osing circumstance that he has practically endorsed their intention
to make fine ladies of themselves. Neither he nor the chief slave of
her own gentility, the wife, who will maintain her reputation for
"faculty" or perish in the attempt, has a suspicion that the strain to
make meet the ends of frugality and pretension, is palpably and
criminally absurd. By keeping up a certain appearance of affluence and
fashion, they assume the obligation to employ servants enough to carry
out the design, yet in nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of every
thousand, they ignore the duty.

I admit without demur that, as American domestics go, they are a
burden, an expense and a vexation. Notwithstanding all these
drawbacks, she who will not risk them should not live in such a way
that she must make use of such instruments or overwork herself
physically and mentally.

The entire social and domestic system of American communities calls
loudly for the reform of simplicity and congruity. We begin to build
and are not able to finish. Our economics are false and mischievous,
our aims are petty and low. The web of our daily living is not round
and even-threaded. The homes which are constructed upon the
foundations of deranged, dying and dead women, are a mockery of the
holy name. Our houses should be planned and kept for those who are to
live in them, not for those who tarry within the doors for a night or
an hour. When housekeeping becomes an intolerable care there is sin
somewhere and danger everywhere.

CHAPTER IV.

LITTLE THINGS THAT ARE TRIFLES.

I feel that in writing a chapter upon ways and means I may seem to
many readers to be going over an oft-traversed road. Of articles and
treatises on the ever-vexing subject there is no end. The whole human
creation or, at all events, a vast majority of it, groaneth and
travaileth together in the agony of trying to spread a little
substance over a vast surface,--in the desperate endeavor to make a
little money go a very long way. Every few months we notice in a daily
newspaper the offer of a money-prize for the best bill of fare for a
company-dinner for six people, to be prepared upon a ludicrously-small
allowance. The number of contestants for this prize proves, not only
the general interest felt in the subject, but also testifies to the
urgent need of the reward on the part of the various would-be winners.
The probabilities are that few of these writers have the means to set
f