To force of action and resolve he opposes force; to strong
will he mates his own; pride lights pride; but to the gentleness of the
true womanly character he yields with a gush of tenderness that nothing
else can call out. He will never be subjugated on his own ground of
action and energy; but let him be lured to that border country over
which the delicacy and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his
energy yields, his haughty determination faints, he is proud of
submission!
And with this thought of modesty and gentleness to illuminate your dream
of an ideal wife, you chase the pleasant phantom to that shadowy
home--lying far off in the future--of which she is the glory and the
crown. I know it is the fashion nowadays with many to look for a woman's
excellencies and influence--away from her home; but I know too that a
vast many eager and hopeful hearts still cherish the belief that her
virtues will range highest and live longest within those sacred walls.
Where, indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue of a woman tell a
stronger story of its worth than upon the dawning habit of a child?
Where can her grace of character win a higher and a riper effect than
upon the action of her household? What mean those noisy declaimers who
talk of the feeble influence, and of the crushed faculties, of a woman?
What school of learning, or of moral endeavor, depends more on its
teacher, than the home upon the mother? What influence of all the
world's professors and teachers tells so strongly on the habit of a
man's mind as those gentle droppings from a mother's lips, which, day by
day and hour by hour, grow into the enlarging stature of his soul, and
live with it forever? They can hardly be mothers who aim at a broader
and noisier field; they have forgotten to be daughters; they must needs
have lost the hope of being wives!
Be this how it may, the heart of a man with whom affection is not a
name, and love a mere passion of the hour, yearns toward the quiet of a
home as toward the goal of his earthly joy and hope.
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