Then the good lady would act as amanuensis for some poor fellow who had an armless sleeve, and write down for loving eyes and heavy hearts in some distant village the same old soldier's story, told a thousand times by a thousand firesides, but always more charming than any story in the Arabian Nights,—how, on that great day, he stood with his company on a hillside, and saw the long line of the enemy come rolling across the valley; how, when, the cannon opened on them, he could see the rough, ragged gaps opening in the line; how they closed up and moved on; how this friend fell on one side, and poor Jimmy ——— on the other; and then he felt a general crash, and a burning pain, and the musket dropped out of his hand; then the ambulance and the amputation, and what the surgeon said about his pluck; and then the weakness, and the pain, and the hunger; and how much better he was now; and how kind the ladies had been to him.
Such offices as these lift woman above the plane of earthly experience and place her a little lower than the angels. Only she can fill the measure of such duties, and only she does fill them.
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Among the deities of the Eastern Pantheon, the god representing the destroyer is embodied under the form of a man, while the preserver is symbolized under the form of a woman. This is an adaptation in Polytheism of a great and true idea. Woman is a preserver. Her's is the conservative influence of society. It is from man that the destructive forces that shake the social organization emanate. He wars on his kind and the earth shakes under the tread of his armies. He organizes those mighty revolutionary movements which pull down the fabric of states. He is restless, aggressive, warlike. But it is woman's province to keep. Her mission is peace.
A party of soldiers passing through the western wilds, sees in the distance a body of horsemen approaching. Cocking their rifles and putting themselves in a defensive attitude, they prepare for battle. But when they see that there are women among the riders who are galloping towards them, they relax their line and restore their rifles to their shoulders. They know there will be no battle, for woman's presence means peace.
Woman is the guardian of our race. In the household she is saving; in the family she is protecting, and everywhere her influence is that which keeps.
It is this characteristic that makes her presence on the frontier so essential to a successful prosecution of true pioneer enterprises. The man's work is one of destruction and subjugation. He must level the forest, break the soil, and fight all the forces that oppose him in his progress. Woman guards the health and life of the household, hoards the stores of the family, and economizes the surplus strength of her husband, father, or son.
We are speaking now of the sex as it is seen in a new country and in remote settlements. In crowded cities, amid a superabundant wealth, and an idle and luxurious mode of life, we see too often the types of selfish, frivolous, and conventional females such as are hardly known on the border. But even in these, populous districts the same spirit is not unfrequently shown, with important results, in respect to the accumulation of great fortunes.
Some forty years since, a capitalist who now counts his fortune by the tens of millions, informed his wife that if he was only in possession of five thousand dollars, he could derive great gains from a business into which he designed to enter. To his astonishment she immediately brought him a bank book showing a balance of five thousand dollars, the savings of many years, and told him to use it as he thought best. Those hoardings judiciously invested laid the foundation of one of the largest properties owned by a single man upon this continent.
As a conserving agency, the spirit and influence of woman is of course most strongly exerted within the circle of her own family. Here she knits the ties that binds that circle together, and gathers and holds the material and moral resources which make the household what it is. When disaster comes, it is her study to prevent disintegration and keep the home uninjured and unbroken.