If women choose to compete with men in any of the learned professions, or in any other pursuit, and are fitted to achieve success, there is nothing in the way to prevent them; yet it does not follow that they can take the places of men in everything, especially in those employments which require masculine strength and great physical endurance. Nor does it follow that women who pay taxes should therefore have the right of suffrage. The fact that they hold property does not change their _status_, nor does it confer political rights. The right of suffrage is a political right and not a natural right. The exercise of this political right carries with it the law-making power, the duty of protecting persons and property, and consequently of maintaining and defending the government. They who make the government are therefore bound to defend it. Nature never intended that women should become soldiers and face the cannon's mouth in the battle-field; nor did she give them strength to construct railroads, tunnel mountains, build war-ships, or man them. Yet women, prompted by affection or romantic sentiment, have been known to become soldiers in disguise, and perhaps have fought bravely in the battle-field. But this, of itself, proves nothing; it is merely an exception to a general rule, or in other words, an eccentricity of character. In all ages of the world, as we have shown, the mere force of circumstances has occasionally unsphered woman and placed her in unnatural situations, in which she has sometimes achieved a brilliant success,--on the throne and off the throne, in peace and in war, in political life and in social life. Yet in stepping out of her sphere, whatever may be her success, every true woman feels that she "o'ersteps the modesty of nature." When woman glides into her natural position,--that of a wife,--it is then only that she occupies her appropriate sphere, and exhibits in its most attractive form the loveliness of her character. Marriage is an institution as essential to the stability and harmony of the social system as gravity is to the order and preservation of the planetary system. In the domestic circle the devoted wife becomes the centre of attraction, the "angel of the household." Her world is her home; her altar, the hearthstone. In her daily ministrations she makes herself angelic by making home a heaven, and every one happy who may come within the "charmed circle" of her kind cares and generous sympathies. In fact, there is no place like home, "sweet home," when on its sacred altar burns the blended incense of harmonious souls,-- "Two souls with but a single thought; Two hearts that beat as one."