going out to manly
labor; and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery,
discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by
graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off the next
week. They spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did
all manner of fine needlework; they made lace, painted flowers, and,
in short, in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and
perfect health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or
thought of. A bride in those days was married with sheets and
tablecloths of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet-covers
wrought in divers embroidery by her own and her sisters' hands. The
amount of fancy work done in our days by girls who have nothing else
to do will not equal what was done by these, who performed besides,
among them, the whole work of the family.

For many years these habits of life characterized the majority of our
rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and
position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and
a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former
days. Human nature is above all things--lazy. Every one confesses in
the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and
mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all
they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more
than circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not write this
article were not the publication-day hard on my heels. I should read
Hawthorne and Emerson and Holmes, and dream in my armchair, and
project in the clouds those lovely unwritten stories that curl and
veer and change like mist-wreaths in the sun. So also, however
dignified, however invigorating, however really desirable, are habits
of life involving daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon
at every one's elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its weight
with sullen, discontented murmurs.

I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very
moderately, a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and
discussed, where there are no servants except the ladies of the
household. I will venture to say, also, that these households, many of
them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance
to many which are conducted by the ministration of domestics. I will
venture to assert furthermore that these same la