and to send forth men into
the world to "die rather" than save themselves at the cost of a woman,
to "die rather" than drive a woman down into those deep waters of
degradation and death, that we look to the mothers of the future as the
sole hope of the world. I say again you have got to see that they learn
in relation to their own sisters what they have to practise towards all
women, however humble, ay, and however degraded, in their future life.
As the great English oaks are built up of tiny cells, so this true
manliness must be built up by a mother's watchful use of a thousand
small daily incidents--by what Wordsworth rightly calls the best part of
a good man's life--

"His little daily, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love."

In themselves they seem almost too trivial to mention:--the easy chair
instinctively given up on the sister's entrance; the door opened for any
woman passing out; the cap removed in the presence of ladies, even
though those ladies are his own relatives; the deck-chair taken out by
the seaside to make the mother comfortable; the favorite cricket-match
given up if an expedition has been fixed in which his services are
needed; the window raised and the door shut on leaving a
railway-carriage in which women are travelling, so as not to expose them
to draught; and, when men-servants are not kept, the sister's bicycle
cleaned or the skates polished--all those "little daily, unremembered
acts" of knightly service which the mere presence of a woman ought to
inspire in a man.

I am well aware that here again, as Mr. Philip Hamerton points out, the
boarding-school presents a difficulty. As he says, "The worst of the
distant school system is that it deprives the home residence that
remains of all beneficial discipline; for the boys are guests during the
holidays, and the great business is to amuse them."[24]

But surely this needs only to be mentioned to be remedied. You do not
make your boys happier during their holidays by making them selfish:
what is really a novelty to a schoolboy, fresh from the association with
boys only, is to have sisters to look after and a mother to depend upon
him for all sorts of little services. A joyous exclamation on your part,
"Oh, what a comfort it is to have a boy in the house to do things for
one!" will make him swell with manly pride; and should he show the least
tendency to put upon his sisters and make them fetch and carry for him,
as they are onl