her people. Our
women's wardrobes are made elaborate with the thousand elegancies of
French toilet,--our houses filled with a thousand knick-knacks of which
our plain ancestors never dreamed. Cleopatra did not set sail on the
Nile in more state and beauty than that in which our young American
bride is often ushered into her new home. Her wardrobe all gossamer lace
and quaint frill and crimp and embroidery, her house a museum of elegant
and costly gewgaws; and amid the whole collection of elegancies and
fragilities, she, perhaps, the frailest.

Then comes the tug of war. The young wife becomes a mother, and while
she is retired to her chamber, blundering Biddy rusts the elegant
knives, or takes off the ivory handles by soaking in hot water,--the
silver is washed in greasy soap-suds, and refreshed now and then with a
thump, which cocks the nose of the teapot awry, or makes the handle
assume an air of drunken defiance. The fragile China is chipped here and
there around its edges with those minute gaps so vexatious to a woman's
soul; the handles fly hither and thither in the wild confusion of
Biddy's washing-day hurry, when cook wants her to help hang out the
clothes. Meanwhile, Bridget sweeps the parlor with a hard broom, and
shakes out showers of ashes from the grate, forgetting to cover the
damask lounges, and they directly look as rusty and time-worn as if they
had come from an auction-store; and all together unite in making such
havoc of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit and
baby-_layette_, that, when the poor young wife comes out of her chamber
after her nurse has left her, and, weakened and embarrassed with the
demands of the new-comer, begins to look once more into the affairs of
her little world, she is ready to sink with vexation and discouragement.
Poor little princess! Her clothes are made as princesses wear them, her
baby's clothes like a young duke's, her house furnished like a lord's,
and only Bridget and Biddy and Polly to do the work of cook,
scullery-maid, butler, footman, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and
lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed
necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. Everything
in it is _too fine_,--not too fine to be pretty, not in bad taste in
itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine for comfort or liberty.

What ensues in a house so furnished? Too often, ceaseless fretting of
the nerves, in the wife's