Ideal Womanhood [pp. 453-460]

IDEAL WOMANIHOOD.
tional career. She is quick, enthusiastic, intuitive. Her memory is keen, her
imagination lively, her perception acute.
She has ingenuity, tact, and perseverance-a noble trinity in woman's industrial offices-a nature vigorous and elastic, capable of adapting itself to all surroundings. Vigorous, self- disciplined
power is her characteristic. She has a
wondrous knack of holding firm to the
rudder of self-conquest; has a well-defined aimn in life -not an inconstant variety of purpose. Self is not her sole
pontiff, but she lives in and for others.
With open-eyed convictions of duty, she
is still not contemptuous of authority,
and is far from being that disagreeable
epitome of a barbarian-a self-willed
girl. She has given herself much to the
friendly ministries of Nature, who has
been to her a delightful tutor. The blank
wearisomeness of dry books has not robbed her of elasticity, nor has she been
worn threadbare by constant attrition
against the rock of the Impossible. She
possesses the gayety and strength requisite to a joyfulness, at times almost
trenching upon the riotous, yet decorously escaping it. Her wit is often
crank, but never closely approaches sarcasm.
Her ambition rises in triumphant superiority to the mere idea of being accounted fashionable and genteel. She
-'does not ignore personal appearance;
for her dress is well chosen and in good
taste. She is only observable from the
unostentatious selection, the simplicity
and harmony of her attire, and the unobtrusive good-breeding that covers every square inch of her life, at home or
abroad. Modesty is not with her an
art, but an inheritance. In society, she
is elegant, but not insipid; delicate, but
not frivolous, and keeps herself in whole some ignorance of the many little subtle ties of flirtation. She has no fancy for
emulating, or fraternizing with, those
gay-colored butterflies, who transform
themselves into wasps with such fatal
facility. She is perfectly at home among
men and women who enjoy "'the feast
of reason and the flow of soul," and does
not deem it outrdor inopportune to introduce subjects which have somewhat of
common sense in them. In the drawing-room, she is neither timid nor bold;
and blushing is by no means one of the
lost arts, so far as she is concerned. She
is full of sparkle, simplicity, and unconscious archness -careless, yet captivating; free, yet feminine. She has the
softness, the polish, the grace of life
all of which are the natural after-growth
of that proper home- culture for which
we have been contending.
Is it necessary that a "roomful of
young ladies should become a disrespectable medley of tattle, chatter, and
squeal," as has been charged upon them?
How pitiable to see "a column of exuberant imbecility," robed and decorated to
the full and resplendent zenith of fashion, but intellectually denuded to the very
scantiness of apparel in Eden -a paragon of intellectual obscurity. Coleridge
patly remarks, "There is a great difference between an egg and an egg-shell,
though they look remarkably alike." So
there is a vast difference between a true,
inborn lady, whose nature is faithfully
daguerreotyped in all the graceful acts
of her every-day life, and the counterfeit,
whose constant study it is to conceal the
poverty, irascibility, and weakness embodied in her gorgeous personnel. She
plumes herself, with complacent vanity,
upon having succeeded in her design to
conceal, when, after all, the very effort
to conceal remains yet to be concealed.
Happily for mankind, such efforts to
deceive can never succeed. We may
repose an abiding faith in the omnipotence of naturalness. The character
will insist upon writing itself all over
the features. The soul is constantly
chiseling assay at the lineaments of the
face; and she is faithful to the model
[MAY,
458