Miss Carrie Cockayne to Miss Sharp.

"Rue Millevoye.

"My dearest Emmy,—No answer from you? How unkind! But still I continue to give you my ideas of the moment from this. What do we want? A writer in one of the frivolous sheets which are called newspapers on this side of the Channel, has been giving himself great airs; looking out of his window, with two or three touches of his pen he dismisses the poor women who pass under his balcony, and closes the casement with the conviction that woman's rights and wrongs are put away for another generation. Foolish women! They are plentiful enough, and they muster in fair numbers at the Wauxhall meetings which have been going on here, to the infinite amusement of the superior creatures who drink absinthe, smoke cigars, and gamble, hours after we silly things have gone to bed. I am not writing to deny woman's weakness, nor her vanity, nor the ridiculous exhibition she makes of herself when she takes to "orating"—as the Yankees say—and lecturing, and dressing herself up in her brother's clothes. Do you think, my dear Emmy, there are many women foolish enough to applaud Dr. Mary Walker because she dresses like an overgrown school-girl, and shows her trousers? What is she like in society? Neither man nor woman. But how many have imitated her? How many women in England, France, and America have taken to the platform? One would think that all womankind was in a state of revolution, and about to make a general descent upon the tailors and tobacconists, turning over the lords of the creation to the milliners and the baby-linen warehouses. This is just the way men argue, and push themselves out of a difficulty. This French philosophical pretender, who has been observing us from his window (I can't imagine where he lives), describes one or two social monstrosities—with false complexions, hair, figure,—and morals; brazen in manner, defiant in walk—female intellectual all-in-alls. His model drives, hunts, orates, passes resolutions, dissects—in short does everything except attend to baby. This she leaves to the husband. He takes the pap-bowl, and she shoulders the gun. He looks out the linen while she sharpens her razors. The foolish public laugh all along the boulevards, and say what a charming creature a woman will be when she drives a locomotive, commands a frigate, and storms a citadel!

"Every time a meeting is convened at the Wauxhall to consider how the amount of female starvation or misery may be reduced, the philosopher throws his window open again, and grins while he caricatures, or rather distorts and exaggerates to positive untruth. M. Gill gets fresh food. The chroniqueurs invent a series of absurdities, which didn't happen yesterday, as they allege. I am out of patience when I see all this mischievous misrepresentation, because I see that it is doing harm to a very just and proper cause. We are arguing for more work for our poor sisters who have neither father, husband, brother, nor fortune to depend upon; and these French comic scribblers describe us as unsexed brawlers, who want top-boots. I want no manly rights for women. I am content with the old position, that her head should just reach the height of a man's heart; but I do see where she is not well used—where she is left to genteel dependence, and a life in the darkest corner of the drawing-room, upon the chair with the unsafe leg, over the plate that is cracked, in the bedroom where the visitor died of scarlet fever.

"She is not unsexed wearing her poor heart out against these bars; but she would be a free, bright, instructed creature, helping her rich sister, or a trusty counsellor when the children are ill. She would be unsexed issuing railway tickets or managing a light business; but she is truly womanly while she is helpless and a burden to others.

"Foolish women! Yes, very stupid very often, but hardly in hoping that the defenceless among us may be permitted to become, by fair womanly exertion, independent. I am directed to observe how amusing the Figaro has been recently at our expense, hoping to obtain the suffrages of the really thoughtless of our sex thereby. We are our own worst enemies and well do you men know it. The frivolous are an immense host, and these have reason to laugh at serious women who want to get a little justice and teaching for their dependent sisters—not manly avocations, nor masculine amusements. I go to the Wauxhall, my dear Emmy, not to help my sex to unsex itself, but, I must repeat, to aid my poor sisters who want to work, that, if left without the support of male kindred, they may lead honourable, independent lives; to this end they must have certain rights, and these, and no more, I advocate.

"You see, the old story is told over again. We beg a little independence; and we are answered with ancient jests. You are quite as unjust, and not so amusing or clever in your injustice in England. They have not imitated the medical students in St. James's Hall at this Wauxhall. We have seen no such monstrous spectacle as a host of young men hooting and yelling at one poor, weak, foolish little woman in black pantalettes. Truly, you must be as tired of the comic view of the question as you are ashamed of your medical students. I know what the highly-educated English ladies think on the subject. They detest the orating, blustering, strangely-costumed advocates of woman's rights; but don't fall into the common error of believing that they are not earnest about many of the points we have been discussing here, in the midst of this mocking race. Depend upon it, we are not foolish enough—fond as you men are of crying 'foolish women!'—to unsex ourselves.

"The woman who wants to get into Parliament is, to my thinking, a monster; and I would sentence her to stocking-mending for life. The creature who appears before men in black pantalettes, and other imitations of his dress, should be rigorously held clear of decent houses, until she had learned how to dress herself modestly and becomingly. The Missy who talked about eating her way to the bar, I would doom to the perpetual duty of cooking chops for hungry lawyers' clerks.

"But you will have had enough of this.

"Not a word? and you promised so many. Somebody has whispered a name to me. It is Charles. Is that true? I will never forgive you.

"Ever yours,

"Carrie."

Emmy never answered, poor girl!