There was a considerable demand for the work on its first appearance; and up to this present date a fair number of copies is annually disposed of. It came out in November, 1853, having partly occupied her time during the preceding two years. Only partly, however; for, besides all the efforts for her neighborhood previously referred to (the building society was in progress during those years, and gave her much thought, as her business notes are in evidence), and besides her farming, she was now writing largely for periodicals and newspapers. These are the pulpits from which our modern preachers are most widely and effectively heard, and the right tone of which is, therefore, of the first consequence to society. For every hundred persons who listen to the priest, the journalist (including in this term writers for all periodicals) speaks to a thousand; and while the words of the one are often heard merely as a formality, those of the other, dealing with the matters at the moment most near and interesting to his audience, may effectively influence the thoughts and consciences and actions of thousands in the near future. Shallow, indeed, would be the mind which undervalued the power of the journalist, or underrated the seriousness of his vocation. Harriet Martineau saw the scope which journalism afforded for the kind of work which she had all her life been doing--the influencing of conduct by considering practical affairs in the light of principle. Her periodical writing being, according to our mistaken English custom, anonymous, neither brought her any increase of fame nor carried with it the influence which her personality as a teacher would have contributed to the weight of what she wrote. Nevertheless, she repeatedly in her letters, speaks of her journalism as the most delightful work of her life, and that which she believed had been perhaps the most useful of all her efforts. Some stories with sanitary morals, which she now contributed to _Household Words_, were admirably written. "The People of Bleaburn" is the true story of what was done by a grand American woman, Mary Ware, when she happened to go into an isolated village at the very time that half its inhabitants were lying stricken down by an epidemic. "Woodruffe, the Gardener," was a presentation of the evils of living in low-lying damp countries. "The Marsh Fog and the Sea Breeze" is perhaps the most interesting of all her stories since the Political Economy tales, which it much resembles in lightness of touch and in practical utility.