Lie hearts, which ere they found the least release
Had lost all memory of the blessing ‘peace;’
Hearts, whose long struggle through unpitied years
None saw but He who marks the mourner’s tears;
The obscurely noble! Who evaded not
The woe which He had willed should be their lot,
But nerved themselves to bear.”
Yes man is often conquered by his calamities, but woman conquers her trials and troubles. The former cannot bear a tithe of what the latter endures without manifesting a hundred times as much impatience. Woman suffers, and suffers well. There are more heroines than heroes in the world.
CAUTION.
Woman is more thoughtful and provident than man. She guards more carefully against catastrophes, and practices assiduously the motto, “Sure bind, sure find.” Animals which are very defenceless are endowed with the acutest senses, and some are said even to sleep with their eyes open; and if, as poets have sung, heaven intended that woman should be not only a “ministering,” but a guardian angel to man, then her timidity, by the watchfulness it induces, especially qualifies her for her post. This may account for that prophetic character which has been particularly attributed to females. Most of the heathen oracles employed priestesses rather than priests; and, as all error is the counterfeit of truth, even “old wives’ prognostications” are only an abuse and exaggeration of that foresight which the timidity and caution of woman prompt her to exercise.