Helen M. Winslow

“ With John Villard it was different. He had begun by looking with a certain degree of scorn upon a woman who held tremendous interests so lightly as she had done in the old days. He had felt for her all the contempt a man who does not know them—a man with serious purposes—may feel for the irresponsible butterflies he imagines society-girls to be. With her deeper interest in the side of life which interested him, and her efforts to raise the standard of the mills, her realization of what to him was a sacred object in life and her devotion to it, his thought of her had changed. ”

“ It rests with the individual woman whether she will be like a rose tree full of brightness and fragrance, a help and an inspiration; or whether she will waste herself in a mad endeavor to keep up with the pell-mell, hop, skip and jump of modern life. Shall we stop occasionally long enough to plant the seed germs that will blossom later into flower and fruit? Or shall we degenerate into mere replicas of other women who wear good clothes, do and say the conventional, commonplace thing, and are as uninteresting as a sunset without a flush of color? ”

“ It is here that Madame Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look exactly to the "felinarian" like cats with whom he or she is familiar. ”

“ But it is our duty to cultivate happiness, just the same. We can form the habit of cheerfulness and hopefulness and a courageous spirit which shall become, in time, the very essence of happiness, or at least a very good substitute for it. The woman who goes whining through life, the woman who is envious or self-conscious or unloving may fasten herself into a steel armor of endurance of this life, but she cannot hope to be happy; but the woman who accepts gladly the work close at her hand, and thanks God for it, plants sunshine in her own soul and radiates happiness from the heart. ”

“ He will succeed me and do great things for Roma, but O, I wish I could help him. I wish I dared let myself love him as he deserves. I wish I were one of the softer, clinging women, made to love a man and to depend on him for happiness. After all, they are the fortunate ones. But,—what am I saying? Brace up, Gertrude Van Deusen; don't be a sentimental girl! You've prided yourself on your independence of mind and heart. At your age, to be thinking of a man,—and one whose ideal is so far from what you know yourself to be! ”

“ Make a man who has been looked upon as a mere machine feel that he is estimated at something near the worth which every human being feels in his heart that he is entitled to, and you have done much to raise him to a higher social standard. For the first time since old Newbern Shepard’s day, the mill-hands began to feel a just pride in being individual American citizens. Unconsciously, both men and women were setting their faces toward the higher standards which Villard by his life, and Salome by her newly awakened energy, had set for them. ”

“ How can we show that in our manner which we lack in our natures? And how can we possess repose of the soul when we never allow ourselves a minute to catch up with ourselves, to commune with the silent forces of nature, to inhale the strength and calmness and courage that we might exhale again in the fragrance which we call, in the rare instances when we behold it in others, repose of manner? Life for the most of us is an insane scramble to catch up with things—and not half the time do we know or care whether they are things worth catching up with ”

“ But the effect was John Allingham's first eye-opener in the development of the modern woman. Brought up as he had been, by a narrow jealous mother, kept close at his books, living at home, even during his college days, he had never before come under the direct influence of the women who are becoming an educative, progressive power in the world of today; and he began to wonder for the first time in his life, if a woman might not be a strong force in public reforms and still retain her refinement of spirit and her home-loving, home-keeping qualities. ”

“ In vain do melodious mewings on the roof invite him to one of those cat parties in which fish bones play the part of tea and cakes; he is not to be tempted away from you. Put him down and he will jump up again, with a sort of cooing sound that is like a gentle reproach; and sometimes he will sit upon the carpet in front of you, looking at you with eyes so melting, so caressing, and so human, that they almost frighten you, for it is impossible to believe that a soul is not there.
"Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre had a sweetheart of the same race and of as snowy a whiteness as himself. ”

“ Happiness is more a habit of the mind than anything else. If we keep ourselves in that mental frame, admitting nothing but the sunlight of existence, sunshine will become such a habit with us that we can no more help shedding sunlight around us than we can help breathing. Isn’t that worth while? And the club, where we come to meet our sisters who have the same kind of trials and difficulties as we do, is one of the places where we should not only seek to gather up sunshine, but to scatter it. For we cannot reap what we do not sow, nor reflect what is not in the soul. ”

“ Oh, you who strive to relieve your overwrought nerves and cultivate power through repose, watch the exquisite languor of a drowsy cat, and despair of imitating such perfect and restful grace. There is a gradual yielding of every muscle to the soft persuasiveness of slumber: the flexible frame is curved into tender lines, the head nestles lower, the paws are tucked out of sight: no convulsive throb or start betrays a rebellious alertness: only a faint quiver of unconscious satisfaction, a faint heaving of the tawny sides, a faint gleam of the half-shut yellow eyes, and Agrippina is asleep. ”

