perplexity! It is always nobler to do your duty than to leave it undone:
make this principle your sheet-anchor, and spiritual feelings and light
will come some day, if God sees fit. It does not always do to apply
direct remedies to these "measles:" if your mind is out of gear, leave it
alone, and attack it through the body by industry. And industry _at home_
is best; here was the true strength of the Virtuous Woman. The strength of
her modern descendant lies abroad: she is strong and admirable, she does
splendid work, but there is always a tinge of excitement to help one
through outside work. Things done among father and mother, brothers and
sisters, are either very peaceful or very flat, according as your feelings
are either wholesome or unwholesome--there is none of the pleasurable
excitement, generally more or less feverish, of working with friends we
love and admire; it is the difference between milk and wine. I do not
think wine wrong, but I think it is much better to cultivate a taste for
milk; you must watch yourselves, and not get to feel home things dull.
Some are so strong in home, so wrapped up in their own family, that
outsiders feel _de trop_, which of course is a fault on the other side. If
we have happy homes, it is a trust for the use of others; we can give a
home feeling to those who are less fortunate as they pass by us, like the
swallow flying through the lighted hall. Lonely people may gain a sense of
home from this large-heartedness in the happy, a feeling of rest and
repose, which is the very essence of the atmosphere I should like my
Virtuous Woman to shed around her; she must "do good by effluvia;" in her
home, "roof and fire are types only of a nobler light and shade--shade as
of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea.
And wherever a true wife comes this home is always round her. The stars
only may be over her head, the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the
only fire at her foot: yet home is wherever she is; and for a noble woman
it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar or painted with
vermilion, shedding its quiet light far for those who else were homeless."