value of every plate, the classical beauty of even the sauce-boats in shape and ornament. Our lady of the flounces chooses the heaviest glass, of the most elaborate pattern; the face of the other lights up with admiration at the pure crystal water-goblet, so thin that a touch would almost shiver it, the graceful stem rising as if to hold the cup of a flower. And the attendant knows this at once, and thus saves herself and her customer time and patience. Yet this tact is essentially a feminine quality, cultivated by patient observation and a long experience.

"Save the bookkeepers, perched upon their high stools, and the proprietors of the establishment, there seem to be only women in attendance," you say, as we resume our seats in the carriage, while Mrs. Jenkins "hands in" the tumblers she has matched, the fruit-dish she has coveted so long for her dessert-service, and a tea-set in miniature for the nursery doll-house.

"Oh no," she returns. "I suppose it seemed strange to you; but I never think of it, except to say how nice it is. I am always in a fever when I see a man handling china; men. are so awkward! A waiter man will break twice as much in a year as a girl, if you ever noticed it.-(No, not there, boy; put those plates on to the front seat-here, by me. Now hand up the rest.)-As I was saying, girls handle things so much more carefully-(Levy's, John) and then I hate to have a man following me about the store, as if I didn't know what I wanted to see. A woman knows when to hold her tongue sometimes; but, if a man talks at all, he talks you to death, and, if not, he 's so sulky that you hate to ask him to show you anything."

"That's just what I should feel in being waited on by women," you modestly suggest. "I don't like to have one of my own sex feel as if they were inferior to me, especially such ladylike-looking girls. I never saw women who seemed better bred, not even in visiting."

"And so it is"-for our active little lady seems to have had a large share of good sense and right feeling" they are well bred; and so you see none of that cringing servility I so hate in a shopman, or the rudeness that is equally disagreeable. Such a woman never could feel herself your inferior, when she is quietly attending to her business to the best of her capacity; nor is she, my dear madam."

"I grant the latter, and own it troubled me to see such ladylike-looking girls exposed to such public observation, and perhaps impertinence. It does not seem to me a woman's place to come so in open contact with all kinds of people"-for you have been brought up carefully in the seclusion of home yourself, and are thoroughly opposed to female president-making, or having ships of the line called "Women-of-war," as some of your sex will doubtless soon petition.

"It would seem so, perhaps," Mrs. Jenkins an

swers, thoughtfully, consulting her list to see what comes next in order. "But think of it for a mo. ment. What woman ever trifles with a shopman, or allows him to bandy words with her? The same dignity of character can be, and is preserved by our shopwomen; for, in Philadelphia, more than half our stores are managed by them. Some are very beautiful, too, and as well dressed as you or I. Wait till we get to Levy's, and all along from there up to Tenth and Chestnut, in every fashionable shop. They have an opportunity to purchase their dress cheaply, and time and good taste to make it up. Besides, they are in the very centre of fashion, and it would be strange if they did not avail themselves of it."

And this reminds us of a Southern gentleman introduced to us in travelling last summer. 'Madam," he said, "Philadelphia is a beautiful place. You have some of the prettiest women there I ever saw. In your shops, I mean. I went into one, as I came on, to buy a pair of gloves; there was a splendid creature behind the counter, a perfect Juno! Such teeth! such eyes! such a figure! I'd give anything to see her on my horse Archer! She wouldn't be afraid of anything, I venture to say. I felt as if I was insulting her when I asked the price of these gloves. I felt much more like offering her my hand and heart than the gold piece I gave for them. I did not wait for change: the idea of fourpences counted out by such a creature!"

"Your friend was an enthusiast," Mrs. Jenkins says, smiling. "There is a great deal of the romance of shopkeeping, no doubt, if we only knew it, enough for a two-volume novel. It was only last winter that the head of one of our best firms married one of the young ladies who had been in the store several years. She was of a very good family, reduced in circumstances, and thus restored to comfort and affluence again; nor is this a solitary instance. But here is Levy's."

As you are well aware, this is our Stewart's, save that there is less display. The habitual customers are, as at Tyndale's, among our most fashionable people, and, of course, those who desire to be so considered are always to be seen thronging the counters. Many a woman has helped herself into Uppertendom through her purchases, and the accidental associations of Levy's and Miss Wharton's; and many another of greater pretensions has only confirmed her vulgarity by her lavish and ill-judged expenditure. It is here she has received the keenest slights from persons she would give her last new bracelet to bow to; here she has incurred the neverending displeasure of the fashionable Mrs. Jones or Thompson, by ordering a dress from the same piece, and having it made from the same pattern, while Mrs. Jones is tall and thin, and her copyist is short and rosy. But it was the demure-looking girl behind the counter who told her of Mrs. Jones's purchase, to confirm her wavering fancy; for she, shrewd

looker-on in Vienna, knew the instant effect such information would produce.

