Ay, there is something in that maidenly modesty--retiring from you as you advance, retreating timidly from all bold approaches, fearful and yet joyous--which wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature like a rising flame. To force of action and resolve he opposes force; to strong will he mates his own; pride lights pride; but to the gentleness of the true womanly character he yields with a gush of tenderness that nothing else can call out. He will never be subjugated on his own ground of action and energy; but let him be lured to that border country over which the delicacy and fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his energy yields, his haughty determination faints, he is proud of submission! And with this thought of modesty and gentleness to illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the pleasant phantom to that shadowy home--lying far off in the future--of which she is the glory and the crown. I know it is the fashion nowadays with many to look for a woman's excellencies and influence--away from her home; but I know too that a vast many eager and hopeful hearts still cherish the belief that her virtues will range highest and live longest within those sacred walls. Where, indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue of a woman tell a stronger story of its worth than upon the dawning habit of a child? Where can her grace of character win a higher and a riper effect than upon the action of her household? What mean those noisy declaimers who talk of the feeble influence, and of the crushed faculties, of a woman? What school of learning, or of moral endeavor, depends more on its teacher, than the home upon the mother? What influence of all the world's professors and teachers tells so strongly on the habit of a man's mind as those gentle droppings from a mother's lips, which, day by day and hour by hour, grow into the enlarging stature of his soul, and live with it forever? They can hardly be mothers who aim at a broader and noisier field; they have forgotten to be daughters; they must needs have lost the hope of being wives! Be this how it may, the heart of a man with whom affection is not a name, and love a mere passion of the hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home as toward the goal of his earthly joy and hope. And as you fasten there your thought, an indulgent yet dreamy fancy paints the loved image that is to adorn it and to make it sacred. ----She is there to bid you God speed! and an adieu that hangs like music on your ear as you go out to the every-day labor of life. At evening she is there to greet you, as you come back wearied with a day's toil; and her look so full of gladness cheats you of your fatigue; and she steals her arm around you with a soul of welcome that beams like sunshine on her brow, and that fills your eye with tears of a twin gratitude--to her and Heaven!