"THE OPENING OF THE GATES."

"If such a day never come, then I perceive much else will never come; heroic purity of heart and of eye, noble, pious valor to amend us and the age of bronze and lacquer,—how can they ever come?"—T. Carlyle.

"TO destroy daughters is to make war upon Heaven's harmony. The more daughters you drown, the more daughters you will have; and never was it known that the drowning of daughters led to the birth of sons."

This passage from the treatise of Kwei Chunk Fu upon Infanticide may be translated so as to apply to every Christian nation. The Chinese are not the only people who drown daughters. England, France, and America, the three leading intelligences of the world, are busy at it this moment. The cold, pure wave of the Pacific is a sweeter draught than that social flood of corruption and depression which, like a hideous quicksand, buries your sisters out of your sight. "The more daughters you drown, the more daughters you will have." Most certainly; and if, instead of the word "daughters," you insert the words "weak and useless members of society,"—which is what the Chinese mean by it,—you will see that Kwei Fu is right. Let women starve; let them sink into untold depths of horror, without one effort to save them; and, for every woman so lost, two shall be born to inherit her fate.

Nor need the careless and ignorant man of wealth fancy that his own daughters shall escape while he continues heartlessly indifferent, though he never actively wronged a human creature. When the spoiler is abroad, he does not pause to choose his victims. The fairest and most innocent may be the first struck down; for human passions find their fitting type in the persecuted beast of the forest. It is not the hunter alone who feels his teeth and talons, but the first human flesh his lawless members seize.

If these things are so, surely it is our duty to consider well this question of work, to suggest all possible modes of relief, and, while waiting for the final application of absolute principles, to help society forward by all partial measures of amelioration; for only partial can they be, so long as the present modes of thought and feeling continue. How little any one person can contribute toward the solution of our difficulties, I am well aware; yet I venture to make a few suggestions.

The "Edinburgh Review," whether prepared to recommend female preachers and lecturers or not, does propose women as teachers of Oratory; and says distinctly, that, for this purpose, they are to be preferred to men, as their voices are more penetrating, distinct, delicate, and correct than those of men. I think it was a matter of surprise to American audiences, when women first came forward as public speakers, that, in so large a number of cases, the parlor tone would reach to the extremity of a large hall. Women, too, were heard at a disadvantage, because popular curiosity compelled them to speak in the largest buildings. There are a great many women, and there are also a great many men, whose voices are wholly unfit for public exigencies; but, when you consider that women have been wholly untrained so far, how great do their natural advantages appear! Several female teachers of elocution in our midst prove that this is gradually perceived. These remarks should be extended so as to cover all instruction in the pronunciation of languages. There may be men capable of distinguishing the delicate shades of sound, so that a woman's voice can catch them; but such men are rare exceptions to the common incompetency. The French nasals cannot be distinguished accurately by a man's voice: the bass tone is too broad, and the treble wavers in trying to find the middle rest. Pursue the study of Italian for years with the best teacher that Boston can furnish; and, when you first hear a cultivated Italian woman speak, you will find that you have the whole thing to learn over again. So there was never any teacher of the French language equal to Rachel, whose nimble and fiery tongue never dropped an unmeaning accent nor tone; nor of the English like Fanny Kemble, who, despite certain "stage tricks," in vogue since the days of Garrick, shows us what delicate shades of meaning lie hidden in the vowel sounds, and what power a slight variation of a flexible voice confers upon a dull passage. The teaching of oratory and of language, then, should devolve upon woman.

"Why," asks Ernest LegouvÉ,—"why should not the immense variety of bureaucrative and administrative employments be given up to women?" Under this head would come the business inspection of hospitals, barracks, prisons, factories, and the like; and the decision of many sanitary questions. For all this, woman is far fitter than man. Her eye is quick; her common sense ready: she sees the consequence in the cause, and does not need to argue every disputed point. A shingle missing from the roof is a trifle to a man; but, the moment a woman sees it, her glance takes in the stained walls, the dripping curtains, wet carpets, sympathetic ceilings, damp beds, and very possibly the colds and illness, which this trifle involves. For this reason, she is a far fitter inspector of all small abuses than man.

Consider, then, LegouvÉ's proposition. The proprietor of the London Adelphi advertised, at the opening of the last season, that his box-openers, check-takers, and so on, would all be women. Throughout the whole range of public amusements, there is a wide field for the employment of girls, which this single step has thrown open.

Women are so steadily pressing in to the medical profession, that I have no need to direct your attention toward it; but I may say, that it is much to be wished that women should devote themselves to the specialities of that science. Until within a very few years, a Boston physician has been expected to understand all the ills that flesh is heir to; an eye-doctor or an ear-doctor or a lung-doctor must necessarily be a quack. Women are entering, in medicine, a very wide field. A few specially gifted may master every branch of practice; but many will undoubtedly fail, from the want of inherited habits of hard study, of transmitted power of investigation. I wish those who are in danger of this would apply strenuously to one branch of practice; and a great success in any one direction would do more for the general cause than a thousand competences earned by an ordinary career.