She and her friend at the next counter are well aware of the unsuccessful struggles Mrs. McAdo persists in. She saw Mrs. Jones turn her back upon the approach, and the chillingly-distant stare with which Mrs. Thompson resigned to her the silk on which her ill-breeding laid violent hands. She knows that the Thompsons are living beyond their means, and that a crash is inevitable; but that is not her affair, so long as Mrs. Thompson trims her caps with Honiton lace at five dollars a yard, and she is instructed to trust her. But think you that, for all their fine dresses and fine furniture, she would change places with either of them? No; she has taken far-reaching views into the social world from her station at Levy's counter. She knows the real value of the costly goods passing through her hands, and that she folds the rich cashmere shawl for her customers over many an aching heart, and tempts in vain a drooping spirit with those rich laces. Care, and passion, and sorrow visit the proudest homes, and hers is bright and happy, and she feels that her own industry and self-denial have helped to make it so, and that love and contentment are not to be purchased with "gold that perisheth." Ah no, the cringing, fawning neophyte, the careworn woman of fashion, might well envy her womanly independence of spirit, and the strength of her character.

Hers is a pleasant and varied employment. There is no stagnation of thought or compression of the frame. All occupations have their disadvantages, and their own share of weariness; but hers has constantly changing interest, new faces, new traits of character, never-ending incident. And here, more especially, the departments are so divided that the actual labor is very light. The book of patterns retained on the counter saves many a wearisome folding and unfolding; and, being appointed to one style of goods, she necessarily understands exactly what is required of her. In the dull season, there is plenty of time for chat; and vacations of a day, or a week, are at her own discretion. There is many a bright and agreeable face in the twenty or thirty girls who line the long counters, aided, as Mrs. Jenkins had before suggested, by neat and tasteful dress.

"And what is the salary?" you inquire, as we leave the store, partially converted to the new "nation of shopkeepers." "Can they afford to look as nicely as they do? or are they obliged to spend all taeir earnings in keeping up appearances ?"

"I asked once myself," replies our friend, busily bestowing packages, so that they may not be polking backwards and forwards with the motion of the carriage. "None of them receive under four dollars a week, and some have seven or eight, according to their experience or real usefulness. I can remember some of the faces at Levy's for years, and, of

course, they must be well paid. Now confess that you don't see anything in the least unwomanly in the occupation; though I don't go quite so far as Mr. who dined with us last Thursday. He has looked into these matters considerably, and proposes a petition for a law to send all men who are found behind a counter of dry-goods to the penitentiary! Though I declare it would be a good thing to go in force all over the country, until they bestirred themselves to find other things for women to do. There wouldn't be half the want, or sin either, in the world, if there was a wider scope for the employment of active, intelligent females.

"For," she continues, quite entering into the spirit of the subject, "just see how many young girls are growing up dependent on their brothers or fathers, and wasting their own time, or making foolish, unhappy matches, when they might much better be usefully employed. And look at the widows, worn down by dependence and grudging charity, seeing their children neglected or ill used, when their hearts are aching to do something for themselves, and to make a home for these helpless little ones. If I was a widow, I'd soon find something to do, you may depend."

"But there is always plain sewing," you suggest, readily.

"Do you know what women get for plain sewing?" Mrs. Jenkins abruptly asks; "because I have had occasion to know something about that, too. I can give you, almost word for word, the answer of a dealer in wholesale clothing, who had been twenty years in the business. I went accidentally to his shop to make an inquiry, and it occurred to me to ask if he could give employment to some poor woman was just then interested in.

"We give the highest prices, ma'am, and calculate to have all our work well done. Now we have given as high as eighty-seven cents a piece for fine

shirts.'

"Eighty-seven cents! Why, I always pay a dollar and a quarter.'

"Oh, we couldn't stand that no way, ma'am. It wouldn't pay at all. Why, in these cheap clothing stores, none of 'em give over a levy and three fips, and ten cents for Canton flannel. We don't pay a great deal on that; but these are mostly made by old women, who can't see so very well, and don't depend on it for a living, so they can afford to work cheap.'

