WOMAN'S MISSION.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 1033, 27 December 1872, Page 3

WOMAN'S MISSION.

Sheridan said, "It is by wcman 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 P Was there ever man, however great his moral strong! hj, however exalted his intellectual height, whose powers could not be increased by a wife's aid. or enfeebled by the down-dragging 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 iortunate, her enthusiasm gives sweetness to his success; if he be struggling, her heroism in battling with difficulties in|fuses courage into his soul; if his j steps be dogged by the evil spirit of I failure, her cheerful patience softens i' the disheartening persecutions of the demon. When he returns troubled and fretful io his home, her tact ignores his ill-humour until ho forgets 'himself. When he is unreasonable, I eho smiles, unseen, at his grave conI tradictions, and allows him to chide I her for supposed caprice. She bears I with his failings as no one else can or i will bear them—she well knows that I endurance is her own especial gift and : not bis, and deems his peevishness jand 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 comjprehends how much the peace and : happiness of life -*• married life in I particular depends upon trifles as I 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—bthe 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 ■Heeds neither great gifts, nor an expansive mind, nor extraordinary 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 beautifier and healer : of his life. If the parasitic vine about the oak tree, to which she is bo often compared, be truly her emblem, it is because she binds together the broken boughs, and drapes with verdurous loveliness the withered branches.