Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners Part 3

8. WOMAN, ABOVE ALL OTHER EDUCATORS, educates humanly. Man is the brain, but woman is the heart of humanity; he its judgment, she its feeling; he its strength, she its grace, ornament, and solace. Even the understanding of the best woman seems to work mainly through her affections. And thus, though man may direct the intellect, woman cultivates the feelings, which mainly determine the character. While he fills the memory, she occupies the heart. She makes us love what he can make us only believe, and it is chiefly through her that we are enabled to arrive at virtue.

9. THE POOREST DWELLING, presided over by a virtuous, thrifty, cheerful, and cleanly woman, may thus be the abode of comfort, virtue, and happiness; it may be the scene of every enn.o.bling relation in family life; it may be endeared to man by many delightful a.s.sociations; furnis.h.i.+ng a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from the storms of life, a sweet resting-place after labor, a consolation in misfortune, a pride in prosperity, and a joy at all times.

10. THE GOOD HOME IS THUS THE BEST OF SCHOOLS, not only in youth but in age. There young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience, self-control, and the spirit of service and of duty. The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always the best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the Provencal proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs."

Philanthropy radiates from the home as from a centre. "To love the little platoon we belong to in society," said Burke, "is the germ of all public affections." The wisest and best have not been ashamed to own it to be their greatest joy and happiness to sit "behind the heads of children" in the inviolable circle of home.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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To Young Women.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEDITATION.]

1. TO BE A WOMAN, in the truest and highest sense of the word, is to be the best thing beneath the skies. To be a woman is something more than to live eighteen or twenty years; something more than to grow to the physical stature of women; something more than to wear flounces, exhibit dry goods, sport jewelry, catch the gaze of lewd-eyed men; {27} something more than to be a belle, a wife, or a mother. Put all these qualifications together and they do but little toward making a true woman.

2. BEAUTY AND STYLE are not the surest pa.s.sports to womanhood--some of the n.o.blest specimens of womanhood that the world has ever seen have presented the plainest and most unprepossessing appearance. A woman's worth is to be estimated by the real goodness of her heart, the greatness of her soul, and the purity and sweetness of her character; and a woman with a kindly disposition and well-balanced temper is both lovely and attractive, be her face ever so plain, and her figure ever so homely; she makes the best of wives and the truest of mothers.

3. BEAUTY IS A DANGEROUS GIFT.--It is even so. Like wealth, it has ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are dest.i.tute of common sense and common humanity. No gift from heaven is so general and so widely abused by woman as the gift of beauty. In about nine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy, vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low and mean. I think I have seen more girls spoiled by beauty than by any other one thing. "She is beautiful, and she knows it," is as much as to say that she is spoiled. A beautiful girl is very likely to believe she was made to be looked at; and so she sets herself up for a show at every window, in every door, on every corner of the street, in every company at which opportunity offers for an exhibition of herself.

4. BEWARE OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.--These facts have long since taught sensible men to beware of beautiful women--to sound them carefully before they give them their confidence. Beauty is shallow--only skin deep; fleeting--only for a few years' reign; dangerous--tempting to vanity and lightness of mind; deceitful--dazzling often to bewilder; weak--reigning only to ruin; gross--leading often to sensual pleasure. And yet we say it need not be so.

Beauty is lovely and ought to be innocently possessed. It has charms which ought to be used for good purposes. It is a delightful gift, which ought to be received with grat.i.tude and worn with grace and meekness. It should always minister to inward beauty. Every woman of beautiful form and features should cultivate a beautiful mind and heart.

5. RIVAL THE BOYS.--We want the girls to rival the boys in all that is good, and refined, and enn.o.bling. We want them to rival the boys, as they well can, in learning, in understanding, in virtues; in all n.o.ble qualities of mind and heart, but not in any of those things that have caused them, justly or unjustly, to be described as savages. We want {28} the girls to be gentle--not weak, but gentle, and kind and affectionate. We want to be sure, that wherever a girl is, there should be a sweet, subduing and harmonizing influence of purity, and truth, and love, pervading and hallowing, from center to circ.u.mference, the entire circle in which she moves. If the boys are savages, we want her to be their civilizer. We want her to tame them, to subdue their ferocity, to soften their manners, and to teach them all needful lessons of order, sobriety, and meekness, and patience, and goodness.

