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Crowfield, you frighten me," said Humming-Bird. "I'm so afraid, do you know, that I am doing exactly that." "And so am I," said Pheasant; "and yet, certainly, it is not what I mean or intend to do." "But how to help it," said Dove. "My dears," said I, "where there is a will there is a way.
"'It is therefore with regret that we discover Christopher Crowfield applying so harshly, and, as we think so indiscriminatingly, the theory of work to women, and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed in the workshops of the State, or to the dustpans and kitchens of the house, that women must work, ought to work, and are dishonored if they do not work; and that a woman committed to the drudgery of a household is more creditably employed than when she is charming, fascinating, irresistible, in the parlor or boudoir.
We have spread ourselves, and shown him what we could do; but what a paltry, heart-sickening achievement! Now, good Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed and despairing, wilt thou not descend into our purgatorial circle, and tell the world what thou hast seen there of doleful remembrance?
"My dear madam, excuse me," said Theophilus; "but I cannot help being reminded of what an English reviewer once said, that a lady's facts have as much poetry in them as Tom Moore's lyrics. Of course poetry is always agreeable, even though of no statistical value." "I see no poetry in my facts," said Mrs. Crowfield.
Crowfield!" "Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I'm not fairly treated. I think, for a young American girl, who looks as most of my fair friends do look, to come down with her bright eyes and all her little panoply of graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect him to like a fashion merely because she looks well in it, is all sheer nonsense.
"CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD, ESQ.: "Sir, If you want to know how American women are to be brought back to family work, I can tell you a short method. Pay them as good wages for it as they can make in any other way. I get from seven to nine dollars a week in a shop where I work; if I could make the same in any good family, I should have no objection to doing it. "Your obedient servant,
Tell us how we, who must do and desire to do our own work, can show forth in our homes a homely yet genial hospitality, and entertain our guests without making a fuss and hurlyburly, and seeming to be anxious for their sake about many things, and spending too much time getting meals, as if eating were the chief social pleasure. Won't you do this, Mr. Crowfield? "Yours beseechingly,
That most sensible of women, Mrs. Crowfield, agreed fully with me that in our house there was to be nothing too good for ourselves, no rooms shut up in holiday attire to be enjoyed by strangers for three or four days in the year, while we lived in holes and corners, no best parlor from which we were to be excluded, no best china which we were not to use, no silver plate to be kept in the safe in the bank, and brought home only in case of a grand festival, while our daily meals were served with dingy Britannia.
In short, the poor old gentleman is in a desperate state of mind, and is firmly of opinion that society is going to ruin by an express train." "Poor old fellow!" said I, "the only comfort I can offer him is what I take myself, that this sad world will last out our time at least. Now for the next." "The next is more concise and spicy," said my wife. "I will read it. "'Christopher Crowfield, Esq.,
Crowfield. "All the troubles of the world are laid at their door." "Well," said Jenny, "they did burn the city of Portland, it appears. The fire arose from firecrackers, thrown by boys among the shavings of a carpenter's shop, so says the paper." "And," said Rudolph, "we surgeons expect a harvest of business from the Fourth, as surely as from a battle.
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