Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

G >> George Sumner Weaver >> Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women

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Every young woman should early form in her mind an ideal of a _true
Home_. It should not be the ideal of a _place_, but of the _character_
of Home. Place does not constitute Home. Many a gilded palace and sea of
luxury is not a Home. Many a flower-girt dwelling and splendid scansion
lacks all the essentials of Home. A hovel is often more a Home than a
palace. If the spirit of the congenial friendship link not the hearts of
the inmates of a dwelling it is not a Home. If love reign not there; if
charity spread not her downy mantle over all; if peace prevail not; if
contentment be not a meek and merry dweller therein; if virtue rear not
her beautiful children, and religion come not in her white robe of
gentleness to lay her hand in benediction on every head, the Home is not
complete. We are all in the habit of building for ourselves ideal homes.
But they are generally made up of outward things--a house, a garden, a
carriage, and the ornaments and appendages of luxury. And if in our
lives we do not realize our ideals, we make ourselves miserable and our
friends miserable. Half the women in our country are unhappy because
their Homes are not so luxurious as they wish.

Somebody has more ornament and style about their Homes than they, and so
they worry their souls to death about it. This is one of the most
fruitful sources of disquiet in nearly all our Homes. Our women want
more show, fashion, luxury, outward ornament than they can afford, or
than is necessary to their happiness. All around us there is a great sea
of disquiet from this one cause. We forget that Homes are not made up of
material things. It is not a fine house, rich furniture, a luxurious
table, a flowery garden, and a superb carriage that make a Home. A
world-wide distance from this is a true Home. Our ideal Homes should be
heart-homes, in which virtues live, and love-flowers bloom, and peace
offerings are daily brought to its altar. Our ideal Homes should be such
as we can and will make in our own lives. We should not expect Homes
better and happier than we are. Our Homes will be sure to be much like
us. If we are good, kind, and happy, our Homes will be likely to be. If
we are craving, selfish, discontented, our Homes will be. If all the
wealth in the world were laid at our feet and lavished on our Homes, we
should not be happier unless our hearts are better. Wealth, luxury,
ornament bring care, anxiety, and a craving for more, which render them
nearly valueless unless the heart is filled with virtue and contentment.
If I could moderate the material desires of the young women I address,
and elevate their spiritual longings in relation to their future Homes,
I should do a good service to them and their families. The grand idea of
Home is a quiet, secluded spot, where loving hearts dwell, set apart and
dedicated to _improvement_--to intellectual and moral improvement. It is
not a formal school of staid solemnity and rigid discipline, where
virtue is made a task and progress a sharp necessity, but a free and
easy exercise of all our spiritual limbs, in which obedience is a
pleasure, discipline a joy, improvement a self-wrought delight. All the
duties and labors of Home, when rightly understood, are so many means of
improvement. Even the trials of Home (for every Home must have its
trials, and severe ones, too) are so many rounds in the ladder of
spiritual progress, if we but make them so.

One idea concerning Home should be deeply impressed on our minds. Of all
places in the world, Home is the most delicate and sensitive. Its
springs of action are subtle and secret. Its chords move with a breath.
Its fires are kindled with a spark. Its flowers are bruised with the
least rudeness. The influence of our homes strikes so directly on our
hearts that they make sharp impressions. In our intercourse with the
world we are barricaded, and the arrows let fly at our hearts are warded
off; but not so with us at Home. Here our hearts wear no covering, no
armor. Every arrow strikes them; every cold wind blows full upon them;
every storm beats against them. What in the world we would pass by in
sport, in our Homes will wound us to the quick. Very little can we bear
at Home. Home is a sensitive place. If we would have it a true Home, we
must guard well our words and actions. We must be honest and kind,
constant and true, to the very extent of our capacity. All little
occasions of offense and misapprehension should be avoided. Little
things make up the web of our life at Home. Little things make us happy,
and little things make us miserable. A word, a hint, a look has power to
transport us with joy or sting us with anguish. If we would make our
Homes what they should be, we must attend faithfully to the little
things which make them so.

