Rae Arbuthnot [pp. 444-448]

THE LADIES' REPOSITORY.
Now we are on this subject, we must mention
the names of those who at the present day have
rendered important services to sericiculturesuch as M. Camille Beauvais, who raised silkworm rearing from the inactivity into which it
had been plunged; M. Eugene Robert, who
founded in the south of France the first successful silk-worm nursery; M. Guerin-M6neville, who has devoted his life to the study of
the same question, and to whom Europe owes
the introduction and the acclimatization of some
species whichl will render us, perhaps, one dclay
very great services; and lastly, I. Robinet,
who has elucidated several practical questions
in the art of sericiculture. In bringing to a
close this rapid historical epitome, we will state
that France consumes annually 30,ooo kilogrammes of silk-worms' eggs, each klilogramme
being at the present time worth from three
hulndrecl to five hundred fi-ancs, and even more.
The value of manufactured silkls represents
annually about 8,ooo,ooo francs; and wve find
by official statistics that France exported in
I868 silk stuffs to the value of 384,000ooo,ooo000
francs. This immense trade shows how much
silk is nowadays every-where appreciated; in
those numerous tissues called taffeta, satin, and
velvet, each of which seems to have a chlarma peculiar attraction. Thle consistency of the
stuff, the smoothness, the softness of surface,
the manner in which silkl receives colors, the
br-ighltness, fineness, power of reflecting, the
rustling, the light or heavy folds all these are
beauty, elegance, and luxury, in whatever way
these words are understood.
RAE ARBUTHNOT.
VER at the piano, in the corner of the
parlor, where the dusky shadows of that
rainy twililght gathered most heavily, Rae
Arbuthnot sat sitnging with the saddest voice
that I ever heard. Dainty Dora Travis nestled among the cushions in her favorite baywindow, and, hidden from the rest by the
heavy curtains, had given herself up to one of
the waking dreams in which she was in the
habit of losing herself, and quaint Amy Carruth, half buried in the crimson solitude of the
great arm-chair that had long ago been voted
her special retreat, sat as motionless as a small
gray kelpie in the heart of a damask rosebut whether asleep or yielding passively to the
spell of the hour, who could say?-while I,
Ruth Ward, mistress of La Retraite, the happiest wife in the world, and hostess of these
three girls, from my low rocker by the window
which overlooked the walk that led to the gate,
watched the face of the singer as it shone out,
white and pure as a star, from the shadows,
and listened to the music of her sad voice, and
for the step that was sweeter than any music to
me. These girls had been my firiends for years.
Their love had gladdened my school-life, had
smoothed the rough places in the years spent
as a teacher, and now, safely harbored in my
hlusbl)and's love and my pretty home, I liked
nothing so well as to gather them about me in
my little nest-"Ruthl's snuggery," they called
it, as they had called my room in the far-away
schlool-tiime.
They were all workers in the world, not one
of them an idler or a failure, as so man, girls
are nowadays, in spite of the great to-do about
woman's work, and woman's righlts, and woman's wrongs. I may as well tell you just here
that I have no sympathy with this vexed question of rights, and suffi-age, and social equality
of the sexes, and all that. I can not see that
the women who talk most vehemently about
elevating the sex to a broader sphere and wvidening woman's influence are thlemselves better
mothers, and wives, and women than some of
their humbler sisters whom I know, and wlhose
chlilcldr-en's rosy faces lean against their bosoms
like luscious peaches ripening against a sunny
wall. And I am quite sure that, if the wee
darling asleep in her crib there were to be left
mothlerless, I would never leave her to the tenler nursing of one of those fine lady leaders of
the movement, who, as one of their number
once saidl in my hearing, "move in a circle of
society so aristocratic that a woman of the
middle class dares not set her foot thlerein." If
they be real workers for the good of woman,
and yet are fearful lest their velvet trains and
costly laces may be soiled by contact with plebeian serge, better that the velvet went to faslhion a funeral pall for a dead aristocracy, aid
that the lace went to trim the christening robes
of a purer and truer reign of society, while
these women, asserting their real womanhlood
in plainer garb, join hands with the great middle class in working for the help of those who
are the "low-down people" of humanity-better
this, I say, than for womanhood to go clamoring for more work and more power while vast
fields lie ripe within our reach.
But I am getting off my story. As I said,
my girls were all workers. Rae was a teacher
in a seminary; Dora was an artist, making
dainty, bright pictures that were like herself in
life and coloring; and Amy was patient nurse
and skillful housekeeper to a whimsical invalid
uncle, yet managed to keep a fund of quaint
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