ill the home with helpful counsel and sustaining sympathy, when he
comes to find that, instead of a _wife_, he has married a plaything,
and that his children are being committed to the care of a helpless,
unformed companion, rather than to the guidance of a true and noble
wife.

A proper conception of woman's mission as the helpmeet of man would
tend greatly to her elevation. A man who knows for what woman has been
made, and what advantage he should look for from the woman whom he
calls wife, will not select a mere toy as the partner of his life; and
when woman properly recognizes her place, mothers will not be content
to give their daughters, nor will daughters be ambitious, or even
content to receive only such a training as fits them for amusing or
pleasing man in his playful hours, but leaves them altogether unfit
to be his companion under the weightier cares and graver concerns of
life.

Let it be understood that woman's life and labor, mission and work,
point ever homeward, and whether she serve in the store or shop,
in the factory or in the home, she will be ready, whenever God's
providence opens the way, to make home bright for another, because it
has been made bright for herself. In her reading, in her planning, in
her waking dreams and in her night visions, let her live to make
her own home joyous, and she will not live in vain. To do this
successfully in the future, she must make home bright and beautiful in
the present. It is the girl, whose hand is skilful in the home, who
is prized as a companion, because of the substantial linked with
the ornamental. The same is true of a man. Talent, genius even, is
valueless unless it can earn bread. There must be something to make
home pleasant with, which it is the duty of man to provide, else woman
finds it hard to do her work or fulfil her mission. This does not
disparage woman. Her intellect should not be regarded as inferior to
man's because it differs from his. Her mind is formed for a distinct
work and sphere, just as truly as is her body. In that sphere she
is endowed with faculties superior to that of man. Here she has her
requital: here she proves herself mistress of the field, and employs
those secret resources which might be termed admirable, if they did
not inspire a more tender sentiment, both towards her, and towards
God, who has so richly endowed her. "Her practical survey, equally
sure and rapid; her quick and accurate perception; her wonderful power