no proscription on account of sex. Let
talent be brought fairly into competition, and although many a
young man, as well as young woman, would sit down forever
briefless, having neither the capacity nor the acquirements to
bring or retain clients, yet their loss would be for the public
good, and for the honor and respectability of the profession. Let
the talents of women be fully developed, and no man will lose any
place that he is qualified to fill in consequence, and no woman
will obtain that place who has not peculiar fitness. All these
matters will find their own level, ultimately. I can point you to
localities now where the people prefer women for teachers. A
Union School in Northern Ohio, which is made up of ten
departments, employs women for teachers, and a woman as
superintendent of the whole. The people reason this way: We
prefer women, because they bring us the best talent. Not that
they have better talents than men, but with the latter, teaching
is generally a stepping-stone to a profession. Woman accepts it
as her highest post, and brings her best energies. With man, it
is often a subordinate interest, and his best talents will be
exercised upon what he regards as something higher and better. As
in this, so in other things. The time will come when talent or
capacity will govern the choice and not sex. It is so now in Art,
to a great extent. I think there is not much known of sex there.
The world does not care who wrote "Aurora Leigh." It does not
recognize it as the production of a woman, but as the work of
genius. Let the artists say what they please, the world does not
care who chisels Zenobia, so that Zenobia be well chiseled. It
does not care whether Landseer or Rosa Bonheur paints animals, so
that animals are well painted. No one says this or that is well
done for a woman, but he says, this is the work of an artist,
that has no merit; not because a woman did it, not because a man
did it, but because the author was destitute of capacity to
embody the idea.

Again, read the little village newspapers, got out by little
editors, and you will find, in many cases, an utter want of
ability to fill the place that has been chosen. I hope young
women will not make such mistakes as these young men have done,
who might have been sup