THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

441

on their hands when they become of age, and so they must be trained and educated to bear these responsibilities. When I walked up Fifth avenue last Easter, after church, and met the crowd of fashionable people coming from their churches, I thought I had never seen so many bright, healthy looking, handsome women and girls as I saw in half-an-hour there, showing what can be done by proper culture, even amid all the unhealthy influences of city life; and, if such is the case, what might the boys and girls on the farms and in country homes do for themselves? While we are educating the physical, we must not forget the moral.

We have been told that the greatest virtues of the soul are hope, faith and char­ity. These are the higher virtues, but there are lower or more homely virtues, we may say, and we must commence with these, and the greatest of these, I think, are order and cleanliness. All reformers, all workers for the uplifting of the lower classes, have found this the first lesson to be taught. Ruskin says that “ the essence of all vulgarity lies in the want of sensation;” and when we commence to cultivate the senses, refine­ment begins, and refinement is one of the attributes of soul culture, and out of soul culture and soul refinement grows spiritual culture and the Christian graces. So I say that order and neatness should be taught to every child. It should be a part of their school education, as, in many cases, it is not taught at home. I think it is even more necessary to teach it to the boys than to the girls, for, if boys were taught to keep their persons and surroundings clean, we should not have so much filth in public places, waiting-rooms, railroad cars, etc. If boys were taught to take a pail of water to their rooms and bathe themselves before going to bed, after working all day in the field or other dirty work, they would learn to look upon their bodies as something to be kept clean and pure; they would soon desire to have their surroundings cleaner; this would again have its influence upon them, and they would grow morally better and healthier, for, as I have said before, what elevates the body must elevate the soul. You know and I know of boys who have been ruined because the family have thought that any­thing and any place was good enough for the boys, until they thus grew away from refinement of the family circle, where they felt awkward and out of place, and sought more congenial companionship. Did you ever sit down to a breakfast-table where the linen was spotless, the coffee fragrant, the dishes nicely arranged, and other things in keeping? If you have, it has been in a refined family, for where artistic virtue has been cultivated you may be sure that others have been, for they are seldom found singly, and, moreover, I think we can usually tell, when we see the head of a house, even for a few minutes, what kind of a housekeeper she is, and what kind of a table she sets.

No one who has cultivated the virtues of cleanliness, the senses to admire music and other arts, the mind to refined and beautiful thoughts, would ever put before her­self, or anyone else, a disorderly table and ill-cooked food. In a very weak, and I think incorrect, article, which appeared in one of our leading magazines, the writer said: “We can get along without learned women, but we can not get along without wives and mothers.” Now, I want to know if there is any vocation that calls for more learning than that of wives and mothers, particularly mothers What we want is more learned women among the mothers; for much of the neglect of which I have spoken is due to ignorance, and ignorance on most vital subjects. What we want are clubs, as widespread as the Chautauqua reading-clubs, devoted to subjects of physical and moral interest. There are some such clubs, called the “Young Mother’s Clubs.” I hope they may become numerous, more numerous than the ladies’ whist clubs. There has been a great deal said about higher education unfitting a woman for her home duties. This is a mistake, for I tell you it is a positive fact that the best housekeep­ers and the best cooks are educated women; the poorest cooks and poorest house­keepers I have met have been women that knew nothing else; brought nothing from outside; and, having nothing else to do, it was a marvel that they did not learn how to do the one thing well. There is no broader sphere or higher sphere than woman’s sphere, for its center is the hearthstone, its circumference eternity; but in some cases