You must toil the darkness through;
Only work with willing fingers,
Only live you brave and true.

Never care or trouble borrow,
"Trouble's real if it seems"--
Ever see a bright to-morrow,
Though you see it but in dreams.




A NEGLECTED "WOMAN'S RIGHT."

I have listened to this cry of "Woman's Rights," this clamoring
for the ballot, for redress for woman's wrongs, and I could but
think, amid it all, that there is one "woman's right"--the right
that could make the widest redress for woman's wrongs--which she
holds in her own hands and does not exercise. It is the right to
defend, to uplift and ennoble womankind; to be as lenient to a
plea for mercy from a fallen woman as though that plea had come
from the lips of a fallen man; to throw around her also the broad
mantle of charity, and if she would try to reform, give her a
chance. Far be it from any honest woman to countenance the
abandoned wretch who plies an unholy calling in defiance of all
morality, for her very breath is contamination; but why should
you greet with smiles and warmest handclasps of friendship the
man who pays his money for her blackened soul? When two human
beings ruled by the same mysterious nature, have yielded to
temptations and fallen, what is this monster of social distinction