What if she did labor week after week, month | surd for her to think of doing a man's work any after month, seeing no fruit of her labors? When the Principal grew tired of seeing their faces in her room he sent them to the next, and they did well enough there. Why should she make herself unhappy about these things so long as-thanks to their influence-she retained her situation, and her monthly salary was promptly paid?

common-schools, it costs but little, and the girls may as well have it, as their time counts for nothing.

And now the question arises, "What is she to do?" If she has any talent for teaching, and friends with sufficient influence to secure a situation for her, then she may teach without losing caste. But if she lacks the talent or the friends she must think of something else. At least this is her mother's decision. Curiously enough, however, we almost always find the father unwilling to have his daughter go to work; and his argument is, that she will be getting married in three or four years, and all she would make would be so trifling that it would scarcely be worth while for her to have the name of a working-girl for it; they will manage to get along without it. But her mother knows how many little fineries a young girl needs-things which never enter into the father's calculations; and she decides that she must earn something, and, of course, she has her way.

But neither parent would dream of apprenticing her, as they would her brother, that she may learn a trade thoroughly and so be prepared always to make her own living. That would be too much like a boy; and she must not have her womanhood tainted by the mere suspicion of unfemininity; and it would be useless waste of time. Accordingly Millie goes to something which she can learn in a few weeks or months, and at which if she earns her own clothing she will do very well.

tled; her sisters growing up are wondering why she don't get married, and out of their way. Father, mother, brother, and sister, all contrive to make her feel that she is one too many. And all this without any thought of unkindness; and still the prince don't come.

Perhaps, at length, there comes one bearing the semblance of a prince; and although her heart does not acknowledge him, yet, in despair of finding the true one, she accepts his offer, and secures a home for herself. Sometimes, by a rare chance, she finds that he is really and truly the one who fills her heart. But far oftener she wakes up, when it is too late, to the bitter truth that work, poverty, privation, beggary even, were better than the fate to which she has sold herself; and often a few years find her, with the additional burden of two or three children, back in her old home.

Charlotte, her friend or neighbor, although her circumstances and surroundings are the same, takes quite a braver course. She will not yield to outside pressure so far as to marry for a living merely; and as the true prince never comes, she remains at home, although she is pushed aside by her sisters, groaned over by her mother, alternately wondered and sneered at by her brothers, while her father laments over the necessity of supporting her, yet is thankful for her presence in the house.

But after a while father and mother are both gone, and she is left alone. She has no home of her own, no means of support, no skill in any thing which would enable her to make her own living without help. Her brothers and sisters have married and gone to homes of their own, and don't feel bound to support her.

At first she is cheerful and hopeful enough. She is earning something; and she tries to help her mother with the work, and to make home pleasant for her father; and she enjoys the pleas-"Why didn't Charlotte marry when she was ures and amusements within her reach with a zest altogether unknown to the mere idler.

young, and have a home of her own?" And she must live among them as best she can; sometimes with one, sometimes with anothersewing for the family, taking care of the sick, attending to the children, working harder than the hardest-worked servant-but with the difference that the servant claims her weekly wages, and prides herself on taking no harsh words or black looks from any body; while Charlotte is the convenient scape-goat on whom

But as the years go by her father finds age creeping on apace, and no provision made for it. His family is growing more expensive every year, while every year he finds himself less able to labor so constantly. His daughter is no help, and there are other daughters coming up who will be none either. And his days are filled with labor and his nights with anxiety and unrest, as he vainly seeks a solution of the ever-every one wreaks their ill-temper; who must recurring problem, how to make one dollar do the work of five. No wonder his temper grows short, his manner crusty, as he looks forward to the time, so rapidly approaching, when he shall be laid aside as useless. Nor is it any lack of love for his daughters that leads him to look with envy on his neighbor who has only sons. His sons, if he has any, bear their part of the household expenses, with an occasional fling at Millie's uselessness, and thus in some degree lessen their father's burden. But if he have no sons then God help him!

And Millie sees it all. Every day, every hour, she feels her inefficiency. She knows she is a hindrance, where she should be a help to her overworked father. Her mother does not scruple to express a desire to see her set

bear the blame of every thing that goes wrong, from an ill-cooked meal to the spoiling of the children's tempers; the said children, by their keen observation and quick imitation of their elders, adding not a little bitterness to her sad lot.

And if she ventures to hint that she needs a pair of shoes, her friends are astonished at her assurance. "Surely when she has nothing else to do she might earn her own clothing."

Now these are by no means extreme cases. They are the legitimate fruits of the charming "helplessness" theory. It has been clearly proven more than once that in every trade that requires delicacy of touch, quickness of perception, and skill rather than strength, women, if thoroughly taught, are fully equal if not superior to men.

