If she reads Greek as readily as she does her mother tongue, you may rest assured she will not mention Homer in ordinary conversation, for a cultivated woman readily recognises the fitness of things, and accords a due deference to the tastes of others. She has her club and her friends, as do the gentlemen of her acquaintance, but her children are not neglected from the fact that she sometimes thinks of other things. She is a helpmeet to her husband, and not a plaything, or a slave. If duty calls her to the kitchen, she goes cheerfully, and, moreover, the cook will not dread to see her coming; or if that important person be absent, the table will be supplied with just as good bread, and just as delicate pastry, as if the lady of the house did not understand the chemicals of their composition.
If trouble comes, she bears it bravely, for the cultured woman has a philosophy which is equal to any emergency, and she does the best she can on all occasions.
If her husband leaves her penniless, she will, if possible, clothe her children with her pen, but if her literary wares are a drug on the market, she will turn bravely to other fields, and find her daily bread made sweet by thankfulness. She does not hesitate to hold out her hands to help a fellow-creature, either man or woman, for she is in all things womanly—a wife to her husband and a mother to her children in the truest sense of the words.
Her knowledge of the classics does not interfere with the making of dainty draperies for her home, and though she may be appointed to read a paper before her club on some scholarly theme, she will listen just as patiently to tales of trouble from childish lips, and will tie up little cut fingers just as sympathetically as her neighbour who folds her arms and who broadly hints that “wimmen’s spear is to hum!”
Whether the literary woman be robed in silk and sealskin, or whether she rejoices in the possession of only one best gown, she may, nevertheless, be contented and happy.
Whether she lives in a modest cottage, or in a fashionable home, she may be the same sweet woman, with cheerful face and pleasant voice—with a broad human sympathy which makes her whole life glad.
Be she princess, or Cinderella, she may be still her husband’s confidant and cherished friend, to whom he may confide his business troubles and perplexities, certain always of her tender consolation and ready sympathy. She may be quick and versatile, doing well whatever she does at all, for her creed declares that “whatever is honest is honourable.”
She glories in her womanhood and has no sympathy with anything which tends to degrade it.
All hail to the woman of the twentieth century; let fin de siècle stand for all that is best and noblest in womanhood: for liberty, equality, and fraternity; for right, truth, and justice.