when the individual decides to buy. A lady who earns her living as a book and newspaper agent, told me that she gets a percentage for the agency of books and papers. She has been an agent eight years in New York. Her health is poor, and she thinks it is from being out in all kinds of weather. She does not go to every house, but calls on one friend, who recommends her to another--so that she has as many to visit as she can. She says the qualifications needed are health, tact, judgment, courage, pleasing address, perseverance, with faith in the work, and in God. Ladies are more likely to be well received than men, but cannot walk as much. She prefers the agency of books, because she then gets the money, gives the book, and that is the last of it. But there is a responsibility attending the agency of papers. The editor may require pre-payment for his magazine. If he is not an honorable man, he may discontinue his magazine during the year, and not refund what is due to his subscribers. The agent is then blamed, as well as the editor, when it may be totally out of her power to remedy the matter, or to have prevented it. A lady news agent, that has a good location and a small circulating library, told me she has occupied the place for several years, and so has regular customers. She does it to aid her husband in supporting and educating their children, but thinks an individual could earn for self alone a comfortable living by keeping a news depot. In the large cities of the North are newspaper agents (men) who solicit advertisements, for which they receive a commission from editors. There is a Miss S. in New York, who makes a very good living by obtaining advertisements for the principal city papers. She goes to stores and offices, and solicits advertisements of business men, for which she receives a percentage from the conductors of the papers. =315. Mercantile Agents.= At the office of a mercantile agency on Broadway, New York, one hundred young men are employed in writing. Why could not women do it? An agent who travels for C.'s paper-hanging manufactory, exhibiting specimens and getting orders, and has a commission also from another house for another kind of business, makes $4,000 a year. Ladies were employed writing for one mercantile agency in Boston one winter.