There were none to help her; for the nearest neighbor dwelt miles away, and her uncle had not yet returned. After a while she remembered the little cup, and filling it with grain stood it upon a grassy mound. When the crows came they fought and struggled for its contents, with many an "Oh, Ruky, if it is you, come back to poor angry cry. One of them made no effort to Cor!" "Caw, caw!" mocked hundreds of voices as a shadow like a thunder-cloud rose in the air. It was an immense flock of crows. She could distinguish them plainly in the starlight, circling higher and higher, then lower and lower, until, screaming "caw, caw!" they sailed far off into the night. "Answer me, Ruky!" she cried. Nep growled, the forest trees whispered busily together, and the lake, twinkling with stars, sang a lullaby as it lifted its weary little waves upon the shore: there was no other sound. It seemed that daylight would never come; but at last the trees turned slowly from black to green, and the lake put out its stars one by one and waited for the sunshine. Cora, who had been wandering restlessly in every direction, now went weeping into the cottage. "Poor boy!" she sobbed; "he had no supper." Then she scattered bread crumbs near the doorway, hoping that Ruky would come for them; but only a few timid little songsters hovered about, and, while Cora wept, picked up the food daintily, as though it burned their bills. When she reached forth her hand, though there were no crows among them, and called "Ruky!" they were frightened away in an instant. Next she went to the steep-roofed barn, and bringing out an' apronful of grain, scattered it all around his favorite tree. Before long, to her great joy, a flock of crows came by. They spied the grain, and were soon busily picking it up with their short feathery bills. One even came near the mound where she sat. Unable to restrain herself longer, she knelt down, with an imploring cry: "Oh, Ruky, is this you?" Instantly the entire flock set up an angry "caw," and surrounding the crow who was hopping closer and closer to Cora, hurried him off, until they all looked like mere specks against the summer sky. Every day, rainy or shiny, she scattered the grain, trembling with dread lest Nep should leap among the hungry crows and perhaps kill her own birdie first. But Nep knew better; he never stirred when the noisy crowd settled around the cottage, except once, when one of them lit upon his back. Then he started up, wagging his tail, and barked with uproarious delight. The crow flew off with a frightened "caw," and did not venture near him again. Poor Cora felt sure that this could be no other than Ruky. Oh, if she only could have caught him then! Perhaps with kisses and prayers she might have won him back to Ruky's shape; but now the chance was lost. VOL. XXIX.-No. 174.-3 E seize the grain. He seemed contented to peck at the berries painted upon its sides as he hopped joyfully around it again and again. Nep lay very quiet. Only the tip of his tail twitched with an eager, wistful motion. But Cora sprang joyfully toward the bird. "It is Ruky!" she cried, striving to catch it. Alas! the cup lay shattered beneath her hand, as, with a taunting "caw, caw," the crow joined its fellows and flew away. Soon nearly the entire flock alighted upon a distant border of the lake. Some foul carrion lay there, washed on shore by a recent storm. The crows greedily hovered about it, and by many a sweep and pounce showed their delight. “Oh, if Ruky should be among them!" cried Cora; and the thought pierced her heart. Next gunners came. They did not care for the crows; but Cora trembled night and day. She could hear the sharp ring of fowling-pieces in the forest, and shuddered whenever Nep, pricking up his ears, darted with an angry howl in the direction of the sound. Time flew by. The leaves seemed to flash into bright colors and fall off almost in a day. Frost and snow came. Still the uncle had not returned, or, if he had, she did not know it. Her brain was bewildered. She knew not whether she ate or slept. Only the terrible firing reached her ears, or that living black cloud came and went with its ceaseless "caw." At last, during a night of wind and storm, it seemed to Cora that she must go forth and seek her poor bird. "Perhaps he is freezing-dying!" she cried, springing from the bed and casting a long mantle over her night-dress. In a moment she was trudging barefooted through the snow. It was so deep she could scarcely walk, and the sleet was driving into her face; still she kept on, though her numbed feet seemed scarcely to belong to her. All the way she was praying in her heart and promising never, never to be passionate again if she could only find her birdie-not Ruky the boy, but whatever he might be-she was willing to accept her punishment. Soon a faint cry reached her ear. With eager haste she peered into every fold of the drifted snow. A black object caught her eye. It was a poor, storm-beaten crow lying there bcnumbed and stiff. Sure that it was Ruky she folded it closely to her bosom and plodded back to the cottage. The fire cast a rosy light on its glossy wing as she entered, but the poor thing did not stir. Softly stroking and warming it she wrapped the frozen bird in soft flannel and breathed into its open mouth. Suddenly she felt a peculiar stirring. The