f servant-girls, and drew out a plan of dress, down
to the very material of their gloves, was an instance of this spirit.
For, when we come to analyse it, what does it really signify to us how
our servants dress, so long as they are clean and decent, and do not let
their garments damage our goods? Fashion is almost always ridiculous,
and women as a rule care more for dress than they care for anything
else; and if the kitchen apes the parlor, and Phyllis gives as much
thought to her new linsey as my lady gives to her new velvet, we cannot
wonder at it, nor need we hold up our hands in horror at the depravity
of the smaller person. Does one flight of stairs transpose morality? If
it does not, there is no real ethical reason why my lady should
interfere with poor Phyllis's enjoyment in her ugly vanities, when she
herself will not be interfered with, though press and pulpit both try to
turn her out of her present path into one that all ages have thought the
best for her, and the one divinely appointed. It is a thing that will
not bear reasoning on, being simply a form of the old "who will guard
the guardian?" Who will direct the directress? and to whose interference
will the interferer submit?

There are two causes for this excessive love of interference among
women. The one is the narrowness of their lives and objects, by which
insignificant things gain a disproportionate value in their eyes; the
other, their belief that they are the only saviors of society, and that
without them man would become hopelessly corrupt. And to a certain
extent this belief is true, but surely with restrictions. Because the
clearer moral sense and greater physical weakness of women restrain
men's fiercer passions, and force them to be gentle and considerate,
women are not, therefore, the sole arbiters of masculine life, into
whose hands is given the paying out of just so much rope as they think
fit for the occasion. They would do better to look to their own tackle
before settling so exactly the run of others'; and if ever their desired
time of equality is to come, it must come through mutual independence,
not through womanly interference, and as much liberality and breadth
must be given as is demanded--which, so far as humanity has gone
hitherto, has not been the feminine manner of squaring accounts.

Grant that women are the salt of the earth, and the great antiseptic
element in society, still that does not reduce everything else to the
verge