d in whom you trust, when
He gives you most; not to fail those who trust you, when they seem to
need you least; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in the pining
of absence, not in the peril of battle, not in the wasting of sickness,
that your prayer should be most passionate, or your guardianship most
tender. Pray, mothers and maidens, for your young soldiers in the bloom
of their pride; pray for them, while the only dangers round them are in
their own wayward wills; watch you, and pray, when they have to face,
not death, but temptation. But it is this fortitude also for which there
is the crowning reward. Believe me, the whole course and character of
your lovers' lives is in your hands; what you would have them be, they
shall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have
them so; for they are but mirrors in which you will see yourselves
imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also; if you have no
understanding of the scope of their duty, they also will forget it; they
will listen,--they _can_ listen,--to no other interpretation of it than
that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave;--they will be brave for
you; bid them be cowards; and how noble soever they be;--they will quail
for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at their
counsel, they will be fools for you: such and so absolute is your rule
over them. You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so often, that a
wife's rule should only be over her husband's house, not over his mind.
Ah, no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; a true wife, in her
husband's house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen.
Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of
highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she
must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen
into truth: from her, through all the world's clamour, he must win his
praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace.

And, now, but one word more. You may wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken
all this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, if it might be, I, for one,
would fain join in the cadence of hammer-strokes that should beat swords
into ploughshares: and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us men.
It is _your_ fault. Wholly yours. Only by your command, or by your
permission, can any contest take place among us. And the real, final,
reason for all t