the dramatic instinct which is the source of so much

without danger of pollution.

Woman and her Work.

The old and familiar claim that the theater is "a school of morals," so far as it was intended to declare it to be an educational institution, with morality for its object, was without any foundation whatever. The theater is never ahead of the people who patronize it. If it has any definite aim, it is to please-to reflect the tastes, the moralities, the opinions, and the enthusiasms of those who attend it. No theater can be run unless it pays, and, as money must be the first object, such plays must be presented as attract the crowd. Plays that are offensive repel the crowd, so that the constant study of managers is to ascertain the tastes and wishes of the people. The tastes of those who attend the Madison Square Theater are very different, doubtless, from those of the people who used to throng the old Bowery, but it is a fact worth noting that those who attend the worst theaters are treated, most commonly, to plays which appeal to the best sentiments and moods of their audiences. Poetic justice is insisted upon in the dénouement of all plots, before audiences of the lower class. It is only thoughtful people who will tolerate plays that do not " come out right." Public opinion and public taste are the master and mistress of the stage. It is but a short time since it was proposed to produce a Passion Play in New York. Now a play representing on the boards of a theater the Passion of our Lord could have no apology or justification save in the ignorant devotion of those producing it. No such apology or justification exists in New York, and public opinion rose against the project and vehemently protested. The manager who had it in hand bowed respectfully to the public voice and withdrew it. The incident is a good illustration of the power of public opinion over the theater. The truth is that the life of the theater depends on its power to please the public, and it is bound by every consideration of interest to reflect the moral sense and moral culture of those upon whom it depends for support. It is for this reason that we have no fears of a bad moral result of the theater upon the public. If an immoral actress wins a great success in New York, it is not because she has debauched New York, but because New York is tolerant of immorality. If a bad play succeeds in a New York theater, it is because there is not moral sense enough in those who witness it and in the public press to rebuke it and drive it from the boards. The better and purer the patronage of any theater may be, the better will that theater become, in every variety of influence which a theater can exert; and it is delightful to believe that VOL. XXI.-47.

WE often hear it said that there are many men engaged in work that women could do as well, and that women ought to be in their places. If we go into Stewart's store, we shall see quite an army of young men engaged in the sale of articles that call for little exercise of muscle in the handling,-articles which women are quite competent to handle and to sell, and it is common to hear the remark that these men ought to be engaged in some muscular pursuit, and that women ought to do their present work. But do we remember how many hours a day these men are obliged to be on their feet? Do we remember how impossible it is for women to stand all day without serious damage to themselves, especially if they be young, and in the formative period of their lives? Woman is endowed with a constitution and charged with a function which make it quite impossible for her to do certain classes of work for which her mind and her hands, if we consider them alone, are entirely sufficient. Not impossible, perhaps, for she undoubtedly does much that inflicts infinite damage upon her, and those that are born of her.

The effects upon woman and upon the race, through her, of female employment constitute a great subject, which cannot be competently treated in an editorial, but we can at least call the attention of employers to the needs of the women engaged in doing their work. All employments involving long periods of standing upon the feet are bad for women, and this all intelligent employers, if they are humane as well, will remember. No woman should be obliged to stand all day. Women who set type, and stand while doing it, like men, invariably acquire physical ills, that at last become unbearable. Factory work which involves long periods of standing upon the feet is ruinous to health. Employers should remember that the girls engaged in their service must have periods of rest, in a sitting position, or wear themselves out, or make themselves unfit for the duties and functions of women. Even constrained positions while sitting, with no liberty of movement upon the feet, are bad for women. The restraints that are often put upon them in great establishments, with regard to their attention to matters that call for privacy, are terrible foes to health. To compel a woman to run the gauntlet of a great company of men to reach the seclusions necessary to her is a brutal cruelty, for which any employer ought to be ashamed, and legally punished.

It has been a dream of certain men and women whom we know, that women need only to be developed through a number of generations to enable them to engage in a large variety of employments now exclusively pursued by men. They have almost quarreled with those disabilities that now attach to the sex. They have quite quarreled with those who insist that those disabilities inhere in the nature of woman, and can never be removed. There are

she can do. There are women who insist on this right. This goes without saying, of course, provided they will qualify the claim a little.

A women has a right to do everything she can do, provided she does nothing which will unfit her for bearing and raising healthy children. The future of the nation and the race depends upon the mothers, and any woman who consents to become a mother has no moral right to engage in any employment which will unfit her for that function. We speak,

of course, of women whose circumstances give them the control of themselves. It is pitiful to think that there are multitudes who have no choice between employments that unfit them for motherhood and want. It is pitiful to think that there are mothers who live their whole married lives in conditions which utterly unfit them for the functions and responsibilities of maternity.

