o
so. If they are willing to undertake the task, I am sure they have my
consent.

If the reader should be surprised at the idea of the interest on the
public debt being paid from the extravagance of one class of women, he
will be more so at the assertion made by a speaker in the highest
deliberative body in the country, that another class would be able to
pay the debt itself. He said our dairy-women alone were able to do
it,--that in ten years they would churn it out,--because within that
short period they would produce butter enough to discharge the whole
amount. This may be all true; for how should I know the number of cows
in this country, or the disposition of the dairy-maids? But I presume he
had not consulted them as to whether they were willing to milk cows and
churn butter for a term of ten years for the sole benefit of the nation.
I am inclined to think they would make no such patriotic sacrifice,
except on compulsion. But with tawdry servant-girls and equally tawdry
ladies, the case is widely different; the latter pursue their great task
voluntarily; indeed, it would seem that they rather enjoy it; so that
the more one reflects on the idea, the less absurd does it appear.

It is very certain that the Irish who come among us have for many years
been sending home millions of dollars to pay the passage hither of
friends whom they had left behind. When these friends arrive here, and
have earned money enough, they repeat the process of sending for others
whom they in turn have left. The most limited inquiry will show how
universal this system of thus helping one another has become. Thus the
stream of remittances swells annually. The millions of money so
transmitted proves the ability of this class to achieve great pecuniary
results in a certain direction. That they thus exert themselves is
strong evidence of the intense affection existing among them. There are
innumerable instances of the father of a large family of children coming
out as a pioneer, then sending for the most useful child, and their
joint savings being devoted to sending for others, until finally the
amount becomes large enough to bring the mother with the younger
children,--the latter being meanwhile generally supported at home from
savings remitted with affectionate punctuality from this country, until
the happy day when they, too, receive the order for a passage. Many
times the entire family of a widowed mother, with the mother herself,
has bee