with realities.  They ought to know what is fact and what is fol-de-rol.  They ought to distinguish between the really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty.  If men do not, it is women’s duty to help them.  I think, if women would only not be quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great deal more womanly than they are.  To be brave, and single-minded, and discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and decisive, that is pure womanly.  To be womanish is not to be womanly.  To be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not womanly.  And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite so patient.  They often exhibit a degree of long-suffering entirely unwarrantable.  There is no use in suffering, unless you cannot help it; and a good, stout, resolute protest would often be a great deal more wise, and Christian, and beneficial on all sides, than so much patient endurance.  A little spirit and “spunk” would go a great way towards setting the world right.  It is not necessary to be a termagant.  The firmest will and the stoutest heart may be combined with the gentlest delicacy.  Tameness is not the stuff that the finest women are made of.  Nobody can be more kind, considerate, or sympathizing towards weakness or weariness than men, if they only know it exists; and it is a wrong to them to go on bolstering them up in their bungling opinions, when a few sensible ideas, wisely administered, would do so much to enlighten them, and reveal the path which needs only to be revealed to secure their unhesitating entrance upon it.  It is absurd to suppose that unvarying acquiescence is necessary to secure and retain their esteem, and that a frank avowal of differing opinions, even if they were wrong, would work its forfeiture.  A respect held on so frail a tenure were little worth.  But it is not so.  I believe that manhood and womanhood are too truly harmonious to need iron bands, too truly noble to require the props of falsehood.  Truth, simple and sincere, without partiality and without hypocrisy, is the best food for both.  If any are to be found on either side too weak to administer or digest it, the remedy is not to mix it with folly or falsehood, for they are poisons, but to strengthen the organisms with wholesome tonics,—­not undiluted, perhaps, but certainly unadulterated.

O Edmund Sparkler, you builded better than you knew, when you reared eulogiums upon the woman with no nonsense about her!

MY SHIP.

  Mist on the shore, and dark on the sand,
    The chilly gulls swept over my head,
  When a stately ship drew near the land,—­
    Onward in silent grace she sped.

  Lonely, I threw but a coward’s glance
    Upon the brave ship tall and free,
  Joyfully dancing her mystic dance,
    As if skies were blue and smooth the sea.

  I breathed the forgotten odors of Spain,
    Remembered my castles so far removed,
  For they brought the distant faith again
    That one who loves shall be beloved.