does), it were better for him, I often think, if he had never been
born: but the only talisman which will keep it alive, much more
develop it into its fulness, is friendly and revering intercourse
with women of higher rank than himself, between whom and him there
is a great and yet a blessed gulf fixed.

I have left to the last the most important subject of all; and
that is, what is called "visiting the poor." It is an endless
subject; if you go into details, you might write volumes on it.
All I can do this afternoon is to keep to my own key-note, and
say, Visit whom, when, and where you will; but let your visits be
those of woman to woman. Consider to whom you go--to poor souls
whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and
soul, and spirit--and do as you would be done by; instead of
reproving and fault-finding, encourage. In God's name, encourage.
They scramble through life's rocks, bogs, and thornbrakes,
clumsily enough, and have many a fall, poor things! But why, in
the name of a God of love and justice, is the lady, rolling along
the smooth turnpike-road in her comfortable carriage, to be
calling out all day long to the poor soul who drags on beside her
over hedge and ditch, moss and moor, bare-footed and weary-
hearted, with half-a-dozen children at her back: "You ought not
to have fallen here; and it was very cowardly to lie down there;
and it was your duty, as a mother, to have helped that child
through the puddle; while, as for sleeping under that bush, it is
most imprudent and inadmissible?" Why not encourage her, praise
her, cheer her on her weary way by loving words, and keep your
reproofs for yourself--even your advice; for SHE does get on her
way, after all, where YOU could not travel a step forward; and she
knows what she is about perhaps better than you do, and what she