Mary Wood-Allen

“ The girls had not maintained their own self-respect, and therefore had not secured the respect of the young men. The girl who respected herself compelled respect from them, and that is the idea I wish to impress on your mind. Never expect any one to respect you more than you respect yourself, nor to shield your honor if you have placed yourself in their power.”
“But, father,” said Helen hesitatingly, “most of the girls and boys think it no harm to kiss each other good night, and the girls say the boys would be offended if a girl refused.” ”

“ A girl is very much mistaken if she fancies that a young man thinks more of her if she lets him be familiar. On the other hand, it is always true that he thinks more of her if she makes him feel that she is not to be carelessly approached. As one boy said to me, ‘Girls ought to know that boys always want most that which is hardest to get.’”
“But, father, if it’s so difficult for boys and girls to be together and act as they should, wouldn’t it be best to keep them entirely apart until they are old enough to marry?” ”

“ I am more and more convinced that right knowledge not only safeguards purity, but really produces true modesty. To give a young person a reverent knowledge of self is to insure that delicacy of thought which preserves the bloom of modesty. If the girls who are engaged in street flirtations could only be taught the lesson of true womanhood, I am sure they would become quiet and lady-like in conduct. ”

“ Yes, dear, I am right in saying that women are to blame that men do not have higher ideals and live up to them. Ruskin says, ‘The soul’s armor is never well set to a heart unless a woman’s hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.’”
34
“It’s putting a great responsibility on women, isn’t it?” sighed Helen.
“Yes, daughter, but no greater than is placed on man. Each sex should be the protector and inspirer of the other. But instead of that, they often tempt and mislead each other.”
“Good girls don’t tempt boys, father.” ”

“ I can assure you of one thing,—even if you never have children, you will never regret having cultivated yourself in every talent and virtue, but you may have great cause for sorrow if you fail to develop the best in yourself. There is no grief in the world like that caused by wilful or wicked sons and daughters. Their waywardness brings not only sorrow but self-condemnation on the parents who must feel that in some way they have been to blame, either in the inheritance they passed on or the training they gave. ”

“ Every baby is a new being with a nature of his own, and what was good for his brother may not be good for him. The training that will give one child self-confidence will make a little tyrant of another; what would render one merely amenable to control might make a coward of another. So you see, my dear, that a mother needs to have great knowledge of the laws of mind and great insight in the applying of those laws to the particular cases she has in hand.”
“It really seems, mamma, as if girls ought to study all those things before they marry.” ”

“ They only laughed.”
“It is unfortunately quite a common idea that boys and men do not have to be as good as girls and women; but it is not God’s idea. He doesn’t have two standards of morals, and I think the 16 time is coming when men will be glad to live up to the highest level of purity.”
“Don’t you think it seems worse for girls to swear or drink or gamble than for boys?”
“It does seem worse, because we have had such high ideals for women; but to God it must seem no worse, because he judges of us as souls, not as men and women, and He has laid down only one rule of conduct for all souls.” ”

“ No, I believe in co-education and in the common social life for both sexes; but with it I should ask that all young people should be taught to respect themselves and each other, and to understand their responsibility to future generations. ”

“ Is it not even a greater thing to be a woman than to be a man?”
“I begin to think so, and I think after this I’ll try to feel that even I am of importance to the world, instead of regretting that I am not a man.” ”

“ It seems to me that girls and boys can be a great help and inspiration to each other. I once had a girl correspondent who wrote most charming letters, simple recitals of her daily life with some of her little moralizings thrown in. Perhaps I would smile at them now, but they surely helped me to have higher ideals and made me have a great reverence for womanhood. ”

“ I can’t fill mother’s place, I know, but I can do what mother can’t, I can give you the man’s view of things, and that is sometimes of great value for a girl to know.”
“Yes,” said Helen, snuggling down in her father’s lap, for they were great friends and she felt his sympathy. “I often wish we could know how things look to other people. I know boys don’t look at matters as girls do, but we can’t always tell just what they do think.”
“That is true,” replied Mr. Wayne, gravely. “I often think that if girls knew just what boys say among themselves it would make them more careful of their conduct. ”

“ Health, and honesty, and virtue, all good traits, are so constantly transmitted that we do not think of their coming through heredity, just as we do not think of all order and stability coming through gravity; but when undesirable traits are inherited we complain of the law, just as we complain when we are hurt through the law of gravitation. ”

“ I wonder now, dear, if you are not beginning to see the greatness of woman’s work. In her own vigor she creates health for the future of the nation. So you see whether you wear your overshoes or not, may be a question of importance to the race. ”

“ Helen was silent a moment and then asked, “Don’t you think the law of heredity a very cruel law? It doesn’t seem fair that children should be punished for the sins of their parents.”
“God’s laws are never cruel, dear. They are always made for our good, and they will be for our good, if we use them rightly. Harry Severn fell yesterday from a scaffold and broke his leg because of the law of gravitation. ”

“ If an ovum starts from the ovary and is not hindered, it will pass on through the uterus and the vagina into the world, and that is the end of it; but if, when the ovum starts from the ovary to make its way through the tube, the spermatozoa are deposited here at the mouth of the uterus, they will find their way up into the cavity, and if one meets an ovum and enters into it, a new life is begun. The ovum will now fasten itself to the walls of the uterus and grow into the little child. ”

