I was once at a little musical party in New York, where several
accomplished amateur singers were present, and with them the eminent
professional, Miss Adelaide Phillipps. The amateurs were first called on.
Each chose some difficult operatic passage, and sang her best. When it came
to the great opera-singer's turn, instead of exhibiting her ability to
eclipse those rivals on her own ground, she simply seated herself at the
piano, and sang "Kathleen Mavourneen" with such thrilling sweetness that
the young Irish girl who was setting the supper-table in the next room
forgot all her plates and teaspoons, threw herself into a chair, put her
apron over her face, and sobbed as if her heart would break. All the
training of Adelaide Phillipps--her magnificent voice, her stage
experience, her skill in effects, her power of expression--went into the
performance of that simple song. The greater included the less. And thus
all the intellectual and practical training that any woman can have, all
her public action and her active career, will make her, if she be a true
woman, more admirable as a wife, a mother, and a friend. The greater
includes the less for her also.

Of course this is a statement of general facts and tendencies. There must
be among women, as among men, an endless variety of individual
temperaments. There will always be plenty whose career will illustrate the
infirmities of genius, and whom no training can convince that two and two
make four. But the general fact is sure. As no sensible man would seriously
prefer for a wife a Hindoo or Tahitian woman rather than one bred in
England or America, so every further advantage of education or opportunity
will only improve, not impair, the true womanly type.

Lucy Stone once said, "Woman's nature was stamped and sealed by the
Almighty, and there is no danger of her unsexing herself while his eye
watches her." Margaret Fuller said, "One hour of love will teach a woman