Hitherto I have dealt exclusively with the moral training of boys and young men, but I am aware that I have left out one of the great shaping influences of a boy’s life, which certainly comes next to the mother’s where it exists—­the influence of sisters.  The childish hand that he clasps in his is the hand that unconsciously moulds him to higher ends or the reverse.  For if the man is the director, the ruler, and defender, “the builder of the house” as he is called in the grand old word husband,[31] the woman is the shaping and moulding influence of life; and if God has placed her in the power of the man, both through the weakness of her frame and the strength of her affections, on the other hand He has given into her hands the keys of his being, and according as he fulfils or abuses his trust towards her, she opens or closes the door of higher life to him.[32]

I often wonder whether we women sufficiently realize this truth for ourselves or our girls.  Walter Bagehot used to say in his blind, masculine way, “It’s a horrid scrape to be a woman,”—­a sentiment which, I fear, will find some echo in the hearts of a good many women themselves.  But is it so?  If to the man chiefly belongs power in all its forms, does not the woman wield as her portion that far more potent but wholly silent, and often unnoticed thing, influence?  Not the storm, or the earthquake, or the strong wind, but the still, small voice:  the benediction of dews and gentle rains, the mute beatitudes of still waters flowing through sun-parched lands and transforming them into “fruitful fields that the Lord hath blest”; the silent but irresistible influence of the sunlight, which in the baby palm of a little leaf becomes a golden key to unlock the secret treasures of the air and build up great oaks out of its invisible elements; the still, small voice of the moral sense, so still, so small, so powerless to enforce its dictates, but before which all the forces of the man do bow and obey, choosing death rather than disobedience—­are not all these silent influences emblems of the supreme, shaping, moulding influence that is given to the woman as the “mother of all living,” coming without observation, but making far more strongly than any external power for the kingdom of love and light?  Truly we have a goodly heritage if only we had eyes to see it.  Alas! that we should have made so little comparative use of it in these great moral questions.  Alas! that we should have to acknowledge the truth and justice of the poet’s words: 

    Ah, wasteful woman! she who may
    On her sweet self set her own price,
    Knowing he cannot choose but pay—­
    How has she cheapen’d Paradise,
    How given for nought her priceless gift,
    How spoiled the bread and spilt the wine,
    Which, spent with due respective thrift,
    Had made brutes men, and men divine!"[33]