It takes a hundred men to make an encampment, but one woman can
make a home. I not only admire woman as the most beautiful object
ever created, but I reverence her as the redeeming glory of humanity,
the sanctuary of all the virtues, the pledge of all perfect qualities
of heart and head. It is not just or right to lay the sins of men
at the feet of women. It is because women are so much better than
men that their faults are considered greater.
The one thing in this world that is constant, the one peak that
rises above all clouds, the one window in which the light forever
burns, the one star that darkness cannot quench, is woman's love.
It rises to the greatest heights, it sinks to the lowest depths,
it forgives the most cruel injuries. It is perennial of life, and
grows in every climate. Neither coldness nor neglect, harshness
nor cruelty, can extinguish it. A woman's love is the perfume of
the heart.
This is the real love that subdues the earth; the love that has
wrought all the miracles of art, that gives us music all the way
from the cradle song to the grand closing symphony that bears the
soul away on wings of fire. A love that is greater than power,
sweeter than life and stronger than death.