sons and daughters engaging in the service
of neighboring families, in default of a sufficient
working-force of their own, but always on conditions
of strict equality. The assistant was to share the
table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and
attention that might be claimed by son or daughter.
When families increased in refinement and education
so as to make these conditions of close intimacy
with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they
had to choose between such intimacies and the performance
of their own domestic toil. No wages

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could induce a son or daughter of New England to
take the condition of a servant on terms which they
thought applicable to that of a slave. The slightest
hint of a separate table was resented as an insult;
not to enter the front-door, and not to sit in the front-parlor
on state-occasions, was bitterly commented on
as a personal indignity.

The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers,
the class most valuable in domestic service, gradually
retired from it. They preferred any other employment,
however laborious. Beyond all doubt, the
labors of a well-regulated family are more healthy,
more cheerful, more interesting, because less monotonous,
than the mechanical toils of a factory; yet
the girls of New England, with one consent, preferred
the factory, and left the whole business of domestic
service to a foreign population; and they did it mainly
because they would not take positions in families as
an inferior laboring-class by the side of others of
their own age who assumed as their prerogative to
live without labor.

“I can't let you have one of my daughters,” said
an energetic matron to her neighbor from the city,
who was seeking for a servant in her summer vacation;
“if you had n't daughters of your own, maybe
I would; but my girls ain't going to work so that your
girls may live in idleness.”

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It was vain to offer money. “We don't need your
money, ma'am, we can support ourselves in other
ways; my girls can braid straw, and bind shoes, but
they ain't going to be slaves to anybody.”

In the Irish and German servants who took the
place of Americans in families, there was, to begin
with, the tradition of education in favor of a higher
class; but even the foreign population became more
or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They
came to this country with vague notions of freedom
and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated people
such ideas are often more unreasonable for being
vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the
table and in the parlor, but they repudiated many
of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged
to their former condition, and asserted their
own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase
which they supposed to be their right as republican
citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and
struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed
their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the
air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who
knew their power and insisted on their privileges.
From this cause domestic service in America has
had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries.
Its terms have been so ill understood and defined
that both parties have assumed the defensive; and

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a common topic of conversation in American female
society has often been the general servile war which
in one form or another was going on in their different
families, — a war as interminable as would be a struggle
between aristocracy and common people, undefined
by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore
opening fields for endless disputes. In England,
the class who go to service are a class, and service is
a profession; the distance between them and their
employers is so marked and defined, and all the customs
and requirements of the position are so perfectly
understood, that the master or mistress has no fear of
being compromised by condescension, and no need of
the external voice or air of authority. The higher up
in the social scale one goes, the more courteous seems
to become the intercourse of master and servant; the
more perfect and real the power, the more is it veiled
in outward expression, — commands are phrased as
requests, and gentleness of voice and manner covers
an authority which no one would think of offending
without trembling.

But in America all is undefined. In the first place,
there is no class who mean to make domestic service a
profession to live and die in. It is universally an expedient,
a stepping-stone to something higher; your
best servants always have something else in view as
soon as they have laid by a little money; some form of

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independence which shall give them a home of their
own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to
the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered
brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service
to gain the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress
intends to become a dress-maker, and take in
work at her own house; your cook is pondering a
marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils
from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women
are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till
female trades and callings are all overstocked. We
are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings
of distressed needle-women, of the exactions and extortions
practised on the frail sex in the many branches
of labor and trade at which they try their hands; and
yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin
and starvation rather than make up their minds to
permanent domestic service. Now what is the matter
with domestic service? One would think, on the
face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a
comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good
board and lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would
certainly offer more attractions than the making of
shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing
one's own sustenance and shelter.

I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea
of the true position of a servant under our democratic

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institutions that domestic service is so shunned and
avoided in America, that it is the very last thing which
an intelligent young woman will look to for a living.
It is more the want of personal respect toward those
in that position than the labors incident to it which
repels our people from it. Many would be willing to
perform these labors, but they are not willing to place
themselves in a situation where their self-respect is
hourly wounded by the implication of a degree of inferiority
which does not follow any kind of labor or service
in this country but that of the family.

There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected
spirit of superiority, which is stimulated into
an active form by the resistance which democracy inspires
in the working-class. Many families think of
servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions,
and all that is allowed them as so much taken
from the family; and they seek in every way to get
from them as much and to give them as little as possible.
Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished,
incommodious ones, — and the kitchen is the most
cheerless and comfortless place in the house. Other
families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their
domestics with more suitable accommodations, and
are more indulgent; but there is still a latent spirit
of something like contempt for the position. That
they treat their servants with so much consideration

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seems to them a merit entitling them to the most
prostrate gratitude; and they are constantly disappointed
and shocked at that want of sense of inferiority
on the part of these people which leads them
to appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and
good living as mere matters of common justice.

