G. S. Weaver

“ There is no nobler attainment this side of the spirit-land than lofty womanhood. There is no purer ambition than that which craves this crown for her mortal brow. To be a genuine woman, full of womanly instincts and power, possessing the intuitive genius of her penetrating soul and the subduing authority of her gentle, yet resolute will, is to be a peer of earth's highest intelligence. All young women have this noble prize before them. They may all put on the glorious crown of womanhood. They may make their lives grand in womanly virtue. There is in every woman-child the seed of womanhood. ”

“ She is goddess of all the springs and little rivulets of humanity. She makes men and trains them. As mother, wife, and friend she wields a triune scepter of vast power. She rears the twigs that grow into the oaks of the world. She may bend them at her will. If woman was rightly educated, who could tell what a race of men would grow up to people the coming ages? How can the woman-mind, undeveloped, untrained, uninspired with great aims, grand and brave resolutions and actions, impress the minds of the generation to come with strength, power, activity, intellectual and moral vigor? ”

“ A lady is a parlor ornament, a walking show-gallery, a mistress of tongue-tied etiquette. A woman is a consecrated intelligence—a love baptized—a hand employed in the work of good. To be a woman requires exertion and prudence. Women are not born; neither do they grow up of themselves; they are made. Their virtues blossom in the garden of industry. Their fruits ripen on the boughs of toil. Their treasures grow on the tree of labor. A woman with nothing to do can not develop a truthful womanhood. A woman with no Employment for her hands or mind can be only the shadow of a woman. ”

“ Genius, worth, power of mind are more made than born. Genius born may grovel in the dust; genius made will mount to the skies. Our great and good men that stand along the paths of history bright and shining lights are witnesses of these truths. They stand there as everlasting pleaders for Employment. Now what is true of men in this respect is equally true of women. If Employment is the instrumentality in making men, it is equally so in making women. A human female is not a woman till she makes herself so. There is something noble, glorious, in a woman. ”

“ Yes, all the mother is holy. God loves the mother for what she is. She is a reflection of himself. The gates of his everlasting Home will never close against a mother. Though she may be wicked in other respects, in her maternal heart lives a germ of the tree of life which can never wholly die. What love sometimes beams in a wicked mother's heart! All mothers are alike. The wise and the foolish, the idiotic and philosophic, the rich and poor, the cultivated and barbaric, are all the same in love; the same beautiful, tender, forgiving spirit of devoted affection dwells in all. ”

“ We often say "Our Father in Heaven," but we seldom think of the majesty of the expression, nor the glorious beauty of the thought it conveys. God's grandeur is as much in his love as his power, as much in his goodness as his wisdom. He is as sublime in his Fatherhood as in his supremacy. The ocean of his tenderness is as deep as the mountain of his holiness is high. God, in his character, sweeps over the infinite spaces of principle and gathers in the infinite perfections of all characteristics of good. It is to such a Being that we owe our existence and all that makes it blessed and blissful. ”

“ We must seek the Happiness we wish; seek it in the wisdom which opens life's mysteries plainly to our view; which reveals our present and eternal relations, and points out the ways of pleasantness and peace. Would we know the truth, the gemmy walks of knowledge, the flowery bowers of inward and joyous life, the teachings of nature, revelation, the Son and the Father? We must seek, else how shall we find them? These things do not come of themselves. Our minds do not develop truth as the forest develops leaves or the prairie flowers, without effort. Truth is without, and must be sought. ”

“ Ingratitude we name among the most hateful feelings that ever darken the fallen heart of humanity. It is the parent of innumerable vices. It is a cold, Satanic mood of mind, suggestive of numberless forms of evil. And yet, unless I greatly mistake, there is much ingratitude in all our hearts. We eat, and forget the Hand that feeds us. We wear, and heed not the Adorner of our persons. We admire our bodies, and offer not an emotion of praise to the grand Architect of the universe and its beauty. We rejoice in our strength and comeliness, scarcely thinking that we owe it all to the Divine love. ”

