OWFIELD.

VII.

While I was preparing my article for the "Atlantic," our friend Bob
Stephens burst in upon us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper
in his hand.

"Well, girls, your time is come now! You women have been preaching
heroism and sacrifice to us,--so splendid to go forth and suffer and die
for our country,--and now comes the test of feminine patriotism."

"Why, what's the matter now?" said Jennie, running eagerly to look over
his shoulder at the paper.

"No more foreign goods," said he, waving it aloft,--"no more gold
shipped to Europe for silks, laces, jewels, kid gloves, and what-not.
Here it is,--great movement, headed by senators' and generals' wives,
Mrs. General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry Wilson, and so on, a
long string of them, to buy no more imported articles during the war."

"But I don't see how it _can_ be done," said Jennie.

"Why," said I, "do you suppose that 'nothing to wear' is made in
America?"

"But, dear Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Featherstone, a nice girl, who was
just then one of our family-circle, "there is not, positively, much that
is really fit to use or wear made in America,--_is_ there now? Just
think; how is Marianne to furnish her house here without French papers
and English carpets?--those American papers are so common, and as to
American carpets, everybody knows their colors don't hold; and then, as
to dress, a lady must have gloves, you know,--and everybody knows no
such things are made in America as gloves."

"I think," I said, "that I have heard of certain fair ladies wishing
that they were men, that they might show with what alacrity they would
sacrifice everything on the altar of their country: life and limb would
be nothing; they would glory in wounds and bruises, they would enjoy
losing a right arm, they wouldn't mind limping about on a lame leg the
rest of their lives, _if they were John or Peter_, if only they might
serve their dear country."

"Yes," said Bob, "that's female patriotism! Girls are always ready to
jump off from precipices, or throw themselves into abysses, but as to
wearing an unfashionable hat or thread gloves, that they can't do,--not
even for their dear country. No matter whether there's any money left to
pay for the war or not, the dear souls must have twenty yards of silk in
a dress,--it's the fashion, you know."

"Now, isn't he too bad?" said Marianne. "As if we'd ever been asked to
make these sacrifices and refused