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.

Contrast the woman who is educated with the one uneducated.  See her in her home, reigning a queen, while her uneducated sister, though she may have wealth and beauty, will constantly feel the lack of that which gold cannot procure nor fortune provide.  “We are foolish, and without excuse foolish,” said Ruskin, “in speaking of the ‘superiority’ of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in similar things.  Each has what the other has not; each completes the other, and is completed by the other; they are in nothing alike; and the happiness and perfection of both depend on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give.  Their separate characters are briefly these:  The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive.  He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender.  His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for work, for conquest, whenever war is just, whenever conquest is necessary.  But the woman’s power is for love, not for battles; and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering arrangement and decision.  She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places.  Her great function is Praise; she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest.  By her office and her place, she is protected from all danger and temptation.  The man, in his rough work in the open world, must encounter all peril and trial.  To him, therefore, the failure, the offence, the inevitable error; often