WOMAN
HER CHARM AN Is) POWER
ROBERT P. DOWNKS, LL.D.
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MY gentle reader if it be,
That this same praise of you from me s
In its good faith and chivalry,
Should sound too high and sweet ;
Rise then to woman's real height,
And let my wonder and delight,
In that which is so pure and bright
Still keep me at your feet.
R. P. a
WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
CHAPTER I
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN
Tender, and sweet, and faithful, I have found her,
Since heaven looked on me through my mother's eyes ;
And still, methinks, heaven's light and grace surround her,
To baffle scorn and silence enemies.
R. P. D.
In my soul I think God meant to teach the world the way to purity and
nobility through women. And I believe, with old Martin Luther, that the
noblest thing God ever made on earth is the heart of a right noble, loving
woman. HENRY WARD BEECHER.
WOMAN, thank God, is always with us. She
brings us into being. We are cradled in her
arms. She loves and guards us with fond devotion when
as yet we have awakened no other interest. We may-
be plain, but she sees beauty in us. We may be ill-
tempered, but she bears with us. She will sacrifice ease,
sleep, strength, yea life itself to serve us. She is Love's
form. God first looks on us through her tender eyes.
She interprets for us the love, the pity, and the grace
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is her^constant and
13
14 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
unwearied ministry which gives its music to the sweet word
home. When She departs, that word loses its meaning, and
we begin to thu?k of heaven as home because she is there.
She bears with bur sins and carries our sorrows. She
is wounded for our transgressions. She is our guardian
angel, not unseen, but moving and breathing by our side*
Our earliest tasks are encountered at her bidding. Our
first ambitions are kindled by her smile. We aspire
after nobleness because she expects it from us. We
itand off from baseness that we may not bow her head
in shame. If she approves us the whole world may hiss,
and we shall not heed it If she condemns us the
applause of nations cannot redeem us from self-contempt
Her blessing is as the sun when he calls forth the
morning. Her censure is as the stroke of an angel's
sword If through loss of honour we have lost her love
and trust, fate has emptied its quiver on us. It has no
other arrow left. If we have blessed and sheltered her,
all things combine to comfort us. If we have wronged
and defiled her, our hell has begun already. A mother,
a sister, a wife, a daughter, what magic dwells in
those tender names. Blot them out and the world would
Jjp for us only a heart-breaking wilderness, and life a
bitter weed which we would gladly cast away.
'Tis hers to curb the passions' maddening sway
And wipe the mourner's bitter tear away:
Tis hers to soothe when hope itself has fled,
And cheej with angel smile the sufferer's bed ;
To give to earth its charm, to life its zest,
One,, only task to bless and to be blest
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 15
Estimates of woman are as varied as the minds
which cherish them. The beautiful . see^the beautiful,
and the base, ttjp base. Men portray their own char-
acters by the manner in which they portray the characters
of otlfers, and this is specially true with regard to their
judgment of women. If they have treated them as toys
and playthings, they esteem them frivolous and empty.
If they have used them lawlessly, they write them down
as base. If, on the other hand, they have honoured and
cherished them, as every true man should, guarding theif
weakness and reverencing their purity, they will hold
them as superior to themselves in all finer human
qualities nearer, indeed, to the divine and the heavenly.
" We pity the man," says Richter, " for whom his own
mother has not made all other mothers venerable."
The Chinese have perhaps the meanest recorded
saying about women : " There are two good women ;
one dead, the other unborn." Closely akin to this, are
the silly lines of one who says
Men have many faults,
Women only two ;
There's nothing wise they ever say,
And nothing good they do.
Most women will hold that Antiphanes was twice a
heathen when he wote : " One thing only I believe in a
woman, that she will not come to life again after she is
dead; in everything else I mistrust her till she is dead,"
George Meredith fills us with amazement when he writes :
" I expect that woman will be the last thing civilised by
i6 WOMAJV: HER CHARM AND POWER
man." Lord Chesterfield, agaiff, has said with bitter
irony: "Wofcen re much more like each other than
men. They hve, in truth, but two passions, vanity and
love. These are their universal characteristics, and he
who flatters them most pleases them best." Anfl what
shall we say of Plato, where, alluding to the doctrine orf
metempsychosis, or the possible sinking of men to lower
and lower stages in another life, he says : " Foppish men
will be degraded after death to the form of woman ; and
if they do not make some effort to retrieve themselves,
they will become birds."
Woman, however, need not be discouraged by the
unjust things which have been said of her by men, since
it is certain that the good things said about her far out-
number and outweigh the evil things. Furthermore, we
have observed that as a man rises in nobleness, his
estimate of woman rises with him, and it is also true
that the wisest and noblest men have cherished the most
exalted views of woman.
Noble Views of Woman
Let us now refer to some of those worthier estimates
of woman, in her ideal character, which are more in
harmony with truth and sanity. For example, Charles
Lemesle has said : " Most of their faults women owe to
us men, whilst we are indebted to them for most of our
better qualities." 'From the pure soul of F. W. Robertson
this tribute springs : " It is the prerogative and glory of
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 17
womanhood to consecrate the meanest things by a
ministry which is not for self." Malherbg- again writes :
"The Creator may have repented the oreation of man,
but He has no reason to repent havjng made woman/'
Menu* the sage, remarks : " When women are respected
the gods are content; but when they are dishonoured
all acts of piety are barren/' The gentle and noble
Jean Paul Richter writes : " Oh, if the loving, closed
heart of a good woman should open before a man, how
much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices^
and dumb virtues would be seen reposing therein/ 1
F. Hargrave says : " Women are the poetry of the world,
in the same sense as stars are the poetry of heaven;
clear, light-giving, harmonious, they are the terrestrial
planets that rule the destinies of mankind/ 1 The kindly
and chivalrous James Ellis writes: "Woman is the
beacon light of every man's ambition; his aspirations,
energies, and courage are all drawn forth by the holy
influence of her love." The great John Ruskin's innate
reverence for woman is known to all his readers ; and that
is a fine tribute to the power of her ministry where he
says: "You cannot think that the buckling on of the
knight's armour by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of
romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth
that the soul's armour is never well set to the heart unless
a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she
braces it loosely that the honour of manhood fails/'
Space fails us to add the noble tributes^ to woman in her
ideal character which might be culled from such writers
i8 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
as Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace
Thackeray, K^ D. Blackmore, Robert Louis Stevenson,
and a hundred others. Almost invariably with these
great delineators of humanity, it is their heroines rather
than their heroes who fascinate and enchain us, ad we
are compelled to yield admiring homage to womanly
grace, womanly fidelity, and womanly purity.
The Poets and Women
Yet, further, since on questions of deep interest we
consult the best authorities, let us now turn for some
adequate view of woman to " God's great truth-tellers," as
Mrs. Browning designates them, the poets. Gifted with
finer intuitions and deeper insight than ordinary men,
the poets have penetrated more fully into the ideal char-
acter of woman than any other class of writers, and it is
essential that we should hear their testimony concern-
ing her.
Going back towards the dim twilight of recorded
time, we find in the older Greek literature pictures of
womanly excellence which neither the age of chivalry
nor that of our modern civilisation has surpassed. Those
Greek masters of song who first gave us the Epic and
the Tragedy have given us visions of ideal womanhood
which are amongst the most perfect in the literature of
tiie world. The devotion of Andromache to Hector; the
fidelity of Penelope gazing for long years over the
glimmering sea for the return of her husband Ulysses ;
VARIED ESTIMATES OP WOMAN 19
the heroic love of Alccstis yielding herself to death with
sacred joy that the life of her husband might be spared ;
the filial piety of Antigone; the saintly resignation of
Iphigcnia; the modesty > tenderness^ and playfulness of
Nauftcaa, who moves through the Odyssey like a ray of
sunshine all these are pictures of sweet and faithful
womanhood, whose charm can never perish,
Passing from Greece to Italy, and pausing before her
greatest master, Dante, we note how a woman inspired
and sustained his genius, not only making earth sacre4
for him by her presence, but leading him also through the
shadowy under- world the mystic Hades up to the
Faradi.se in whose bright radiance angels circle the throne
rejoicing*
Chaucer wrote w A Legend of Good Women/* but no
Legend of Good Men* Spenser portrays in the heavenly
Una a vision of pure loveliness, which has taken captive
the heart of the world. And what shall we say of
Shakespeare's divine gallery of pure and noble woman-
hood ! " Broadly speaking/' says John Ruskin, " Shake-
speare has no heroes ;~*hc has only heroines, , . There
is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, stead-
fast in grace, hope, and errorless purpose* , * , He repre-
sents them as infallibly faithful and wise councillors,
incorruptedly just and pure examples, strong always to
sanctify, even when they cannot save. 11 Goethe, the
Shakespeare of Germany, has given us in his Pair Saint,
as Rwrattd in ffir Confessions^ perhaps the finest Ideal
of womanhood the world has ever beheld. Some of
20 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND PO WER
Browning's women are lovely beyond words, as, foi
example, Pompitiia, " the snow-white soul that angels fear
to take untendeMy" and Pippa, in her sweet spring-
rapture, singing as ske trips along
God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.
Tennyson has his exquisite " Dream of Fair Women,"
from the charms of Enid and Elaine, to the noble
strength of his Princess, who says to all the world,
"JBetter not be at all, than not be noble," and who bids
the women of her college drink deep of knowledge, that
" the habits of the slave, the sins of emptiness, gossip,
and spite and slander," may die within them.
Such, according to the best authorities, is ideal
woman. Not a puppet or a plaything. Not a kind of
inferior being, through whom children are bora, and
houses kept neat and clean. Not a creature destined
to stand aloof from serious thoughts and lofty aims,
but the teacher and guide of youth, the helpmeet
of man, the conscience of society and of the world, the
Eve of the Paradise of our joys, and our comforter
when its gates are closed against us, and we face the
wilderness.
Let man reverence her, and she will justify his
reverence. Let him treat her nobly, and she will requite
his nobleness a hundredfold. Let him deal purely with
her, and she will make his sanctity look stained and
poor. Let him deiay himself only in some small degree
to make her blest, and she will lay her all in magnificent
VARIED ESTIMATES OP WOMAN ai
self-surrender at his feet, only grieving that it is not
more, f
The ve^f first
Of hutn%n life must JJpring from woman's breast,
Your first small words arc taught y$u from her lips,
Your first tears qttenchVl by her, and your last sighs
Too nficn breathed out in a woman's hearing,
\Vlsrn men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the lust hour of him who led them,
The Relation of Woman to Man
He fore considering further the subject of the charjji
and power of woman, it is needful to determine, in some
satisfactory way, her relation to man* Some speak of
the mission and the rights of woman as if she were
intended to stand apart from man and to be Independent
of him, while others assert so strongly the lordship of
man as to convey the idea that woman Is his inferior,
and Is intended to yield a weak and servile obedience
to his stronger will Both conceptions, however, are
false and misleading. The true relation between man
and woman Is one of equality in difference*
We urc formed iw nott** of twwlc ure
Fur one ftnothrr, though
There is no such thing as independence on either
side, there is only inter-dependence* Each sex has its
own distinctive place, and its own appointed ministry,
Woman was not intended to be the rival or the slave,
but the complement of man* The primitive record of
God's creative act is, u Male and .female created He
them.'* There are characteristic differences which make
22 WOMAN : HER CHARM AND POWER
the two sexes related to and dependent the one upon
the other. Tltey are, as it were, two halves of humanity.
Man is not complete in himself, or woman in herself.
It needs "the two-celled heart beating with one full
stroke" to constitute a full-orbed and perfect hmman
life.
Benjamin Franklin aptly said, that like the two
halves of a pair of scissors man and woman completed
each other. Pope erred when he affirmed that woman
jyas merely " a softer man." On the contrary, there is
sex in souls as well as in bodies, and for this reason
there is an essential difference between woman and
man. Plato also erred when he said that women are
the same as men in faculty, only less in degree. Tenny-
son has the truer insight where he sings
For woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this-
Not like to like, but like in difference:
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man ;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world:
She mental breadth, not fail in childward care:
More, as the double-natured poet, each:
Till at the last she sets herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words.
