There are a multitude of receipts for removing stains both from linen and marble, but very many, although they remove the stains, are liable to remove the cloth also, or in marble destroy the polish; others are useful, and in time our readers shall have them. LXVII. THE SLAVERY OF FASHION. “WORN OUT,” “_Overtaxed_,” “_Used up_,” “_Too tired for anything_,” are expressions daily heard from mothers and housekeepers; and the languid step, pale, care-worn face, and heavy eyes bear witness that these are not foolish, unmeaning words, but all too near the truth for safety. Most are ready to recognize the fact that half the feebleness and ill health among women arises from over-exertion while attempting to carry burdens too weighty for the constitution. Yet how much of this is needless, in no wise increasing the comfort or happiness of the family circle, but, in every department of household labor, the result of blind, unreasoning adherence to the dictates of fashion. Look backward but one half-century. Are those of us who require three or four servants to keep the household machinery in working order any happier than our mothers were? We turn from our fashionable cooking and elaborately served tables with longing for the simpler yet most excellent cooking of the olden time, when one servant was sufficient, and often none at all was required; the mother, with her little daughters round her, preferring to do all the work without a servant, that she might herself teach her young girls the lessons of domestic economy as none but a mother can teach them. Was all that labor more wearing to health and strength than the cruel bondage in which we live, while laboring to secure, from servants, the care and efficient work absolutely necessary to the present style of living? With how much more appetite we partook of the plainly cooked and more healthful food in those days, undisturbed by the bustle and confusion of many courses, or the constant attendance of a waiter, whose eyes and ears are usually more observing of the little pleasantries and freedom of the family circle than of the service which a fashionable style demands, and whose tongue is ready to retail all that is said or done at our table, and “with additions strange.” The meal finished, the labor of clearing away and washing the many dishes now required is fourfold what was demanded in the times of more simple and pleasure-giving customs, to say nothing of the reckless heedlessness and destruction fostered by the haste necessary to be ready for the next formal meal.