e wiser, better, happier by being
employed in something that will benefit herself and the world. We have a
strange theory about our young women that are well to do in the world.
We think that they must be great babies, and be fed, and clothed, and
housed, and posted about in carriages, waited upon and petted as though
they were made for nothing else. It is horridly vulgar for such young
women to work. It would be a violation of propriety for them to be
useful. They would lose caste if they should engage in any useful
employment. So they must be useless appendages, hung about the body of
humanity to torment themselves and as many others as they can. What a
torment it must be to them to lead such aimless lives, studying all the
while for some new way to kill time! How many women there are over whose
heads time drags heavily! They have nothing to do. The dull round of
society is irksome. They have stood at the toilet till every thing there
is fatiguing. They have talked over and over their little round of
fashionable nonsense. They are weary of their monotonous, inactive,
inglorious life. Thousands are the women in easy circumstances who feel
thus. They would be glad to lift up their hands and do something, but
the chains of custom and fashion are upon them. A false social position
has made them timid and fearful. I know that many noble women are weary
of such a life. They are tired of being dolls. They would be glad to be
women and fill the places of useful, energetic, resolute women.

The position of dependence in which society places its wealthy and easy
circumstanced women is directly calculated to destroy their
self-reliance and force of character. They are attended by servants
wherever they go, who do what they ought to do, and often think what
they ought to think. The woman who always asks her servant to do what
she may do herself, soon becomes dependent upon and loses a good portion
of herself in her servant. If my servant eats my dinner for me, he gets
the benefit and I lose it. If my servant takes my morning bath from me,
he gets the benefit and I lose it. If he takes my morning walk for me,
he receives what I lose. So if he takes my Employment, does what I may
and ought to do myself for my own good, he receives the benefit while I
lose it. Thus it is that this system of servitude in all its forms tends
to degrade the party to whom the service is done. To have done for us
what it is best we should do ourselves alw