The Dignity of Lowly Duties.
By E. W.
WOMEN particularly are inclined to look at the struggle for subsistence as something that ought not to be; they feel that there is no real worth in it, and so there can be no beauty or dignity. Those teachers who have assumed that this life, rich as it is in promise, and full of possibilities for the great soul, is of no worth and value in itself; that the lesson to be early learned and to be acted upon always is that we are merely pilgrims who lodge here for a night in order that we may go on next day—these teachers have done more to narrow and restrict woman in the exercise of her best powers than all the petty tyranny of which the avowed woman's rights women declaim. I have often thought that if I had time to be a woman with a mission, I would take the wide world for my field, and go up and down helping to convince the tired woman who lies down in her bed at night with the profound consciousness that another day has been frittered away in doing things without relation to eternal affairs, but which for the comfort and well-being of her family were required, that in her being the patient mother of her children, and the good housewife, she has done that which for her is the best thing to do. If this could be done, we should not so often hear women whose work is that of doing the near duties which are so plainly theirs, that, unless willfully blind, they cannot overlook them, say, "Oh, if I could only do something that amounts to something!" One who can help us to see that this doing the work, simple and common though it appear, which really lies at the root of all things, and without which life is impossible, and who shall at the same time teach us to simplify our task, so that while living we may also live nobly, will be a great benefactor to the race. Then shall we see calm-browed women performing lowly duties with satisfaction instead of unhappiness.—E. W., in New York Evening Post.