r thinking so
does not make it so, and you need not rule me out of court on the
strength of it. I acknowledge, in the domain of letters, none but
Squatter Sovereignty. In literature, unlike morals, might makes right.
If I think you are cultivating the soil to its utmost capacity, I shall
not meddle; but if it seems to me that you are letting it lie fallow
while I can draw a furrow to some purpose, you need not warn me off with
your old title-deeds; in my ploughshare shall drive. To a better farmer
I will yield right gladly, but I will not be scared away by a
sign-board.

Nor need you go very far out of your way to affirm that I have not the
requisite experience for writing on such and such topics. As a principle
your remark is absurd. Cannot a doctor prescribe for typhus fever,
unless he has had typhus fever himself? On the contrary, is he not the
better able to prescribe from always having had a sound mind in a sound
body? As a fact, my experience in those things concerning which you
allege its insufficiency has never been presented to you for judgment,
and its discussion is therefore entirely irrelevant. If my statements
are false, they are false; if my arguments are inconclusive, they are
inconclusive: disprove the one and refute the other. But whether this
state of things be owing to a want of experience, or inability to use
experience aright, or any personal circumstance whatever, is a matter in
regard to which all the laws of literary courtesy forbid you to concern
yourself.

And pray, Gentle Critic, do not tell me that I must be content simply to
amuse, or _must_--anything else. Must is a hard word; be not
over-confident of its power. I feel a grandmotherly interest in the
world and its ways; and much as I should like to amuse it, I shall never
be content with that. You may not _like_ to be instructed, my dear
children, but instructed you shall be. You read long ago, in your
story-book, that little Tommy Piper didn't want his face washed, though
he was very willing to be amused with soap-bubbles; but his face needed
washing and got it. I come to you with soap-bubbles indeed, but with
scrubbing-brushes also. If you take to them kindly, it will soon be
over; but if you scream and struggle, I shall not only scrub the harder,
but be all the longer about it.

Sometimes your grave refutations are very amusing. It is astonishing to
see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead
level of cat