  The ideal woman is lovable. She may not be beautiful of face, but she has charm. She is attractive to men, not repellent. She is the appeal of Nature. She draws men as the sun draws planets. Her power is deep, cosmic, as strong and as mysterious as gravitation. She is the embodiment of love, which is the most persistent, evergreen, and irresistible of human motives. However forceful her individuality she cannot lose her strange drawing power. She is passionate, but differs from her weakling sisters in that her passion is unswervingly loyal. All the cumulative morality of centuries of conscience centers in her love. She clings, not from subservience, but from a loyalty as intense as sex itself. She is free. No man owns her soul nor body. She gives, as sovereign queens give. She cannot barter as commoner women barter, she cannot obey as slaves obey, she cannot yield as cowards yield. She is void of egotism; she is full of self-reverence. She is happy in girlhood, contented in wifehood, glorified in motherhood. She is proud to be a woman. She does not want to be a man. She has wisdom. In every crisis her husband is guided by her instinct. She has character. She secretly moulds the natures of her children. She is the power behind each one of them. She is the flowering rose-bush in times of pleasure. She is a high tower in times of trouble. Her eyes are full of understanding. She knows the feeling back of your words. Her smile is as the reward of heaven. It is worth more than gold. She is intelligent as no man is intelligent. She is brave as no man is brave. Her vision has that clairvoyance that is bestowed upon no man. She is variable as water; but as the water of the unfailing spring, of the eternal ocean, changing forever, forever fixed. She is the best inheritance from the world that was. She is the matrix of the world to come. In proportion as men look up to her they grow unafraid and wise. When they look down on her, as they treat her with contempt She is not the champion of religious doctrine; she is the incarnation of the religious instinct. She is the ladder by the brook where man dreams; she reaches to heaven; upon the rungs of her soul angels ascend and descend. |
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