en to have enough of his own."

"It is very odd, Miss Effie," I replied, "for you to entertain these
opinions, they are so different from those of rich people; and it is
very encouraging to me to hear you express them. But I should have
expected nothing less noble from you, you are so good and generous."

"Why, Lizzie, what do you mean?" she exclaimed. "It is not goodness, but
merely common sense. What brought me here to be a pupil in this school?
Not the desire to do good to others, but to improve myself,--a little
selfishness, after all."

"But," I inquired, "will this unnatural prejudice against the
respectability of female labor ever die out? You know that I am to be a
sewing-girl, not from choice, like you, but from necessity. You learn
the use of a machine only as a prop to lean upon in a very remote
contingency; I, to make it the staff for all my future life. You will
continue to be a lady,--indeed, Miss Effie, you never can be anything
else,--but I shall be only a sewing-girl. The prejudice will never
attach to you, but it will always cling to me. How cruel it seems that
the world should consider as ladies all who can afford to be idle, and
all working-women as belonging to a lower class, because God compels
them to labor for the life He has given them!"

"Dear Lizzie," she exclaimed, in tones so modulated to extreme softness
as to show that her feelings had been deeply touched both by the matter
and the manner of my inquiry, "you must banish all such thoughts from
your mind. For His own wise purposes, God has placed you in a position
in which you have a mission of some kind to fulfil. That position is an
honorable one, because it requires you to labor, and it is none the less
honorable because others are not required to do so. They also have their
several missions, which we cannot understand. If it be regarded as mean
for women to work, it is in the pride of man that so false a standard of
respectability has been set up, not in the word or wisdom of God. To
which shall we pay the most respect? The former, we know, brings
constant bitterness; the latter, we know equally well, is unchangeably
good. As it is our duty to submit to it here, so, through the Saviour,
is it our only trust hereafter. It is not labor that degrades us, but
temper, behavior, character. If all these be vicious, can mere money or
exemption from labor make them respectable? You know it cannot.

"You," she continued, in a tone so impressiv