Tit for tat

"We cannot live much longer, I fear," he said, clasping her closely in his arms. "Kiss me once, darling, and then we will die."

She clung to him and kissed him.

"There is life, not death, in your lips!" he cried. "Oh, God, if we should live!"

He rose painfully to his feet, stood, tottering? on the raft, and looked across the waves. Presently he began to tremble, then to sob like a child, and at last spoke, through his tears:

"A sail! a sail!--and heading towards us!"

Mr. Editor,--If you ever read the "Burroak Banner" (which you will find among your exchanges, as the editor publishes your prospectus for six weeks every year, and sends no bill to you) my name will not be that of a stranger. Let me throw aside all affectation of humility, and say that I hope it is already and not unfavorably familiar to you. I am informed by those who claim to know that the manuscripts of obscure writers are passed over by you editors without examination--in short, that I must first have a name, if I hope to make one. The fact that an article of three hundred and seventy-five pages, which I sent, successively, to the "North American Review," the "Catholic World," and the "Radical," was in each case returned to me with MY knot on the tape by which it was tied, convinces me that such is indeed the case. A few years ago I should not have meekly submitted to treatment like this; but late experiences have taught me the vanity of many womanly dreams.

You are acquainted with the part I took (I am SURE you must have seen it in the "Burroak Banner" eight years ago) in creating that public sentiment in our favor which invested us with all the civil and political rights of men. How the editors of the "Revolution," to which I subscribe, and the conventions in favor of the equal rights of women, recently held in Boston and other cities, have failed to notice our noble struggle, is a circumstance for which I will not try to account. I will only say--and it is a hint which SOME PERSONS will understand--that there are other forms of jealousy than those which spring from love.

It is, indeed, incredible that so little is known, outside the State of Atlantic, of the experiment--I mean the achievement--of the last eight years. While the war lasted, we did not complain that our work was ignored; but now that our sisters in other States are acting as if in complete unconsciousness of what WE have done--now that we need their aid and they need ours (but in different ways), it is time that somebody should speak. Were Selina Whiston living, I should leave the task to her pen; she never recovered from the shock and mortification of her experiences in the State Legislature, in '64--but I will not anticipate the history. Of all the band of female iconoclasts, as the Hon. Mr. Screed called us in jest--it was no jest afterwards, HIS image being the first to go down--of all, I say, "some are married, and some are dead," and there is really no one left so familiar with the circumstances as I am, and equally competent to give a report of them.