sists in mistaken judgment, not in being possessed of aspiration. The feeling that prompts one to seek and cling to what is felt to be good and elevating is one that distinguishes civilized beings from savages. Better a people feverish with hope and faith, willing to endure present ill for future benefit,—not always practical in the ordinary sense,—than a people whose wants are all immediate and for the direct benefit of the individual self; better, also, that material good should occasionally be discounted in favor of that good which cannot be eaten like pottage or reckoned in dollars and cents.
And, after all, in what is the poor daughter of America, with her scorn of personal comforts purchased by servility and loss of individual freedom, different from her brother the working-man? He prefers hardship to luxury when the latter costs him the best attributes of his manhood, and with axe in hand seeks the frontier, leaving to foreigners the easy occupations of coachman and butler. Had he been content to be sleek and well-fed,—a dependant at some rich man's house,—where would have been our wealth-breeding mines, grain-planted prairies, and reaches of railroad? Surely those who deprecate the "silly pride" which determines the American girl's aversion to domestic service are, Esau-like, permitting the wants of to-day to blind them to the needs of the morrow, forgetting that what the individual loses in personal comfort through voluntary sacrifice goes to the strengthening and dignifying of the national life and character.
If American labor did not seek the lines of employment offering the greatest number of possibilities for social advancement, as it does, instead of those offering the highest immediate remuneration, as many contend it should, I hold that the prospect of a high future civilization for us would not be promising. The degree of culture that characterizes a people is proportionate to the intensity and duration of the struggle which developed that culture. Let it be borne in mind also that in the elevation of society the efforts of the weaker as well as the achievements of the stronger stimulate general exertion: hence any falling back or yielding of aspiration in the lower ranks must weaken the tension of effort and tend to hasten a condition of comparative fixity. The servant-girl problem may, therefore, be said to be the nucleus of the great class problem which sooner or later will work out its own solution; for the pressure and final settling that will give us our own countrywomen for domestic servants will assuredly stratify society from top to bottom.
But let us not suppose that because of this inevitable settling of our social foundations an aristocracy such as is known in Europe is about to be developed on our Western continent. The national demo-
