less it is distributed it is useless. At a ruinous expense both to them and to us they accomplish it; but by planning our lives as I have indicated, we can assume this useful and profitable office, and thus become again what in the beginning we were created, helps, meet for men in their new circumstances, and be in reality, what now we are only in name, "Ladies,"—that is "Loaf-givers," almoners of their bounty, not only to our own families, but to all the needy, the destitute, the wretched of the whole race.
The leap is wide, and it must be taken together, but it is our best chance of uniting the grand and true old feminine functions of house-ordering, of food-preparing, and of clothes-providing, with the noble modern elements of taste and culture and freedom.
"Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own work praise her in the gates."
O, when upon the immortal warp, stamped with the simple and majestic figure of the Virtuous Woman, shall we moderns weave in with glowing thread the still more resplendent feminine ideal, that all the knowledge and advantages of this happier age should teach us?
When indeed?
"Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us."
