Amiable and useful

I'm going to pin this up in our kitchen. Dolores will really appreciate it.

"The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hour's work for a servant woman, or a tradesman's or farmer's wife. There is no heavy work — no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the business, otherwise I would not recommend it to be performed by the women, who, though so amiable in themselves, are never quite so amiable as when they are useful; and as to beauty, though men may fall in love with girls at play, there is nothing to make them stand to their love like seeing them at work. In conclusion of these remarks on beer brewing, I once more express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax on malt, which, I verily believe, has done more harm to the people of England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine, and civil war."
"Cottage Economy" by William Cobbett, 1824, page 33.