swers us ere we turn back from the
Yo-Semite's last precipice toward the haunts of men:--

"Ye who cannot go to the Highest, lo, the Highest comes down to you!"

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

VI.

"My dear Chris," said my wife, "isn't it time to be writing the next
'House and Home Paper'?"

I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels luxuriously propped on
an ottoman, reading for the two-hundredth time Hawthorne's "Mosses from
an Old Manse," or his "Twice-Told Tales," I forget which,--I only know
that these books constitute my cloud-land, where I love to sail away in
dreamy quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and flour, the
rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of gold. What do all these
things matter, as seen from those enchanted gardens in Padua where the
weird Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gorgeous daughter
fills us with the light and magic of her presence, and saddens us with
the shadowy allegoric mystery of her preternatural destiny? But my wife
represents the positive forces of time, place, and number in our family,
and, having also a chronological head, she knows the day of the month,
and therefore gently reminded me that by inevitable dates the time drew
near for preparing my--which is it now, May or June number?

"Well, my dear, you are right," I said, as by an exertion I came
head-uppermost, and laid down the fascinating volume. "Let me see, what
was I to write about?"

"Why, you remember you were to answer that letter from the lady who does
her own work."

"Enough!" said I, seizing the pen with alacrity; "you have hit the exact
phrase:--

"'The _lady_ who _does her own work_.'"

* * * * *

America is the only country where such a title is possible,--the only
country where there is a class of women who may be described as _ladies_
who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education,
cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without
any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in
any circle of the Old World or the New.

What I have said is, that the existence of such a class is a fact
peculiar to American society, a clear, plain result of the new
principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed
ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued
with