contribute her full share toward purifying and
brightening the social atmosphere about her, in accordance with the
spirit of true Christian civilization, such is one great and essential
part of woman's work in life. It is a work more especially her own.
Man, without his helpmeet, can do but little here. His faculties are
absorbed by other tasks, not more important, but more engrossing and
essentially different. The finer tact, the more graceful manner, the
quicker wit, the more tender conscience, are all needed here. Every
woman in the country has her own share of this work to do. Each
individual woman is responsible for the right use of all her own social
influences, whether for good or for evil.

To keep up the standard of female purity becomes emphatically one of
the most stringent duties of every Christian woman. For her own sake,
for the sake of all she loves, for the sake of her country, for the
service of Christ and His Church, she is bound to uphold this standard
at a high point--a point entirely above suspicion. This task is of
importance incalculable. But, owing to the frivolity of some women, and
the very loose ideas of many men, it is no easy task. Undoubtedly, the
very great majority of women are born modest at heart. Their nature is
by many degrees less coarse than that of man. And their conscience is
more tender. But there is one temptation to which they too often yield.
With them the great dangers are vanity and the thirst for admiration,
which often become a sort of diseased excitement--what drinking or
gambling is to men. Here is the weak point. Yielding chiefly to this
temptation, scores of women are falling every day. Vanity leads them to
wear the extravagant, the flashy, the immodest, the unhealthy dress, to
dance the immodest dance, to adopt the alluring manner, to carry
flirting to extremes. Vanity leads them, in short, to forget true
self-respect, to enjoy the very doubtful compliment of a miserably
cheap admiration. They become impatient of the least appearance of
neglect or indifference, they become eager in pursuit of attention,
while men always attribute that pursuit to motives of the coarsest
kind. It is generally vanity alone which leads a married woman to
receive the first disgraceful flattery of dissolute men. Probably nine
out of ten of those American women who have trifled with honor and
reputation, whose names are spoken with the sneer of contempt, have
been led on, step by step, in th