regard wedding presents as a prominent fea¬ 
ture of a wedding, and their value and varie¬ 
ty are vastly more talked about than the 
manly qualities and accomplishments of the 
husbands. In airing this question with a gen¬ 
tlewoman some months ago, she said, 
“There is a very wealthy gentleman in 
Philadelphia who is quite of your mind, 
and he says that, when his daughter 
marries she shall not be allowed to receive 
presents except from near family friends.” 
While we were talking the lady’s daughter, a 
lovely young girl in her early teens, and who 
is heiress to a million of dollars, exclaimed: 
“But, Mamma, what is one to do, then, for 
wedding presents if no one is allowed to bring 
any?” so unconsciously, but thoroughly, had 
the girl’s mind taken on the color of fashion¬ 
able society. Her mother, a woman of excel¬ 
lent sense, assured her that wedding presents 
bad nothing to do with securing the honor 
and happiness of marriage, and that she 
hoped that they would be able to settle her 
prettily and comfortably in life, when she 
might lie married, without having their ac¬ 
quaintances tax themselves in the way of 
presents. Of course any reform of an abuse 
of this character stands a far better chance of 
success when begun and waged by the rich 
and mighty; but people in low life us well as 
in high life, cau maintain their self-respect 
and set their faces against vulgarity and the 
acceptance and display of presents from a 
variety of worried and unwilling givers on 
the occasion of one’s marriage, is vulgar in 
more ways than one. 
The early custom of “fitting out" a bride 
for housekeeping was very good and pretty in 
its way, just as it would be now, if done in 
the same spirit. Friends who desire to give 
can always find away to do so quietly and 
without ostentation. Simple gifts often suffer 
so much in comparison with costly ones at a 
wedding display that their donors turn away 
in pain and disgust, and wish themselves well 
at home. Nobody likes to be thought “mean,” 
neither do people feel that their lack of 
money is a matter requiring public announce¬ 
ment So, in looking the matter well over, 
would it not bo far better, more relined and 
self-respecting to have invited guests under¬ 
stand that they are exempt in the matter ol' 
wedding presents? 
While on the topic of weddings I wish to say 
vvlmt 1 have long bad it on my heart to say, 
but it is a delicate matter to touch upon—that 
there is nothing "nice, or romantic”—nay, 
nor even decent in the marriage of a young 
girl with a gross and immoral old man, no 
matter how high his social position because of 
his office, for in this country as everywhere 
else, certain high offices of trust from the 
1’resideut’s chair down, confer upon the occu¬ 
pants proportionate social dignify indepen¬ 
dent of merit, or ohasteuess of character. 
There is but one thing that sanctifies marriage 
and makes it respectable—and that is mu¬ 
tual love, and mutual respect, and for 
this, there must be mutual fitness. When 
a girl with the dower of youth and beauty 
and charm marries a man in every way 
unsuited to her, simply because his posi¬ 
tion confers distinction upon her, or be¬ 
cause he has money, she has sold herself 
for a price. There is nothing romantic, 
or nice in such a union, although she 
may be feted and travel in special railway 
trains and hold receptions and wear lovely 
gowns ami have very nice tilings said of her 
in the newspapers,and turns a deaf ear—if she 
Ins one—to the aside universal comment, “How 
could she bring herself to marry that man.”— 
1 allude to this matter because 1 have been 
assured that a marriage of similar character 
has had a very demoralizing effect upon 
school girls, who declare it to be ‘‘too roman¬ 
tic, and so jierfeclly lovely” and wish nothing 
better for themselves than to be able to do 
likewise. It may go a good way iu keeping their 
beads level, to assure them that such a mar¬ 
riage is of the most sordid character, and that 
no person of right feeling, of delicate and 
fine instincts can regard it with pleasure or 
even respect. I think that the greut middle 
class of the country—the well-to-do intelligent 
people, the conservators of whatever is most 
precious in the nation, almost unfuilingly 
shut their doors upon immoral men as upon 
immoral women. But there still exists far 
too ma ny people who “condone” ill-doing in 
a mau, if lie chances to be rich, or of good 
family, or bolds a high position of any kind. 
The more a man knows, the better his oppor 
timities have been, the more flagrant his 
crime. I hold that if a man cannot live a 
cha#te and virtuous life, that the very best 
thing for him to do, is to blow out his brains. 
The unhuppiness of the world is great, enough 
without any limn adding to it. by the vieious- 
ness of his own personal acts. 
