Much ornamental work is executed in alabaster, spar, composition, and plaster of Paris. None of them are unfit for women. A more desirable occupation, with the exception of its want of cleanliness, a woman could not engage in, than plaster of Paris modelling. An Italian plaster image maker in Boston writes me: "We employ about 60 women. Women are employed at this business in Florence, Rome, and Milan. I get about $10 per day, and pay women $3 per day, working ten hours. I pay both by the piece and by the day. As a general thing, we pay men better than women. It requires some genius and a lifetime to learn the business. The prospects for employment are good in Boston, and there is a pretty lively demand for hands. All the women I employ are Italians. Women are decidedly superior workers. The business can be carried on in any part of the United States. Women might be employed in taking casts from the dead, if they have sufficient nerve. I have a peculiar fancy for this branch of the work, and do not consider it unhealthy." =83. Painters of Plates for Books.= Hundreds of thousands of plates are annually colored in London, and some in this country. The neatness and patience of women fit them admirably for this work. It is an agreeable, but at present not a very constant or profitable employment. The coloring of lithographs in printing has done away with much hand coloring. The painting of stereoscopic plates has given employment to some ladies, and does not require much skill or taste. The gentleman who prepared stereoscopic plates for the Messrs. A., employed several ladies, to whom he paid on an average from $9 to $10 a week, working by the piece. Botanical plates are mostly colored by hand. The gentleman who prepares the fashion plates of the _Ladies' American Magazine_ employs women, paying from $4 to $7 a week, according to application and rapidity of execution. They work from eight till dark, in winter, and by the week, not the piece. It requires but a few weeks to learn. He has stereoscopic views also painted by women. They receive rather better prices, as it requires some artistic taste and more care. The universal complaint among employers is, that their best workwomen will get married and leave them. If women were better paid, employers would not be so likely to lose them. A few years ago, we saw a newspaper statement to this effect: When maps were colored by hand in New York, girls were paid from three cents to ten cents a sheet, and they earned from $3 to $5 a week. A few years back, it was estimated that there were two hundred female paint colorers at the top of the profession, who made excellent wages by coloring costly engravings. The colorers of plates in _Leslie's Magazine_ pay by the hundred or thousand. The first year, a learner is paid but little. If she succeeds right well in that time, she is then paid according to the quality and quantity of her work, earning from $3 to $5 per week.