Lucy Helen Muriel Soulsby

“ A girl tries to live nobly at home and fails: she is not enough wanted, her mother is not blind, and does not want to be deposed from housekeeping; her father is not paralytic, and only wants her to play to him in the evening; life seems choked by tiny interruptions, such as doing the flowers, or writing notes, and she sinks into a placid or unplacid drudge—the aspirations with which she left school have died out. ”

“ Take a girl who wants to be good and dutiful and useful, to be a comfort at home, to keep her brain in good working order, and to enjoy herself: what should she resolve upon if she is to be of use in the world and not drift idly along? She must think it out for herself, and no longer wait for orders. She must put the salt of self-denial and effort into every day, of her own accord, and not feel absolved because her mother has not given any special orders. ”

“ It rests with each of us to draw out the better part in others; we all know people with whom we are at our best, and we have failed in our Duty to our Neighbour if we do not make others feel this with us. "Each soul is in some other's presence quite discrowned;" let the reverse be true where we are.
It is a terrible thought that we have perhaps made others less noble, less pure, less conscientious, than they would have been. We can never repair the harm we do to one who loses faith in our goodness,—he inevitably loses some part of his faith in goodness itself. ”

“ Nothing so certainly kills love as reproaches; I do not believe any affection will stand it. Our hurt feelings may seem to us tenderness and depth of feeling, but they are selfish:—"fine feelings seldom result in fine conduct." If our love were perfectly selfless, we should be glad of all pleasure for our friend; failure in his allegiance to us would not change us, nothing would do that except failure in his allegiance to his better self. We should love our friends not for what they are to us, but for what they are in themselves. ”

“ You have lost one chance of growing into a reliable woman. In all your life you will only have a certain limited number of chances, and should use every one you have—to be reliable is worth all the genius in the world for comfort to others, and you can each win this crown if you care to do so.
One other person I would choose if I were fated to have sisters, would be the one who purrs when she is pleased. It takes all the colour and air out of life when people gaze impassively at beautiful things, or hear lovely things and never seem to have taken them in ”

“ Are you ready for real work? Can you take criticism or contradiction with a perfectly unruffled face and voice? Do you overcome your hindrances to usefulness at home, e.g. do you improve your handwriting so that your mother need not be ashamed to let you write for her? Do you help her tactfully and consentingly—the only help which rests people—or do you argue each point, so that it is far less trouble to do the thing twice over than to ask you? Are you prompt and alert in your movements, or do you indulge in that exasperating slowness, which some girls seem to consider quite a charm? ”

“ Have you ever had some violent friendship—or laughed at it in others—which meant running in and out of each other's houses at all hours—being inseparable—quoting your friend, till your brothers exclaimed at her very name—and making all your family feel that they ranked nowhere in comparison with her? In this matter of home and friends conflicting, I quite see the point of view of some: "My family don't give me the sympathy and help that my friend does—they always tease or scold if I come to them in a difficulty, and yet they are vexed and jealous when I find a friend who can and will help." ”

“ It is impossible to dwell on the mere passionate emotion of second-rate novels and sensuous poetry, without wiping some possibility of nobleness out of your own life. Every influence which you allow to pass through your mind colours it, but most of all, those which appeal to your feelings. You take pains to strengthen your minds, but you let your feelings come up as wheat or tares according to chance; and yet the unruly wills and affections of women need more discipline than their minds.
Perhaps the individual girl feels commonplace and of small account. ”

“ No harm! I would rather hear you were dead than that you lived a life like that!
On the other hand, every day of your life you can make the wings of your soul grow by an honest bit of self-denial, by an honest bit of work for others, by an honest bit of mental work.
Every day you can be more worth having; there is not one of you here who has not the power to make herself—and to pray herself—into a noble, dutiful woman. ”

“ Looking back on life, I am sure each will feel, "I could not afford to miss one of its shadows, no matter how black they were at the time." And the fact that you and I each feel that the key of God's love fits the lock of our individual life, should be one valid reason for believing that all Life is ordered for a right and noble purpose; our happy lives are as real a bit of Life, and as good a specimen of God's government, as sad ones.
People say to me, "Yes, I feel as you do about myself, but others have such terrible shadows that I cannot feel God is good!" ”

“ We often say pretty things to an acquaintance, and omit them to a friend, "because she knows us, and we need not be ceremonious." But ceremony is not half such a bad thing as this age seems to think; it may be overdone, but so may its opposite. Why should we not give our friend the pleasure of this or that acknowledgment of her powers, which a stranger would give her, but which she would value far more from us, even though she "knows we know" it? Saying those things makes the wheels of life's chariot run smoothly,—we think them, why are we so slow to say them? ”

