Mary Wood-Allen

“ There is a beauty in a golden wedding that truly celebrates a happy union of half a century. But when life is all untried, when perhaps the two young people know nothing of what is before them, it may be are but little acquainted with each other, and have mistaken the thrill of passion for the steady [271] exaltation of love, then it would seem wiser to make the occasion one of most solemn import, free from glitter and show, and full of that deep meaning which makes the heart stand still in reverence for life's deepest mysteries. ”

“ We have evidence of it in the material world about us, and when we use our reason we are "thinking God's thoughts after Him."
God has the marvelous power of imagination, using that word in its noblest sense. He has the power to conceive something in thought before it actually exists. He must have seen all the glories of the material universe, worlds upon worlds circling through space, moon and stars, the beauty of forest and stream, of tinted flower and iridescent insect wing before they were brought into being, and He had the power to create them. ”

“ We appreciate the housewife's culinary creation; we admire the tasteful creation of the dressmaker; we wonder at the glorious creation of artist or musician; perhaps we even envy them. But food and clothing pass away and are forgotten. Even the grand symphony, the beautiful picture, the graceful statue, may [89] pass into oblivion, and man forget that they ever existed.
But humanity is endowed with creative powers that are not transient. The brains builded by the individual are transmitted to his posterity from generation to generation. ”

“ I know a woman who says that there should never be marriage where there are unpleasant peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, or even mannerisms; but should we act on that principle, few would marry. Love is sometimes said to be blind in the days of wooing, but wearing magnifying glasses after wedlock. True love is never blind, but he is capable of judging of true relative values, and will count as naught the slight defect when measured by the overwhelming perfection. Who has not seen men devoted to wives who were homely or peculiar, but who were genuinely pure and true? ”

“ What more worthy of our devout study? In this reverent attitude of mind let us study this gift of creative power, learning what we may of its scope and purpose and the material organs through which it works.
In your study of physiology in school you took up the organs of individual life. You studied the framework of the body, its machinery, its internal vital mechanism. You studied about digestion, nutrition, respiration, elimination, and in this you learned nothing of physical differences between individuals. ”

“ Man has this wonderful gift of imagination. The inventor sees the machine in his thought before he attempts to build it. The poet has the germ of his poem in mind, even the rhythm and rhyme, before he puts it on paper. To the imagination of the artist the [88] canvas glows with color before his brush has touched it. The sculptor, looking at the rough block of marble, sees within it the imprisoned shape of beauty which his genius shall liberate to delight the world. The musician hears, singing through his brain, the marvelous harmonies which, put upon paper, shall entrance all hearers. ”

“ If a lover would be disenchanted to see the room from which his blooming, beauteous adored one had departed, bearing the marks of carelessness and disorder, with soiled clothing, unmade bed, shoes, hose and dresses all in tumbled heaps on chairs and floor, remember that the marriage ceremony does not make such a room more attractive to the husband, who must not only see but share its discomforts. ”

“ What made such a mere child imagine a beau to be an essential agent of a girl's life? Because she had been taught by the jests and suggestions of her elders that every boy was a possible lover, and, young as she was, that thought was woven into her very life. It is pitiable to see how early the mind of the child is tainted by sentimentality, by the unwise suggestions of older friends. ”

“ In fact there seems to me more indelicacy and more danger from long evenings spent in murmuring ardent protestations of love and indulging in embraces and endearments than in a frank, serious conversation on the realities and responsibilities of marriage, an exchange of earnest thoughts, voiced in chaste, well-chosen language—a conversation which by its very solemnity is lifted out of the realm of sense-pleasure into the dignified domain of science and morality. ”

“ No doubt you will think that some of this advice should be given to young men as well as to young women, and I think so too, and were I talking to your lover I could say many warning words; but just now I am telling you things that he does not need to hear, and I do not need to tell you what, if I had the chance, I would say to him. You are to train yourself and not him, and yet I would not have you ignorant of your power over him in developing in him all that is noblest and best. You should hold him ever to his highest ideals. ”

“ There is no need of words, of caresses, even of deeds. We are both busy women. Our daily cares absorb us, yet we [179] know that we are friends, and in the great hereafter we hope to find a place where we may pause and look into each other's faces and enjoy an interchange of thought. But now other interests than self-seeking claim us. We work on, cheered by the thought that time cannot alienate us, for true love is eternal.
The charm of a true friendship is that it does not make demands. ”

