Home. In her artistic mind it takes the form of
an outer and inner sisterhood,--the inner devoted to culture, the outer
attending to the useful, ready alike to broil a steak or toe a stocking
for the more ethereal ones of the household. This is all quite amiably
intended, but no queen-bee and common-bee scheme of the sort seems to be
either generous or practicable. It involves at once too much caste and
too much contact. We do not wish to find servants or scrubs in our
sisters, nor do we wish at all times even to see our sisters. There must
be elbow-room for mood and temperament, as well as high walls of
defence. The social element is too shy and elusive, and will not, like a
monkey, perform on demand; therefore our plan abjures all these poetic
organizations, which have a great deal of cant and very little good
companionship; it has no sentimentalism to offer, proposing an
association of purses rather than of persons,--a household on the base
of protection rather than of society,--a mere combining for privileges
and against prices. It is resolved into a simple matter of business; and
the only help women need is that of an organizing brain to put
themselves into this associate form, whereby they can meet the existing
state of things with somewhat of human comfort.

Are we never to obtain even this, until the golden doors of the
Millennium swing open? Ah, then indeed one must melt a little, looking
regretfully back to Brook Farm, undismayed by the fearful Zenobia;
looking leniently toward Wallingford, Lebanon, and Haryard. Anything
for wholesome diet, free life, and a quiet refuge.

But whether to live alone or together, the first want is of
houses,--which is another hitch in the social system. In the city a
building-lot is an incipient fortune; and the large sum paid for it is
the beginning of reasons for the large rent of the building that is put
upon it. But then if ground is costly, air is cheap,--land is high, but
sky is low; and one need have but very little earth to a great deal of
house. A writer, describing the London of thirty years ago, speaks of
the huge, narrow dwellings, full five stories high, and says that the
agility with which the inmates "ran up and down, and perched on the
different stories, gave the idea of a cage with its birds and sticks";
and the like figure seems to have occurred to the queer Mademoiselle
Marchand of "Denise," who, as she toiled to her eyrie on the topmost
landing, exclaimed, "