e can do her good.
_Acting on principle always helps others_: it is the most catching thing
in the world, whereas our words and our personal influence do not help
them one bit, unless God is speaking through us, and making us His
instruments, which He will not do if we are behaving wrongly.

"_She looketh well to the ways of her household_." She gives her servants
full work, and insists on its being done, at the right time and in the
right way, but she is careful never to overwork them, and to remember that
servants have rights and feelings; she is not only kind, but
_considerate_, which involves far more sympathy and thought.

"_She eateth not the bread of idleness_." But she never does her servants'
work, or spoils them. Of course, if she is very poor, and has few
servants, she will lend a helping hand, but she will be wise in her
industry, and understand that riches are a call, not to idleness, but to
another kind of work--overseeing and directing, but not doing. "One good
head is worth a hundred good hands," but the head must know how things
should be done, and therefore the Virtuous Woman will make it a point of
conscience to know how to cook, and equally a point of conscience not to
do it, if she has servants who ought to see to it.

"_Her children shall rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and
he praiseth her_." My Virtuous Woman may never marry, but she will be a
mother in Israel in spite of that. Every woman finds scope for
motherliness if it is in her; one way or another she will find children
looking to her for love and help, and she must fit herself to educate
those children, for this is a woman's main duty in life; she should never
be satisfied till she has earned a right to the compliment which Steele
paid his wife--that "to know her was a liberal education," until

"Men at her side
Grow nobler, girls purer, and, through the whole town,
The children are gladder that pull at her gown."

"_A woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised_." I may seem to
have made my last words to you consist of merely worldly-wise counsels,
and to have left out of sight "the one thing needful," but in many other
Scripture lessons we have spoken of that Prayer, and Bible reading, that
"going in the strength of the Lord God," which is the only source of
strength for man or woman.

I have tried to give a few practical counsels for everyday life,
believing, as I do firml