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tress; and secured for that purpose an Irish girl. She had been in the house at work a day, when she received a visit from her sister, a strapping red-faced cook, who, putting her arms a-kimbo, surveyed the apartments with lofty disdain, and then commenced in the rudest and vilest manner to abuse her sister for taking service in such an establishment. The lady of the house, entering the room to know the reason of the outcry, was next most bitterly assailed for daring to bring a "dacent girl" into such a little house, and one so "manely" furnished. "What right has such a poor family as yez are wid a sempstress?" cried she, in fiery indignation. The sewinggirl, upon being questioned by the perplexed family, who could not yet comprehend the significance of this demonstration, informed them that her sister would not permit her to live with "the kind of people they were; for she had always been accustomed to live with "very respectable people-in very rich houses indeed."

A bright little girl, at one of our fashionable watering-places came sadly to the mother, with the complaint that she had no one to play with. Why not, my child? was the maternal inquiry. "Because I am not nice, my clothes are not fine enough, these children will not play with me. They have silk dresses and flounces, and broad, gay ribbons, and chains, while my dress is only muslin and I have not any broad

sash or chain, and they say I am not good enough to go with them." The mother looked on the broad saloon, where groups of little ones were gathered promiscuously, and saw in many faces whose tender years should not have out-grown the marks on brow and feature of the benediction of Him who once took just such in his arms and blessed them, only the vulgar artificial stare of worldliness and folly. And in such an atmosphere her darlings must breathe, and either share the infection, or brave it out at fearful risk-a commentary on fashionable life sadder and darker than any of the homilies.

These trivial instances illustrate the fearfully debauched state of opinion upon social morals and ́ manners, prevalent among large masses of the community; in which a man's expenditure is made the standard of his respectability; and ostentatious display and extravagance the test of qualification for social life. The greed for gold, like a canker, is eating out the heart of our healthful life; and what is acquired by painstaking toil, speculation, with the fevered haste of a gambler, is lavished in reckless profusion, with flaunting display. There never was a country where money was so rapidly made; there never was a country where money was so vulgarly and indecently spent.

Besides this artificial and hollow form of domestic

life with which we are cursed, I must allude to another monstrous evil which has already been hinted at, growing out of the senseless and sensualized conceptions of our people; I refer to the boardinghouse system. Such is the scale of expense which young married people find it essential to adopt, that housekeeping is impossible. Lodgings are therefore taken; where the childless wife, for eight-tenths of her waking hours, is thrown upon her own resources, among such acquaintances and associates as the common table may bring her into contact with. Her life is one of leisure, if not one of ease and indolence; and who does not know that the idle brain is the devil's work-shop? The female inmates of these houses lounge in each others' apartments; discuss the gossip of the house; "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the records of divorce trials, and such other tit-bits of scandal as our "family newspapers" provide them withal; stroll out for an hour's aimless walk; return to loll or sleep for an hour, and then dress for dinner. The narrow income of the clerk or younger partner fails to supply the youthful wife with all the expensive decorations which she deems requisite to show off her fine person. The chances are that she will begin by ogling and end with infamy; that her expensive tastes will be gratified by her husband's recourse to fraud, or her own to more ignominious means. I cannot but

regard the growing habit of boarding, with the train of risks, evils and horrors inseparable from it, as one of the most terrible dangers by which the domestic and social interests of our country are threatened.

Another appalling fact demands an instant's consideration. The exaggerated notions with which our young people are imbued, are tending more and more every year, to prevent marriage between persons who, but for their ill-judged and absurd views, might be most fitly wedded. The result is that many of our very best young women must linger out unmated lives, while young men with less scruple, and less respect for public opinion, accept the horrible alternative of an illegitimate connection, thus deliberately dedicating themselves to vice and crime. I neither overstate nor croak. These are truths patent to every one familiar with the city life of this country. They are facts pregnant with mischief and disaster. They are facts chargeable upon the ill-regulated, even monstrous social life of the country. They are facts demanding a prompt, full, earnest consideration from the best men and women among us.

From whom have we a right to ask the initiation of reform? Who, by their constitution, their position in the family, the delicate pervasive influence with which they are endowed, may inaugurate the revolution and carry it forward to a successful termination? The child is father of the man; and the child's char

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acter is moulded by the mother. The nurseries of to-day contain the Society and the State of the next generation; and in the child's world, woman's dignity and sway are regal. I have little confidence in political or moral reforms; in measures which attempt to persuade and rectify men. If society is purged it must be by the sanctification of home, by the sway of female influence over childhood. I have frequently heard it complained by women who revolted at the narrow theatre assigned them, "You send us back to the care of children; condemn us to be nurses and enslave us in the drudgery of the family." Let us calmly survey the lot of the housekeeping wife and mother. The school-girl pines for the free air and joys of society. She is enfranchised at sixteen or eighteen; and leaving the dull routine and harsh trammels, as she esteems them, of her novitiate, she bounds with a glad step into the sunny places of society. She ceases to woo the muses, that herself may be wooed in turn; and either devotes a few years to the jilting career of a coquette, or quickly surrenders her heart and her hand to the man of her choice. Hitherto she has been under parental conservatism and restraint; her aspirations have been checked, her movements controlled, and many of her "rights" denied; but now she will be free. The future lies before her, a garden of pleasure. It is a land of enchantment. Alas! the nuptial blessing