The most magnificent scenery is tame, unless you can point out its beauties to the one you love.  The picture gallery is worthless, unless some other lip can press the goblet of your pleasure, and sip nectar from the flower of beauty which blossoms in your thought or imagination.  It is not good for man to be alone, even in Eden.  Eden is not Eden without its Eve.  Before Eve came, Eden was the pastureland of beasts; after it, the place took on home-like properties, bowers of love were formed, and the place became the house of God, and the gate of heaven.

The characteristics of woman as a helpmeet deserve our notice.

1. Consider this word “Woman.” Woman was the name given to our mother because she was taken out of man.  The word itself means pliant.  In this definition we discover the first characteristic of a womanly nature.  She is pliant.  She adjusts herself to circumstances.  She is adapted to meet man’s wants, because she finds it in her nature to adapt herself to meet them.

It is gentlemanly to avow an opinion.  We feel that it is womanly to waive one.  We never think less of a woman for not forcing her opinions upon a company.  We do not desire her to be without opinions, nor is it expected that she will desist from expressing an opinion, but if one must yield, it is womanly in woman to do so.

Indeed, oftentimes a woman of strong mental calibre, whose opinions are derived from thought and study, has built her husband up by permitting his expression to stand even though her own judgment might differ from him.  If she be a true wife or sister, she will seek, in retirement, to correct an opinion which could not be avowed in public without weakening a husband’s or a brother’s influence.  A woman that builds up another is herself a power and a praise.

The word pliant does not demand an absence of quality.  The Damascus blade is pliant; it can be bent but it is not easily broken, while its edge is the keenest and its strength is a marvel.  So woman is not necessarily weak because she is pliant.  She may be the very reverse, and yet be pliant.  Oftentimes her power of control is the more potent because it is unseen and unostentatious.  An opinion held, to be uttered in the moment of cool and calm reflection, may be more telling than if spoken while the storm of debate was raging.  The still, small voice came after the lightning and the thunder and the earthquake, and God spake in it with power and effect.  It is the quiet utterance in the home which is of marvellous power in the world.  It is womanly to adorn rather than to plan.

She fits herself for companionship rather than for leadership.  By her tact and by her very nature she is enabled to harmonize antagonistic elements, and promote concord, if she cannot secure union.  Like the lily living in the water, she feeds on her native element, love.  The lily, though it floats on the wave, opens wider its leaves to the rain and dew.  So woman, though living on love, finds pleasure and rapture in fresh manifestations of love day by day.  It is her nature to love.  It is her life to be beloved.