as if all the intolerance in life were got up and
expended in the religious world; whereas religious intolerance is only a
small branch of the radical, strong, all-pervading intolerance of human
nature.

Physicians are quite as intolerant as theologians. They never have had
the power of burning at the stake for medical opinions, but they
certainly have shown the will. Politicians are intolerant. Philosophers
are intolerant, especially those who pique themselves on liberal
opinions. Painters and sculptors are intolerant. And housekeepers are
intolerant, virulently denunciatory concerning any departures from their
particular domestic creed.

Mrs. Alexander Exact, seated at her domestic altar, gives homilies on
the degeneracy of modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations of Dr.
Holdfast as to the falling off from the good old faith.

"Don't tell me about pillow-cases made without felling," says Mrs.
Alexander; "it's slovenly and shiftless. I wouldn't have such a
pillow-case in my house any more than I'd have vermin."

"But," says a trembling young housekeeper, conscious of unfelled
pillow-cases at home, "don't you think, Mrs. Alexander, that some of
these old traditions might be dispensed with? It really is not necessary
to do all the work that has been done so thoroughly and exactly,--to
double-stitch every wristband, fell every seam, count all the threads of
gathers, and take a stitch to every gather. It makes beautiful sewing,
to be sure; but when a woman has a family of little children and a small
income, if all her sewing is to be kept up in this perfect style, she
wears her life out in stitching. Had she not better slight a little, and
get air and exercise?"

"Don't tell me about air and exercise! What did my grandmother do? Why,
she did all her own work, and made grandfather's ruffled shirts besides,
with the finest stitching and gathers; and she found exercise enough, I
warrant you. Women of this day are miserable, sickly, degenerate
creatures."

"But, my dear Madam, look at poor Mrs. Evans, over the way, with her
pale face and her eight little ones."

"Miserable manager," said Mrs. Alexander. "If she'd get up at five
o'clock the year round, as I do, she'd find time enough to do things
properly, and be the better for it."

"But, my dear Madam, Mrs. Evans is a very delicately organized, nervous
woman."

"Nervous! Don't tell me! Every woman nowadays is nervous. She can't get
up in the morning, because