Now, George Sand was doubtless correct in the rather prosaic remark: "It is not so easy to see through a woman as through a man." Samson did not quite penetrate the wiles of his lady love. Her beauty hid all else, and Samson fell. "The whisper of a beautiful woman," says Diana of Poitiers, "can be heard further than the loudest call of duty." The Nazarite vow, so strong and binding, became in Delilah's hands, as she held the shears, weaker than the withes she bound about the arms of the captured giant. Robert Burns has, in a characteristic fashion, given what might well be inscribed to Samson's memory: "As Father Adam first was fooled, A case that's still too common, Here lies a man a woman ruled The devil ruled the woman." Delilah, the Philistine, is to be contrasted with the typical Hebrew women, not only in the matter of feminine chastity for which they stand out among ancient women as preëminent, but also in that fidelity to husband and to native land which made the Hebrews the most stable and persistent race with which the world is acquainted. In marked contrast with this witch of the Philistine plains, stands out the heroic daughter of Jephtha. Her purity, patriotism, and her deep respect for the sacredness of a religious oath, place her at the very opposite pole. "Great women," says Leigh Hunt, "belong to the history of self-sacrifice." If this be true, Jephtha's daughter must be enrolled among the great, as her heroic self-devotion shines through the dimness of ancient history. Her father was one of Israel's deliverers in the days of tribal division and political chaos. Returning from victory over the hostile Ammonites, Jephtha purposes to give, as sacrifice to Jehovah for bringing him success in arms, the first creature that comes forth to meet him as he turns his face homeward. It is his own daughter, his only child, going out to meet him with the timbrel and with dances. In his eyes a "very daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." Will he break his vow? Will the young woman herself, this Hebrew Alcestis, shrink from the sacrifice? "My father, thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do unto me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth." For a woman to die childless in Israel was looked upon as a calamity, a mark of divine displeasure, and the daughter of Jephtha was a virgin. It is for this reason that she begged the coveted privilege of two months' respite that, with her maidens, she might withdraw to the neighboring mountain and there "bewail her virginity." At the end of the required period, returning to her father's house, she yields herself a sacrifice to the hasty but well-meant vow of her patriotic father. So deeply did her pure devotion to filial and patriotic ideals impress the daughters of Israel, that every year they went out to lament, four days, in honor of the daughter of Jephtha, the Gileadite, of whom N. P. Willis has drawn this appreciative picture: