The True Woman: A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. BallotFulton, Justin D. (Justin Dewey)
Religion
The True Woman: A Series of Discourses, to Which Is Added Woman vs. Ballot
Fulton, Justin D. (Justin Dewey)
Husband and wife; Women -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Women -- Suffrage
The cultured sewing-girl is quite likely to become the wife of the
future millionnaire; and the lady reared in the midst of every luxury,
and endowed with a fortune, amid the reverses of fortune may be
compelled to draw upon her own resources of labor, and of love, and
culture, to stay up the hands and encourage the heart of the man more
than ever dependent upon her for happiness and hope.
Such a woman Irving must have painted when he wrote, "I have often had
occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most
overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the
spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all
the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and devotion
to their character, that at times it approaches to sublimity."
Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female,
who had been all weakness, and dependence, and alive to every trivial
roughness, while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly
rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her
husband under misfortunes, and abiding, with unshrinking firmness, the
bitterest blasts of adversity.
As the vine, which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak,
and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the lordly plant is
rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with caressing tendrils,
and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordained by
Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man
in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with
sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his
nature, tenderly supporting the head and binding up the broken heart.
To fill this feature of the wife, education is essential in household
affairs, quite as much as education in books, in music, and the ways
of fashion is essential to the young wife whose husband has suddenly
become rich, and has given up his chambers and taken an elegant house
in some fashionable street.
It is as bad to fall from the heights of opulence, and know not how
to sweep a room, make a bed, or cook a meal, as it is to rise to an
exalted position, and know not how to welcome company or preside at a
feast.
The women in America who suddenly become elevated in rank, and buy
pictures by the yard and books by the cord, are quite as abundant as
are those who lose fortune and rank, and are compelled to seek menial
employments.
The happiness secured by the proper employment of time, and by the
cultivation of the mind, furnishes a high incentive to exertion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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