STRENGTH OF MIND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue VIII, 24 August 1895, Page 229

STRENGTH OF MIND.

In the last issue of The Queen, Mrs Lynn Linton writes : —One evidence of strength of mind is to some people extremely difficult—almost impossible, indeed. That is, to choose one among a crowd of conflicting duties, and to follow steadily on the path selected. We are all so apt to think we might have done better than we have done, and the more conscientious the nature, most frequently the less resolute the determination —the more vascillating the will. It is right to do this, but it is also right to do that ; and the two do not agree. A mother must care for her child, a wife may stay with her Lusband. In the tropics a woman cannot do both. Which shall she choose ? She has no mother. n_> sister of her own to whom she could safely confide her treasure ; and her husband’s mother is an old tyrant and his sister a starch and prim disciplinarian, whose method of correction would be cruelty without the admixture of mercy, and whose up-bringing would mean starvation for small faults, the dark closet and stripes for misdemeanours, and a general exhibition of ‘ strong ’ management ruinous to body and soul. Here, then, is a cruix—with a weak kind of husband as certain to slop over into evil without a wife by his side to keep him steady, as a tilted cup is certain to spill its contents. Another case is that of an ill-treated wife whose love for her husband has gone while her sentiment of wifely duty remains. What shall she do ? Stay to be brutalised, to be the scorn of all honest souls because of the infamies he puts about concerning her—or shall she take the way of renunciation for her honour’s sake, and break that vow of ‘ love, honour, and obey ’ as a less worthy shibboleth than that other of self-respect ? Now one, now the other, of these two ways seems to her the right ; and until she find the strength of will which leads to a final decision she will be miserable because undecided. This if vou like is strength—this ability to pick out the right road amid a labyrinth of crossing and contrary paths—this keen sense of the best in a tangle of contradictory duties. But the cause of weakness in decision so often lies in that extreme tenderness of conscience which cannot face the possibility of doing wrong, that we must be tender and patient with the vacillation which yet we could not endure in our own lives. For is not patience also one of the attributes of strength ? When we deal with those weaker than ourselves in any quality whatsoever, are we not strong just in proportion as we can give what is wanting ? Surely ! And this kind of strength, O ye modern maids and women, is a nobler thing than playing football badly as well as indecorously, and riding bicycles in short coats and knickerbockers.