Sisterhood

“ A boy who's only forty should be full of romp and mirth,
But I (because I'm sisterless) am the oldest man on earth!
Had I a little sister—oh, how happy I should be!
I'd never let her cast her eyes on any chap but me;
I'd love her and I'd cherish her for better and for worse—
I'd buy her gowns and bonnets, and sing her praise in verse;
And—yes, what's more and vastly more—I tell you what I'd do:
I'd let her make her wondrous cake, and I would eat it, too!
I have a high opinion of the sisters, as you see—
Another fellow's sister is so very dear to me! ”

“ Come to thy sister—come to thy wife—
Come to thy wife, oh thou who makest the heart to rest.
I, thy sister, born of thy mother, go about to every temple of thine,
Yet thou comest not forth to me:
Gods, and men before the face of the gods, are weeping for thee at the same time, when they behold me!
Lo, I invoke thee with wailing that reacheth high as heaven,—
Yet thou hearest not my voice. Lo I, thy sister, I love thee more than all the earth—
And thou lovest not another as thou dost thy sister—
Surely thou lovest not another as thou dost thy sister! ”

“ If only we cultivate that love, we shall be thrice blessed. In the name of our Purity Association, cultivate that habit of looking upon, of regarding, of respecting every woman as mother or sister. How shocking, blasting, killing it is that we should deny to, we should withhold from, another darling child of our Divine Mother the birthright, the Heaven-granted prerogative, to be considered a sister, If we refuse her that, we rob her of her noblest privilege in this world. ”

“ He had come ultimately to regard her as a sister, to whom he had acted in all good faith the strong, reliant, reliable, affectionate, unemotional elder brother—who could have kissed her, and thought no more of that kiss, nor prepared his lips for kisses to come. And now ... what was he going to make of her next? ... of himself? Who but a brother can act the brother? Who but a father—even though he doddle benevolently on his legs and have respectable white hairs—can be sure of acting the father to any daughter not his own? ”

“ But not alone This day of joy to each restores a brother; It brings a sister! Wonderstruck you gaze! Yet now the truth, in silence guarded long, Bursts from my soul. Attend! I have a daughter! A sister lives, ordained by heaven to bind ye With ties unknown before. DON CAESAR. We have a sister! What hast thou said, my mother? never told Her being till this hour! DON MANUEL. In childhood's years, Oft of a sister we have heard, untimely Snatched in her cradle by remorseless death; So ran the tale. ISABELLA. She lives! ”

“ What inestimable power, can a wise and virtuous Sister exert. Has she a brother prone to waywardness and passion? Her words may restrain his wanderings, her example subdue his anger. It can hardly fail, that a daily influence, mild, gentle, Christian in its character, will produce no effect on so near a relative. Do the brothers incline to seek their recreations abroad? Are the charms of merriment, of sensuality, or of questionable excitements and pleasures, stealing on the heart, and estranging it from God and duty, from purity and heaven? ”

“ While one is the tale of an elder sister's affection, and of the brother's self-sacrifice for the tender care of her during periods of nature's saddest affliction, the other tells how a younger sister consecrated her life to her brother's greatest good, relinquishing for herself everything outside him in such a way that she became absorbed in his own existence. ”

“ Don't you see that they must all be his children, and so all sisters, and that he is your Father, too, who makes the mayflowers bloom, and the violets cover the hills, and turns the white blossoms into black, sweet berries in the autumn? It is your dear and kind Father who does all this for his children. He has very many children; some of them live in houses and some in tents, some in little huts and some under the trees, in the warm countries and in the cold. And he loves them all; they are his children, and they are brothers and sisters. Shall they not love each other? ”

“ And a third spoke and said, "Thou hast spoken truly, yet let it be known also to our English sister, that our women and girls rejoice greatly when they have many brothers, and it is their pride and delight to hear their friends say, 'Happy art thou, O sister of seven men; may they soon be married, and may you live to see their children's children!' And it is said that a woman sometimes regards the life of her brother as more precious than her own, or than that of her husband, or her son. ”

