River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1891-03-12
TEnlPERHDGE.
demonstrating the Ideal of Womanhood
BIZ FRANcIs E. wILLARp.

| visited his studio IN Florence many
years ago, that he was investing his
life to work into marble a few femi-
nine types which should express, un-
blamed" the twentieth century's
womanhood. The Venus de Medici,
with its small head and button-hole
eye-lids, matched the Greek concep-
ton of woman well, he thought, but
America was slowly evolving another
and a loftier type. His statue, named
by him woman Triumphant" and
purchased by patriotic ladies of his
native state, Kentucky, adorns the
city hall at Lexington, and shows
"a perfect woman, molly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
A creature not too bright or good,
For human natures daily food,
And yet spirit pure and bright,
With something of an angels light"
She is the embodiment of what
shall be. In an age of force. woman's
greatest grace was to cling; in this
age of peace she doesn't cling much,
but is every bit as tender and sweet
as if she did. She has strength and
individuality, gentle seriousness;
there is more of the sisterly, less of
the siren-more of the duchess and
less of the doll. Woman is becoming
what God intended her to be, and
Christ's gospel necessitates her being
the companion and counselor, not the
incumbrance and toy, of man.
To meet this new creation, how
grandly men themselves are growing;
how considerable and brotherly, how
pure in word and deed! The world
has never yet known half the aptitude
of character and life to which men
will attain when they and women live
in the same world. 1t doth not yet
appear what they shall be, or we eth
er, for that matter, but in many a
home presided over by a temperance
voter, aud Red Ribbon worker,
have thought the heavenly vision was
really coming down to terra frma.
With all my heart l believe, as do the
best men of the nation, that woman
will bless and brighten every place
she enters, and that she will enter ev-
cry place on the round earth. Its
welcome of her presence and her pow
er will be the final test Of any institu-
tons fitness to survive. Happily for
us, every other genuine reform helps
push forward the white car of social
purity. The great peace movement,
seeking as its final outcome court
of international arbitration as a sub
stitute for war, promises more mo-
mentum to our home cause than al
most any other. For as the chief
cornerstone of the peaceful state is
the hearth-stone, so the chief pulver
izer of that cornerstone is war.
1t is said that when darkness settles
on the Adriatic sea. and fishermen are
far from land, their wives and daugh-
tiers, just before putting out the lights
in their humble cottages, go down by
the shore and in their clear, sweet
voices sing the first lines of the Ave
Maria. Then they listen eagerly and
across the sea are bourn to them the
deep tones of those they love, singing
the strains that follow, "0ra pro
nobis," and thus each knows that
with the other all is well. | often
think that from the home life of the
nation, from its mothers and sisters,
daughters and sweethearts, there
sound through the darkness of this
transition age the tender notes of
dearer song, whose burden is being
taken up and echoed back to us from
those far out amid the pillows of
temptation and its sacred words are
Home, Sweet Honem God grant
that deeper and stronger may grow
that heavenly chorus from mems and
women's lips and lives! For with all
its faults, and they are many, | believe
the present marriage system to be the
greatest triumph of past Christianity,
and that it has created and conserves
more happy homes than the world has
ever before known. Any law that
renders less binding the mutual, life
long loyalty of one man and woman to
each other, which is the central idea
g hnr fc NIT loo cd
to the home and to humanity. Around
this unien, which alone renders posi- |
bile a pure society and a permanent
state, the law should build it's utmost
safeguards, and upon this union the
gospel should pronounce its most sa
cred benedictioHs.
In the nature of the case, the most
that even Christianity itself could do
at first, though it is the strongest
was to separate one man and one wo
man from the common herd, into each
home, telling the woman to remain
there in grateful quietness, while the
man stood at the door to defend its sa-
cred shrine with fist and spear, to in
sist upon its rights Of property, and
later on to represent it in the state.
Thus, under the conditions of civ.
ilization crude and material, grew up
that well-wofn maxim of the common
law, Husband and wife are one, and
| that one is the husband" But such
supreme power as this brought to the
man supreme temptation. By the
laws of mind he legislated first for
himself ana afterward for the physi-
cally weaker one within "his" home.
The feme-coUert is not character APP
propriate to our peaceful, home-like
communities, although she may have
been, and doubtless was, a necessary
figure in the days when women were
safe only as they we're shut up in cas-
ties and when they were the booty
chiefly sought in war. To-day wo-
man may circumnavigate the world
alone and yet be unmolested.
CONTINUED next week.
Tho ,,au Grenadines will take the