The average woman, specially trained, should do at any intellectual
work nearly as well as the average man. The old prejudice against the
work of women is practically extinct. Love of independence and the
newly awakened impatience of the old shackles, in addition to the
forces already mentioned, are everywhere driving girls to take up
professional lives.

Not only are the doors of the old avenues thrown open: we have created
new ways for the women who work. Literature offers a hundred paths,
each one with stimulating examples of feminine success. There is
journalism, into which women are only now beginning to enter by ones
and twos. Before long they will sweep in with a flood. In medicine,
which requires arduous study and great bodily strength, they do not
enter in large numbers. Acting is a fashionable craze. Art covers as
wide a field as literature. Education in girls' schools of the highest
kind has passed into their own hands. Moreover, women can now do many
things--and remain gentlewomen--which were formerly impossible. Some
keep furniture shops, some are decorators, some are dressmakers, some
make or sell embroidery.

In all these professions two things are wanting--natural aptitude and
special training. Unfortunately, the competition is encumbered and
crowded with those who have neither, or else both imperfectly,
developed.

The present state of things is somewhat as follows: The world contains
a great open market, where the demand for first-class work of every
kind is practically inexhaustible. In literature everything really
good commands instant attention, respect--and payment. But it must be
really good. Publishers are always looking about for genius.