THE SEWING GIRL.—The inequality of social life and domestic comfort in large cities, is, we presume, inseparable from a state of society as at present organized, and the bold reformer, even while he is preaching, is illustrating its incapacity for sudden change. So long as capital possesses supreme power, and the inherent quality of reproduction, there must be dependents and laborers. We cannot all ride in carriages, or there would be none to build them, and the present stock, we think, would in time grow ricketty upon the hands of the most adroit leveler. And if we descended into a race of pedestrians, we fear that we should in time, even if we divided the last dollar with a needy brother, be looked upon as soulless and decidedly shabby. We do not know that Fourier, even in his maddest dreams of social reformation and equality, ever seriously contemplated an era when boots should grow upon trees, without the aid of human hands, and coats come down like snow-flakes to cover our nakedness. We think not. And even if he had, there are certain disagreeable anticipations—aside from want of modesty—in wandering about on a wintry day, hunting for garments—to say nothing of having our beef killed and cooked to stay our appetites the while. We suppose then we must have sewing girls—but we see no necessity of forgetting that they are girls—and neither horses nor mules—that they are human beings—noble women, with as warm hearts, and as good blood as ourselves, feeling the same yearnings after sympathy, the same keenness of suffering under insult, neglect or wrong. There is no necessary humiliation in labor. It is in itself of the highest dignity and of the loftiest nobility of extraction. She who, by assiduous industry, makes her little home happy, clothes her infant brothers, and administers to the wants of an aged and decrepit parent, has clothed herself in the holiest of garments, and though their texture may not be of the finest, she may stand up proudly beside the purple of a queen, and if she sees but the trembling of scorn upon the royal lip, may say, “_Stand off! I am nobler than thou!_” The treatment, however, which some of them receive from very fashionable and very silly young ladies, who have been badly educated by ignorant and vulgar mothers, is humiliating to witness occasionally, and must be very hard to bear continually. “Hark! that rustle of a dress, Stiff with lavish costliness; Here comes one whose cheek would flush But to have her garment brush ’Gainst the girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary broidery in, And in midnight’s still and murk Stitched her _life_ into the work, Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the silk might soil, Shaping from her bitter thought Heart’s-ease and forget-me-not. Satirizing her despair With the emblem woven there.”