Stray Thoughts for Girls | Page 5

possibly keep our minds fresh and sweet, and wholesome and
strong,--and hence, strengthening for others. Feeling is the only part of
a woman's nature which will develop of itself:--her mind will not grow
unless definitely cultivated, and no more will her conscience, but if she
leave the field fallow, weeds of foolish feelings and fancies spring up
on all sides. This is why it is your duty, when you leave, not to allow
yourself to be idle: not only because God expects you to bring your
sheaves with you at the Last Day, but because your field cannot stand
empty--if good grain is not there, weeds will be. And manual
work--gardening or housework--gives more fresh air to the mind than
anything else. If you ever, as Punch expresses it, "find your doll stuffed
with sawdust," if life seems a disappointment, and you are a prey to
foolish fancies, and have lost your spring, then try being really tired out
in body by useful work, and see if you do not find it an effectual tonic.
Some say that these "mental measles" are a phase which the modern
girl must inevitably pass through: perhaps so, but I should be
disappointed if you went through them,--at all events, if you did so in
the hopelessly idiotic way that many do! I should be disappointed if, in
the future, you came and said, "I am in the dark, and Life is all a
tangle!" I do feel you ought to have learnt that "the light of Duty shines
on every day for all." "We always have as much light as we need,
though often not as much as we would like," and if you honestly want
to do your next duty, you will have light enough to do it by. Come to

me, by all means, if you like, and say, "I feel idle and good-for-nothing,
and don't particularly want to see my Duty!" but do not moan about
Life being all perplexity! It is always nobler to do your duty than to
leave it undone: make this principle your sheet-anchor, and spiritual
feelings and light will come some day, if God sees fit. It does not
always do to apply direct remedies to these "measles:" if your mind is
out of gear, leave it alone, and attack it through the body by industry.
And industry at home is best; here was the true strength of the Virtuous
Woman. The strength of her modern descendant lies abroad: she is
strong and admirable, she does splendid work, but there is always a
tinge of excitement to help one through outside work. Things done
among father and mother, brothers and sisters, are either very peaceful
or very flat, according as your feelings are either wholesome or
unwholesome--there is none of the pleasurable excitement, generally
more or less feverish, of working with friends we love and admire; it is
the difference between milk and wine. I do not think wine wrong, but I
think it is much better to cultivate a taste for milk; you must watch
yourselves, and not get to feel home things dull. Some are so strong in
home, so wrapped up in their own family, that outsiders feel de trop,
which of course is a fault on the other side. If we have happy homes, it
is a trust for the use of others; we can give a home feeling to those who
are less fortunate as they pass by us, like the swallow flying through the
lighted hall. Lonely people may gain a sense of home from this
large-heartedness in the happy, a feeling of rest and repose, which is
the very essence of the atmosphere I should like my Virtuous Woman
to shed around her; she must "do good by effluvia;" in her home, "roof
and fire are types only of a nobler light and shade--shade as of the rock
in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea. And
wherever a true wife comes this home is always round her. The stars
only may be over her head, the glowworm in the night-cold grass may
be the only fire at her foot: yet home is wherever she is; and for a noble
woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar or
painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far for those who else
were homeless."
Let us now consider the Virtuous Woman verse by verse. Solomon is
describing a rich woman with an "establishment," a sphere and husband

and children, as if a woman's life was not complete without this. And
no more it is; it may be very useful and very beautiful, but it is not
complete. Girls are often blamed for thinking too much about marriage:
I think they do not