It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers
that servants should insist on having the same
human wants as themselves. Ladies who yawn in their
elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures,
if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify
the evening, seem astonished and half indignant that
cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out
for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the
kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The
pretty chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the
time she spends at her small and not very clear mirror,
are sneeringly noticed by those whose toilet-cares
take up serious hours; and the question has never
apparently occurred to them why a serving-maid
should not want to look pretty as well as her mistress.
She is a woman as well as they, with all a
woman's wants and weaknesses; and her dress is as
much to her as theirs to them.

A vast deal of trouble among servants arises from
impertinent interferences and petty tyrannical exactions
on the part of employers. Now the authority of

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the master and mistress of a house in regard to their
domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted
to do and the hours during which they have
contracted to serve; otherwise than this, they have no
more right to interfere with them in the disposal of
their time than with any mechanic whom they employ.
They have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of
their own household, and servants can choose between
conformity to these hours and the loss of their
situation; but, within reasonable limits, their right to
come and go at their own discretion, in their own time,
should be unquestioned.

If employers are troubled by the fondness of their
servants for dancing, evening company, and late hours,
the proper mode of proceeding is to make these matters
a subject of distinct contract in hiring. The more
strictly and perfectly the business matters of the first
engagement of domestics are conducted, the more
likelihood there is of mutual quiet and satisfaction in
the relation. It is quite competent to every house-keeper
to say what practices are or are not consistent
with the rules of her family, and what will be inconsistent
with the service for which she agrees to pay.
It is much better to regulate such affairs by cool contract
in the outset than by warm altercations and
protracted domestic battles.

As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems

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somehow to be settled in the minds of many employers
that their servants owe them and their family more
respect than they and the family owe to the servants.
But do they? What is the relation of servant to employer
in a democratic country? Precisely that of a
person who for money performs any kind of service
for you. The carpenter comes into your house to
put up a set of shelves, — the cook comes into your
kitchen to cook your dinner. You never think that
the carpenter owes you any more respect than you
owe to him because he is in your house doing your
behests; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with
respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him.
You have a claim on him that he shall do your work
according to your directions, — no more. Now I apprehend
that there is a very common notion as to the
position and rights of servants which is quite different
from this. Is it not a common feeling that a servant
is one who may be treated with a degree of freedom
by every member of the family which he or she may
not return? Do not people feel at liberty to question
servants about their private affairs, to comment on
their dress and appearance, in a manner which they
would feel to be an impertinence, if reciprocated?
Do they not feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction
with their performances in rude and unceremonious
terms, to reprove them in the presence of company,

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while yet they require that the dissatisfaction of servants
shall be expressed only in terms of respect?
A woman would not feel herself at liberty to talk to
her milliner or her dressmaker in language as devoid
of consideration as she will employ towards her cook
or chambermaid. Yet both are rendering her a service
which she pays for in money, and one is no more
made her inferior thereby than the other. Both have
an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The master
and mistress of a house have a right to require
respectful treatment from all whom their roof shelters;
but they have no more right to exact it of servants
than of every guest and every child, and they themselves
owe it as much to servants as to guests.

In order that servants may be treated with respect
and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal
days, that they sit at the family-table. Your
carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do
not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and
mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious
calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood
that your relations with them are of a mere
business character. They never take it as an assumption
of superiority on your part that you do not admit
them to relations of private intimacy. There may be
the most perfect respect and esteem and even friendship
between them and you, notwithstanding. So it

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may be in the case of servants. It is easy to make
any person understand that there are quite other reasons
than the assumption of personal superiority for
not wishing to admit servants to the family privacy.
It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table,
in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed at
by New England girls, — these were valued only as
signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and
consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often
in point of fact declined.

Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers,
and in the atmosphere of the family, that their
position is held to be a respectable one, let them feel
in the mistress of the family the charm of unvarying
consideration and good manners, let their work-rooms
be made convenient and comfortable, and their private
apartments bear some reasonable comparison in
point of agreeableness to those of other members of
the family, and domestic service will be more frequently
sought by a superior and self-respecting class.
There are families in which such a state of things prevails;
and such families, amid the many causes which
unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have
generally been able to keep good permanent servants.

There is an extreme into which kindly disposed
people often run with regard to servants, which may
be mentioned here. They make pets of them. They

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give extravagant wages and indiscreet indulgences,
and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate
neglect of duty. Many of the complaints of
the ingratitude of servants come from those who have
spoiled them in this way; while many of the longest
and most harmonious domestic unions have sprung
from a simple, quiet course of Christian justice and
benevolence, a recognition of servants as fellow-beings
and fellow-Christians, and a doing to them as we would
in like circumstances that they should do to us.

