To the Editor of the Nortu-Cuixa Dany New: editorial in Thurwday's paper (16th Nove.
Smx,—Having just finished perusing your
ber) I feel like taking up the cudgels on behalf of the fair sex.
In these days when many men are giving us gratuitous advice to what I would do if I were @ woman," " woman naturally tires of such weighty' matter and for recreation she too goes to that vast collection of light literature in which she rashly imagines she may discover a short cut to hee own imperfection Avon aid the effusion Most I sink us low as th creation of x male novelist brain before Lean hope for man's favour? she ocks in despair.
The heroine may simper; have no higher ideal of beauty than a love of " bonnes or a silly, Tialiaw moustache. ies glories in her iguoran ublic affairs, and will poutingly ask if Home Rule means that x lot of stupid ugly old maids Tf only ug vine, Or perhaps of Bohemia, abandon ne girl friend, live " fi fe and amoke cigar rettes. Que thing, must be a beauty. Did you ever know of amole author male ing his heroine plain the shading of the book there is an earnest, homely, true woman she is contemptuously auctioned off to a fifty-cent man and considered lucky at that. And these are the models for us women to follow! After reading your own effusions on the subject, do you men ever forget to pray the prayer of the orthodox Jew, "Lord, 1 thank thee that Tum not a woman?" I have never seen woman in even our best authors (male) after whom I want to pattern. How a sensible En: joi's lips curl at little Dora who didn't know that oysters must he opened before serving, and whose little Jip was encouraged to run over the tablecloth dipping his paws in the butter. And she hasn't any warmer appreciation for the Vicar of Wakefield's two daughters, Who wants to be " Bell Wilbur? Can't the great Victor Hugo give us a belter woman than Cosette? Bat heaven preserve us fiom Fenimore Comper's dissolving damsels, all sappy as maplewood; flat as prairie." Contrast these creatures with Dorothea, Romolo, or Dinah Bede—George Eliot's Var sure I can't tel! why you don't like men we women paint for you, Huw can any girl's brother call John Halifax april? No wonder that Helen Mur proposed to William Wallace after Jane Porter had portrayed him! And if George Bliot serves you all right when. she holds up to scum Tito, yet you certainly can't find fault with Adam Bede, or Felix Holt, In Uncle Tom's Cabin, how we women admire Augusting St. Clare! But aa you say, they are all imaginary study hey aust be, for I have been going around with " lantern like Diogenes seeking one of them for companion, I have not met him. I'm afraid I never shall. If he existe at all, he has probably by this time married a heroine vf one of your male authors, and if so, he has gotten the worst of the bargain.
Tam, ete., 18th November.
AN Op Marp.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.