n the hands of servants; not for mothers, for they
universally grumble at the advent and responsibility of children.

But to the large majority of women, domestic service ought to be a
high moral question, especially to those who are the wives of men
striving to keep up on limited incomes the reality and the appearance
of a prosperous home; all the more necessary, perhaps, because the
appearance is the condition on which the reality is possible.

Too often a false notion that usefulness and elegance are incompatible,
that it is "unladylike" to be in their kitchens, or come in contact
with the baker and butcher, makes them abrogate the highest honors of
wifehood. Or perhaps they have the misfortune to be the children of
those tender parents who are permitted without loss of reputation to
educate their daughters for drawing-room ornaments in their youth, and
yet do nothing to _insure_ them against a middle age of struggle and
privation, and an old age of misery.

To such I would speak candidly--not without thought--not without
practical knowledge of what I say--not without strong hopes that I may
influence many warm, thoughtless hearts, who only need to be once
alive to a responsibility in order to feel straitened and burdened
until they assume and fulfil it.

Is it fair, then, is it just, kind, or honorable, that the husband day
after day should be bound to the wheel of a monotonous occupation, and
the wife fritter away the results in frivolity or suffer them to be
wasted in extravagant and yet unsatisfactory housekeeping? Supposing
the magnificent affection of the husband makes him willing to coin his
life into dollars, in order that the wife may live and dress and visit
according to her ideal, ought she to accept an offering that has in it
so strong an odor of human sacrifice?

Even if it be necessary to keep up a certain style, it is still in the
wife's power to make the husband's service for this end a reasonable
one. Personal supervision of the marketing will save twenty per cent,
and I am afraid to say how much might be saved from actual waste in
the kitchen by the same means; and this is but the beginning.

Yet saving is only one item in the wife's lawful domestic service; if
her husband is to be a permanently successful man, she must take care
of his digestion. It may seem derogatory to thought, enterprise, and
virtue to assert that eating has anything to do with them. I cannot
help the condition; I only kn