Some men--and they are not all ignorant men--are beginning to be
alarmed at the press of women into other--I had almost said any
other--avenues of labor than that of housewifery. Eagerness to break
up housekeeping and try boarding for a while, in order "to get rested
out," is not confined to the incompetent and the indolent. Nor is it
altogether the result of the national discontent with "the greatest
plague of life"--servants.

American women, from high to low, keep house too hard because too
ambitiously.

It is, furthermore, ambition without knowledge; hence, misdirected. We
have the most indifferent domestic service in the world, but we
employ, as a rule, too few servants, such as they are. It is
considered altogether sensible and becoming for the mechanic's wife to
do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her
husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire
a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a
significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English joiner or
mason or small farmer, if brisk, notable and healthy, may dispense
with the stated service of a maid of all work, but she calls in a
charwoman on certain days, and is content to live as becomes the
station of a housewife who must be her own domestic staff.

Here is the root of the difference. In a climate that keeps the pulses
in full leap and the nerves tense, we call upon pride to lash on the
quivering body and spirit to run the unrighteous race, the goal of
which is to seem richer than we are, and make "smartness" (American
smartness) cover the want of capital. Having created false standards
of respectability, we crowd insane asylums and cemeteries in trying to