after our households, and, since we earn nothing for our families, to save what hired labour we can. But our fragile American physique, as well as the fastidious taste born of school-day studies and fanciful young-lady pursuits, makes us shrink from kitchen and storeroom; nor can we bear to lose our hold, feeble as it may be, upon the music, the drawing, the varied culture of books, travel, and society, that made the interest and happiness of our girlish years. Pulled one way by necessity, and another by inclination, we try to pay an equal homage to opposing and jealous gods. But we have not reconciled the quarrel between mind and matter. Our smattering of the arts and sciences does not emancipate us from the old feminine slavery to manual labour. Cooking, sewing, dusting, arranging, still stand there to be done; and, slight them as we may, we are yet compelled to attend to them just sufficiently to prevent our doing anything else well. So we accept superficiality in everything, and, as a consequence, find ourselves at many a turn unequal to the situation. Goaded by her aspirations and fretted by her imperfections, it is no wonder that the young American matron grows thin, nervous, even prematurely old; for she hurries along in the general rush, thorough neither as cook, seamstress, musician, student, or fine lady, but a patchwork apology for them all!
The Problem of the Hour.
Thus the feminine paradox remains, that, though never before our time were so many privileges and advantages accorded to the sex, yet never was feminine work so badly done, never was there so much frivolity, so much complaint, so much sadness, anxiety, and discouragement, among women as now. Easy as modern housekeeping is compared with that of former times, women seem to hate it and to want to get away from it more and more every day. The evil is so great that men are growing afraid to marry even in this country, while those that are married are so uncomfortable that they have begun to talk in the papers about
