f doing their own
work will know their own happiness and dignity, and properly value
their great acquisition, even though it may have been forced upon them
by circumstances.

VII

WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA

While I was preparing my article for the "Atlantic," our friend Bob
Stephens burst in upon us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper
in his hand.

"Well, girls, your time is come now! You women have been preaching
heroism and sacrifice to us,--'so splendid to go forth and suffer
and die for our country,'--and now comes the test of feminine
patriotism."

"Why, what's the matter now?" said Jenny, running eagerly to look over
his shoulder at the paper.

"No more foreign goods," said he, waving it aloft,--"no more gold
shipped to Europe for silks, laces, jewels, kid gloves, and what not.
Here it is,--great movement, headed by senators' and generals' wives,
Mrs. General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry Wilson, and so on,
a long string of them, to buy no more imported articles during the
war."

"But I don't see how it _can_ be done," said Jenny.

"Why," said I, "do you suppose that 'nothing to wear' is made in
America?"

"But, dear Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Featherstone, a nice girl, who
was just then one of our family circle, "there is not, positively,
much that is really fit to use or wear made in America,--is there now?
Just think: how is Marianne to furnish her house here without French
papers and English carpets?--those American papers are so very
ordinary, and, as to American carpets, everybody knows their colors
don't hold; and then, as to dress, a lady must have gloves, you
know,--and everybody knows no such things are made in America as
gloves."

"I think," I said, "that I have heard of certain fair ladies wishing
that they were men, that they might show with what alacrity they would
sacrifice everything on the altar of their country: life and limb
would be nothing; they would glory in wounds and bruises, they would
enjoy losing a right arm, they wouldn't mind limping about on a lame
leg the rest of their lives, if they were John or Peter, if only they
might serve their dear country."

"Yes," said Bob, "that's female patriotism! Girls are always ready to
jump off from precipices, or throw themselves into abysses, but as to
wearing an unfashionable hat or thread gloves, that they can't
do,--not even for their dear country. No matter whether there's any
money left to pay for the