n, and an
obstacle in our way. But no kind, wise heart will heed this obstacle.
Having spoken plain to society, having won the sympathy of men, let us see
if we cannot compel the attention of these well-disposed but thoughtless
damsels.

"Six years out of the very bloom of our lives to be spent in the
printing-office or the laboratory!" exclaim the dismayed band; and they
flutter out of reach along the sidewalks of Beacon Street, or through the
mazes of the "Lancers."

But what happens ten years afterward, when, from twenty-six to thirty,
they find themselves pushed off the _pave_, or left to blossom on the
wall? Desolate, because father and brother have died; disappointed,
because well-founded hopes of a home or a "career" have failed;
impoverished, because they depended on strength or means that are
broken,--what have they now to say to the printing-office or the
apothecary's shop? They enter both gladly; with quick woman's wit,
learning as much in six months as men would in a year; but grumbling and
discontented, that, in competing with men who have spent their whole lives
in preparation, they can only be paid at half-wages. What does common
sense demand, if not that women should make thorough preparation for
trades or professions; and, having taken up a resolution, should abide by
all its consequences like men?

Before cases like these my lips are often sealed, and my hands drop
paralyzed. Not that they alter God's truth, or make the duty of protest
against existing wrong any less incumbent: but they obscure the truth;
they needlessly complicate the duty.

Perplexed and anxious, I have often felt that what I needed most was an
example to set before young girls,--an example not removed by superiority
of station, advantage of education, or unwonted endowment, beyond their
grasp and imitation.

There was Florence Nightingale. But her father had a title: it was fair
to presume that her opportunities were titled also. All the girls I knew
wished they could have gone to the Crimea; while I was morally certain,
that the first amputation would have turned them all faint. There was
Dorothea Dix: she had money and time. It was not strange that she had
great success; for she started, a monomaniac in philanthropy, from the
summit of personal independence. Mrs. John Stuart Mill: had she ever
wanted bread? George Sand: the woman wasn't respectable. In short,
whomsoever I named, who had pursued with undeviating perseverance