I do not suppose there is a city in the United States,—and, if not in the United States, then certainly not in the world,—where, if you asked the name of the first physician, you would be answered by that of a woman.[26] I do not complain of this: it is too soon to expect it. Colleges, schools of anatomy, clinical courses, have not yet been thrown open; and success, so far, has been mastered mainly by original endowment. Genius has held the torch, and shown the way; but I want women to remember, that, in this department, all the teachings of nature and experience show that they are bound to excel men. Let them, therefore, take the best way to accomplish it.

At the School of Design in New York, the other day, I pressed upon the observation of the young wood-engravers the possibility of opening for themselves a new career by wood-carving. It is quite common, in old European museums, to see the stones of plums and peaches delicately carved by woman's hand, and set in frames of gold and jewels. Sometimes they are the work of departed saints or cloistered nuns; and a terrible waste of time they seem to our modern eyes. Properzia dei Rossi,—whose early history is so obscure, that no one knows the name of her parents; while the cities of Bologna and Modena still dispute the honor of her birth,—Properzia began her wonderful career by carving on peach-stones. One she decorated with thirty sacred figures, holding the stone so near the eye as to gain a microscopic power. On one still in the possession of the Grassi Family, at Bologna, she chiselled the passion of our Lord; where twelve figures, gracefully disposed, are said to glow with characteristic expression. Properzia died a maiden, according to Vasari and the best manuscript contemporaneous authority; and there seems to be no ground for the vile stories that have clustered round her name, other than the fact, that in her sculpture of Potiphar's wife, finished when she knew that she was dying, she ventured to cut her own likeness. It is not to the carving of cherry-stones, however, that I would direct the attention of young women, but to the Swiss carving of paper-knives, bread-plates, salad-spoons, ornamental figures, jewel-boxes, and so on. On account of the care required in transportation, these articles bring large prices; and I feel quite sure that many an idle girl might win a pleasant fame through such trifles. No one will dispute the assertion, who recalls the pranks of her young classmates at school. Do you remember the exquisite drawings which once decorated the kerchiefs, the linen collars and sleeves, of a certain schoolroom? The sun of the artist set early; but I have often thought that a free maiden career in the higher walks of art might have preserved her to us. The same fancy, displayed in wood-carving, would have challenged the attention of the world; and the cherry-stones also bore witness to her power. The only practical difficulty would spring from the want of highly seasoned wood; and that could be obviated by a little patience. Should any young girl be tempted by my words into this career, I hope she will not give away her carvings to indifferent friends, but carry them into the market at once, and let them bring their price, that she may know her own value, and that of the work.

Properzia also excelled in engraving: so did Elizabetta Sirani in 1660. Her engravings from Guido are still considered master-pieces. We have female engravers on wood and steel, and also female lithographers. I want some woman to apply herself to this work, with such energy and determination as will place her at the head of it. Let her do this, and she could soon establish a workshop, and take men and women into her employ; standing responsible herself for the finish of every piece of work marked with her name. Let some idle woman of wealth offer the capital for such an experiment, and share some of its administrative duties. "Success" is the best argument. It would be possible to organize in Boston, at this moment, a shop of the best kind, where all the designing and engraving should be done by women. Why can it not be tried? Carvers on wood, and engravers then.

I have known several English barbers,—not women of the decorative art, like our sainted Harriet Ryan; but women actually capable of shaving a man! Why, then, does the "Englishwoman's Journal" inform us, that, in Normandy and Western Africa, there actually are female barbers?

I think there is room in Boston for an establishment of this kind; a place from which a woman could come to a sick-room to shave the heated head or cut the beard of the dying; a place where women's and children's wants could be attended to without necessary contact with men; and with the absolutely necessary cleanliness, of which there is not now a single instance in this city.

When I mentioned wood-carving to women, I was thinking, in part, of the immense annual demand for Christmas presents. In this connection, also, I should like to direct the attention of our rural women to the art of preserving and candying fruit. "But that is nothing new," you will say. "Did not your Massachusetts census for 1845 enumerate certain picklers and preservers?" Yes; but those women were merely in the employ of men carrying on large establishments. What I would suggest is a domestic manufacture to compete with French candies, and to occupy the minds of our farmers' wives and daughters, to the exclusion of shirt-fronts and shoe-binding.

Every one of us, probably, fills more than one little stocking, on Christmas night, with candied fruit. If we belong to the "first families," and wish to do the thing handsomely, this fruit has cost from seventy-five cents to a dollar a pound; we knowing, all the while, that better could be produced for half or two-thirds the money. Last year, I purchased one pound of the candy, and examined it with practical reference to this question. Plums, peaches, cherries, apples, and pears, all tasted alike, and had evidently been boiled in the same sirup. Apple and quince marmalades alone had any flavor. Now, our farmers' daughters could cook these fruits so as to preserve their flavor, could candy them and pack them into boxes, quite as well as the French men; and so a new and important domestic industry might arise. The experiment would be largely profitable as soon as all risk of mistake were over; and perishable fruit at a distance from market could be used in this way. A few years ago, we had a rare conserve from Constantinople and Smyrna, called fig-paste. Now we have a mixture of gum Arabic and flour, flavored with essences; made for the most part at Westboro', and called by the same name. Yes, we actually have fig-paste, spicy with wintergreen and black-birch! Now, what is to prevent our farmers' daughters from making this?—from putting up fruits in air-tight cans, and drying a great many kinds of vegetables that cannot be had now for love or money? Who can get Lima beans or dried sweet-corn, that does not dry them from his own garden?

