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25, 1860.] as the men do to their business. If they knew the strain upon the nerves, and the general unhealthiness of the occupation, when a certain limit of hours is past, they would forbid it as peremptorily as intemperance in stimulating novels. I fear it is still too often the case, that all the girls of a family are seated at the work-table all day long, except when at meals, or when taking a walk; and that no one of them can attempt to steal half-an-hour’s solitude in her own room without being sent for to join the sewing-party. There may be reading aloud; and this is a great improvement upon perpetual talk: but the need of solitude, and of freedom of occupation, is too often forgotten in households where needlework is assumed to be the whole employment, if not the whole duty of women. I could say much more under this head; but the advent of the sewing-machine supersedes much remonstrance and preaching. It will not happily take the needle out of women’s hands, because there is much delicate and critical work which it cannot do: but it will soon put an end to the slavery to the needle under which so many English girls grow crooked, and sallow, and nervous, and miserable.

A few instances may go a long way in giving strangers an impression that our middle-class ladies do not condescend to domestic employments. I would fain hope that a few scattered cases have passed for more than they were worth, or I must think less well than I wish to do, of the cultivation of whole classes of my countrywomen. I once felt, and probably appeared, somewhat indignant, when a foreign clergyman crossed the room to ask me whether I could sew; and he was much surprised at a subsequent time, when we were better acquainted, to find that it would be considered insulting in this country to doubt any educated woman’s being able to sew.

I wondered less when I saw, during a Nile voyage, the spectacle presented by a young English lady,—a daughter and sister of a clergyman,—to a considerable number of observers. She was accompanying her brother in his travels in search of health: and she was in intention a kind nurse and devoted companion; but she had had little or no training in feminine offices. She was aware of the deficiency; but she did not appear to regret it. She explained that her mother had vigilantly guarded her against every sort of communication with servants, and had prohibited all approach to the precincts of their department. (There was no doubt cause and effect in this method, as no mistress could have good servants who established such respect of persons in the household.) As there are no laundresses on the Nile boats, and the clothes of travellers are washed by the crew, in their primitive style, travellers must wear their linen rough-dried, unless female hands will iron them. My companions were a lady and two gentlemen. My lady friend and I took flat-irons with us; and during the ten weeks we were on the Nile, the gentlemen had collars and shirt-fronts, and we ladies had gowns and collars, as well starched and smoothed as they would have been at home, while all stockings were duly mended, and all damages repaired, with a very small sacrifice of time. The invalid clergyman and his sister, meanwhile, looked as wofully out of order as any ducal family, bereft of servants, could appear: and servants are a mere nuisance on the Nile. His collars were rough and limp; her muslin dresses looked as if they had been wrung out of a washing-tub;—which was indeed the real state of the case. They tried to induce their dragoman to undertake the ironing,—a process which the Arabs conclude to be a sort of devilry,—or a charm against vermin. The obliging dragoman yielded to entreaty, and tried the experiment upon a pair of duck trousers, which looked particularly ill in a rough condition. At the very first touch, the operator took off a leg with his over-heated implement. He fled in a scared state, and could never be prevailed upon to try again. As the sister was acquainted with many of the parties on the river, and as she evidently did not envy us our power of “making things pleasant,” the effect of the incident would probably be, to lead strangers to suppose the young lady an example of English middle-class education, and the more housewifely ladies eccentric or low-bred.

The two main difficulties for young women in London seem to be, to get enough of bodily exercise, and to pass beyond a too narrow circle of sympathies. Some kind-hearted people, it is true, are for ever on their feet, going about doing good, as they think: but, in the first place, they are not usually young ladies who do this; and next, it is never prudent to recommend philanthropic pursuits as express business or resource. Philanthropy is apt to be mischievous unless it comes of itself;—that is, unless it arises out of natural circumstances; and it loses all its virtue when it is cultivated for the advantage of the dispenser of the good. While deprecating, on this account, the sending girls among the poor for exercise of body or mind,—as a sort of prescription for quickening the circulation, and stimulating the emotions,—we may yet bear in mind that all exercise is more salutary when it is means to an end than when it is taken as exercise. Daily governesses, if not overworked, derive more benefit from their walks than ladies who go out for constitutional exercise: and the excellent women who find it occur in their course of life to visit and aid the sick and unhappy, in prisons, workhouses, hospitals, reformatories, and in their wretched homes, certainly have fewer ailments, and more disposable daily strength, than women whose heads, hearts, and limbs are insufficiently employed. There is great difficulty in passing out of the small environment of personal acquaintance, and penetrating the life of any who live outside of it; and I would not deal out censure upon London families whose interests have been restricted within their own class, and even their own coterie; but, at the same time, we cannot but see in this, as in other cases, that “where there’s a will there’s a way.” Young ladies in London, who have no carriage to set them down at any point they wish to reach, and no footman at their heels, do get face to face with sufferers whom they can aid, and sinners whom they can retrieve. The truth seems to be, that it does not answer to go wandering forth, to find excitement for philanthropic, any more than other feelings: