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first thing to be said about the feminine nom de plume, usually, is that it is not feminine. Why is it that the woman writer, when she takes a pen in her hand to address the public, so commonly wishes it to be forgotten that she is a woman? She does not seem to care for this deceit or illusion when she addresses the public orally from a platform. No woman that I ever heard of ever assumed a masculine garb for the sole purpose of being an orator. Why should she affect, then, the habit of the man when she steps forth as a writer?

As an orator or public speaker she assumes, in fact, a position which no grace of manner, or softness of voice, or beauty of fare, or bewitching mystery of dress can quite demasculinize (if I may coin a word for this occasion). For the performance, however well it is done, has that element of commanding power and psychological sway of a multitude by direct physical influence that no amount of habit or familiarity with it can make much different from masculine effort. The function cannot seem otherwise than a man's function. The act of writing, on the contrary, is one of very slight assumption. It does not bring your person into view. You jostle among no rough crowds as a writer, but simply sit in a seclusion as complete as that which hedges in the women of the Orient. It is a fact that some of the veiled women of Persia today are writers of literary productions, and this exercise violates no law of their 