of costly musical instruction, wins the zenith of professional success;
she receives, the newspapers affirm, sixty thousand dollars a year,
travelling-expenses for ten persons, country-houses, stables, and
liveries, besides an uncounted revenue of bracelets, bouquets, and
_billet-doux_. Of course, every young _débutante_ fancies the same thing
within her own reach, with only a brief stage-vista between. On the
stage there is no deduction for sex, and therefore woman has shown in
that sphere an equal genius. But every female common-school teacher in
the United States finds the enjoyment of her two hundred dollars a
year to be secretly embittered by the knowledge that the young
college-stripling in the next school-room is paid a thousand dollars for
work no harder or more responsible than her own,--and that, too, after
the whole pathway of education has been obstructed for her and smoothed
for him. These may be gross and carnal considerations; but Faith asks
her daily bread, and Fancy must be _fed_. We deny woman her fair share
of training, of encouragement, of remuneration, and then talk fine
nonsense about her instincts and her intuitions,--say sentimentally,
with the Oriental proverbialist, "Every book of knowledge is implanted
by nature in the heart of woman," and make the compliment a substitute
for the alphabet.

Nothing can be more absurd than to impose entirely distinct standards,
in this respect, on the two sexes, or to expect that woman, any more
than man, will accomplish anything great without due preparation and
adequate stimulus. Mrs. Patten, who navigated her husband's ship from
Cape Horn to California, would have failed in the effort, for all her
heroism, if she had not, unlike most of her sex, been taught to use her
Bowditch. Florence Nightingale, when she heard of the distresses in the
Crimea, did not, as most people imagine, rise up and say, "I am a woman,
ignorant, but intuitive, with very little sense or information, but