“O, father, do you think girls have as much power as that? It always seems to me as if girls might be of value when they are grown up, but that while we are girls we can’t do much to make the world better.”
“That is the mistake girls generally make, when in fact the most important time of life is youth. It is while you are girls that you are forming your own character, and at the same time you are helping to form the character of the generations to come. You are of far more value to the nation now, while you are young and can make of yourselves almost anything you please, than you will be when you are old and your habits are fixed. If girls all lived nobly and exacted noble conduct 18 of all their associates, boys as well as girls, it would not take long to settle all questions of reform. Young men will be what young women ask them to be, and that, you see, makes girls of great importance. Do you remember what we were reading in Sesame and Lilies the other day about woman’s queenly power? Get the book and let us read it again.”
Helen brought the book, and, finding the place, read:
“Woman’s power is for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision. Her great function is Praise.
“There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it, not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight. They will fight for any cause or none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with you.
“Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers: queens to your husbands and sons: queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself and will forever bow before the myrtle crown and the stainless sceptre of womanhood.”
Helen leaned her head on her father’s shoulder 19 in silence. Then she said, softly: “It makes me almost afraid to become a woman.”
Mr. Wayne kissed his daughter tenderly, saying: “It is worthy your highest ambition to be a noble woman. I would be glad to see you such an one as is pictured in Lowell’s poem of Irene. Would you like to read it to me?”
Helen took the book from her father’s hand and read.