curate, but vividly reproducing the scene and the actors therein. She worked on patiently, step by step, until now her position is assured.

As I have sat beside this noble gifted girl in her elegant rooms at the Hotel Vendôme; taken account of her entrance into the most exclusive circles, literary and artistic, of Boston and New York; read her letters full of point and piquancy; and asked myself the secret of her success, the answer has been one that young women may wisely ponder: "She has not only ability, but what is just as vital, she has availability; she has not only a clear head, but a warm heart; she has not only rare talent, but unequalled courage, consummate perseverance, and relentless industry."

The chief reasons why journalism will always be, next to philanthropy, the most natural and satisfactory vocation of the intellectual woman seem to me to be these:

1. The "Woman Question" is settled in the "Republic of Letters." Both sexes stand on the same footing, with equal pay and preferment for equal work and success.

2. One is in good company. Journalists as a class are among the brightest, kindest, and most companionable of earth's inhabitants.

3. There is less likelihood of a discontinuance of one's income and a break in one's career on account of marriage, than in most pursuits, for pen and ink plus ideas makes a handy kit of tools, well suited to the surroundings of a home. Even Whitelaw Reid dictates his editorials and corrects the proof by telephone from his elegant up-town mansion; and the progress of invention will constantly improve the adjustments between office and home, so that no

woman who writes with nib inevitable and ink indelible will find her journalistic occupation gone just because there is written in her marriage certificate the climax chapter of her own life's serial story.

4. Journalism is a calling in which specialties abound. The woman's opportunity in journalism is likely to be greatest who most successfully tills some chosen plot of ground in the great field of literature. Let the selection be made with due deliberation, and then steadfastly adhered to. Reputation is capital of the most substantial sort, and along the crowded street of journalism reputation comes to the specialist first and stays there longest. A specialty in these competitive days is the difference between point and no point; between a dead flat and a clean cut perspective; between the monotonous sea and the sunbright sail. Therefore, with all thy gettings, get a specialty.

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5. Journalism is a profession of unbounded usefulness and power. Every generous nature desires to make the earning of an honest living but a means to the higher end of adding to the sum total of human goodness and human happiness. There is no foothold which conducts more surely to this result than that of a newspaper woman. But this enchanted realm is without an open sesame. It has no spell by which to conjure. The conditions are hardfaced as printer's type, and pointed as a stylographic pen. "Work your passage" or you cannot win this port. Begin at the foot of the ladder and climb up round by round or you will not reach this height. Learn your alphabet before you tackle polysyllables. The printer's case is a good place to begin. Accuracy, rapidity, skill in detail, are all as vital to the journalist as to the type-setter; William

Lloyd Garrison studied both arts at a time, so did William D. Howells, Robert Burdette, and a host besides who have become famous. To thousands of aspiring young women, bound to be journalists, I would like to say, as I wish some one had said to me in girlhood, learn the printer's trade, and meanwhile try your hand at writing; you will thus hold one bread-winning implement while you reach out for another. Never wait for something to turn up; take hold of the types, they move the world, and turn them right side up; keep on doing this faithfully, and if you have the gift predicted by your preference, you will slowly and steadily, but surely, win a foothold in the splendid realm of journalism.

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CHAPTER XII.

AT WHAT AGE SHALL GIRLS MARRY?

WHEN Théophile Gautier announced it as his intention to write a book, entitled "Travels in Spain," his friends expostulated. "But you have never been there," they said. Assuredly not," replied the man of fancy; "do you suppose I would spoil my ideal by any such stupidity as that?" Not dissimilar is the unprejudiced relation of the present witness to the subject in hand.

"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" is not an old saw, but a live question, for in anticipation of this chapter, the writer addressed questions to eight of the most distinguished physicians in America, and their replies, as to the age when girls should marry in our temperate zone, range along the chronological gamut all the way from eighteen to twenty-six. But I am glad to add that the balance of their testimony, and their own emphatic commentary on the text afforded by these figures, is, that a girl's life should be safely beyond the rippling shallows of her halfbewildered "teens," before the Rhone and Arve meet. [Please to observe that I prudently refrain from invidious discrimination as to which is which" in this aqueous simile.] There are, however, other and more decisive estimates than mere numerals can furnish. Indeed, to have a 'head for figures" was never my weakness, hence I would

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determine the proper marriage age with very little reference to any birthday limitation.

Briefly, then, Sophronisca is too immature to think seriously about a life-long comradeship with Sophroniscus, unless she has been sacredly schooled in every law of God written in her members, and counts obedience to these heavenly voices the key that opens almost every door to a true and happy life. She is too young if she has not learned that

"No lasting link to bind two souls is wrought,

When passion takes no deeper cast from thought."

She is too young if she thinks his role in their new drama is to be that of money-maker and hers of money-spender; too young until she has enough of motherhood's ineffable and sacred instinct to repudiate an alliance which unites her to a man of voluntarily deteriorated physique, and which does not bring to her the same total abstinence from alcoholic and nicotine poison which she brings to it and the same purity for purity. Were she the only one to be considered, she might righteously forgive much, because she loves much; but unless pitifully ignorant and unready for the sacrament of marriage, she will not dare invoke the tremulous, immortal lives of the innocent and lovely, upon conditions that involve deterioration and weakness from the first, and at the last may lead to unutterable misery and shame. I would apply another test: Look at the average fashion-plate, Sophronisca; what is its impression? Do its paniers and high heels, low-necks and hour-glass waists, its top-knot bonnets, artificial attitudes, and simpering faces strike you with mental nausea and spiritual scorn? Then,