t tell me that there are any girls
or women so mean and selfish as to want aristocracy or rank so
purchased! You are too bad, Mr. Theophilus!"

"Perhaps they might not, were it stated in just these terms; yet I
think, if the question of the establishment of an order of aristocracy
among us were put to vote, we should find more women than men who
would go for it; and they would flout at the consequences to society
with the lively wit and the musical laugh which make feminine
selfishness so genteel and agreeable.

"No! It is a fact that in America, the women, in the wealthy
classes, are like the noblemen of aristocracies, and the men are
the workers. And in all this outcry that has been raised about
women's wages being inferior to those of men there is one thing
overlooked,--and that is, that women's work is generally inferior to
that of men, because in every rank they are the pets of society and
are excused from the laborious drill and training by which men are
fitted for their callings. Our fair friends come in generally by some
royal road to knowledge, which saves them the dire necessity of real
work,--a sort of feminine hop-skip-and-jump into science or mechanical
skill,--nothing like the uncompromising hard labor to which the boy
is put who would be a mechanic or farmer, a lawyer or physician.

"I admit freely that we men are to blame for most of the faults of our
fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and
love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted
daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it.
Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give
their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any
adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness
by applying herself to some occupation whereby she may earn her own
living, infallibly draws down on her the comments of her whole circle:
'Keeping school, is she? Isn't her father rich enough to support her?
What could possess her?'"

"I am glad, my dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect
yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As
usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your
assertions; but they are as far from being in themselves the truth as
would be their exact opposites.

"The class of American women who travel, live abroad, and represent
our country to the foreign eye, have acqu