Our life abroad is but a reflex of what it is at Home. We make ourselves
in a great manner at Home. This is especially true of woman. The woman
who is rude, coarse, and vulgar at home, can not be expected to be
amiable, chaste, and refined in the world. Her Home habits will stick to
her. She can not shake them off. They are woven into the web of her
life. Her Home language will be first on her tongue. Her Home by-words
will come out to mortify her just when she wants most to hide them in
her heart. Her Home vulgarities will show their hideous forms to shock
her most when she wants to appear her best. Her Home coarseness will
appear most when she is in the most refined circles, and appearing there
will abash her more than elsewhere. All her Home habits will follow her.
They have become a sort of second nature to her.

Every young woman should feel that just what she is at Home she will
appear abroad. If she attempts to appear otherwise, everybody will soon
see through the attempt. We can not cheat the world long about our real
characters. The thickest and most opaque mask we can put on will soon
become transparent. This fact we should believe without a doubt.
Deception most often deceives itself. The deceiver is the most deceived.
The liar is often the only one cheated. The young woman who pretends to
what she is not, believes her pretense is not understood. Other people
laugh in their sleeves at her foolish pretension. If young women were
what they ought to be at Home, they would never have to put on a mask
when they go into company. How uncomfortable it must be to have to cover
up the Home character the moment we appear in the world! Nothing should
be said or done at Home that would make us appear in a bad light in the
world. If this one rule is constantly kept, how pleasant will be our
Homes, how proper our habits, how beautiful our lives! How easy and
graceful will become our Home manners, how elegant and appropriate our
Home language, how pure and lovely our Home characters! Home excellences
are the ones we should covet. Home morality and religion are the best.
Home love and worth only are real and lasting. Home virtue is for the
skies. A Home woman of worth is the most beautiful and lovely woman in
the world. A Home character is the one that will stand the scrutiny of
the All-Seeing Eye. If these were the last words I had to say to young
women, I would say, Be at Home what you would be abroad; what you ought
to be everywhere; what all good people would have you; what God requires
you to be.

Lecture Ten.

THE RELATIONS AND DUTIES OF YOUNG WOMEN TO YOUNG MEN.

The Primary Principles of Being--Life is full of
Solemnities--Influence of the Sexes--Influence depends on
Culture--Men Reverence Female Worth--Much Influence is directly
Evil--Woman should demand Morality--Errors of Society--The Sexes too
much Separated--Equality of Moral Standards--Female Encouragement
and Counsel--Time Trifled, worse than Lost.

I feel that we have a subject before us of solemn and weighty
importance. It relates to some of the dearest interests of our
earth-life, gathers within itself some of the holiest affections of our
hearts, and places before the bars of our consciences some of the most
serious questions of practical morality and religion. Man and woman are
a related pair. God has made them so. The relation they bear to each
other is a divine one. It takes hold of the heart of life. It spans our
whole manhood. It enters into our hopes, aims, and prospects. It holds
its scepter over our business, our amusements, our philosophy, and
religion. Its sphere is larger than we at first imagine. The relation is
deeper and broader than we have yet comprehended. It lies in the very
being of every man and every woman. There is in humanity two grand
primary and universal principles of being--the masculine and feminine.
They bear such a relation to each other that the one is essential to the
action of the other. They mutually electrify and empower each other. It
is in this mysterious relation that Infinite Wisdom has laid the springs
of animate being. If any one mystery of our existence is deeper than any
other, it is that which lies in the solemn depths of this relation. We
ought to approach it wrapt in reverential awe and wonder. We look out on
the earth in its brilliant beauty and teeming activity, and up to the
heavens in their gorgeous glory and magnificent movements, and are
oppressed with profound astonishment at what we behold. Yet all this we
can in a measure comprehend. At least the secondary causes of the
physical universe are clear to our minds. We can measure them with the
line of mathematics; we can weigh them in the balance of reason. But
when we turn in upon ourselves we meet a universe ten thousand times
more wonderful and glorious, yet wrapt in the deep mystery of spiritual
being. It is practical irreverence not to look upon our relations with
religious respect. Of all these relations, the one between man and woman
takes the most direct held of our practical life and enters most largely
into the details of our purposes and thoughts. Men and women live in and
for each other more than for any thing else. The fact stands out on the
face of human society. We must take the fact as we find it. We did not
make human nature; hence we have no right to complain of it. Our
business is to comprehend it so far as possible and seek to keep it in
the path of its design and destiny. Our morality and religion should be
adapted to our nature. They should meet the every-day wants of men.

