But the plain truth is, I earn my living by writing. Sewing does not pay. I have no "faculty" at school-keeping; for I invariably spoil all the good children, and pet all the pretty ones,--a process not conducive, as I am told, to the development of manners or morals;--so I write: just as Mr. Jones makes shoes, Mr. Peters harangues the jury, Mr. Smith sells calico, or Mr. Robinson rolls pills. For, strange as it may seem, when it is so easy to read, it is hard work to write,--_bona fide_, undeniable hard work. Suppose my head cracks and rings and reels with a great ache that stupefies me? In comes Biddy with a letter. "The editor of the 'Monthly Signpost' would be much obliged to Miss Matilda Muffin for a tale of four pages, to make up the June number, before the end of next week. "Very respectfully, etc., etc." Miss Muffin's head looks her in the face, (metaphorically,) and says, "You can't!"--but her last year's bonnet creaks and rustles from the bandbox, finally lifts the lid and peeps out. Gracious! the ghost in Hamlet was not more of an "airy nothing" than that ragged, faded, dilapidated old structure of crape and blonde. The bonnet retires to the sound of slow music; the head slinks back and holds its tongue; Miss Muffin sits down at her table; scratch, scratch, scratch, goes the old pen, and the ideas catch up with it, it is so shaky; and the words go tumbling over it, till the _t_s go out without any hats on, and the eyes--no, the _i_s (_is_ that the way to pluralize them?)--get no dots at all; and every now and then the head says, softly, "Oh, dear!" Miss Muffin goes to something called by novel-writers "repose," toward one o'clock that night, and the next night, and the next; she obliges the "Monthly Signpost" with a comic story at a low price, and buys herself a decent little bonnet for Sundays, replenishing her wardrobe generally by the same process; and the head considers it work, I assure you. But this is not the special grievance to which I direct this Memorial. I like to work; it suits me much better to obtain my money by steady, honest effort than it would to depend on anybody else for one round cent. If I had a thousand dollars unexpectedly left me by some unknown benefactor, I don't think it would be worth five cents on the dollar, compared with what I earn; there is a healthy, trustworthy pleasure in that, never yet attained by gifted or inherited specie. Neither is it the publicity of the occupation that I here object to. I knew that, before I began to write; and many an hour have I cried over the thought of being known, and talked about, and commented on,--having my dear name, that my mother called me by, printed on the cover of a magazine, seeing it in newspapers, hearing it in whispers, when Miss Brown says to Miss Black under her breath,--"That girl in the straw bonnet is Matilda Muffin, who writes for the 'Snapdragon' and the 'Signpost.'"