get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than
circumstances drive him to do. Even I would not write this article, were
not the publication-day hard on my heels. I should read Hawthorne and
Emerson and Holmes, and dream in my arm-chair, and project in the clouds
those lovely unwritten stories that curl and veer and change like
mist-wreaths in the sun. So, also, however dignified, however
invigorating, however really desirable are habits of life involving
daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon at every one's
elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its weight with sullen,
discontented murmurs.

I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very moderately,
a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and discussed,
where there are no servants except the ladies of the household. I will
venture to say, also, that these households, many of them, are not
inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance to many which
are conducted by the ministration of domestics. I will venture to
assert, furthermore, that these same ladies who live thus find quite as
much time for reading, letter-writing, drawing, embroidery, and
fancy-work, as the women of families otherwise arranged. I am quite
certain that they would be found on an average to be in the enjoyment of
better health, and more of that sense of capability and vitality which
gives one confidence in one's ability to look into life and meet it with
cheerful courage, than three-quarters of the women who keep
servants,--and that on the whole their domestic establishment is
regulated more exactly to their mind, their food prepared and served
more to their taste. And yet, with all this, I will _not_ venture to
assert that they are satisfied with this way of living, and that they
would not change it forthwith, if they could. They have a secret feeling
all the while that they are being abused, that they are working harder
than they ought to, and that women who live in their houses like
boarders, who have only to speak and it is done, are the truly enviable
ones. One after another of their associates, as opportunity offers and
means increase, desert the ranks, and commit their domestic affairs to
the hands of hired servants. Self-respect takes the alarm. Is it
altogether genteel to live as we do? To be sure, we are accustomed to
it; we have it all systematized and arranged; the work of our own hands
suits us better than any we