Women’s Drudgery.—Why should all the washing, cooking, and sewing of each household be done by its women? We have laundries, ready-made clothing, and bakeries, and now it is proposed in Boston to furnish a complete supply of ready-cooked food. This can be done cheaper than families can supply themselves, if we leave out the American propensity to speculate in exorbitant profits.

Christian Civilization.—Wong Chin Foo may boast of the superiority of heathenism as long as pauperism shows itself to be a vast ulcer, as in the following despatch from London:

“Pauperism is on the increase in the metropolis. Last week relief was given to 53,164 indoor, and 35,110 outdoor paupers. The total shows an increase of 2011 over the corresponding week last year. Trafalgar Square pavement is half covered nightly with houseless vagrants, and church steps, benches, and doorways in nearly all parts of London have their complements of destitute people after midnight. Many resort to the parks in the daytime to obtain on the grass the sleep which they are unable to get on the stones by night, and begging cannot be suppressed by the police.”

Walt Whitman, the odd and original American poet, enjoys in his declining years and feeble health the admiration of a large number of literary friends, who are to build him a beautiful little cottage. His special admirers regard him as the greatest of American poets, and he has equally warm admirers among the foreign literati. A Walt Whitman club is to be established in his honor at Philadelphia. Yet it is not long since Mr. Whitman was made the target of the “prurient prudes,” who carry on the Comstockian movement of the Vice Society, and was ordered to expunge some of his writings. Mr. Whitman defied them, and his literary prestige has sustained him; but Mrs. Elmina Drake Slenker, of Western Virginia, a woman of humble surroundings, has been pounced upon, arrested, and placed on trial for discussing in private correspondence physiological questions in reproduction which might have been discussed by physicians in medical journals with impunity. Her friends regard this as an outrage, considering her exemplary character and philanthropic motives. The Congressional law under which the prosecution of Mrs. Slenker has been instituted, is a specimen of hasty legislation, rushed through in the last hours of the 42d session, more than one-half of all the acts being passed on the last day and night amid the most disgraceful confusion and uproar.

A well-educated community will learn that the charge of obscenity in such cases expresses a quality which belongs neither to nature nor art, but to the foul minds in which such ideas rise. This was illustrated by an intelligent judge in Maine. The Health Monthly says:

“Recently in Portland an art dealer was arrested for exhibiting immoral pictures in his window. Mr. Stubbs, the artist, gathered up samples of all the pictures that he had exhibited in his windows and took them with him into court. He placed them about the court room on chairs and benches. They were copies of masterpieces of the Paris Salon of well-known subjects, and such as are familiar to all art critics. As Judge Gould looked about him and saw these pictures he thought it unnecessary to take testimony, but descending from his desk he made a pilgrimage of the room, carefully inspecting each picture. He exhibited much appreciation, and after examining the last one, he complimented the taste of the art dealer and dismissed the case. A sensible judge.”

This “prurient prudery” of the vulgar mind was once strongly exhibited in Baltimore. The millionaire Winans had imported from abroad quite a number of classical statues, which he erected in the beautiful grounds around his palatial residence. The ignorant vulgarity of the neighborhood made such a clamor against his statuary as to excite his indignation and contempt. He built a wall about his grounds fifteen feet high, to exclude the vulgar gaze. The City Council being thoroughly ashamed of the circumstances as a discredit to the city, passed a resolution requesting him to take down the wall, but Mr. W. had been too profoundly disgusted with the vulgarity of the people, and refused to remove it.

Temperance.—“For the first time in the history of Iowa, Fort Madison Penitentiary is short of a sufficient number of convicts to enable it to fill contracts made upon the basis of the usual supply. This and many similar instances go to prove that prohibition does decrease crime.”

Hon. W. D. Kelley, the oldest member of Congress, argues that the whiskey tax of ninety cents a gallon ought to be taken off because it amounts to little more than half a cent a drink, and therefore does not discourage intemperance. Temperance men would think this was an argument for increasing the tax. The best temperance measure would be to send every drunkard to a reformatory prison.