We have a theory, which, we regret to say, is not only unpopular among a certain class of women, but exceedingly offensive to them, viz., that every one of them ought to be the mistress of a home. Women have a fashion in these days of rebelling against the idea that marriage is the great end of a woman's life. They claim the right to mark out for themselves and achieve an independent career. We appreciate the delicacies of their position, and we bow to their choice and their rights; nevertheless, we believe that in the millennium women will all live in their homes, and that men will not only do that which is now regarded as their own peculiar work, but much of that which is now done by women. There has been in these late years a great widening out of the field of women's employments. We have been inclined to rejoice in this "for the present necessity," but we are sure the better time is to come when man, the real worker of the world, will do the work of the world, or all of it that is done outside of home, and that woman will, as wife and daughter and domestic, hold to the house and to that variety of employments which will best conserve her health and fit her for the duties and delights of wifehood, and the functions of motherhood. Quarrel with the fact as she may, woman's rights must all and always be conditioned on her relations to the future of humanity. She has no right, as a woman, to

may be compelled to do some things for bread th will militate against her in this particular, but this will be pitiful, and the legitimate subject of all the ameliorating influences that practical humanity can comman

We understand, appreciate, and respect that pride of independence which moves women to desire to achieve the advantage of self-support, as a release from the necessity of marriage. We give assent to her demand for the privilege to develop herself in her own way, and to do those things to which she finds her powers adapted, but we must exceedingly lament that degree of independence, and even that love of it, which interfere with marriage. Anything which renders the sexes less necessary to each other, or renders them less desirable to each other, is much to be deprecated. Now there is no question that some of the pursuits which have been adopted by women in these latter days of freedom unfit them. in many ways for wifehood and for maternity. There is, perhaps, no better test for the propriety and desirableness of a woman's calling than the marriage test. A woman can say, if she chooses: "I will not marry. I prefer the life of a maiden. I will take the liberty it gives me, and live the life that seems best to me, and cut myself forever loose from all responsibility for the future of my race." We say she can say this, if she chooses, and then settle the matter with Him who made her a woman, but if she holds her heart open to men, and considers herself a candidate for love and marriage, she ha no moral right to touch any employment that w.. detract from her modest maiden delicacy, or that will in any degree unfit her for domestic life, and a the responsibilities that go with marriage. Further than this, she positively owes it to the world, to herself, and to the possible husband and children of her future, to seek for that kind of employment and that variety of culture which will fit her for marriage and maternity. If public or professiona life furnishes this employment and culture, they wil be legitimate for her, and not otherwise, and the same may be said of all the employments of men to which women may be attracted. Alas! that there should be so many whom circumstances make im potent for any choice in the matter of their lives and destinies !

The Tariff on Works of Art.

TO THE EDITOR OF SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY: SIR: A girl art-student, who was traveling lately in our party in Europe, came home several months before us, bringing some of our photographs with her. Both her photographs and ours were admitted free, as studio properties, or tools of trade. This was in December, 1879. In June, 1880, we returned by the same line. At the Hoboken dock, when asked concerning photographs, I said we had about one hundred dollars' worth. This was a rough guess,

and went beyond the real value, as I had in mind also those which had already gone in un charge of our friend. But I said that they wen studio properties,-my wife being an artist,-ar had no idea of having to pay anything on the We were, however, forced to pay twenty-five pe cent. on the suppositive one hundred dollars, we enjoy the satisfaction of having contributed sum of twenty-five dollars toward the protecti (possibly) the American old masters of the fiftee and sixteenth centuries. This is only a single examp of the many inconsistencies and absurdities of

tariff, as applied to objects of art.

The " rulings

seem to be changed every two hours. Not long ago an artist brought in a houseful of things from Italy as free studio properties, and lately a writer on art was not charged duty for several hundred casts from ancient coins, which were satisfactorily explained to be "tools of trade."

