ence to ourselves and the
world that we understand our own institutions and position, and learn
that, instead of following the corrupt and worn-out ways of the Old
World, we are called on to set the example of a new state of
society,--noble, simple, pure, and religious; and women can do more
towards this even than men, for women are the real architects of
society.

"Viewed in this light, even the small, frittering cares of woman's
life--the attention to buttons, trimmings, thread, and sewing-silk--may
be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted
woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life.
The women of America can, if they choose, hold back their country from
following in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate European
society, and make America the leader of the world in all that is good."

"I'm sure," said Humming-Bird, "we all would like to be noble and
heroic. During the war, I did so long to be a man! I felt so poor and
insignificant because I was nothing but a girl!"

"Ah, well," said Pheasant, "but then one wants to do something worth
doing, if one is going to do anything. One would like to be grand and
heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be _very_
something, _very_ great, _very_ heroic; or if not that, then at least
very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity
that bores me."

"Then, I suppose, you agree with the man we read of, who buried his one
talent in the earth, as hardly worth caring for."

"To say the truth, I always had something of a sympathy for that man,"
said Pheasant. "I can't enjoy goodness and heroism in homoeopathic
doses. I want something appreciable. What I can do, being a woman, is a
very different thing from what I should try to do if I were a man, and
had a man's chances: it is so much less--so poor--that it is scarcely
worth trying for."

"You remember," said I, "the apothegm of one of the old divines, that if
two angels were sent down from heaven, the one to govern a kingdom, and
the other to sweep a street, they would not feel any disposition to
change works."

"Well, that just shows that they are angels, and not mortals," said
Pheasant; "but we poor human beings see things differently."

"Yet, my child, what could Grant or Sherman have done, if it had not
been for the thousands of brave privates who were content to do each
their imperceptible little,--if it had not be