[8] Memoirs of S.M. Fuller, vol. i.p. 337.
[9] I have sustained this assertion in two articles on Hypatia, published in "Historical Sketches," 1855.
[10] In allusion to the Unitarianism of Florence Nightingale.
[11] "Now that we can produce artificially, and from waste and even noisome materials, the ethereal liquids to which the fragrance of the pear, the pineapple, and the melon are due, and can manufacture spirits of wine from coal-gas and oil of vitriol, we can scarcely be over-sanguine as to what we shall yet effect as competitors with living organisms in the production of certain compounds."—George Wilson's Life of Forbes, p. 129.
[12] What I mean here will be understood by a reference to Emile Souvestre's "Philosophe sous les Toits." In a pretty story of two women employed in a clasp-factory, he speaks of their low wages, and says, that, having worked for thirty years, they had seen ten masters grow wealthy and retire from business, without having changed, in any degree, their own position.
These claspmakers certainly supported these ten masters and their families in ease; and, wonderful to relate, these two did not fall.
An angel, clothed in white, sat on the sepulchre wherein their hopes were buried, all through that thirty years.
[13] This may strike some readers like the hardihood of willing vice; but it is only callousness, born of exposure to hopeless cold and hunger.
[14] When a woman wishes to get slop-work, she must find some friend, who will either deposit, or become responsible for, a sum equal to the value of the work she is permitted to carry home. This person is called her "security." The longer she works, the lower she falls; and, on the death of the "security," it is often impossible to replace him. The custom does not seem to be general in this country.
[15] Those who are unaccustomed to this class of women will be inclined to think that the state of things represented in the text has long passed away. People who know nothing of the value of money talk a great deal about "increase of wages," and are apt to say that any honest woman can now get a living. Women's wages are at this moment of less value than they were before the war; and, to confirm the foregoing statements, I add here the statements of my friend Mrs. Corbin, which reach me as I go to press:—