"My circle of acquaintance is small, nevertheless I know many women between twenty-five and forty whose culture is always steadily progressing; who keep up an acquaintance with literature for its own sake, and not 'impelled' thereto 'by masculine influence;' who, though without creative power, yet have such capability of reception that they can appreciate the best authors of the day; whose theology is not quite the fossil you represent it, though I confess it is for but a small number of my acquaintance that I can claim the power of judicially estimating the various schools of theology. "Without being specialists, the more thoughtful of our class have such an acquaintance with current literature that they are able to enter into the progress of the great questions of the day, and may even estimate the more fairly a Gladstone or a Disraeli for being spectators instead of actors in politics. "I have spoken of my own acquaintances, but they are such as may be met within any middle-class society. For myself, I look back to the painful bewilderment of twenty-five and contrast it with satisfaction with the brighter perceptions of forty, finding out 'a little more, and yet a little more, of the eternal order of the universe.' One reason for your underrating us may be that our receptive powers only are in constant use, and we have little power of expression. I dislike anonymous letters as a rule, but as I write as the representative of a class, I beg to sign myself, "Yours gratefully, "ONE OF THREE OR FOUR RICH OLD MAIDS. "_November 13, 1883._" Letters of this kind give no pain to the receiver, except when they compel him to an unsatisfactory kind of self-examination. In the present case I make the best amends by giving publicity and permanence to this clearly expressed criticism. Something may be said, too, in defence of the passages incriminated. Let me attempt it in the form of a letter which may possibly fall under the eye of the Rich Old Maid.