=First Made on a Kitchen Stove.=--Could this be done? Mrs. Pinkham believed with all her heart that it was possible. So on a kitchen stove she began the great work which has made her name a household word wherever civilization exists. Without money, but with a hopeful heart, she made up little batches of this remedy to give to neighbors and friends whom she felt could be relieved by it.
The story soon spread from house to house, from village to village, from city to city. Now it looked as if a business might be established upon a permanent basis, a basis resting upon the wonderful curative properties of the medicine itself.
="We Can Trust Her."=--By judicious advertising the merits of this remarkable remedy were set forth; and before she was hardly aware of it, she found herself at the head of one of the largest enterprises ever established in this country.
That face so full of character and sympathy, soon after it was first published, years ago, began to attract marked attention wherever it was seen. Women said, "Here is one to whom we can tell our misery, one who will listen to our story of pain, one whom we can fully trust." And so the letters began to arrive from every quarter. Now hundreds of these letters are received every day. More than a hundred thousand were written in a single year. Everyone is opened by a woman, read by a woman, sacredly regarded as written strictly in confidence by one woman to another. Men do not see these letters.
=Men Never See Your Letters.=--Do you want a strange man to hear all about your particular disease? Would you feel like sitting down by the side of a stranger and telling him all those sacred things which should be known only by women? It isn't natural for a woman to do this; it isn't like her, isn't in keeping with her finer sense of refinement.
=No Boys Around.=--And then, how would it be when some boy opens the letters, steals time to read a few before they are handed to some other boy clerk to distribute (and probably read) around the office to the various departments? It makes one almost indignant to think how light and trivial these serious matters are so often regarded.
=You Write to a Woman.=--But when you know your letter is going to be seen only by a woman, one who sympathizes with you, feels sorry for you, knows all about you, how different all this seems.