There are two sides to every question, and in this article I shall deal
with the woman's side. I want to present especially the wife's side of
the question to every Odd-Fellow, hoping that it will be of lasting
benefit in many ways. I know full well that only one accustomed to
deal with high and holy things, one whose glance is ever at sacred
things, one who, as it were, administers the treasures of the kingdom
of God, can fittingly touch this subject. It would be easy for me to
be a cheap wit, to rake up the old scandal of Mother Eve, to even
declaim with windy volubility that a woman betrayed the capital, that a
woman lost Mark Anthony the world and left old Troy in ashes. But far
be it from me! Rather would I assume a loftier mood; rather would I
strike a loftier note, and, with blind Homer, beg for an unwearied
tongue to chant the praise of woman. It is true Eve lost us Eden, but
in that garden of monotonous delight, had we been born there, we would
never have truly known what woman is. O, Felix Culpa! O, happy fault!
that has shown the world the mines of rich affection of woman's heart,
that else would never have been discovered. O, happy fault, that has
shown the world a wealth of woman's nature, her capability for love,
the radiance of her tenderness, her infinite pity, her unswerving
devotion, the solace of her presence in sickness and sorrow, the depth
and sweetness of her mercy.
A river of pure delight flowed through paradise, but blind Adam never
saw it, never dreamed of it until the flaming sword cut him off
forever; but he has since drank of it, and so has every man who has
ever tasted the sacramental wine of woman's true affection. The seamy
side of life has been laid bare to me. Its sorrows and its anguishes
have I often witnessed, but into that pool of Bethesida of the world's
anguish, with healing do I see ever come an angel, a pitying woman.
The influence of wife and mother is ever near me; their faces are the
most lovely; their hearts the most tender of all in this world--my
mother and my wife. And for their sake, and for the sake of all the
mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, whom I daily meet doing good, I
long and I earnestly yearn for the eloquence and grace to half express
the thoughts that rise within me of what the world owes woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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