Already there are faint indications of the dawn of a brighter day; old prejudices and jealousies are slowly wearing out; and we now find woman engaged in many occupations which a few years ago were carefully guarded against her approach. True, it is almost always in a subordinate position; but don't be content with that position. Fit yourself for the highest, and you may yet find yourself in the line of promotion. Don't be afraid of being called strongminded; at the worst it is better than to be called weak-minded; but there is no reason why you should cease to be womanly in ceasing to be frivolous. Only be in earnest-stand by each other-don't talk scandal; but when you meet find some subject of discussion more profit

fers the bread and butter? Or can any man this will ultimately overcome all your diffithink his wife a less worthy helpmate because culties. she was not compelled to marry him for a home -being capable of making one for herself? Is it too much, then, to ask men-successful, prosperous men to take the same interest in, and extend the same encouragement to the struggling woman who is bending all her energies to the up-hill task of bettering her condition, that they would to a man under the same circumstances? If it is honorable and praiseworthy in him to strive to reach the highest round of the ladder, is it less laudable in her? And if he should falter by the way, not at once succeeding, would any man believe himself justified in advising him to go down to the lowermost round because it suited the convenience of others who have succeeded to have intelligent drudges about them? If the mists of self-able than each other's bonnets, beaux, or charishness, prejudice, and jealousy could be clear-acters. ed away, I think we should find few men or women either who would not be heartily ashamed that they had ever joined in this ery: "Let them come into our kitchens, for we have need of them."

And for you, sister women, basking in the light and warmth of homes won by no exertion or self-denial of yours, if you will not help, in God's name don't hinder! Cherished and protected as you are, you may be sincere in your belief that there is no change needed. But if in time to come you should be forced into the arena yourself, you would bitterly realize your mistake. And it matters little how assured your prospects may be. In this country fortune changes rapidly, and the petted, dainty wife or daughter of to-day may be the poor, destitute widow, or the lonely, desolate old maid of the future.

Never fold your hands waiting for the machine that is to take you to the mountaintop, nor yet for the coming of the prince; but, remembering the great things that were done when the people had a mind to work, use with all earnestness whatever talent God has given you, and, my word for it, you will succeed; for of all the musty proverbs handed down to us by our grandmothers, there is none truer than this, "God helps those who help themselves."

TO MAJORCA.

AGRUMBLING Englishman, such as “Cap

tain J. W. Clayton, F.R.G.S., late 13th Hussars," the author of a book he calls the "Sunny South," evidently is not exactly the sort of traveling companion we should have chosen if we had had our own way. It is certainly not our favorite mode of getting over

fungus of his kind, who goes sniffing about and stirring up all the dirty rubbish, and thus keeping us in a perpetual atmosphere of dust and fustiness. We don't care to have our heads dragged down from the contemplation of the sublimities of towering cathedral, and our nose held over the gutter which rankles at its base, in order to take a whiff of "a compound of extra-sour vinegar, stale slop-pails, and burned India rubber."

In conclusion, I would say to the working-classic ground to be led by the nose by a Smellwomen, If you wish to succeed be in earnest. This, after all has been said, is the lever with which you may and must move the world. Put your heart into your work. Make a business of it. Don't always look on it as something to be taken up for a few months, or at most, years, and then to be laid aside, never to be resumed. Whatever work you elect, whether hand-work or brain-work, take it up as if for life. Don't be satisfied with a superficial knowledge of your craft, whatever it may be. Never stop till you The Anglican growl is every where apparare a skilled work-woman. The working-manent, turning, like thunder, the sweetest milk in his craft puts forth all his powers in the effort to reach perfection, and works as if for an object. Let the working-women show to the world that they too have the courage, energy, perseverance, and endurance requisite to suc

cess.

sour. It is astonishing how resolute this John Bull is in discontent and pertinacious in complaint, even in spite of his own confessed reasons for satisfaction. The warm rays of the Sunny South seem sometimes, however, to liquefy his English iciness, but he hardly yields to their lenient touch. He wakes himself up constantly from incipient sleep and dreams of enjoyment with his own growl. "In the courtyard of our inn," he says, "a fountain was play