This is a knitting age anil women knit, their 
underwear, their chemises and petticoats, as 
if the world was not full of clever machines 
for weaving them. For the chemise a pat¬ 
tern is made of the back and the front and the 
sleeves, and after these pieces are knit separ¬ 
ately they are sewed together. The fit is per¬ 
fect., the garment is very warm, but it needs 
to be washed with care, and to be very par¬ 
ticularly dried—stretched over a board to pre¬ 
vent shrinkage. 
Mrs. Ole Bull, a friend tells ine, dresses al¬ 
ways in the same fashion, in a round, full 
skirt without draperies, iu a severe, plain 
style which, however, she thoroughly becomes. 
She calls her daughter Ole—named for the 
father. 
The business of breediug dogs for the mar¬ 
ket is an unusual one for women m this coun¬ 
try. although one of the most successful breed¬ 
ers in the United States is a New England 
lady. She spent several years in Switzerland 
studying dogs and her specialty is the Saint 
Bernard. She is not only the proprietor of 
famous kennels, blit also conducts an excel¬ 
lent school for girls. 
IN THE LONG EVENINGS. 
OLIVE E. DANA. 
ONE or two new books lie before me. The 
one which has especially interested me, and 
sobered me also, is Mrs. Heleu Campbell's 
“Prisoners of Poverty.” It impresses me as a 
book it would be good for many of the Rural 
friends to read; good for mauy women in 
sheltered homes, for women, even, burdened 
with many cares, and with duties, which, 
however dear, turn to enchain them. Is it 
not a wholesome thing oftentimes for us to 
know how many, many lives are cast iu ways 
whose desolation and distress and noisomo- 
ness are almost, unbelievable? Shall it not 
rebuke our discontent ami our small ambi¬ 
tions, and shame us into livelier gratitude? 
And ought we not to know these things? 
The most of us did not dream of such need, 
such helplessness, such distress, such danger, 
among workers. For this is n compilation of 
dire, te'entless, appallingly suggestive facts 
concerning “Women wage-workers, their 
trades aud their lives.” 
The chapters of “Prisoners of Poverty” 
were published (prior to their issue in this 
volume by Roberts Brothers of Bostoo) iu the 
New York Tribune. The cases recorded here 
have all been registered, and the records are 
the result of minutest personal research. 
Every branch of trade that employs women 
seems to have its tyrannies, its exactions, its 
withholdings, its greed. For the great chief 
cause of this suffering and oppression is, Mrs. 
Campbell is assured, injustice. Bhe well says, 
“No good will, no charity, however splendid, 
fills or can fill the place owned by that need 
which is forever first and most vital between 
man and mau—justice.” 
Cheap underwear, ready-made clothing— 
the Bargain counter! What words these are 
in the light of these records to conjure with! 
For while the more favored of womankind 
aro exulting over these things, “ there arises, 
from narrow attic and dark, foul busement, 
and crowded factory, the cry of the women 
whose life-blood is on these garments.” What 
a picture this is! And it is matched by others 
ns dreadful; aye, and by those the pen is 
loathe to copy. “ Through burning, scorch¬ 
ing days of summer, through marrow-pierc¬ 
ing cold of winter, in hunger aud rags, with 
white-faced children at their knees, crying 
for more bread; or, silent from long weak¬ 
ness, looking with blank eyes ut the flyiug 
needle, those women toil on, 1”, 14, Iff hours 
oven, before the fixed task is done. Tho shew 
of baker’s bread and the bowl of rank, black 
tea, boiled to extract every possibility of 
strength ore taken, still at the machiue. It is 
easier to sit there than in rising aud move¬ 
ment to Hud what weariness is in every limb. 
There is always a child old enough to boil tho 
kettle aud ran for a loaf of bread; ami all 
share the tea, which gives a fictitious strength, 
laying thus tho foundation for tho fragile, 
amende faces and figures to be found among 
the workers iu the bag factories, paper-box 
manufactories, etc.” 
“ Plenty of work!” say both employers and 
employed; but the latter add: “ Plenty of 
work? Oh, yes! I can always get plenty of 
work. The trouble is to get the wages for it.” 
Under t he great Bridge, our author says, is 
a tenement-house where daylight scarcely 
penet. ates, suve at mid-day. Filth and cor¬ 
ruption unutterable lurk iu its eoruers aud 
contaminate the children who are among its 
unfortunate occupants. In the upper rooms 
“ the day’s work lias ceased to bo the day’s 
work,” for the women, unable to pay for gas 
or oil, sleep in the daytime, “ aud when night 
comes aud the electric light penetrates every 
coruer of the shadowy rooms, turn to the toil 
by which their bread is won.” 