The distinction which exists between man and woman
is not, as some would argue, the mere result of education
or of training, but is inherent in the physical and mental
constitution of the, sexes. The constitutional qualities
which result in motherhood, exercise so great an mflu-
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 23
ence on the temperament and on the nervous system
that they bring about, as a natural re^ilt, a marked
difference between woman and man. /These qualities
do not affect the higher moral *and intellectual nature,
but they do affect the whole emotional nature, and fix
that difference in the sexes which renders them mutually
attractive and capable of blending and becoming one.
Each is the other's needful counterpart, Man is
woman's fulness and strength. Woman is his quicker
insight and his more winsome grace. Man represents
power, courage, will, labour. Woman represents del?
cacy, beauty, tenderness, trust. Man is the prose of
humanity ; woman the poetry. Man is roused into
action by ambition ; woman by love. Woman carries
her special strength in her heart; man in his head*
We are greater when we love than when we think, for
God is love* And woman stands nearer to God than
man because of her capacity to love* She climbs the
golden stair, while he lingers at the foot. He has the
knowledge of outward things, and masters them for her.
She confides in God, and pleads with God for him. The
countcrpoi.se is beautiful, and attests the divine wisdom
and the divine benevolence, " If I were suddenly
asked/ 1 says Sir Arthur Helps, "to give a proof of
the goodness of God to us, 1 think I should say that
it is most manifest in the exquisite difference He has
made between the souls of men and women, so as to
create the possibility of the most comforting and charm-
ing companionship that the mind of man can imagine/'
24 WQMAM: HK CHARM AN 2} POWER
It has been too generally assumed that won
exists for mai\ and that her unique destiny is to please
and serve him\ It is true that woman is intended to
be the helpmeet of man, but this does*not imply that
she must therefore be subservient to him, and that she
exists chiefly for his sake. No, she exists chiefly for
her own sake.
Let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn to be
All that harms not distinctive womanhood.
Tt has been said that the most important duty of woman
is to perfect man. This is false. It is a remnant of
barbaric prejudice, preserved from the ages of brute
force, when woman was regarded as a mere appendage
to man, or as his slave. The most important duty of
woman, as of every other human being, is, through the
perfecting of her own nature as a child of God, to fulfil
her personal destiny in the universe. Woman's divinity
is intended not to be man, but God. Her being and
her strength are drawn not from man, but from that
higher and diviner source whence every individual soul
proceeds, and to which alone it is accountable. She
is created first of all for God, next for herself, and lastly
for her husband and her children. She may be a wife
and a mother, and find her highest earthly happiness in
these relations. But these relations are by no means
an entire statement of her privileges and responsibilities.
She may have neither lover, husband, nor children, yet
her personal destiny may still be achieved. She may
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 25
walk with God and do His will, and thus attain that
self-perfection which will reach its glorious fruition in
that diviner world, where there is " nattier marriage
nor giving in marriage," but all are as the angels of
God, * No man may call her to his side to be the
jpartner of his joys and sorrows, no little ones may
cluster round her knee for love and cherishing, but over
the lonely sea of life she may hear a sweet voice calling
Oh, child, conic forth ! for them #rwh dwell with Me
About the immortal throne, where spirits joy
In growing vision, and In growing love.
The Masculine and Feminine Intellect
It has always been assumed that woman, intellectu-
ally, is essentially inferior to man, A careful study of
the subject, however, leads us to the conclusion that she
Is different rather than inferior. There is a masculine
and a feminine in intellect as well as In physical con-
formation. In comparing the intellectual powers of men
and women, a proper distinction should be made be-
tween receptive faculty and originative faculty, between
fineness and essential strength. John Raskin wisely
says: "We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, 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, and is completed by the
other ; they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and
perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving
from the other what the other can only give/'
26 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
r
If the quality of an instrument is to be tested t>y
the intricacy* and delicacy of the work it can do,
female mind And nervous system show a greater
of fineness than those of man. But fhey do not equa.1
man's in essential strength. Feminine and
reign here as elsewhere. In the world of Art
have had no woman master no compeer to Handol,
Beethoven, Raphael, or Michael Angelo. In literature,
with regard to energy, the same truth holds good-
Balzac is greater than George Sand, and Victor Hug"O
than Madame de Stae'L George Eliot does not equa.1
Scott, Thackeray, or Dickens. Sappho cannot vie wit:!*
Homer, or E. B. Browning with Wordsworth or Shelley.
In philosophy we cannot compare Harriet Martinea.x*
with Bishop Berkeley or Sir William Hamiltox* ;
while in mathematics we cannot place Mary Somerville.
side by side with Sir Isaac Newton or Sir William
Thomson. Women are intelligent, but they are not:
often creative.
It is only fair, however, to remember that in tlies
mental sphere woman has had to battle with immense:
difficulties. She has not had half a chance. She h.a.s
been shut out from almost every field of intellectual
labour. " Long prejudice," remarks Mazzini, " an in-
ferior education, and a perennial legal inequality anci
injustice, have created that apparent intellectual inferi-
ority which has been converted into an argument of
continued oppression." After the same fashion, Lady-
Psyche says in Tennyson's " Princess "
VAJRIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 27
Besides, the brain was Hke the hand, and grew
With using ; thence the man's, if more was nt>re j
He took advantage of his strength to be
First in thq, field : some ages had been lost.
Until women have been allowed for some generations to
share Trecly in every educational advantage, and have
keen given every opportunity In common with men, it
is impossible to gauge their mental capacity.
We know it is urged, in reply to this, that a woman's
brain is smaller than a man's. But it must also be
remembered that there arc two things in brain quality
and quantity. The brain of a whale weighs double that
of a man, yet it has never been asserted that it has the
advantage over man in point of intellect
Woman* s Swift> fntoith* Insight
If it be admitted, however, that intellectually woman
is inferior to man,~~~inferior, that is, in strength of mind f
and in power of mental concentration, it is still true
that in Intuitive sagacity woman is man's superior.
Notwithstanding her want of opportunity she has always
ihown a quickness of perception, a swift and accurate
insight which man has regarded with a wonder some-
times not far separated from positive awe*
Writing of the Teutonic peoples, whose respect for
woman was remarkable In those early times, Tacitus
says : " The Germans suppose some divine and prophetic
quality resident in their women, and are careful neither
to disregard their admonitions nor * to neglect their
answers/ 1 Thus was it In ancient times, and In the
*8 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
present day all wise and thoughtful men are very
cautious abfiut acting in direct opposition to the con-
victions of tHfeir wives.
By a flash, as it were, of inspired insight, woman
often decides, with unerring accuracy, questions* which
man has failed to solve by an elaborate process of
reasoning. Her intuitive judgments are often more to
be relied upon than the balanced conclusions of the
logical intellect, and she sees at a glance that which
man may have laboured hours to see. As a witty
French writer says : " When a man has toiled step by
step up a flight of stairs, he will be sure to find a woman
at the top, though she will be unable to tell how she
got there." How she got there is of little consequence ;
it is enough for her that she is gifted, like many other
beings in creation, with a self-protective instinct which
guards heir from danger by revealing her enemies. She
knows instinctively that one man is to be trusted, and
another man is to be feared; and if those about her
despise her intuitive convictions as to character, the final
result attests their folly and her wisdom. It is this
fact which has given rise to the saying, "The woman
who deliberates is lost." Her first swift judgment, God-
whispered as one might think, is always more accurate
than her subsequent reflection.
Varieties in Women
Neither is it* true, as some have unworthily asserted,
that women are destitute of character. "Accuracy of
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 29
*
thought," says W. R. Alger, "has seldom been more
recklessly offered up to pungency of expression than in
Pope's oft-citcrl aphorism *
Nothing so true as what you once let fail,
* Most women have no characters at all*
There is an ample variety of tenacious womanly char-
acter between the extremes marked by Miriam beating
her timbrel and Cleopatra applying the asp, Cornelia
showing her Roman jewels and Madame Guyon rapt
in God, Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger
and Florence Nightingale sweetening the Crimean war
with philanthropic deeds. What group of men, indeed,
can be brought together, more distinct in individuality,
more contrasted in diversity of traits and destiny, than
such women as Kve in the Garden of Eden, Mary at
the foot of the cross, Jael bending over the sleeping
Sisera, Delilah betraying the swarthy Samson, Rebecca
at the well, Scmiramis on her throne, Boadicea in her
chariot, Ruth among f the alien corn,' Jezebel in her
palace at Jezrcel, Lais at the banquet, Joan of Arc in
her shining armour, Tomyris striding over the field with
the head of Cyrus in her hand, Ferpetua smiling on the
lions in the amphitheatre, Martha cumbered with much
serving, Pocahontas under the shadow of the woods,
Saint Theresa in the convent, Madame Roland on the
scaffold. Mother Agnes at Port Royal, Catharine ot
Sienna devoting her life to the poor, Grace Darling
facing the wrath of the sea, exiled Madame de Stal
wielding her pen as a sceptre, the Princess Alice of
30 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
England drinking in death with a kiss, Aria handing
the dripping dagger to Paetus, and Mrs. Fry lavishing
her existence on outcasts?"
Thus, it is not fair to clash women together as if
they were all alike, for there are as many varieties of
character among women as among men.
Crime in Woman and Man
Some of our modern sociologists have maintained
that women were equal with men in the field of crimin-
ality. From statistics carefully compiled, however, it
can be proved that this is not so. On the contrary,
It is established beyond dispute that, taking the whole
of Europe into consideration, women are far less criminal
than men.
For example, in France, in the year 1880, there
were but fourteen women delinquents to one hundred
men. During the same year, in Italy, only nine women
were convicted of crime, as compared with one hundred
men. In the year 1871, Dr. Nicholson found in the
prisons of England over eight thousand men, and less
than thirteen hundred women.
From Algeria and Bavaria, Germany and Russia,
we have a like testimony, amply demonstrating that,
as far as positive crime is concerned, the contrast with
regard to man and woman is great.
In our journey through life we have sometimes met
with men who seemed utterly and hopelessly depraved
But we hav % e never yet met a woman out of whose
VARIED ESTIMATES OF WOMAN 31
nature all which was divine had been crushed or flung
away. With Longfellow
We believe
That wonfan, in her deepest degradation,
Holds something sacred, something undefiled,
Some pledge and keepsake of her higher nature,
And, like the diamond in the dark, retains
Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light I
Honour, chastity, modesty, fidelity these divine
and beautiful qualities seem natural to woman. It
would, indeed, appear that only by the corrupting in-
fluence of man is she dragged down to degradation.
The records of the race attest that woman is very
seldom the originator of crime, it is in following in
the wake of man that she becomes soiled and polluted.
It has been stated again and again that women have
no sense of justice, but the statement is utterly untrue,
The sense of justice in a woman is fully as keen as it
is in the best men, but she will meekly bear acts of
injustice toward herself, through her unwillingness to
retaliate, while her sense of dependence frequently leads
to silent acquiescence in acts of injustice toward others
which, if she were independent, she would not tolerate.
Let men, who have despised or forgotten the mother
who bore them, labour to convict woman of baseness,
for our part we would rather say, with Mrs. Browning
in her " Aurora Leigh "
My sister ! let the night be ne'er so dark,
The moon is surely somewhere in the skyj
So surely is your whiteness to be found
Through all dark facts.
CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN
All that we dream of gracious or divine
In women hath its type; each holy sprite,
Poet or seer, or saintly eremite,
Resembles woman ; all that doth refine
The arts, the manners, to her sway benign
Owes high allegiance; all things fair and right
Her weakness champion in the world's despite ;
Where women is, no home hut hath a shrine ;
How oft, alas, profaned ! Men crucify
Her gentle spirit, and to shame betray
Her innocence with a kiss ; her agony
And sweat of blood the winds that ever stray
Forever witness ; and her bitter cry
Goes up to heaven for vengeance, night and day.
MARTIN SWIFT.
