" You know she was cold toward her lover, and when asked
why, she replied she was perfectly willing to receive his compliments
and devotion, as was her right; but that, just before he came to pay
his regards, she had overheard him roughly rating a young woman who
had not been quite prompt with his cravats, and she thought what a
simple change of place might have caused, and said, "I was determined
not to accept any fine speeches to the compromise of that sex the
belonging to which was, after all, my strongest claim and title to
them."
Let us remember that womanliness is in all the motherliness we see
in our mothers; that it is in all the sacrifices and noble deeds of
silent women, as well as in those of celebrated women, like Elizabeth
Fry or Mrs. Browning; that it is in the acts of all those who make
the ordinary home "like the shadow of a rock in a weary land," and
a "light as of a Pharos in the stormy sea." If we are impressed with
the remembrance that womanliness is in such and such characters, we
shall try harder to imitate them; we shall be more thankful we are
women, and more grateful that it belongs to us especially to impart
what man lacks, and what he must depend on us to supply.
Here, again, I want to emphasize the fact that womanliness does not
require a girl to abandon merriment, vigorous exercise of the body,
or brain, or heart, freedom in sports, and "a jolly good time.
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