WOMAN’S MISSION.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 36, 19 March 1873, Page 3

WOMAN’S MISSION.

Sheridan said, “It is by woman that nature writes upon the hearts of man ;” and what hand can trace such glorious inscriptions upon that book, when it is sacredly hers, as a wife’s ? Was there ever man, however great his moral strength, r however exalted m* intellectual height, whose powers could not be increased by a wife’s aid, or enfeebled by the downdragging weight? of her unsympathetic opposition ? The man to whom she is united (when that union is not a mere formal mockery) draws inspirations from the magnetic breath of her appreciative praise. If he be fortunate, her enthusiasm gives sweetness to his success; if he be struggling, her heroism in battling with difficulties infuses courage into his soul; if his steps be dogged by the evil spirit of failure, her cheerfol patience softens the disheartening- persecutions of the demon. When he returns troubled and fretful to his home, her tact ignores his ill-humour until he forgets himself. When he is unreasonable, she smiles, unseen, at his grave contradictions, and allows him to chide her for supposed caprice. She bears with his failings as no one else can or will bear them—she well knows that endurance is her own especial gift and not his, and deems his peevishness and impatience, when ho is suffering, a matter of course, though double the amount of pain would not extract from her a murmur or a groan. She comprehends how much the peace and hapi uness of life—married life in particular—•depends upbn trifles as light as air, and strives to guard him against petty domestic vexations less endurable to some temperaments than actual afflictions. She never forgets that the absence from its proper place of the tiny but all-important button —the mislaying of the indispensable closet keys —the necessity of waiting for an unpunctual meal, may imperil a man’s affection, or unfit, him for his most important, avocations—particularly if they are of an intellectual or artistic character. Let the wife only understand and have faith in her true position—that of woman ‘the helper’—and she needs neither great gifts, nor an expansive mind, nor extraordniary beauty, to be always charming to her husband, and, while she walks by his side, to “ Fill all the stops of life with music.” In being literally his ‘ help-meet ’ she becomes the bcadtifier and healer of his life. If the parasitic vine about the oak tree, to which she is so often compared, be truly her emblem, it is because she binds together the broken boughs, and drapes with verdurous loveliness the withered branches.” . . J