“ What is there in our highly civilized life that escapes the palsying touch of Fashion? Dress, what is it? Fashion from head to foot. No matter if it outrages all physiology, puts hands around the lungs, gauze on the feet, and hangs multitudinous skirts upon the most vital and yielding portions of the female system. What of all that? Fashion is superior to health and life. What if it shrivel a woman into a mummy, and fade her into a ghost, and plant in her vitals the never-dying worm of consumption! What is beauty and physical womanhood to Fashion? ”

“ They need more sprightly activity, more exhilaration of mind and body, more sunshine and bird-song, more exuberant freshness of life and Happiness. Every gloomy thought is a tax on health. Every desponding hour extracts a year's vitality from the system. A melancholy spirit is like a humor in the blood, breeding a perpetual disease. Doubts and fears are like chills and fevers, which shake and shatter the vital economy to its center. No unhappy woman can enjoy perfect health. The most vigorous constitutions will quail and sink under the weight of a desponding mind. ”

“ To develop our strength of body and mind we want freedom. Genius expands its wings in freedom's airs. Health blooms in freedom's prairie-fields. Wisdom grows in the hermit-cells of individual thought where no binding chains of custom cramp the mental powers. Love is always truest and sweetest and noblest where it is freest. Nature is freedom's temple. No forming shears of Fashion cuts her patterns. She grows every leaf, and opens every flower, and solemnizes every bird-marriage, and utters every hymn of praise in the truthful and innate spontaneity of her universal soul. ”

“ The adornments that will not perish, and that all men most admire, shine from the heart through this life. God has made it our highest, holiest duty to dress the soul he has given us. It is wicked to waste it in frivolity. It is a beautiful, undying, precious thing. If every young woman would think of her soul when she looks in the glass, would hear the cry of her naked mind when she dallies away her precious hours at her toilet, would listen to the sad moaning of her hollow heart, as it wails through her idle, useless life, something would be done for the elevation of womanhood. ”

“ Friendship, its links must be forged on Fashion's anvil, or it is good for nothing. How shocking to be friendly with an unfashionable lady! It will never do. How soon one would lose caste! No matter if her mind is a treasury of gems, and her heart a flower-garden of love, and her life a hymn of grace and praise, it will not do to walk on the streets with her, or intimate to anybody that you know her. No, one's intimate friend must be à la mode. Better bow to the shadow of a belle's wing than rest in the bosom of a "strong-minded" woman's love. ”

“ But Education has made us mighty in evil. Giants in vice stalk about us daily who were sweet and beautiful in their babyhood as ever smiled in a mother's face. On every hand we meet with the graduates of some school of vice, in whom the powers of darkness are mighty for evil. Some come out from the dark holes of intemperance; some from the luxurious saloons of gambling; some from the gilded halls of fashion; some from those dark places where virtue dies a bleeding sacrifice to sensuality. These are the schools in which the mighty in wickedness are educated. ”

“ Talent is withering into weakness in thy voluptuous gaze! Virtue gives up the ghost at thy smile. Our youth are chasing after thee as a wanton in disguise. Our young women are the victims of thine all-greedy lust. And still thou art not satisfied, but, like the devouring grave, criest for more. Where shall we get the strong women of the next generation—the women who will live for principle—whose commanding virtues shall be a tower of strength—whose wisdom shall be a poem of prophecy, and whose love a hymn of praise? ”

“ I take it that dignity of character, power of action, resolute will, commanding judgment, steady temper of mind, strong inward resources, are as essential in a good wife and mother as in a good husband and father. In a word, I take it that all that is noble, dignified, useful, and beautiful in character and life, is as essential in women as in men. If so, then why not give woman opportunities such as are necessary to develop her powers and form her character? Those opportunities can not be given without Employment. We can not make men without Employment; how can we expect to make women? ”

