can any
woman make diviner, higher, better? From such homes go forth all
heroisms, all inspirations, all great deeds. Such mothers and such
homes have made the heroes and martyrs, faithful unto death, who have
given their precious lives to us during these three years of our
agony!

Homes are the work of art peculiar to the genius of woman. Man helps
in this work, but woman leads; the hive is always in confusion without
the queen bee. But what a woman must she be who does this work
perfectly! She comprehends all, she balances and arranges all; all
different tastes and temperaments find in her their rest, and she can
unite at one hearthstone the most discordant elements. In her is
order, yet an order ever veiled and concealed by indulgence. None are
checked, reproved, abridged of privileges by her love of system; for
she knows that order was made for the family, and not the family for
order. Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or
overlook. What the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody
in her sphere breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in
her sunshine to put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations
and movements that none sees that it is she who holds all things in
harmony; only, alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear
disordered, inharmonious, neglected! All these threads have been
smilingly held in her weak hand. Alas, if that is no longer there!

Can any woman be such a housekeeper without inspiration? No. In the
words of the old church service, "her soul must ever have affiance in
God." The New Jerusalem of a perfect home cometh down from God out of
heaven. But to make such a home is ambition high and worthy enough for
any woman, be she what she may.

One thing more. Right on the threshold of all perfection lies the
cross to be taken up. No one can go over or around that cross in
science or in art. Without labor and self-denial neither Raphael nor
Michel Angelo nor Newton was made perfect. Nor can man or woman
create a true home who is not willing in the outset to embrace life
heroically to encounter labor and sacrifice. Only to such shall this
divinest power be given to create on earth that which is the nearest
image of heaven.

IV

THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL

Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader,
there seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we
shall not readily be able to take