The seventh picture is a series of dissolving views that suggest the portrait of a lady standing with her back to the onlooker and gazing at her own face reflected in a mirror opposite. A few months after the book was published, its author, attracted by the title of an article, purchased a new review to while away a railway journey. She read the article—and pondered. It seemed strangely familiar and soon she realized that it was in effect one of the chapters in her own book. It had not even suffered “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” for the illustrations used were the same that the first author had collected from the experiences of her personal friends, and to every one she could have attached a name, as presumably the second author could not do. The second in the series of dissolving views is of a correspondence with a gentleman who had given a course of lectures on domestic service in a remote city. The author of the book had expressed a desire to sit at the feet of Gamaliel and at length secured the loan of the manuscript from which the lectures were given. Probably a sea-change was not to be looked for in an interior city, and the author of the book rejoiced to find so much community of interest with the author of the lectures. The third in the series of dissolving views was of a certain bibliography. It had appeared in the first number of a new report on household affairs and the author was interested in it as a probable illustration of thought transference. Here was the title of a book she had consulted in the Bibliothèque Nationale and that presumably was not to be found in American libraries. Here was the title of a curious book she had picked up when “bouquinering” on the Quai Voltaire and had added to her private library. This was the title of another curious book found in a great university library,—interesting, but of little value. This was the line-long title of a collection of technical German laws found in Saxony. Here was the title of an old book that had been valued as a family heritage, but of no special importance to any one else. The compiler of the so-called “books of reference” had overlooked the sub-title in the book—“full titles of works referred to in the text”—and had not realized that the use of the word “bibliography” had been demanded by the exigencies of type. To recommend for use as a working bibliography a list of “full titles of works referred to in the text,”—was it perhaps donning an evening dress when starting for the golf-links?
The dissolving views have given the author the greatest pleasure of all the illustrations of the book. There is a favorite jest concerning books that have been read only by the author and the proof-reader. It is indeed true that for the most part an author writes a book to please himself, not to gain readers. But there is a secret joy if two birds can be brought down with the same stone and a reader, other than the proof-reader, be found. The purchase of a book does not necessarily imply that the book is read,—public libraries add the latest new books, private libraries are interested in first editions, and authors buy presentation copies for their friends. But none of these purchasers guarantee that the book purchased will be read. Was it not a cause for open rejoicing that not only one but three readers had been found, and more than that, that these three readers had not only been non-combatants, but had agreed so entirely with the views of the author?
The pleasures of a visit to Europe are often as is the square of the distance from the time of the visit. With the passage of the years, oblivion overtakes the moments when we agonized over the question whether the fee expected by the guide was a shilling or a pound, and the hours when we gazed at the fireless grate; but with each recurring year the realities stand out with greater and growing vividness. Does not the flight of time bring to us all the realization that the real work of our hand is not the one that can be bought at the counter, but the unpurchasable illustrated edition?
THE WOMAN’S EXCHANGE[14]
Few persons whose attention is attracted by the modest sign of the Woman’s Exchange, now found in nearly all our large cities, realize that a new competitor has appeared in the industrial market. Few even of those who have assisted in organizing and carrying on such exchanges know that they have been instrumental in introducing a new factor into economic problems. Yet in spite of unpretentious rooms and unconcern as to economic questions, the Woman’s Exchange has already had an appreciable effect on economic conditions, and must in future play a still more important part.
The history of these organizations belongs, however, to a history of philanthropic work rather than to that of economics. The first Woman’s Exchange, the “Ladies’ Depository Association” of Philadelphia, established in 1833, was founded by persons “who labored earnestly to arouse in the community an interest in the hard and often bitter struggle to which educated, refined women are so frequently exposed when financial reverses compel them to rely upon their own exertions for a support.”[15] In its foundation and its management it was controlled entirely by philanthropic motives; it was to enable women “who had seen better days,” and suffered more from the prejudices of society in regard to woman’s work than from actual poverty, “to dispose of their work without being exposed to the often rough handling of shopkeepers, or to the then mortifying admission of their fancied humiliating condition.” The second exchange, the “New Brunswick, New Jersey, Ladies’ Depository,” founded in 1856, also was purely charitable in its motives, and it restricted its privileges to those who had been in affluent circumstances but were suddenly forced to become self-supporting. The first two exchanges were the product of a generation in which charities of every kind were largely regulated by sympathy alone, and it was twenty years before similar organizations were formed elsewhere. In 1878 the “New York Woman’s Exchange” was begun, and it added a new idea. Its aim was “beneficence, rather than charity,” and it undertook “to train women unaccustomed to work to compete with skilled laborers and those already trained, and to sell the result of their industries.”[16] It came at a time when the organization of charities was first being attempted, and the principle was being slowly evolved that the best way to help an individual is to help him to help himself. Its aim and its management show the influence of the present generation in its study of philanthropy as a social and economic question.