“ Plutarch says, "The influence of a true friend is felt in the help that he gives the noble part of nature; nothing that is weak or poor meets with encouragement from him. While the flatterer fans every spark of suspicion, envy, or grudge, he may be described in the verse of Sophocles as 'sharing the love and not the hatred of the person he cares for.'" Such a bit as that makes us forget the centuries which have rolled between us and Plutarch; his temptations are ours—how much easier it is to us to please our friends by sympathizing with their feelings, whether that feeling be right or wrong! ”

“ It is difficult, but necessary, to learn that affection is not a matter of will, except in family ties; that our friends love us in exact proportion as we appear to them lovable, that "the less you claim, the more you will have," as the Duke of Wellington said of authority. A very little humility would wonderfully lessen our demands upon our friends' affections, and a very little wisdom would preserve us from trying to win them by reproaches. How many coolnesses would be avoided could we learn to see that friendship, like all other relations of life, has more duties than rights. ”

“ Some are so strong in home, so wrapped up in their own family, that outsiders feel de trop, which of course is a fault on the other side. If we have happy homes, it is a trust for the use of others; we can give a home feeling to those who are less fortunate as they pass by us, like the swallow flying through the lighted hall. Lonely people may gain a sense of home from this large-heartedness in the happy, a feeling of rest and repose, which is the very essence of the atmosphere I should like my Virtuous Woman to shed around her ”

“ In case it should be any comfort to those of you who may have a dull life, I can tell you that it is not so. I am convinced we all have a certain power of enjoyment, and if you can get your fill of pleasure in youth, you do not find as much keen enjoyment in middle life as if you had been kept on a shorter allowance. It is true you do not enjoy quite the same things—there are youthful amusements which you can only enjoy at a certain stage; but take comfort, if you do not get as much as you would like now, it will only mean keener enjoyment of the pleasures of the next stage of life. ”

“ The Fall brings us under the curse; the tree of knowledge of good and evil has entailed upon us the necessity of self-knowledge; and if we find our hearts out of joint, and craving for more love than we get, we should examine ourselves as to whether we use the love we do get, like the runner's torch handed on from one to the other; whether the glow of our happiness warms us to pass on light and heat to others, or whether we absorb it all ourselves. ”

“ And thirdly I want a magnanimous nature;—one that takes slights and neglects in a large-minded way, and does not believe people meant them and, if they did, does not fret: one who is serene when little things go wrong, and does not fuss or worry: one who accepts generously as well as gives generously, and who is keenly alive to people's good points and good intentions. Little petty motives and small spites and jealousy die away in the light of a nature like that. It keeps the family atmosphere sweet and wholesome. ”

“ Esprit de corps is the virtue above all others which we, as members of this school, should seek to attain, and, in the very nature of things, nothing so entirely kills it as any self-seeking; while if you wish to be worth anything as an individual, remember that nothing is so smallening, so alien to any true greatness—to the most far-off touch of greatness—as the wish to be Number One. ”

“ Now, what mental result, what benefit to the world, will result from an ordinary woman's reading, which can, in any way, be comparable to the value of a woman who diffuses a home-atmosphere, and is always "at leisure from herself"? You know that I care very much for your reading—you will have plenty to do if you read all the books I have begged you to study—but if it gave your mother pleasure for you to be at the stupidest garden-party, I should think you were wasting your time terribly if you spent it over a book instead. Some people think ordinary society, and small talk, beneath them:—well! ”

“ I dare say you find reading is cold work,—very few women really enjoy knowledge for its own sake,—you are tempted to throw it up, and to drift in an easy good-tempered way, which pleases the others much more than your shutting yourself up to read. And the others are quite right in expecting you, now school is over, to be a woman, "with a heart at leisure from itself" and from self-improvement. One of the hardest home lessons for some girls to learn is the power of sitting idle and chatting. They feel it waste of time; they long to be doing something tangible ”

“ And wherever a true wife comes this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot: yet home is wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far for those who else were homeless."
Let us now consider the Virtuous Woman verse by verse. Solomon is describing a rich woman with an "establishment," a sphere and husband and children, as if a woman's life was not complete without this. ”

