Some people once thought it was, and they thought, also, that you might as well throw down its Lares and Penates as to carry away its weaving loom and spinning wheel. But it survived this spoliation; and when women ceased to pick their own geese and do their own dyeing, it still serenely smiled. The sewing machine took away much of its occupation; the French and Chinese laundries have intruded upon its domain; indeed, men, by their “witty inventions,” are perpetually encroaching on “woman’s sphere,” so that the next generation will no doubt turn the cook stove out of doors, and the housekeeper, standing at the telephone, will order better cooked meals than almost any one has nowadays, sent from scientific caterers by pneumatic tubes, and the debris thereof returned to a general cleaning-up establishment; while houses will be heated, as they are now lighted and supplied with water, from general reservoirs. Women are fortunate in belonging to the less tainted half of the race. Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson says that but for this conserving fact it would deteriorate to the point of failure. A bright old lady said, after viewing a brewery, distillery and tobacco factory: “Ain’t I thankful that the women folks hain’t got all that stuff to chew and smoke and swallow down!” It behooves us to offset force of muscle by force of heart, that what our strong brothers have done to subdue the material world for us, who are not their equals in physical strength, may be offset by what we shall achieve for them in bringing in the reign of “Sweeter manners, purer laws.” For the world is slowly making the immense discovery that not what woman does, but what she is, makes home a possible creation. It is the Lord’s ark, and does not need steadying; it will survive the wreck of systems and the crash of theories, for the home is but the efflorescence of woman’s nature under the nurture of Christ’s gospel. She came into the college and elevated it, into literature and hallowed it, into the business world and ennobled it. She will come into government and purify it, into politics and cleanse that Stygian pool as the waters of Marah were cleansed; for woman will make homelike every place she enters, and she will enter every place on this round earth. Any custom, or traffic, or party, on which a woman can not look with favor is irrevocably doomed. Its welcome of her presence and her power is to be the final test of its fitness to survive. All Gospel civilization is radiant with the demonstration of this truth: “It is not good for man to be alone.”