But there is something for women to do.  Let young people prepare to excel in spheres of work, and they will be able after awhile to get larger wages.  Unskilled and incompetent labor must take what is given:  skilled and competent labor will eventually make its own standard.  Admitting that the law of supply and demand regulates these things, I contend that the demand for skilled labor is very great and the supply very small.  Start with the idea that work is honorable, and that you can do some one thing better than anybody else.  Resolve that, God helping, you will take care of yourself.  If you are after awhile called into another relation you will all the better be qualified for it by your spirit of self-reliance, or if you are called to stay as you are, you can be happy and self-supporting.

Poets are fond of talking about man as an oak and woman the vine that climbs it; but I have seen many a tree fall that not only went down itself, but took all the vines with it.  I can tell you of something stronger than an oak for an ivy to climb on, and that is the throne of the great Jehovah.  Single or affianced, that woman is strong who leans on God and does her best.  Many of you will go single-handed through life, and you will have to choose between two characters.  Young woman, I am sure you will turn your back upon the useless, giggling, irresponsible nonentity which society ignominiously acknowledges to be a woman, and ask God to make you an humble, active, earnest Christian.  What will become of that womanly disciple of the world?  She is more thoughtful of the attitude she strikes upon the carpet than how she will look in the judgment; more worried about her freckles than her sins; more interested in her apparel than in her redemption.  The dying actress whose life had been vicious said:  “The scene closes—­draw the curtain.”  Generally the tragedy comes first and the farce afterward; but in her life it was first the farce of a useless life and then the tragedy of a wretched eternity.

Compare the life and death of such a one with that of some Christian aunt that was once a blessing to your household.  I do not know that she was ever asked to give her hand in marriage.  She lived single, that, untrammeled, she might be everybody’s blessing.  Whenever the sick were to be visited or the poor to be provided with bread she went with a blessing.  She could pray or sing “Rock of Ages” for any sick pauper who asked her.  As she got older there were many days when she was a little sharp, but for the most part auntie was a sunbeam—­just the one for Christmas Eve.  She knew better than any one else how to fix things.  Her every prayer, as God heard it, was full of everybody who had trouble.  The brightest things in all the house dropped from her fingers.  She had peculiar notions, but the grandest notion she ever had was to make you happy.  She dressed well—­auntie always dressed well; but her highest adornment was that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight