“Self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control; these three alone lead life to a sovereign power,” and these are fast becoming essential to any ideal of womanly character which the modern age will recognize as the product of its institutions. Of self-knowledge, these talks have said much. Self-reverence I would fain help you to develop in your character as a woman. If my dear mother did me one crowning kindness it was in making me believe that next to being an angel, the greatest bestowment of God is to make one a woman. With what contempt she referred to the old Jewish formula in which the less refined sex rolled out the words, “I thank thee, O God, that thou hast not made me a woman,” and with what pathos she repeated the gentle prayer of the other, “I thank thee, O God, that thou hast made me as it pleased thee,” with the pithy comment, “What could have pleased Him better, I should like to know, than to make one so rare, so choice, so spiritual as woman is?” Perhaps some of you may have thought you wanted to be a boy, but I seriously doubt it. You may have wanted a boy’s freedom, his independence, his healthful, unimpeding style of dress, but I do not believe any true girl could ever have been coaxed to be a boy. Reverence yourself, then, if you would learn one of the first elements of “How to Win” in this great world race, with its “go-as-you-please” terms, but its “Lucifer-may-take-the-hindmost” penalty for failure. What will the new ideal of woman _not_ be? She will never be written down in the hotel register by her husband after this fashion: “John Smith and Wife.” He would as soon think of her writing “Mrs. John Smith and Husband.” Why does it not occur to any one to designate him thus? Simply because he is so much more than that. He is a leading force in the affairs of the church; he helps decide who shall be pastor. (So will she.) He is perhaps the village physician, or merchant (so she will be, perhaps—indeed, they are oftentimes in partnership, nowadays, and I have found their home a blessed one). He is the village editor. (Very likely she will be associate.) He is a voter. (She will be, beyond a peradventure.) For the same reason you will never read of her marriage that “the minister pronounced them _man_ and _wife_” for that functionary would have been just as likely to pronounce them “husband and woman,” a form of expression into which the regulation reporter will be likely to fall one of these days, it being, really, not one whit more ridiculous than the time-worn phrase, “man and wife.” The ideal woman of the future will never be designated as “the Widow Jones,” because she will be so much more than that—“a provider” for her children, “a power” in the church, “a felt force” in the state. I think George Eliot is the first woman to attain the post-mortem honor of having her husband called “her widower,” John W. Cross having been thus indicated in English papers of the period.