ss of American domestics, women of good sense and good powers of
reflection, who applied this sense and power of reflection to
household matters. In the early part of my married life, I myself had
American 'help'; and they were not only excellent servants, but trusty
and invaluable friends. But now, all this class of applicants for
domestic service have disappeared, I scarce know why or how. All I
know is, there is no more a Betsey or a Lois, such as used to take
domestic cares off my shoulders so completely."

"Good heavens! where are they?" cried Bob. "Where do they hide? I
would search through the world after such a prodigy!"

"The fact is," said I, "there has been a slow and gradual reaction
against household labor in America. Mothers began to feel that it was
a sort of _curse_, to be spared, if possible, to their daughters;
women began to feel that they were fortunate in proportion as they
were able to be entirely clear of family responsibilities. Then Irish
labor began to come in, simultaneously with a great advance in female
education.

"For a long while nothing was talked of, written of, thought of, in
teachers' meetings, conventions, and assemblies, but the neglected
state of female education; and the whole circle of the arts and
sciences was suddenly introduced into our free-school system, from
which needlework as gradually and quietly was suffered to drop out.
The girl who attended the primary and high school had so much study
imposed on her that she had no time for sewing or housework; and the
delighted mother was only too happy to darn her stockings and do the
housework alone, that her daughter might rise to a higher plane than
she herself had attained to. The daughter, thus educated, had, on
coming to womanhood, no solidity of muscle, no manual dexterity, no
practice or experience in domestic life; and if she were to seek a
livelihood, there remained only teaching, or some feminine trade, or
the factory."

"These factories," said my wife, "have been the ruin of hundreds and
hundreds of our once healthy farmers' daughters and others from the
country. They go there young and unprotected; they live there in great
boarding-houses, and associate with a promiscuous crowd, without even
such restraints of maternal supervision as they would have in great
boarding-schools; their bodies are enfeebled by labor often
necessarily carried on in a foul and heated atmosphere; and at the
hours when off duty, they are e