shame that they, who have the instinct of purity and of divine
remedial mercy more than any other, should withhold their hand
from that public legislation by which society may be scoured, and
its pests cleared away. And I declare that woman has more
interest in legislation than man, because she is the sufferer and
the home-staying, ruined victim.

II. The household, about which we hear so much said as being
woman's sphere, is safe only as the community around about it is
safe. Now and then there may be a Lot that can live in Sodom; but
when Lot was called to emigrate, he could not get all his
children to go with him. They had been intermarried and
corrupted. A Christian woman is said to have all that she needs
for her understanding and to task her powers if she will stay at
home and mend her husband's clothes, if she has a husband, and
take care of her children, if she has children. The welfare of
the family, it is said, ought to occupy her time and thoughts.
And some ministers, in descanting upon the sphere of woman, are
wont to magnify the glory and beauty of a mother teaching some
future chief-justice, or some president of the United States. Not
one whit of glory would I withdraw from such a canvas as that;
but I aver that the power to teach these children largely depends
upon the influences that surround the household. So that she that
would take the best care of the house must take care of that
atmosphere which is around the house as well. And every true and
wise Christian woman is bound to have a thought for the village,
for the county, for the State, and for the nation. [Applause].
That was not the kind of woman that brought me up--a woman that
never thought of anything outside of her own door-yard. My
mother's house was as wide as Christ's house; and she taught me
to understand the words of Him that said, "The field is the
world; and whoever needs is your brother." A woman that is
content to wash stockings, and make Johnny-cake, and to look
after and bring up her boys faultless to a button, and that never
thinks beyond the meal-tub, and whose morality is so small as to
be confined to a single house, is an under-grown woman, and will
spend the first thousand years after death in coming to that
state in which she ought to have been befor