used as an undirected force, and we know not, therefore, what that
force may accomplish when a larger and truer knowledge enables it to be
persistently directed to a conscious aim. This fact, at least, has been
stamped into my inmost being, that men will rise to any moral standard
which women choose to set them.

I ask, therefore, cannot we get our girls to help us here more than we
do, without being crippled by the fear of initiating them too much in
the evil of the world or destroying that unconscious virginal purity
which is, even as things are, so strong and pathetic an influence for
good over young men?

In the addresses that I have given to large numbers of educated girls, I
used often to begin by quoting a passage from the Jewish Prayer-Book. In
a general thanksgiving for the mercies of life, the men say: "We thank
Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast not made us a woman."
One a little wonders how the poor women could join in this thanksgiving.
But in one corner of the page there is a little rubric in very small
print which directs, "Here shall the women say: 'We thank Thee, O Lord
of heaven and earth, that Thou hast made us according unto Thy will!'"
And, looking upon that bed of spring flowers before me, I used to tell
them that it made me feel what a fair and gracious and beautiful thing
it was to be made according unto God's will, to be made a woman.

Now, in the first place, could we not get them to realize this great
truth a little more than they do, and not in their heart of hearts to
wish that they were men? Could we not get them to realize a little more
the divine possibilities of their womanhood, and instead of making it
their ambition to figure as a weaker form of man, and become lawyers,
stockbrokers, and other queer things the modern woman is striving after,
to make it their ambition to become stronger and truer women?

But how is this to be done? I remember on one occasion, when I was going
in the evening to address a mass meeting of working-class girls, a
stout, middle-aged lady bustling up to me in a morning conference we
were holding, and exclaiming: "And what are you going to say to them?
What can you say to them, except to tell them to take care of themselves
and keep the men at arm's length?"

Now, this old-fashioned method, which we have adopted in dealing with
the girls of the poor, I contend traverses the central and most
fundamental facts of a woman's being. A woman will ne