INDEPENDENCE (_Nurse-Companion, etc._).—A nurse-companion is usually expected to have been trained at a hospital. The training need not have been sufficient to qualify a woman for regular hospital employment, but it ought to have covered a period of six months at all events. You do not mention that you have been in any hospital, and we therefore think you had better give up the idea of becoming a nurse-companion. Perhaps, as music appears to be your best accomplishment, you would do most wisely to seek employment as nursery governess. Your general education we judge by your letter to be fairly good. But try to improve yourself by every means within your power, as you cannot long remain a nursery governess; and you must either advance so as to become a fully qualified governess, when you are older, or devote your attention to the practical duties of looking after young children. In the latter case you would, of course, term yourself a children’s nurse. It is possible that you might be well advised to advertise yourself as a children’s nurse from the first, seeking a subordinate position to begin with, in order to gain experience. Your handwriting is satisfactory. A CLYDESDALE LASSIE (_Hospital Nursing_).—Paying probationers are received commonly for a period of three months at a time, for which thirteen guineas is paid in advance. You could not enter a general hospital on these terms just at present. Twenty-two is customarily the lowest age for admission. WEE WIFIE (_Fancy Work_).—It is almost impossible to obtain a sale for fancy articles which are only made at home and in small quantities. Little novelties which can be produced cheaply and in large numbers may often be sold direct to wholesale and retail dealers in bazaar and fancy articles. We should recommend a lady who must live at home either to do work on these lines and treat her home as a small manufactory, or else devote her time to the making of fine underclothing, which she could sell to the drapers and outfitters. Shops where embroidery is sold usually keep their own workers on the premises, for the simple reason that orders have to be executed promptly and in exact obedience to the demand of the moment. It is not possible for work of this kind to be sent to workers who can only be reached by correspondence. MISCELLANEOUS. FRUIT FARMER.—No, strawberries are not indigenous to England, according to Haydn, in his _Dictionary of Dates_, where he says that they were brought to this country from Flanders in 1530. Against this date, we refer to Shakespeare’s _Richard III._, in which we find them spoken of as growing in the Bishop of Ely’s garden in Holborn, which shows it was cultivated as early as the latter part of the fifteenth century. A hundred years subsequently four kinds of this fruit were cultivated in the garden of a barber-surgeon, Gerard by name, also in Holborn.