The philosopher, the moralist, and the minister should aim at practical
utility in all their labors, and men and women should study carefully
the great book of every-day life. The relation of men and women to each
other is one of the most important lessons in that book. If we would be
wise, useful, or happy, we must understand at least the _duties_ growing
out of this relation. If we would bless mankind or please God, we must
fulfill these duties. I have but little faith in any philosophy or
religion that would shun the walks of practical life. We have too much
ethereal philosophy and spasmodic religion. Men reason profoundly about
etherealities, and go into ecstasies about glory and joy to come. This
may be all well enough, but I submit whether it would not be better to
reason how to live well the life that now is, and how to sanctify it
with the redeeming presence of the spirit of the lowly Jesus. Our chief
concern is with this life. If we make it right, no harm can come to us
in the future life. To me our present life is full of holy solemnities.
Its most interesting relations are holy, and the duties that grow out of
them are to be performed with religious sincerity and joy. To me God is
in our present life, walking with us daily and entreating us to walk
with him. I see His arrangement in the relation of man and woman. I feel
his benediction in the joy and blessed influence that arise from this
relation. I can not consider it or enjoy it in any other than a
religious sense. Nor can I conceive of any true religion in the heart of
him who practically sinks this relation to a level with sensualism or
folly. I hear almost daily from the lips of professedly religious men
and women, language and thoughts on this subject which bespeak a carnal
heart and an unsanctified mind. They treat the relation with levity.
They make it a practical joke. They look at it through carnal eyes, and
listen to its language with carnal ears. Their whole conception and
practical understanding of it is sensuous. I have but little confidence
in their religion. It is only an emotion of the heart. It has never
sanctified the conscience nor consecrated the life.

With these introductory remarks let us observe in the first place, that
the most potent influence that bears on our earth-life grows out of this
relation. This is a fact standing out boldly on the face of life. And
this influence is more powerful in refined and cultured life than in
savage and primitive existence. As individuals, nations, and races
advance in the arts, principles, and culture of civilization, the
influence of the sexes becomes more general and irresistible. So far as
a people advance morally, religiously, and spiritually, this influence
becomes more direct, constant, and powerful. The truest men and the
truest women we have are most under each other's influence. They bow
most reverently in each other's presence and entertain the highest
opinions of each other. Their feelings toward each other are most pure
and truthful. One of the most intellectual, religious, and refined women
that it has been my privilege to meet in life's sequestered vale, while
speaking in a private conversation, made this significant remark: "Next
to my God do I adore man, for he is God's best image." She was a
matronly woman about sixty years of age, who had tasted life's full cup
and been blessed by its richest and most profound experiences, and who
said of her religion: "For twenty-five years it has been my meat and my
drink." It is a joy and a blessing never to be forgotten to have known
such a woman. The best men I have ever known, considered both in
relation to their spiritual experiences and their influence in life,
have joyfully and reverently expressed their feelings of profound
respect and sacred affection for woman, confessing that, under God, she
had wrought in them a mission of redeeming love. So frequent have been
similar expressions both from men and women in the highest spiritual and
practical walks in life, and so clear and strong has been their
experience, that it can not be doubted that the influence of man and
woman upon each other is potent and penetrating in proportion to their
degree of refinement and spiritual culture. The tendency of moral
training and religious discipline are to strengthen and elevate this
influence.

Woman improves in man's view as her nature is cultivated and her soul
blessed with sanctifying influences. Man grows in woman's sight as his
mind is developed and his heart subdued. They mutually exert a higher
and deeper influence over each other by their progress in things good
and true. If I am correct in this, it presents us with a strong
inducement to develop our best powers and live our best lives, that our
mental joys may be most deep and holy and our lives most pure and happy.
And here I may present the subject directly to young women. If they
would secure the deepest respect and holiest friendship of the young men
with whom they associate, they must themselves be refined, elevated, and
noble in their characters and lives. If they would exert their best
influence upon young men, and benefit them most by their association
with them, they must be truthful and high of soul.

