us to make our distressed woman
Marianne's housekeeper, and to send South for three or four contrabands
for her to train, and, with great apparent complacency, seems to think
that course will solve all similar cases of difficulty."

"That's quite a man's view of the subject," said Jennie. "They think any
woman who isn't particularly fitted to do anything else can keep house."

"As if housekeeping were not the very highest craft and mystery of
social life," said I. "I admit that our sex speak too unadvisedly on
such topics, and, being well instructed by my household priestess, will
humbly suggest the following ideas to my correspondent.

"1st. A woman is not of course fit to be a housekeeper because she is a
woman of good education and refinement.

"2d. If she were, a family with young children in it is not the proper
place to establish a school for untaught contrabands, however desirable
their training may be.

"A woman of good education and good common-sense may _learn_ to be a
good housekeeper, as she learns any trade, by going into a good family
and practising first one and then another branch of the business, till
finally she shall acquire the comprehensive knowledge to direct all.

"The next letter I will read.

"'DEAR MR. CROWFIELD,--Your papers relating to the domestic
problem have touched upon a difficulty which threatens to
become a matter of life and death with me.

"'I am a young man, with good health, good courage, and good
prospects. I have, for a young man, a fair income, and a
prospect of its increase. But my business requires me to reside
in a country town near a great manufacturing city. The demand
for labor there has made such a drain on the female population
of the vicinity, that it seems, for a great part of the time,
impossible to keep any servants at all; and what we can hire
are of the poorest quality, and want exorbitant wages. My wife
was a well-trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that
pertains to the care of a family; but she has three little
children, and a delicate babe only a few weeks old; and _can_
any one woman do all that is needed for such a household?
Something must be trusted to servants; and what is thus trusted
brings such confusion and waste and dirt into our house, and
the poor woman is constantly distraught between the disgust of
having them and the utter impossibility