or exacting demands of those who preside in the home.  None but a man of low instinct, of base passion, of weak character, will turn away from and neglect a home where order reigns, where a cheerful smile, well-prepared food, neatly arranged table await him; where a word of cheer greets him, and where patient forbearance is exercised, even with his irregularities and faults.  It is the part of woman to win; and her winning arts should not be laid aside when she grasps what she has considered a prize.  She should seek in every way to win, beyond the possibility of loss, the abiding love, the unwavering confidence, the undoubting respect of her husband.  If woman would be man’s equal, she must challenge the equality by proving herself mistress of those arts that minister the highest comfort to his physical nature, as well as to his affections, that further his interests as well as his happiness.”

Alas! how many fail here because they know not how to make a home pleasant.  Such are the slaves of servants and the creatures of circumstances.  In some cases the fault is man’s, in others it is woman’s.  Perhaps in all cases both are somewhat at fault; yet the responsibility rests on woman to make home a delight.  When she fails she must take the consequences.  Failure with her is often a mistake.  She knows no better.  Ignorance, in some, is wilful, but in more it is educational.  Their mothers, through ill-judged kindness, mistaken notions of life, or careless neglect, suffered them to grow up without the necessary practical training; or else they failed before them; and inefficiency and slatternliness, bad cooking, and worse manners, are the patrimony bequeathed in perpetuity to the daughters.  Happy is the man who has a wife capable of getting a better meal than the hired help, and whose smile is the light of his dwelling!  Sometimes a girl knows how to win, but cares not to keep.  She gives place in her heart, and a welcome in her home, to others more readily than to the one she has given her plighted troth.  This is criminal.  A woman who does it is a suicide.  She is bent on ruin, and will find the pit ere long.

Consider her wiles of speech.  Mystery here brings ruin to man as it brought ruin to woman.  Young ladies of culture and of refinement are not ashamed to employ the language of the Parisian to lead astray the companion of her life.  God curse the language and the forms of speech whose words drop with the very gall of death, which revel in elegant dress as near the edge of indecency as is possible without treading over the boundary!  Her wiles of speech are bad, but her wiles of love are the most perilous of all.  Man needs love.  He is fond of it.  It is his joy, come from whence it may.  Love is the mind’s light and heat.  A mind of the greatest stature, without love, is like a huge pyramid of Egypt—­chill and cheerless in all its dark halls and passages.  A mind with love, is as a king’s palace lighted for a royal festival.  Shame that the sweetest of all the mind’s attributes should be suborned to sin.  Think of it! each wile, rightly used, is a power given to woman to make her man’s helpmeet, and wrongly used will make her man’s destroyer.