"Well, then, mother, let us hear what it is."

"It is to nurse you, and rear you, when you are unable to help
yourselves; to guide your first steps, and teach you to lisp your
first syllables. For this purpose, God has given her qualities that
attract sympathy and engender love. She is so constituted as to impart
a charm to your lives, to share in your labors, to soothe you when you
are ruffled, to smooth your pillow when you are in pain, and to
cherish you in old age; bestowing upon you, to your last hour, cares
that no other love could yield. These, gentlemen, are the duties and
occupations of women; and you must admit, that if it is not our
province to command armies, or to add new planets to the galaxy of the
firmament; that if we have not produced an Iliad or an AEnead, a
Jerusalem Delivered, or a Paradise Lost, an Oratorio of the Creation,
a Transfiguration, or a Laocoon, we have not the less our modest
utility."

"I should think so, mother," replied Jack; "it would take no end of
philosophers to do the work of one of you."

"It surprises me," said Willis, "that not one of you has selected the
finest profession in the world--that of a sailor."

"The finest profession of the sea, you mean, Willis. There is no doubt
of its being the finest that can be exercised on the ocean, since it
is the only one. If it is the best, Willis, it is also the worst."

"It has also produced great men," continued Willis; "there are
Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Captain Cook, to whom you are indebted
for a new world."

"No thanks to them for that," said Jack; "if they had not discovered a
new world we should have been in an old one."

"That does not follow," remarked Ernest; "the new world would have
existed even if it had not been discovered, and you might have found
your way there all the same."

"Not very likely," replied Jack, "unless one of the stars you intend
to discover had shown us the way; otherwise it would only have existed
in conjecture; and as nobody under such circumstances would have
dreamt of settling in it, they would not have been shipwrecked during
the voyage."

"Very true," remarked Fritz; "if we had not been here we should, very
probably, have been somewhere else, and perhaps in a much worse
plight. Let me ask if there is any one here who regrets his present
position?"

Willis was about to reply to this question, but Sophia observing that
there was something wrong with the handkerchief that he wore roun