Letter from Nevada County. Mud Hill, May 3, 1868

Mr. Editor:– All women admire the beautiful. Here lies a broad field for woman’s talent–painting, sculpting, music, all the fine arts. Here her intuitive faculties can have full play; she can work around her own fireside–and gentlemen, there are many artists among us who adorn their own homes with what you are pleased to call knickknacks. All these things have given her pleasure in creation, and if encouragement were given, more than one Edmonia Lewis might gratify our vision with beautiful creations in marble.

. . . How proud we all feel of our own Miss Greenfield, and rejoice when the Anglo Saxon race had given to the world no sweeter singer than our own Black Swan.

What adorns our own homes more than pictures? Good pictures have a refining influence on the mind, and who of us would be without the portrait of the great and good Lincoln? Let us encourage our children in the use of the pencil and if the artist lurks there we shall soon perceive it. . .

The great world of letters is open to women, and those that have leisure know not, until perused, the pleasure derived from good books as companions. There is no scandal, no backbiting, no recriminations, no criticisms of surroundings, and when you close the book, then put your reflections on open paper.

Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West, pp. 33-34 (excerpts)