f I venture a modest opinion about a
dinner, "Dear me! as if a literary woman knew anything about
cooking!"--I endure that meekly, sustained by the inner consciousness
that I _can_ cook much better than any artist in that line I ever yet
encountered. Likewise I am used to hear people say, "I suppose you don't
waste your valuable time in sewing?" when a look at my left forefinger
would insure me a fraternal grip from any member of the Seamstress's
Friends Society anywhere. I do not either scold or cry when accidentally
some visitor discovers me fitting my dress or making my bonnet, and
looks at me with a "fearful joy," as if I were on a tight-rope. I even
smile when people lay my ugly shawl or _passe_ bonnet, that I bought
because they were cheap, and wear for the same reason, at the door of
the "eccentricities of genius." And I am case-hardened to the
instantaneous scattering and dodging of young men that ensue the moment
I enter a little party, because "gentlemen are so afraid of literary
women." I don't think gentlemen are; I know two or three who never
conceal a revolver in the breast of their coat when they talk to me, and
who sometimes even offer to go home with me from a tea-party all alone,
and after dark too. It is true, one or two of these are "literary"
themselves; the others I knew before I was dyed blue; which may account
for it. Also I am impervious to anonymous letters, exhorting me to all
kinds of mental and moral improvement, or indulging in idle
impertinences about my private affairs, the result of a knowledge about
me and the aforesaid affairs drawn solely from my "Pieces in Prose and
Verse."

Then as to the matter of the romantic stories that are afloat concerning
me, I am rather amused than otherwise by them. I have a sentimental
name, by the religious and customary ordinance of baptism, legally my
own; and at first, being rather loath to enter the great alliterative
ranks of female writers by my lawful title of Matilda Muffin, I signed
my writings "A. B."

Two reprobatory poems addressed to those initials came to me through
the medium of the "Snapdragon," immediately after my having printed in
that spicy paper a pensive little poem called "The Rooster's Cry": one,
in Spenserian measure, rebuking me for alluding lightly to serious
subjects,--a thing I never do, I am sure, and I can't imagine what "J.
H. P." meant; and another, in hexameter, calling upon me to "arouse,"
and "smile," and "struggle on