THE WESTERN WILDS,

during the early period of their settlement by Americans, have furnished us with accurate views of society without women.  And what has that society been?  More a den of wild beasts than a congregation of the most reasoning of God’s creatures!  There we find men living in constant suspicion of their comrades, in constant danger of hazarding their lives for some sentimental canon of personal vanity that, if they were boys in civilized society, would be flogged out of their moral code.

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF HUMAN SICKNESS

is a continuous outcry of the goodness of woman.  Wherever the red hand of war has risen to smite, there the white hand of woman has hastened to soothe.  After the roar of the conflagration and amidst the ruins piled up by the earthquake ever has that sweet minister sought out the hungry and succored the suffering.

CRITICISM OUT OF PLACE.

One does not feel that he can do any good by criticising woman.  We love fruit that is perfect.  We do not describe, and we would have little thanks for a description of, those specimens of cherries, strawberries, or grapes which fail to realize our anticipations of a delightful product of the orchard, the garden, or the vineyard.  But I have perhaps, by showing the respect in which men of intellect and honor hold a good woman, given needed encouragement to patient hearts, and testified my own humble regard for womanhood.

FATHER.

     His hair just grizzled,
     As in a green old age.—­Dryden.

The word papa, I believe, goes back, just as it is, through all the languages, to the Sanscrit, and even beyond to the unknown Aryan, the stock of our civilized tongues.  The Pope is papa, kind father, in Italian.  How his name ever came to be twisted into the ugly sound we hear in English is a problem, for the difference on the feelings between the sounds of Pope, and papa, kind father, cannot well be exaggerated.  The kind father of a good man occupies an enviable place in that man’s thoughts.  It is no passing admiration; that father is no hero of to-day no study of to-morrow, no dim recollection when the future shall have come—­but an active exemplar, an honored memory, a potent spur and stay combined—­a spur to urge to all a man should do; a stay to curb unwisdom’s flying feet.  That father has toiled in weariness that his son might follow an easier path of life.  Perhaps you now tread that path.  How carefully should your steps be taken; how earnestly you should climb to reach the round which meets your self-denying parent’s gaze!  With him there have come few paroxysms of delight in his labor.  He has not been endowed with that mysterious joy your mother has felt in all your existence.  He has delighted in you because