“ You know not what a hell sisters can make for one another, if they cherish such tempers. You know not how bitterness and harshness may grow among you to a dreadful habit; how you may become tormenting spirits to each other, and embitter each others' lives. And it could be so different! Sisters might be like good angels the one to the other, and make the paternal home like a heaven upon earth! I have seen both the one and the other in families: a greater contrast is not to be found on earth. Ah, think, think only that every day, nay, every hour, you are working to shape the future. ”

“ Were the public mind deeply impressed with the truth we have labored to establish, it would tend much to preserve the purity of domestic life; render the intercourse of a wife's sister in her family, at all times and in all circumstances, easy and pleasant, free from suspicion and embarrassment; and preserve her and her brother-in-law from the temptations to which human nature, in its present fallen condition, is too liable. It would make a sister's house like that of an own brother. ”

“ Approaching thus her womanhood, a girl having brothers to whom she is thus bound by the sanctities of the home life, has their future weal in no small measure within her power.
Unusual talent, if not genius, is frequently found to have distinguished various members of a family. The reason is not always to be found in heredity. Where one has early shown an aptitude for a particular pursuit, or become absorbed in a certain mental recreation, a brother or a sister, animated in the first place by love, has become interested in the other's work. From sympathy they pass to mutual labour. ”

“ A certain chivalry characterizes the attitude of the brother toward the sister, a certain motherliness that of the sister toward the brother. The relation may be and often is a very beautiful one. The peculiar moral responsibility connected with it is that the sister is usually the first woman whom the brother knows at all intimately and as an equal, and that his notions of womanhood are largely influenced by the traits which he sees in her, while the brother is usually the first man whom the sister knows as a companion, and her ideas of men are colored by what she sees in him. ”

“ How many are there who, in the changes of mature years, have found a sister's love their ready and adequate resource! With what a sense of security is confidence reposed in a good sister, and with what assurance that it will be uprightly and considerately given is her counsel sought! How intimate is the friendship of such a brother and sister not widely separated in age from one another! ”

“ The childhood's playmate feeds the brother's love, and becomes, even then, his "blessing." The very thought of the absent sister is like a "flash of light" cheering the loneliness of college chambers. ”

“ Then she sat down and said to me, "O my sister, I have a brother, who is handsomer than I; and he saw thee at certain festivals and assemblies and fell passionately in love with thee, for that thou art possessed of beauty and grace beyond thy share. He heard that thou wast thine own mistress, even as he also is the head of his family, and wished to make thine acquaintance; wherefore he used this device to bring thee in company with me; for he desires to marry thee according to the law of God and His prophet, and there is no shame in what is lawful." ”

“ A loving sister might be seen with her arms around a brother's neck, reminding him of her love and attachment, and her grief and sorrow at parting from one with whom she had been associated from childhood's days, upon whom she had leaned for protection, and upon whom her fondest hopes for the future rested, and whose face she was, in all probability, gazing upon for the last time. ”

“ As a sister, the uninterrupted flow of her affection, manifested by numberless tokens of love,—not alone to her brother, but to every member of his family,—will ever be recalled by them with emotions of tenderness, respect, and gratitude. ”

“ There was once a blind, crippled, helpless hulk of humanity who had a sister. And such a sister! All the women who ever wrote books, or painted pictures, or spoke or sang to gaping crowds, weren’t worth her little finger. ”

“ One would think her own sister's children were nearer akin to her than her maid's, and she might with more satisfaction have made them her own, if she had so pleased; but (so natural is it for us all to be fond of power) children that she had a right to rule, were more desirable to her than children that she had more reason to love; and, as an early instance of her dominion over the children born in her apartment, she takes a pleasure in giving them names that carry in them nothing but marks of emulation with her sister. ”