America, the only civilized country on the face of the earth which has not inherited works of native art, is the only country, civilized or uncivilized, on the face of the earth which puts up a barrier against the acquisition of works of art. When the true story of our ignorant (I was about to say barbarous, but no nation of barbarians has ever been guilty of just such folly as this)—when the true story of our ignorant and hurtful laws on this subject,comes to be told, we fear it may bear heavily upon certain of our painters, who have not only failed to advance American art by their own example, but who have resorted to a blind and unavailing method of advancing their own selfish interests. One incident in this story is the effort made a dozen years or so ago, by persons calling themselves artists, to put a duty of one dollar per square inch on oil paintings. This would have weighted a picture of twenty by thirty inches with a nice little duty of $600.

our

I have been told that a new movement has been started lately in favor of making the duties upon works of art still heavier. On the other hand, some of our artists and art lovers are pushing for a total abolition of all duties on art, either ancient or modern. There ought to be nothing startling in such a proposition. There are only two grounds upon which the present heavy tax could be defended. Either it is right and necessary to "protect own art in this way, or else works of art must be looked upon as luxuries and taxed for revenue accordingly. But the tariff does not really protect our art in the way that it is supposed to protect our manufactures; and if it did, that is, if the rates were absolutely prohibitive, it would manifestly be a bad thing for the country. For if art is a thing to be desired for the country at large, and if this is the fundamental reason for its protection, then it would be demonstrably a bad thing for the country to keep out of it the highest examples of art anywhere to be obtained. Nor can works of art be considered luxuries, in the sense of costly hangings, expensive wines, etc. By the very nature of a work of art, it is a thing that can be enjoyed by every beholder. Not only can the original painting, for instance, in a gallery give as much pleasure to thousands as it can give to its owner, but it can be in some sort indefinitely reproduced, and thus keep up forever its mission of pleasing and profiting. Our present laws on this subject are undemocratic, for, as the New York Times" has recently pointed out, no matter how high the tariff, the rich can always buy. But the law is essentially undemocratic, also, because the wider the diffusion of every kind of art throughout the community, the happier and the more refined the community is supposed to be.

The editor of SCRIBNER'S would please many readers, and help on a good cause, if he would devote

space to the anomalies of the American tariff on art works, and set forth, also, the economic bearings of the subject. G.

Thomas Paine.

TO THE EDITOR OF SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY: SIR: The extensive circulation of SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY may, I hope, be sufficient reason for your allowing me to correct a statement in your columns which is likely to produce a false impression.

The statement of which I complain is in the following sentence, at page 32 of the number for November, 1880, volume XXI., number 1, article "Bordentown and the Bonapartes" : "His (Paine's) favorite resort was the bar-room of the Washington House, and the visitors to that ancient hostelry are told that nothing but brandy and atheism passed his lips." This is said to have been "during a period of several years"; and nothing in the context alters the bearing of the sentence. Of course I cannot dispute the statement of such tales being told to the Washington-House visitors: I only deny the truth of the tales.

Paine was neither brandy-drinker (implied drunkard) nor atheist. Against the atheism his own works are sufficient evidence. Throughout his writings, especially in the "Age of Reason" and his "Thoughts on a Future State," is proof that, although not a believer in Christianity or the Bible, he was a steady theist,-what in those days was known as a deist, as distinct from the Unitarian, who accepts the authority while denying the divinity of Christ. In his will, Paine expressly directs that his adopted sons shall be instructed in "their duty to God."

For the brandy-bibbing there is as little warrant as for the atheism. I have before me a letter of his, to a friend intending to visit him (it is dated some years later than the bar-room period, but there is no record of any variation in his habits), in which he says:

"When you come you must take such fare as you meet with, for I live upon tea, milk, fruit, pies, plain dumplings, and a piece of meat when I get it; but I live with that retirement and quiet that suits me."

In truth, these aspersions of atheism and brandy, like the insolent appellation "Tom Paine " (to which even your contributor stoops, though he does not write Joe Hopkinson nor Jack Adams), deliberately intended to cloak him with an atmosphere of vulgarity, are but proofs of the reckless blackguardism of polemical writers of Paine's time. It is not at the present more courteous day, at least not in America, that the author of "Common Sense" should be so treated.

Forty years ago I was employed to write Paine's "Life." Knowing nothing of the man, I was careful to examine everything I could find for or against him. I was also in communication with men who had known him personally. I found him to be that typical Englishman, honest, courageous, and constant, a lover of justice, a man of the real Old and New England stamp, religious according to his light, it may be pugnacious in attacking what to him seemed error, but at least more tolerant than his

opponents, benevolent, and generous. Born of the lower classes, with only a grammar-school education, he must have made something of himself, must have also acquired some decency of behavior, to become the friend of Franklin, Jefferson, and Lafayette, and for a time the companion of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, living in the same house with him in Paris. Of him Lord Edward writes, October 30, 1792, no such great while after the accustomed visits to the Bordentown bar:

"I lodge with my friend Paine. We breakfast, dine, and sup together. The more I see of his interior, the more I like and respect him. I cannot express how kind he is to me. There is a simplicity of manners, a goodness of heart, and a strength of mind in him that I never knew a man before possess." So also Colonel Burr, who knew him after his re

turn to America; and who replied to an inquirer as to Paine's habits (it was the inquirer himself who informed me), "Sir, he dined at my table; " adding: "I always considered Mr. Paine a gentleman, a pleasant companion, and a good-natured and intelligent man; decidedly temperate, with a proper regard to his personal appearance, whenever I saw him."