"But a woman who does depend on her needle, how much can she make?'

"Why, a right steady hand can earn as high as

two, and two and a half, and three dollars, by sitting to it all the time. A vest-maker can do that, if she 's good at button-holes. You see, I just cut out half a dozen satin vests at once, and give them. A pantaloons-maker can't do so well, unless she has customer work, or is uncommonly smart. Some don't make over a dollar, or a dollar and a half, if they don't bring in good work. You see, they don't stay long enough at their trade to learn. They can't afford to pay their board, and so they don't stay more than three months before they must begin to earn for themselves. That makes a great many bad hands. I pity the poor things, and get along with them the best I can. Sometimes I try to show them myself; but I have to turn them off at last; though, I must say, it goes rather hard,' said the worthy man, 'because I know half the time they haven't got money to pay their board, and dear knows what becomes of them! And those that do well, you see, they have to sit so steady to make their three dollars, and then their board has to come out of that, and they don't have much light or good air, and they mostly get sick, and just live along.'

"That's almost word for word what he told me, and, I declare, it gave me such a heartache I could not enjoy my own comforts. He was, no doubt, a liberal and humane employer. Think how many are a great deal worse off. I've no patience with people who are everlastingly preaching up the needle. If the sword has its thousand victims, the needle has its ten thousands, small and inoffensive as it seems, because we women know how intolerably irksome the unvaried labor must be. I like sewing, and should not know what to do with myself often without it; but to sew only one morning without stopping always gives me a pain in my

side."

We all can certainly testify to the truth of this. "Some of my Sunday-school girls," continues the good woman, whom we have never before suspected of knowing anything more of social economy than appertained to the management of her own household, "when I used to teach-that was the first I ever thought about the matter: they were quite large girls: I had a kind of Bible class; and nearly all earned their own living. It was very easy for me to go round in my silk dress and white kid gloves, and preach up self-denial and industry to them, out of our Sunday's lesson, and they practising it all the time, in those little dark filthy alleys, swarming with pigs and children. One of them sewed straw bonnets; no wonder they can sell them so cheap, when they only give ten cents apiece for them!-others worked in crowded milliner shops from Monday morning till Saturday night, for a dollar and a half, mixing with good and bad-the Monday's talk with their comrades undoing all the good of Sunday's lessons. I soon found that out. A young girl could hardly have a worse moral atmosphere than one of those work-rooms; they themselves, and their mo

thers, have told me so many a time. I always had a heart-ache while I taught those girls: it was the first thing that made me think of what a woman ought to be, or might be, in the way of influencing society-her own sex in particular-without any public gatherings, or speech-makings either."

Mrs. Jenkins has certainly spoken very energetically in all those intervals of our shopping in Second street, where we have still been waited upon by our own sex as well as though the hands that displayed the ribbons and muslins had been twice as large and coarse; and now we are driven to Eighth Street, to be fitted for a pair of gaiters-still by a womanand here the comfort and propriety are self-evident; there is no need of soiling your own gloves, or ruffling your temper in bending over a refractory lacing.

Eighth Street is the paradise of cheap shopping, as we all know; but it is remarkable for one other feature: so many of these little stores are not only kept, but owned by women, many of whom have accumulated a sufficient sum to retire upon comfortably, when they shall choose. This we are told from the lips of one of them, a bright, tidy little body, who shakes back her black curls, and snips a little bit of paper with her scissors as she talks.

"You have been here some time, Mrs. White," says Mrs. Jenkins, choosing a sacque for her youngest boy.

"Yes, ma'am; eight years now. I came when there were very few stores along in this square, and I have made my own business, as you may say, and a great deal for other people. I've been a widow now fifteen years," (she scarcely looks old enough for this, so round, so comely are her face and figure,) "and I was left without anything; and now I've got enough to live on the rest of my days, if I choose; but I know I couldn't be satisfied to sit still, after such an active life. I bought my goods myself, and sewed, and 'tended the shop, and saved, and I knew all I was making was for myself. My rent was always ready when rent-day came, and I never had to ask the favor of security from anybody, though this house and store is seven hundred a year. Please God, I'm quite independent now." And yet withal she is as womanly a little body as one could wish to

see.