“ They will not make such excuses for themselves for lapses from virtue, but they imbibe the idea that men are not to be held to an absolute standard of purity, and so think it delicate to shut their eyes to the derelictions of young men. This chapter of human life is a sorrowful one to read, but to heed its warnings would save many a girl from sorrow, many a wife from heartache. ”

“ Every normal function of the body is attended with a pleasurable sensation. We enjoy eating, seeing, walking. Odors bring sensations which are agreeable, the sense of touch may give pleasure, and as we enjoy these sensations in fact, so we may enjoy them in memory or in imagination. We can recall the beauty of the rose, the perfume of the mignonette, the flavor of the orange, or we can imagine new combinations of these delights. We feel joy or grief [153] through reading vivid descriptions, or we can ourselves create imaginary scenes in which we are actors, who suffer or enjoy. ”

“ In this fashion a girl may treat a young man as a brother. She may tell him his faults in all kindness. She may listen to his dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and encourage with approval, incite by gentle sarcasm, or enliven by kindly sportiveness; but her person is her own, and he should be made to feel that beyond these bounds he may not pass. Such friendship may endure vicissitude, or separation, and be through life a source of truest inspiration. To be such a friend to a noble man is a worthy ambition. ”

“ You cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth—that the soul's armor is never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails. ”

“ It is through sex that the "desolate of the earth are set in families," and love and generosity have sway instead of selfishness. For this reason we ought to regard sex with reverent thought, to hold it sacred to the highest purposes, to speak of it ever with purest delicacy, and never with jesting or prurient smiles. I do not want you to center your thought on the physical facts of sex, but I would like to have you feel that womanhood, which is the mental, moral and physical [117] expression of sex, is a glorious, divine gift, to be received with solemn thankfulness. ”

“ You cannot measure your value to the human race until you begin to think that the young people of to-day are creating the condition of the world in fifty or one hundred years to come; that you, through your physical health, or lack of it, are to become a source of strength or weakness in future years, if you are a mother. It is all right that young women should think of marriage and motherhood, provided they think of it in the right way. ”

“ Instead, then, of looking at sex as circumscribed, and perhaps as something low and vulgar, to be thought of and spoken of only with whispers or questionable mirth, we should see that sex is God's divinest gift to humanity, the power through which we come into the nearest likeness to Himself—the function by which we become creators and transmitters of our powers of body, mind, and soul. ”

“ Now is the time to display your tact, to learn how to express an opposing opinion without arousing antagonism, to yield a desire for the sake of a greater love than that of self, to adhere to principle without unpleasant discussion; in short, to be dignified and womanly without pettiness or littleness of any kind. You remember the words of Ruskin, that the woman must be "incorruptibly good, instinctively, infallibly wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation," and that will be the highest development. ”

“ When I see what an influence the awakening of sex has upon the entire body and upon the character, I am led to believe that sex inheres in mind as well. That does not mean that the brain of one sex is either inferior or superior to the other; it means only that they differ; that men and women see things from different standpoints; that they are the two eyes of the race, and the use of both is needed to a clear understanding of any problem of human interest. ”

“ Love, to be worthy the name, must be a superstructure built upon a firm foundation of acquaintance with each other's true qualities. Love is not a balloon, in which two young people may go sailing among the clouds, away from all regions of every-day life. ”

“ Her friendship became a tax because it demanded so much. And, after all, was it true friendship? Was it not love of self, rather than of me? People sometimes imagine that, because they crave love, they are affectionate and unselfish. Is it true? It is rather natural to want to be loved, but it is selfish, and the feeling indulged in to any extent is weakening. To want to be loved means usually to want some one to be a protector, a giver of pleasure, a supplier of wants. To desire to love is nobler, for to love is to give. God so loved the world that he gave. ”

“ I know a young woman who had been self-supporting before her marriage who felt timid about asking her husband for money. So she wore her wedding garments until they were shabby, went without money when her own funds were exhausted, and kept silent for five years, and her husband—a young clergyman—never thought to ask her if she needed anything, never observed her growing shabbiness. When at last she summoned courage to tell him her needs, he was overwhelmed with regret for his own lack of thought and observation, and yet he could not understand why she should hesitate to ask for money. ”

“ What can you decide in regard to this individual young man to whom you think you have given your heart? What is he in his inheritance? What is he in himself? I do not ask that he shall have inherited wealth, for that often proves a young man's ruin, but does he come of an honest, industrious family? Have you just reason to suppose that he will make a fair success of life? ”