Newport weekly independent., 1901-08-23

l Prlnclple was put had it not been for
 Wife's voice that encouraged them
 to do right and wife's prayer that
 sounded louder than the clamor of
 partisanship! Why, my friends, the right of suffrage, as We men exercise
 it, seems to be feeble thing. You, a
 Christian man, come up to the ballot box and drop your vote. Right after you comes a libertine or a sot, the off
 securing of the street, and he drops
 his vote, and his vote counteracts yours. But if in the quiet of home life
 daughter by her Christian demeanor,
 wife by her industry, a mother by
 her falthtulness, casts a vote in the right direction, then nothing can re-
 slst it, and the influence of that vote
 will throb through the eternities.
 My chief anxiety, then, is not that
 woman have other rights accorded
 her, but that she, by the grace of God, rise up to the appreciation of
 the glorious rights she already Dos- sesses. l shall only have time to speak of one grand and all absorbing right that every woman has, and that is to make home happy. That realm no one has ever disputed with her.
 Men may come home at noon or at
 night, and they tarry a comparative ly little while, but she all day long governs it, beautifes it, sanctiffes it. 1t IS within her power to make 1t the most attractive place on earth. It is the only calm harbor in this world.
 You know as we'll as I do that this outside world and the business world IS long scene of jostle and conten- ton. The man who has a dollar struggles to keep it; the man who has it not struggles to get it. Prices up. Prices down. Losses. Gains. Misrepresentations. Gougings. Un- derselling. Buyers depreciating; salesmen exaggerating. Tenants seeking less rent; landlords demand ing more. Gold fdgety. Struggles about office. Men who are in trying to keep in; men out trying to get in. Slips. Tumbles. Defalcations. Pan- ics. Catastrophes. o woman, thank God you have 6 home, and that you may be queen in it. Better be there than wear a queens coronet Better be there than carry the purse of princess. Your abode may be hum- ble, but you can by your faith in God and your cheerfulness of de- meanor gild it with splendors such as an upholsterer's hand never yet kindled.
 There are abodes in the city humble, two stories, four plain, un- papered rooms; undesirable neigh borhood, and yet there is man here to-day who would die on the thresh- old rather than surrender it. Why? It is home. Whenever he thinks of it he sees angels of God lowering around it. The ladders of Heaven are let down to this house. Over the child's rough crib there are the chantings of angels, as those that sounded over Bethlehem. It is home. These children may come up after awhile, and they may win high posi- tion, and they may have an affiuent residence, but they will not until their dying day forget that humble roof under which their father rested and their mother sang and their sis ters played. Oh, if you would gather up all tender memories, all the lights and shades of the heart, all banuuet- ings and reunions, all filial, fraternal, paternal and conjugal affections, and you had only just four letters to spell out that height and depth and length and breadth and magnitude and eternity of meaning, you would, with streaming eyes and trembling voice and agitated hand, write it out in those four living capitals, HOME. |
 What right does woman want that is grander than to be queen in such a realm? Why, the eagles of heaven cannot fly across, that dominion Horses, panting and with lathered l Hanks, are not swift enough to run to the outpost of that realm. They | say that the sun never sets upon the English empire, but l have to tell you | that on this realm of woman's inf1u- | ence eternity never marks any bound. | Isabella fled from the Spanish throne by the nations anathema, but she who is queen in home will | never lose her throne, and death it. self will only be the annexation of heavenly principalities.
 When you want to get your grand est idea of queen, you do not think of Catherine of Russia, or of Anne of | England, or Maria Theresa of Aus tria, but when you want to get your grandest idea of queen you think of the plain woman who sat opposite your father at the table, or walked with him arm in arm down life's pathway, sometimes to the thanks giving banquet, sometimes to the