We can not overestimate the strength and power of woman's moral and religious character. The world would go to ruin without her. With all our ministers and Churches, and Bibles and sermons, man would be a prodigal without the restraint of woman's virtue and the consecration of her religion. Woman first lays her hand on our young faces; she plants the first seeds; she makes the first impressions; and all along through life she scatters the good seeds of her kindness, and sprinkles them with the dews of her piety.

A woman of true intelligence is a blessing at home, in her circle of friends, and in society. Wherever {86} she goes she carries with her a health-giving influence. There is a beautiful harmony about her character that at once inspires a respect which soon warms into love. The influence of such a woman upon society is of the most salutary kind. She strengthens right principles in the virtuous, incites the selfish and indifferent to good actions, and gives to the light and frivolous a taste after something more substantial than the frothy gossip with which they seek to recreate themselves.

Many a woman does the work of her life without being noticed or seen by the world. The world sees a family reared to virtue, one child after another growing into Christian manhood or womanhood, and at last it sees them gathered around the grave where the mother that bore them rests from her labors. But the world has never seen the quiet woman laboring for her children, making their clothes, providing them food, teaching them their prayers, and making their homes comfortable and happy.

A woman's happiness flows to her from sources and through channels different from those that give origin and conduct to the happiness of man, and in a measure will continue to do so forever. Her faculties bend their exercise toward different issues, her social an