l foliage about the oak,
and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the lordly plant is
rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with caressing tendrils,
and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordained by
Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man
in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with
sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his
nature, tenderly supporting the head and binding up the broken heart.

To fill this feature of the wife, education is essential in household
affairs, quite as much as education in books, in music, and the ways
of fashion is essential to the young wife whose husband has suddenly
become rich, and has given up his chambers and taken an elegant house
in some fashionable street.

It is as bad to fall from the heights of opulence, and know not how
to sweep a room, make a bed, or cook a meal, as it is to rise to an
exalted position, and know not how to welcome company or preside at a
feast.

The women in America who suddenly become elevated in rank, and buy
pictures by the yard and books by the cord, are quite as abundant as
are those who lose fortune and rank, and are compelled to seek menial
employments.

The happiness secured by the proper employment of time, and by the
cultivation of the mind, furnishes a high incentive to exertion.

Contrast the woman who is educated with the one uneducated. See her in
her home, reigning a queen, while her uneducated sister, though she
may have wealth and beauty, will constantly feel the lack of that
which gold cannot procure nor fortune provide. "We are foolish,
and without excuse foolish," said Ruskin, "in speaking of the
'superiority' of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in
similar things. Each has what the other has not; each completes the
other, and is completed by the other; they are in nothing alike;
and the happiness and perfection of both depend on each asking and
receiving from the other what the other only can give. Their separate
characters are briefly these: The man's power is active, progressive,
defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the
defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy
for adventure, for work, for conquest, whenever war is just, whenever
conquest is necessary. But the woman's power is for love, not for
battles; and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but