sew, or to inspire
her with any taste for domestic duties? Her arms have no exercise; her
chest and lungs, and all the complex system of muscles which are to be
perfected by quick and active movement, are compressed while she bends
over book and slate and drawing-board; while the ever active brain is
kept all the while going at the top of its speed. She grows up spare,
thin, and delicate; and while the Irish girl, who sweeps the parlors,
rubs the silver, and irons the muslins, is developing a finely rounded
arm and bust, the American girl has a pair of bones at her sides, and
a bust composed of cotton padding, the work of a skillful dressmaker.
Nature, who is no respecter of persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who
uses her arms and chest, a beauty which perishes in the gentle,
languid Edith, who does nothing but study and read."

"But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, "as stated by our friend of the
'Post,' that American matrons are perishing, and their beauty and
grace all withered, from overwork?"

"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because they are brought up
without vigor or muscular strength, without the least practical
experience of household labor, or those means of saving it which come
by daily practice; and then, after marriage, when physically weakened
by maternity, embarrassed by the care of young children, they are
often suddenly deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole
machinery of a complicated household left in their weak, inexperienced
hands. In the country, you see a household perhaps made void some fine
morning by Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the bread, or
cook the steak, or sweep the parlors, or do one of the complicated
offices of a family, and no bakery, cook-shop, or laundry to turn to
for alleviation. A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a
howling desolation; and then ensues a long season of breakage, waste,
distraction, as one wild Irish immigrant after another introduces the
style of Irish cottage life into an elegant dwelling.

"Now suppose I grant to the 'Evening Post' that woman ought to rest,
to be kept in the garden of life, and all that, how is this to be done
in a country where a state of things like this is the commonest of
occurrences? And is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate
her for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical
delicacy and incapacity? Many a woman who has been brought into these
cruel circumstances would