FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 591 



the same. The need of constant watchfulness and improvement in all 

 directions is as great in one place as the other. The town home-maker 

 has the advantage of the reading circle, and the country home-maker has 

 the advantage in the cheapness of good literature, and the rural mail 

 route. She is a wise woman who knows how to choose what will be 

 conducive to her own mental growth, and not endanger the comfort of 

 her home. 



Perhaps some of you are thinking that reading circles and literature 

 have nothing at all t'o do with home-making, but before I am through 

 you will see that it has a great deal to do with it. A home, to be truly 

 a home, need not be an elegant one with many servants, or filled with 

 costly furniture. It should reflect the personality of those who inhabit 

 it. It should be so permeated with their personality, that all who enter 

 should feel it at once. We all know of homes in which a serene and 

 cheerful spirit pervades the very atmosphere, and everything speaks of 

 the ready hand, the artistic eye, and the thoughtful brain that has had 

 the planning and arranging of it all. There is the gracious welcome, 

 the true hospitality, the spirit of refinement and cultivation that have 

 a lasting influence on all that come within its reach. 



When the young wife steps across the threshold of her home she 

 enter?; upon an experience through which she is to prove either her weak- 

 ness or her womanly power, to win victory or suffer defeat. 



Human beings, male and female, can not exercise the full power of 

 their minds in the exclusive contemplation of their own affairs. So in 

 order that the home-maker may not be dwarfed and narrowed by con- 

 tinually contemplating her home affairs, and that she may bring into her 

 home a new brightness and cheer, a deeper sympathy and a broader un- 

 derstanding of the world and its conditions; that world in which her 

 children after a few short years at home and under her immediate care, 

 must go out into the world alone as men and women, she must know^ of 

 other things than cooking and washing, and cleaning. If she does not 

 know the good things, the bad, the wholesome, and the unwh'olesome 

 things the children must meet when away from home, how can she 

 teach them what to avoid and what to seek, or in what direction to use 

 their influence to do the most good. 



The time will never come when right-minded women will be drawn 

 from their homes by wealth, power or politics. Queen Victoria, in her 

 exalted and powerful position, w^as a model home-maker, a true wife, 

 and a devoted mother. Mrs. Cyrus W. Field, v/ife of the great financier, 

 supervised everything in her own home from the cleaning to the mar- 

 keting, as do the women of the Vanderbilt, Gould and many other fami- 

 lies. 



The nations which lead the world have the freest women. The wo- 

 men of England and America have not lost their htomes, and nowhere is 

 the home better loved, or family life cleaner and higher. In proportion to 

 the freedom of the women is the nation's growth. 



It is claimed that higher education has the effect of diminishing the 

 number of marriages, by raising the standard of v/omen. and through 

 the fact that their outlook on life is enlarged. If fewer girls regarded 



