As to the impossibility of fitting, that is a vulgar mistake. The human frame is quite as much the result of law as Mr. Buckle's statistics. Any comely, healthy form is a good model for all other forms of the same height and breadth. Who ever heard of a French bonnet or a bridal trousseau that did not fit? yet these things are made by arbitrary rules. Our superintendent could find every measure she would ever need in one of the teeming houses on Sea Street. She must take her measures from life, not books. Nor would I have the sewing done with machines, unless those of the highest cost could be procured and ably superintended. The best machine is as yet a poor substitute for the supple, human hand; and many practical inconveniences must result from its use. It requires more skill and intelligence to manage man's simplest machine, than to control with a thought that complicated network of nerve, bone, and fibre which we have been accustomed to use. Capital to start such an establishment as I refer to is all that is needed. How desirable the thing is, you can easily see. In the first place, if good common clothing could be so purchased, mothers need not keep a large stock on hand: an accident could be readily repaired. In the second, it would greatly simplify and expedite many a charitable task. The terrible suffering which followed the panic of November, 1857, you all remember. Purses, always open hitherto, were necessarily closed; no Sister of Charity was willing to tread on the heels of the sheriff: yet the need was greater than ever. Many persons who had dismissed their servants were found willing to give a rough, untrained girl her board; but who was to provide her with decent clothes? They could not be bought, and to make them was the work of time and strength. May I always remember to honor, as God will always surely bless, one woman possessed of wealth and beauty, who did clothe from head to foot with her own needle, in that dreadful winter, _three_ "wild Irish girls," and took them successively into her own family; training them to habits of tolerable decency, until others, less self-sacrificing, were found ready to do their part! No people in our community suffer such inconvenience, loss, and imposition, in having their clothes made, as our servant girls. If a plentiful supply of calico sacks and skirts or loose dresses could be anywhere found, few girls would ever employ a dressmaker.