l so unfit.
Now, if I do not marry, what is to become of me in the event of
anything happening to my father? His property is almost all gone; I
doubt if we shall ever receive one pound from it. Is it likely
that, supposing I were willing to undergo the drudgery of writing
for my bread, I could live by my wits and the produce of my brain;
or is such an existence desirable?

Perhaps I might attain to the literary dignity of being the lioness
of a season, asked to dinner parties "because I am so clever;"
perhaps my writing faculty might become a useful auxiliary to some
other less precarious dependence; but to write to eat--to live, in
short--that seems to me to earn hard money after a very hard
fashion. The stage is a profession that people who have a talent
for it make lucrative, and which honorable conduct may make
respectable; one which would place me at once beyond the fear of
want, and that is closely allied in its nature to my beloved
literary pursuits.

If I should (as my father and mother seem to think not unlikely)
change my mind with respect to marrying, the stage need be no bar
to that, and if I continue to write, the stage might both help me
in and derive assistance from my exercise of the pursuit of
dramatic authorship. And the mere mechanical labor of writing costs
me so little, that the union of the two occupations does not seem
to me a difficulty. My father said the other day, "There is a fine
fortune to be made by any young woman, of even decent talent, on
the stage now." A fine fortune is a fine thing; to be sure, there
remains a rather material question to settle, that of "even decent
talent." A passion for all beautiful poetry I am sure you will
grant me; and you would perhaps be inclined to take my father and
mother's word for my dramatic capacity. I spoke to them earnestly
on this subject lately, and they both, with some reluctance, I
think, answered me, to my questions, that they thought, as far as
they could judge (and, unless partiality blinds them entirely, none
can be better judges), I might succeed. In some respects, no girl
intending herself for this profession can have had better
opportunities of acquiring just notions on the subject of acting. I
have constantly heard refined and thoughtful criticism on our
g