The woman is not the servant of man, much less his slave. She is his
companion, his assistant, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. In pro-
portion as the moral sense becomes developed among a people, she increases
in dignity and in liberty; hi that sort of liberty that is not exemption
from duty and order, but enfranchisement from all servile dependence.
LAMBNNAIS.
THERE are few studies more interesting than that
of the condition of woman at different periods of
the world's history, together with the extremes of honour
or dishonour in which she has been held in different
climes and under varied social conditions. It is truly
amazing to consider how for long ages woman was
as
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 33
regarded merely as the property of man, made only for
him as her aim and end in life, as if she possessed neither
soul, conscience, nor moral liberty.
If we except the ancient Egyptians, and the primitive
Iranians, who appear to have held woman in high esteem
and to have granted her the privileges of education and
self-government, the whole history of antiquity presents
to the amazed student a scene in which we find women
groaning under the hard hand of oppression, deprived of
many of the rights of nature, and regarded as a mere
appendage of man, the slave of his caprices, and the
minister to his passions.
Among savage nations where the habits of the people
were nomadic, and war and the chase the sole pursuits,
woman was naturally regarded as inferior to man, since
she could not bend the bow or wield the club as effect-
ually as he. Muscular superiority gave the right to rule,
and woman, as "the weaker vessel," must needs obey.
Her condition was one of extreme degradation, and her
life a weary record of continual, abject, and unrequited
toil. When she accompanied the hunter on his expedi-
tions it was her duty to bring home the prey, and when
at home it was her office to cook it for him and to
stand behind him while he ate, receiving as her meed
the wretched fragments of the meal, which were not
seldom flung to her over his shoulder, as if she were a
dog. The duty of restraining the sensual passions was
confined to the female, while the male was restricted only
by the prohibition of adultery.
34 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
Woman in the East
In the Oriental world, where polygamy flourished*
and marriage was viewed only in its sensual aspects,
woman was held as a creature without a soul, afld was
regarded as a toy to play with, or as an inferior to be
despised. The despots of the East might indeed praise
her for her beauty, but, at the same time, she was con-
sidered incapable of thought, and so frail in virtue that
she must be hidden from the gaze of man, lest she should
go astray. Neither did the rule of Mohammed improve
her condition. He allowed the Moslem, under the law
of the Koran, four wives, though he himself had nine,
asserting that he had obtained a revelation from heaven
to justify the transgression of his own law. He per-
mitted his followers to beat their wives. Hence in the
Koran we read : " Those women whose perverseness ye
shall be apprehensive of, rebuke, and remove them into
separate apartments, and chastise them." In another
passage he says: "Men shall have the pre-eminence
above women, because of those advantages wherein God
hath caused the one of them to excel the other."
Such was the condition assigned to woman by
Mohammed, and such it remains among the Moslems
to-day. In a record of travel in Morocco, Mrs. Haweis
says: "The Moors say that women have no souls.
They are right, they have no souls in Morocco. When
I was present 'at the wedding festivities of the late
Ch^rif at Tangier (who was very much married), and
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 35
saw the handsome gaily-clad men galloping and enjoy-
ing themselves on the long beach of that lovely bay,
gyrating and popping their guns, and shouting in the
futile Moorish way; when I saw the women who had
brought those men into the world afar off, wrapt in
white haiks like winding-sheets, crouching like honey-
pots on the blue-grey slopes like dogs, and dogs tied
up I realised on a sudden what is the subjection of
women, carried to its logical conclusion. And when I
visited the harem later and saw the dull animal faces'
that hardly brightened at the novelty of our coming
then I knew all. Women have no souls m Morocco.
It has been educated out of her, for we can educate the
soul out of people in time, as we can educate a soul into
them"
Woman in India
Evidence is not wanting that the Zoroastrian people,
who lived in the eastern territories of India more than
three thousand years ago, thought nobly of their women.
In primitive Iranian society the wife held a position not
inferior to her husband, while the mother and the
daughter were revered and cherished. There is no
reference in the Avesta, the sacred book of the disciples
of Zoroaster, to any disappointment at the birth of a
daughter. On the contrary, she seems to have been
regarded with special tenderness, and, in harmony with
the lofty Monotheism of the Parsees, she was taught the
value and necessity of pure thoughts,* pure words, and
pure deeds.
36 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND PO WER
%
The ancient Iranian marriage tie was not the result
of capture or purchase, but of selection on the part of
the lovers themselves. Marriage was regarded as
honourable in all, and after marriage, while the husband
was regarded as master of the house, the wife was
recognised as Its mistress. The wife also attended the
common religious services with her husband, was associ-
ated with him as a fosterer of the holy law, and united
with him in special prayer to God, and other acts of
worship.
The social state of woman under Brahminism in
India was, and is, on the other hand, deeply deplorable.
One of the very foremost of Hindoo religious teachers
says : " A woman ought never to govern herself, accord-
Ing to her own will. She is not fit for independence,
and must be utterly subservient to her husband." In
the Pundits we read : " Women have an inordinate
desire for jewels and fine furniture, handsome clothes
and nice victuals. Their prominent vices are violent
anger; deep resentment, no person knowing the senti-
ments concealed in their heart; another person's good
appears evil in their eyes; and they commit bad
actions."
These views of woman are painfully reflected in the
zenana life of India, where the existence of woman is
one long martyrdom, and her finest instincts are merci-
lessly crushed beneath the heel of domestic tyranny.
The birth of a girl in the zenana is regarded as a
calamity. She is nowhere welcomed. "Only a girll*
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 37
*
is the sorry exclamation which hails her birth* A pass-
age from a book given not long ago as a prhe in a girls 1
school in Bombay will illustrate, without further words,
the condition of woman in India: " The wife who gives
an ugly answer to her husband will become a village
pariah dog; she will also become a female jackal, and
live in an uninhabited desert. The woman who eats
sweetmeats without sharing them with her husband will
become a hen 0wl> living in a hollow tree. The woman
who walks alone without her husband will become /' '
filth-eating sow* The woman who speaks disrespectfully
to her husband will be dumb in the next incarnation.
The woman who hates her husband's relations will be-
come from birth to birth a musk rat, living in filth, 11
Woman in Greece &nd Romi
In the classic world of Greece and Rome women
were always treated an far Inferior to men, and held up
in literature in the most odious light* Euripides was
surttarned the woman-hater from the scorn with which
he depicts the cx t and the comedies of Aristophanes are
mercilessly sarcastic in their portrayals of women. In
general, the position of the virtuous Greek woman was a
very low one. Married when very young* she was tinder
perpetual tutelage ; first of all to her parents, who dis-
posed of her hand ; then to her husband ; and in the
days of her widowhood to her sons or her relatives.
Women were strictly confined in their *own apartments,
and they became $c* absolutely the property of their
38 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
t
husbands that, in dying, they could bequeath their wives
to others by will. And in this regard the philosophers
of the nation were as unjust as its grofligates. The
position Aristotle gave to woman was an intermediate
one between free men and slaves, while Plato tSught
that " a woman's virtue was to order her house, to keep
indoors, and to obey her husband."
Not less unenviable was the lot of the Roman wife.
She was regarded as a mere convenience for the peopling
% of the Republic, while marriage was looked upon as a
sacrifice of pleasure to public duty. Augustus legalised
concubinage ; Seneca wrote with petulant scorn of the
women of his time ; and Metrellus says, " If nature could
have arranged that man could have existed without
woman, he would have been spared a troublesome
companion/' The Roman family was formed on the
principle of the absolute authority of its head. He had
the power of life and death, both over his wife and his
children, and he could repudiate the former at will.
Woman and Christianity
It was reserved for Christianity to raise woman from
the dust and to teach man that the measure of ampler
strength should be the measure of willing service. If
man owes much to Christ, woman owes still more.
Christianity may be said to have conferred on woman a
new soul and a new destiny. It has delivered her from
the degradation of being man's slave and plaything, and
raised her to be his friend and his equal before Heaven.
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 39
In Christ, who is the representative, not of man only,
but of humanity, there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond
nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Him!
All equal are within the Church's gate.
The difference between the character of Christ and
that of Mohammed, and the difference of the spirit
which they showed in their personal relationships to
women, may be illustrated by the following anecdote :
After the battle of Bedr, a Jewess of Medina, named
Asma, wrote some satirical couplets against Mohammed.
Omeir, at dead of night, instigated by the prophet, crept
into the apartment where Asma, surrounded by her
children, lay asleep; Feeling stealthily with his hand,
he removed her infant from her breast, and plunged his
sword into her bosom with such force that it went
through her back. The next morning, at prayers in the
mosque, Mohammed said, " Hast thou slain the daughter
of Marwan ? " " Yes ; but is there cause for fear for
what I have done ? " The implacable prophet replied,
" None whatever : two goats will not knock their heads
together for it "
Such was the cruelty and the treachery of the leader
of Islam. How far removed from the tenderness and
the pity of Christ in whom divine womanhood, as well
as divine manhood, was manifested to the world. He
found woman down-trodden and degraded, and lifting
her from the earth He seemed to sajr : " Shake thyself
from the dust, arise and sit down, O Jerusalem ; loose
40 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
thyself from the bands of thy neck, Q captive daughter
of Zion."
Under the benign Influence of Christianity, with its
recognition of the passive virtues, such as gentleness,
meekness, humility, tenderness, woman has been failed
to her true dignity, and has shaken off the ashes of
misery and oppression. The adoration of the Son
of the Virgin Mother meant the permanent exaltation of
womanhood, and the eternal sanctification of maternity.
Christianity raised marriage into a sacrament, and thus
redeemed society. With the pure light of Heaven on its
brow, it stepped forth into a world reeking with sensuality,
and proclaimed the glory of chastity. For the slave-
woman, as well as for her patrician mistress there came
Good Tidings of Great Joy.
The slave-woman was no longer the property of her
master, to be used and debased as the instrument of his
passion, and the honour of womanhood was redeemed for
ever. Glad multitudes of Roman slaves became subject
to the sweet yoke of Christ, and large numbers of
patrician women, conscious of a new exaltation, flocked
like doves to the windows of the Christian sanctuary.
The history of the early centuries is full of the names of
women of noble birth and nobler soul who enriched the
Church by their ministry, succoured her pastors, and
began the unending apostolate among the sick and poor.
Emancipated by tjie consecrating power of Christianity
from that fatal emptiness of mind, and frivolity of heart,
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 41
to which, as classic history shows, the women of that era
were so prone, and dowered with a faith in God and in
immortality whioJjj made them no mere empty abstrac-
tions but living realities, woman rose to her true alti-
tude 5s an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Jesus
Christ, and as
Ministering 1 Angd of the World.
The recognition of elect and emancipated woman-
hood, and of its ministry in the service of the new
evangel, is one of the loveliest features of the early
Church, Deacons and deaconesses are alike honoured
and respected* Tryphcna and Tryphosa share with
men of the Church at Rome in the salutations of the
Apostle Paul* St John writes an epistle to an elect
lady, charged with the finest features of respect; and
trust, Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchrea,
is described as a succourer of many, yea even of St.
Paul himself, while Kuodias and Syntyche, noble workers
in the church lit Philippi* are addressed by the great
Apostle of the Gentiles with all the tenderness and
fidelity of a brother.
Neither did the bright succession of elect and
ministrant women cease with the life of the first apostles
of the Lord, On the contrary, their influence permeated
the Pagan world, stanching its wounds and alleviating
its sorrows.
*
Lo 1 in ihtt hoiitnj of mincry,
A lady with a lump ! rc
4 a WOMAN: HER CHARM AND PO WER
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room ;
And slow as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls *
Upon the darkening walls.
