ired the reputation of being
Sybarites in luxury and extravagance, and there is much in the modes
of life that are creeping into our richer circles to justify this.

"Miss Murray, ex-maid-of-honor to the Queen of England, among other
impressions which she received from an extended tour through our
country, states it as her conviction that young American girls of the
better classes are less helpful in nursing the sick and in the general
duties of family life than the daughters of the aristocracy of
England; and I am inclined to believe it, because even the Queen has
taken special pains to cultivate habits of energy and self-helpfulness
in her children. One of the toys of the Princess Royal was said to be
a cottage of her own, furnished with every accommodation for cooking
and housekeeping, where she from time to time enacted the part of
housekeeper, making bread and biscuit, boiling potatoes which she
herself had gathered from her own garden-patch, and inviting her royal
parents to meals of her own preparing; and report says, that the
dignitaries of the German court have been horrified at the energetic
determination of the young royal housekeeper to overlook her own linen
closets and attend to her own affairs. But as an offset to what I have
been saying, it must be admitted that America is a country where a
young woman can be self-supporting without forfeiting her place in
society. All our New England and Western towns show us female teachers
who are as well received and as much caressed in society, and as often
contract advantageous marriages, as any women whatever; and the
productive labor of American women, in various arts, trades, and
callings, would be found, I think, not inferior to that of any women
in the world.

"Furthermore, the history of the late war has shown them capable of
every form of heroic endeavor. We have had hundreds of Florence
Nightingales, and an amount of real hard work has been done by female
hands not inferior to that performed by men in the camp and field, and
enough to make sure that American womanhood is not yet so enervated as
seriously to interfere with the prospects of free republican
society."

"I wonder," said Jenny, "what it is in our country that spoils the
working classes that come into it. They say that the emigrants, as
they land here, are often simple-hearted people, willing to work,
accustomed to early hours and plain living, decorous and respectful in
their manners. It woul