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humanity. Those who enter into the marriage relation with true attachment, and become unhappy, are the most unfortunate and criminal of mankind, and they have none to blame but themselves. They are suicides in a double sense. One of the worst indications of the moral condition of our country, is the number of applications for divorce which are annually made to the legislatures in the different states. By this indication it would seem that we have sunk below even heathen morality. Such a thing as a divorce was not known in the Roman state for four centuries from its foundation. I never see an account of a case of this kind without picturing to myself the deep misery which must precede, accompany, and follow such a proceeding. You never read the details of a divorce, except in cases of gross immorality, without recognizing the fact, that the great cause of connubial unhappiness is want of mutual forbearance and self control.

As a wife's control over her husband's happiness is almost unlimited, so is her influence over his fortunes. Some women make it a matter of pride and of boast that they

govern their husbands, and consider it a mark of their superiority. The very attempt is a proof of the contrary. It is only the foolish and the weak that can ever even wish to do so. Such a boast is equally disgraceful to both parties. The will too, often bears an inverse proportion to the other powers of the mind. And you sometimes find women who seem to be little else than the incarnation of a fierce and indomitable will. Such women will have their way it is true, because a wise man will sacrifice much for peace. But it is no more government than it is when a mob gets the mastery of a town. They govern it is true, because all government is suspended.)

A woman has her husband's fortunes in her power, because she may, or she may not, as she pleases, conform to his circumstances. This is her first duty, and it ought to be her pride. No passion for luxury or display ought for a moment to tempt her to deviate in the least degree from this line of conduct. She will find her happiness and her respectability in it. Any other course is wretchedness itself, and inevitably leads to ruin. Nothing can be more miserable than the

struggle to keep up an appearance. If it could succeed, it would cost more than it is worth, and as it never can, its failure involves the deepest mortification. Some of the sublimest exhibitions of human virtue have been made by women, who have been precipitated suddenly from wealth and splendor to absolute want. It costs perhaps the mightiest struggle which the mind can make to conform at once and without a murmur to altered circumstances; but when it is over, it brings its own rich reward. There is no other way but to submit, and begin to spin the web of hope and endeavor anew.

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Then a man's fortunes are in a manner in the hands of his wife, inasmuch as his own power of exertion depends on her. His moral strength is inconceivably increased by her sympathy, her counsel, her aid. She can aid him immensely by relieving him of every care which she is capable of taking upon herself. His own employments are usually such to require his whole time, and his whole mind. A good wife will never suffer her husband's attention to be distracted by details, to which her own time and talents are adequate. If she be prompted

by true affection and good sense, she will perceive when his spirit is borne down and overwhelmed. She of all human beings can best minister to its needs. For the sick soul her nursing is quite as sovereign, as it is for corporeal ills. If it be weary, in her assi duity it finds repose and refreshment. If it

be harassed and worn to a morbid irritability, her gentle tones steal over it with a soothing more potent than the most exquisite music. If every enterprise be dead, and hope itself almost extinguished, her patience and fortitude have the power to rekindle them in the heart, and he again goes forth to renew his encounter with the toils and troubles of life.

A woman has it in her power to add greatly to a man's respectability in the world, and to determine his social position. Indeed his pleasant relations with society depend mainly on her wisdom, her prudence, her kind and conciliatory manners. She cannot make herself odious and contemptible without reflecting ill will and disgrace upon him. She cannot indulge in a meddlesome, censorious, bitter, vindictive disposition, without subjecting him to continual mortifi

cation, and involving him in perpetual difficulty and embarrassment.

We come in the next place to speak of woman in the most important and responsible relation which she sustains, as the mother. In this relation Providence fully makes up to her the inferiority of her physical powers, the narrowness of her sphere of action, and the alleged inferiority of her intellectual endowments. In the influence she has in forming the character of the young, and training up each rising generation as it comes forward, and assumes the control of the destinies of the world, she has her full share in that power which sways and governs mankind, which makes nations, families, individuals great, prosperous, virtuous, happy,—or mean, degraded, vicious and wretched. Woman is mistress of the fortunes of the world, by holding in her plastic hand the minds and hearts of those who are to mould the coming age, at that decisive period when the character is determined and fixed in good, or irrecoverably bent on vice and mischief. She governs the world in the capacity of mother, because in the forming period of life, the cords of love and gentleness are stronger and more pre

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