LETTER XXX.

From Miss Jane.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE, POTATOES AND POSTSCRIPTS.

MR. ARCHITECT:  Dear Sir,—­After so long an indirect acquaintance through our mutual friends, it is quite time we were formally introduced.  Allow me to present myself:  Sister Jane, spinster; native of New England, born to idleness, bred to school-teaching; age not reported, temperament hopeful, abilities average; possessor of a moderate competence, partly acquired, mainly inherited; greatly overestimated by a friendly few, somewhat abused as peculiar (in American idiom “funny”) by strangers; especially interested in the building of homes, and quite willing to help Mr. Fred carry out his ambitions in that direction by any suggestions I am able to make.

[Illustration:  “SISTER JANE, SPINSTER.”]

I’ve taught school, and I’ve taught music; sold goods in a store and worked in a factory; run a sewing-machine, travelled with subscription-books, and hired out to do house-work; and I solemnly aver that the only time I was conscious of genuine enthusiasm for my work, or felt that I was doing myself or others any actual good, was while keeping house.  In school I was required to teach things I knew little and cared less about, and to punish the dear children for doing precisely what I would have done myself had I been in their places, losing all the while in amiability more than was gained in mental discipline.  My experience in a factory was limited to three months.  From working with the machines and as they worked, hardly using more intelligent volition than they, I began to fancy myself becoming like them, with no more rights to be respected, no more moral responsibility, and left without even serving my notice.  Clerking I tried “just for fun.”  If all people who came to trade were like some, it would be the pleasantest, easiest work imaginable; if all were like others, the veriest torment.  It was an excellent place to study human nature, but made me somewhat cynical.  My sewing-machine had fits and gave me a back-ache, so I’ve locked it up until some one invents a motive-power that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning, mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and—­if it only could—­kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing clothes, and making beds.  My book agency was undertaken for the sake of travel,—­of learning something, not only of the land we live in, but of its people and homes.  If I had gone from house to house and with malice aforethought begged an outright gift of a sum equal to my commission on each book, I should have felt more self-approval than in asking people to buy what I had not the slightest reason to suppose they wanted.

Now I’m sure you are beginning to think me one of the disagreeably strong-minded, who think the whole world has gone astray when it’s only themselves who are out of tune, but, truly, I’m not; only I don’t like to be or to feel idle and useless, nor yet to be constantly striving to do from a sense of duty what is positively distasteful.