"Thanks, to the human heart, by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears." We have shown how in all the ages since the landing, woman has proved her title to the possession of the manly virtues. We have shown her as a heroine, battling with the hostile powers of man and nature, and yet, even in those cases, if we were to analyze the motives which prompted her heroic acts, we should find them to spring at last from the source of power whereof we are speaking. It is out of her abounding and forceful emotional nature that she becomes a heroine. It is to relieve, to succor, or to save her dear ones, that she is brave, strong, enduring, patient, and devoted. Frontier life has called, upon her for the exercise of these qualities, and she has nobly responded to the call. She fought; she toiled; she was undaunted by the apprehension of dangers and difficulties as well as intrepid in facing them. She bore without complaint the privations and hardships incident to such a life, and taxed every resource of body and mind in efforts to secure for her successors a home which neither peril nor trial should assail. But this did not embrace the entire circle of her acts and her influence. To soothe, to comfort, to sustain in the trying time, to throw over the darkest hour the brightness of her sunny presence and sweet voice--by these influences she did more to establish and confirm, that civilization which our race has been carrying westward, than by even those exhibitions of manly heroism of which we have spoken. Nine generations of men and women, through a period which a few years more will make three centuries, have been engaged in extending the frontier line, or have lived surrounded by circumstances similar to those which environ the remote border. The aggregate number of these men and women cannot be any more than estimated. Doubtless it will amount to many millions. A million helpmeets and comforters in a million homes! Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters--all supporting and buoying up the well-nigh broken spirits of the "stronger sex," and, by simple words, encouraging and stimulating to repair their desperate fortunes. Who can calculate the sum total of such an influence as this? Among the myriad instances of the solacing and soul-inspiring power of a woman's voice in hours of darkness on the lonely border, we select a few for the purpose of showing her in this her appropriate domain.