Sobbing, she asked, "Have I been asleep, Ruky, dear?" "I don't know, Cor. Do people cry when they're asleep?" "Sometimes, Ruky," clasping him very close. "Then you have been asleep. But, Cor, please don't let uncle whip Ruky." "No, no, my birdie-I mean my brother. Good-night, darling!" "Good-night!" When parents are poor, the daughters are forced into considerable practical training for future duties, though many a mother toils to the loss of health that her daughters may have all their time for study and school. In the more wealthy classes the young girl is subjected to a constant stimulus of the brain, involving certain debility of nerves and muscles. Books in the nursery-books in the parlorbooks in the school-room surround her. Her body is deformed by pernicious dress, her stomach weakened by confectionery and bad food. She sleeps late in the morning, lives more by lamps and gas than sunlight, breathing bad air in close rooms or a crowded school. A round of scientific study and fashionable accomplishments alternate, while her ambition is stimulated to excel in any thing rather than her proper business. School is succeeded by a round of pleasurable excitement till marriage is secured, and thenperhaps in one short year-the untrained novice is plunged into all the complicated duties of wife, mother, and housekeeper, aided only by domestics as ignorant and untrained as herself. What would a watch-maker be called who should set up his son in the trade when he had never put together a watch, furnishing only journeymen and apprentices as ignorant as his son? If in addition to this the boy's right hand were paralyzed, he would be no more unfit for HE delicate constitution and failing health his business than are most young girls of the WOMAN'S PROFESSION DIS- young girls, sickness sufferings wealthy classes, when starting profession of mothers and housekeepers, the miserable quality of domestic service, the stinted wages of seamstresses, the despair of thousands who vainly strive for an honest living, and the awful increase of those who live by vice, are more and more pressing on public attention. What is the cause of all this? The chief cause is, that woman is not trained for her profession, while that profession is socially disgraced. Women are not trained to be housekeepers, nor to be wives, nor to be mothers, nor to be nurses of young children, nor to be nurses of the sick, nor to be seamstresses, nor to be domestics. And yet what trade or profession of men involves more difficult and complicated duties than that of a housekeeper? Where is skill and science more needed than in the selection, cooking, and economy of food? What wisdom and self-control are needed to perform all the duties of a wife! What can demand more practical science and skill than the care of infants and young children? What profession of man requires more knowledge and wisdom than the training of the human mind at its most impressible period? Where are science and skill more needed than in woman's post as nurse of the sick? And where is trained handicraft more important than in making, mending, and preserving the clothing of a family? And yet where is, the endowment and where is the institution that has for its aim the practical training of woman for any one of these departments of her sacred profession? at marriage. Then, on the other hand, women who do not marry, especially in the more wealthy class, have no profession or business, and are as illprovided as men would be, were all their trades and professions ended, and nothing left but the desultory pursuits of most single women who do not earn their living. A few such can create some new sphere as authors, artists, or philanthropists. But the great majority live such aimless lives as men would do were all their professions ended. Almost every method that can be devised to make woman's work vulgar, and disagreeable, and disgraceful has been employed, till now the word "lady" signifies a woman that never has done any of the proper work of a woman. Dark and dirty kitchens, mean and filthy dress, ignorant and vulgar associates, inconvenient arrangements, poor utensils, hard and dirty work, and ignorant and unreasonable housekeepers - these are the attractions offered to young girls to tempt them to one of the most important departments of their future profession. The care of infants and young children is made scarcely less repulsive and oppressive, and usually is given to the young or the ignorant. Thus the training of young children at the most impressive age, the providing of healthful food, and suitable clothing, and of most of home comforts are turned off to the vulgar and the ignorant. A woman of position and education who should attempt to earn her living in any of these departments of woman's proper business | if a crime had been committed, instead of an honorable would be regarded with pity or disgust, and be effort made to obtain a livelihood. rewarded only with penurious wages and social disgrace. Meantime, while woman's proper business is thus disgraced and avoided, all the excitements of praise, honor, competition, and emolument are given to book-learning and accomplishments. The little girl who used to be rewarded at school for sewing neatly, and praised when she had made a whole shirt for her father, now is rewarded and praised only