Referring to the gracious intervention of ministrant
womanhood amid the cruelty and vice of the decaying
Roman world, Lecky says, in his History of European
Morals : " The general superiority of women to men
in the strength of their religious emotions, and their
natural attraction to a religion which made personal
attachment to its Founder its central duty, and which
imparted an unprecedented dignity and afforded an un-
precedented scope to their characteristic virtues, account
for the very conspicuous position they assumed in the
great work of the conversion of the Roman Empire. In no
other important movement of thought was female influ-
ence so powerful or so acknowledged. In the ages of
persecution female figures occupy many of the foremost
places in the ranks of martyrdom, and Pagan and
Christian writers alike attest the alacrity with which
women flocked to the Church, and the influence they
exercised in its favour over the male members of their
families. The mothers of St. Augustine, St. Chry-
sostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and Theo-
doret, had all a leading part in the conversion of their
sons. St. Helena the mother of Constantine, Flacilla
the wife of Thegdosius the Great, St. Pulcheria the
sister of Theodosius the Younger, and Placidia the
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 43
mother of Valentinian in., were among the most con-
spicuous defenders of the faith. ... In the career of
asceticism women took a part little if at all inferior
^to men, while in the organisation of the great work
of chctrity they were pre-eminent. For no other field of
active labour are women so admirably suited as for
this; and although we may trace from the earliest
period, in many creeds and ages, individual instances
of their influence in allaying the sufferings of the dis-
tressed, it may be truly said that their instinct and
genius of charity had never, before the dawn of Christi-
anity, obtained full scope for action. Fabiola, Paula,
Melania, and a host of other noble ladies devoted their
time and fortunes mainly to founding and extending
vast institutions of charity, some of them of a kind
before unknown in the world. The Empress Flacilla
was accustomed to tend with her own hands the sick in
the hospitals, and a readiness to discharge such offices
was deemed the first duty of a Christian wife."
Such is the testimony of the Christian thinker,
historian, and philosopher, to the influence of Christ and
His evangel on women, and we have dealt thus exhaus-
tively with this early phase of the subject, because out of
the Christian exaltation of womanhood, and out of the
generosity with which the newly acknowledged soul
seized and avowed its privileges of faith, are evolved all
the glory of women in succeeding ages and all their
finest service to the world. As in one of those lovely
visions, depicted by the artists of old on the fading
44 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
frescoes of the sanctuary, we see them moving In meek
and beautiful procession, with palm and crown and
aureole, with Christ as their Leader, aqd we bless them
as they pass. The gospel of Christ was at once their
patent of nobility and their charter to labour, and what-
ever influence they have possessed for the ennobling of
humanity has been due to the honour granted them by
* Christian truth, and to that response of ardent faith and
characteristic generosity which in the beginning was
fruitful of martyrdom, as in these days it is fruitful of
sacrifice. Upraised, in the first instance, by the gentle
hand of the Redeemer, woman has reached her present
position as the helpmeet and the equal of man.
And so these twain, upon the skirts of time,
Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the to-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other ev'n as those who love.
The Progress of Woman in Later Years
Since the hour when she was first emancipated by the
power of Christianity the history of woman has been one
of steady progress. Much might be written concerning
the advancement of woman in recent years, which could
not fail to encourage and stimulate.
Four centuries ago Martin Luther began a letter of
condolence to a friend who had lost a daughter, with the
words: " This is ahard world for girls." If the Lion of
the Reformation could revisit us to-day he would alter
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 45
his opinion, and conclude that the world is a very
pleasant world for girls.
During the last decade vast and fundamental changes
have been made with regard to woman. The whole out-
look rf her life and career has been altered. The old
idea was that woman was most essentially woman when
she merged her individuality in that of man. She was
an echo, and not a voice ; a dependent creature unable
to stand alone; a "weaker vessel" whose privilege It
was to serve and to obey ; a graceful body with little
physical strength, a faint infusion of soul, and a few star-
like gleams of intelligence, well-nigh hidden and lost in a .
mist of feeling this was the common estimate of woman.
Body and soul, she was a mere appendage to man.
Her great charm was that of beauty, conquered and
enslaved by an unreasoning love. Her primal virtue
was that of unquestioning obedience to her lord. We
see her aptly depicted by Chaucer in his " Griselda," and
by Tennyson in his " Enid " ; and she accepted her
destiny without complaint. Catharine said to her hus-
band, Henry VIII., "Your Majesty doth know right
well, neither am I myself ignorant, what great imper-
fection, by our first creation, is allotted to us women, to
be appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our
head ; and that, as God made man in His own likeness,
even so He hath made woman of man, by whom she is
to be governed."
The "stern old king" in Tennyson's "Princess"
correctly states the opinion of the past where he says,
46 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
with an absoluteness which defies criticism and silences
appeal
This is fixt
As are the posts of earth and base of all ;
Man for the field, and woman for the hearth 5 *~
Man for the sword, and for the needle she ; **
Man with the head and woman with the heart \
Man to command and woman to obey.
All else confusion,
The Revolt of Woman
Woman has now revolted from this arbitrary standard.
Every step of social progress in later years has been
marked by a softening of the tyranny of man and a
lifting of the position of woman, an approximation
towards an equal companionship. First the tool of his
will, next the toy of his pleasure, then the minister of
his vanity, she is at last to become the free sharer of his
life, the friend of his mind and heart.
This healthy and necessary change has been brought
about chiefly through the realisation by woman of her
own individual value. She has learnt the glory, the
beauty, and the significance of her own existence. She
has risen to the true conception of her position as the
equal and the fitting complement of man. She claims
an equal right with him to the use of every means of
self-development in the fulfilment of her destiny. She
rises to the possession of her own soul.
Improved methods of education have also done much
for the social and intellectual advancement of woman.
The female education of fifty years ago was superficial,
THE HISTORY OJF WOMAN 47
trifling, and babyish. Girls were not half developed.
Their minds did not exhibit one-half of their native
strength and beauty. They were robbed of much of
their natural vigour. Their education differed not only
in d^jree, but in kind, from that of their brothers, being
confined to a smattering of modern languages and a few
elegant accomplishments. Neither were their natural
aptitudes sufficiently considered. Girls were doomed to
practise on the piano for an hour a day who had no
idea of tune ; to whom, indeed, the whole exercise was
a mere slavery. Others were condemned to draw and
paint, who had no innate perception of form and colour.
To study botany without seeing a flower, astronomy
without looking at a star, geology without handling a
clod or a stone ; write half a dozen compositions on
friendship, love, or home ; cram into the brain a few dates
of history and a few names of kings ; daub a little in oils
or water-colours. This was female education without
an object, without an ambition, without a definite pur-
pose of any kind. In place of drawing out the mental
fineness and tender glory of womanhood, this kind of
education left her merely a prey to frivolous excitement,
gave her a taste for no other form of literature than that
of the novel, and doomed her to the life of an animated
doll.
Frances Power Cobbe wittily says that the attitude
of many men in the last decade with regard to the ques-
tion of the higher education of woman .might be summed
up as follows : " Woman, beware ! beware ! ! You are
48 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
on the brink of destruction. You have hitherto been
engaged only in crushing your waists; now you are
attempting to cultivate your minds ! You have been
merely dancing all night in the foul air of ball-rooms ;
now you are beginning to spend your mornings in ^tudy.
You have been incessantly stimulating your emotions
with concerts and operas, with French plays and French
novels ; now you are exerting your understanding to
learn Greek and solve propositions in Euclid ! Beware,
oh, beware ! Science pronounces that the woman who
studies -is lost."
When a Chinese mandarin in California was told
that the women of England and America were all taught
to read and write, he shook his head thoughtfully, and,
with a foreboding sigh, replied, " If he readee, writee, by'n-
by he lickee all the men."
But, regardless of these foolish objections, in these
later years the decree has gone forth that our maidens
should have a more vigorous, practical, and useful educa-
tion, one that should develop strength of character,
power of will, and efficiency of life. It has been de-
manded that they should be trained with something of
the same freedom as their brothers to know their own
powers, to understand their own duties ; to mark out
their own course in life ; and, if needful, to earn their own
living.
The results of this social change have been beneficial
beyond expectati9n. One important result is, that with
development of mind there has followed improvement of
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 49
physique. " The health of woman generally," says Dr.
Richardson, " is improving under the change ; there is
amongst women generally less bloodlessness, less of what
the old fiction-wrfters called swooning ; less of lassitude,
TSss ^f nervousness, less of hysteria, and much less of
that general debility to which, for want of a better term,
the words ' malaise ' and c languor ' have been applied.
Woman, in a word, is stronger than she was in the olden
time. With this increase of strength woman has gained
in development of body and of limb. She has become
less distortioned. The curved back, the pigeon-shaped
chest, the disproportioned limb, the narrow feeble trunk,
the small and often distorted eyeball, the myopic eye,
and puny ill-shaped external ear, all these parts are
becoming of better and more natural contour. The
muscles are also becoming more equally and more fully
developed, and with these improvements there are grow-
ing up amongst women models who may, in due time,
vie with the best models that old Greek culture has left
for us to study in its undying art."
The old idea that helplessness is feminine and
beautiful, and helpfulness is unwomanly and unbecom-
ing is exploded. Knowledge, reason, strength, and
thoroughness are no longer rated masculine ; while half-
knowledge, unreasoning impulse, weakness, and super-
ficiality are rated feminine. The frivolous, fickle, ignorant
woman, incapable of all studious pursuits and of all
consecutive attention, is being gradually supplanted by
the intelligent, judicious woman, capable of sustained
4
50 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
thought, and well versed in everything which it is useful
for her to know as a mother, as the mistress of a house-
hold, or as a citizen of the world.
Woman has cast aside her old timidities and gained
a new freedom. She has achieved intellectual ejRancT*
pation, and is well-nigh as conspicuous as man in every
branch of intellectual achievement. The avenues of
work open to her have broadened and multiplied. Her
capacity for business has been amply attested. Her
skill in organisation and in executive have been forced
upon the notice of the world, while, at the same time,
she has retained the virtues which have made her in all
ages the creator and the guardian of society.
It yet remains,
Woman, for you to cast aside the chains
Of false traditions, marring womanhood ;
Men ! be it yours to help them on to good 1
The race is in its manhood ! Leave behind
The jealousies of childhood ; strive to find
Each an ideal truer and more grand ;
Fear not that women, gaming their demand,
Will cast their dower gentleness away,
Or love thee less because they understand,
But rise and say, " Henceforth we woo perfection
hand in htand."
u Tke New Woman"
While, however, we thoroughly approve of the eman-
dpation of woman from the fetters which in the past
checked her development, and while we have no
whatever with those who extol her "lovely
uselessness" aad her "fascinating frivolity," we are yet
THE HISTORY OP WOMAN 51
strongly opposed to that outcry about " the equality of
the sexes," which is a foolish attempt to force woman
into an unhealthy rivalry with man,
Whatever education may do for woman, it should
"neater- take away from her the qualities which constitute
her charm and which invest her with her truest power.
To educate is riot to change and to transform, but to
lead out, Education should not interfere with the
essential characteristics of woman, but give them the
noblest possible expression. Lamentable, indeed, would
be the condition of things if the words of Mrs. Devereux,
in her clever book on The Ascent of Woman> should
be really true where she says : w Woman has become an
intelligence, but she has ceased to be a delight, and the
cultivation of her intellect has been accomplished at the
expense of every grace of person and charm of manner/'
Our colleges for the higher education of woman,
thronged by
Swert giri'KrntltmtfH with their golden hnir,
will be a curse and not a blessing if they only become
nurseries of hybrids and turn out an inferior species ol
man-woman. Equality of the sexes is not in the nature
of things* Man and woman are made for, and not like,
one another. Woman is not intended to be the rival,
but the complement of man. We have no patience with
the insane folly which, under the name of progress,
attempts to change the relations between the sexes, to
set woman free from what have hitherto been considered
52 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
the limitations of her sex, and to make her the competitor,
instead of the helpmate of man.
It is teaching such as this with regard to claims of
rivalry and equality which renders the so-called
"Advanced Woman"
of our era distasteful to us. A tew of this species have,
indeed, risen to affright us, but we are thankful to know
that their number is extremely limited. The " New " or
"Advanced Woman," whose presence in our midst we
deprecate, is the woman who to the wistful tenderness
and clinging trust of ordinary womanhood has bidden a
scornful farewell. She stands on her dignity as in every
respect the equal, if not, indeed, the superior of man.
