men!  Certainly an intelligent American mother put her finger on the blot, so far as we are concerned, when, speaking to me many years ago, she said what struck her so in our English homes was the way in which the girls were subordinated to the boys; the boys seemed first considered, the girls in comparison were nowhere.  Doubtless our English homes are more at fault here than in America; but, as a mother’s pride in her boys is the same all over the world, may not even American homes admit of a little improvement in this respect as well?  And, if we choose to bring up our boys to look upon their mothers and sisters as more or less the devoted slaves of their selfishness, can we wonder that they should grow up to look upon all women as more or less the slaves of their needs, fleshly or otherwise?

Now, what I want all boys taught from their earliest years is, roughly speaking, that boys came into the world to take care of girls.  Whatever modification may take place in our view of the relation of the sexes, Nature’s great fact will remain, that the man is the stronger—­a difference which civilization and culture seem to strengthen rather than diminish; and from his earliest years he ought to be taught that he, therefore, is the one that has to serve.  It is the strong that have to bear the burden of the weaker, and not to prostitute that strength by using it to master the weaker into bearing their loads.  It is the man who has to give himself for the woman, not the other way on, as we have made it.  Nay, this is no theory of mine; it is a truth implanted in the very heart of every true man.  “Every true man,” as Milton says, “is born a knight,” diligently as we endeavor to stub up this royal root, constantly, as from the very nursery, we endeavor to train it out of him.  You may deny the truth and go on some theory of your own in the training of your boys, but the truth cannot deny itself.  It is there, whether you will have it or not, a root of the tree of life itself.

Now there is not a day that need pass without opportunities of training your boys in this their true knightly attitude.  You can see, as I have already said, that they learn in relation to their own sisters what in after years they have to practise towards all women alike.  To give up the comfortable easy-chair, the favorite book or toy, the warmest place by the fire, to the little sister—­this ought to become a second nature to a well-trained boy.  To carry a parcel for her, to jump up and fetch anything she wants, to give in to her because he is a boy and the stronger—­all this ought to be a matter of course.  As he grows older you can place him in little positions of responsibility to his sisters, sending them out on an expedition or to a party under his care.  In a thousand such ways you can see that your boy is not only born but grows up a knight.  I was once in a house where the master always brought up the heavy evening water-cans and morning coal-scuttles for the maids.  And if these were placed at the foot of the stairs so as to involve no running in and out of the kitchen, it might be no mean exercise for a boy’s muscles.