Human creatures, to keep healthy, _must_ mingle with one another. The house-bound woman cannot; therefore she does not maintain a vigorous and growing mind. Such contact as she has is mainly through church opportunities; and along all such lines as are open to her she eagerly flocks, finding great relief therein. But compare the interchange between a group of house-ladies, and a corresponding group of men--their husbands perhaps. Each of these men, touching the world through a different trade, has an area of his own; from which he can bring a new outlook to the others. Even if all are farmers, in which case there is much less breadth and stimulus in their intercourse, they still have some connection with the moving world. They seek to meet at some outside point, the store, the blacksmith's shop, the railroad station, the post-office; the social hunger appeasing itself as best it may with such scraps of the general social activities as fall to it. But the women, coming together, have nothing to bring each other but personalities. Some slight variation in each case perhaps, a little difference in receipts for sponge-cake, cures for measles, patterns for clothes, or stitches for fancy-work. (Oh, poor, poor lives! where fancy has no work but in stitches, and no play at all!) The more extended and well-supplied house merely gives its lady a more extended supply of topics of the same nature. She may discuss candle-shades instead of bed-quilts, "entrées" instead of "emptin's"; ferns for the table instead of "yarbs" for the garret; but the distinction is not vital. It is still the lady prattling of her circumambient house, as snails might (possibly do!) dilate upon the merits of their ever-present shells. The limitations of the house as an area for a human life are most baldly dreary and crippling in the lower grades, the great majority of cases, where the housewife toils, not yet become the lady of the house. Here you see grinding work, and endless grey monotony. Here are premature age, wasting disease, and early death. If a series of photographs could be made of the working housewives in our country districts, with some personal account of the "poor health" which is the main topic of their infrequent talk; we should get a vivid idea of the condition of this grade of house-bound life.