She ordains that the word obey, as applied to her, shall
be eliminated from the marriage service. She objects
that her husband, like a god, should know her going out
and her coming in, and claims to come and go as she
herself chooses. She regards all domestic duties as a
kind of slavery r and the care of children is so irksome
to her that she wishes they could be sent out like the
washing and brought in when they are clean. She
is as familiar with her husband's friends as though
they were her cousins calls them by their Christian
names, and may, after dinner, even join them at a
cigarette.
Now this kind of "New Woman" is an offence to
ras* She is too stxident She is too self-assertive. She
neither gladdens, helps, nor ennobles us, We are content
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN 53
with women like Cordelia, and Juliet, and Desdemona,
We are content with women such as our mother was.
Woman need nq unsex herself that she may be a power
y^^e world. She is most truly powerful when she is
most truly woman. She queens it over us not by
intrusive self-assertion, but by the potent mastery of
gentleness. She rules us by the power of love and
sympathy and tender comradeship.
It is said that when the Archbishop of Canterbury
asked the Queen, at her marriage with Prince Albert,
whether, she being sovereign, he should omit the word
** obey M from the marriage service, she sweetly answered,
" No 1 I wish to be married not as a Queen but as a
woman," She was never more a Queen than when she
said those words.
Dr. Pulsford says with deep truth : a When by loud
and vulgar methods unwomanly women over-assert
themselves, they afford proof enough that they have
lost the knowledge of a very divine secret. They
have already resigned their most potent influence*
Instead of worshipping thorn, we begin to resist them*
The more veiled and inward, in the retirement of her
spirit, are woman's purity and sweetness, goodness and
wisdom, the more will she be recognised by heaven and
appreciated by men. When woman is adorned with the
supreme virtues of her own kingdom, by the aroma oi
her presence, and the meekness of her majesty, she
conquers all men, She is Una. She is the strength,
kingdom, power, and government of the
54 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
Woman's True Function
It should ever be remembered that alike in body and
in mind, in feeling and in character, women are d<
to play a different part to that of men. The tendency
of civilisation has been to elevate woman, but elevation
is a very different thing to assimilation to man. When
men and women start as competitors in the same fierce
race as rivals and opponents, instead of companions and
helpmates, with the same habits, the same ambitions, the
same engrossing toil, and the same public lives, woman-
hood, which we hold to be the most heavenly thing next
angelhood, will have disappeared, and the world will be
disenchanted and desolated by its loss.
The true strength of woman lies, after all, not in her
intellect, but in her affections. Her highest sphere is
not the Market, or the State, but the Family. To keep
the Family true, refined, affectionate, faithful, pure, is a
grander task than to govern the State, and needs the
whole energies and the entire life of woman. Those are
wise and pregnant words of Oliver Goldsmith, where he
says: "Women famed for their valour, their skill, in
politics, or their learning, leave the duties of their own
sex, in order to invade the privileges of ours. I can no
more pardon a fair one for endeavouring to wield the
club of Hercules, than I could him for attempting to
twirl her distaff. The modest virgin, the prudent wife,
or the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life
than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or
THE HISTORY OP WOMAN 55
virago queens. She who makes her husband and her
children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and
trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character
t.han ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation
*^'* l *'*%^ fc
is to murder mankind with shafts from the quiver of
their eyes."
A more recent writer says : " It is a lesson worth
learning by those young creatures who seek to allure
by their accomplishments, or dazzle with their wit, that
though he may admire, no man ever hues a woman for
these things* He loves her for what is essentially
distinct from, though by no means Incompatible with,
them- her woman's nature, and her woman's heart,
guileless, simple, and unaffected* This is why we so
often see a man of high intellectual power passing by
the De Stalls and Corinnes to take into his bosom some
wayside flower, who has nothing on earth to make her
worthy of him, except that she is what so few of your
1 female celebrities ' are a true woman/ 1
Meanwhile, let those of the sterner sex be nobly
patient with those new developments which mark the
deliverance of woman from the fetters of the past and
her advancement in the social scale. Mistakes will
doubtless be made in the early stages of her progress, as
she is not yet certain of her ground. A large measure
of self-control will be needed before her real emancipa-
tion is achieved. But she will neither transcend nor
deny hernclf, God has done His work in the beginning
too well for that, The laws of her legitimate progress
56 WOMAN: HEX CHARM AND POWER
are as fixed as those of the planets or the tides, She
will still keep her appointed orbit. She will still obey
her predominant attraction. Let her move upward as
she will, guided by her own God-given instincts, andwq^
shall find her on her new eminence, not unsexed but woman
still, retaining the sweetness, the tenderness, and the trust,
which are her inalienable dower, while better fitted than
before to be the companion and the counsellor of man.
Thus Wordsworth's radiant vision will be that of the
coming future ^here he sings
I saw her upon nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too 1
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty.
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet ;
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles*
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine ;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death ;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.
CHAPTKTC III
SALIKNT CUAKACTKKISTICS OF WOMAN
Oh, woman ! lovely woman ! Nature made thce
To temper man : we had Ixien brutes without you I
Angela are painted fair, to look like you !
There's in you all llx&t we believe of henv'n t
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,
Eternal jay, and everlasting IOVC.-OTWAY.
***! from your minds every idem of superiority over woman, You have
mUK>cvcr.~~MA7,r.iNl (On th& Dutm &f Man}.
-IK special characteristics of woman as contradis-
tinguished from man are suggested by the
cy of the female form as compared with that of
tale. She is more daintily fashioned than man,
soft and delicate in outline. Her skin is of finer
*c, her features more mobile, her voice gentler and
musical, her step lighter and more elastic, her
us system more sensitive* And these physical
ies in woman arc the outward and visible signs
ental and spiritual characteristics by which she
tinguishcd from man,
Cen are self-reliant and not seldom hard and exact-
^hile tenderness, delicacy^ and gentleness are the
>priate qualities of women. Men seldom conceal
58 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
the sacrifices they make for others, or what it costs to
make them, but with women this concealment is as
natural as retiring modesty to the violet, and evidences
a spiritual fineness which man cannot rival. Spring. m
youth, and morning, seem the natural accompaniments
of woman. Not seldom, when she speaks, it is as if a
flower had grown musical and found fitting utterance for
its beauty. When true to herself her greeting has a
blessing in it She can
Every morning with "Good day**
Make each day good.
Often we feel that our life is not worth the price we pay
for it We sometimes even wonder that the Great
Father did not consult us before He sent us into it.
As it Is we need the presence and the ministry of
woman to make it tolerable. Separated from her
love and tenderness we move with halting feet as
in a wilderness. But when she is by our side and
her love is ours
The earth and every common sight,
To us doth seem
Apparelled in celestial light;
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
But to return to the special and winsome characteristics
of woman we should place first her power of
Sympathy.
Sympathy is* that fine faculty through which we
enter into the concerns of others and are interested in
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 59
what they do or suffer. It Is indeed, as Burke has said,
a sort of substitution, by which we are put in the place
of others, and affgcted as they are affected. And this
expuisite grace of life is stronger in woman than in man,
because of her keener sensibility. Her emotional nature
is sensitive as the waters are to the changes of the sky,
or the glances of the sun. She is quick to feel the
suffering or the joy of others. Woman is more sensitive
and acute than man, and has a strange facility for
reading the language of the soul. Tones, gestures,
bearing, a smile, a sigh, a shadow on the countenance,
all these are avenues by which she enters into the
hidden chamber where some unwonted joy sits radiant,
or some dark sorrow stands amid its tears. She will
look into your eyes and see you think. She will listen
to your voice and hear you feel. When you return
home after contact with the world, where you have
toiled and striven for her dear sake, she will see at a
glance whether things have gone well or ill with you,
whether you have been pleased or fretted, known failure
or success. The coy and subtle world of emotion is a
domain in which she is ever at home.
From earliest childhood it has been an instinct with
us to nestle for shelter near a woman's heart, and that
instinct has never died out of us. The rough school-boy,
all aglow with passion, flings himself into her presence
for consolation and the relief of tears, when he has failed
in his task or been defeated in fight ; ami the grey -haired
statesman, thwarted in purpose or worsted in debate.
60 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
finds his burden lightened by her soft caress and beneath
the benediction of her smile.
It is this exquisite gift of sympathy which renders
woman so invaluable in the chamber where sicknps
droops and pines. The art of the physician is a coarse,
remote method, compared with the charm of her sweet
presence. Her footstep on the stair has healing in it,
and when she enters the darkened room, her quiet move-
ments, her gentle touch, and her words tremulous with
tenderness and pity, distil as the dew on the parched
and weary spirit.
Writing in " The Princess " that lovely literary pre-
sentation of the joys and aspirations of woman* Tenny-
son says, of Psyche's ministry to the wounded Florian
Here and there the small bright head,
A light of healing glanced about the couch,
Or thro' the parted silks the tender face
Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw
The sting from pain.
Kindness in Woman
There is no doubt that love is the actuating impulse
of woman's life, and out of love springs gentleness and
kindness.
Without her tender ministry our infancy would be
without succour, our youth without gladness, and our
age without consolation. Love for dumb animals, affec-
tion for children, commiseration for the weak and help-
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 61
less, regard for the aged and the suffering, pity for the
oppressed, all these are natural to woman. They are
found not only among the civilised, but in rude and
savage lands. Mungo Park tells us how, on one occa-
sionTwhen lonely, friendless, and famished, after being
driven forth from an African village by the men, he was
preparing to spend the night under a tree, exposed to
the rain and the wild beasts which there abounded, a
poor negro woman, returning from the labours of the
field, took compassion on him, conducted him to her hut,
and there gave him food, succour, and shelter. " Having
conducted me into her hut," he writes, " she lighted up
a lamp, spread a mat on the floor, and told me I might
remain there for the night. Finding that I was very
hungry, she said she would procure me something to
eat She accordingly went out, and returned in a short
time with a very fine fish, which, having caused to be
half broiled upon some embers, she gave me for supper.
The rites of hospitality being thus performed towards a
stranger in distress, my worthy benefactress pointing
to the mat, and telling me I might sleep there without
apprehension called to the female part of her family,
who had stood gazing on me all the while in fixed
astonishment, to resume their task of spinning cotton, in
which they continued to employ themselves a great part
of the night They lightened their labour by songs, one
of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the
subject of it. It was sung by one of the young women,
the rest joining in a sort of chorus. The air was sweet
62 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
and plaintive, and the words, literally translated, were
these : * The winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor
white man faint and weary, came and sat under our tree.
He has no mother to bring him milk no wife to grind
his corn. Chorus Let us pity the white man no
mother has he/ etc Trifling as the recital may appear
to the reader, to a person in my situation the circum-
stance was affecting in the highest degree. I was op-
pressed by such unexpected kindness, and sleep fled from
my eyes." Such, even in savage lands, is the tenderness
of woman. The Bedouin cry, so beautifully voiced by
Whittier, comes naturally from the lips of woman
Whoever thou art, whose need is great,
In the name of God, the compassionate
And merciful One, for thee I wait.
Among the salient characteristics of woman must
also be noted the beautiful qualities of
Heroic Devotion and Self -Sacrifice.
Men have been accustomed to arrogate to themselves
the virtues of courage and heroism, since they have
stormed citadels amid a rain of bullets and fought like
Titans with the infuriated tiger or with the raging sea.
But they forget that the grandest of heroic deeds have
been done within four walls. Heroism is really a thing
of the heart, and it has been more finely demonstrated
in the household than on the most memorable battle-
fields of history.. Heroism is self-devotion, manifesting
itself in action, and it is continually displayed where no
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 63
trumpets are sounding and where there are none to
chronicle its victories. The silent workers in humble
places; the meek martyrs to principle, who are known
only to God ; tfie uncomplaining household drudges,
who sacrifice themselves for husbands, brothers, and
children, and who do it, not in the face of an admiring
audience, not to win the plaudits of the crowd, not to be
chronicled in story, but simply and unostentatiously in
the line of duty these are the true transfigured band of
heroines, greater than any epic heroes who have faced
without flinching the fury of the guns, or been dragged
unappalled in the insolence of triumph to the chariot
wheels of the foe.
