“Ah! you forget my sedan-chair,” said Madame de StaËl, when, at the height of her social and literary fame some one wondered how she found time for writing amid her many and engrossing engagements.

The sedan-chair was the fashionable conveyance for ladies, at that day, in their round of daily calls or evening festivities, and the brilliant Frenchwoman secured within its closed curtains the solitude and silence she needed for composition.

An American authoress who wrote much and with great care—never sending her brain-bantlings into the world en dÉshabille—replied to a similar question: “My happiest thoughts come to me while I am mixing cake. My most serious study-hours are those devoted apparently to darning the family stockings.”

I entered a street-car, not many days ago, and sat down beside a gentleman who did not lift his eyes from a book he was reading, or show, by any token, his consciousness of others’ presence. A side-glance at the volume told me it was Froude’s “History of England,” and I cheerfully forgave his inattention to myself. The conductor notified him when he reached his stopping-place, and, with a readiness that betrayed admirable mental training, he came out of the world through which the fascinating historian was leading him, pocketed his book, recognized me with a pleasant word, and stepped to the pavement in front of his store, the thorough business man.

“That is an affected prig,” said a fellow-passenger, by the time the other had left the car. “He and I take this ride in company every morning and afternoon. It takes him half an hour to go from his house to his store; and, instead of amusing himself with his newspaper, as the rest of us do, he always has some heavy-looking book along—biography, or history, or a scientific treatise. He begins to read by the time he is seated, and never leaves off until he gets out. It is in wretched taste, such a show of pedantic industry.”

After this growl of disapprobation, the speaker buried himself anew in the advertising columns of the Herald, and I lapsed into a brown study, which had for its germ the query, “Is it, then, more respectable, even among men, to kill time than to save it?”

I knew the reader of Froude well. He was, as I have intimated, a successful and a busy merchant; and I had often marvelled at his familiarity with English belles-lettres, and graver literature, the study of which is usually given up to so-called professional men. That hour a day explained it all. The crowded street-car was his sedan-chair. I also knew his critic; had seen him placed at such a woful disadvantage in the society of educated men and women, that my heart ached and my cheeks burned in sympathy with his mortification; had heard him deplore the deficiencies of his early training, and that the exigencies of his business-cares now made self-improvement impracticable. He would have protested it to be an impossibility that he could find a spare hour a day to devote to the neglected task; six hours a week—a whole day in a month, two weeks in a year. Yet a fortnight of newspaper-reading and idle gossip would be a sorry entry in his year-book. For this lazy murder of time cannot, by any stretch of conscience, be classed as healthful recreation, any more than can the one, two, three, ten hours a week during which Mrs. Neverthink sits with folded hands, discussing fashions and her neighbors’ frailties, the while her work is steadily doubling itself up, snowball-like, before the lever of each idle minute. All work and no play would make Mrs. Neverthink a dull and a diseased woman; but the fact is, she is not playing any more than she is working, as she sits, or stands to parley about trifles. She is only wasting time, making inevitable the haste. Oh! these “few words more,” with which the Neverthink tribe prolong the agony of their would-be-if-they-could industrious sisters, and heap up the burden of their own coming cares! The words which mean nothing, the driblets of a shallow, sluggish stream that meanders into anybody’s meadow, and spreads itself harmfully over the nearest pastures, instead of being directed into a straight, beneficent channel! “I haven’t a bit of system about me!” wails the worried creature, when the ponderous snow-ball has finally to be heaved out of the way by her own hands.

It would be a matter of curious interest could I recount how often I have heard this plaint from those of my own sex who are thus straining and suffering. From some it comes carelessly—a form of words they have fallen into the habit of repeating without much thought of what they mean. With a majority (I wish I were not obliged to say it!) it is rather a boast than a lament. The notable housekeeper who would be ashamed to admit that she does not look narrowly after paper and twine, bits of cold meat and scraps of butter, does not calculate wisely concerning coal, candle-ends and crusts—confesses, without a blush, that she takes no thought of the gold-dust, known among us as minutes and seconds, sifting through her lax fingers. By and by, she is as truly impoverished as if she had thrown away the treasure in nuggets, and then comes the lament, not repentance. She is “run to death with work, but she doesn’t see how it is to be helped. All other housekeepers are the same. She never could economize time; has no genius for arranging her labors to advantage.”

