comfortable and
easy, with the least outlay of expense. Biddy's capital is her muscles
and sinews; and she wants to get as many greenbacks in exchange for
them as her wit and shrewdness will enable her to do. You feel, when
you bargain with her, that she is nothing to you, except so far as her
strength and knowledge may save you care and trouble; and she feels
that you are nothing to her, except so far as she can get your money
for her work. The free-and-easy airs of those seeking employment show
one thing,--that the country in general is prosperous, and that
openings for profitable employment are so numerous that it is not
thought necessary to try to conciliate favor. If the community were at
starvation-point, and the loss of a situation brought fear of the
almshouse, the laboring-class would be more subservient. As it is,
there is a little spice of the bitterness of a past age of servitude
in their present attitude,--a bristling, self-defensive impertinence,
which will gradually smooth away as society learns to accommodate
itself to the new order of things."

"Well, but, papa," said Jenny, "don't you think all this a very severe
test, if applied to us women particularly, more than to the men? Mr.
Theophilus seems to think women are aristocrats, and go for enslaving
the lower classes out of mere selfishness; but I say that we are a
great deal more strongly tempted than men, because all these
annoyances and trials of domestic life come upon us. It is very
insidious, the aristocratic argument, as it appeals to us; there seems
much to be said in its favor. It does appear to me that it is better
to have servants and work-people tidy, industrious, respectful, and
decorous, as they are in Europe, than domineering, impertinent, and
negligent, as they are here,--and it seems that there is something in
our institutions that produces these disagreeable traits; and I
presume that the negroes will eventually be traveling the same road as
the Irish, and from the same influences.

"When people see all these things, and feel all the inconveniences of
them, I don't wonder that they are tempted not to like democracy, and
to feel as if aristocratic institutions made a more agreeable state of
society. It is not such a blank, bald, downright piece of brutal
selfishness as Mr. Theophilus there seems to suppose, for us to wish
there were some quiet, submissive, laborious lower class, who would be
content to work for kind treatment and mod