Do not let our medical friends feel too indignant if I recommend to these same women the manufacture of pickles. The use of pickles, like the use of wine, may be a questionable thing; but, like liquors, they are a large article of trade: and, if we must have them, why not have them made of wholesome fruit, in good cider-vinegar, with a touch of the grandmotherly seasoning that we all remember, rather than of stinted gherkins, soured by vitriol and greened by copper? There are many sweet sauces, too,—made of fruit, stewed with vinegar, spice, and sugar,—which cannot be obtained in shops, and would meet a good market. How easy the whole matter is, may be guessed from this fact, that, sitting once at a Southern table,—the table of a genial grand-nephew of George Washington, who bore his name,—I was offered twenty-five kinds of candied fruit, all made by the delicate hands of his wife; and seven varieties in form and flavor, from the common tomato.

I looked through Boston in vain, the other day, to find a common dish-mop large enough to serve my purpose. There was no such thing to be found. Taking up one of the slender tassels offered me, I inquired into its history, and was informed that it was imported from France. The one I had been trying to replace had been made by some skilful Yankee hand for a Ladies' Fair. Now, what are our poor women doing, that they cannot compete with this French trumpery, and give us at least dish-mops fit for use?

As teachers of gymnastics, women are already somewhat employed. A wide field would be opened, if a teacher were attached to each of our public schools,—a step in physical education greatly needed.

No conservative is so prejudiced, I suppose, as to object to placing woman in all positions of moral supervision. Female assistants in jails, prisons, workhouses, insane asylums, and hospitals, are seen to be fit, and to have a harmonizing influence in every respect. How many more such assistants are needed, we may guess from the fact that our City Jail and Charlestown are still unsupplied. Women of a superior order are needed for such posts; and when will they be found? Not till labor is thoroughly respected; not till the popular voice says, "It is all very well to be a Miss Dix, and go from asylum to asylum, suggesting and improving; but it is just as well, quite as honorable, to work in one asylum, carrying out the wise ideas which a Miss Dix suggests, and securing the faithful trial of her experiments." Many men in Beacon Street would feel honored to call the moving philanthropist sister or friend; but few would like to acknowledge a daughter in the post of matron or superintendent. Why not? There is something "rotten in the State" where such inconsistencies exist. How thoroughly men accept such women, as soon as they are permitted to try their experiment, we may judge from the case of Florence Nightingale and her staff. The very men, whose scepticism kept the army suffering for months, would be the first to send them now; and the soldiers, who kissed her shadow where it fell, would fill the whole Commissariat with women. When her gentle but efficient hand broke in the doors of the storehouses at Scutari, a general huzza followed from the very men who were too timid to break the trammels of office. The woman's keen sympathy with the advancing spirit of her time, taught her what it was fit to do; and, if the rippling smiles of suffering men had not rewarded her when the bedding and stores were distributed, the warm encomiums of her Queen, whose heart she had so truly read, must have done it. Following out this train of reflection, I have often thought it would some day fall to women, and to women alone, to exercise the function of parish minister! I do not mean "parish preacher." I hold pulpit graces cheap by the side of that fatherly walk among his people, which has made the name of Charles Lowell sacred to the West Church. Go back to the history of the first church in every town: see how the minister knew the story of every heart in his parish; how he kept his eye on every lonely boy or orphan girl; how widowed mothers took his counsel about schools and rents; how forlorn old maids trusted to him to make all "things come round right;" how the lad, inclining to wild courses, found no better friend than he. How is it now? The minister has his Sunday sermons, his annual addresses before certain societies, his weekly association. In the old time, such things were done, yet not the other left undone. Now the lonely boy or orphan girl must seek out the minister,—and how likely this is to happen everybody knows; the mother must tell over the story of her widowhood, pained to see how "in course" it falls upon that wearied ear; the spinster must tell again how the boat floated empty and bottom upward to shore long years ago, and so no one was "spared to keep all right;" and the wild lad—alas! how many such do the clergy save now?

As I see such things,—and I do see them often,—as I realize that change in men and times, in manners and books, from which this change is inseparable,—I confess I see a new[27] sphere opening for women. It takes no remarkable gifts, in the common sense of those words; only a kindly heart, a thoughtful head, a tender, reverent care-taking, wholly apart from meddlesomeness. Not many are the ministers now who will pause to explain to Martha that she is careful and troubled about many things; and that really the visionary Mary, with her dreamy eyes, is choosing the good part. Not many can see Nathanael standing under the fig-tree, and remind him of it at the needful moment. But if, in every religious household, there were a deaconess, called by nature and God to her work,—one to whom the young felt a right to go with questions home could not answer; one pledged to secret counsel, with whom the restless and unhappy might confer,—it seems to me the wheels of life would move more smoothly.[28] How the unlikeliest persons are sometimes raised up to such a ministry, let the following story tell. In the dim and dreary precincts of the Seven Dials in London, years ago, two orphan girls were left lying on door-steps, fed by chance charity, to grow up as they might. One died; and the other was finally adopted by an old man, an atheist, who had been neighbor to her parents. She grew up an atheist also, and married,—saved by God's mercy from what had seemed her likeliest fate. Stepping into the passage of the Bloomsbury Mission Hall to shelter herself from the rain, one night, a shaft, winged by the Holy Spirit, struck to her empty heart.