The mistresses of American families, whether they
like it or not, have the duties of missionaries imposed
upon them by that class from which our supply of
domestic servants is drawn. They may as well accept
the position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained
hand after another passes through their family, and
is instructed by them in the mysteries of good housekeeping,
comfort themselves with the reflection that
they are doing something to form good wives and
mothers for the Republic.

The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous
and loud; the failings of green Erin, alas! are but
too open and manifest; yet, in arrest of judgment, let
us move this consideration: let us imagine our own
daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four,
untaught and inexperienced in domestic affairs
as they commonly are, shipped to a foreign shore to

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seek service in families. It may be questioned whether
as a whole they would do much better. The girls that
fill our families and do our house-work are often of
the age of our own daughters, standing for themselves,
without mothers to guide them, in a foreign country,
not only bravely supporting themselves, but sending
home in every ship remittances to impoverished friends
left behind. If our daughters did as much for us,
should we not be proud of their energy and heroism?

When we go into the houses of our country, we find
a majority of well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant
establishments where the only hands employed are
those of the daughters of Erin. True, American women
have been their instructors, and many a weary
hour of care have they had in the discharge of this
office; but the result on the whole is beautiful and
good, and the end of it, doubtless, will be peace.

In speaking of the office of the American mistress
as being a missionary one, we are far from recommending
any controversial interference with the religious
faith of our servants. It is far better to incite them
to be good Christians in their own way than to run
the risk of shaking their faith in all religion by pointing
out to them the errors of that in which they have
been educated. The general purity of life and propriety
of demeanor of so many thousands of

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undefended young girls cast yearly upon our shores, with
no home but their church, and no shield but their
religion, are a sufficient proof that this religion exerts
an influence over them not to be lightly trifled with.
But there is a real unity even in opposite Christian
forms; and the Roman Catholic servant and the Protestant
mistress, if alike possessed by the spirit of
Christ, and striving to conform to the Golden Rule,
cannot help being one in heart, though one go to
mass and the other to meeting.

Finally, the bitter baptism through which we are
passing, the life-blood dearer than our own which is
drenching distant fields, should remind us of the preciousness
of distinctive American ideas. They who
would seek in their foolish pride to establish the pomp
of liveried servants in America are doing that which
is simply absurd. A servant can never in our country
be the mere appendage to another man, to be marked
like a sheep with the color of his owner; he must be
a fellow-citizen, with an established position of his
own, free to make contracts, free to come and go, and
having in his sphere titles to consideration and respect
just as definite as those of any trade or profession
whatever.

Moreover, we cannot in this country maintain to
any great extent large retinues of servants. Even
with ample fortunes they are forbidden by the

[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]

general character of society here, which makes them cumbrous
and difficult to manage. Every mistress of a
family knows that her cares increase with every additional
servant. Two keep the peace with each other
and their employer; three begin a possible discord,
which possibility increases with four, and becomes
certain with five or six. Trained housekeepers, such
as regulate the complicated establishments of the Old
World, form a class that are not, and from the nature
of the case never will be, found in any great numbers
in this country. All such women, as a general thing,
are keeping, and prefer to keep, houses of their own.

A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact,
and simple domestic establishments, must necessarily
be the general order of life in America. So many
openings of profit are to be found in this country, that
domestic service necessarily wants the permanence
which forms so agreeable a feature of it in the Old
World.

This being the case, it should be an object in America
to exclude from the labors of the family all that
can, with greater advantage, be executed out of it
by combined labor.

Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were
to be made in each separate family; now, comparatively
few take this toil upon them. We buy soap of
the soap-maker, and candles of the candle-factor. This

[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]

principle might be extended much further. In France
no family makes its own bread, and better bread cannot
be eaten than what can be bought at the appropriate
shops. No family does its own washing, the
family's linen is all sent to women who, making this
their sole profession, get it up with a care and nicety
which can seldom be equalled in any family.

How would it simplify the burdens of the American
housekeeper to have washing and ironing day expunged
from her calendar! How much more neatly
and compactly could the whole domestic system be
arranged! If all the money that each separate family
spends on the outfit and accommodations for washing
and ironing, on fuel, soap, starch, and the other et
ceteras, were united in a fund to create a laundry for
every dozen families, one or two good women could
do in first rate style what now is very indifferently
done by the disturbance and disarrangement of all
other domestic processes in these families. Whoever
sets neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to
solve the American housekeeper's hardest problem.

Finally, American women must not try with three
servants to carry on life in the style which in the Old
World requires sixteen, — they must thoroughly understand,
and be prepared to teach, every branch of
housekeeping, — they must study to make domestic
service desirable, by treating their servants in a way

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to lead them to respect themselves and to feel themselves
respected, — and there will gradually be evolved
from the present confusion a solution of the domestic
problem which shall be adapted to the life of a new
and growing world.