A gentleman said to a celebrated physician who had
a woman under his care, " How great she was in that
emergency." " Don't you know," said the physician,
"that all women are great in emergencies?"
Grandly true are the words of Ward Beecher
" Society is full of heroes of love and domestic fidelity.
Thousands of them are unknown on earth. They march
in ranks and battalions, so that we speak of them in
nouns of multitude, as drunkards* wives. All those that
under such circumstances lift themselves up above the
ordinary line of human conduct, are heroic. And God
waits for them, and heaven is home-sick for them. Oh,
how they will shine there 1 Perchance, as you see them
going through the street, meek and patient, their dress
growing more and more rusty, you smile pityingly and
say, They arc poor drunkards* wives; they were
64 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
promising once, but they have gone down, down, down,
and now they are nowhere/ I beg your pardon, they
have not gone down. They have been going up. And
when you rise, with all your wealth and learning and
genius, and stand in heaven, having escaped damnation so
i as by fire, you may stand lowest, and see them as far
} above you as the stars to-night are above your heads. For
| the last shall be first, and the lowest shall be highest/ 1
I * .
I To him who deems her weak and vain
1 And boasts his own exceeding might,
*"* She clings, through darkest fortune fain;
Still loyal though the ruffian smite,
Still true though crime his hand distain.
And is this weakness? Is it not
' The strength of God, that loves and bears,
Though He be slighted or forgot
"In damning crimes, or driving cares,
~ And closest clings in darkest lot ?
j Woman does not withhold her devotion even from
* the worthless. She will discern beauty and deserving,
| where another will see only deformity and shame, and
I for the sake of such an one she will wander without
| mianmuring through scenes of trial and sorrow, if only
| sfae may stand by the heart she loves. He knew her
] writ!, and her unswerving devotion, as distinguished from
I the caprice of man, who made a woman say
I Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
I *Tis woman's whole existence ; man may range
I The court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart,
Swofd, gown, gain glory, often in excjiange;
I , Hide, fame* ambition, to fiH up his heart,
j. [ &Kt few there are whom these cannot estrange J
1 Hem faawfr %E these resources, we but one
| To Htm* gpi% and be again undone.
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 65
" What a love," says Ian Maclaren, " is that which
God has placed in the heart of woman so magnani-
mous, so ungrudging, so forgiving, so steadfast Is
there any man living who has ever fathomed that love,
who has ever lived so as to deserve it ? Who shall ever
be able to repay it ? ... Does a woman think less of
her husband because he has been worsted in the battle,
and has been sent out of the lists wounded ? She is so
fashioned by God that she will claim her knight before
the world, and glory in him. Why ? For a woman's
reason : because he is not strong and successful ; because
he has failed, and therefore has need of sympathy and
comfort and confidence."
How beautiful and winsome, nay how divine, is this
quality of fidelity in woman. It has been reserved for
her to manifest in the finest degree the splendid virtue
of self-sacrifice. Her ability to throw self away and live
entirely for another, is a thing which puts man to the
blush. Self-abandonment appears to be her destiny.
Called upon to forsake her home, her friends, her
country, she devotes herself to another, at whose feet
she breaks the alabaster box of her heart and pours out
unstintingly its wealth of affection. This is the attri-
bute of divinity in woman, placing her near the great
Redeemer, " who made His agony the barrier to our
else all-conquering foe."
Concerning this beautiful quality in woman Thackeray
says, with deep pathos : " Very likely female pelicans like
so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young
5
66 WOMAN*: HER CHARM AND PO WER
ones; it is certain that women do. There must be
some sort of pleasure which men do not understand,
which accompanies the pain of being scarified. . . . Do
not let us men despise these instincts, because we cannot
feel them. ... Be it for a reckless husband, a dissipated
son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready their
hearts are to pour out their best treasures for the benefit
of the cherished person ; and what a deal of this sort of
enjoyment are we, on our side, ready to give the soft
creatures ! There is scarce a man that reads this but has
administered pleasure in that fashion to his womankind,
and has treated them to the luxury of forgiving him."
" To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself," says
Balzac, * ( will always be the text of the life of woman."
" Woman," says another, " reveals the heart of God in
her noblest characteristic, self-sacrifice. Her whole life
is one of self-offering on love's altar. She begins as a
bride in tears, on the wedding morning, for when she
enters into her new life of joy she cuts asunder all the
ties that bound her to the old home and the old loves ;
her very name she surrenders on that day when her life
begins its mingling with her husband's life. Mother-
hood brings her new joys; but these are the joys of a
new self-sacrifice. She hazards her own life in giving
birth to a new life; she gives up society, friends, litera-
ture, art, music, everything that stands between herself
and the highest, best, most perfect devotion to the dawn-
ing life that is entrusted to her. When her child comes
to an age in which he could begin to repay her service
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OP WOMAN 67
with service of his own, she sends him off, with a baptism
of tears and an ordination of prayers and kisses, to
school, or college, or business; and whether ever a
loving letter, or a grateful word, or an unselfish service,
or even a warm kiss, or a tender glance of the eye,
shall serve to repay her for a service so simply and un-
ostentatiously rendered, that the boy never comprehends
either its value to himself or its cost to her, she knows
not nay, hardly stops to ask. . . . Thanks be to God
for a pure and noble womanhood ; for all its purity, its
sympathy, its tenderness, its long-suffering, its joyful self-
sacrifice ; but most of all for its pathetic interpretation of
the incomparable and for ever incomprehensible Life."
Warriors and statesmen have their meed of praise,
And what they do or suffer, men record ;
But the long sacrifice of women's days
Passes without a thought, without a word;
And many a lofty struggle for the sake
Of duties sternly, faithfully fulfilled
For which the anxious mind must watch and wake,
And the strong feelings of the heart be stilled
Goes by, unheeded as the summer wind
And leaves no memory and no trace behind \
Yet it must be more holy courage dwells
In one meek heart which braves an adverse state,
Than his whose ardent soul indignant swells,
Warmed by the fight, or cheered through high debate*
Heroism in Woman
But women have not only distinguished themselves
by passive courage. When dominated by love and by
anxiety for the safety of the person loved, they have
done deeds which might make a brave man blush for
68 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
his valour. When the band of conspirators, who sought
the life of James II. of Scotland, burst into his lodgings
at Perth, the king called to the ladies^ who were in the
chamber outside his room, to keep the door as well as
they could, and thus give him time to escape. It was
found that the bar had been removed from the door of
the room in which the ladies stood. But the brave
Catherine Douglas, with the hereditary courage of her
race, boldly thrust her arm across the door instead of
the bar ; and held it there until, her arm being broken,
the enemies of the king burst into the apartment
The defence of Latham House by Charlotte de la
Fr^mouille, in whose veins ran the blood of Coligny,
affords another striking instance of heroic bravery on
the part of a woman. When summoned by the Parlia-
mentary forces to surrender, she declared that she had
been entrusted by her husband with the defence of the
house, and that she could not surrender it without her
dear lord's orders. She held her house and home good
against the enemy for a whole year, during three months
of which the place was besieged and bombarded, until
at length the siege was raised by the advance of the
Royalist army.
We have all read how Deborah slew the enemy of
her people; how Boadicea faced in her rude chariot the
veterans of Rome ; how Camilla, queen of the Volscians,
was slain fighting at the head of her troops; how
Telesilla, the poetess, discomfited the Spartans; how
Theodora, by her valour, saved the Eastern Empire;
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 69
how Artemisia, queen of Caria, won from Xerxes the
praise that he had found in her
His ablest, bravest councillor and chief;
and how Joan of Arc drove the English from the shores
of France. Modern historians have thrown grave doubts
upon the story of Thermopylae. But no historian has
thrown any doubt upon the story of the two hundred
and eighty peasant women of Switzerland, who, during
the French invasion of 1798, rushed to arms in response
to the patriotic eloquence of the aged Martha Glaz, and
defended their homes until one hundred and eighty of them
had been killedj and all the rest more or less wounded.
In the French Revolution of 1793, Mademoiselle Sen/an,
a beautiful young woman of eighteen, was guillotined
because she would not betray the retreat of her father,
Fresh also In our memory is the instance of that glorious
woman, the stewardess of the Sulla> who taking off her life-
belt gave it to an affrighted passenger, and then, commend-
ing her soul to God, bravely sank in the mighty waters,
These and other stories of a like order show the
heroism of woman when her heart is deeply stirred,
or when that which she loves calls for defence or pro-
tection. Rouse her affections, enkindle the fires of her
heart, and how brave she isl In Browning's poem,
11 Mary Wollstonecroft,' 1 the woman says*
Oh> but It is not hard,
Mine are the nerves to quake at a myuset
If a spider drops, I shriek with few ;
I sh*d die outright In haunted houie j
7 o WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
While for you did the danger dared bring help
From a lion's den I could steal his whelp.
With a serpent round me, stand stock still ;
Go sleep in a churchyard ! So w'd will
Give me the power to dare and do *
Valiantly JUST FOR YOU !
Examples of Womanly Demotion
History records many illustrious examples ot
womanly fidelity and devotion where her heart's love
is set as an " ever-fixed mark." The instance of Monica,
the mother of St. Augustine, is well known. Deeply
concerned at the profligacy of her gifted son, who was
wasting his splendid powers in riot and debauchery, she
spent her widowed life in tears and prayers before God,
for his conversion. Long years rolled away, and her
"prayers were still unanswered, and her entreaties un-
regarded, until at length, overwhelmed by her constancy
and tenderness, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
he shook off his vices like a nightmare, and became an
eloquent preacher and witness for Christ*
Thirty years after the death of Monica, St. Augus-
tine, the great divine of Western Christendom, said in
one of his sermons : " Ah 1 the dead do not come
'back; for, had it been possible, there is not a night
when I should not have seen my mothershe who
could not live apart from me, and who, in all my
wanderings, never forsook me,"
A pathetic story of a leper mother's supreme love
for her children comes from India. The legend runs
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OP WOMAN 71
that if a woman stricken with leprosy suffers herself
to be buried alive, the disease will not descend to her
children. Now, there was in the North-west Provinces
of India the wife of a gardener, on whom the loathsome
malady had fallen. Children were born to her. The
disease grew worse. She importuned her husband to
bury her alive. He at last, yielding to her prayers,
summoned his son* The two dug the grave, and four
neighbours assisted at the sepulture. So the woman
died,
Augusta, the sister of Lord Byron, remained un-
alterably attached to the poet, through the dreadful
storm of obloquy which drove him out of England,
Nothing could estrange her love, which clung to him
as the ivy clings to the ruined shrine, With what
convulsive gratitude he appreciated her fond fidelity,-
we may learn from his poems, Four of the choicest
of them were addressed to her. In one of them we
find the touching and melodious lines
Though the day of my dcstiny'it over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy flofi heart refused lo discover
The fault* winch so many could find*
From the wreck of the punt, which hath perished.
Thus much I at !cwl may recall :
It hath uught me that what X most cherished
Deserved to be dourest of all*
In the clcuert it fountain Is springing;,
In the wide waste there ttill in a tree,
And it bird in the solitude singing,
Which spetks to my spirit of thcr.
7* WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
When passing into the eternal world, the last in-
telligible words of Byron were, "Augusta, Ada, my
sister, my child."
Very pathetic also, amid the terrible trials which
smote them like a tempest, was the devotion of his
sister Mary to Charles Lamb. He always wrote of her
as his better self, his wiser self, a generous benefactress,
of whom he was hardly worthy. " Of all the people I
ever saw in the world, my poor sister is the most
thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness."
He was happy when she was well and with him. His
great sorrow was to be obliged so often to part from
her on the recurrences of her attacks. " To say all that
I know of her would be more than I think anybody
could believe or even understand. It would be sinning
against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I
can conceal nothing I do from her. All my wretched
imperfections I cover to myself, by resolutely thinking
on her goodness. She would share life and death,
heaven and hell, with me. She lives but for me."
