ost positive indication of mental alienation."

"Here," said I, "we behold at this moment two women dying for the want
of what they can mutually give one another,--each having a supply of
what the other needs, but held back by certain invisible cobwebs,
slight but strong, from coming to each other's assistance. Marianne
has money enough, but she wants a helper in her family, such as all
her money has been hitherto unable to buy; and here, close at hand, is
a woman who wants home shelter, healthy, varied, active, cheerful
labor, with nourishing food, kind care, and good wages. What hinders
these women from rushing to the help of one another, just as two drops
of water on a leaf rush together and make one? Nothing but a miserable
prejudice,--but a prejudice so strong that women will starve in any
other mode of life rather than accept competency and comfort in
this."

"You don't mean," said my wife, "to propose that our protegee should
go to Marianne as a servant?"

"I do say it would be the best thing for her to do,--the only opening
that I see, and a very good one, too, it is. Just look at it. Her bare
living at this moment cannot cost her less than five or six dollars a
week,--everything at the present time is so very dear in the city. Now
by what possible calling open to her capacity can she pay her board
and washing, fuel and lights, and clear a hundred and some odd dollars
a year? She could not do it as a district school teacher; she
certainly cannot, with her feeble health, do it by plain sewing; she
could not do it as a copyist. A robust woman might go into a factory
and earn more; but factory work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily,
week in and out, in the same movement, in close air, amid the clatter
of machinery; and a person delicately organized soon sinks under it.
It takes a stolid, enduring temperament to bear factory labor. Now
look at Marianne's house and family, and see what is insured to your
protegee there.

"In the first place, a home,--a neat, quiet chamber, quite as good as
she has probably been accustomed to,--the very best of food, served in
a pleasant, light, airy kitchen, which is one of the most agreeable
rooms in the house, and the table and table service quite equal to
those of most farmers and mechanics. Then her daily tasks would be
light and varied,--some sweeping, some dusting, the washing and
dressing of children, the care of their rooms and the nursery,--all of
it the most healthf