whooping-cough in the adjoining apartment.  Let him see the tray of crockery and the cook fall down stairs, and nothing saved but the pieces.  Let the pump give out on a wash-day, and the stove pipe, when too hot for handling, get dislocated.  Let the pudding come out of the stove stiff as a poker.  Let the gossiping gabbler of next door come in and tell all the disagreeable things that neighbors have been saying.  Let the lungs be worn out by staying indoors without fresh air, and the needle be threaded with nerves exhausted.  After one week’s household annoyances, he would conclude that Wall street is heaven and the clatter of the Stock Exchange rich as Beethoven’s symphony.

We think Mary of Bethany a little to blame for not helping Martha get the dinner.  If women sympathize with men in the troubles of store and field, let the men also sympathize with the women in the troubles of housekeeping.  Many a housewife has died of her annoyances.  A bar of soap may become a murderous weapon.  The poor cooking stove has sometimes been the slow fire on which the wife has been roasted.  In the day when Latimer and Ridley are honored before the universe as the martyrs of the fire, we do not think the Lord will forget the long line of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters who have been the martyrs of the kitchen.

Accompanying masculine criticism of woman’s temper goes the popular criticism of woman’s dress.

A convention has recently been held in Vineland, attended by the women who are opposed to extravagance in dress.  They propose, not only by formal resolution, but by personal example, to teach the world lessons of economy by wearing less adornment and dragging fewer yards of silk.

We wish them all success, although we would have more confidence in the movement if so many of the delegates had not worn bloomer dress.  Moses makes war upon that style of apparel in Deuteronomy xxii. 5:  “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto man.”  Nevertheless we favor every effort to stop the extravagant use of dry goods and millinery.

We have, however, no sympathy with the implication that women are worse than men in this respect.  Men wear all they can without interfering with their locomotion, but man is such an awkward creature he cannot find any place on his body to hang a great many fineries.  He could not get round in Wall street with eight or ten flounces, and a big-handled parasol, and a mountain of back hair.  Men wear less than women, not because they are more moral, but because they cannot stand it.  As it is, many of our young men are padded to a superlative degree, and have corns and bunions on every separate toe from wearing shoes too tight.