tural fondness for personal
decoration which I freely confess to be inherent in my sex, they begin
their new career by imitating them. At home, public example taught them
to be saving of their money; here, it teaches no other lesson than to
spend it. There, it came slowly and painfully, and was consequently
valued; here, it comes readily and for the asking, and is parted with
almost as quickly as it has been earned. I have never been the victim of
this common infatuation, to spend my last dollar on a dress that would
not become my station; I have been the architect of my own bonnets; I
have never been the owner of a silken outfit.

The idea of this class of women being large enough to pay the interest
on our public debt, in the shape of duties on the imported goods which
they consume, will of course excite a smile in all to whom it is
suggested. It will be a wonder, moreover, how the attention of a quiet
sewing-girl like myself should have been drawn to a subject so
exclusively within the domain of masculine thought. But all know that
the nation has been feeling the pressure of a universal rise of prices.
When any woman comes to buy the commonest article of dry goods for the
family, she finds that foreign fabrics are generally much higher in
price than goods of the same quality made in this country. On asking the
reason for this difference, she is told it is owing to the tariff, to
the greatly enhanced duty that has been put on foreign goods, and that
those who buy and consume them must pay this duty in the shape of an
increase of price. I have resolutely refused to purchase the imported
goods, and preferred those made at home, thus unconsciously becoming a
member of the woman's league for the support of domestic manufactures.

But it is not so with the army of foreign servant-girls among us. They
choose the finest and most expensive articles, loaded as they are with a
heavy duty. There are millions of American women who purchase in the
same way. This craving after foreign luxuries seems to be unconquerable
by anything short of absolute inability to indulge in it. But I suppose
there must always be somebody to purchase and consume these imported
goods. And perhaps, after all, it is well that there should be; for if
the nation is to pay a great sum every year for interest out of its
import duties, it could hardly raise the means, unless there were an
army of thoughtless American women and Irish servant-girls to help it d