world there is no room for childishness, peevishness, or willfulness, and in the discipline of working life many a woman has learned self-control and a certain consideration for the rights of others she would otherwise have missed. In order to make her own way a woman needs to have a stout heart. She must not be easily overcome by difficulties nor expect that her path will be smoothed by poetic justice. She must learn to take people and things as they are instead of fretting because they are not as she would like to have them, and if she is wise she will cultivate the habit of looking on the bright side. She must realize that superficial knowledge and hasty, imperfect, slipshod work will not do, that weariness and disgust before the battle is half won will not do, that nothing but application and patient, thorough work will bring her satisfaction or success. It is to be deprecated that since it has become common for young women to become self-supporting, the greed of gain has so taken hold of some that girls are willing unnecessarily to sacrifice an education for the work that will bring them a few dollars a week pin money, leaving the school for the store, factory, or office. Parents ought to realize, if the girls do not, that for working people the only time to obtain an education is while young, and that two or three extra years spent in acquir ing knowledge will broaden the girl's outlook for life and make her a happier and wiser woman. The working girl's life is a crowded one. Many "keep house" in a small way and make most of their own clothing in addition to their daily work of from eight to ten hours. Unless the love of knowledge and the taste for good literature is gained in school there will be little time or desire after working life begins for the pursuit of that culture which has been so well defined as knowing "the best that has been said and thought in the world." With such a taste an active force, no life is barren, no matter how full of monotonous toil. The poorest are rich in the legacies of mind and heart left for mankind by the thinkers and poets of all ages. The pity is these legacies so often go unclaimed, while the toil and the care of life and the deceitfulness of poverty narrow the mental and spiritual vision until the worker fails to see that "the life is more than meat and the body than raiment.' The habit of church attendance, although kept up with difficulty and at a sacrifice, will serve to keep a door open into the intellectual and spiritual world, and thousands of working women can testify to the uplift received from their weekly glimpse of truths that at once rest and stimulate. It would be well if every worker could carry into the daily routine the inspiration of these words of Carlyle's: "The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!" NOTE.-Different phases of this subject are fully treated in the following books: 6 Women Wage-Earners, by Helen Campbell. Prisoners of Poverty, by Helen Campbell. Woman's Work in America, by Annie Nathan Meyer. The Power of Mother's Influence. *** MRS. SUSAN S. FESSENDEN, President Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of Massachusetts. ROFESSOR Drummond, in his lecture on "The Evolution of Motherhood," says, "All the machinery, all the preceding work of nature, is to the end that she may produce a mother. The work itself is one of the most stupendous processes of nature. The mother is the ultimate object of the evolution of the animal kingdom. Nature has never made anything higher." At last, from the lowest form of life, at the command and according to the law of the Author and Controller of evolution, a mother exists. It yet remains for the world to evolve a higher and still higher type of motherhood. The sweetest, purest, strongest, most unselfish relationship in life is that of mother. God intended that this should be so. To this end is the little infant laid so helpless, the most helpless of all the animal creation, into the arms of a mother, who has gone down into the depths to receive it, and who should rise to the mount of selfpurification and self-abnegation that she may promote its prosperity and happiness. That is a thrilling little story of the mother who was lost upon the mountain. When the snow fell and the fierce winds howled, and the cold penetrated, "She stripped her mantle from her breast It is, however, an act that finds its counterpart in kind, differing in degree, in the life of every true mother. The thought of self is eliminated when the interests of "my child" are involved. All the laws of nature are planned in infinite wisdom to strengthen this bond. Because there are exceptions to it, because there are selfish, loveless mothers, is no proof against the law, nor any demonstration against the wisdom of it. There exists no law without exception. Much, however, that appears to be in defiance of this law is only the present incomplete evolution of motherhood, which has as yet, by no means, reached the highest. Mothers and sisters have been greatly hampered in their growth and influence by the condition of subordination in which woman has been held. No character can reach its highest possibilities in a position of subordination. Responsibility, accountability, personality, are discounted and the individual is correspondingly weakened. Before the best influence can be established, the completest character must exist, and that can come only when this vestige of heathenism disappears in church and state. In this way only can God's purpose concerning the womanhood of the world be brought to pass. In whatever other relationship in life woman might or might not find a representative in man, in this he must utterly fail; he can never represent her motherhood. These maternal rights, duties, and obligations she delegates to none. In this, her crown of motherhood, woman stands peculiar, alone. The sweet joy, the strong tie, the unquenchable love, the untiring solicitude that swells with the first consciousness of a new life, and life of one's own life, and ends not in time nor eternity, is such that only experience can reveal, and even experience cannot understand. Awe, reverence, adoration, are emotions not too strong with which to stand in the holy of holies of motherhood. This it is that makes the various Madonnas the most universally, reverently loved of all the works of art. It appeals to every thinking, feeling being. "A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing on earth." The influence of this maternal love re-acts upon the child from the hour of conscious existence. Nature, who has permitted no two leaves to be alike, has given a still greater diversity to human souls. To meet the necessities of this infinite variety, she has given to each a mother. No child has a fair chance in life who fails to be well born and well mothered. An ideal mother is still a thing of the future. A wise appreciation of the good of the race and the influences that tend most rapidly and surely for the uplift of humanity would recognize, as the initial force, the betterment of mothers. The education of the child begins before any conscious forces have been brought to bear upon it. Through all the ages, the higher virtues have become more and more the vital moving forces in private and public affairs in proportion as the mother element has been respected and utilized. Our country to-day needs just this; it needs mothering; it needs to have the power of love for humanity transcend the love of wealth, or position. Mothers need the largest development, the utmost freedom and dignity, to enable them rightly to meet the demands of creating and educating the race. Ben Jonson ascribed all his early impressions of religion to his mother's piety. She was a woman of distinguished understanding. Once when some one was asked whether Mrs. Jonson was not vain of her son, the reply was, "She has too much good sense to be vain, but she knows her son's value." How characteristic of motherhood! "She hid all these things in her heart. The world owes much to the early influences on the heart and life of the child. God pity the child who has an ungodly, worldly, frivolous mother! Mothers have special need of the power of the invisible, mighty love of the Divine to shed a softening charm. They need that protecting, all-embracing love that does not forsake its object because of weakness or sin. It is the mother who loves, and trusts, and hopes when all the world condemns. Mother's room, mother's heart, means home to the prodigal. When all other influences fail, this will often suggest the infinite love of God, and bring back the wanderer, |