If you wish to soften and to purify the man, you
must first soften and purify the woman, or at least encourage her not to
lose what womanliness she has left, amid sights, and sounds, and habits
which tend continually to destroy her womanhood. You must encourage her,
I say, to remember always that she is a woman still, and let her teach--
as none can teach like her--true manfulness to her husband and her sons.
And how can you best do that? Not by giving her shillings, not by
preaching at her, not by scolding her: but by behaving to her as what
she is--a woman and a sister--and cheering her heavy heart by simple
human kindliness. What she wants amid all her poverty and toil, her
child-bearing and child-rearing, what she wants, I say, to keep her brave
and strong, is to know by actual sight and speech that she is still not
an outcast; not alone; that she is still a member of the human family,
that her fellow-woman has not forgotten her; and that, therefore, it may
be, He that was born of woman has not forgotten her either. That she
has, after all, a God in heaven, who can be touched with the feeling of
her infirmities, and can help her and those she loves, to struggle
through all their temptations, seeing that He too was tempted in all
things like them, yet without sin.
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