THERE is one class of laborers who never strike and seldom complain. They get up at five o’clock in the morning, and do not go back to bed until ten or eleven o’clock at night. They work without ceasing the whole of the time, and receive no other emolument than food and the plainest clothing. They understand something of every branch of economy and labor, from finance to cooking. Though harassed by a hundred responsibilities, though driven and worried, though reproached and looked down upon, they never revolt; and they cannot organize for their own protection. Not even sickness releases them from their posts. No sacrifice is deemed too great for them to make, and no incompetency in any branch of their work is excused. No essays or books or poems are written in tribute to their steadfastness. They die in the harness, and are supplanted as quickly as may be. These are the housekeeping wives of the laboring men. If these women had the time to rest which their husbands spend in dramshops and dissipation, and if they had the money to spend which their husbands squander on liquor and tobacco, they would brighten their homes with comfort and sunshine, rear their children in respectability, and cause life’s desert to rejoice and blossom like the garden of the Lord.—Selected.