CHAPTER XIV.
NOT A RAG ON THEIR BACKS.
THERE are, among the many things which Mr.Smith, like other men, will _not_ understand, frequent difficulties about the children's clothing.

He seems to think that frocks and trowsers grow spontaneously; or that the dry goods, once bought and brought into the house, will resolve into the shapes desired, and fit themselves to the children's backs, like Cindarella's suit in the nursery tale.
Now, I never did claim to be a sprite; and I am not sure that the experience of all housekeepers will bear me out in the opinion that the longer a woman is married, the less she becomes like a fairy.
Stitch! stitch! stitch! Hood's Song of the Shirt, which every body has heard and admired, is certainly most eloquent and pathetic upon the sufferings and difficulties of sewing girls.

"Much yet remains unsung," particularly in regard to the ceaseless labors of women who are as rich as Cornelia in muslin-rending, habit-cloth-destroying, children's-plaid-rubbing--jewels! I am sure that the Roman matron never went shopping.

I am sure that she did not undertake to keep her own children's clothing in repair; for if she had, she could not have been ready, at a moment's warning, to put forward her troublesome charge as specimen jewels.

Do all I can, my little comforts never _are_ "fit to be seen!" Many is the weary evening that I have been occupied, past the noon of night, in repairing the wear and tear of habiliments--abridging the volume of the elder children's clothes into narrow dimensions for the next, or compiling a suit for one, out of the fringed raiment of two or three.