lineal descendant of the twelve-dollar gaiters in which
her mother walked; and that torn and faded calico had ancestry of
magnificent brocade, that swept Broadway clean without any expense to
the street commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence, and
fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace
to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in
society, that though our young women may embroider slippers, and
crochet, and make mats for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the
idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame
for a young woman, belonging to a large family, to be inefficient when
the father toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a
daughter to be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as
honorable to sweep house, make beds, or trim hats, as it is to twist a
watch-chain.

As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between
that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which
is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it
is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing
dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the
back of an armchair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy
the chair. You may, with delicate brush, beautify a mantel-ornament,
but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may
learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing
"Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical, if you would, in
the eyes of refined society, preserve your respectability.

I scout these finical notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man,
has a right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for
it.

In the course of a lifetime you consume whole harvests, and droves of
cattle, and every day you live breathe forty hogsheads of good pure
air. You must, by some kind of usefulness, _pay_ for all this. Our
race was the last thing created,--the birds and fishes on the fourth
day, the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth
day. If geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the
possession of the insects, beasts, and birds, before our race came
upon it. In one sense, we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards,
and the hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are
to do with the lizards and summer insects, but what t