thoroughness, but that it is hard to make them carry this quality into new
fields.

I wish I could possibly convey to the young women who write for advice on
literary projects something of the meaning of this word "thorough" as
applied to literary work. Scarcely any of them seem to have a conception of
it. Dash, cleverness, recklessness, impatience of revision or of patient
investigation, these are the common traits. To a person of experience,
no stupidity is so discouraging as a brilliancy that has no roots. It
brings nothing to pass; whereas a slow stupidity, if it takes time enough,
may conquer the world. Consider that for more than twenty years the path of
literature has been quite as fully open for women as for men, in America,--
the payment the same, the honor the same, the obstacles no greater.
Collegiate education has until quite recently been denied them, but how
many men succeed as writers without that advantage! Yet how little, how
very little, of permanent literary work has yet been done by American
women! Young girls appear one after another: each writes a single clever
story or a single sweet poem, and then disappears forever. Look at
Griswold's "Female Poets of America," and you are disposed to turn back to
the title-page, and see if these utterly forgotten names do not really
represent the "female poets" of some other nation. They are forgotten, as
most of the more numerous "female prose writers" are forgotten, because
they had no root. Nobody doubts that women have cleverness enough, and
enough of power of expression. If you could open the mails, and take out
the women's letters, as somebody says, they would prove far more graphic
and entertaining than those of the men. They would be written, too, in what
Macaulay calls--speaking of Madame d'Arblay's early style--"true woman's
English, clear, natural, and lively." What they need, in order to convert
this epistolary brilliancy into literature, is to be thorough.