But if the Angel, which inspires This subtle flame with active fires, Should mould this breath to words, and those Into a harmony dispose, The music of this heavenly sphere Would steal each soul out at the ear, And into plants and stones infuse A life that Cherubim would choose, And with new powers invert the laws of fate, Kill those that live, and dead things animate. GERMAN-AMERICAN HOUSE-KEEPING. By the Author of “Home Life in Germany,” etc. I received a letter from Germany the other day, written by a young American woman who was recently married to a German officer. They live in a city with about the population of Rochester, N. Y., only distinguished from other places of its size in possessing an old cathedral, a water-cure (_Bade Anstalt_), and being a military post. These distinguishing features have nothing to do, however, with the part of her letter which I desire to reflect upon. She writes: “I am so fortunately situated in domestic matters; I have really no care, the _mädchen_ is so competent, and so willing, it is a real pleasure to keep house.” Just before the arrival of this letter I had patiently listened for two hours to the just and lamentable complaints of an American house-keeper about “the impossibility of procuring a good servant!” The latter resides in a university town, and if a university is worse than a garrison, or students than military men, in destroying the tone of the laboring women and girls, then let the fact have its weight against the statement that the relation between mistress and maid in Europe is better regulated and understood than in America. The two cases I have presented seem to me to have about equal accessories, and it is a curious search to find the reasons for the difference in them. “Six years ago the Empress of Germany announced that she would henceforth decorate with a golden cross every female servant who had passed forty years of her life in the same family. The Empress has been called upon to bestow this mark of her royal favor 893 times. Can any other country make such a remarkable showing? In America house-maids are apt to reckon their terms of continuous service by weeks and months instead of by years. The beginning of reform in this matter is anxiously awaited by millions of worried households. The heavy emigration from Germany to this country ought to bring to our shores some of these steady-going maids. Possibly there is something in the atmosphere of America, in the restless movement of our people that puts the devil of change into the heads of Gretchens and Bridgets.”