and depressing associations, to work in
the home, because she hopes in the store or factory to secure the
hand and heart of a husband sooner than elsewhere, she must suffer
accordingly. But if woman will unite in securing a reform in this
direction,--if the pure and the virtuous will say, Such a life as is
offered me in the family is in harmony with my future well-being, and
I will scorn the allurements elsewhere held out, and fit myself, by
study, for companionship with the noble of the land, she will succeed.
If woman will respect herself, she will be respected.

It is not by clamoring for rights that have been conferred upon
others; it is not by restless discontent, by partisan appeals, by
stepping out of her God-given sphere, and by attempting to destroy the
network of holy influences by which he ever has surrounded her; it is
not by ridiculing marriage and casting scorn on motherhood, that she
is to obtain the blessings she courts, but by tranquilly laboring
under this heaven-imposed law of obedience. Woman's weakness is
transmuted into strength when she opens her nature to the influences
of love, and when she consecrates herself to the happiness of others.
Then it is she obtains a moral and spiritual power to which man
is glad to do homage. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or any earthly
passion, will distort her being. She struggles all in vain against
a divine appointment. It is from the soul of meekness that the true
strength of womanhood is derived; and it is because it has its root in
such a soil that it has a growth so majestic, showering its blessing
and fruits upon the world.

It was the sun and the wind that in the fable strove for the mastery;
and the strife was for the traveller's cloak. The quiet moon had
nought to do with such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast;
but as in her tranquil orbit she journeys round the world, she gently
sways the tides of the ocean. Woman's influence resembles that exerted
by the queen of night. In the conflicts of life she has little to do;
but her influence is felt from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere
of it is the whole region of humanity. Woman's worst enemy is he who
would cruelly lift her out of her sphere, and would try to reverse the
laws of God and of nature in her behalf. They deceive woman who cause
her to believe that she will find independence when she abandons the
position assigned her by her Creator, and reaches one against which
her nature, the