Year: 1872

Writing from Boston, correspondent relates the story of such mutations in life as may be considered characteristic of American experience. In 1865 there came to the metropolis of New England, from Penobscot, in Maine, young or phan girl, who, after vainly striving to maintain herself comfortably at home by school teaching, had decided to essay the fortunes of 8 factory girl in larger city. Entering the hoop-skirt manufac- tory of private firm in Boston, she devoted all her energies to mastery of the business, that her confinement to mere drudgery might not be long pro- tracted, and this to such effect that in a years time she was promoted to the position of saleswoman.

 In two years her superior mental ca pacity and practical tact made her the chief saleswoman of the establishment, and through this last position she was brought to the acquaintance of certain rich, California merchant, buying goods for his store in San Francisco. The acquaintance matured into a mutual regard of graver nature. The girl, well as she was doing, had woman's natural yearning for woman's domestic kingdom, and when the Californian closed his business account for the time by asking the saleswoman to go back to San Francisco with him as his wife she yielded graceful assent After quiet wedding the two departed together for the Pacific coast, where the ensuing four years were passed in all the harmony and prosperity requisite for the smooth est DrOoreSS Of married life

 The wife now of rich man, and the possessor of abilities and personal come iness to grace high social station, the former factory girl assumed command ing position in the society of her new aristocratic taste and fashion. After four years the Americanism of her des. tiny found tragic demonstration. Some months ago her husband was tempted into one of those extravagant mining speculations which are the bane of Cali fornia, and entered too deep to be able to withdraw before the collapse and crush.

 In few hours of sinking values he was dragged down from wealth to pov- erty, and revenged himself upon fortune by committing suicide. The sound of the fatal pistol shot awoke the bereaved wife from her four years dream of hap piness and plenty to the old reality of her girlish homeliness and want The expenses of the self destroyer's burial left her with barely enough remaining from recent wealth to secure her return to Boston, where she is once more work ing for livelihood as though the Cali fornia episode had never blighted her existence.

 FEMALE FARM LABoRERs.- a story aoout @ brawny woman running a farn-building the fences, blowing the fields, driving the reaper, picking the stones, and all that-as some fellow did concerning 8 female landowner, near Canandaigua Lake, last year-and it goes the rounds of the whole American press half the editors applauding the Amazon for her independence, industry and thrift. Hardly one stops to ask if it is womanly, or proper or civilized even. One would also conclude that mankind would prefer to have the female portion of the population do all the hewing of wood and drawing of water. But it should be remembered that such perfor- mances on the part of the females are only croppings out of barbarism that only portion of the world has even yet emerged from. England has plenty of it left in the agricultural districts, and it is not unknown in the manufacturing counties. A late writer in the London Telegraph describes trip to Stafford shire, where the women work at the blacksmith's forge as long and as hard as the men. He says it is not uncommon to find mother and her three lusty daughters fully of marriageable age, stripped to their stays, and, with ker- chief over their shoulders, yielding the hammer and tugging at the bellows, making twelve hundred nails for twelve pence, and working from eight in the morning till twelve at night. At Lye Waste whole streets are made up of these smithies, in which these women and their children toll, year in and year out, beside their husbands and brothers. They have about as much refinement and intelligence as Digger Indian. Let our women take to the blow and hoe, and we shall soon have districts in which they would rival these muscular females of the Straffordshire smithics. We are disgusted with this talk about women farmers. Let our girls take all the prizes at our universities drive all the men from the rostrum, run our banking and brokerage, keep our shops, become governors and presidents, vote and be happy according to their capabilities but deliver us from female blacksmiths and farm 1aborers. If man is not fitted for this work, we don't know what his particular sphere can be,