Writes Mrs. Campbell in her final chapter— 
“End aud Beginning:”—“Year by year in the 
story of tho Republic, labor has taken lower 
and lower place. The passion forgetting on, 
latent iu every drop of Ameriran blood, has 
made money the sole symbol of success, and 
freedom from band-labor the synonyms of 
happiness. There is not a girl old enough to 
work at all who does not dream of a possible 
future in which work will cease and ease aud 
luxury take its place. Tho boy content 
with a trade, the man or woman accepting 
simple living and its limitation, .contentedly, 
is counted a fool. To get money and always 
more and more money, is the oue ambition, 
and in tliis mad rush toward the golden foun¬ 
tain, gentle virtues are trampled under foot, 
and men count no armor of honest thought 
worth wearing unless it be fringed with bul¬ 
lion.’ 1 “No form of mitigation means any¬ 
thing till the whole system of thought is re¬ 
constructed, and we come to some sense of 
what the eternal virtues really are.” 
“Justice is the one demand in this life of 
to-day, and not one of us who shrinks and 
shudders at the thought or what woman- 
workers are enduring, but has it in her power 
to lessen the great sum of wretchedness; to 
begin for some one the education into just 
thinking and just living. Beginning is always 
possible. Not one of us but can ask. “How 
can I bring more simplicity, less convention¬ 
ality, more truth and tight-living into home 
and every relation of life?” “Ask first, then, 
not w’hat shall we do for theso women, but 
what shall we do for ourselves? now shall 
we learn to knew what are the real things? 
How shall we come to love them and cleave 
to them, and hold no life worth living that 
admits sham or compromise?” 
HALF AN HOUR.—IV. 
THE KING’S ENGLISH. 
Under the head of Grammar, may also be 
considered the spelling, pronunciation, and 
meaning of words aud structure of seutenc&s. 
The first <>f these will be a stumbling block to 
many intelligent minds as long as we suffer 
under our present disadvantage of no utter 
want, of system in this direction The manu¬ 
script of many of our best writers would pre¬ 
sent a peculiar effect in type were it not for 
the proof reader. 
“Your spelling needs looking after,” wrote 
a President of a Michigan college to a gradu¬ 
ate of a Chicago high school, and although 
for 1:3 years the youth had been “looking 
after” it he could not escape the criticism of 
defective spelling. In the city editor’s room 
of a prominent Ban Francisco daily, a youth¬ 
ful reporter, aud one of the brightest on the 
paper, who stood at the next desk to mine, 
asked me bow to spell “lurch,” lie having 
written it “leareb.” And why not, since wo 
write “search?” Peeping over the shoulder of 
this youth with the familiarity of frank 
friendship, I read such words as “peer” for 
“pier,” aod when I suggested that h is spelling 
needed a little “looking al ter,” ho nonchalant¬ 
ly assured me that “Mack" (the proof-reader) 
drew his salary for performing (hat duty. 
The same lad four years ago; wheu u hoy of 
fourteen, in some letters descriptive of a sea- 
voyugc he had taken, used the word “roll” as 
applied to tlie waves, spelling it variously 
“roal,” “role,” “row]" and “ruul,” all this m 
a letter showing more than average literary 
merit for oue of his years. 
Bo do not bo discouraged if you do not read¬ 
ily muster your native language with its many 
redundancies, aud awkward orthography, 
governed by few or no principles. The two 
best rules (in regard to the doubling of the 
final consonant, and the dipthong “i e”| have 
so many exceptions as to roudor them praetJ- 
eally valueless. Buell spelling as you must 
acquire must be learned arbitrarily. Noth¬ 
ing can be done by analogy when tone is pro¬ 
nounced one wuy aud “gone” auother, and 
when it is found necessary to spell rite, right, 
wright and write differently to express differ¬ 
ent meanings, ami when light in Webster is 
defined as having S8 shades of meaning with 
only a single spelling. 
To a very great extent you will acquire a 
knowledge of spelling in your daily reading, 
and if you are not naturally of an observing 
turn of mind, then the best thing you can do 
is to tram those facilities. George Cary Eggle¬ 
ston says that no teacher of spelling is needed 
by anyone who can read and write. If you 
would learn to spell words use them. When¬ 
ever in writing you come to a word of which 
you do not certainly know the orthography, 
look it up iu the dictionary, aud examine both 
its meuniug and derivation. Then notice also 
the words derived from it, aud that particular 
word with its many derivatives will never 
trouble you ngaiu. This may consume valu¬ 
able time at, first, but until you have given a 
little attention to tho study of uu Unabridged 
you have no idea what a source of education 
it is. 
