would, were I
worthy to be considered, humbly suggest to their prophetic wisdom and
enthusiasm, whether, in this new future of woman which they wish to
introduce, woman's natural, God-given employment of _domestic service_
is not to receive a new character and rise in a new form.

"'To love and serve' is a motto worn with pride on some aristocratic
family shields in England. It ought to be graven on the Christian
shield. _Servant_ is the name which Christ gives to the _Christian_; and
in speaking of his kingdom as distinguished from earthly kingdoms, he
distinctly said, that rank there should be conditioned, not upon desire
to command, but on willingness to serve.

"'Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,
and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not
be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your
minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
_servant_.'

"Why is it, that this name of servant, which Christ says is the highest
in the kingdom of heaven, is so dishonored among us professing
Christians, that good women will beg or starve, will suffer almost any
extreme of poverty and privation, rather than accept home, competence,
security, with this honored name?"

"The fault with many of our friends of the Woman's Rights order," said
my wife, "is the depreciatory tone in which they have spoken of the
domestic labors of a family as being altogether below the scope of the
faculties of woman. '_Domestic drudgery_' they call it: an expression
that has done more harm than any two words that ever were put together.

"Think of a woman's calling clear-starching and ironing domestic
drudgery, and to better the matter turning to type-setting in a grimy
printing-office! Call the care of china and silver, the sweeping of
carpets, the arrangement of parlors and sitting rooms, drudgery; and go
into a factory and spend the day amid the whir and clatter and thunder
of machinery, inhaling an atmosphere loaded with wool and
machine-grease, and keeping on the feet for twelve hours, nearly
continuously! Think of its being called drudgery to take care of a
clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and dress and care for two or three
children, to mend their clothes, tell them stories, make them
playthings, take them out walking or driving; and rather than this, to
wear out the whole livelong day, extending often deep into the night, in
endless se