ecessitous circumstances, I would choose for
her a position such as I name, in a kind, intelligent, Christian
family, before many of those to which women do devote themselves."

"Well," said Bob, "all this has a good sound enough, but it's quite
impossible. It's true, I verily believe, that such a kind of servant
in our family would really prolong Marianne's life years,--that it
would improve her health, and be an unspeakable blessing to her, to
me, and the children,--and I would almost go down on my knees to a
really well-educated, good American woman who would come into our
family and take that place; but I know it's perfectly vain and useless
to expect it. You know we have tried the experiment two or three times
of having a person in our family who should be on the footing of a
friend, yet do the duties of a servant, and that we never could make
it work well. These half-and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting
in their demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the firm
determination that we will have no sliding-scale in our family, and
that whoever we are to depend on must come with bona fide willingness
to take the position of a servant, such as that position is in our
house; and that, I suppose, your protegee would never do, even if she
could thereby live easier, have less hard work, better health, and
quite as much money as she could earn in any other way."

"She would consider it a personal degradation, I suppose," said my
wife.

"And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, "I should respect her far
more profoundly for her willingness to take that position, when
adverse fortune has shut other doors."

"Well, now," said I, "this woman is, as I understand, the daughter of
a respectable stone-mason, and the domestic habits of her early life
have probably been economical and simple. Like most of our mechanics'
daughters, she has received in one of our high schools an education
which has cultivated and developed her mind far beyond those of her
parents and the associates of her childhood. This is a common fact in
our American life. By our high schools the daughters of plain
workingmen are raised to a state of intellectual culture which seems
to make the disposition of them in any kind of industrial calling a
difficult one. They all want to teach school,--and schoolteaching,
consequently, is an overcrowded profession,--and, failing that, there
is only millinery and dressmaking. Of late, it is true, efforts