make any one discontented with that calling and life to which she may have been called, and by which she is obtaining an honest livelihood. We are told by good old George Herbert that —
"All may of Thee partake,
Nothing can be so mean
Which, with his tincture for Thy sake,
Will not grow bright and clean.
"A servant with this clause.
Makes drudgery divine,
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws.
Makes that, and the action, fine."
There will always be needlework to be done and dresses to be made, and I do not want you to think that you cannot serve God in this employment. It is from no such motive that I wish to direct the thoughts of young women to the avocation of a nurse. But we know it to be a fact, neither to be denied nor deplored, that the occupation of needlework is now far less remunerative and abundant than it has ever been before, owing to the introduction of the sewing machine. The consequence of this invention, every day becoming more and more widely adopted, must be to throw numbers of women out of employment, or to reduce them to very low and miserable earnings. The calling of governesses for the better educated classes of women, and of needlewomen for the lower, have been the two chief vocations open to those who must earn their own living, and for years past we have heard with pain, and, I must confess it, with somewhat of weariness and impatience, of the sufferings of half-starved needlewomen, hundreds of whom have, it is said, been driven to vice and crime by the insufficiency of their earnings. Emigration has been tried as a partial means of relief, but still the evil and the complaint go on, and must go on and strengthen, because the number of workers will continue to diminish by the inevitable advance of the sewing machine. Now various other
