Let us ask, then, a few questions about the state of female labor in the United States. Our census is by no means so complete as that of Great Britain; and our statements will, therefore, be less accurate. At the close of the Revolution, there were in New England, and perhaps farther south, many women conducting large business establishments, and few females employed as clerks, partly because we were still English, and had not lost English habits. Men went to the war or the General Court, and their wives soon learned to carry on the business upon which not only the family bread, but the fate of the nation, depended; while our common schools had not yet begun to fit women for book-keepers and clerks. The Island of Nantucket was, at the close of the war, a good example of the whole country. Great destitution existed on the establishment of peace. The men began the whale fishery with redoubled energy: some fitted out and others manned the ships; while the women laid aside distaff and loom to attend to trade. A very interesting letter from Mrs. Eliza Barney to Mr. Higginson gives me many particulars. "Fifty years ago," she says, "all the dry-goods and groceries were kept by women, who went to Boston semi-annually to renew their stock. The heroine of 'Miriam Coffin' was one of the most influential of our commercial women. She not only traded in dry-goods and provisions, but fitted vessels for the merchant service. Since that time, I can recall near seventy women who have successfully engaged in commerce, brought up and educated large families, and retired with a competence. It was the influence of capitalists from the Continent that drove the Nantucket women out of the trade; and they only resumed it a few years since, when the California emigration made it necessary. Five dry-goods and a few large groceries are now carried on by women, as also one druggist's shop." Mrs. Gaskell, in her "Life of Charlotte Bronté," mentions a woman living as a druggist, I think, at Haworth; and I have always been surprised that this business was not left to women. Our Nantucket druggist is doing well. In Pennsylvania, the Quaker view of the duties and rights of women contributed to throw many into trade at the same period. One lady in Philadelphia transferred a large wholesale business to two nephews, and died wealthy. I saw a letter the other day, which gave an interesting account of two girls who got permission there to sell a little stock in their father's shop. One began with sixty-two cents, which she invested in a dozen tapes. The other had three dollars. In a few years, they bought their father out. The little tape-seller married, and carried her husband eight thousand dollars; while the single sister kept on till she accumulated twenty thousand dollars, and took a poor boy into partnership.