r
childhood, and domestic drudgery destroys her beauty of form and
softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To correct, or rather
to break up, this despotism of household cares, or of work, over woman,
American society must be taught that women will inevitably fade and
deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort to them. It must
be taught that reverence for beauty is the normal condition, while
the theory of work, applied to women, is disastrous alike to beauty and
morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or women, is forced and
unjust.

"'All the great masculine or creative epochs have been distinguished
by spontaneous work on the part of men, and universal reverence and
care for beauty. The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this
great heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are the social
doctrine of, a mechanical age and a utilitarian epoch. And if the New
England idea of social life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we
shall have a reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.'"

"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you have expressed my
idea of the conditions of the sex. Woman was not made to work; she was
made to be taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying,
whether in study or in practical life, is and ought to be in its very
nature essentially the work of the male sex. The value of woman is
precisely the value of those priceless works of art for which we build
museums,--which we shelter and guard as the world's choicest heritage;
and a lovely, cultivated, refined woman, thus sheltered, and guarded,
and developed, has a worth that cannot be estimated by any gross,
material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments of Miss Jenny's
friend without scruple."

"The great trouble in settling all these society questions," said I,
"lies in the gold-washing--the cradling I think the miners call it. If
all the quartz were in one stratum and all the gold in another, it
would save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jenny's friend
of the 'Evening Post' there is a line of truth and a line of falsehood
so interwoven and threaded together that it is impossible wholly to
assent or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudolph, there is a degree of
truth in them, but there is also a fallacy.

"It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do the hard work of
the world, either social, intellectual, or moral. These are evidences
in her physiology that this was not intended fo