All young men bow before female worth. Their evil thoughts forsake them;
their wicked habits flee away from them for the time being. Let a
depraved man _feel_ that he stands in the presence of pure, cultivated
womanhood, around which is wrapped the mantle of Jesus, and through
which breathes the spirit of his holy religion, and he will be ashamed
of himself, and long to be sufficiently pure and elevated to commune in
sacred friendship with her spirit. Oh, if young women could only realize
the moral powers which they could gather up within themselves, and wield
over their male associates in all the walks of life, by a proper
development of their minds and hearts, and a truthful submission to the
principles of moral right, how different would they be, and how changed
would be the face of young society! That young women do wield a mighty
influence over young men we admit; but it is not so great nor so good as
it should be. Much of it is directly evil. It is trifling, deceitful,
volatile, changeable, and not unfrequently carnal. It is often low,
worldly, irreverent, base. I am sorry to say it, but young women rebuke
but very little the evil doings of their male associates. They chide not
the waywardness of young men as they ought. They smile upon them in
their villainy. They court the society of young men they have every
reason to believe are corrupt. They will meet without a shudder or
disapproving frown, in the ball-room and the private circle, men whom
they know would glory in being the instrument of the moral ruin of any
woman. Young women who claim to be good, and who would not for a fortune
be guilty of a moral impropriety, often wreathe the villain's way in
smiles.

Young men in "high life" can smoke and chew, drink and swear, in woman's
presence, and she turns not away in disgust nor rebukes them with a cut
of their acquaintance. There are a large class of young women who only
ask that the young men shall behave tolerably well in their presence,
asking not what they do behind their backs. They may carouse, blaspheme,
get drunk, and do what wickedness they please among themselves; if they
only keep straight in the ladies' presence, it is all that is asked. Now
there is by far too much of this low state of morality among young
women. I say among young women, because if their moral feelings were
what they should be, they would not associate with such young men. They
would not enroll them on their list of friends. They would not know
their names; would not recognize them when they met. I have no
confidence in the moral sense of young women who will acknowledge such
associates. The very first duty which women owe to young men is to
demand of them a higher standard of morality. I say _demand_. They
should peremptorily demand it. Young women should erect the standard for
young men which young men have erected for them. Young men who have any
respect for themselves will not associate with women that chew, and
smoke, and swear, and get drunk--those whose morals are low and base.
They spurn such associates from them. Let young women do the same. Let
them say to the young men, "You shall not do the things you prohibit us
from doing; you shall not, behind our backs, do things you would despise
us for doing; you shall not bring into our society characters from which
you know every honest and pure woman ought to recoil as she would from a
basilisk; you shall not breathe into our faces the pestiferous breath of
the drunkard, nor burden our ears with the hateful sound of the
blasphemer; you must be what you would have us, or you must be out of
our society." Let young women talk thus and act thus, and true young men
will respect them all the more. No woman is respected more for smiling
on the villain. He himself despises her for it. The truth is, our
society is corrupt on this subject. _Men_ are permitted to do with
impunity what would blast a woman's reputation for life. A man may be
coarse, vulgar, and wicked, and society admits him to all its
privileges, and good women will meet him on terms of equality. Society
can never be what it should be till the same standard of morality and
propriety is established for men and women. It is woman's duty to
establish such a standard--a duty she owes to man. She does man an act
of injustice when she accepts him as an associate at the sacrifice of
her moral dignity. It is her duty to rebuke his evil course. It is
kindness to him to do it.

Young women can not do a bad man a greater evil than to associate with
him on terms of moral equality. All young women should show by their
words and actions that they have a deep and holy respect for moral
worth; that they will demand it in their associates. Such a course would
inspire a greater respect for them in the minds of young men, and give a
higher tone to the moral feelings of our youth.

