e_," materials for plot, sketches of life and
character, etc., than at a girls' college? One could surely range "from
grave to gay, from lively to severe," in such a field.

The editor of the _Atlantic_, dear young people, accepts
articles--well-written, of course--on questions relating to higher
education, university extension, matters of historical research. Harper
& Brothers are glad to get character sketches (not New England
particularly,--you cannot outdo, quite yet, Miss Jewett and Mary
Wilkins,--but there are many other bits of humanity, quaint, odd, or
pathetic). _Scribner's_ and the _Cosmopolitan_ like travels, but they
must be bright and varied; and mechanical articles, young men, but these
must be a direct and forcible presentation of their subjects, and not
rehashes from old books; while the _Century_ will pay you well for some
dainty comic bit for its "Bric-a-brac." Friends of the _Golden Rule_,
_Cottage Hearth_, and _Christian Register_ have assured me that
good--not _goody-goody_--juvenile literature is very hard to get. I know
a young woman who is paid well by the page for all the children's
stories she can write, and her pages are fresh and good, with new
themes and unhackneyed incidents; and a young man who is taking up
themes of interest in our history,--the unprecedented message of a
president which gave no report to Congress of financial or diplomatic
matters for the preceding two years, and the three presidential protests
against action taken in Congress (how many of you know about these state
papers?),--there are a hundred other things, too, which might be told
about in this line,--and he finds no difficulty in getting his matter
accepted. There is an assistant editor not far from Beacon Hill who
keeps track of the clergymen, the prominent families, and individuals in
a certain large religious denomination. Every week she furnishes her
quota of items to an eight-page paper, and she is a pearl of great price
to her chief. The Marthas of the household, "careful and troubled,"
there is a place for in many journals to-day, whether their specialty be
cooking, scrubbing, or lace-work. There is also a chance for those who
possess a large fund of miscellaneous information, in _Notes and
Queries_ and like journals.

"The bearing of which lies in the application of it." Perhaps you may
think, discouragingly, that there is no chance for you in these or any
other specialties, but take my advice and try somet