Go heartily to work, then, and while helping yourselves try also to help each other. We all remember the old fable of the bundle of fagots, which, taken singly, a child might break, but bound together, defied the strongest man. Mening, and a vine formed a large shady arbor for have been quick enough to apply the moral, and it is certainly time that you would see it. Earnest, united effort-I can not repeat it too often

smokers and idlers beneath." "There was not much to complain of," he adds, "and notwithstanding the general smell of garlic, and an

odor resembling that of steamboat cabins with | place in the middle of fields, where there is no which the bedrooms were perfumed, we slept sign of habitations. Some woman, perhaps, most comfortably for a short time with calm may rise from the border of a ditch, where she consciences and clean sheets." The digestion has been resting, with a child in her arms, and of a breakfast at Bayonne is disturbed by the all the officials will get down and have a chat presence of "an opposite lady with a false nose, with her; while the good-natured passengers, and a gentleman with diamond rings and dirty who take the stoppage as a matter of course, wristbands." The French vermicelli soup, which get out and smoke cigarettes. When some staevery one else acknowledges to be supreme, our tion, which is represented by one small house, English traveler calls a "not very inviting fluid, is reached the carriage-windows are surrounded with things like boiled gentles in it ;" and the by tottering old men in ancient velvet hats with delicious kidneys, stewed in Champagne, turn very broad brims, and with little silk balls danin his disordered Anglican stomach to "old gling from them. They are all swathed in varihats and hot water." Thus, throughout the colored rags, and no one seems to know where whole journey, he is quarreling with his meat they come from and how they live, but they are and drink, scowling at each morsel that crosses always there. On the journey to Madrid the his lips, and giving it some ugly name or other. traveler passes a succession of sandy plains and The butter of Spain is lard, and its milk of rugged mountains of granite, with here and there mares; the tea consists of "chopped broom- towns and villages composed of ruined churches, sticks and dead flies," and the wine of Xeres with their spires toppling above crouching hovtakes the growler "by the throat like a bull- els; peasants with broad sombreros and velveteen dog, and holds him there." doublets, lagging behind flocks of black sheep; and endless groups of beggars, subjects for painters in their distant picturesqueness, but so vile when approached as to prove mere masses of dirt, apparently "designed by Providence as places of refuge for destitute insects." Every thing seems dull and obsolete but superstition, which still makes a brave show with all its flaunting emblems. Religious processions pass and repass. Mourners hooded and clad in black from head to foot, tonsured priests, attendants carrying torches, and children singing the Miserere, escort brightly-painted coffins, with keys dangling from them and fastened near the locks by chains, so as "to be in readiness at the day of judgment."

Captain Clayton affects to be a very knowing traveler. From his own well-marked characteristics of the genus we doubt not his familiarity with the peculiar features of John Bull, and accept this as a description of himself and family: "We are sure to meet an English paterfamilias, with mamma and daughters. When we say English, we do not mean moderately English, but downright and awfully British-British in the dogged look of plethoric, stupid selfcomplacency, and general superiority over every body and every thing not British; British in that moneyed, bovine state of mind which distinguishes the inferior specimens of the nouveau riche fresh from Albion." We, however, venture to deny that Captain Clayton ever heard this lingo, or any thing like it, from American lips: "Wa'al, stranger, I guess I prefer neither, for the manner in which you con-duct, operations in Eu-rope is a caution to snakes, and aside of being ridiculian in manner, I put it down slick as base and tyrannical, which, howsomever, is only as how yew poor European critturs is suckled to enjure, except Irish cutes, who, I calculate, are absquatulating from the rotten Old World, and making pretty quick tracks across the fish-pond to the Almighty States, and that's a faact."

Madrid itself, though the Madrileños are very proud of their city, is pronounced to be merely a bad imitation of Paris. The mantilla and the fan have given way in the street to the chapeau à la mode and the gaudy parasol; and the traditional Spanish cloak, though still worn by some Dons, being crowned with the tall and ugly chimney hat of the French, has lost its easy grace in the incongruity of the companionship of its stiff associate.

There is little worth seeing, it would seem, in the Spanish capital but the famous gallery with its unequaled pictures of Velasquez and Murillo; and of these our guide has nothing to say but some commonplaces which our readers will thank us for sparing them. A bull-fight scene with a long-winded description is a matter of course with every Spanish traveler; but its horrors are too familiar to arrest our atten

We can not find that our English traveler, in passing through Spain, saw much that has not been more clearly discerned and better described by others. The railway has become a matter of course on the Peninsula now, as every where else; and yet this pathway of modern civilization seems not to have let in much light|tion. upon Iberian darkness. The country of Old We are surprised at the total want in the Spain, at least from the French frontier to Mad-records of a journey made so lately of any prerid, is more of a wilderness at this day than any part of our own continent. The trains, which move only at the rate of nine miles an hour, stop now and again in the midst of a barren region, at the discretion of guards or enginedrivers for the stoppages are not confined to regular stations or villages, but sometimes take

liminary indication of the revolution which all believers in progress have just now so hopefully welcomed. At the theatre in Valladolid, every person rose reverentially to the unveiling of a picture of Queen Isabel. Her Majesty, as seen at the Opera through the usual chiaroscuro atmosphere of smoke-for all, every where, in