6. KINDNESS.--Kindness is the ornament of man--it is the chief glory of woman--it is, indeed, woman's true prerogative--her sceptre and her crown.

It is the sword with which she conquers, and the charm with which she captivates.

7. ADMIRED AND BELOVED.--Young lady, would you be admired and beloved?

Would you be an ornament to your s.e.x, and a blessing to your race?

Cultivate this heavenly virtue. Wealth may surround you with its blandishments, and beauty, and learning, or talents, may give you admirers, but love and kindness alone can captivate the heart. Whether you live in a cottage or a palace, these graces can surround you with perpetual suns.h.i.+ne, making you, and all around you, happy.

8. INWARD GRACE.--Seek ye then, fair daughters, the possession of that inward grace, whose essence shall permeate and vitalize the affections, adorn the countenance, make mellifluous the voice, and impart a hallowed beauty even to your motions. Not merely that you may be loved, would I urge this, but that you may, in truth, be lovely--that loveliness which fades not with time, nor is marred or alienated by disease, but which neither chance nor change can in any way despoil.

9. SILKEN ENTICEMENTS OF THE STRANGER.--We urge you, gentle maiden, to beware of the silken enticements of the stranger, until your love is confirmed by protracted acquaintance. Shun the idler, though his coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent--the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place, irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather, until your own character and that of him who would woo you, is more fully developed. Surely, if this "first love" cannot endure a short probation, fortified by "the {29} pleasures of hope," how can it be expected to survive years of intimacy, scenes of trial, distracting cares, wasting sickness, and all the homely routine of practical life? Yet it is these that const.i.tute life, and the love that cannot abide them is false and must die.

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Influence of Female Character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMAN LADIES.]

1. MORAL EFFECT.--It is in its moral effect on the mind and the heart of man, that the influence of woman is most powerful and important. In the diversity of tastes, habits, inclinations, and pursuits of the two s.e.xes, is found a most beneficent provision for controlling the force and extravagance of human pa.s.sion. The objects which most strongly seize and stimulate the mind of man, rarely act at the same time and with equal power on the mind of woman. She is naturally better, purer, and more chaste in thought and language.

2. FEMALE CHARACTER.--But the influence of female character on the virtue of men, is not seen merely in restraining and softening the violence of human pa.s.sion. To her is mainly committed the task of pouring into the opening mind of infancy its first impressions of duty, and of stamping on its susceptible heart the first image of its G.o.d. Who will not confess the influence of a mother in forming the heart of a child? What man is there who can not trace the origin of many of the best maxims of his life to the lips of her who gave him birth? How wide, how lasting, how sacred is that part of a woman's influence.

3. VIRTUE OF A COMMUNITY.--There is yet another mode, by which woman may exert a powerful influence on the virtue of a community. It rests with her in a pre-eminent degree, to give tone and elevation to the moral character of the age, by deciding the degree of virtue that shall be necessary to afford a pa.s.sport to her society. If all the favor of woman were given only to the good, if it were known that the charms and attractions of beauty, and wisdom, and wit, were reserved only for the pure; if, in one word, something of a similar rigor were exerted to exclude the profligate and abandoned of society, as is shown to those who have fallen from virtue,--how much would be done to re-enforce the motives to moral purity among us, and impress on the minds of all a reverence for the sanct.i.ty and obligations of virtue.

4. THE INFLUENCE OF WOMAN ON THE MORAL SENTIMENTS.--The influence of woman on the moral sentiments of society is intimately connected with her influence on its religious character; for religion and a pure and elevated morality must ever stand in the relation to each other of effect and cause.

The heart of a woman is formed for the abode of sacred truth; and for the reasons alike honorable to her character and to that of society. From the nature of humanity this must be so, or the race would soon degenerate, and moral contagion eat out the heart of society. The purity of home is the safeguard to American manhood.