Eponina and Julius Sabinus
Maeterlinck has retold with tenderest pathos the
story of Eponina and her husband Julius Sabinus. He
headed a revolt against the Emperor Vespasian, and was
defeated. Threatened with instant death, he might have
sought refuge among the Germans, but only by leaving
his young wife, Eponina, behind him, and he had not
the heart to forsake her. He possessed a villa, beneath
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OP WOMAN 73
which there stretched vast subterranean caverns, known
only to him and two freedmen. This villa he caused
to be burned, and the rumour was spread that he had
sought death by poison, and that his body was con-
sumed by the flames. Eponina herself was deceived,
and when Martialis the freed man told her of her hus-
band's self-slaughter, she lay for three days and three
nights on the ground, refusing all nourishment When
Sabinus heard of her grief, he took pity and caused her
to know that he lived, She none the less mourned and
shed floods of tears, in the daytime, when people were
near, but when night fell she sought him below in his
cavern. For seven long months did she thus confront
the shades, every night, to be with her husband; she
even attempted to help him escape ; she shaved off his
hair and his beard, wrapped his head round with fillets,
disguised him, and then had him sent, in a bundle of
clothes, to her own native city. But his stay there
becoming unsafe, she soon brought him back to his
cavern ; and herself divided her stay between town and
the country, spending her nights with him, and from
time to time going to town to be seen by her friends*
She became pregnant, and, by means of an unguent
wherewith she anointed her body, her condition remained
unsuspected by even the women at the baths, which at
that time were taken in common. And when her con-
finement drew nigh she went down to her cavern, and
there, with no midwife, alone, she gave birth to two
sons, as a lioness throws off her cubs. She nourished
74 WOMAN; HER CHARM AND POWER
her twins with her milk, she nursed them through child-
hood ; and for nine years she stood by her husband in
the gloom and the darkness. But Sabinus at last was
discovered and taken to Rome. He surely would seem
to have merited Vespasian's pardon. Eponina led forth
the two sons she had reared in the depths of the earth,
and said to the emperor, "These have I brought into
the world and fed on my milk, that we might one day
be more to implore thy forgiveness." Tears filled the
eyes of all who were there ; but Caesar stood firm, and
the brave Gaul at last was reduced to demand per-
mission to die with her husband. " I have known more
happiness with him in the darkness," she cried, "than
thou ever shalt know, O Caesar, in the full glare of the
sunshine, or in all the splendour of thy mighty empire."
Rama and S/td
There is a Hindu poem, worthy of notice, that
describes beautifully this noble trait of womanhood,
showing also how universal it is, not confined to the
cultured or enlightened, but native to the heart of
woman, in whatsoever clime or time she may be found.
It is an extract from an epic poem. Rama is to be
banished, and S&d, his wife, says
A wife must share her husband's fate : my duty is to follow thee
Where'er tfcom goest. Apart from thee I would not dwell in heaven
itself.
Deserted by her lord, a wife is like a miserable corpse.
Qose as thy shadow tfould I cleave to thee in this life and hereafter.
art my king, my guide, my only refuge, my divinity.
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OJ? WOMAN 7*5
It is my fixed resolve to follow thee,
If thou dost wander forth
Through thorny trackless forests,
I will go before thee, treading down
The prickly bramble to make smooth thy path. Walking before thee
I shall feel no weariness, the forests' thorns will seem like silken robes,
A bed of leaves, a couch of down.
To me the shelter of thy presence
Is better far than stately palaces, and paradise itself.
Protected by thine arm, gods, demons, men shall have no power to
harm me.
With thee I'll live contentedly on roots and fruits. Sweet, or not sweet,
If given by thy hand they will be to me like the food of life.
Roaming with thee in desert and in waste a thousand years will be a
day?
Dwelling with thee, e'en hell itself would be to me a heaven of bliss.
How divme a thing is this quality of fidelity and
devotion in woman, where her whole being has been
led captive by an all-mastering affection. It is the
quality which lights up her nature with sacred splen-
dour, and which leads us to the world's holiest spot
the Cross of Calvary.
Purity in Woman
As a general rule women are purer than men.
Purity is natural to woman. The thought of woman is
purer than the thought of man. It is contact with man
that soils her. It is through man that she is stained
and corrupted. If girls were as prone to sensuality as
boys are, society would fester and rot But in woman
there is a natural revulsion against impurity. She pre-
serves for us in a fallen world the pure^ fragrance of the
soul, and if man would rise to her height, in place ol
7 6
WOMAN": HER CHARM AND POWER
dragging her down to his own level, we should see a
nobler world. Men who are vile discountenance the
purity of woman. It rebukes them, and they desire to
soil, it lest haply they should be despised by it There
are scoundrels who say that every woman has her price.
We despise their secret, and join rather with the sage of
whom Maeterlinck writes, who said : " I have never come
across a single woman who did not bring to me some-
thing that was great." The enormous majority of women
regard with horror the loss of personal chastity. There
are many of them, even in humblest life, who will starve
rather than sin. Their peril arises not from unclean
desire, but from perverted self-sacrifice. They wish to
please men and are wrecked on that issue. The all-
absorbing affection which should render them sacred and
inviolable is the snare which draws them into ruin.
How few degraded and repulsive women there are
when compared with the number of degraded and
repulsive men. In the depth of the soul of woman there
lies a defence against evil which would always preserve
her if she were true to its divine promptings. Through
the sweet might of a power which God has inbreathed
she may tread upon the lion and adder of lust, and rebuke
unchastity, until it shrinks away defeated and ashamed.
How often is the old, sweet legend of Una and the lion
wrought out in lovely truth ! The bold and subtle beast
is cowed by her chastity and innocence, and crouches at
her feet a willing ^captive, or slinks back into the wilder-
ness abashed and foiled. It was a woman, a nun with
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 77
pure soul and " knees of adoration," who first saw the
Holy Grail, and how often has a man been lifted out
of debasing sins by the love of a pure sweet woman.
Dante nobly witnessed of that love for Beatrice " which
withdrew his thought from all vile things," and Michael
Angelo acknowledged this power when he wrote to
Vittoria Colonna :
The might of one fair face sublimes my love,
For it hath weaned my heart from low desires ;
Nor death I heed, nor purgatorial fires.
Thy beauty, antepast of joys above,
Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve*
For oh ! how good, how beautiful must be
The God that made so good a thing as thec,
So fear an image of the heavenly dove.
Forgive me if I cannot turn away
From those sweet eyes that are my earthly heaven,
For they are guiding stars benignly given
To tempt my footsteps to the upward way;
And if I dwell too fondly in thy sight,
I live and love in God's peculiar light.
Religion in Woman
From purity to religion there is but one step. The
pure in heart see God. All receive the heaven which is
around them according to the quality of the heaven
which is within them, and, in virtue of her peculiar
endowments of purity and love, woman stands near to
God. Her sense of dependence also leads to the same
result. Religion has been defined as "a feeling of
dependence," and this feeling is native to woman. Man
is self-assertive, independent, proud of -his strength and
of his isolation but woman must cling. Her soul is the
7 g WOMAN*: .HER CHARM AND POWER
seat and the home of reverence, dependence, trust These
qualities are as natural to her as stars to the sky, as
beauty to the flowers, and as song to tl^e woods. Because
of her feeling of dependence she leaps gladly into " the
everlasting arms," and because of the energy of her
affections she rejoices in the warm beat of the Infinite
heart Thus it may be said that religion is more natural
> to woman than to man. It is her native air. It is her
desired haven. On her pure brow the dove of peace
* delights to rest, and all the hues of heaven have set a
radiance in her eyes. On the margin of the sea, where
the eternal mysteries chant their weird melody, most men
are but as stones on which the wavelets break, and from
which they withdraw leaving no hoarded music; but
woman, like the sea-shell, holds them in her heart, where
they echo and reverberate for ever.
" There is a deep," says Theodore Parker, " to which
reason goes down with its flambeau in its hand ; there
is a height to which imagination goes up, on wide wings
borne; and that is the deep of philosophy, that is the
height of eloquence and song. But there is a deeper
\ depth, where reason goes not, a higher height, where
| imagination never wanders; and that is the deep of
justice, that is the height of love. It is the great wide
heaven of religion. Conscience goes down there, affection
goes up there, the soul lives up there. And that is the
place of woman. Woman has gone deeper in justice and
in love, and haS gone higher in trust, than man has
gone."
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 79
These words are true. Woman is superior to man in
the strength of her religious emotions. In the heaven
of religion she is^more at home than he. Man stands
-dm! questions. Woman believes and worships. Ever
and anon man arrests himself in the crowding rush of life
and asks : Whence have I come ? What am I ? Why
arn I here? Whither am I going? It is the cry of his
soul for the Father of his spirit, and for the heaven from
whence he came. But while he is crying out for God
woman has found Him, and rests in His bosom as in
her native home. Man seems to climb up into religion ;
woman is already there, We should draw near to her
with reverence, as to a mother's knee, for she is nearer to
God than we* She knows the things we do not know
She hears the voices we do not hear. She holds to her
bosom the lamp which we have lost. Truths which we
arc toiling all our lives to find, are for her intuitive and
familiar. Consolations which we feel we must rend the
heavens to gain, come to her as the dawn and drop as
the clew. To her, who is true woman, we may address
with confidence those lovely lines of Wordsworth to his
sister
If thou appear untouched by notcmn thought,
Thy nature is not, therefore* less divine :
Thou Jicst in Abraham ' bosom all the year,
And wnrahipp'ftt at the Temple's inner shrine,
God twing with thee when we know it not,
Woman is essentially religious* She cannot break
away irom the embrace of God* An irreligious woman
So WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
appears a monstrosity. She cannot be an unbeliever or
an atheist. She must trust. She must lean on another
stronger than herself. She must worship. The relation
between religion and conduct may not always be clear to
her. She may have stumbled and fallen, but she must
pray. She may have singed her wings, but she must
hover round the light. Rob her of religion and you take
away her womanhood. Her abiding place is at the
feet of God, and the paths thereto are more visible
to her than to men, and more easily trodden when
revealed.
The one all-sufficient word for religion is love, and
this is woman's world. He that loveth not knoweth not
God, but love tears away all the veils which hide Him
from view. Milton has said of love that it
Leads up to Heaven, is both the way and guide,
In Plato's Banquet we read : " He whose teacher
is Love, turns out scholar of repute and illustrious ; but
he on whom Love does not lay his hands, remains in
obscurity." Thus by her power to love, woman apprehends
God and rejoices in Him. Through the permitted tyranny
of love she takes the kingdom of heaven by violence,
while man stands hesitating at its gates. Her hunger
for some answering tenderness to her own love and trust
renders it impossible for her to conceive of God merely
as a great artificer, an empty abstraction, or an impersonal
power. She claims a heart in the centre of things.
She must have a God who loves and cares for her, and
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN* 81
who has given proof that he does so. It does not matter
to her how great He is
His greatness makes her strong, as children are,
When those they love are near.
She smiles at the majesty of God with the intimate
grace of the child to whom its father suggests no cause
for fear. For her it was hardly needful that God should
reveal Himself as essential love. Her own deep heart
had already taught her that sweet secret The baffling
mystery of the Incarnation, before which man falters and
is dumb, does not perplex the soul of woman. It is just
what her heart had led her to expect of God, and all that
is most truly woman in her welcomes Christ and rejoices
in Him.
Woman and Christ
We cannot read the New Testament thoughtfully
without realising that women rather than men were
the most faithful and devoted followers of Christ. We
instinctively feel that had they been present with Him in
Gethsemane they would not have slept during His sore
agony, but would have watched with Him, and wiped
from His pale brow the precious blood which the unpity-
ing earth received. Man too often stints his offering to
the Master, calculating on the need of less or more.
Woman, on the contrary, breaks at His sacred feet the
alabaster box, and yields her all, only grieving that the
offering is so poor.
