their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to
get down on all fours? The free-born American rebels. Perchance it is the
unconscious protest over a four-footed ancestry, or it may be that disuse
has really weakened the spinal column. Whatever the cause, the fact
remains. It is not the idea of work, of service, but of bending the back
to work that is so repugnant; likewise the effect on the hands of hot
water and scrubbing. Close observation has convinced me that care of the
hands has become an indication of freedom from manual labor quite
unthought of fifteen or twenty years ago. The increase of
manicuring-rooms, like the increase of restaurants, is a clear sign of the
trend of the times. Not only the class who likes to waste conspicuously,
but many a teacher, many a young man in State or Government employ with
an income of one, two, or three thousand a year patronizes these rooms.

This daintiness reflects downward, and the girl whose acquaintances in her
high-school days are in a position to keep well manicured, if not
"lily-white," hands does not like to have hers show the effect of
housework, when that means scrubbing the floor and cleaning the stove.
Gloves? Ah, well, James Nasmyth once wrote: "Kid-gloves are great
non-conductors of knowledge." I believe that gloves of any kind are a
makeshift in real cleaning of dirty corners; but _there should not be
corners to catch dirt_.

The unnecessary nastiness of the scrub-water with its fine soot which
works into every pore is a great objection to the girl who must work for
her living. If she goes to visit her friends, her hands betray her. She
can remove the other badges of her toil, her cap and apron; she may go out
on the street as brave as her mistress; but the moment her gloves are
removed her hands tell the tale. With the means at hand this need not be.
It is one of the legacies which have come down to us, and which we have