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Personal Purity.

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power."--TENNYSON.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

1. WORDS OF THE GREAT TEACHER.--Mark the words of the Great Teacher: "If thy right hand or foot cause thee to fall, cut it off and cast it from thee. If thy right eye cause thee to fall, pluck it out. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed and halt, than having two eyes to be cast into h.e.l.l-fire, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

2. A MELANCHOLY FACT.--It is a melancholy fact, in human experience, that the n.o.blest gifts which men possess are constantly prost.i.tuted to other purposes than those for which they are designed. The most valuable and useful organs of the body are those which are capable of the greatest dishonor, abuse, and corruption. What a snare the wonderful organism of the eye may become, when used to read corrupt books, or to look upon licentious pictures, or vulgar theater scenes, or when used to meet the fascinating gaze of the harlot! What an instrument for depraving the whole man may be found in the matchless powers of the brain, the hand, the mouth, or the tongue! What potent instruments may these become in accomplis.h.i.+ng the ruin of the whole being, for time and eternity! {32}

3. ABSTINENCE.--Some can testify with thankfulness that they never knew the sins of gambling, drunkenness, fornication, or adultery. In all these cases abstinence has been, and continues to be, liberty. Restraint is the n.o.blest freedom. No man can affirm that self-denial ever injured him; on the contrary, self-restraint has been liberty, strength and blessing. Solemnly ask young men to remember this when temptation and pa.s.sion strive as a floodtide to move them from the anchorage and peace of self-restraint.

Beware of the deceitful stream of temporary gratification, whose eddying current drifts towards license, shame, disease and death. Remember how quickly moral power declines, how rapidly the edge of the fatal maelstrom is reached, how near the vortex, how terrible the penalty, how fearful the sentence of everlasting punishment!

4. FRANK DISCUSSION.--The time has arrived for a full and frank discussion of those things which affect the personal purity. Thousands are suffering to-day from various weaknesses, the causes of which they have never learned. Manly vigor is not increasing with that rapidity which a Christian age demands. Means of dissipation are on the increase. It is high time, therefore, that every lover of the race should call a halt, and inquire into the condition of things. Excessive modesty on this subject is not virtue. Timidity in presenting unpleasant but important truths has permitted untold damage in every age.

5. MAN IS A CARELESS BEING.--He is very much inclined to sinful things. He more often does that which is wrong than that which is right, because it is easier, and, for the moment, perhaps, more satisfying to the flesh. The Creator is often blamed for man's weaknesses and inconsistencies. This is wrong. G.o.d did not intend that we should be mere machines, but free moral agents. We are privileged to choose between good and evil. Hence, if we perseveringly choose the latter, and make a miserable failure of life, we should blame only ourselves.

6. THE PULPIT.--Would that every pulpit in the land might join hands with the medical profession and cry out with no uncertain sound against the mighty evils herein stigmatized! It would work a revolution for which coming society could never cease to be grateful.

7. STRIVE TO ATTAIN A HIGHER LIFE.--Strive to attain unto a higher and better life. Beware of all excesses, of whatever nature, and guard your personal purity with sacred determination. Let every aspiration be upward, and be strong in every good resolution. Seek the light, for in light there is life, while in darkness there is decay and death. {33}

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONFIDENCE THAT SOMETIMES MAKES TROUBLE.]

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How to Write All Kinds of Letters.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

1. From the President in his cabinet to the laborer in the street; from the lady in her parlor to the servant in her kitchen; from the millionaire to the beggar; from the emigrant to the settler; from every country and under every combination of circ.u.mstances, letter writing in all its forms and varieties is most important to the advancement, welfare and happiness of the human family.

2. EDUCATION.---The art of conveying thought through the medium of written language is so valuable and so necessary, a thorough knowledge of the practice must be desirable to every one. For merely to write a good letter requires the exercise of much of the education and talent of any writer.

3. A GOOD LETTER.--A good letter must be correct in every mechanical detail, finished in style, interesting in substance, and intelligible in construction. Few there are who do not need write them; yet a letter perfect in detail is rarer than any other specimen of composition.