The next week, a lending library was to be opened in the district. Marian was first at the door. "Sir," said she, "will you lend me a Bible?"—"A Bible!" exclaimed the man. "We did not mean to lend Bibles; but I will get you one."

How long she read, how she was at first moved, none but God can know. But, whether from mental distress or from the sad vicissitudes of her needy career, she became very ill, and went to a public hospital. While there, she saw the sufferings of those who applied for its charity, and observed that the filthy state of their persons needed a friendly female hand. When she came out, she wrote to the missionary, and told him she wished to dedicate all her spare time to the lost and degraded of her own sex. "God's mercy," she writes, "has spared me from their fate: for me their misery will have no terrors. I will clean and wash them, and mend their linen. If they can get into a hospital, I will take care of their clothes." You may suppose the missionary did not lose sight of Marian, and you may guess how gladly she undertook to distribute Bibles; going, where none of the gentry could go, into dens of misery known only to the police-officers and herself. Spending her mornings in distributing Bibles, and giving the kind and pastoral counsel everywhere needed, she discovered, in the autumn of 1857, a new want, and devoted her afternoons to teaching the ignorant women about her to cut and make their children's clothes. Why she knew better than they, who shall tell? Then came the November panic and its wide-spread distresses; and, seeing how food was wasted from ignorance, she opened a soup-kitchen of her own. She used what is called vegetable stock: her wretched customers liked it, and she sold it all through the winter for a price which just paid the cost of cooking. Her noble work goes on. The stone which the builders of our modern society would have rejected, is now the head of the corner; and Seven Dials knows her as "Marian, the Bible-woman."

Another mission has been begun at St. Pancras, where, in one of the worst neighborhoods, the most profligate men have gathered together, between church hours, to hear a young lady read the "Pilgrim's Progress," and are thus softened and led to higher things. Would you shut those sacred lips because they are a woman's? Would you quote St. Paul to her, and blush for her career, if she were your own daughter? I will not believe it.

At the parish of St. Alkmunds, in Shrewsbury, the wife of the clergyman, Mrs. Whitman, began by modest reading from house to house; a work which has since been greatly blessed. Gently she won profligate men and women to give up their beer, and the temptations of the "tap;" signing herself the pledge which they alone needed.

A very important work could be done in this city by the establishment of a proper Training School for Servants. One reason why our house-work is so miserably done is, that it is never regarded as a profession, in which a certain degree of excellence must be attained, but rather as a "make-shift," by the aid of which a certain number of years can be got through. The only thorough servant I ever had was one who had been educated at such a school in Germany. Here would be an admirable field for some of the women who have money and time, but no object in life. Such a school must be carried on in connection with a good-sized boarding-house of a respectable kind; and beside the regular superintendents, who will, of course, be hired for the different departments, there must be committees of ladies who should see to the practical working of the institution in turn. This is necessary to secure that thorough working in every department which the best housekeeping demands. Only by intelligent, refined oversight can feathered "flirts" be hindered from taking the place of the tidy dusting cloth; only so will a girl learn to sweep each apartment separately, without dragging her accumulations from floor to floor; only so can soap-suds be kept off your oil-cloths, soiled hands from your doors, and dust from your shirt-fronts. I do not believe a better service could be done to the community than the establishment of such a school, especially in relation to cooking.[29] A good many such experiments have been successfully tried in England, but none so thorough as that I would propose in Boston.

With regard to the lowest class of employed women, such as are employed at home, we have, it seems to me, several distinct duties to perform.

In the first place, we need a public but self-supporting Laundry. By this I mean two large halls, with an adjacent area, built at the expense of the city, and properly superintended, where, for so much an hour, women of the lower class may wash, starch, dry, and iron the clothes they take home. A bleaching-ground would be desirable; but, if it could not be had, a steam drying-room would be the next best thing. Good starch, soap, and indigo should be for sale upon the premises at wholesale prices; it not being desirable that the city should make money out of the necessities of its poor. If such an establishment could be had, a great many women would be changed from paupers to decent citizens. They are tired of seeking washing; for, in their one close room, scented with boiling onions or rank meat, without a proper area for drying, and compelled to pay high prices for poor soap and starch, they cannot do decently the very work which philanthropy soon becomes unwilling to intrust to them, and for which they are compelled to charge higher than the best private laundry. The city could buy coal, wood, soap, starch, and indigo at manufacturers' and importers' prices, and so give them a fair chance for competition. I hope this project, long since partially adopted in many cities of the Old World, may find favor with my audience.

