My wife and I had been invited to luncheon with a cultured and clever author, who knew three languages, had received an extensive and liberal education, and lived by her pen, writing for newspapers, translating, and giving lessons. She belonged, in fact, to what one might call the intellectual middle class. She lived with a sister in a street of old New York, occupying a little flat of the kind in which many middle-class New Yorkers live. One reached it by a little wooden staircase, and entered it by a little door, opening on to a little corridor, which gave access to four tiny rooms, whose floors creaked under foot and whose walls let the voices and noises of the neighbours and co-lodgers be clearly heard. Outside the windows and extending to the court-yard, the fire-escapes reminded one that the house, partly constructed of wood, might at any moment catch fire like a match. Naturally there were no servants in the house. With her sister’s help the charming author, when she returned home, laid down the pen and became cook and chambermaid. The luncheon, considered from an artistic point of view, gave us clearly to understand, that the hands which had prepared it did not possess any very considerable technical skill. That did not prevent us, however, from enjoying ourselves mightily, so interesting and pleasant was the company. Now, while I was eating my luncheon, and looking round me, I thought that America must certainly be much wealthier than the wealthiest of European countries. A woman as richly endowed with intellect and culture as my kind hostess, who lived by her pen in Paris, Rome, or London, would certainly earn less than she. And yet the foreign woman could live in better style, keep a servant to relieve her of the most troublesome and humble of her domestic duties, live in a large and less inflammable house, and have fresher and better prepared food to eat. If she married a man of her own station, she could more easily and with less stint, bring into the world, rear, and educate a family.