in human life and affairs. Only has not the mistake been
made of contending with and grappling results, when causes were in
their hands? Have they not let go the mainsprings to run after
and effectually push with pins the refractory cogs upon the
wheel-rims?

Woman always deserts herself when she puts her life and motive
and influence in mere outsides. Outsides of fashion and place,
outsides of charm and apparel, outsides of work and ambition--she
must learn that these are not her true showing; she must go hack
and put herself where God has called her to be with Himself, at
the silent, holy inmost; then we shall feel, if not at once, yet
surely soon or some time, a new order beginning. He, the Father
of all, gives it to us to be the motherhood. That is the great
solving and upraising word; not limited to mere parentage, but the
law of woman-life. For good or for evil she mothers the world.

Not all are called to motherhood in the literal sense, but all
are called to the great, true motherhood in some of its manifold
trusts and obligations. "_Noblesse oblige_;" you can not lay it
down. "More are the children of the desolate than of her who hath
a husband." All the little children that are born must look to
womanhood somewhere for mothering. Do they all get it? All the
works and policies of men look back somewhere for a true "desire"
toward and by which only they can rule. Is the desire of the
woman--of the home, the mother-motive of the world and human
living--kept in the integrity and beauty for which it was
intrusted to her, that it might move the power of man to noble
ends?

Do you ask the governing of the nation? You have the making of
the nation. Would you choose your statesmen? First make your
statesmen.

Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the
proving of an alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at
the caucuses, conventions, polls? She is needed, at the same time,
elsewhere. Two years of time and strength, of thought and love,
from some woman, are essential for every little human being, that
he may even begin a life. When you remember that every man is once
a little child, born of a woman, trained--or needing training--at
a woman's hands; that of the little men, every one of whom takes
and shapes his life so, come at length the h