There is in Boston no place, strange as it may seem, where plain, neatly finished clothing can be bought ready-made. I can go down town, and buy embroidered merinos, Paris hats with ostrich feathers, and lace-trimmed, welted linen: but if I want a plain, cotton skirt for a child, whereof the calico was eight cents a yard; if I want a plain, cotton print made into a neatly fitting dress; if I want a boy's coarse apron,—such things are not to be had, or only so very badly made that no one will buy them. I do not want lace or embroidery or silk, or fine linen; but I do want my button-holes nicely turned and strong, my hems even, my gathers stroked, and, however plain and coarse, the whole finish of the garment such as a mistress of the needle only would approve, such as no lady need be ashamed to wear. So do others. The reasons given to explain the non-existence of such a magazine in Boston are, first, That our women of the middle class are, for the most part, accustomed to cut and make their own clothes; second, That there is a prevalent but mistaken idea, that clothes made for sale cannot possibly fit. With regard to the first point, it may be said, that, as more and more avenues of labor are opened for women, this class perceives that it is not good economy for them to do their own sewing. Hands compelled to coarser or heavier labor cannot sew quick or well, and those training to more delicate manipulation lose practice by returning to it; so there will be a constantly increasing class of purchasers.

As to the impossibility of fitting, that is a vulgar mistake. The human frame is quite as much the result of law as Mr. Buckle's statistics. Any comely, healthy form is a good model for all other forms of the same height and breadth. Who ever heard of a French bonnet or a bridal trousseau that did not fit? yet these things are made by arbitrary rules. Our superintendent could find every measure she would ever need in one of the teeming houses on Sea Street. She must take her measures from life, not books. Nor would I have the sewing done with machines, unless those of the highest cost could be procured and ably superintended. The best machine is as yet a poor substitute for the supple, human hand; and many practical inconveniences must result from its use. It requires more skill and intelligence to manage man's simplest machine, than to control with a thought that complicated network of nerve, bone, and fibre which we have been accustomed to use.

Capital to start such an establishment as I refer to is all that is needed. How desirable the thing is, you can easily see. In the first place, if good common clothing could be so purchased, mothers need not keep a large stock on hand: an accident could be readily repaired. In the second, it would greatly simplify and expedite many a charitable task. The terrible suffering which followed the panic of November, 1857, you all remember. Purses, always open hitherto, were necessarily closed; no Sister of Charity was willing to tread on the heels of the sheriff: yet the need was greater than ever. Many persons who had dismissed their servants were found willing to give a rough, untrained girl her board; but who was to provide her with decent clothes? They could not be bought, and to make them was the work of time and strength. May I always remember to honor, as God will always surely bless, one woman possessed of wealth and beauty, who did clothe from head to foot with her own needle, in that dreadful winter, three "wild Irish girls," and took them successively into her own family; training them to habits of tolerable decency, until others, less self-sacrificing, were found ready to do their part!

No people in our community suffer such inconvenience, loss, and imposition, in having their clothes made, as our servant girls. If a plentiful supply of calico sacks and skirts or loose dresses could be anywhere found, few girls would ever employ a dressmaker.

I have spoken of Public Laundry Rooms, and a Ready-made Clothing Room. There is a class of women greatly to be benefited by the establishment of a Knitting Factory. It is well known to every person in this room, especially to physicians, that no knitting done by machinery can compete with that done by the human hand, in durability, warmth, or stimulative power. Invalids are now obliged to import the Shetland jackets, which are always badly shaped; or to hire, at our fancy stores, the making of delicate and very expensive fabrics. Men's socks and children's gloves may be purchased; but the first cost from seventy-five cents to a dollar a pair, and the last are of very inferior manufacture. We cannot give out knitting to advantage, because of the dirt and grease it is liable to accumulate where water is not plenty nor ventilation to be had; and very good knitters of socks have not skill and intelligence to manage the different sizes, or to shape the larger articles, such as drawers and under-jackets for the two sexes. Coarse crocheting would answer better than knitting for many articles.

Let a large, airy room be hired, well supplied with Cochituate. Let all sorts of material be kept on hand, and some coarse, warm kinds of Shetland yarn imported that are not now to be had. Let at least two superintendents be appointed from among the women, who work best for our fancy stores; let knitting-women be invited to use this room for twelve hours a day, or less, as they choose,—receiving daily pay for their daily needs; and in less than one year you would have an establishment, for which not merely Boston, but all New England, would be grateful. I should hope that neither this nor the Clothing Room would ever offer very expensive or highly ornamental articles for sale. There is no danger that the interests of the wealthy will suffer. What I desire is to provide for the needs of the lowest women and the comfort of the middle-class customer.

The young girls in Beacon Street have now some thing to do. I offer them the establishment of a Training School for Servants, of a public but self-supporting Laundry, of a Ready-made Clothes Room, and a Knitting Factory; all simple matters, entirely within their control, if they would but believe it.

A certain human faithlessness often interferes with the execution of such plans. If my young friends doubt, let them go and talk to Harriet Ryan about it. She will show them, how, having taken the first step toward duty, God always leads the way to the second. To cheer them still further, I will tell them—for I may never have a fitter opportunity—of the splendid success of the industrial schools in Ireland, established in 1850 by Ellen Woodlock,—a name destined to stand honorably by the side of Florence Nightingale; nay, worthy to precede it, in so far as preventive measures are always a greater good than remedial. Mrs. Ellen Woodlock has powers of statement, according to the "London Times," equal to her extraordinary powers of execution; and it is from her own account of the work that I select what I have to offer you.