Yes; this man, still pointed out to abhorrence as a coarse, brawling, brandy-tippling reviler of religion, was indeed a gentleman, a high-souled man of genius and philanthropic purpose, a man of remarkable probity and disinterestedness, a notably good man; and known to be so in his own day, however buried now in the mud flung at him by calumniators, and heaped again by those who care not to learn the truth concerning him. W. J. LINTON.

About Floors and Rugs.

MODERN fashion is responsible for so many absurdities that it is only fair to expect from it some really sensible innovations. To offset the ridiculous eruptions of meaningless and ugly bric-à-brac, the collections of china dogs and climbing monkeys, the fire-places with their mock logs and senseless gas flames, we have at least one sensible, wholesome fashion. In place of the old-fashioned carpet, serving as a reservoir of dust in the rooms of a careless housekeeper, and as a continual thorn in the flesh to the careful one, we may now have polished floors and movable rugs, and yet be in the fashion.

The outcry which the devotees of hygiene make against carpets, as affording such admirable hidingplaces for dust and the germs of disease, cannot be urged with equal force against rugs. In the first place, the corners of the room are always open to sun and air, to water and soap, and these, all housekeepers know, are the places where dust accumulates; in the second, with very little trouble a rug may be taken up, beaten, and sunned; and whenever the floor is washed, dusted, or waxed, it should be lifted along the edges, and the dust carefully removed. Where rugs are filled in about the edges with carpeting, they must meet the hygienists in the same rank with carpets, as they have no advantage over them in that case.

I have nothing to say to the people who can afford to have inlaid or even simple natural wood floors; but there is many a careful housewife who is living in a rented house, or who cannot afford either to have her floors relaid or covered with wood carpeting, and yet who would be glad to replace her wornout carpets with rugs. The floors in well-finished Northern houses, having all the modern improvements and conveniences about them, are an astonishment to Southern people, who are used to seeing, in every decent house, good, well-finished floors, with smoothly planed, narrow, clear-grained, close-fitting

planks. What to do with the knotty, rough, irregular planks, covered with spots and splashes of paint left by the careless workmen, is a puzzling question to the housekeeper. The painter who is called in to remedy the evil has usually but one suggestion to make-the universal panacea-which is "Paint it," and he goes on to expatiate upon the "elegant floors he has painted for so and so." Do not be beguiled into painting your floor. Every footstep will leave a dusty impression, many repeated footsteps will leave it scratched and ugly beyond redemption by any thing less than radical measureswhich will bring you back to the naked planks.

First, if your floor has been already painted, or is covered with drippings from the paint-brush, cover the spots and splashes with caustic potash; leave this on till the paint is dissolved. It will take, perhaps, thirty-six hours to do this if the paint is old and hard; then have the floor well scoured, taking care not to let the mixture deface your wash-boards.

Secondly, if your flooring is marred by wide, ugly cracks between the planks, have them puttied, as they serve otherwise as a multitude of small dustbins, and show an ugly stripe between your shining boards.

If the planks are narrow and of equal width, you can have them stained alternately light and dark— oak and walnut. In that case, stain the whole floor oak, and then do the alternate stripes dark. The staining mixture can be bought at any paint-shop, or can be ordered from any city, and brought by express in sealed cans. In almost every case it is safe to dilute the staining mixture with an equal quantity of turpentine. I have never seen or used any which was not far too thick as it is bought. It helps very much, when staining in stripes, to lay two boards carefully on each side of the stripe to be stained, and then draw the brush between. This guards the plank from an accidental false stroke of your brust. and saves time to the aching back. If, however, the

dark staining should chance to run over on the light | plank, before it dries wipe it off with a bit of flannel dipped in turpentine.

When the floor is to be all walnut, the best staining I have ever seen is done without the use of a brush. Buy at a grocer's—for a single medium-sized room-a one-pound can of burnt umber, ground in oil.

