country has not, to my thinking, been altogether in accordance with good
taste or self-respect. It is hardly excusable for men, who, whatever
may be their present position, have, in common with all of us, brothers,
sisters, or other relations busy in workshop and dairy, and who have
scarcely washed from their own professional hands the soil of labor, to
make very marked demonstrations of astonishment at the appearance of a
magazine whose papers are written by factory girls. As if the
compatibility of mental cultivation with bodily labor and the equality
and brotherhood of the human family were still open questions, depending
for their decision very much on the production of positive proof that
essays may be written and carpets woven by the same set of fingers!

The truth is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and
self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction. We
have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease
and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the titled European
does his social fictions. As a people, we do not feel and live out our
great Declaration. We lack faith in man,--confidence in simple
humanity, apart from its environments.

"The age shows, to my thinking, more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God."

Elizabeth B. Browning.