Are they not in any profession?
Have they no valuable calling? Enrolled, would not they swell the number
of workers by several hundreds of thousands in Massachusetts alone?
If the census slights home-keepers, however, the girls slight
home-keeping even more. Very few girls are to step aside from the
commonplace, as we carelessly term it; but more depends, in this world,
on the ordinary than the extraordinary. The work of the humblest is as
essential to the labor of the highest as is the work of the highest to
the labor of the lowliest. Michael Angelo could plan a St. Peter's; but
the men who climbed up with wood and stone--"the hewers of wood and the
drawers of water"--were necessary to its construction. Genius is a slave
to labor. Says Smiles, in his work on "Thrift," "Genius is but a
capability of laboring intensely"; making, you see, even talent itself,
and its highest expression, an outgrowth of work.
No simplest task we do but is essential to somebody. Slight it, shirk
it, scorn it, and somebody suffers. Leave the parlor undusted, and
callers are sure to come. Wear a stocking with a hole in it, you will
find it necessary to take your boot off before night. There is the
greatest need among girls of a more entire consecration to certain
humble, homely, housewifely duties. The wearing torment of discontent
with unassuming work arises not from lack of ambition, but from scorn
of what one has to do.
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