TTE BRONTE

'WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND.

'DEAR CHARLOTTE,--I have set up shop! I am delighted with it as a
whole--that is, it is as pleasant or as little disagreeable as you
can expect an employment to be that you earn your living by. The
best of it is that your labour has some return, and you are not
forced to work on hopelessly without result. _Du reste_, it is very
odd. I keep looking at myself with one eye while I'm using the
other, and I sometimes find myself in very queer positions.
Yesterday I went along the shore past the wharfes and several
warehouses on a street where I had never been before during all the
five years I have been in Wellington. I opened the door of a long
place filled with packages, with passages up the middle, and a row of
high windows on one side. At the far end of the room a man was
writing at a desk beneath a window. I walked all the length of the
room very slowly, for what I had come for had completely gone out of
my head. Fortunately the man never heard me until I had recollected
it. Then he got up, and I asked him for some stone-blue, saltpetre,
tea, pickles, salt, etc. He was very civil. I bought some things
and asked for a note of them. He went to his desk again; I looked at
some newspapers lying near. On the top was a circular from Smith &
Elder containing notices of the most important new works. The first
and longest was given to _Shirley_, a book I had seen mentioned in
the _Manchester Examiner_ as written by Currer Bell. I blushed all
over. The man got up, folding the note. I pulled it out of his hand
and set off to the door, looking odder than ever, for a partner had
come in and was watching. The clerk said something about sending
them, and I said something too--I hope it was not very silly--and
took my departure.

'I have seen some extracts from _Shirley_ in which you talk of women
working. And this first duty, this great necessity, you seem to
think that some women may indulge in, if they give up marriage, and
don't make themselves too disagreeable to the other sex. You are a
coward and a traitor. A woman who works is by that alone better than
one who does not; and a woman who does not happen to be rich and who
_still_ earns no money and does not wish to do so, is guilty of a