lor work, was so
full of airs and fine notions, that it seemed as difficult to treat with
her as with a princess. She could not sweep, because it blistered her
hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate; she could not think of
putting them into hot dish-water, and for that reason preferred washing
the dishes in cold water; she required a full hour in the morning to
make her toilet; she was laced so tightly that she could not stoop
without vertigo, and her hoops were of dimensions which seemed to render
it impossible for her to wait upon table; she was quite exhausted with
the effort of ironing the table-napkins and chamber-towels;--yet she
could not think of 'living out' under two dollars a week.

"Both these girls had had a good free-school education, and could read
any amount of novels, write a tolerable letter, but had not learned
anything with sufficient accuracy to fit them for teachers. They were
pretty, and their destiny was to marry and lie a dead weight on the
hands of some honest man, and to increase, in their children, the number
of incapables."

"Well," said Bob, "what would you have? What is to be done?"

"In the first place," said I, "I would have it felt by those who are
seeking to elevate woman, that the work is to be done, not so much by
creating for her new spheres of action as by elevating her conceptions
of that domestic vocation to which God and Nature have assigned her. It
is all very well to open to her avenues of profit and advancement in the
great outer world; but, after all, _to make and keep a home_ is, and
ever must be, a woman's first glory, her highest aim. No work of art can
compare with a perfect home; the training and guiding of a family must
be recognized as the highest work a woman can perform; and female
education ought to be conducted with special reference to this.

"Men are _trained_ to be lawyers, to be physicians, to be mechanics, by
long and self-denying study and practice. A man cannot even make shoes
merely by going to the high school and learning reading, writing, and
mathematics; he cannot be a book-keeper, or a printer, simply from
general education.

"Now women have a sphere and profession of their own,--a profession for
which they are fitted by physical organization, by their own instincts,
and to which they are directed by the pointing and manifest finger of
God,--and that sphere is _family life_.

"Duties to the State and to public life they may have; but the p