for geography, grammar, and arithmetic. The young woman in the next higher school goes on to geometry, algebra, and Latin, and winds up, if able to afford it, with French, music, and drawing. Twenty other branches are added to these, not one of them including any practical training for any one of woman's distinctive duties. The result is, that in the wealthy classes a woman no more thinks of earning her living in her true and proper profession than her brothers do of securing theirs by burglary or piracy. "It is this absurd prejudice against labor which makes girls eager to rush into matrimony with the first man who It "Thus it happens that in no department of business can competent women be found to fulfill the duties as required. Only the extremest necessity will induce them, as we have, said, to obtain employment, and then, ignorant though they may be, they imagine themselves conferring a favor, and expect wages that can only be paid to the most experienced persons. "Any business by which a livelihood can be obtained requires industry and application, as well as some natural ability, before it can be mastered, but this is rarely thought of by girls or women who seek employment. They will apply for positions of the duties of which they are totally ignorant, vaguely supposing that they shall learn somehow, and quite satisfied if they succeed in getting their pay. Many young women, indeed, make a merit of never having been obliged to work;' evidently supposing that the mistress of a large establishment will consider herself honored by the possibility of adding to her corps so distinguished a person, and offer increased pay in consequence. "Feeling no respect for their calling, and determined to escape from it at the first opportunity, girls rarely acquire that proficiency which is only the result and reward of devotion to and honest pride in any profession. "Where such cases occur, and of course they are to be found occasionally, they are sure of appreciation and substantial encouragement, especially if united to integrity of purpose. This feeling in the more wealthy classes descends to those less favored by fortune. Though forced by lack of means to some degree of training for woman's business, the daughters of respectable farmers and mechanics never look forward to earning a living in their proper business, except as the last and most disgraceful resort of poverty. They will go into hot and unhealthy shops and mills, and even into fields "Take a large dress-making establishment, and imagine with men and boys, rather than to doing wo-how much more profitable a dozen swift, competent, wellman's work in a private family. Not that, take the year around, they can make so much more money, but to avoid the tyranny and social disgrace of living as a servant in kitchen, with all the discomforts connected with that position. Few except the negro and the poorer German and Irish will occupy the place which brings to respectable and educated women social disgrace and the petty tyranny of inexperienced and untrained housekeepers, who know neither how to perform their own duties nor how to teach incompetent helpers to perform theirs. Of that great body of women who must earn their living, and yet can not find employment, nine-tenths of them would gain at least tolerable wages were they properly trained to any kind of woman's work. But those who have attempted to aid seamstresses say that all efforts fail because women are not taught either to cut and fit or even to do plain sewing properly. Neither are they trained for any other woman's work. Afraid of the disgrace of servitude, they throng to our great cities to perish in vice or on wages that will not keep soul and body together. The following extract from Madame Demorest's Mirror of Fashion gives the views of a practical woman in a position that makes her a competent judge: "It has been the great curse of American women that work-work for a living-was considered dishonorable, and only to be resorted to in cases of the direst necessity. Even then it must be cloaked and hooded, and disgnised in all sorts of ways; and, if discovered, apologized for, as paid hands will be than twice the number of slow, ignorant, ill-paid ones, whose work has to be carefully prepared, and half taken out, and who can not be relied upon for any thing but their blunders." The system of our public schools, especially in large towns and cities, is tending to the destruction of female health, as also to this degradation of woman's profession. A recent writer in a leading Boston paper thus describes what is true all over the nation : "Our school system supposes that the human being from the age of five to fifteen has nothing to do but to acquire by memory the results of the study of the world for some hundred centuries. The system gives no fit place for physpractical experience in the humblest details of human ical exercise, for personal observation of nature, or for life. The girl, properly educated in the system of our public schools, when at the crown of its operation at the Normal Schools, has only one hour a week for herself. All the rest of her time is devoted to the studies of the be preserved through the school's ordeals. school, and to the minimum of exercise by which life can "But we shall be told that some girls of the lower class. es in our