No, we want a more robust womanhood than that, sound of body and sound of mind, in order that our homes may be happy and well regulated, our children born and reared fit for the battle of life. A well-known novelist, lecturing recently on the younger generation of fiction-writers, remarked that Robert Louis Stevenson, in ignoring woman so much in his works, had passed by the most picturesque part of human life. The contention was perfectly unimpeachable from the artistic point of view; but we aim, I trust, at being something more than picturesque. While not disdaining the high privilege of giving the romance and sweetness to life, we would desire also to be strong, capable, serviceable to our day and generation. So and so only can we hope to be the equal and the friend of man. But in this worthy aim we have to steer clear of many quicksands; we must avoid the very semblance of usurpation or imitation.
Surely we are sufficiently endowed with our own gifts and graces, so powerful in their influence, that I need not enumerate or expatiate upon them here.
Let us not forget that in true womanliness is our strength, and that the end of our being is to comfort and bless and love--never to usurp.
What can be more melancholy than to live with a grumbler, to sit opposite a face prematurely wrinkled at the brows and down-drooped at the lips? I have in my mind's eye, as perhaps you have in yours, such a woman, tied to the best of good fellows, who, through no fault of his own, has not as yet made such headway in life as was expected of him. And his Nemesis sits at home, querulous and fretful because her establishment is more modest than her ambition, her possessions than her pretensions. Life is embittered to him; hope has died: if love follow it sadly to the bier, who can blame him? Certainly not the woman who has been a hindrance and not a help, one whose reproaches, tacit and acknowledged, have caused the iron to enter into his soul. It is such women who send men to mental and moral destruction, nor is their punishment lacking.
The ideal wife, then, will sedulously cultivate the happy spirit of contentment, and make the best of everything, not seeking to add to the burden an already overworked husband may have to carry. It is not the abundance of worldly possessions which makes happiness. I can speak from personal experience, and I could tell you a story of a young pair who began life in very humble circumstances, in the face of much opposition, and who, by dint of honest, faithful, united endeavours, overcame obstacles over which Experience shook her head and called insurmountable. And the struggle being over, the memory of it is sweet beyond all telling,--the little shifts to make ends meet, the constant planning and striving, the simple pleasures won by waiting and hard work, are possessions which they would not barter for untold gold.