Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/274

Rh spoiled in her paternal home. She leaves discipline and severity to the school, to which the child is sent early. And the school does what it can; gives style and grace to the outward being, but leaves the inward very much, probably, as it found it.

Hence, especially in the Slave States, that unrestrained temper and mode of action; that want of a stricter moral law, of a keener conscientious perception with which, and not without reason, the young men of America are reproached, and those disorderly occurrences in private life and in the community at large, which are the consequent results.

Strong, stern women, who would bring up republicans by severity and love—such women as Lycurgus would form to make his republic strong and great—are not to be met with here.

Neither is that Spartan type of physical strength the only necessary. The New World requires another. And if it should become more universal, if woman in the United States of America became that which she ought to be, and exercised that influence which it lies in her power to exercise, on the soul of the child and the man, on social life, on the great interests of the community, then would the United States become also the ideal states of the earth!

Many distinguished and amiable women in North America—Quaker women among these—have presented noble examples to their sex; and many movements in the States have, latterly, shown the dawn of public spirit among women. May it increase and strengthen, and I will venture to say, that the American woman will then stand forward as the earth's most beautiful and most perfect woman.