And having found Christ, how deep is woman's joy
6
82 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
in Him who was not only truly man, but also truly
woman, who represented in His sacred person not merely
man, but humanity, in all its manifold completeness,
" Last at the cross, and first at the sepulchre," how faithful
woman is to her redeeming Lord, and how lovingly she
nestles at His feetl All that is purely and sweetly
woman in her asks for Jesus, Her penitence beseeches
Him who lifted her trampled sister from the dust, and
who blesses the weariest and the most fallen by the
mighty healing of His cross. Her household loue winds
itself about Him, who took the little children in His
arms, and blessed them, and who left Jerusalem at night-
fall for the home in Bethany, where dwelt Mary, and
Martha, and Lazarus. Her affections yearn toward Him
who loved us and gave Himself for us. Her sympatkits
supplicate Him who took our infirmities and bare our
sicknesses, Her pain demands Him who through suffer-
ing was made perfect, and who bore the nameless agonies
of the Garden* Her loneliness confides in Him who
lifted up in the great darkness the awful unfathomable
cry, " My God 1 My God 1 why hast Thou forsaken Me ? lf
Her hope of a dimner future rests on Him, who, having
broken the bars of death and carried away the gates of
the grave, said : " I go to My Father and to your Father,
to My God and to your God,"
It is questionable, indeed, whether any true woman
can have her hope fulfilled, and her whole being satisfied,
apart from Jesus Christ, He, and He only, is great and
pure and tender and sympathetic enough for a woman's
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 83
heart. If she has not found Him, whom Mary found in
the garden of the sepulchre, her nature is unsatisfied, and
her finest love flows out on desert sands. It is for this
reason that she throngs the churches where Christ is
presented as a living breathing reality. We smile when
she hangs a crucifix in her chamber, or when she kneels
before a picture of her Lord, But in our shallow scorn we
often smile at that, the significance of which is fathomless.
Nothing has impressed some of us more in life than
the essential loneliness of very many women. They have
never married, or, being married, they have ventured
their all upon some human affection, and found it alto-
gether inadequate and disappointing. They are married,
and yet they stand alone. They are married, but not
mated. There is no real affinity between their higher
selves and the man who walks by their side. He has
never touched their loftier nature or satisfied their finer
affections. It does not necessarily follow that the man
is a sensualist or a clown he is simply hard, dry,
shallow, and unsympathetic. Neither does it follow that
he does not admire and venerate the woman at his side.
On the contrary, he is not seldom filled with wonder, that
such a creature ever stooped to link her life with his.
Yet all the same she is alone. Ask such a woman what
marriage means, and a smile so bitter rises on her lips
that you turn away in pity and in pain.
The preciousncss of Christ to the soul of a woman
thus isolated Is beyond the reach of words. He is all
and in all to her, In His divine beauty and His human
&4 WOMAN": HER CHARM AND POWER
sympathy He fills and satisfies the heart which otherwise
would pine in unspeakable hunger. Before Him she
kneels, and kneeling cries, with a dedicated spirit of her
own sisterhood
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat;
Speak to me as to Mary at Thy feet
Neither does He refuse to listen to her trembling prayer,
for this would be to deny Himself. He folds her in His
arms. He carries her in His bosom. He blends His
own serene unfathomable life with hers. In temptation
He shields her. In slippery places He upholds her.
Henceforth she is alone, but not alone, because her Lord
is with her. He is with her at night-fall when the house
is still, and she listens for the step which is so long
delayed. He is with her in the morning when the river
of dawn flows into her silent chamber. He is with her
when her children climb her knee, and smooth with tiny
hands the furrows from her brow. He is with her on the
twilight-shadowed way when the children are scattered,
and she walks alone and is sad. And when the last solemn
twilight falls, a voice will strike through the gathering
gloom, saying, " The Master is come, and calleth for thee,"
and she will go forth to meet the Bridegroom. Then
will dawn upon her emancipated and rejoicing spirit
The Sabbaths of eternity,
One Sabbath deep and wide,
A tight upon the shining sea,
The Bridegroom with His bride I
SALIENT CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMAN 85
Thus, religion is natural to woman, Man may forsake
the temple and the altar, but woman will still worship.
She preserves religion in the Home, in the Church, and
in the Nation. If we treat her nobly she will continually
minister to the divine in us. And when she goes forth
from us into the unseen, she will still perform her finest
office in making the future life real and near to us.
Hume once said that when he thought of his mother he
believed in immortality. There was that in her character
and in her virtues which he could not reconcile with final
dissolution, And there are many of us to whom nothing
is so true in the world of thought as this, that our mother
does not rest beneath the sod, but only the garment
which she wore in her earthly pilgrimage, and flung off
when God called her to Himself.
She is folded, she is lying.
In the light which is undying.
Nay, more, she comes forth from God with the fragrance
and beauty of heaven upon her, and gently lures us
towards the light in which she dwells. We bury base-
ness in her grave, and virtue rises from it to robe us as
with celestial armour. And she cannot be forgotten.
On the contrary, she rises to the sweet power attributed
to one of his heroines by our greatest poet, where he
says
The idea of her life fehall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination ;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shnil come ftpparcH'd in more precious habit,
More wooing delicate, and full of life
Into the eye and prospect of hit soul.
CHAPTER IV
WOMAN AS DAUGHTER AND AS SISTER
Of all the knots which nature ties.
The secret, sacred sympathies.
That, as with viewless chains of gold.
The heart a happy prisoner hold ;
None is more chaste, more blight, more pure,
Stronger stern trials to endure ;
None is more pure of earthly leaven,
More like the love of highest Heaven,
Than that which binds, in bonds how blest,
A daughter to a father's breast
J. W. CUNNINGHAM.
Certain it is that there is no kind of affection 10 purely angelic, as that of
a father to a daughter ; he beholds her both with and without regard to her
sex. In love to our wives there is desire ; to our ions there is ambition ; but
in that to our daughters, there is something which there are no wordf to
express.- ADDISON.
Woman as Daughter
IT was a beautiful idea of Swedeflborg's, which he
says was told him by the angels, that there are* it*
every human being germs of a holier nature which has
survived from Paradise, or come down from heaven*
The same sweet truth is taught in Wordsworth's splendid
11 Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollec-
tions of Early Childhood, 11 The poet tells us that because
86
WOMAN AS DAUGHTER AND AS SISTER 87
the child Js fresh from heaven it is nearer to God than
the man, and cherishes reminiscences of " that imperial
Palace whence it came." It is more closely akin to
God, more near to the immortal Life, more purely and
brightly free, because it half shares in the pre-existent
life and glory out of which it has been drawn into its
earthly home,
By nothing is this truth so deeply impressed upon
us as by the vision and the presence of pure, sweet
girlhood. The daughter in the house is frequently its
richest ornament Whether she moves to and fro in
tender ministry to her mother; welcomes the father
after his day of toil ; helps a younger brother with his
uncongenial tasks, or ministers in the sick-chamber with
that noiseless grace, and swift unerring sympathy, which
is woman's finest dower, she is equally winsome and
lovely. Not seldom as we have marked the ministering
sweetness of an unspoilt girlhood in the home, those
words of Shakespeare have been recalled to us
The uir of Paradise did fan the house,
And angels offic'd all.
Two of the greatest works in all literature draw
their inspiration, in whole or in part, from this relation-
ship of daughterhood the (Rdipus at Colonus of
Sophocles, and Shakespeare's King Lear. In the Greek
play there is a lovely description of the tender affection
shown by Antigone to the blind and wandering king,
her father, in his exile from the city, which had formerly
honoured and adored him as a deliverer. As for
88 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
Cordelia in King Lear, no introduction is needed to the
lovely story.
The relationship of daughterhood^ to father or to
mother, is a relationship too precious, too exquisite, to
be spoiled by the rough hand of selfishness, or jarred by
the friction of daily life.
Counsel to Daughters
To our English girls than whom there are none so
winsome or so lovely in the wide world we would say
Be sympathetic; be unselfish. Seek the joy of
service. Let the home be brighter and gladder because
you are in it.
One of the sweetest things a girl can do is to receive
visitors graciously ; to walk over the room to meet
them, give them her hand, and say a word or two in the
way of hearty welcome. Oliver Wendell Homes says in
one of his books: "Whether gifted with the accident
of beauty or not, a woman should have been moulded
in the rose-red clay of love. A woman who docs not
carry a halo of good feeling, and desire to make every-
body contented, about with her wherever she goes an
atmosphere of grace, mercy, and peace, at least of six-
foot radius, which wraps every human being upon whom
she voluntarily bestows her presence, and flatters him
with the comfortable thought that she is rather glad that
he is alive isn't worth the trouble of talking to/ 1
Woman has- often been called the civiliser, the
softener, and the purifier of life; and it is love and
WOMAN AS DAUGHTER AND AS SISTER 89
gentleness which makes her so. Isocrates made an
excellent application of the golden rule when he said :
" Be such to your parents as you would wish your
children to be to you." And, as the love of her parents
is a daughter's joy and pride, it behoves her to love
them fondly in return, and, as far as in her lies, to
lighten their burdens and minister to their happiness,
There is a Hindoo saying, to the effect that the pain
and care which a mother and father undergo for their
children cannot be compensated in a hundred years.
But it need not for this reason be unconsidered.
Among the many helpful ministries possible to a
daughter one of the most valuable is that of reading aloud.
A girl who has once been taught clearly and dis-
tinctly to articulate, is capable of imparting a pleasure
in the home, to which even music itself is secondary.
There was a time when in most refined households the
system of reading aloud for the general edification was
cultivated. Partly from the increased hurry of modern
life, and in part from the fevered appetite for reading
much and fast, the habit has largely faded in these later
years. It would be well, however, to revive and to
make it, as far as possible, universal Much of the silly
and corrupt literature of the present day would wither
under this trying ordeal, while in the working class
family circle no moro formidable rival to the tap-room
could be imagined. And since
*
Evil is wrought by want of thought
A well want of heart,
90 WOMAN: HER CHARM AND POWER
we would tenderly appeal to our girls to remember how
often a father's solitude or a mother's patient toil might
be cheered and lightened by the reading, in their hearing,
of some interesting book in the seclusion of the home.
There are few of us, on whom the years have left
their mark, who do not possess some painful memory of
neglected privilege in this regard. If we could bring
our loved ones back, how eagerly would we atone for the
stinted affection and the cold neglect which we now so
bitterly mourn ! Alas, that we should so often rob our
parents of their profoundest happiness, that of pride
* .i and joy in their children.
For human hearts are harps divinely strung,
And framed diversely : waiting for the power
Of kindred soul, and on each chord is hung
A wondrous dower
Of song and glory J which, if touched aright,
Would fill the world with light !
Yet, further, the reflex influence of this habit of
reading aloud would also be most valuable to girlhood.
No girl can be truly beautiful or permanently attractive
if she is ignorant. She must call some mental quality
to the aid of physical charms if she would hold her own.
"Beauty is not an accident of things; it pertains to
their essence," said Mr. Gladstone in one of his addresses.
A woman cannot be really beautiful, however perfect the
conformation of her' face and figure, unless she has
character and intellect whereby a spirituality may be
infused into a tfbdy which would otherwise be nought
but a shell. On the other hand, it is difficult to make a
WOMAN AS DAUGHTER AND AS SISTER 91
clever, well-informed woman look really ugly. An
Illumination from within transfigures her, while the finer
features of her rival may be only " icily regular
splendidly null." Akenside gives fine expression to this
necessity where he says
The shape alone let others prize,
The features of the fair ;
I look for spirit in her eyes,
And meaning in her air.
A damask cheek, an ivory arm,
Shall ne'er my wishes win;
Give me an animated form,
That speaks a mind within.
A face where awful honour shines,
Where sense and sweetness move,
And angel innocence refines
The tenderness of love.
These are the soul of beauty's frame,
Without whose vital aid,
Unfinished all her features seem,
And all her roses dead.
* Examples of Devotion among 1 Daughters
The annals of the heart present many examples of
the devotion of daughters to their parents.
When Louis XVI. and his consort were in prison,
their daughters, the princesses, cheerfully discharged all
the duties of servants to the King and Queen.
The first Earl of Marchmont was concealed in a
church vault for a month, and had only for light a slit
in the massive wall. His daughter carried him food at
midnight every night, and remained with him until the
9* WOMAN: HER CHARM
