ry colt enters a clover-field. Not
knowing how long her good fortune would last, she eagerly improved her
time. She wrote frequent letters to her sisters, telling what she was
doing and what she was reading. She was eminently superior to any of the
females in the family, and acknowledged it. A tutor in the house taught
her French; and whether the nobleman's children learned much or not, we
do not know, but Mary soon equaled her teacher.

Knowledge is a matter of desire.

The next year the Wollstonecraft girls opened a private school, a kind
of "Young Ladies' Establishment," quite on the Mrs. Nickleby order. And
indeed, if a Micawber had been wanting, Mary knew where to look for him.

About this time Mary met Ursa Major, who may have treated men very
rudely, but not your petite, animated and clever women.

Doctor Johnson quite liked little Mary Wollstonecraft. She matched her
wit against his and put him on his mettle, and when Mary once expressed
a desire to become an authoress he encouraged her by saying, "Yes, my
dear, you should write, for that is the way to learn; and no matter how
badly you write, you can always be encouraged by finding men who write
worse." And another time he said, "Women have quite as much interest in
life as men, and see things just as clearly, and why they should not
write the last word as well as speak it, I do not know."

That settled it with Mary: She gave up her part in the school; and very
soon after, the sisters gave up theirs; one of them wedding a
ne'er-do-well scion of nobility, and the other marrying an orthodox
curate with a harelip. Through the help of Doctor Johnson, Mary got a
position as proofreader with a publisher. Here her knowledge of French
was valuable, and she assisted in translations. Then she became literary
adviser and reader for different publishers. She was making money, and
had accumulated a little fortune of near a hundred pounds by the sweat
of her brain. Her close acquaintanceship with printers and publishers
thus placed her where she became acquainted with several statesmen who
had speeches to make, and for these she constructed arguments and also
helped them out of dire difficulties by rounding out their periods, and
by introducing flights of fancy for men whose fancies were wingless.

On her own account she had written various stories and essays. She had
met the wits and thinkers of London and had learned to take care of
herself. She was an honest, industr