Though we did not realize the success we hoped for by making the dress popular, yet the effort was not lost.  We were well aware that the dress was not artistic, and though we made many changes, our own good taste was never satisfied until we threw aside the loose trousers and adopted buttoned leggins.  After giving up the experiment, we found that the costume in which Diana the Huntress is represented, and that worn on the stage by Ellen Tree in the play of “Ion,” would have been more artistic and convenient.  But we, who had made the experiment, were too happy to move about unnoticed and unknown, to risk, again, the happiness of ourselves and our friends by any further experiments.  I have never wondered since that the Chinese women allow their daughters’ feet to be encased in iron shoes, nor that the Hindoo widows walk calmly to the funeral pyre; for great are the penalties of those who dare resist the behests of the tyrant Custom.

Nevertheless the agitation has been kept up, in a mild form, both in England and America.  Lady Harberton, in 1885, was at the head of an organized movement in London to introduce the bifurcated skirt; Mrs. Jenness Miller, in this country, is making an entire revolution in every garment that belongs to a woman’s toilet; and common-sense shoemakers have vouchsafed to us, at last, a low, square heel to our boots and a broad sole in which the five toes can spread themselves at pleasure.  Evidently a new day of physical freedom is at last dawning for the most cribbed and crippled of Eve’s unhappy daughters.

It was while living in Seneca Falls, and at one of the most despairing periods of my young life, that one of the best gifts of the gods came to me in the form of a good, faithful housekeeper.  She was indeed a treasure, a friend and comforter, a second mother to my children, and understood all life’s duties and gladly bore its burdens.  She could fill any department in domestic life, and for thirty years was the joy of our household.  But for this noble, self-sacrificing woman, much of my public work would have been quite impossible.  If by word or deed I have made the journey of life easier for any struggling soul, I must in justice share the meed of praise accorded me with my little Quaker friend Amelia Willard.

There are two classes of housekeepers—­one that will get what they want, if in the range of human possibilities, and then accept the inevitable inconveniences with cheerfulness and heroism; the other, from a kind of chronic inertia and a fear of taking responsibility, accept everything as they find it, though with gentle, continuous complainings.  The latter are called amiable women.  Such a woman was our congressman’s wife in 1854, and, as I was the reservoir of all her sorrows, great and small, I became very weary of her amiable non-resistance.  Among other domestic trials, she had a kitchen stove that smoked and leaked, which could neither bake nor broil,—­a worthless thing,—­and too small for any purpose.  Consequently half their viands were spoiled in the cooking, and the cooks left in disgust, one after another.