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domestic piety, a virtue that could sacrifice home, people, substance,
and which tendered even life itself for a parent, was an earnest of the
choicest worth. It formed

"A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that bloom
With most success, when all beside decay."

Of the confessed power of the mother, and the unrivalled claims of her
children on her spiritual care, no language can speak too strongly, or
even in adequate terms. From the hour when their first cry announces to
her their utter helplessness, onward through the trials of childhood,
and the crossing elements of youth, till they part from her charge,--no,
this they never do,--but until she grasps their hand amid the chill of
death, they draw from her, as a well-spring of life. What a question
then is there to be asked, "Does she shed upon them an Eden-like
fragrance? Is she a true mother?" Worlds of wellbeing hang on the answer.

In every domestic relation, the influence of woman is of transcendent
concern. Let her measure the responsibilities that attach to her
position. The faithful daughter, the kind sister, the disinterested
inmate, no less than the parent, must habitually realize, that around
that little spot, her home, she is distilling and must distill, either
dews that fertilize the spirit, or night-damps which blast what they
touch.

Consider the demands of her country upon woman. Sparta required her
women to bear arms in war. Rome called on hers for the austere virtues
of heathenism. But America justly anticipates in this sex a union of
grace with power, intellectual cultivation sustained by moral and
religious attainments. During the French Revolution, we are told that
the wives and daughters of the celebrated artists gave their jewels to
extinguish the national debt. Would that they had added the fairer gift
of the Christian graces.

She who shapes so emphatically the destinies of home, should be aware of
the calls of patriotism on her sex. I have read of a family in the West,
in which the daily conversation of both sexes is, "What can I do for my
country?" Rare as this example may be, I earnestly hope that, through a
sense of her high obligations to her country, woman will everywhere
emulate its spirit.

Is it not due for the rank she is allowed to hold in our republic?
Released from the servitude of her sex, which prevails in so many
foreign lands, and recognized as a partaker in the divinity of our
nature, why should she sink in