Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/272

Rh life. The best and the noblest men of America have every one of them, with Washington at their head, been brought up by pious mothers, in noble and moral homes.

Probably that which most distinguishes the home of the New World from that of the Old, is the dominant sway which is assigned in it to woman. The rule of the American man is to allow the wife to establish the laws of home. He bows himself willingly to her sceptre, partly from affection, partly from the conviction that it is best and most just that it should be so, and from chivalric politeness to the sex; for the American believes that a something divine, a something of a higher and more refined nature, abides in woman. He loves to listen to it and to yield to it in all the questions of the inner life. He loves to place his partner in life higher than himself.

She is left to the free development of her world and her own being within the home, seldom contradicted, never compelled, is generally true to her nobler nature, and stands forth gentle, domestic, affectionate, and god-fearing. One of the most striking features in American women is their religious strength. Many American women during the earliest periods of their wars with the Indians, like the mother of the Maccabees, strengthened their children under their martyrdom, admonishing them to hold fast by their God; many do the same at the present day during severe trials of sickness or misfortune. And from the Eastern sea to the Mississippi, from the Northern Minnesota to the tropics, throughout the Western country; have I seen nothing more worthy of love, nothing more near to perfection, than the motherly woman.

Neither have I ever seen anywhere on the earth a being of more dew-like freshness, more beautiful, primevally vital life than the young girl of America.

But beyond this group of beautiful womanhood, I am