Much is said about woman's mission! It is constantly repeated that the future of society depends on us. If we occasionally forget this, we should certainly not suffer others to doubt it. We wish--and we are right in doing so--we wish to occupy an important position in the family and in society; we struggle vigorously against those who would assign to us a secondary position; we boast that we exercise a great influence over men. This idea flatters our self-love. But let us not forget that this circumstance becomes for us a source of strict obligations. Man is nurtured in our arms, and grows up at our side. He is, we may say, whatever we make him. That primary instruction which it is our duty to impart to him, exercises the greatest influence on his after life. His mother! He will always remember her, and her example, good or evil, will leave an indelible impression on his soul. And our husbands, our fathers and brothers! We know our power over them, and we sometimes use it in matters which are not really worth all the diplomacy we employ. That mission of mother, of wife! Have we forgotten that it is the end of our life, the reason of our creation? God, who has established laws for the material world, laws from which even a slight derogation would produce a great catastrophe, has likewise marked out for each one of us her place here below. He has not placed us in this world without a definite end in view. Woman has serious duties to perform, of which she must one day render a strict account to her Creator. Have these duties, these obligations which our Lord has imposed upon us, been hitherto our principal concern? Has our worldly life, with its numerous preoccupations, left us time to be true wives and true mothers? Alas! the world and its requirements take up all our time. And yet the duties to which we are bound by this twofold title, although differing with our different positions in the world, oblige equally the wife of the mechanic, the merchant, the officer, and the prince, before both God and society. Here, then, is the pith of this question; it may be summed up in a single word: are we wives and mothers, or are we merely women of the world? Those children whom God has confided to our care, and of whom we shall have to render an account, do we suppose that we have done our duty toward them when we have procured tutors for them, or when we have placed them in an academy?