“ Every hill, and dale, and landscape is a picture of Beauty. Every cloud, and mist-wreath, and vapor-vail is a shadowy reflection of Beauty. Every spring and rivulet, lakelet, river, and ocean, is a glassy mirror of Beauty. Every diamond, and rock, and pebbly beach is [Pg 23] a mine of Beauty. Every sun, and planet, and star is a blazing face of Beauty. All along the aisles of earth, all over the arches of heaven, all through the expanses of the universe, are scattered in rich and infinite profusion the life-gems of Beauty. All natural motion is Beauty in action. ”

“ We urge it as the best and highest duty of every young woman—a duty she owes to herself, her fellows, and her God—a duty as full of joys as the heavens are of stars, and when performed, reflecting matchless grace upon her soul. We do not urge it through fear of hell or hope of heaven; we do not urge it from motives of policy; we urge it for its own intrinsic worth; for the blessedness of being pious; for the excellency and worth of character and life it confers. ”

“ It takes us by the hand and leads us into the great temple of life where duties stand ministering around the solemn altar, and the baptism of love is followed by the quick discipline of trial. Young, single existence is but the vestibule of real life, where anticipation weaves a golden web, bearing but a faint resemblance to the web of actual life. The youthful imagination is apt to dress the institution of Marriage in too many garlands, and to consider it full of ethereal joys and paradisaical blessedness such as can exist only in the chambers of an untaught fancy. ”

“ With such a mind, the true philosophy of life is clear—it is that we were made to be happy in righteousness and truth, and should bend all our energies to guard our hearts from every fretful and desponding feeling, and make every experience in life bless and make us happy. Oh, young woman! set your heart on Happiness; not on pleasure that floats on the surface of life, but on that inward peace that dwells in the soul devoted to all good. The things about us are designed to administer to our Happiness, and we should use them for this purpose. The world we live in is for our use. ”

“ It is another Beauty, inward, living, powerful, which charges their wisdom, sweetens their actions with love, and tempers their lives with piety. Oh, how lovely it makes them! We gaze upon them with reverence. We never once think of their outward Beauty. No, it would be sacrilege to do so. They have a higher Beauty. We see it playing on their faces; we feel it in the charm of their presence, and hear it in the music of their voices. It is the Beauty of virtue, wisdom, goodness, magnanimity, meekness, piety. ”

“ The world will send into her heart its putrid streams of influence to corrupt and debase it.
The second virtue she should cultivate is benevolence. Queen of virtues, lovely star in the crown of life, bright and glorious image of Him who is love, how beautiful is it in woman's heart! A woman without benevolence is not a woman; she is only a deformed personality of womanhood. In every heart there are many tendencies to selfishness, but the spirit of benevolence counteracts them all. A hollow, cold, graceless, ungodly thing is a heart without benevolence. ”

“ If I could speak to Girlhood in its wide realm of beauty and promise all over the world, I should say to it, that its first work is to form a fitting character with which to pass through life and do the great work of woman. There is much in starting right. A stumble in the start often defeats the race, while a good strike at the onset often wins the victory. There is no more alarming feature in the Girlhood of our times than its apparent indifference to the great work before it. Multitudes of girls are as thoughtless and giddy as the lambs that sport on the lea. ”

“ Else why their perpetual unrest, their longing, dissatisfied condition of mind? Oh, if we could pull off the false glitter that lays like a gorgeous mantle over the fashionable world, we should see such an aching void, such a palpitating heart of woe, as would make the very stones cry out for sympathy. Look at a fashionable woman—one woman, a poor, weak mortal, apprenticed to earth to learn the work of the skies, pupiled here to be schooled in the great lessons of beauty and goodness written on all the outward universe and taught by the constant voice of God in the soul in its best experiences ”

“ Speaking from my own experience, I should say that I can love goodness, worth, all that is lovable in character as well as in a being that I have not seen as one that I have. I have known of people who have an earthly father living that they have never seen, and whom they love with a deep and rich fervency of affection. I have known of children whom poverty or accident has separated in infancy from their mother, and who cherished for that unknown, far-off maternal friend a sacred and deathless love. ”