interests of society, and the laws of God contend.
Woman has her sphere and her work, and she is only happy when she
finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the
duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman. She is
not the natural head of society. Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost
nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick,
sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the
heart of the world. As the heart, she has power. She rules through
love, and finds the work set for her to do in the doors opening before
her loving nature. She rules through love, and becomes a blessing
greater than we can ever acknowledge, because it is greater than we
can measure. Let woman take heart. She is not in captivity. The law of
service is on her, as it is on man. Much of her service consists in
suffering; much of man's consists in toil. Before both there are
fields of endeavor, white with beckoning harvests. In literature, in
reforms, in ministering to the wants and woes of humanity, in making
home more and more like heaven, woman has an open door set before her,
which no man will desire to close. Let her enter it and work. There
is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity and
equality, or similarity--the law which reconciles similitude and
dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which what is wanting on
the one side finds its complement on the other; for,--

"Heart with heart and mind with mind,
When the main fibres are entwined,
Through Nature's skill,
May even by contraries be joined
More closely still."

Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes as they were
represented by our first parents, and such, however they may be
momentarily disturbed, they will remain, as the ideal for all the
generations of men and women. Let woman repose her trust in man, and
then, lifting up her heart, she may sing,--

"Though God's high things are not all ours,
'Tis ours to look above;
All is not ours to have and hold,
But all is ours to love."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRUE WOMAN***

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