In 1850, Mrs. Woodlock had placed her only child at school, and began to look for something to do. A lady, who had started an industrial school on a gift of $250 from a clergyman, asked for her help. She proposed to teach young girls to do plain sewing. Very soon, there were more seamstresses than customers; but God did not fail to open a way. One poor, half-blind creature—very poor and very earnest—failed in the plain sewing, and was put to make cabbage nets. She did it so well, that Mrs. Woodlock taught her to make silk nets for the hair. The nets took: other girls were taught; and Mrs. Woodlock went to all the shops in Cork, and coaxed the merchants to buy of her. She very soon began to make nets for exportation. Mrs. Woodlock's fashionable niece arrived from Dublin, with a new style of crocheted net. Her aunt had a dozen made directly; and, by showing these, got orders from all the merchants for the new style. One day, a merchant came into the school, and saw a little girl at work on a mohair net. He asked the price, and found that she would make him twelve for the same money that he had paid for one in London. So you may guess where his next orders went.

Mrs. Woodlock then made interest with the "buyers," or young men who go to London twice a year to purchase goods. They took over her patterns, and returned with orders so large that their principals at once entered into the business. Yellow nets were made for Germany. Many were sent to England and America; and orders came so thick that they had to share them with the convent schools. They paid out a hundred dollars weekly; and alacrity and intelligence beamed where there had been, at first, only hopeless suffering and imbecility. Of course, this point was not reached without much self-sacrifice. At first, the children made awkward work that would not sell. Then the lady patronesses got tired, and dropped off. Worn and worried, Mrs. Woodlock fell ill. If you ever undertake any of the schemes I have mentioned, you must be prepared for all these things: they will certainly happen. No one ever fought a revolutionary war, and established an independence, without one or two defeats like that at Bunker Hill.[30] When they become historic, we call them victories. When Mrs. Woodlock found that she was human and liable to fall ill, she sent for some of the Sisters of Charity, and trained several, so that they could, on an emergency, fill her place well.

But Mrs. Woodlock did not stop here. She used to teach the Catechism in the parish church; and, one day, she gave notice that a new school would be opened in that neighborhood. The next morning, one hundred and fifty girls, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, presented themselves. Mrs. Woodlock asked every girl, who had ever earned any money before, to hold up her hand. Four girls did so. They had sold apples in the streets. One hundred and forty-six suffering creatures, who had no way to earn a cent! Think what a class it was! Do you remember what I told you, the other day, of eighteen hundred and eighty women in New York who had never been taught to support themselves? Ten of the best workers from the first school were taken to teach these girls; and, for a salary, the teacher received the first perfect dozen of nets made by each of her pupils. This plan was not costly, and worked well. There was no lack of faithfulness. Travellers came to see the schools. There was no time wasted in looking for orders: they had more than they could fill. Of course, they must keep these hands employed: so other manufactures must be tried. Mrs. Woodlock thought she would try fine shirt-fronts for the city dealers. What do you think the people said? That it could not be done in all Ireland; that there was nobody to wash and iron them properly; that they would have to be sent all the way to Glasgow to be boxed in card boxes! Well, the nuns undertook the first washing and ironing,—making apprentices, let us hope, of some of the older pupils; and Mrs. Woodlock found a starving band-box maker, whom she herself taught to make flat boxes. And look now at the blessing which always follows wise work. This flat-box maker has had to take apprentices, has opened another branch of her business in Limerick, and has put money into the Savings' Bank.

Mrs. Woodlock's account of her work would be a great help to any young persons engaged in philanthropic effort. She lays the very greatest stress upon her machinery,—her methods. Every industrial work ought to support itself: if it does not, it is a failure. All her schools earn their own bread, in every sense; and all reforming agencies must always stand second to any institution which does that. See how she carried this thought into her daily life. Mrs. Woodlock had a brother who was one of the Board of Poor-Law Guardians. Seeing the success of her work, he persuaded the other members to employ an embroidery mistress in the Union School for a few months.

When these children knew enough, Mrs. Woodlock took out six, and put them into her industrial school, till she was sure they could support themselves. Then she let them look up lodgings, and continued to give them work from the school. In a few weeks, they got on so well that they began to take their relations and friends out of that terrible poorhouse. Three young girls took out their mother and cousin, and supported them. Eighty girls were brought off the parish by the first working of her schools. A house has also been opened for orphans, where they are trained to support themselves.

Now, my friends, the census, at the end of ten years, will report a great change in the industrial condition of Ireland; and the beginning of that change was Mrs. Woodlock's intelligent moral effort to benefit her countrywomen,—in the first place, to teach one little sufferer to make cabbage-nets. That element will enter into the statistics on which Mr. Buckle bids you so confidently rely. Do not believe him when he says that moral effort can never help anybody but yourself, because it will be balanced, in the long-run, by your neighbor's immoral effort. Two and two make four in all statistics, and always will while the world stands; but two and two and one make five, and not four, as he asserts; and the one which he forgets to enumerate is no other than the divine Centre of life and action,—God himself. I value Mr. Buckle's book. I see how clearly he thinks; how much he has read; and how much truer his historical attitude than any ever before assumed. But when a man separates goodness from knowledge; tells you that intelligence may reign alone; does not see that the two are now and for ever one, equal attributes of the divine nature,—then he makes a mistake which saps the very foundation of his own work, and writes fallacy on every page.

What he says is perfectly true of mistaken, ignorant moral effort. That does help yourself, and does not help anybody else. It helps you, because it develops your right-mindedness,—your generosity. It does not help anybody else. It hinders others who are clearer intellectually: they see and despise the mistakes, and are not inspired by the purpose. Had it been intelligent, they would have seen it to be divine.