But we must not neglect to sketch the three sisters that we find next door, dispensing their pins and tapes, and polite sayings over their little counter. Mrs. Jenkins commends them to our especial notice; but this is not necessary, we have made their acquaintance before. They are always dressed precisely alike, it seems to us, in subdued half mourning black dresses and lead-colored ribbons, and each with a mourning brooch, their only ornament. We cannot tell them apart yet, although it is three years since we first chanced to notice the neat shop windows, with their collars and cuffs, and ribbons, and such beautifully shaped combs and

brushes. They are all tall, with full fine figures, appear to be the same age, or certainly very near it. They have kindly dark eyes, and black hair neatly arranged, and speak in a soft, measured voice; they seem to have one voice as well as one mind. Many an errand we have made there, for a moment's glance at so much quiet goodness and content.

"Pins, Miss?" Perhaps our feminine vanity is conciliated by this, for they have never recognized our claim to the dignity of madamship. "Which sort, if you please? Oh, English pins; quite small, I recollect; they do not tear one's collars so, and though they cost a little more, are better in the end. Lovely day, Miss; quite cool after the shower yesterday. Yes, ten cents for those; this size are a levy. Was there anything else? Combs? I suppose you would like them well finished. Sister, will you be so good as to show this young lady some tucking combs? At the other counter, Miss ;" and we turn to the other counter to find the ditto of the first speaker, in appearance, voice, and manner.

"Wore your last comb two years? That's the fault of our goods, though," (with a low mellow laugh;) "all our customers say so; they last too long for our profit. But then we always have the best, as you say the best is the cheapest in the end. Yes, Miss, that's a beautiful pattern; we had a great deal of trouble to get it again. The street is quite lively this morning. A great many people are out of town though. This one, did you say? Eighty-seven cents, if you please. We would just as soon change a five dollar piece as not. Thank you, Miss; sometimes we have a heavy payment to make, and it is all the better. This is the change, I believe; all but five cents. I'm sorry to keep you waiting. Sister, could you give this young lady five cents? Good morning; good morning, Miss." And both sisters bow and smile as pleasantly as if we had expended ten dollars instead of one.

We have often longed to know something of their history, there is such an air of placid content and innate refinement about them and their little shop; their very ribbons rustle, with an old-style gentility, as they are folded and unfolded in their soft white hands.

And now the carriage rolls beyond what we have always considered the business part of the town, down Tenth Street, to a range of low frame houses, each with its narrow window of cheap muslins, and tawdry ornaments; shops, as the author of the "Charcoal Sketches" has said, "which bring a sensation of dreariness over the mind, and which cause a sinking of the heart, before you have time to ask why you are saddened; frail and feeble barriers they seem against penury and famine, to yield at the first approach of the gaunt enemy. Look at one of them closely. There is no aspect of business about it; it compels you to think of distraining for rent, of broken hearts, of sickness, suffering, and death.

"It is a shop, moreover, we have all seen the like,

with a bell to it, which rings out an announcement as we open the door, that few and far between there has been an arrival in the way of a customer, though it may be that the bell, with all its untuned sharpness, fails to triumph over the din of domestic affairs in the little dark room, that serves for parlor, and kitchen, and hall, and proves unavailing to spread the news against the turbulent clamor of noisy children. The owner is one of those women you may recognize in the street by their look of premature age, anxious, hollow-eyed, and worn to shadows. There is a whole history in every line of their faces, which tells of unceasing trouble; and their hard quick movement, as they press onward, regardless of all that begirts their way, indicates those who have no thoughts to spare, from their own immediate necessities, for comment on the gay flaunting world. Little does ostentation know, as it flashes by in satined arrogance and jeweled pride, of the sorrow it may jostle from its path; and perhaps it is happy for us, as we move along in smiles and pleasantries, not to comprehend that the glance which meets our own comes from the bleakness of a withered heart, withered by penury's unceasing presence."

Ay, it is too true a picture to spare one tint, one shade of the sombre coloring, for such is the worn face that tries to smile-such a wintry gleam!-as we are welcomed, though there is scarcely room to stand, outside the narrow empty counter. And why has industry failed in its reward? "It is those fairs," the woman tells us-speaking bitterly, poor soul! and what wonder?-"that kills all our business. Some ladies won't pay a fair price when they can get things there so much less, and even think they are giving to charity besides. It's poor charity, to my thinking, ma'am, that takes the bread out of our mouths, and works our hands to the bone. And then they come here, and bring their work, and we must do it for next to nothing, because we can't starve, and they know it. Some ladies don't seem to have no conscience, ma'am."

