“ Pray, Mistress Mouse, are you within?” --But as no amount of spinning saved that excellent matron from the terrible cat, so Harriet Martineau and other literary women might be as good housekeepers as they pleased without clearing themselves from reproach. Indeed, it is rather pathetic to notice how the pioneer women authors in America, such as Mrs. Child and Miss Leslie, endeavored to disarm public judgment by printing some “Frugal Housewife” or “Seventy-five Receipts” before showing their heads as writers. Even now the practice is not discontinued, and Marion Harland, with all her wide popularity, has to wind up with a practical work on “Breakfast, dinner, and Supper” to demonstrate that, though an author, she still has the virtues of her sex; We have not yet — outgrown that profound
Heigho! says Rowley.
“Oh yes, kind sir; I'm sitting to spin ” --
With a Rowley, Powley, etc.
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the eager desire of men, especially the mediocre ones, that women should remain invisible.
It was the Latin epitaph upon the model woman that she stayed at home and spun--Domum servavit, lanam fecit. It is a motto which Mr. Newell, the scientific explorer of nursery rhymes, would perhaps find preserved in Mrs. Mouse's answer to the “frog who would a-wooing go :”
Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square, New York. 1888.
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