“She stretcheth out her hand to the poor.”  The “classes” are poor and needy, as well as the “masses:”  read Mozley’s “University Sermon” on “Our Duty to our Equals,” and learn to see that they also need a stretched-out hand.  We may be very kind in our district; are we as kind to social bores?  We may be very energetic in school feasts; are we as careful to provide amusements of other kinds for people who, in rank or brains, are slightly our inferiors?

“She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet” (marg., double garments).  She looks after the health of other people as well as her own; she does not keep her maid sitting up night after night, or overwork her dressmaker.  She is as considerate for the flyman waiting for her on a rainy night as she would be for her father’s coachman and horses, remembering that the flyman is quite as liable to catch cold as the coachman, and has fewer facilities for curing himself.

“Her clothing is silk and purple.”  She dresses suitably, richly if occasion demand it, but never showily.  If she has to walk as a rule, she will not buy dresses that look fit only for a carriage:  she will not wear, in church, a brilliant dress that would be suitable at a flower-show.

“Her husband is known in the gates.”  There was doubtless a great difference among the husbands at the gate, and I feel sure that this one took a specially large and public-spirited view of the business there discussed.  The Virtuous Woman would not usurp his office, just because she had the power of speaking well,—­she would remember the Russian proverb, “The Master is the Head of the House, while the Mistress is its Soul,” and she would be a very high-souled mistress, and care greatly that her master should not only be a good husband and a father, but should also serve his generation as a good citizen and a true patriot.  When the public good demanded sacrifices, she would not drag him back by insisting on his duty to his family, nor would she persuade him to rob the public stores, or time, by taking little perquisites or shortening his office hours.  She would feel with De Tocqueville, who says, “A hundred times I have seen weak men show real public virtue, because they had by their sides women who supported them—­not by advice as to particulars, but by fortifying their feelings of duty, and by directing their ambition.  More frequently, I must confess, I have observed the domestic influence gradually transforming a man, naturally generous, noble, and unselfish, into a cowardly, commonplace, place-hunting, self-seeker, thinking of public business only as the means of making himself comfortable; and this simply by daily contact with a well-conducted woman, a faithful wife, an excellent mother, but from whose mind the grand notion of public duty was entirely absent.”