"
"Enough!" said I, seizing the pen with alacrity; "you have hit the exact
phrase:--
"'The _lady_ who _does her own work_.'"
* * * * *
America is the only country where such a title is possible,--the only
country where there is a class of women who may be described as _ladies_
who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education,
cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without
any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in
any circle of the Old World or the New.
What I have said is, that the existence of such a class is a fact
peculiar to American society, a clear, plain result of the new
principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality.
When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed
ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued
with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the
wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled
the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the ploughman, and thews
and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in proportion
as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest." So in the
interior domestic circle.
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