look on the reality; but does such
reality now exist? Amidst all the troubled waters of European society,
does such a vast, strong, selfish old leviathan now roll ponderous? I
suppose not.

* * * * *

I often wish to say something on the "condition-of-women" question,
but it is one on which so much cant has been talked, that one feels a
sort of reluctance to approach it. I have always been accustomed to
think that the necessity of earning one's living is not, in itself, an
evil; though I feel it may become a heavy evil if health fails, if
employment lacks, if the demand upon our efforts, made by the weakness
of others dependent upon us becomes greater than our strength. Both
sons and daughters should early be inured to habits of independence
and industry.

A governess' lot is frequently, indeed, bitter, but its results are
precious. The mind, feelings, and temper are subjected to a discipline
equally painful and priceless. I have known many who were unhappy as
governesses, but scarcely one who, having undergone the ordeal, was
not ultimately strengthened and improved--made more enduring for her
own afflictions, more considerate for the afflictions of others. The
great curse of a single female life is its dependency; daughters, as
well as sons, should aim at making their way through life. Teachers
may be hard-worked, ill-paid, and despised; but the girl who stays at
home _doing nothing_ is worse off than the worse-paid drudge of a
school; the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade her
nature.

Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me
courage to adopt a career, perseverance to plead through two long
weary years with publishers till they admitted me? How should I be,
with youth passed, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where
there is not a single resident family? In that case I should have no
world at all. The raven weary of surveying the deluge, and with no ark
to return to, would be my type.

As it is, something like a hope and motive sustain me still. I wish
every woman in England had also a hope and a motive. Alas! I fear
there are many old maids who have neither.

--Adapted from _Littell's Living Age_.

XXXIX

THACKERAY IN AMERICA

Thackeray, like many other Englishmen of note, came to America to
lecture in order to make money. He had delivered lectures in London
and in other towns in England on the _Engl