NIL DESPERANDUM.
Deplorable as are the pictures which are drawn, discouraging as are the statements we daily hear of domestic confusion and misery, it is not to be admitted or believed that our American women are so swallowed up in a vortex of fashion and folly, or so enfeebled by habits of indolence, that they cannot be awakened from their fatal dream.
There is really in our national character too much intelligence, though it may be slumbering; too much energy, though it may be dormant through apathy, to permit us to sink hopelessly and helplessly into social chaos. It is only necessary to awaken the public mind to the importance of the subject, and to arouse American women to united and persevering efforts to retrieve the past, and bring about a better state of affairs in the future, and the work of reform is on the sure road to accomplishment. This is the only "coöperative" agency from which we may hope for beneficial results. No new plans or patent machinery will enable the wife, the mother, the housekeeper, to shirk her duty or transfer the irksome task to other shoulders. She must simply "seek out the old paths, and walk therein," humbly, diligently, at whatever sacrifice of her own ease or endurance of painful trials, which must always be the heritage of the true woman, but which, met and endured in the true womanly spirit, are richer than earthly treasures, and will secure rewards more unfailing than earthly glories.
In no other way can this painful domestic problem ever find a fitting solution.