It is the same with women as with men, for in literature as in the gospel, there is neither male nor female. When a woman does any work for which she receives money she becomes so far a man, and passes immediately and inevitably under the yoke of trade. She has no right to demand a favorable judgment of her work because she is a woman, nor has she the least right to require that chivalry shall come in to help fix or secure her compensation. Trade laws know no more of gallantry than trade winds—and it is well they do not. Individuals and societies wheedle and flatter and threaten and torture according to the fashion, or passion, or panic of the hour, but under it all, the great, pitiless, unseen, inexorable law of the world holds from age to age, never relaxing its grasp, never revoking its decree, deaf to the wail of weakness, dumb to the cry of despair, forever and forever teaching with unrelenting persistency, by unrelenting persistency, the good and wholesome lesson that will be taught no other way. Under this law there is no sex, no chivalry, no deference, no mercy. There is nothing but supply and demand; nothing but buy and sell. To him who understands it, and guides himself by it, it is a chariot of state bearing him on to fame and fortune. To him who does not comprehend it and flings himself against it, it is a car of Juggernaut, crushing him beneath its wheels, without passion, but without pity.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The most casual observer will readily see that this strain of remark can refer only to a far distant past. If our age is remarkable for any one thing, it is for a delicate reticence regarding what is not lawfully, and by divine right, its own.—Note by Editor.
[2] A circumstance which at once relegates this story to the last century.—Note by Editor.
[3] Proof that this paper belongs to an age when people had time to pronounce long words.—Ed.
[4] This was in reference to Mr. Hunt's repeated injunctions that I should write only books.
[5] The editor cannot allow this sentiment to go out into the world unchallenged. To him few things are more marvelous than the amount of provender which the ill-favored and lean-fleshed kine will consume without giving any sign of feeding. Poverty, or incapacity, which in this country is the almost inseparable companion of permanent poverty—poverty is a sort of Chatmoss into which cart-loads of gravel may be upset without giving any solid foundation to build on. Horace Greeley was as true as the multiplication-table when he said that people generally earn money as fast as they have the ability to expend it judiciously.—Ed.
[6] A “Common” is a tract of ground which belongs not to individuals but to the public. Probably the bookstore referred to was on the outskirts of the city, and the “Common” was the land as yet unappropriated by builders, and on which, doubtless, sheep and cows grazed undisturbed.—Note by Editor.
[7] “The dickens!” is an exclamation of playful surprise. Probably the word as here used, is a corruption of this phrase, and was merely a strong way of expressing, on Mr. Hunt's part, that he had written no other letter at all. But after so great a lapse of time it is impossible to get at the exact truth.—Note by Editor.