THE MISTRESS. Considering that women have been shut out from thetraining of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wideobservation that men enjoy, isn't it beautiful well that the foremostliving writers of fiction are women?

HERBERT. You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray andDickens have just died. But it does not affect the general estimate.We are inundated with a flood of weak writing. Take the Sunday-school literature, largely the product of women; it has n't as muchcharacter as a dried apple pie. I don't know what we are coming toif the presses keep on running.

0UR NEXT D00R. We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awfultime; I'm glad I don't write novels.