ch writes a single clever
story or a single sweet poem, and then disappears forever. Look at
Griswold's "Female Poets of America," and you are disposed to turn back to
the title-page, and see if these utterly forgotten names do not really
represent the "female poets" of some other nation. They are forgotten, as
most of the more numerous "female prose writers" are forgotten, because
they had no root. Nobody doubts that women have cleverness enough, and
enough of power of expression. If you could open the mails, and take out
the women's letters, as somebody says, they would prove far more graphic
and entertaining than those of the men. They would be written, too, in what
Macaulay calls--speaking of Madame d'Arblay's early style--"true woman's
English, clear, natural, and lively." What they need, in order to convert
this epistolary brilliancy into literature, is to be thorough.

You cannot separate woman's rights and her responsibilities. In all ages of
the world she has had a certain limited work to do, and has done that well.
All that is needed, when new spheres are open, is that she should carry the
same fidelity into those. If she will work as hard to shape the children of
her brain as to rear her bodily offspring, will do intellectual work as
well as she does housework, and will meet her moral responsibilities as she
meets her social engagements, then opposition will soon disappear. The
habit of thoroughness is the key to all high success. Whatever is worth
doing is worth doing well. Only those who are faithful in a few things will
rightfully be made rulers over many.

LITERARY ASPIRANTS

The brilliant Lady Ashburton used to say of herself that she had never
written a book, and knew nobody whose books she would like to have written.
This does not seem to be the ordinary state of mind among those who write
letters of inquiry to authors. If I may judge from these letters, the
yearning for a literary career is now almost greater among women than among
men. Perhaps this is because of some literary successes lately achieved by
women. Perhaps it is because they have fewer outlets for their energies.
Perhaps they find more obstacles in literature than young men find, and
have, therefore, more need to write letters of inquiry about it. It is
certain that they write such letters quite often; and ask questions that
test severely the supposed omniscience of the author's brain,--questions
bearing on logic, rhetoric, gram