Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/537

 SOME LADIES OF THK OLD SCHOOL. 525 the water-wheel performing all that was hard and labori- ous. The only important difference I could discover between the proprietor and the workmen was, that the men came to work every morning at seven, and the owner at half-past six. All of them, in fact, came an hour too soon and stayed an hour too late. The workmen lived in pretty cottages — their own, if they choose to buy, — with good, large gardens around them. Their children went to the same school — common school and high school — as his "children, and had access to the same library and lyceum. All lived in the same sweet, umbrageous village, and looked out upon the same circle of wood-crowned mountains ; nor did there appear to be in the place a mind small enough to hold the barbaric idea, that one man could be higher than another because he has more money, or earns his livelihood by a different kind of work. Mr. Emerson, in speaking of an improvident marriage, says: " Millenium has come and no groceries." I said to myself, as I strolled about this village, " Here is a fore- taste of millenium, and groceries in abundance. Here are ladies and gentlemen, not of the old school, who are living the polite and intelligent life upon eight and twelve dollars a week." Ladies of the present day themselves lament that they should be so little able to resist the tyranny of fashion. Ladies of the old school were more submissive to fashion than they, without lamenting it. Let me say that, of all tyrannies, the most ancient and the most universal is that of fashion. It began with the beginning of civilization, and it is precisely in the most civilized nations that its control extends to the greatest variety of details. Phi- losophers laugh at it ; but show me, if you can, a phi- losopher who is philosopher enough to wear in broad day- light his grandfather's Sunday hat ! Is it not a good hat ? It is an excellent hat. The soft and silken fur of