municate to one another. Many have cultivated
minds and refined manners, all a varied experience, while they have
in common the interests of a new country and a new life. They must
traverse some space to get at one another, but the journey is through
scenes that make it a separate pleasure. They must bear inconveniences
to stay in one another's houses; but these, to the well-disposed, are
only a source of amusement and adventure.

The great drawback upon the lives of these settlers, at present, is
the unfitness of the women for their new lot. It has generally been
the choice of the men, and the women follow, as women will, doing
their best for affection's sake, but too often in heartsickness and
weariness. Beside, it frequently not being a choice or conviction of
their own minds that it is best to be here, their part is the hardest,
and they are least fitted for it. The men can find assistance in
field labor, and recreation with the gun and fishing-rod. Their bodily
strength is greater, and enables them to bear and enjoy both these
forms of life.

The women can rarely find any aid in domestic labor. All its various
and careful tasks must often be performed, sick, or well, by the
mother and daughters, to whom a city education has imparted neither
the strength nor skill now demanded.

The wives of the poorer settlers, having more hard work to do than
before, very frequently become slatterns; but the ladies, accustomed
to a refined neatness, feel that they cannot degrade themselves by
its absence, and struggle under every disadvantage to keep up the
necessary routine of small arrangements.

With all these disadvantages for work, their resources for pleasure
are fewer. When they can leave the housework, they have not learnt to
ride, to drive, to row, alone. Their culture has too generally been
that given to women to make them "the ornaments of society." They can
dance, but not draw; talk French, but know nothing of the language
of flowers; neither in childhood were allowed to cultivate them,
lest they should tan their complexions. Accustomed to the pavement
of Broadway, they dare not tread the wild-wood paths for fear of
rattlesnakes!

Seeing much of this joylessness, and inaptitude, both of body and
mind, for a lot which would be full of blessings for those prepared
for it, we could not but look with deep interest on the little girls,
and hope they would grow up with the strength of body, dexterity,
simple tastes, a