“ As in a glass darkly, I have seen what I might feel as child, wife, mother, but I have never really approached the close relations of life. A sister I have truly been to many, — a brother to more, — a fostering nurse to, oh how many! ”

“ The intercourse of brothers and sisters should be marked by the frankness and familiarity befitting their intimate relation; but this certainly does not preclude the exercise of all the little courtesies of life. Young man, be polite to your sister. She is a woman, and all women have claims on you for courteous attentions; and the affection which exists between you adds tenfold to the sacredness of the claims she has upon you, not only for protection, but for the exercise toward her of all the sweet amenities of life. ”

“ Who can tell the thoughts that cluster around the word sister? How ready she is to forgive the foibles of a brother! She never deserts him. In adversity she clings closely to him, and in trial she cheers him. When the bitter voice of reproach is poured in his ears she is ever ready to hush its hard tones, and to turn his attention away from its painful notes. Let him move in pleasant paths, she hangs clusters of flowers about him. ”

“ But there is no rivalship between the sisters—sisters in affection as much as in name—and the children, whose fair heads have sprung up like flowers beside and about them, are like one family in their cordial intercourse. ”

“ A third sister participating of the generous and noble spirit of her brother, but having undergone, in her childhood and youth, restraint and direction, improves her talents [110] by instruction, guides benignity of disposition by prudence, and adorns beauty by apposite accomplishments; she is rewarded for her virtues, by the heart and hand of a man of rank, fortune, and merit; and becomes the sole comfort of her father, in his declining years, bent down by affliction, for the fatal effects of his conduct towards his more favoured children. ”

“ How faithful generally is a sister’s love. Place her by the side of the sick couch, let her have to count over the long dull hours of night, and wait, alone and sleepless, the struggle of the grey dawn into the chamber of suffering—let her be appointed to this ministry for father, mother, sister, or brother, and she feels no weariness, nor owns recollection of self. ”

“ Think of the sisters, living along with a hidden heart-ache, nursing in secret the knowledge, that somewhere in the world were those dear to them, from whom they were shut out by a bar-sinister terribly real, and for whose welfare, with all the generous truth of a sister's feeling, they would barter everything, yet who were in an unending danger! ”

“ But always remember, my brother, that I will never cease to love you as a sister, and that if I cannot compel my heart to love you otherwise, yet no other power, no other feeling can ever lessen or destroy my sisterly affection. ”

“ She preferred the love and companionship of a younger sister to the uncertainty of marriage and the keener joys and splendors of the world. Early in life these sisters mutually resolved to seek nothing further than to live together; nor did either ever feel a regret, or doubt the wisdom of their choice, till, at the end of eight and twenty years, death dissolved their union. ”

“ The first results from the marriage of a woman with the man's blood relatives; the other is the relation in which a man stands to his wife's blood relatives." "To establish the argument under notice we would require a statement to the effect, that being the sister of a man's wife is a bar to marriage, on the principle that two sisters are one flesh. ”

“ Watch over your sister, to protect her from any association whatever with bad young men, to minister to her wants, to help your parents minister to her health, and to love her with a sincere affection, for as long as you live, you will find her devotion unchangeable, through good and evil report. This same sister may be your companion all through your life. Where single life becomes the destiny of both brother and sister this often happens. ”

“ There is an eternity of difference, Fille, between the sister and brother and the husband and wife. The sacredness of isolation is the thing which holds the brother and sister together. The familiarity of—but never mind what it is that so often forces husband and wife apart. It is there, and it breaks out in rebellion as it did with the wife of Jean Jacques Barbille. ”

“ And if her feelings be those of a sister indeed, how must she mourn to see her next of kin pushing back, as far as in her lies, the advance of this good cause, binding those whom the old world had awakened from its sins enough to loose! But courage, sister! All is not yet lost! There is here a faithful band, determined to expiate the crimes that have been committed in the name of liberty. ”