n my knees to a really
well-educated, good, American woman who would come into our family, and
take that place; but I know it's perfectly vain and useless to expect
it. You know we have tried the experiment two or three times of having a
person in our family who should be on the footing of a friend, yet do
the duties of a servant, and that we _never_ could make it work well.
These half-and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting in their
demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the firm determination
that we will have no sliding-scale in our family, and that whoever we
are to depend on must come with _bona-fide_ willingness to take the
position of a servant, such as that position is in our house; and
_that_, I suppose, your _protegee_ would never do, even if she could
thereby live easier, have less hard work, better health, and quite as
much money as she could earn in any other way."

"She would consider it a personal degradation, I suppose," said my wife.

"And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, "I should respect her far more
profoundly for her willingness to take that position, when adverse
fortune has shut other doors."

"Well, now," said I, "this woman is, as I understand, the daughter of a
respectable stone-mason; and the domestic habits of her early life have
probably been economical and simple. Like most of our mechanics'
daughters, she has received in one of our high schools an education
which has cultivated and developed her mind far beyond those of her
parents and the associates of her childhood. This is a common fact in
our American life. By our high schools the daughters of plain workingmen
are raised to a state of intellectual culture which seems to make the
disposition of them in any kind of industrial calling a difficult one.
They all want to teach school,--and school-teaching, consequently, is an
overcrowded profession,--and, failing that, there is only millinery and
dress-making. Of late, it is true; efforts have been made in various
directions to widen their sphere. Type-setting and book-keeping are in
some instances beginning to be open to them.

"All this time there is lying, neglected and despised, a calling to
which womanly talents and instincts are peculiarly fitted,--a calling
full of opportunities of the most lasting usefulness,--a calling which
insures a settled home, respectable protection, healthful exercise, good
air, good food, and good wages,--a calling in which a woman may