It was the sun and the wind that in the fable strove for the mastery; and the strife was for the traveller’s cloak.  The quiet moon had nought to do with such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast; but as in her tranquil orbit she journeys round the world, she gently sways the tides of the ocean.  Woman’s influence resembles that exerted by the queen of night.  In the conflicts of life she has little to do; but her influence is felt from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere of it is the whole region of humanity.  Woman’s worst enemy is he who would cruelly lift her out of her sphere, and would try to reverse the laws of God and of nature in her behalf.  They deceive woman who cause her to believe that she will find independence when she abandons the position assigned her by her Creator, and reaches one against which her nature, the interests of society, and the laws of God contend.  Woman has her sphere and her work, and she is only happy when she finds pleasure in lovingly, patiently, and faithfully performing the duties and enacting the relations that belong to her as woman.  She is not the natural head of society.  Man, rough, stern, cold, and almost nerveless, is made to be the head of human society; and woman, quick, sensitive, pliant (as her name indicates), gentle, loving, is the heart of the world.  As the heart, she has power.  She rules through love, and finds the work set for her to do in the doors opening before her loving nature.  She rules through love, and becomes a blessing greater than we can ever acknowledge, because it is greater than we can measure.  Let woman take heart.  She is not in captivity.  The law of service is on her, as it is on man.  Much of her service consists in suffering; much of man’s consists in toil.  Before both there are fields of endeavor, white with beckoning harvests.  In literature, in reforms, in ministering to the wants and woes of humanity, in making home more and more like heaven, woman has an open door set before her, which no man will desire to close.  Let her enter it and work.  There is a law of companionship far deeper than that of uniformity and equality, or similarity—­the law which reconciles similitude and dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which what is wanting on the one side finds its complement on the other; for,—­

  “Heart with heart and mind with mind,
  When the main fibres are entwined,
    Through Nature’s skill,
  May even by contraries be joined
  More closely still.”

Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes as they were represented by our first parents, and such, however they may be momentarily disturbed, they will remain, as the ideal for all the generations of men and women.  Let woman repose her trust in man, and then, lifting up her heart, she may sing,—­

  “Though God’s high things are not all ours,
    ’Tis ours to look above;
  All is not ours to have and hold,
    But all is ours to love.”