fever-struck hospital and plague-blotched lazaretto in greeting her
as she passes: "Hail! Hail! Queen Vashti!"

II. Again, I want you to consider Vashti the veiled. Had she appeared
before Ahasuerus and his court on that day with her face uncovered she
would have shocked all the delicacies of Oriental society, and the
very men who in their intoxication demanded that she come, in their
sober moments would have despised her. As some flowers seem to thrive
best in the dark lane and in the shadow, and where the sun does not
seem to reach them, so God appoints to most womanly natures a retiring
and unobtrusive spirit.

God once in awhile does call an Isabella to a throne, or a Miriam to
strike the timbrel at the front of a host, or a Marie Antoinette to
quell a French mob, or a Deborah to stand at the front of an armed
battalion, crying out, "Up! Up! This is the day in which the Lord will
deliver Sisera into thy hands." And when the women are called to such
out-door work and to such heroic positions, God prepares them for it;
and they have iron in their soul, and lightnings in their eye, and
whirlwinds in their breath, and the borrowed strength of the Lord
Omnipotent in their right arm. They walk through furnaces as though
they were hedges of wild-flowers, and cross seas as though they were
shimmering sapphire; and all the harpies of hell down to their dungeon
at the stamp of womanly indignation.

But these are the exceptions. Generally, Dorcas would rather make a
garment for the poor boy; Rebecca would rather fill the trough for the
camels; Hannah would rather make a coat for Samuel; the Hebrew maid
would rather give a prescription for Naaman's leprosy; the woman of
Sarepta would rather gather a few sticks to cook a meal for famished
Elijah; Phebe would rather carry a letter for the inspired apostle;
Mother Lois would rather educate Timothy in the Scriptures. When I see
a woman going about her daily duty, with cheerful dignity presiding at
the table, with kind and gentle, but firm discipline presiding in the
nursery, going out into the world without any blast of trumpets,
following in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good--I say:
"This is Vashti with a veil on."

But when I see a woman of unblushing boldness, loud-voiced, with a
tongue of infinite clitter-clatter, with arrogant look, passing
through the streets with the step of a walking-beam, gayly arrayed in
a very hurricane of millinery, I cry out: "Vashti