Stray Thoughts for Girls | Page 6

do it enough,--at least in the right way; you are not
fit to be wives now, and you should aim at becoming so, and to do that,
you must be fit to manage your house and to teach your children; if you
fit yourselves to be perfect wives, you will at least be very perfect old
maids, and find plenty to do for other people's children! But your life
would then be incomplete. St. Paul is misquoted when his words in Cor.
vii. 34 are used to condemn marriage; our Lord puts it before all other
earthly ties, and it is used as a type of His love for His Church, which
should guard us from two errors in connection with it. If married love is
to be a type, however faint, of Christ's love for His Church, there must
be no unworthiness connected with it; "no inner baseness we would
hide;" no marrying for the sake of being married, for the dignity and
position, or the worldly advantages it may bring; and there must be no
matchmaking or flirtation that a woman need be ashamed of afterwards.
"Let the wife see that she reverence her husband," says St. Paul, and the
husband must be able to reverence her. And there must be no
selfishness, no getting entangled in engagements that must bring
trouble on others; to marry for money is degrading, but a woman may
redeem it by being a good wife; to marry without money means debt,
which is irretrievably degrading, and is altogether selfish instead of
romantic.
But, married or single, rich or poor, Solomon's Virtuous Woman gives
us principles to go on.
"The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her." Is not
trustworthiness a main point in those we respect? Do we not require our
Virtuous Woman to be reliable, not to repeat what we say to her, not to
forget her promises, in short, that we know "where to have her"?
"She will do him good and not evil all the days of his life." It would
distinctly do him evil if she did his work for him! This is a great
temptation of capable people; it is so much easier to do a thing yourself
than to see others bungling over it; but remember, that _not to do other

people's duties is as much a duty as it is to do your own_. Unselfish
people are often selfish in the harm they do husbands, and brothers, and
sisters, and unconscionable friends, by doing their duties for them. You
recognize that you yourself are on a downward path when you leave
duties undone. You have no right to help any one else to tread that path.
It is much pleasanter to spoil your brothers than to make them take
their fair share of family burdens; it is much pleasanter to be
popular,--but if your brother grows up selfish, three-fourths of the sin
will be on your head. You will have to be very careful to convince him
that you are not selfish by sacrificing yourself on every occasion when
it is not bad for him, but if you are to do him good and not evil all the
days of his life, you must remember that you are your brother's keeper
in this matter.
"She worketh willingly with her hands." The idea is going out that, to
be like a lady, you must sit with your hands before you. I heard of a
village tea the other day where a curate's maid-of-all-work was
boasting that her mistress was a real lady who could not do a thing!
"Dear! how strange," said an old servant; "my first mistress taught me,
with her own hands, all the house-work I know." "Ah! she couldn't
have been a real lady," said the other. "Perhaps not," said the old
woman reflectively; "I can't tell, but I know she was an Earl's
daughter." If you knew anything of Colonial life in old uncivilized days,
you would know how invariably it turned out that those settlers were
nobody at home who talked there about what they were "accustomed
to," and how they could not do this or that,--while the real ladies
laughed and buckled to. I do not believe in a woman being
thoroughbred if she cannot do what comes to her to do; she may have
little bodily strength, but if she is of the right sort, spirit carries her
through, just as you often find uneducated people, unnerved by pain or
fright, crying and pitying themselves: a real lady has nerve for it all,
though she is ten times more sensitive, and, till the occasion arises, she
may lie on the sofa all day, and believe herself quite unable to do a
thing!
People sometimes seem to think it