JOHN.




LETTER XXXI.

From the Architect.

DOMESTIC-SERVICE REFORM.


Dear Miss Jane: Your very kind letter was received and gratefully
appreciated. As the world grows less ignorant and wicked, we should
naturally expect missionaries and reformers to find their occupation
going, if not quite gone; that modern reforms would be mere play
compared with the stern and mighty movements that in former times have
blessed mankind and balked the Evil One. But somehow the need for
missionary work seems greater every year. We are not even permitted to
go to the heathen. They come to us without waiting for an invitation;
if not as pupils in the lessons of civilization, they come as
teachers. Sometimes they are aliens, sometimes our own kith and kin.
To keep what we have won and gain the next height requires new zeal,
and ever greater efforts,--requires the very work you are doing; for a
well-ordered home, though it consist of but two members, is a
tremendous missionary society. The light streaming from its windows is
an ever-burning beacon of safety to our most cherished social
institutions.

First and chiefly, this essential home work needs to be taken from the