Speaking as a woman, I can quite understand and appreciate all the little difficulties, irritations, and trials incident to a woman’s career in literature; and though I myself welcome such difficulties as so many incentives to fresh effort, I know that there are many of my sex who, growing weary and discouraged, are not able to adopt this attitude. And looking back into the past, one is bound to see a host of brilliant women done to death by cruel injustice and misrepresentation, a state of things which is quite likely to be continued as long as humanity endures. But no useful object is served by brooding over this apparently incurable evil. “The noble army of martyrs” who praise the Lord in the “Te Deum” are likely to be of the sex feminine. But what does that matter? It is more glorious to be martyred than to die of over-eating and general plethora. Moreover mental or intellectual martyrdom is a necessary ingredient for the “happy” life--a touch of it is like the toothache, helping one to be duly thankful when the pain ceases. For, if we never understood trouble, we should never taste the full measure of joy. One thing can be very well dispensed with by both men and women who look for happiness in the Life Literary, and that is the uneasy hankering after what is called “Fame.” Fame has a habit of setting its halo on the elected brows without any outside advice or assistance. Those authors who are destined for it will assuredly win it, though all the world should intervene; those for whom it is not intended must content themselves with the temporary notoriety of pretty newspaper puffs and “stock” compliments, such as “the renowned” or “well-known” or “admired” author or authoress, and be glad and grateful for these meaningless terms, inasmuch as the higher Fame itself at its utmost is only a brief and very often inaccurate “line in history.” The rewards and emoluments of the happy life, such as I have always found the Life Literary to be, are manifold and frequently incongruous. They may be considered in two sections--the outward or apparent and the interior or invisible. Concerning these I can only, of course, speak from my own experience. The outward or apparent occur (so far as I myself am concerned) as follows:-- 1. Certain payments, small or large, made by publishers who undertake to present one’s brain work to the world in print, and who do the best they can for their authors, as well as for themselves. 2. Public appreciation and condemnation, about equally divided. 3. Critical praise and censure, six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. 4. Endless requests for autographs. 5. Innumerable begging letters. 6. Imperative, sometimes threatening, demands for “interviews.” 7. Hundreds of love-letters. 8. Continual offers of marriage. 9. Shoals of MSS. sent by literary aspirants to be “placed” or “recommended.”