(54 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPAEDIA. 



hands which should not have been ashamed to work, hands which would 

 have been whiter for honest efforts. 



The prejudice against literary women has so much disappeared that it 

 requires no word of encouragement now to women to try literature as a 

 means of getting a living. Indeed, so many more try writing than have 

 the gift for it that it would perhaps be wise to recommend a great many 

 to try anything rather than that. 



To write well must be in the first place a gift ; all have it not. To be 

 sure, it also requires will, persistency, and the most enormous industry. 

 No one ever wrote well who had not gone through many an hour of pain, 

 disgust at the work, and a crucial test of the hard labour that is to bring 

 from the brain its purest gold. But even the industrious can not always 

 write ; and if a woman does not write well she generally writes very 

 poorly. She can not do machine work as well as a man can. Therefore, 

 if she have no inspiration, she had better throw down the pen. 



Women, by reason of their health, are sometimes debarred from taking 

 up any very exacting out-of-door work. This was, in the opinion of an 

 Edinburgh surgeon (the particular enemy of Miss Jex Blake), an unan- 

 swerable argument against their becoming physicians and surgeons. The 

 fact remains that they have become both. Therefore, we can never say 

 what a woman can not do. 



We could hardly train our daughters to be car conductors, soldiers, or 

 police-officers, the three trades which are always thrown in the face of 

 woman's suffragists ; but it remains to be seen why they should not play 

 in orchestras, become jewellers and watch-makers, wood-carvers, and inter- 

 nal decorators, that branch of household art now so fashionable and so 

 profitable. 



One energetic woman in France has made a large fortune by raising 

 hens and chickens. Another in the west is a good practical farmer, taking 

 care of ten thousand acres, and making money surely and rapidly. It will 

 repay all women to inquire what were Madame de Genlis' seventy trades, 

 and which one, or two, she will learn. 



There is another reason for learning a trade or an accomplishment, and 

 that is for the pleasure which it gives to an otherwise idle lady. Many a 

 woman, after her children are married, finds herself with days to get rid 

 of which have no possible pleasure in them, Her occupation is gone, and 

 she needs the help of something to carry off weary, unprofitable hours. She 

 generally, in these days, takes to painting plaques, and plates, fans and 

 reticules which is very good as long as it lasts. It does not last very long 

 to a woman of active mind. She needs to throw in charities and outside 