Mrs. Woodlock's work was both intelligent and moral. What inspired the pupils was her moral force and disinterested love. They saw this, and were kindled by it; while the community at large respected the intelligence and common sense with which she laid her plans. Intelligence made these plans self-supporting; intelligence gave them solid pyramidal position in the world: but moral energy gave them their prestige, and will win its way by the side of intelligence into the very columns which Mr. Buckle's closing volume must quote.

Do not be disheartened, then, as to the ultimate profit to others of any kindly work you feel inclined to do. Let kindliness inspire, let intelligence direct, your efforts. God has made your success certain from the very foundations of the world.

I cannot close such inadequate survey of this field as I have felt it my duty to offer, without alluding to one other fact, and making one parting suggestion. It cannot but be realized, by all the women to whom I speak, how very casual is the communication between the laboring class in this community and their employers. Suppose a housekeeper wants additional service, how can she secure it? If she is not wealthy enough to hire regularly, her "chance" is a very poor one; and she must take the recommendation, in nine cases out of ten, of some one in the charwoman's own rank of life.

Suppose a maid of all work leaves a mistress alone early some busy Monday morning, where can her place be filled? How can any one be found who will work by the hour or the day, in a cleanly, respectable manner, till a new servant can be deliberately chosen? Nobody knows of a washerwoman who is out of work on Monday. The intelligence offices hold no women so distressed that they will go out for less than a week, and that on trial. Yet, somewhere in the city, there must be women pining and longing for that waiting work.

Suppose a sudden influx of visitors exhausts your household staff, and makes a waiting-maid a necessity where none was kept before; suppose a large group of relatives, passing quickly through the city, come for a plain family dinner at a moment when your personal superintendence is impossible,—where is the active, tidy girl who can be summoned, or the decent woman of experience who can order matters in your kitchen as well as you can yourself?

Somewhere they sit waiting—suffering, it may be—for the opportunity which never comes. The intelligence office will get them places; but places they are not at liberty to seek. They need what they call "a chance lift."

I am well aware that wealthy and long-established families may not suffer much from this cause. Old servants well married, or a variety of well-paid servants with wide connections in the neighborhood, or deserving objects of charity personally met and understood, often prevent such persons from feeling any inconvenience; but for young housekeepers, for new residents, for persons of small means and few connections, there is no help.

I need not enlarge on the subject. There is no kind of female labor of which it is easy to get a prompt and suitable supply. To obviate this difficulty, I think there should be a sort of "Labor Exchange;" and this is a project which all classes would be glad to have carried out. How shall it be done? That, of course, must be settled by those who have the task in charge; but, to explain what I mean, I will offer a few suggestions. In the first place, What are the defects in the intelligence-offices now in existence?[31] There are several. They take cognizance of domestic servants alone. They are kept by ignorant or inexperienced persons, who often lose sight of the interests of both the employer and the employed in their own pecuniary loss or gain. These persons have necessarily little insight into character, and do not see how to bring the right persons together. They will send a slow, dawdling girl to an impatient, lively mistress;—a smart upstart to some meek, little wife, who has hardly learned the way to order her own house; and the natural misunderstandings will occur. Then the books of the office are irregularly kept, and closed to the applicant, so that you have no chance to select for yourself. Go down to an office, and ask for a servant; tell the keeper not to send a raw girl, not to send one without a recommendation, not to send a foreigner who cannot speak English; and go home. The odds are, that, while you are taking off your bonnet, there will be three rings at the bell. The first girl will be a barefooted imp of Erin, just from the steerage. Some one at the office has been watching three days for just such a hand to be broken into a farm-kitchen. The second wears a flower-garden on her head, more flounces than you do, and has, of course, no recommendation. Some soda-room wants her; but you do not. The third is high Dutch, and, when you ask her for the coal-hod, brings you, in her despair, the bread-tray. Neither of these three is what you ordered or wanted.

Do you ask me the reason of this bad management, and whether I think it can be remedied? The reason of it is, that the superintendence of these offices is not treated like a profession. People neither fit themselves for it, nor are attracted to it by nature: they simply do it; and how they do it we feel. They want comprehensive insight, have no business ways, and these difficulties are only to be obviated by bringing a higher intelligence to bear upon the arrangements.

Let us have a place where all kinds of female work can be sought and found; an intelligent working committee first, who know what is wanted, and how to get it, and who, most important of all, shall not be too wise to accept diplomas from experience.

Let us have a committee of five; its quorum to be three. Let these persons hire a large, clean, airy room, and appoint an intelligent superintendent,—one who will be interested to have the experiment thoroughly successful. Let them line the walls, and screen off the room with frames, having glass covers, to lock and unlock. Let one frame be devoted to cooks; another, to laundresses; another, to washerwomen, window-washers, charwomen, seamstresses, dressmakers, copyists, translators, or what you will; and under the glass the notices should be posted. Each should contain the name, age, and residence of the applicant; the situation last held, and for how long; the full address of the reference; and the date of posting. The date should be printed and movable, and changed semi-weekly, on the personal application of the poster. Each woman should pay five cents for the privilege of posting; should lose this privilege from misconduct, from neglect to report herself, from proved falsehood. No date should be left unchanged more than a week, and the superintendent should be responsible for the strict observance of the regulations. No woman, not even a charwoman, should be allowed to use the posting privilege, unless she has a reference. "What!" you will say, "is that kind?" Yes, it is kind: the want of it is doubly cruel. A woman who needs work can afford to offer a day's free work to get a reference; and referees should be required to tell the simple truth. A lady who once recommended a dishonest or incapable servant without the proper qualification should be struck off the books, not allowed to testify again in that court.

