WOMEN IN PUBLIC LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6362, 17 December 1898, Page 3

WOMEN IN PUBLIC LIFE.

•■. '(Young Woman.). . :'.'_.' ..' \. Precisely those qualities.- winch make a woman a notable house*keeper, a good ocoaomist, a. successful factor in society*. a useful church member, will add to andjncrea.se lifer usefulness 'when .she answers a summons which bids her enter a more conspicuous field. In proportion as she continues gentle, self-sacrificing, pure and true, as she cultivates the finer graces and the social gifts which have made her the queen in woman's kingdom, she will dignify and ennoble her new role. She must be the Christian woman, combining Mary's devotedn-ss-s with Martha's practical energy"', ' if she would enter public life to any purpose. Forgetting herself in the good at which she aims, the simple straightforward woman will do all she can, and then gladly say good-bye to the public nnd kneel down to fan the fire on the home hearth. Nor must we forget that there are many communities in which, for one cause or another, the educated women outnumber the educated men; There are places from which tho young men liavc apparently departed. But- the girls remain. They are of all ages, from -the lovely young thing with the sea*hell pink in her cheeks, to the fadled out wide-awake and " intelligent spinsteir, with opinions on many subjects and wide reading to back them They have been at school and at college, and have received an intellectual training, which is a. manifest endowment for them iii the public life to which circumstances seem to call them. Who shan say that a woman, thoroughly equipped for a vocation, has a. right to turn* from it simply because of. her sex? John being unavoidably absent, is not the door open to Jane, who is here to answer to her name?