But if useless in her nursery while her children are young, she is even more helpless as they get older; and the family of a weak woman grows up, unassisted by counsel or direction, just as the old Adam wills and the natural bent inclines. Her girls may be loud and fast, her sons idle and dissipated, but she is powerless to correct or to influence. If her husband does not take the reins into his own hands, or if she be a widow, the young people manage matters for themselves under the perilous guidance of youthful passions and inexperience. And nine times out of ten they give her but a rough corner for her own share. They have no respect for her, and, unless more generously compassionate than young people usually are, scarcely care to conceal the contempt they cannot help feeling. What can she expect? If she was not strong enough to root out the tares while still green and tender, can she wonder at their luxuriant growth about her feet now? She, like every one else, must learn the sad meaning of retribution, and how the weakness which allowed evil to flourish unsubdued has to share in its consequences and to suffer for its sin. Unsatisfactory in her home, the weak sister does not do much better in society. She is there the embodiment of restriction. She can bear nothing that has any flavour or colour in it. Topics of broad human interest are forbidden in her presence because they are vulgar, improper, unfeminine. She takes her stand on her womanhood, and makes that womanhood to be something apart from humanity in the gross. There must be no cakes and ale for others if she be virtuous; and spades are not to be called spades when she is by to hear. She is the limit beyond which no one must go, under pain of such displeasure as the weak sister can show. And, weak as she is in many things, she can compass a certain strength of displeasure; she can condemn, persistently if not passionately.