love seems uninterrupted. May God grant us peace to the end, and then order all things. mercifully for us that our end may be according to His will, free from sin and shame, and, if it be His pleasure, free from pain." "

XIX

THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

-THOREAU.

"A wasteful woman!-she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapened Paradise!
How given for naught her priceless gifts,
How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine,
Which spent with due respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine!"

-COVENTRY PATMORE.

"That they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified." -Is. 61, v. 3.

XIX

THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD

AM old-fashioned enough to believe that women still want love more than they want anything else in the world,

and I believe that the sincere woman, who is denied it, admits her work to be a substitute. If she teaches school instead of rocking a cradle, or is in a business house instead of making a home for a good man, it is because love has not come her way, and not because she has not wanted it.

At the dawn of womanhood, the thought still uppermost in the mind of every healthy girl (just as it used to be in days of romance and chivalry), is the thought of marriage, and the hope that animates all her pretty ways and innocent little devices

to attract, is the hope that some day-perhaps some day very soon-she will meet the man who is to be her husband. And this is not a hope to hide or suppress. It is the most beautiful hope in life, reasonable, right, and open to no possible ridicule or dispute. Let us look at the subject rationally.

We admit that at the dawn of her being woman feels strongest among her new instincts the hope that she may be needed to complete the happiness of a good man. To be necessary to someone is the one deep essential need of her nature. Gratify this and she will develop happily in a very stony soil, for her satisfaction is a secret dew which enables her to bloom. Admitting and realizing this, is it not strange that girls give so little thought to the way in which they shall prepare themselves for marriage? Girls go to college for years before they consider themselves fit to teach; they study for years to prepare themselves to hold valuable positions in the business world; but they marry without a serious thought or ever once ask