“ In this way has grown up the double moral standard, the pure woman holding herself to the strictest morality, and men imagining themselves not so sternly held to the narrow path of absolute purity.
“Women are not now slaves, bought as wives and valued for their personal charms alone. They have intellectual power and moral force and social influence, and they can, if they will, create the single moral standard,—that is, the one high ideal for both men and women.”
“O, father, do you think girls have as much power as that? ”

“ We want to be good, we want to treat all women with respect; yet, when you pretty pink-and-white creatures smile and smirk and set us on fire, then you say we are bad, we are not gentlemen. Maybe not. ”

“ When girls are so demonstrative, when they claim to stand to each other as man and woman, you may feel assured that the relation is unnatural and that the drain upon the nervous system is very great. I once knew a girl who actually destroyed the health of a number of girls in a school by such demonstrative friendships. She always had one devoted friend who could not live without her. ”

“ God has entrusted mothers with life’s grandest work, the moulding of humanity in its plastic stage. You have done clay modelling in school, and you know that when the clay is fresh and 28 moist you can make of it almost anything you will, but when it has hardened it is past remodelling. It is just the same with humanity. In babyhood the mind is plastic; when one has grown to maturity, it is hard and unyielding. ”

“ All who took 54 prizes for essays wore no corsets; five girls were class-day orators, and four of these wore no corsets; five had not missed a day in four years, and one had not missed a day in six years. That speaks pretty loudly in favor of doing without corsets, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, indeed; but some of the girls care more for looks than for class honors. They say a girl looks so queer without a corset.”
“That is because we have set up false standards of beauty. If we examine the finest statuary of all ages, we shall not find a single figure that has been accustomed to tight clothing. ”

“ Indeed, the Bible tells us that good is transmitted in greater degree than evil. The third commandment gives us the law of heredity: ‘For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth 76 generation of them that hate me and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.’ That does not mean thousands of individuals, but, as the revised version gives it, ‘thousands of generations.’ So you see what encouragement this law gives us. The evil in us is to be transient, the good everlasting. ”

“ It is while you are girls that you are forming your own character, and at the same time you are helping to form the character of the generations to come. You are of far more value to the nation now, while you are young and can make of yourselves almost anything you please, than you will be when you are old and your habits are fixed. If girls all lived nobly and exacted noble conduct 18 of all their associates, boys as well as girls, it would not take long to settle all questions of reform. Young men will be what young women ask them to be, and that, you see, makes girls of great importance. ”

“ Certainly I am not to blame.”
“Many people excuse themselves for their faults in just that way; but that is to give evil greater power than good, and we don’t believe in that, you know. Each one has the power to make himself over, and in the process he may change the direction of the inheritance of his children.” ”

“ One can live without feet, but one could not live without heart and lungs and other vital organs, and can only half live when these organs are cramped and crowded together so they cannot work properly. If we were all truly artistic we would be pained at the sight of the small waist, for we should know that it was procured at the expense of the vital organs. ”

“ Bid them be brave;—they will be brave for you; bid them be cowards, and how noble soever they be, they will quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you; mock at their counsels and they will be fools for you, such, and so absolute is your rule over them.’ Isn’t 37 that a wonderful power that is in woman’s hands? ”

“ I have a friend who’d be glad to come.’ Then I broke in—‘No, I never walk by the lake.’ Then he bowed and left, and Belle said, ‘O, you little goose! Why did you say you didn’t walk by the lake? He’d have brought his friend and we’d have had such a good time. Ten to one he’ll bring flowers or candy, and we could take a boat ride. You were foolish.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to walk with young men, especially if I don’t know them.’ And she laughed and said, ‘O, you’ll get over that when you’re older and learn what fun it is. My, he’s a gentleman! ”

“ Girls are more ignorant than young men, because, as a rule, they have been taught less. The young men know more, but in all probability they have not learned from sources that are pure. The young girl does not understand that her coquettish glances and tossings of the head and simperings are so many intuitive efforts to awaken that sort of magnetic thrill in the young man. ”

“ None of us can see our future, but if we are wise we will prepare for the probabilities. At your age I could not be sure that I would ever be a mother, and now I have several children to call forth every power that I possess through inheritance or by education. ”

“ I am afraid our girls wouldn’t like that,—they’d want to select their own husbands.”
“They could do that after they got out of school.”
“My observation is that the girl who has been shut up away from young men, is the very one who doesn’t know how to act when she comes out of school. She has very romantic ideas, and is quite apt to be misled by a glittering exterior. She is less able to judge wisely or to guide her own conduct judiciously than the girl who, having been educated with boys, has less romantic ideas concerning them. ”

“ It seems to you that any one can take care of a baby. But what is a baby? Not just a helpless little animal, to be fed and clothed and kept warm. A baby is a spirit in the process of development. From the moment of birth it is being educated by everything around it; the very tones of voice used in speaking to it are educating it. It is a great thing to be President of the United States, but that president was once a baby. ”

“ True, woman’s work does not show on the surface so plainly, but she works with more enduring material than does man in creating the world of things. We can see the great works of man’s hands and they impress us with a sense of his power ”