es not relish the idea of being unable to
stop his subscription.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Parson, won't you please punch that fire, and give us
more blaze? we are getting into the darkness of socialism.

III

Herbert returned to us in March. The Young Lady was spending the winter
with us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to be a winter
month. It usually is in New England, and April too, for that matter. And
I cannot say it is unfortunate for us. There are so many topics to be
turned over and settled at our fireside that a winter of ordinary length
would make little impression on the list. The fireside is, after all,
a sort of private court of chancery, where nothing ever does come to a
final decision. The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen
one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does
believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and
defence. A man left to himself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake;
it is only when the wind blows that the boat goes anywhere.

Herbert said he had been dipping into the recent novels written by
women, here and there, with a view to noting the effect upon literature
of this sudden and rather overwhelming accession to it. There was a good
deal of talk about it evening after evening, off and on, and I can only
undertake to set down fragments of it.

HERBERT. I should say that the distinguishing feature of the literature
of this day is the prominence women have in its production. They figure
in most of the magazines, though very rarely in the scholarly and
critical reviews, and in thousands of newspapers; to them we are
indebted for the oceans of Sunday-school books, and they write the
majority of the novels, the serial stories, and they mainly pour out the
watery flood of tales in the weekly papers. Whether this is to result in
more good than evil it is impossible yet to say, and perhaps it would be
unjust to say, until this generation has worked off its froth, and women
settle down to artistic, conscientious labor in literature.

THE MISTRESS. You don't mean to say that George Eliot, and Mrs. Gaskell,
and George Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage and severe
attack of spiritism, are less true to art than contemporary men
novelists and poets.

HERBERT. You name some exceptions that show the bright side of the
picture, not only for the present, but for the future. Perhaps genius
has no sex; but or