The building of such an one is the heaping together of boulders with crevices between, through which the winds of disappointment whistle sharply. System,—by which we mean a sagacious and economical apportionment of the duty to the hour and the minute; an avoidance of needless waste of time; a courageous putting forth of the hand to the plough, instead of talking over the work to be done while the cool morning moments are flying,—“System,” then, is not a talent! I wish I could write this in terms so strong and striking as to command the attention, enforce the belief of those whom I would reach. It is not a talent. Still less is it genius. It is a duty! and she who shirks it does herself and others wrong. If you cannot order your household according to this rule, the fault is yours, and the misfortune theirs.

“We are living too fast!” is the useless note of alarm sounded from press, and pulpit, and lecture-room; echoed in a thousand homes, in various accents of regret and dismay; most fearfully by the rattling clods upon the coffin-lid, that hides forever the careworn face of wife and mother, who has been trampled to death by the press of iron-footed cares. Is not this haste begotten by waste?

Is there any good reason why, in our homes—yours and mine, my toiling sister—and in those of our neighbors to the right and left of us, should not reign such method as prevails in our husbands’ places of business? Why, instead of meeting the morning with uplifted hands and the already desponding cry, “I have so much to do I cannot decide what to lay hold of first!” we should not behold our path already mapped out by our provident study over-night—its certain duties; its probable stumbling-blocks; recreation, devotion and rest—each in its proper place? Why we should not be ready, “heart within and God o’erhead,” to make the new day an event in our lives, a stepping-stone to higher usefulness to our kind and toward heaven? Why we should not bring to hindrance, as to duty, the resolute, hopeful purpose with which the miner bends over his pickaxe, the gardener over his spade, the book-keeper over his ledger? Why, in short, we should not magnify our office—make of housewifery, and child-tending, and sewing a profession—to be studied as diligently and pursued as steadily as are the avocations of the other sex?

I should not dare ask these questions, were I not already convinced, by years of patient examination of the subject, that it is feasible for a clear-headed, conscientious woman to do all this, and more. Would not “dare,” because I know by what a storm of indignant protest the queries will be met, not only from those who pride themselves upon the amiable foible of “having no system,” but on the part of deep-hearted women who are really anxious to do their share of this world’s great work.

The pale-faced mother over the way will tell me of the clutch of baby-fingers upon her garments whenever she essays to move steadily onward, and how the pressure of the same holds her eyes waking through the night-watches; how the weight of baby-lips upon the breast saps strength and vitality together. Dear and precious cares she esteems these; but they leave little time or energy for anything else. The matron, whose younglings have outgrown childhood, is ready with her story of the toils and distractions of a family of merry girls who are “in society,” and inconsiderate, unpunctual “boys,” who look to “mother” to supply, for the present, the place of the coming wife to each of them. Martha, wedded and middle-aged, but childless, is overpowered by cares, “put upon her by everybody,” she relates, with an ever-renewed sense of injury wearing into her soul, “because it is believed that women without children have nothing to do.”

One and all, they are eloquent upon the subject of unforeseen vexations, the ever-hindering “happenings” that, like the knots tied in wire-grass across the path by mischievous fairies, are continually tripping them up.

“Moreover,” says Mrs. Practical, “there is little use in attempting to be methodical and to save the scraps of time unless other people do. We are liable to have our precious hoard stolen at any moment. If my next-door neighbor persists in ‘dropping in’ whenever she feels lonely, or wants a receipt, or has a morsel of news she cannot keep, and cannot withdraw her unseasonable foot from my house under an hour at each visit, of what avail are my watchfulness and diligence?”

