Here is the white and plastic tablet of the new-born soul. Let woman fear and tremble to write on that, for the writing shall confront her forever. Like the Roman Pilate, _what she has written, she has written_. Here are the purblind human instincts to direct and culture; the vagrant, unbridled hosts of the spontaneous emotions to be tutored and restrained; the affections and the tastes to be trained toward the true, the beautiful, and the good; the warring passions to be curbed and disciplined; in short, the whole glorious domain of the heart and soul, the moral and spiritual nature, is to be surveyed, studied, swayed by that potential agency which woman possesses in a very eminent degree--personal influence. By this agency, informed and vitalized by love, she becomes the great educator in the great school of life, in the family, in society, in the world. Women do not sufficiently appreciate the importance of their work as the architects of character. _Character!_ That, after all, is the man, the enduring individual, the real _I_, to whom the Creator has said, _Live forever_! Character is simply what education and habit make of a person, starting from the foundation of his inherited organic idiosyncrasies. It is a result--the work of time and countless shapings and impressings. It is not what a man thinks of himself, nor what others think of him, but _what he really is in the sight of God, his Maker_. This is what shall come out, at last, from the obscurations and uncertainties of this lower atmosphere into the clear, truthful light of eternity; shall cast off the devices, the flimsy pretences, the temporary shows, the convenient disguises, of this mortal life of mixed substance and shadow, and stand a bare, naked, unclothed fact of being before itself, the universe, and God. Alas! what multitudes of real dwarfs go out every day, 'unhouseled,' into that searching light of eternity. To be the builder of a fair and comely character; to chisel out a work that shall please the eye of God Himself, in whose estimation Beauty, being His own attribute, is a most holy thing; to see that work of beauty take its place in the well-filled gallery of eternity, and to know that it is your own immortal monument--is this not scope enough, honor enough, praise and glory enough? If women would but rise to the height of their real mission, and faithfully and earnestly assume the rights and fulfil the duties which God has specially devolved upon them, they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right, society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or the feasibility of granting them.