Mix with boiled linseed oil a sufficient amount of this to color properly without perceptibly thickening the oil; by trying the mixture upon a bit of wood till the desired color is attained, the quantity can easily be determined. It should be a rich walnut brown. Rub this into the wood thoroughly with a woolen cloth, rubbing it off with another woolen cloth till the stain ceases to "come off." Never be beguiled into using boiled oil to keep the floor in order, for it is more like a varnish than an oil, and after the pores of the wood have once become filled, it lies on the surface, attracting and holding dust till it ruins the wood, and can only be removed by the use of caustic potash, sand-paper, or the plane. But this first, or any subsequent coloring of the floor, must be done as here directed.

If you find, when the coloring matter dries, that it is not dark enough, rub on another coat. Do not be discouraged that your floors look dull and poor, for they only need a few weeks of proper care to be what you want.

When the staining is done, prepare for the next day's waxing. Mix turpentine and yellow bees-wax in the proportion of one gallon of turpentine to one pound of wax, shaved thin. Let the wax soak all night, or longer, in the turpentine before using; then rub it on with a woolen cloth. A few times of using this will make the floor gain a polish like that of an old-fashioned table-top. At first it must be done frequently, but beyond the smell of the turpentine, which soon passes off, and the trouble of applying, it has no disadvantage. When the wood finally becomes well polished, the wax need not be applied oftener than once a week or even once a fortnight. The floor, in the meantime, can be dusted off by passing over it an old broom or hair floor-brush, with a piece of slightly moistened rag tied around it. Everything that falls upon it lies upon the surface; as on that of varnished furniture. Nothing ever

really soils it. It can, of course, be washed up, but never needs scrubbing.

Now for the rugs. A room, unless it is very full of furniture, never looks well with bits and scraps

of rugs about it. The main open space should be

covered by a large rug, if possible. The rug need not be so expensive as a carpet, for it can be made of American Smyrna, velvet, Brussels, or even ingrain carpeting, edged with a border to match. It should cover the open space in the middle of the room, and be held down, if possible, here and there, by the heavier pieces of furniture. If made of carpeting, it is better to have it made by the firm of whom it is bought, as home-made rugs usually bear the impress of domestic manufacture. They need, after being sewed, to be shrunk and pressed, so as to lie flat and smooth and perfectly square.

Of the domestic and imported rugs there is a great variety, with a corresponding range of prices. The Pennsylvania rugs-imitation Smyrna-are exceedingly pretty, and are gotten up in pleasing colorsolives and crimsons and blues; but the occidental appreciation for color is crude and vulgar compared to the oriental; and the domestic rugs, even the prettiest, smack of the designer and the loom, while the oriental ones often show an audacity of color and design in detail which produces a charmingly

harmonious result.

The Indian designs are dark and rich and somber, but very beautiful, while the Turkish are bright and vivid, and are far handsomer when toned down by wear than at first. The Persian are scarcely to be distinguished from the Turkish by the uninitiated. The Smyrna or Oushak rugs usually have a vivid cardinal center, broken by set figures and surrounded by a border of deep, rich, harmonious tints, or else they are of the old-fashioned colors, brickdust red with indigo-blue, a somberer combination, but one of which the eye never tires.

Rugs, like wine, grow more valuable as they grow older. Not with our usage, scampered over by children with muddy boots, or trodden by the heeled shoes of adults, but with the eastern usage, they are worn from their original wooliness of surface to an exquisite sheen, almost like that of silk plush, and are sold, half-worn, for prices above what the new ones bring. S. B. H.

"Jean-François Millet, Peasant and Painter." WE fear it will be long before there will appear the biography of a modern artist at once so absorb

Jean-François Millet, Peasant and Painter. Translated by Helena de Kay, from the French of Alfred Sensier. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1881.

"NOTE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.-The present work, being an abridged translation, from advance sheets, of La Vie et L'Oeuvre de J.-F. Millet, par Alfred Sensier: Manuscrit Publié par Paul Mantz,' Paris, A. Quantin, 1881, -is reprinted from SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY, with additional letter-press and illustrations."

ingly interesting and touching in its story and so profound in its dealings with principles of life and of art, as that of Millet. Since Gilchrist's life of Blake, nothing of the kind has been given to the world of equal importance. The man of whom this volume is the hero-for Sensier, in his enthusiasm and devotion, casts a by no means false atmosphere of romance about the life of his friend-was one of the deep thinkers, as well as one of the strong painters, of our century. His pictures have been the theme of heated discussion ever since they first began to attract