The foregoing remarks on the search for copy are of course addressed to
the aspirant living in London, who possesses immense advantages over her
rural sister. She has, chiefly, the British Museum, that blessed fount of
universal information, and her first duty must be to apply to the Chief
Librarian for a reading ticket. Some time will elapse before she is able
to use handily the vast apparatus here placed at her disposal, but she
will find the officials benignantly omniscient, and always ready to help
the unskilled in research. Also, she must not be shy of going into the
world and collecting such facts as she may require, ferreting things out,
and refusing to be abashed. So soon as she has contributed to a few papers
of standing, she should have some cards engraved with her name, and a list
of these papers after the words "Contributor to." Such a card will
constitute sufficient credentials on any expedition of enquiry, and will
frequently aid her to obtain interviews with "people of importance in
their day." Interviews, it need scarcely be said, are most popular with
the average editor.

The provincial aspirant is less fortunately placed, though if she resides
in a large town with a good public library, she may manage tolerably well.
It is the woman sepulchred in a small village who finds herself most
severely handicapped. Still, I know instances of women so situated who
have gained the position of regular contributors to journals of dignity.
Their success has been usually due to specialising on some single topic or
group of topics, such as "nature notes," "household affairs," "country
occupations," "parochial management," "home handiwork," "village
sketches," and so on. There is copy even in a village. A woman afflicted
with journalistic ambitions once wrote to an editor complaining that she
was out of the world, actually two miles from a shop. "Then write an
article," the editor replied, "entitled 'Two miles from a shop.'" She did