erhaps to get money
in irregular ways, by office-holding, is demoralizing. It tends to make
and to keep in existence a body of shiftless men who otherwise would be
obliged to turn their attention to mechanics, to trade, to agriculture.
It helps to increase our too great tendency to speculative and unstable
habits of life. It is bad in every way. As to the particular method by
which the much-needed change is to be brought about there may be various
opinions; but among sensible and decent men there is none as to the
prime necessity of the extinction of office-seeking. In whatever he may
do to effect this the new President will have the best wishes even of
the greater number of those who cast their votes against him.

--From civil service to domestic service is a great leap; but there is
this likeness between the two, that both, in this country at least, are
in a deplorable condition of inefficiency. And as to domestic service,
the complaints of householders in England are hardly less loud and
grievous than those which go up daily in America. In both countries
there is a great cry for provision for unemployed women; and yet in
both countries the procurement of women capable and willing to give
good household work in return for good wages seems to vibrate between
the not remote points of difficulty and impossibility. Disorder, dirt,
waste, and cooking which is only the destruction of good viands by
reducing them to an unpalatable and indigestible condition are,
according to all accounts, the lot of all housekeepers whose means do
not enable them to procure the most skilful and highly trained domestic
servants. In England a strange remedy has been proposed, adopted in a
measure, and thus far with success. It is the introduction of what are
called, even in England, "lady helps." There is something amusing in
seeing our cousins, who used to sneer at the Yankee phrase "helps," and
also at the Yankee help herself, who would not be regarded (unwisely it
may be) as a servant, turn in despair to the word and the thing as the
only relief in their domestic perplexity. The scheme was first proposed
by Mrs. Crayshaw, of Cyfarthfa Castle, the wife of one of the
wealthiest iron masters in England. Considering the fact, known to
everybody there, that there were thousands of poor gentlewomen--that
is, of women born and bred in the comparatively wealthy and cultivated
classes--who were absolutely penniless, living in want, in suffering,
o