With her accustomed shrewdness, Mrs. Practical has put her finger upon the hardest knot of the tangle. Says that other model of sterling, every-day sense, Miss Betsy Trotwood, touching Mr. Micawber’s difficulties: “If he is going to be continually arrested, his friends have got to be continually bailing him out—that is all!”

The family of Neverthinks (“may their tribe decrease!”) act upon the reverse principle. If their acquaintances will be continually working themselves into line with the flying hours, they—the Neverthinks—must be zealous in pulling them to the rear. They are like an army of mice scampering through the tidy cupboards of Mesdames Practical and Notable. They claim, like Death, all seasons for their own. Against such there is no recognized law, and no redress except in the determined will and wise co-operation of their victims.

Dropping the fictitious personages, let us talk of this matter plainly, as face-to-face, dear reader! Why have women, as a class, such an imperfect conception of the value of time to themselves and to others? To Mrs. Trollope belongs, I believe, the credit of bringing into general use a word which, if not elegant, is so expressive that I cannot do without it in this connection. Why do women dawdle away seconds and minutes and hours in playing at work, or affecting to play? A clever young girl was once showing me a set of chairs embroidered by herself. Knowing that she was her mother’s efficient aid in the cares entailed by a large family, I asked her how she had made the time for the achievement.

“O! I did it in the betweenities!” she returned, gayly. “Between prayers and breakfast; between the children’s lessons; between the spring and fall sewing; between morning and evening calls, and in a dozen other gaps. I had a piece of it always within reach, and every stitch taken was a gain of one.”

We all need play—recreation, wholesome and hearty diversion. I would guard this point carefully. God-willing, we will talk of it, more at length, some time, but to make the day’s work even and close, our life’s work rich and ample, we must look well after the “betweenities.”

Let me probe a little more deeply yet. Have not the prejudices and gallantries of generations had their effect upon the formation of feminine opinions on this head? begotten in many minds the impression that we are unjustly dealt with in being obliged to take up and carry forward as a life-long duty any business whatsoever? Is not the unspoken thought of such persons one of impatient disappointment at finding that earth is not a vast pleasure-ground and existence one long, bright holiday? If men will speak of and treat women as pretty playthings, they at least should not complain when the dainty toy proves to be an unserviceable domestic machine. A man who acknowledges that he dislikes the business by which he earns his living is looked upon with instant distrust, as silly, indolent, or, at the best, unphilosophical. If his auditor has occasion to avail himself of the services of one of the craft to which the unwilling workman belongs, he will assuredly seek a man who would be likely to do himself and his employer more credit than can be given by his half-hearted labor. But housewives confess freely that they loathe housekeeping and all pertaining thereto. I speak that which I do know when I say that where you find one who works con amore in her profession, there are two who drudge on grumblingly, and consider themselves aggrieved because the morning brings labor and the evening care. The fault begins very far back.

“If girls knew when they were well off, they would never marry.”

“A butterfly before marriage—a grub afterward.”

“Let well enough alone.”

“She who weds may do well. She who remains single certainly does better.”

These are specimens of the choice maxims shouted from the reefs of matrimony to the pleasure-shallops gliding over the summer sea beyond the breakers. By the time the boy begins to walk and talk, the sagacious father studies his tastes and capacity in selecting a trade for him; puts him fairly in training for the same so soon as he is well embarked in his teens; sees for himself that his drill is thorough and his progress satisfactory. Of the lad’s sisters their mother will tell you, with tears in her eyes, that she “cannot bear to tie the dear girls down to regular duties. Let them take their pleasure now, for when they marry, trouble and responsibility must come.”

Not seeing that to the unskilled apprentice the practice of his art must be cruelly hard; that her own loving hands are making tight the lashings of the load which the tender shoulders must bear until death cuts the sharp cords; that in her mistaken indulgence she is putting darkness for light, and light for darkness; bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.