The second thing I have to say is, that our land is now full of motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at great expense to have hired operators stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all the different muscles of the body worked for them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite as cheerful and less expensive a process if young girls from early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, ironing, rubbing furniture, and all the multiplied domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified the intervals with spinning on the great and little wheel, never came to need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for us? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in a week went over every movement that any gymnast has invented, and went over them to some productive purpose, too. Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain if those ladies who have learned and practice the invaluable accomplishment of doing their own work will know their own happiness and dignity, and properly value their great acquisition, even though it may have been forced upon them by circumstances. VII WHAT CAN BE GOT IN AMERICA While I was preparing my article for the "Atlantic," our friend Bob Stephens burst in upon us, in some considerable heat, with a newspaper in his hand. "Well, girls, your time is come now! You women have been preaching heroism and sacrifice to us,--'so splendid to go forth and suffer and die for our country,'--and now comes the test of feminine patriotism." "Why, what's the matter now?" said Jenny, running eagerly to look over his shoulder at the paper. "No more foreign goods," said he, waving it aloft,--"no more gold shipped to Europe for silks, laces, jewels, kid gloves, and what not. Here it is,--great movement, headed by senators' and generals' wives, Mrs. General Butler, Mrs. John P. Hale, Mrs. Henry Wilson, and so on, a long string of them, to buy no more imported articles during the war." "But I don't see how it _can_ be done," said Jenny. "Why," said I, "do you suppose that 'nothing to wear' is made in America?" "But, dear Mr. Crowfield," said Miss Featherstone, a nice girl, who was just then one of our family circle, "there is not, positively, much that is really fit to use or wear made in America,--is there now? Just think: how is Marianne to furnish her house here without French papers and English carpets?--those American papers are so very ordinary, and, as to American carpets, everybody knows their colors don't hold; and then, as to dress, a lady must have gloves, you know,--and everybody knows no such things are made in America as gloves."