But Mrs. Jenkins is not of these; she has come far out of her way to give out this bundle of plain sewing, and she will pay a fair price for it, too. I know it won't be done quite so well," she says to us confidentially, "but it will wear quite as long, and nobody will look at the stitches. That poor soul used to sew beautifully when she was first a widow, but she set up a little shop for muslins and trimmings, as you see, and sunk all she had, because ladies will buy where they can get things under price, without looking at the justice of the thing. Now she has to slight her work; but I never say a word. I see just how things go."

Reader, thus far we have spoken under the guise of a pleasant morning's talk; but we have given you no fancy sketches. What we have related are studies in a life school, vouched for by our own actual

experience and observation; and yet the task we have set for ourselves seems so feebly executed that we could almost lay down our pen despairingly, when we think of the hundreds of our own sex, every where around us, wasting life and energy in idleness, or ill-paid and wasting labor. And we have our own share in the wrong-those of us, at least, who allow the weakness or poverty of our sisters to minister to our own luxury and Selfishness. "The "laborer is not unworthy of her hire ;" and when, by trifling self-denial of ostentatious luxuries, the needlewoman has her just and equitable compense, hers will cease to be the wearisome and dreaded task it has now become. But this cannot be so long as

it is the only avenue open to our sex. It is a principle of our social economy that the price shall be equal to the demand; and where so many are forced into competition, justice cannot be rendered. But we have said what we could, with deep and earnest feeling, and must leave, for a time, a subject so full of interest to us all, believing, with Frederika Bremer, that

"He who points out a new field for the employment of female industry ought to be regarded as a public benefactor; and any means by which such a field becomes accessible to woman recommends itself to society as an important agent in the civilization of the future."

In casting our eyes over the earth, our attention is first arrested by the great variety of scenery, and the different degrees of fertility that characterize its surface. The contrasts are remarkable and striking. In the polar regions, we have an aspect of perpetual desolation; while, in tropical countries, sunshine and verdure everywhere greet our eyes. The poet of the "Seasons" thus describes the former regions

"For relentless months, continual night
Holds o'er the glittering waste her starry reign.
There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barred by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Naught around
Strikes his sad eye but deserts lost in snow,
And heavy loaded groves; and solid floods
That stretch athwart the solitary waste,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main."

Such is a truthful and beautiful description of those regions of the earth roamed by the Laplander, the Siberian, the northern Russian, and Greenlander.

Now let us turn to the shores of the Mediterranean, and the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, and refresh our vision among the scenes celebrated in classic verse. Here, the mantle of snow gives place to robes of green, decorated with Nature's most gorgeous colors; here, the rivers and brooks flow unfettered and free along their courses; here, all is radiant with light, where bird and beast find a congenial home, and mankind, sympathizing with the scenes around them, exult in universal happiness. The same contrasts may be observed in a single country, as in Switzerland, or in two contiguous countries, as in England and Scotland. In the former case, one part of the population live " bowered in vales where the happy Grisons dwell;" while another part "force the stubborn soil" of the mountain for bread: one part are shepherds repos

em

ing in the grateful climate of the valleys, while another part are clad in furs, and shod with snowshoes, adapted to their cold, bleak, mountain home. Equally diversified are the scenes of the two contiguous countries referred to, but too familiar to need a description. 7

We may consider the various aspects of the earth as so many changes in the countenance of great Nature, with which we are affected as with the smiles and tears, joys and sorrows of a dear friend. In her mountains and hills, she assumes the pomp and majesty of a king, aweing us into silence and admiration; from the beetling cliff, rugged and bar. ren in its aspect, she frowns upon us with the eye of a despot, sending a thrill of horror through all our frame; along the sunny vale, she assumes a sprightly air, her eyes beaming joy, and her face wrinkled with laughter; on the quiet lake, embowered among hills, a placid, serene smile sits upon her countenance, tranquillizing our thoughts and hushing our passions into peace. Again, we behold her in the heaving and swelling ocean, when the tempest goes forth upon its bosom, agitated, as it were, by some monster passion, foaming with rage and uttering a wrathful voice; and anon she sits on the desert, desolate and sad, with the dishevelled lock, the weeping eye, and accent of woe.

These remarks have been made with a view to introduce the question as to how far human character is modified and moulded by the aspects of external nature. Without intending a full discussion of the subject, we shall produce a few illustrations showing this influence to be undoubtedly great. In reference to English character, a favorite poet thus writes:

"They take, perhaps, a well-directed aim,
Who seek it in his climate and his frame.
Liberal in all things else, yet Nature here,
With stern severity, deals out the year.