“ Why cannot a girl welcome some tiresome commission or fidgeting rule of her mother's, as much as if it were imposed by some Mother Superior? Ought not the trifling duties to be fuel to her burning desire for her nobleness of life, instead of dust to choke it? You can make them which you will.
Girls often say, "I have nothing to do, worth doing, at home; I want to go and do some real work;" and they sometimes have the face to say this, while they are still as full of faults as when they left school, and when every hour of the day, at home, brings with it an opportunity of conquering some fault. ”

“ Love is not measured by time; often we are truer friends through some half-hour's talk, in which we saw another's real self, than through years of ordinary meeting. But this is so different from the folly I speak of, that I need not dwell on it; except to say that you will be spared many disappointments if you are content with the fact that such moments of sympathy have been, and do not look to have a permanent friendship on that basis. When people draw the veil aside for a minute they generally put it back closer than ever, and do not like to be reminded of the self-revelation. ”

“ I do not believe in a woman being thoroughbred if she cannot do what comes to her to do; she may have little bodily strength, but if she is of the right sort, spirit carries her through, just as you often find uneducated people, unnerved by pain or fright, crying and pitying themselves: a real lady has nerve for it all, though she is ten times more sensitive, and, till the occasion arises, she may lie on the sofa all day, and believe herself quite unable to do a thing! ”

“ Why should she restrain her love of fun, her Tomboyism, her tendency to flirtation? She is no heroine! But, let her be as commonplace as possible, she will represent Woman to the man who is in love with her, as surely as Beatrice represented it to Dante.
Every woman, married or single, alters the opinion of some man about women. Even a careless man judges a girl in a way that she, with her head full of nonsense, probably never dreams of;—he has a standard for her, though he has none for himself. ”

“ But to come at last to Solomon's ideal—what is our first impression of her? Surely it is strength, and we probably feel her strong-minded, and rather a "managing woman"—and, as a rule, these are not loved. I feel that she wants some sorrow to humanize her—she would hardly be sorry for less prosperous, less sensible people: the modern feeling of, "the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!" has never gone home to her; she is not like Ruskin's "gentleman" who has tears always in his eyes, in spite of the smile on his lips ”

“ The duty of a life of rule at home is all the more complex because home pleasures are duties too; if it was only a question of self-denial it would be plain sailing, but your mother likes you to go out, and your brothers want you, and if you refuse to enjoy yourself it hurts them: if you even betray that you would rather be doing something else, you spoil their pleasure, for a "martyr" to home duty is a most depressing sight to gods and men. ”

“ Nobody, who has not watched or felt it, knows the laming of all spiritual energy, the hardening, the blighting of all noble impulse which comes from this sort of knowledge of the world; and who can say that he has never (more or less) been thus guilty?—it is more truly blood-guiltiness than anything else, for it helps to murder souls.
Perhaps the greatest of the innumerable blessings which friendship confers on the character, lies in this fostering of moral thoughtfulness produced by its responsibilities: "I know not a more serious thing than the responsibility incurred by all human affection. ”

“ I do beg that none of you will bring this discredit on school life, for the system gets blamed when it is really your individual shortcoming which is in fault; you ought to be big enough to hold both school and home interests! But, setting aside this form of term-time selfishness, which we shall all agree to condemn, there remains another form of it, which is a duty. You must put lessons first, or you will be wasting both your parents' money and that leisure for self-improvement, which, as a rule, is only granted to us while we are young. ”

“ If you are a genius you can have your own country, and wait in it, till you meet some fellow-countryman; but as you only want to be an ordinary woman, 'not too bright and good for human nature's daily food,' you will give far more pleasure to others, and widen and strengthen your own mind far more, by being able to join on easily to all you meet, than by pursuing some one abstruse study, whether it be mathematics or philosophy."
"But it seems such a small thing to spend one's mind in learning odds and ends of other people's hobbies." ”

“ I shall never look at a Euclid again after I leave school—I want to learn how to hold my own in after-life,—I want to be able to talk when I come out,—I want to be a sensible woman, whose opinion will be asked by other people,—I want to be clever at house-work or cooking, or to be able to manage a shop,—I want to be strong enough and wise enough to be a support and comfort to others,—I want to be a useful woman and not a mathematician! ”

“ I do not say, Cut yourself off from your friend,—she is sent by God to help you; but, Remember to feel for your Mother;—see how natural and loving her jealousy is, and spare it by constant tact—instead of being a martyr, feel that it is she, and not you, who is ill-used. And in all ways, never let outside affections interfere with home ones. It is the great difference between them, that outside, self-chosen affections burn all the stronger for repression and self-restraint; while home ones burn stronger for each act of attention to them and expression of them ”