en," or some such name as that it was called, and it was written by
a man called Benton or Henson, or something of that kind. She read the
first few pages. We listened in silence. "But that's not a book,"
someone said. So she chose another. This time it was a history, but I
have forgotten the writer's name. Our trepidation increased as she went
on. Not a word of it seemed to be true, and the style in which it was
written was execrable.

"Poetry! Poetry!" we cried, impatiently. "Read us poetry!" I cannot
describe the desolation which fell upon us as she opened a little volume
and mouthed out the verbose, sentimental foolery which it contained.

"It must have been written by a woman," one of us urged. But no. She
told us that it was written by a young man, one of the most famous poets
of the day. I leave you to imagine what the shock of the discovery was.
Though we all cried and begged her to read no more, she persisted and
read us extracts from the Lives of the Lord Chancellors. When she had
finished, Jane, the eldest and wisest of us, rose to her feet and said
that she for one was not convinced.

"Why," she asked, "if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers
have wasted their youth in bringing them into the world?"

We were all silent; and, in the silence, poor Poll could be heard
sobbing out, "Why, why did my father teach me to read?"

Clorinda was the first to come to her senses. "It's all our fault," she
said. "Every one of us knows how to read. But no one, save Poll, has
ever taken the trouble to do it. I, for one, have taken it for granted
that it was a woman's duty to spend her youth in bearing children. I
venerated my mother for bearing ten; still more my grandmother for
bearing fifteen; it was, I confess, my own ambition to bear twenty. We
have gone on all these ages supposing that men were equally industrious,
and that their works were of equal merit. While we have borne the
children, they, we supposed, have borne the books and the pictures. We
have populated the world. They have civilized it. But now that we can
read, what prevents us from judging the results? Before we bring another
child into the world we must swear that we will find out what the world
is like."

So we made ourselves into a society for asking questions. One of us was
to visit a man-of-war; another was to hide herself in a scholar's study;
another was to attend a meeting of business men; while all were to read
books, look at p