“ Had it not been that the love of battle and of conquest had been born and bred in the old Senator's daughter, Gertrude would have sickened already of politics and politicians and the mass of feeble humanity that was like clay in the hands of the potter. For in spite of the real interest of the more intelligent citizens, there were the usual hangers-on and heelers,—men who had no civic sense, no idea of public duty, no moral stamina; men who sold their votes openly and as a matter of course. ”

“ By trying to stamp our own individuality upon everything, by making ourselves a personal power? Or are we realizing that only in serving others can we best help ourselves? “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.” And what is a servant? One who works for others. Look over the women of your acquaintance. Is it the self-seeking woman, who sacrifices her dignity in a scramble for prominence and who pushes herself, regardless of the rights of others, into prominent positions, whose name stands for real service and real value in the world? ”

“ Well, I never before had time to play with kittens as much as I wished, and when I come outdoors and see them bounding toward me in long, light leaps, I am glad that they leap toward me and not away from me, little soft, fierce sparks of infinite energy holding a mystery of their own as inscrutable as life. And I remember that with all our high art, the common daily sun searches a man for one revealing moment, and makes a truer portrait than the most laborious painter. ”

“ If they were unwilling to match wits with a woman, why did they not say so? Why condescend to kidnaping a woman and running away with her from the fight? If this was the kind of a man John Allingham was—
They were turning into a cross-road now which led up-hill into another strip of wood. Shadows of tall pines and oak trees made it like a solemn temple, into the arched aisles of which they seemed to be entering. Gertrude did not see, and apparently the motionless automaton before her did not, that other machine gliding on in the shadowy road above and toward them. ”

“ Cultivate sunshine and sweetness in ourselves at home, every day and every hour in the day, and we shall have no difficulty in keeping sweet and pleasant everywhere else. Let us each be the woman for whose presence her friends wait as for a benediction of peace.
Do you not know women whose very presence is uplifting, whose very atmosphere is peace? We might all be so if we would set ourselves steadily and calmly to work to find our balance and lift ourselves to a mental plane where outside worries and flurries and tempers and jealousies could not reach us. ”

“ Even when she is disposed to be affable, turns the light of her countenance upon me, watches with attentive curiosity every stroke I make, and softly, with curved paw, pats my pen as it travels over the paper, even in these halcyon moments, though my self-love is flattered by her condescension, I am aware that I should work better and more rapidly if I denied myself this charming companionship. ”

“ We are in danger, in our eagerness to be of service and our dread of losing some of the frills of life, [26] of forgetting that we can do no better service to humanity than to develop our own selves into the highest types of womanhood. The world will always stand in need of noble women.
The great trouble with the average woman is that she does not readily find her balance. Who does not recall some rare, sweet nature that while bearing the burdens of life—heavy burdens, perhaps—is marked by a serenity of soul that is as restful to her friends as it is helpful to herself? ”

“ We have to do many things that seem like the merest drudgery; but to do any blind, dead work loyally and faithfully without protesting is to build character and to get culture. For what is culture but patience, fidelity, quiet wisdom, loyalty to trust—those simple, primitive qualities on which human life is based? And when trouble comes on us, to whom do we go? Sometimes to our physician. Sometimes to our minister. But often we go to some woman who has lived quietly and brought up her children, but is able to give us the help that comes from a hand-grip with life. ”

“ I call it living on a plane where the mire of petty smallness, the hurt of wrong living and the danger of wrong thinking cannot reach us.
But, after all, why should we dread growing old? It seems to me that life should be brightest, like the sunset, just before the night—if it is night. I prefer to think of it as the real morning. When we have learned to drop worry and undue haste, and fretfulness and all disagreeableness, we are only just fitted to enjoy the serenity of age. ”

“ If girls could be left to themselves as boys are, and allowed to know from childhood the blessed privilege of unconscious self-companionship, and the solitary communion of earth and air and sky, would not the other side of their natures be developed? Would not they learn to form their own opinions, and hold independent ideas, just as naturally as boys? To those occasional seasons when a woman seems to have lost her hold on life is owing some of the most helpful work ever given to the world. ”

“ Never before have women cared so much for other women, and the result is greater kindliness and helpfulness toward human nature everywhere. The heart of womanhood is alive and stirring as never before; shall we dare say this is not kindling a streak of electric fire that may burn out old prejudices and kindle a new era? We may still be in the groping, vague stage where mistakes are as frequent as the right steps, but it is an evident uplift in the scale of human advancement.
Even in our family life we are letting the old notions go and recognizing the individuality of each member. ”