The pronunciation of words is for the most 
part learned by bearing others uso them, and 
when we are in doubt as to the correctness of 
this usage, all such doubts can be solved and 
the errors corrected by a reference to this 
same Unabridged. 
The student who has no master may get on 
very well without any of the ordinary gram¬ 
mars, but such a text-book on English gram¬ 
mar as Greene’s Analysis, in which all the bur¬ 
densome technicalities in rules of syntax and 
conjugations are done away with, will facili¬ 
tate greatly the study of his own language. 
This book leads him step by step, from the 
simplest to the most complex sentence, analyz¬ 
ing them and showing him the nature aud use 
of every part and its dependence on tho rest, 
of the sentence. All this ho may learn and 
still not be able to write English well, al¬ 
though lie may write it correctly. He may 
never frame an incorrect sentence, and yet be 
incapable of a graceful oue. “An approved 
text-book on English composition,” says 
Eggleston, “will supply a good deal of needed 
information, while it will furnish also the 
rules governing good English speech, and 
guide the student in the correctness or inele¬ 
gancies of phrases. Dr. John S. Hart’s very 
admirable series of text-books are probably 
the best, especially for self-instructed stu¬ 
dents. 
A late writer who was noted for his puie 
Addisonian English, and strong and graceful 
sentences, had made Campbell’s Rhetoric a 
study from boyhood. The practice of telling 
things in writing will bring with it a certain 
degree of fluency and ease in the use of 
language, and with a competent teacher as 
critic, will be extremely valuable, aud even 
without criticism will help to form a natural 
style, which although it may not be a model 
of elegance, will acquire less and less stiffness. 
In order not to make these half hour sketches 
too long, let me say that any one who has had 
the patience to read them with a desire to bo 
helped iu his self-education, will receive great 
asssitauco in his task,which will often boa dis¬ 
couraging one,from a little volume of the Put¬ 
nam Handy Series, entitled “How to Educate 
Yourself,” by George Cary Eggleston. a.g. 
THE DAYS OF CHIVALRY. 
SELMA CLARE. 
There is a great deal of talk now-a-days to 
the effect that the duy3 of chivalry are over. 
Sentimental girls sigh that the helmeted 
knights of t he Round Table are no more. For 
myself I believe that, those grim and muiled 
warriors were very uupleasaut articles for 
“human nature’s daily food.” I am oue of 
the happy-go-lucky people who like to think 
that the world is better instead of worse. 
That truth, aud honor, and devotion, and 
friendship, the best of all Christ-like actions 
are all to be found If we do not shut our eyes 
to them. The greater number of the world’s 
heroes and heroines are never hoard from. 
Reporters aro enterprising in these days of 
advanced journalism, but they never get hold 
of hy far the larger part of the great deeds 
that aro done, they never hear of those who 
suffer and make no moan. 
A few days since there was an accident on 
the Denver and Rio Grande road between 
Denver aud Bult Lake City. Fivo minutes 
after a freight train had passed a certain part, 
of the road, tons of rock were dislodged from 
an ovorhaoging precipice and fell across the 
track just before the LeadviUe express came 
thundering around the curve. Tho fireman 
saw the danger and jumped, shouting to the 
engineer to do likewise, but tho brave fellow 
shut off the steam, saved bis traiu and died 
like a hero as he was, although he had been a 
husband only a few months, and life with all 
its possibilities must have looked very bright 
to him. 
Could any knight of Arthur’s Round Table 
have done abetter or braver deed? And yet 
the next day’s papers chronicled tho accident 
in a few lilies aunouuciug that only the engi¬ 
neer and two tramps who were riding on the 
baggage-car were killed. I was one of tbo 
saved passengers, and saw the poor fellow's 
mangled body, and thought of that poor 
young wife who could not recognize u feature 
of her dear, dead husband’s face. Ah! tlio 
world is full of uusuug heroes who die tragi 
cal deaths, and of those who live still more 
tragical lives, and although they aro never 
heard from, the world is the better for these 
deaths and lives. 
» ♦ ♦ - 
GULDEN GRAINS. 
Dr. Cuylkr says tho best advertisement 
of a workshop is first-class work. Tbestrong- 
#Ujsic<Uanc0Uj9 
Wheu Baby was nick, we itave her Caatorla 
Wheu she was a Child, she cried for Caatorla, 
Wheu she became Miss, she clung to Caatorla, 
Wheu she had Children, she save them Castor I*. 
