I looked through Boston in vain, the other day, to find a common dish-mop large enough to serve my purpose. There was no such thing to be found. Taking up one of the slender tassels offered me, I inquired into its history, and was informed that it was imported from France. The one I had been trying to replace had been made by some skilful Yankee hand for a Ladies' Fair. Now, what are our poor women doing, that they cannot compete with this French trumpery, and give us at least dish-mops fit for use? As teachers of gymnastics, women are already somewhat employed. A wide field would be opened, if a teacher were attached to each of our public schools,--a step in physical education greatly needed. No conservative is so prejudiced, I suppose, as to object to placing woman in all positions of moral supervision. Female assistants in jails, prisons, workhouses, insane asylums, and hospitals, are seen to be fit, and to have a harmonizing influence in every respect. How many more such assistants are needed, we may guess from the fact that our City Jail and Charlestown are still unsupplied. Women of a superior order are needed for such posts; and when will they be found? Not till labor is thoroughly respected; not till the popular voice says, "It is all very well to be a Miss Dix, and go from asylum to asylum, suggesting and improving; but it is just _as_ well, quite _as_ honorable, to work in _one_ asylum, carrying out the wise ideas which a Miss Dix suggests, and securing the faithful trial of her experiments." Many men in Beacon Street would feel honored to call the moving philanthropist sister or friend; but few would like to acknowledge a daughter in the post of matron or superintendent. Why not? There is something "rotten in the State" where such inconsistencies exist. How thoroughly men accept such women, as soon as they are permitted to try their experiment, we may judge from the case of Florence Nightingale and her staff. The very men, whose scepticism kept the army suffering for months, would be the first to send them now; and the soldiers, who kissed her shadow where it fell, would fill the whole Commissariat with women. When her gentle but efficient hand broke in the doors of the storehouses at Scutari, a general huzza followed from the very men who were too timid to break the trammels of office. The woman's keen sympathy with the advancing spirit of her time, taught her what it was fit to do; and, if the rippling smiles of suffering men had not rewarded her when the bedding and stores were distributed, the warm encomiums of her Queen, whose heart she had so truly read, must have done it. Following out this train of reflection, I have often thought it would some day fall to women, and to women alone, to exercise the function of parish minister! I do not mean "parish preacher." I hold pulpit graces cheap by the side of that fatherly walk among his people, which has made the name of Charles Lowell sacred to the West Church.