grammar-schools are taught a little sewing in We are aware that a pretended concession to good sense is made in this material for work is provided, and that the results are in- "We shall be told again that, when the hours of school are over, study is over; that, in the girls' schools, the rules forbid study at home. To which we reply, that we never meet a company of school girls in the streets but they are lugging more school books than ought to answer the whole purpose of their school-training; and that every head of a family knows that the school regulation must be systematically disobeyed. "It is evident that careful parents, who care more for the health of their children than for their laurels, more and more regularly attempt to withdraw them from the public schools. "When do we find any skillful physician intrusting his daughters even to the best public schools? Yet there is virtually no choice. The private schools are worked at as high a pressure. Their teachers are intelligent enough public, but that vitiated public sentiment or public indifference which mistakes book-learning for wisdom, drives them up to the overwork which, with very few exceptions, is the vice of our whole system. to regret it, as are their fellow-laborers who work for the "On the other hand, we constantly hear of children withdrawn where the direction of the physician is the reason assigned. The strain on the whole system is so severe, just at the period of life when the physical functions should be gaining strength, that a medal or a diploma is rightly considered poor pay for epilepsy, for dyspepsia, for typhoid fever, or for pulmonary disease. The boys, as has been intimated, take this thing a good deal into their own hands. But girls can not go into water,' can not play cricket on the Common, can not form drill clubs; and yet, though the earlier development of women makes it specially necessary that we should relieve them earlier than boys from school, by a sort of fatality we pile upon them a mass of additional sciences which the boys by some good fortune escape from. At fourteen most of the boys throw the whole thing up. Their wages are worth something to their parents, or they themselves decline to have any thing more to do with the schools. Some years are left them, therefore, to renew or to create physical vigor before the age of growth is over. "The girls at the same age are at the most critical period of life. The body is growing most rapidly; its functions are undergoing the most critical changes; its organs are adapting themselves to the necessities of womanhood; and yet at that precise period it is that we say that the rest of the body may look out for itself, but that what we care for is brain, and nothing but brain. The blood shall feed the brain with such nutrition as it can give, and all the rest of the system may go. Still we will not give appetite enough to endow the blood tolerably; for we will not give air or exercise enough to create a healthy appetite. We will have girls who can explain to us the binomial theorem; who can tell us how many metaphors there are in the 'Bugle Song,' and how many metacarpal bones they have. If they can do this it is no matter, we say, whether their metacarpal bones can sustain the weight of a pail of water, or whether they themselves are ever fresh enough or free enough to have written for themselves a 'Bugle Song.' "Now this becomes a serious matter when, as a generation passes, we find that half our young men are exempt from bearing arms by physical weakness, and that half our young women, in what was once the prime of life, are confirmed invalids. It is a serious matter when, for the class which graduates this year at the Normal School, we find that there is another class, as large, of those who have dropped out by the way, unable to bear the high pressure of the Grammar schools and of the Normal. Such facts of themselves show that the practice is as disastrous as the system is absurd." The results of boarding-schools, as they have been made known to the writer, would make a still more mournful impression. Especially so in those great brick establishments where one, two, and three hundred young girls, at the most critical period of life, are congregated to be put under the extremest intellectual excitement, without parental care to watch and regulate. God made woman so that her health and comfort are best promoted by doing the work she is appointed to perform. The tending of chil dren, the house-work of a family, duly combined with its sedentary pursuits, all tend to strengthen and develop those central muscles of the body that hold its most important organs in their place. But most young girls grow up without those tonic exercises of the arms, chest, and trunk, either at home or at school. Instead of this, a weight of clothing that ought to be held by the shoulders encircles the lower part of the body, impeding action in the most important sustaining muscles, and debilitating also by the heat, drawing the blood from other portions. Then the central part of the body is compressed by tight dress pressing the central organs on to those below, bringing them into a condition similar to a finger when bound with a tight string, thus inflaming or debilitating all the lower organs. Then the brain is excited by constant intellectual