Do not, my sister, be dizzied and disturbed by the talk of those who
think the home circle too insignificant for a woman's career, and who
want to get you out on platforms and in conspicuous enterprises. There
are women who have a special outside mission, and do not dare to
interpret me as derisive of their important mission. But my opinion is
that the woman who can reinforce her husband in the work of life and
rear her children for positions of usefulness is doing more for God
and the race and her own happiness than if she spoke on every great
platform and headed a hundred great enterprises. My mother never made
a missionary speech in her life, and at a missionary meeting I doubt
whether she could have got enough courage to vote aye or no, but she
raised her son John, who has been preaching the Gospel and translating
religious literature in Amoy, China, for about forty years. Was not
that a better thing to do?
Compare such an one with one of these dieaway, attitudinizing,
frivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an
opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten
commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the
complexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna,
bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to
discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent
and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.