Do it, however humble, as though it were the grandest thing you ever expected to do.

A servant girl, in making application to the Deacons for church-membership, was asked, "What evidence have you that you are converted?" "Because I now sweep under the mats." Conscientious work builds character. Faithful work is sincere worship.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

HY is the number of women who occupy

WHY

high official positions less to-day than ever before? Why is it that, as civilization advances, the impression deepens on the popular mind that political position is not woman's truest and noblest mission?

It certainly is not that a lighter estimate is placed upon woman's ability and force of character than before, but because of the development of our own being, the true spheres of the sexes are better defined, it is found that these spheres are worthy of boundless capacities and the highest ambition of both sexes.

Man's sphere, by his more robust constitution, is designed by Providence to be the more public one; that of woman by her more refined organiza

tion, the more private, but none the less honorable, or requiring less brains.

The world's history plainly shows that God never called woman out of her sphere except on occasions of signal exigencies, when men were so abased that they were not to be found equal to tasks that legitimately belonged to them. This was true way back yonder in that early age when heroic Deborah ruled all Israel for forty years. I dare to venture the prophecy that, in the future, no Elizabeth or Victoria will ever sit upon the throne of political power.

But woman is not on this account going to be dishonored, or her pride mortified. As civilization advances woman shall be crowned queen in a higher sense-a queen swaying an imperial sceptre over human hearts, queen of home, out of which sweet empire influences will go forth that shall govern the world-proving thousands of times a light in the darkness, an inspiration in discouragement, a secret of victory in hard struggle, and a hand to restrain from sin in the time of fierce temptation.

God has put into the hands of our women at their own hearthstone a power greater than that which Presidents or Kings wield and which issue either in the weal or woe of their children.

You will bear me witness that in all I have written I have sought to inspire your sex with that dignity which God has set upon you. Upon this vexed question of woman's rights, the burden of which seems to turn upon the one point of suffrage: Shall woman be invested with the ballot? the question is not one of the simple right as her equal with man, but, Is it wise, is it best? I do not deny the inborn right of woman to smoke cigarettes, or to use the rough language of men, but most of us men are inclined to believe that women who do these things are, as someone has put it, "no gentlemen," and if the sexes are to be equalized I would rather it were done by refining the woman than by the vulgarizing of women.

A woman has the right equal to that of man to tell a story, such as men often tell among themselves, but somehow the woman who tells the story is never quite the same woman she was

before; when woman, to whom we instinctively look for all that is pure, falls short of the standard man sets for her and believes to be hers, her influence for good is gone forever.

Shall we invest woman with the ballot? Candidly I believe that such an enlargement of her sphere would not only violate the sacred laws of her being, but add nothing to the high and holy mission which her own nature unmistakably defines.

Woman must fail the moment she passes the boundary that God has indicated in her being. To give woman equal chance with man, and where she has the ability and strength for a like service an equal amount of pay for the same work, if done equally as well as by the man, is an act of justice.

The Government at Washington sets the nation the bad example of paying the women about half as much as it does the men for the same work. Why should the male teachers in our schools receive nearly twice as much for the same work done equally well by the women? We have told