stimulus, absorbing to itself and the nerves an over-exciting excess of nourishment, and robbing the muscles of their normal portion. Deformed and weakened, the young girl is then sent to those great boarding establishments, where the muscles of the lower limbs and spine are overworked by the stairs of three and four stories; thus again drawing nutriment from the central organs. And when, under all this, the system begins to fail, then some scheme of Calisthenics comes, in many instances, to add to the mischief by unscientific and indiscriminate application. If most of those institutions were labeled aright, they would read, "Hospitals for the Destruction of Female Health." If the public only knew all that medical men and women could narrate, especially those who conduct health establishments frequented by women and young girls, a cry of horror would go up more agonized than the wail over sons slaughtered on the battle-field. For while the sons are sacrificed for liberty and country in honorable martyrdom, the daughters are led as lambs to a more dreadful and disgraceful slaughter, or to a lingering fate far worse than death. The truth on this subject can not be spokencan not be written-for it is too dreadful and disgraceful to be tolerated in expression. The census tells us that before the war there were in Massachusetts 37,000 more women than men, in Connecticut 8000, in New Hampshire 7000, in New York 11,000. To these must be added the mournful multitudes of wives and betrothed maidens widowed by the war, and a large increase from this cause of the relative female population all over the nation. What is to become of this multitude of women who can not have homes of their own, while it is disgraceful to do the healthful work that should bring them as honored and well-paid helpers into the homes of others? These questions are now assuming a shape in which the women of this nation will be called upon to take some practical action. There are plans being devised and discussed that aim to remedy the evils here set forth. [ALICE B. HAVEN (known to the reading world as "Cousin Alice") sleeps her last sleep in the pretty rural cemetery at Rye. A beautiful marble cross is her monument, and upon the base of it is inscribed, after her name and age, the following text as suggestive of the spirit of her life: "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." The following lines were written after a first visit to her grave.] I SAW her asleep for the last, Close-clasped in her pale hands a cross; The chaplets lay white on her brow, Life's burdens to bear for the faint, Life's sorrows to share with the sad, This sweet service made her a saint, And each rough cross still made her glad. What else for a sign might be set Her wood-cloistered grave to reveal, The cross at her grave is as white But longer than gleam of the stone, The light of her life shall endure; B MY SILVER SPOON. S "Those born in June Are worth a silver spoon." OOTH of these conditions met in me. I was born in June; I was worth a silver spoon. My paternal grandfather was a millionaire in his day and generation; but alas! his heirs were million-figuratively speaking, you know. As for me, I was the seventh child of a seventh son, who had never ceased to repine that we five were daughters, and thus annihilated the possibility of the philosopher's stone ever becoming the splendid possession of our family. My mother, a creole and a second wife, died at my birth. "There's another slice of our property gone!" pouted Emily, the eldest at home since Sophia, Lucy, and Fan were married, and when I was first reported to have sneezed, and so, as oldwives say, broken loose from elfin spell to run riot in a spell of crying not so enchanting. "You needn't fret, miss," quoth grandmamma, in a pet, "I'll provide for her." "What will you do?-leave her your property ?" "Leave my property! Really, have I got so old as to be taunted with leaving any thing? Fine time o' day! However, she shall have something, and something worth waiting for, provided she doesn't throw her poor old grandmamma's age in her teeth." "I wonder will the child live?" suggested Diana. Diana, not to be outdone by the huntress, was quite full enough of sentimental moonshine, and it was never the last quarter with her. Shortly after this Grandmamma Engelhardt made her will, and I, Dolores, was provided for ; at least so my father must have thought, for at his death, which occurred years later, and some months before hers, his will left me but a pittance, and perhaps he thought thereby to propitiate his other children offended by his second marriage, and who never seemed inclined to overlook my audacity in coming so inopportunely upon this mundane scene. Grandmamma, being on her own death-bed at the same time, never knew what disposition my father had made; and as I was too thoughtless or shrinking to tell her, you may be sure no one else would take the trouble. "Never mind," said the appeased Emily; "there's grandmamma, who's going to give you the sun, moon, and stars in a nut-shell." "Only you'll have to borrow Thor's hammer to crack the nut!" jeered Jerome. "Jerome! Jerome !" from the warning voice of Diana, "never make game of the longevity of your race, lest you be cut off in the flower of youth." "I leave all the game to you, my dear, it's your birth-right." |