A man, or, if you please, a woman, comes into possession of wealth. With this there come the picture gallery, the beautiful grounds, the perfect house,—everything to gratify her taste, every external good; but caste whispers in her ear, that rich people must not work,—work is a badge of poverty.
Caught with this trick, she soon has no palate for the delicious fruits, no eye for beauty, no relish for the thousand sweet and beautiful things which cluster about her; and, ere long, she would fain change places with the jolly Irishwoman who sweats over her wash-tub.
WORK FOR RICH GIRLS.
You understand all this, and you want to work; but the difficulty is to find something to do. Housekeeping, with its thousand and one duties, offers a useful and pleasant field; but I will suppose that you have already been too much in the house, and greatly need to go out into the air and sunshine.
Now, dear girls, let me suggest something for you, something you will like, and in which you will be, after a little, very happy. Go to bed to-night early, say at half-past eight o'clock, and rise to- morrow morning at six o'clock. I will suppose that you reside in a large town, or a city. Go at once to the suburbs, and you will find the abodes of poverty. March boldly up to one of them, and say:—-
"Good morning; how de do, folkses? Thought I'd just come out and see how the the morning air tasted!"
If you are in right down earnest, it won't take you five minutes to establish yourself in the confidence of Bridget O'Flaherty. And if your voice and manner are of just the right sort, there will follow such a wondrous disclosure of family secrets! You will be told all about Michael's stone-bruise, and Patrick's sore toe; probably the boys will be hauled out of bed to show you. But I must leave the secrets to your imagination, or, what is better, to an actual trial.
You find that the mother herself needs a new dress that she may attend mass, and you make a note of it. The little girl needs a dress, and a pair of shoes. The next morning you carry a bundle with your own hands, and leave it with the promise that you will come again in a few days.
Put together all the soft, polite things that your fashionable friends have ever said of you, and as the zephyr to the tornado, so would they all be compared to the gratitude, the admiration, the "God bless her," the "dear swate angel," the very worship which that household would pour out upon you during the few days before the next visit; and when you do go again, the shanty has been thoroughly cleaned and white-washed, the children's feet have been soaked and scrubbed, so that the actual skin has been brought into view; and everything has become wonderfully smart. Tell them of the heart pleasure which all this change gives you, and then speak warmly of the great advantage of such cleanliness, of ventilation, and of such other matters as you see they are ignorant of.
And now you mustn't blame them for casting surreptitious glances at your covered basket; they can't help it, poor things. They try not to look that way, but their imaginations are very busy with the contents of that basket. At length you open it, and taking out a bowl, you say:—