ense to the street
commissioners. Though you live in an elegant residence and fare
sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace to
them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea prevalent in society
that, though our young women may embroider slippers and crochet and
make mats for lamps to stand on without disgrace, the idea of doing
anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a young
woman belonging to a large family to be inefficient when the father
toils his life away for her support. It is a shame for a daughter to
be idle while her mother toils at the wash-tub. It is as honorable to
sweep the house, make beds or trim hats as it is to twist a
watch-chain.

As far as I can understand, the line of respectability lies between
that which is useful and that which is useless. If women do that which
is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it
is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing
dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the
back of an arm-chair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy
the chair. You may with a delicate brush beautify a mantel ornament,
but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learn
artistic music until you can squall Italian, but never sing
"Ortonville" or "Old Hundred." Do nothing practical if you would in
the eyes of refined society preserve your respectability. I scout
these fine notions. I tell you a woman, no more than a man, has a
right to occupy a place in this world unless she pays a rent for it.

In the course of a life-time you consume whole harvests and droves of
cattle, and every day you live, breathe forty hogsheads of good, pure
air. You must by some kind of usefulness pay for all this. Our race
was the last thing created--the birds and fishes on the fourth day,
the cattle and lizards on the fifth day, and man on the sixth day. If
geologists are right, the earth was a million of years in the
possession of the insects, beasts, and birds before our race came upon
it. In one sense we were innovators. The cattle, the lizards, and the
hawks had pre-emption right. The question is not what we are to do
with the lizards and summer insects, but what the lizards and summer
insects are to do with us. If we want a place in this world, we must
earn it. The partridge makes its own nest before it occupies it. The
lark by its morning song earns its breakfa