ney to poison with blackness and desolation the green fields where
God meant little children to gather flowers?

Ladies, to you I appeal, not merely as women, but as Ladies, if (as I am
assured by those who know you), ladies you are, in the grand old meaning
of that grand old word.

If so--you know then, what it is to be a lady and what not. You know
that it is not to go, like the daughters of Zion in Isaiah's time, with
mincing gait, and borrowed head-gear, and tasteless finery, the head
well-nigh empty, the heart full of little save vanity and vexation of
spirit, busy all the week over cheap novels and expensive dresses, and on
Sunday over a little dilettante devotion. You know, I take for granted,
that whatever the world may think or say, that to be that, is not to be a
lady.

For you know, I take for granted, what that word lady meant at first.
That it meant she who gave out the loaves, the housewife who provided
food and clothes; the stewardess of her household and dependants; the
spinner among her maidens; the almsgiver to the poor; the worshipper in
the chapel, praying for wild men away in battle. The being from whom
flowed forth all gracious influences of thought and order, of bounty and
compassion, of purity and piety, civilizing and Christianizing a whole
family, a whole domain. This it was to be a lady, in the old days when
too many men had little care save to make war. And this it is to be a
lady still, in the new days in which too many men have little care save
to make money. Show then that you can be ladies still. That the spirit
is the spirit of your ancestresses, though the form in which it must show
itself is changed with the change of society.

To you I appeal; to as many in this church as are ladies, not in name
only, but in spirit and in truth. Say to your fathers, husbands,
brothers, sons, and say too, and that boldly, to the tradesmen with whom
you deal--Do you hear this? Do you hear that there are savages and
heathens, generations of them, within a rifle-shot of the house? And you
cannot exterminate them; cannot drive them out, much less kill them. You
must convert them, improve them, make them civilized and Christian, if
not for their own sakes, at least for our sakes, and for our children.

And if they should answer: My dears, it is too true. But we did not
make them or put them there, and they are not in our parish. They are no
concern of ours,