put confidence in God, to be as independent as
possible, and to take their own parts. If they are low-spirited, let
them not make themselves foolish by putting on sackcloth, drinking water,
or chewing ashes, but let them take wholesome exercise, and eat the most
generous food they can get, taking up and reading occasionally, not the
lives of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Spira, but something more agreeable;
for example, the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, the deaf and
dumb gentleman; the travels of Captain Falconer in America, and the
journal of John Randall, who went to Virginia and married an Indian wife;
not forgetting, amidst their eating and drinking, their walks over
heaths, and by the sea-side, and their agreeable literature, to be
charitable to the poor, to read the Psalms, and to go to church twice on
a Sunday. In their dealings with people to be courteous to everybody, as
Lavengro was, but always independent like him; and if people meddle with
them, to give them as good as they bring, even as he and Isopel Berners
were in the habit of doing; and it will be as well for him to observe
that he by no means advises women to be too womanly, but bearing the
conduct of Isopel Berners in mind, to take their own parts, and if
anybody strikes them, to strike again.

Beating of women by the lords of the creation has become very prevalent
in England since pugilism has been discountenanced. Now the writer
strongly advises any woman who is struck by a ruffian to strike him
again; or if she cannot clench her fists, and he advises all women in
these singular times to learn to clench their fists, to go at him with
tooth and nail, and not to be afraid of the result, for any fellow who is
dastard enough to strike a woman, would allow himself to be beaten by a
woman, were she to make at him in self-defence, even if, instead of
possessing the stately height and athletic proportions of the aforesaid
Isopel, she were as diminutive in stature, and had a hand as delicate and
a foot as small as a certain royal lady, who was some time ago assaulted
by a fellow upwards of six feet high, whom the writer has no doubt she
could have beaten had she thought proper to go at him. Such is the
deliberate advice of the author to his countrymen and women--advice in
which he believes there is nothing unscriptural or repugnant to
common-sense.

The writer is perfectly well aware that, by the plain language which he
has used in speaking