"I am afraid we all keep too much aloof from those beneath us, and whom we encourage to look upon us with suspicion and dislike. Even to our servants, we think perhaps that we fulfil our duty when we perform our contract with them; when we pay them their wages and treat them with the civility consistent with our habits and feelings; when we curb our temper and use no violent expressions towards them. But how painful is the thought that there are men and women growing up around us, ministering to our comforts and necessities, continually inmates of our dwellings, with whose affections and natures we are as much unacquainted as if they were the inhabitants of some other sphere. This feeling, arising from that kind of reserve peculiar to the English character, does, I think, greatly tend to prevent that reciprocation of kind words and gentle affections, gracious admonitions and kind inquiries, which often, more than any book education, tend to the culture of the affections of the heart, refinement and elevation of the character of those to whom they are addressed."
EVERY LADY HER OWN DRESSMAKER.
A NICE time we should have of it, in the spring and fall, if some ingenious "Singer" would invent a machine that would cut and fit our own and our children's dresses. With the aid of Godey's "How to Make a Dress," the agony of weeks would be over in a few days, and wardrobes and closets have their full supply of dresses, jackets, and aprons. In the absence of this useful domestic aid, several parties have done their best to simplify the process of measuring and fitting that every one dreads to go through with, whether they stand up to it themselves or exhaust entreaties and commands to make the younger members of the flock "keep still" under the trying ordeal of pins and scissors.
Among the best of these methods, the simplest and most expeditious that we have seen are the dress charts of Madame Demorest, to whose establishment we have made frequent allusion, for ladies and children. Three measures only are taken, the pencil, chart, and paper put in requisition, and the thing is done. Madame D. evidently "keeps a poet," from the verses which we find on the back of her circular. Listen to "the consummation devoutly to be wished for" by all who dread fall and spring dressmaking:—
"Dressmakers made artists by this magical chart,
All flee from the old tedious and wearisome art;
A pleasure succeeds to what once was a task,
As they fashion the jacket, the bodice, and basque.
Each lady with skill now may cut her own dresses,