A Woman Leader-Writer
sently sent me a copy of his great work on 'Municipal London,' inscribed not only with his kind regards, but 'with further remembrances of the fact that the work is due to a suggestion made by you.'"
In its earliest years the Echo owed much to a woman of great literary power, endowed with a splendid enthusiasm for humanity—Frances Power Cobbe. She had acted as correspondent of the Daily News while in Italy, and was well known as a contributor to the Spectator, the Academy, and the Examiner. She was invited by Mr. Arnold to write leaders three days a week, and she accepted with alacrity. "To be in touch," she wrote, "with the most striking events of the whole world, and to enjoy the privilege of giving your opinion on them to 50,000 or perhaps 100,000 readers within a few hours—this struck me, when I first recognized that such was my business as a leader-writer, as something for which many prophets and preachers of old would have given a house-ful of silver and gold. And I was to be paid for accepting it! It is one thing to be a vox clamantis in deserto, and quite another to speak in Fleet Street, and, without lifting one's voice, to reach, all at once, as many men as formed the population of ancient Athens, not to say that of Jerusalem!
"But I must not magnify mine office too fondly! My share of the undertaking was that on three mornings of every week I should write a leading article on some special subject after arranging with the editor what it should be. For the seven years of my engagement I never once failed. Sometimes it was hard work for me; I had a cold or was otherwise ill, or the snow lay thick, and cabs from South Kensington were not to be had. Nevertheless I made my way to my destination; and when there, I wrote my leader, and as many 'Notes' as were allotted to me, and thus proved, I hope, once for all, that a woman may be relied on as a journalist no less than a man.
"My first article appeared in the third number of the Echo, December 10, 1868, and the last in March, 1875. I
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