s a very common feeling that it is unbecoming in one of
my sex to address one of your own with whom she is unacquainted, unless
she has some special claim upon his attention. I am by no means disposed
to concede to the vulgar prejudice on this point. If one human being has
anything to communicate to another,--anything which deserves being
communicated,--I see no occasion for bringing in the question of sex. I
do not think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the male sex as
its private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,

I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of healing.
If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving my whole powers
to the service of humanity. And if I should carry out that idea, should
I refuse my care and skill to a suffering fellow-mortal because that
mortal happened to be a brother, and not a sister? My whole nature
protests against such one-sided humanity! No! I am blind to all
distinctions when my eyes are opened to any form of suffering, to any
spectacle of want.

You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of, and
to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive. It is
because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to
you,--that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our
meetings. I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this as a
compliment to that paper. I am not bandying compliments now, but
thinking of better things than praises or phrases. I was interested in
the paper, partly because I recognized some of the feelings expressed in
it as my own,--partly because there was an undertone of sadness in all
the voices of nature as you echoed them which made me sad to hear, and
which I could not help longing to cheer and enliven. I said to myself, I
should like to hold communion with the writer of that paper. I have had
my lonely hours and days, as he has had. I have had some of his
experiences in my intercourse with nature. And oh! if I could draw him
into those better human relations which await us all, if we come with the
right dispositions, I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I
violated any conventional rule or not.

You will understand me, I feel sure. You believe, do you not? in the
insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the
brotherhood of mankind. You believe, do you not? that they should be
educated side by side, that the