Every woman who passes thirty ought to keep her brain, heart and mind
alive and warm with human sympathy and emotion. She ought to interest
herself in the lives of others, and make her friendship valuable to the
young.
She should keep her body supple, and avoid losing the lines of grace:
and she should select some study or work to occupy her spare hours and
to lend a zest to the coming years. Every woman in the comfortable
walks in life can find time for such a study. No woman of tact, charm,
refinement and feeling need ever let her husband, unless she has
married a clod, become indifferent or commonplace in his treatment of
her. Man reflects to an astonishing degree woman's sentiments for him.
Keep sentiment alive in your own heart, madam, and in the heart of your
husband. If he sees that other men admire you he will be more alert to
the necessity of remaining your lover.
Take the happy, safe, medium path between a gray and a gay life by
keeping it radiant and bright. Read and think and talk of cheerful,
hopeful, interesting subjects. Avoid small gossip, and be careful in
your criticism of neighbors. Sometimes we must criticise, but speak
_to_ people whose faults you feel a word of counsel may amend, not _of_
them to others.
Make your life after it reaches its noon, glorious with sunlight, rich
with harvests, and bright with color. Be alive in mind, heart and
body. Be joyous without giddiness, loving without silliness,
attractive without being flirtatious, attentive to others' needs
without being officious, and instructive without too great a display of
erudition.
Be a noble, loving, lovable woman.
It is never too late in life to make anew start. No matter how small a
beginning may be, it is so much begun for a new incarnation if it is
cut off here by death.
If I were one hundred years old, and in possession of my faculties, I
would not hesitate to undertake a new enterprise which offered a hope
of bettering my condition.
Thought is eternal in its effects, and every hopeful thought which
enters the mind sets vibrations in motion, which shall help minds
millions of miles distant and lives yet unborn.
It is folly to mourn over a failure to provide opportunities and
luxuries for children. We have only to look at the children of the
rich, to see how little enduring happiness money gives, and how seldom
great advantages result in great characters. The majority of the
really great people of the world, in all lines of achievement, have
sprung from poverty. I do not mean from pauper homes, but from the
homes where only the mere necessities of life could be obtained, and
where early in their youth the children felt it necessary to go into
the world and make their own way. Self-dependence, self-reliance,
energy, ambition, were all developed in this way.
How rarely do we find these qualities in the children of wealth. How
rarely do great philosophers, great statesman, great thinkers and great
_characters_ develop from the wealthy classes.
Pauperism--infant labor--the wage-earning women--are all evils which
ought to be abolished. But next to that evil I believe the worst thing
possible for a human soul is to be born to wealth. It is an obstacle
to greatness which few are strong enough to surmount, and it rarely
results in happiness to the recipient.