d are at incessant
feud; and the more free and enlightened the society, the more bitter
the feud. The standing complaint of life in America is the badness of
servants; and England, which always follows at a certain rate behind
us in our social movements, is beginning to raise very loudly the same
complaint. The condition of service has been thought worthy of public
attention in some of the leading British prints; and Ruskin, in a
summing-up article, speaks of it as a deep ulcer in society,--a thing
hopeless of remedy."

"My dear Mr. Theophilus," said my wife, "I cannot imagine whither you
are rambling, or to what purpose you are getting up these horrible
shadows. You talk of the world as if there were no God in it,
overruling the selfishness of men, and educating it up to order and
justice. I do not deny that there is a vast deal of truth in what you
say. Nobody doubts that, in general, human nature _is_ selfish,
callous, unfeeling, willing to engross all good to itself, and to
trample on the rights of others. Nevertheless, thanks to God's
teaching and fatherly care, the world has worked along to the point of
a great nation founded on the principles of strict equality,
forbidding all monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, by its
very constitution; and now, by God's wonderful providence, this nation
has been brought, and forced, as it were, to overturn and abolish the
only aristocratic institution that interfered with its free
development. Does not this look as if a Mightier Power than ours were
working in and for us, supplementing our weakness and infirmity? and
if we believe that man is always ready to drop everything and let it
run back to evil, shall we not have faith that God will _not_ drop the
noble work he has so evidently taken in hand in this nation?"

"And I want to know," said Jenny, "why your illustrations of
selfishness are all drawn from the female sex. Why do you speak of
girls that marry for money, any more than men? of mistresses of families
that want to be free from household duties and responsibilities, rather
than of masters?"

"My charming young lady," said Theophilus, "it is a fact that in
America, except the slaveholders, women have hitherto been the only
aristocracy. Women have been the privileged class,--the only one to
which our rough democracy has always and everywhere given the
precedence,--and consequently the vices of aristocrats are more
developed in them as a class than among