Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/415

Rh to the greatness of their vocation, then all is lost; for never was their influence of so much importance as in this land of free-will. See what Horace Mann says of the power of any impulse whatever on the unlimited development of the United States.

Can the home, can the American mother give the life, the power which is required?

I must answer the question with No, they cannot do so in their present state of cultivation. And whatever value we may give to exceptional cases, still it is certain that the Home in the New World, as well as in the Old, has not yet come up to its capabilities, and that woman still stands as hitherto, almost isolated in the home and in social life, with no place in the life of fellow-citizenship, without any higher consciousness of the connection which exists between this and the life of home, or of the connection between moral and religious (or the higher political) questions and social questions and political life; without consciousness of her own vocation, of her responsibility as a citizen of the great Christian Commonwealth. How then can she educate citizens; how can she kindle in the heart of the child a sacred zeal for the well-being of the native land; how so enlighten it that it may bring into exercise the same conscientious integrity, the same lofty piety for the conduct of worldly business and political questions, as within the sacred world of home?

The women of the community of Quakers are the only women who are more generally alive to the consciousness of citizenship; but they are merely a small number.

How the great mass may ascend, and by that means enlighten the whole rising generation; how the home may become the greatest and the most beautiful school of society—life's high-school; of all this I have my own thoughts, but I shall not now give them utterance.