It is a well-settled conviction of my mind that society separates too
much its male and female youth. In our schools our boys and girls are
separated. Almost the entire course of education is pursued in sexual
isolation. The girls are taught that it is not pretty to be with the
boys, and the boys that is not manly to be with the girls; and yet both
are anxious for each other's society. In this unnatural and unhappy
state, their imaginations are left to fill up the void made by the
separation. Imagination seldom does such work well. I believe it is the
grand corrupter of youth. The brother and sister should grow up together
in the same family, be educated at the same school, engage in the same
sports, and, so far as practical, in the same labors. Their joys and
sorrows, tastes and aims, should be mutual so far as possible. The same
moral lessons, the same moral obligations and duties should bear upon
them. The moral standard for the girl should be the moral standard for
the boy, and he should be made to feel that the moment he falls below it
he is unworthy, and must not expect her confidence and society. It is a
sad error that the youth of our towns and country are separated in so
many of the most important duties of life. They are permitted to come
together only for sport and nonsense. Their study and work are separate.
Hence the good influence which they ought to have upon each other is in
a great measure lost. They are unacquainted with each other. They know
not each other's natures. They have but little interest in each other's
business and duties. They meet only to cajole and deceive each other.
They wear masks in each other's presence. For this state of things no
one in particular is to blame, but every one in general. It is the fault
of society. Now it seems to me to be a duty of every young woman to seek
to correct this state of things, by acquainting herself as far as
possible with the interests and business of young men that she may seek
to benefit them by her approval of what is right and condemnation of
what is wrong.

If woman was more intimately acquainted with the life, duty, hopes, and
aims of man, with his business, his education, his sharp encounters, his
trials and temptations, she could be of much more service to him
intellectually, morally, and socially. I do not believe in the present
isolation of woman from man's business, ambition, and hope. Woman might
be a perpetual inspiration to man to act nobly his part in the theater
of life if she knew that part and was more deeply interested in it. And
here is just where young women can be of great service to young men. In
nearly all young men there is more or less of noble ambition, of
praiseworthy aim for an active and useful life. Some wish to fill posts
of honor and trust in their country's service; some would win respect
and honor in some of the learned professions; some would seek esteem and
competency in the schools of art; some would lay the foundations of a
noble life in mechanism; some in agriculture; some in commerce. The
avocations are many, but the spirit, the aim, the ambition is one. In
these avocations young men expect to make their fortunes, win their
fame, work out their good, and do their life-work. If young women had
their hearts in these things, saw the true end of life, and would enter
into the young man's plans and hopes, they might cheer and animate,
encourage and empower, thousands of young men who otherwise will make
grand failures of life. How little encouragement, how little counsel and
cheer do young men now get from their young female associates! What
young woman enters heartily into the best aims and highest hopes of the
young man with whom she associates?

What young woman watches with anxious and benevolent solicitude the
young men about her, in relation to their success and progress in the
vocations and pursuits to which their lives are wedded, and from which
their fortunes, characters, and spiritual good are in no small degree to
be made? Our young women are too childish and trifling in their
thoughts and intercourse with young men. They seek to dissipate rather
than benefit them; or, if they do not seek it, their intercourse tends
to dissipation. It should not be so. All of woman's influence should
tend to elevate man. He is bad enough, do all she can for him. The hours
she spends with him should be for his inspiration; to make him more
active in the pursuit of whatever is noble in life or good in spirit.

Every hour trifled away with young men is an hour worse than lost. It
injures both parties. Woman exerts a great influence over man. She
should see to it that that influence is good. She should encourage him
in all his intellectual pursuits, throw the whole weight of her
influence upon his moral nature, resolutely demand a good life at his
hands, and electrify his laudable purposes with the strength of her
holiest prayer. She may be to him an angel of redeeming mercy. She may
magnetize his soul with strength. She may gird him with the armor of
religion and make him a soldier of the Cross, braver than Caesar and
mightier than Napoleon. But to do it she must herself be strong in the
right. She must be panoplied in the armor of spiritual warfare. She must
be a true woman, girded and crowned with the royalty of noble womanhood.
Being this, she must ask her brother to wear the royal badge of
high-toned manhood. Let young women learn how men are made; how, by
industry, labor, prudence, perseverance in the common vocations of life,
and by a strict adherence to rectitude and goodness they grow to be
useful and great, and then they may become ministers of good to the
rising manhood of our country.

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