This was written before the advent of high prices. At present such service would command perhaps twice that sum.Return
Heaven be praised that the course of events has blunted the point of this sentence. Return
The discussions which, since this was written, have arisen concerning expenditure and extravagance, in connection with the women’s pledge against the purchase of foreign goods, only increase the strength of my position. But let it be remembered, that I speak not for an emergency, but for the conduct of life. Return
I like sometimes to take my views out on an airing, before making a final disposition of them, just to see how they are received. On one such occasion, an excellent man, in comfortable circumstances, expressed his very hearty dissent from my opinions about woman’s work. He thought women had a pretty easy time of it, and appealed to his wife, just then entering the room, to say what had been her own experience. I wish type could convey the clear, ringing decisiveness and incisiveness of the tone with which she instantaneously responded “Harassed to death!” Return
This paragraph was written with a partial reference to Mrs. Farnham’s “Woman and her Era,” of which book I had at the time but a very general notion, derived from one or two newspaper notices. Since then the appearance of an unclean criticism in the “Publishers’ Circular” induced me to suspect that the book must embody some unusual excellence, or it could not have forced a fallen soul thus to foam out its own shame. From such a brief glance as I have been able to give to “Woman and her Era,” while these pages are going through the press, I infer that, a little hidden from common eyes under a somewhat appalling mass of metaphysical and other learning, are collected a greater number of valuable, timely truths than I have met in any other book on this topic. Not agreeing to all her opinions, one can but rejoice in the sagacity which most of them display, and in the good temper and just spirit which characterize all. Return
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
