Even my mother, as I have said, began to wake up from the delusion under which she had hitherto labored, that the needle was a woman's best and surest dependence; for here was a revolution that had not entered into her imagination. Though not at any time impoverished or even straitened by it, yet she saw how others were; and it led her to think that women might be not only usefully employed at many new things, but that they ought to be qualified by education for even a variety of occupations, so that, when one staff gave way, another would remain to lean upon. I suggested that the reason why so many were at that time idle was, that all of them had been brought up to do the same thing,—to sew,—and that they did not seek employment in other pursuits because their industrial education had not been sufficiently diversified; they were not qualified, and consequently would not be employed.
A woman can become expert at the needle only by proper training through a regular apprenticeship. If necessary in that instance, it is equally so in all others. Every great city abounds in employments for which women are especially fitted, both mentally and physically; and they are shut out from them only for want of proper training, and the deplorable absence of available facilities for acquiring it. The boy is apprenticed, serves out his time, and secures remunerative wages. Why not give a similar training to his sister? If girls were properly instructed, they would be profitably employed. It has been so with the seamstress: why should it be otherwise in a different sphere?
At no time had we been in the habit of telling my father the particulars of our experience with the tailors. He heard only incidentally how little we earned, while our greatest grievances were rarely spoken of before him. The truth is, that he had a very poor opinion of the craft. I am sure, that, if he had known as much of them as we did, it would have been even more unfavorable. But here was an entirely new trouble to be met and overcome, requiring the utmost wisdom of the whole family to master it. As to our ceasing work, no one dreamed of that; the anxiety was, to be kept at it. Our consultations and discussions were consequently frequent and long. My father joined in these with great interest, but could suggest no remedy.
I had noticed that our penny paper was crowded with advertisements for girls who understood working on a sewing-machine; and I learned from several of my acquaintances that not only was the demand for such operatives unlimited, but that an expert hand was able to earn quite as much as with the needle formerly, while some were earning much more. It struck me that I had overlooked the important fact that all the sewing for the public was still to be done by women, even though machines had been invented on which to do it: in our first depression, we had innocently supposed that in future it was to be done by men. It was obvious, then, that our only course was to get machines,—one for my mother, and one for myself. I knew that I should learn quickly, and was sure that I could earn as much as any one else.
My mother entered heartily into the plan, as it held out to us the certainty of continued employment. We explained the case to my father, and he also approved of the project, and agreed to buy us a machine. He thought it better to begin with only one, to see whether we could understand it, and find a sale for our work, as well as how we liked it. Besides, when these machines were first made, the inventors exacted an exorbitant price for them,—they, too, in this way levying a cruel tax on the sewing-women. The cost at that time was from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty dollars. My father could manage to provide us with one, but the expense of two was more than he could assume. I was then within a few weeks of being eighteen; and it was arranged that I should devote the intervening time to learning how to operate a machine, by attending one of the schools for beginners then opened by lady teachers, and that the new purchase should be my birthday present. So, paying ten dollars for instruction, and agreeing to work eight weeks without wages, I took my position, with more than a dozen others, as a learner at the sewing-machine.
NOTES OF A PIANIST.
I.
There is a class of persons to whom art in general is but a fashionable luxury, and music in particular but an agreeable sound, an elegant superfluity serving to relieve the tedium of conversation at a soiree, and fill up the space between sorbets and supper. To such, any philosophical discussion on the æsthetics of art must seem as puerile an occupation as that of the fairy who spent her time weighing grains of dust with a spider's web. Artists, to whom, through a foreign prejudice which dates back to the barbarism of the Middle Ages, they persist in refusing any high place in the social scale, are to them only petty tradesmen dealing in suspicious wares (in most instances unshrewdly, since they rarely get rich, which aggravates their position); while what they call performers are looked upon by them as mere tricksters or jugglers, who profit by the dexterity of their fingers, as dancers and acrobats by the suppleness of their limbs. The painter whose works decorate their saloons figures in the budget of their expenses on a line with the upholsterer, whose hangings they speak of in the same breath with Church's "Heart of the Andes," and Rosa Bonheur's "Cattle Fair."
It is not for such people that I write; but there are others,—and to these I address myself,—who recognize in the artist the privileged instrument of a moral and civilizing influence; who appreciate art because they derive from it pure and ennobling inspirations; who respect it because it is the highest expression of human thought, aiming at the absolute ideal; and who love it as we love the friend to whom we confide our joys and sorrows, and in whom we find a faithful response to every movement of the soul.