ose other
thousands of women who stand on their own feet, and their own pluck,
to understand how good a thing it is to be there.

Of all the methods of making a living open to educated people to-day,
the profession of literature is, probably, the poorest in point of
monetary returns. A couple of authors, counted successful as the world
and the word go, said once:

"We have earned less this year than the fisherman in the dory before
the door of our summer home." Perhaps it had been a good year for
Jack; possibly a poor one for those other fishers, who spread their
brains and hearts--a piteous net--into the seas of life in quest of
thought and feeling that the idlers on the banks may take a summer's
fancy to. But the truth remains. A successful teacher, a clever
manufacturer, a steady mechanic, may depend upon a better income in
this country than the writer whose supposed wealth he envies, and
whose books he reads on Sunday afternoons, if he is not too sleepy, or
does not prefer his bicycle.

When we see (as we have actually done) our market-man driving by our
old buggy and cheap horse on holidays, with a barouche and span, we
enjoy the sight very much; and when I say (for the other occupant of
the buggy has a little taste for two horses, which I am so plebeian
as not to share, having never been able to understand why one is
not enough for anybody): "But would you _be_ the span-owner--for the
span?" we see the end of the subject, and grow ravenously contented.

One cannot live by bread or magazine stories alone, as the young
daughter of toil too soon found out. Like other writers I did hack
work. My main dependence was on that venerable and useful form of it
which consists in making Sunday-school books. Of these I must have
written over a dozen; I wince, sometimes, when I see their forgotten
dates and titles in encyclopaedias; but a better judgment tells me that
one should not be ashamed of doing hard work honestly. I was not an
artist at Sunday-school literature (there are such), and have often
wondered why the religious publishing societies kept me at it so
steadily and so long.

There were tales of piety and of mischief, of war and of home, of
babies and of army nurses, of Tom-boys, and of girls who did their
mending and obeyed their mothers.

The variety was the only thing I can recall that was commendable about
these little books, unless one except a considerable dash of fun.

One of them came back to me--it