But even here is there not place for a hopeful thought, that if women have made so little comparative use of their well-nigh irresistible influence in setting a high standard and shaping men to a diviner and less animal type, it has been, as I have already said, chiefly owing to ignorance?  The whole of one of the darkest sides of life has been sedulously kept from us.  Educated mothers, till lately, have been profoundly ignorant of the moral evils of schools, and have never dreamt that that young, frank, fresh-faced lad of theirs had any temptations of the kind.  Their moral influence, which the poet blames them so strongly for misusing, has been largely, at least with good women, not so much a misused as an undirected force, and we know not, therefore, what that force may accomplish when a larger and truer knowledge enables it to be persistently directed to a conscious aim.  This fact, at least, has been stamped into my inmost being, that men will rise to any moral standard which women choose to set them.

I ask, therefore, cannot we get our girls to help us here more than we do, without being crippled by the fear of initiating them too much in the evil of the world or destroying that unconscious virginal purity which is, even as things are, so strong and pathetic an influence for good over young men?

In the addresses that I have given to large numbers of educated girls, I used often to begin by quoting a passage from the Jewish Prayer-Book.  In a general thanksgiving for the mercies of life, the men say:  “We thank Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast not made us a woman.”  One a little wonders how the poor women could join in this thanksgiving.  But in one corner of the page there is a little rubric in very small print which directs, “Here shall the women say:  ’We thank Thee, O Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast made us according unto Thy will!’” And, looking upon that bed of spring flowers before me, I used to tell them that it made me feel what a fair and gracious and beautiful thing it was to be made according unto God’s will, to be made a woman.

Now, in the first place, could we not get them to realize this great truth a little more than they do, and not in their heart of hearts to wish that they were men?  Could we not get them to realize a little more the divine possibilities of their womanhood, and instead of making it their ambition to figure as a weaker form of man, and become lawyers, stockbrokers, and other queer things the modern woman is striving after, to make it their ambition to become stronger and truer women?

But how is this to be done?  I remember on one occasion, when I was going in the evening to address a mass meeting of working-class girls, a stout, middle-aged lady bustling up to me in a morning conference we were holding, and exclaiming:  “And what are you going to say to them?  What can you say to them, except to tell them to take care of themselves and keep the men at arm’s length?”