With regard to all transient labor, it should be the duty of the superintendent to see that the references are reliable before posting, so that those who apply in haste need not be delayed.

If a dressmaker or charwoman inform the superintendent that she has worked for A, B, and C, let a printed circular, addressed to such persons, inquiring if they can recommend her, and to what degree, be placed in her hands. To this she should bring written answers before being allowed to post.

If the institution became popular, books would have to be kept, corresponding to these glass cases—one book for cooks, another for housemaids, and so on; but the cases should never be given up. There should always be as many as the room will hold. Ladies should pay a certain sum for each servant they obtain; and the servant should pay for every place she gets, at a rate proportioned to the wages received. In most intelligence offices, the servants get two places for the same fee, if they do not stay over a week in the place, and the lady gets two girls or more on the same condition. This works like a premium on change of place. The servant should prove to the Labor Exchange, that she did not leave her place of her own will, and the lady should show that incapacity or insubordination made it impossible to keep her.

It should be a cash business, and a fee should be paid for each application. Wanting a cook, you go down to the room, and consult the proper frame. Finding, perhaps, forty posters, you select one that reads like this:—

• Matilda Haynes.
• Irish.
• Twenty-five years of age.
• In the country four years.
• Thoroughly understands plain cooking.
• Expects two dollars.
• Is willing to go out of town.
• Lived last at No. 4, Pemberton Square.
• Kept the place six months.
• May refer to it.
• Can be found at 24, High Street.

You first go to Pemberton Square. It is quite possible that this girl may not be what you want; but if she is, and your eye tells you that you can trust the judgment of her referee, you have only to go to High Street, and make your own terms. If you are already prejudiced in her favor, you will go prepared to make some concessions, so that the chance will be better for you both; and this process may be repeated without loss of time, till you are supplied.

You will see that this is quite a feasible plan, and has two advantages. One is, that you have access to the books, and can choose for yourself; the other is, that there would be no waiting-room for servants, where they should talk with, prejudice, and morally harm each other. You would also be saved the pain of rejecting servants to their faces, on the ground of "greenness," or bodily unfitness. Such an institution would offer this advantage over the present offices, that it would direct you to temporary laborers, and give you in a moment the addresses of some dozens. Such an institution would be a very great saver of time, and so a great blessing.

If, in the course of these lectures, any words that I have spoken have touched your hearts, or carried conviction to your minds, do not put aside, I beseech you, such impulse as they may have given. Remember that, however feebly the subject has been treated, however presumptuous may seem the attempt, the subject itself is the most important theme that is presented to this generation. In my first lecture I showed you, that while women, ever since the beginning of civilization, have been sharing the hardest, and doing the most unwholesome work, they have also done the worst paid in the world. I showed you that this poor pay, founded on a false estimate of woman's value as a human being, and consequently as a laborer, was filling your streets with criminals, with stricken souls and bodies, for whose blood society is responsible to God. Having proved thus, that women need new avenues of labor, I tried in my second lecture to show you, that, when she sought these, she had been met too often by the selfish opposition of man. I showed also that all such opposition proved, in the end, unavailing; that all the work she asks will inevitably be given. I showed you, from the censuses of Great Britain and America, how much labor is even now open to her; that it is not half so necessary to open new avenues of labor as to make work itself respectable for women; and I therefore entreated women to learn to work thoroughly and well, that men might respect their labor in the aggregate. "Woman's work" means nothing very honorable or conscientious now. Alter its significance till it indicates the best work in the world.

In my present lecture I have indicated some of the steps that might be taken to benefit the women in the heart of this city. To encourage you to take them, I have briefly pointed out Ellen Woodlock's remarkable success. Have I kindled any interest in your minds? Can you enter into such labors? Have you strength or time or enthusiasm to spare? In the ballads of Northern Europe, a loving sister trod out, with her bare feet, the nettles whose fibre, woven into clothing, might one day restore her brothers to human form.

Your feet are shod, your nettles are gathered: will you tread them out courageously, and so restore to your sisters the nature and the privileges of a blessed humanity?

Opportunity is a rare and sacred thing. God seldom offers it twice. In the English fields, the little Drosera, or sundew, lifts its tiny, crimson head. The delicate buds are clustered in a raceme, to the summit of which they climb one by one. The top-most bud waits only through the twelve hours of a single day to open. If the sun do not shine, it withers and drops, and gives way to the next aspirant.

So it is with the human heart and its purposes. One by one, they come to the point of blossoming. If the sunshine of faith and the serene heaven of resolution meet the ripe hour, all is well; but if you faint, repel, delay, they wither at the core, and your crown is stolen from you,—your privilege set aside. Esau has sold his birthright, and the pottage has lost its savor.