ing has not
been done to assist others." We are told that a child can be taught to
braid straw for his hats or to make feather fans; the objection to
which would be that a modern mother would not let a child wear that
kind of hat nor carry the fan.

The following will be interesting if not valuable: "Cheap as stockings
are, it is good economy to knit them; knit hose wear twice as long as
woven; and they can be done at odd moments of time which would not be
otherwise employed." What an age that must have been when one had time
enough and to spare! Other suggestions are quite as curious. The book
is "dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy." "The writer,"
she says, "has no apology to offer for this little book of economical
hints, except her deep conviction that such a book is needed. In this
case, renown is out of the question; and ridicule is a matter of
indifference."

Goethe made poems of his chagrins; Mrs. Child in this instance
utilized her privations and forced economies to make a book; and a
wonderfully successful book it was. She was not wrong in supposing it
would meet a want. During the next seven years, it went through twenty
editions, or three editions a year; in 1855, it had reached its
thirty-third edition, averaging little short of one edition a year for
thirty-six years. Surely this was a result which made a year of
economical living in a "very small house" worth while.

"The Frugal Housewife" was a true "mother's book," although another
and later volume was so named. "The Mother's Book" was nearly as
successful as "The Frugal Housewife," and went through eight American
editions, twelve English, and one German. The success of these books
gave Mrs. Child a good income, and she hardly needed to be the "frugal
housewife" she had been before.

A check soon came to her prosperity. In 1831, she met Garrison and,
being inflammable, caught fire from his anti-slavery zeal, and became
one of his earliest and staunchest disciples. The free use of the
Athenaeum library which had been graciously extended to her ten years
before, now enabled her to study the subject of slavery in all its
aspects, historical, legal, theoretical, and practical and, in 1833,
she embodied the results of her investigations in a book entitled, "An
Appeal in behalf of the class of Americans called Africans." The
material is chiefly drawn from Southern sources, the statute books of
Southern states, the columns of Southern newspa