12
THE BATTALION.
Without a question woman’s mission as a home-maker is
paramount to every other interest; but her influence beyond
the home circle is always mightier when she comes with her
countenance brightened by the light of home, and bearing up
on her heart the responsibilities of her family relations, and
it is the fidelity with which she performs the duties growing
out of these Heaven-blessed relations which gives her power
and widens her influence. The fear is always expressed that
women of the period are stepping beyond her natural sphere,
that the coming woman will be home forgetting, family-neg
lecting, masculine and assuming. Let every such thought
perish. History furnishes no example of education and lib
erty of thought and action developing such a class of women.
Every true woman knows her God-prescribed sphere and
needs no legislative action to define its limits. Every true
woman finds her purest and most exalting happiness in her
home and family. But her womanly instinct also teaches
her that her home is a part of a great throbbing world, and
her family a part of a living, moving throng and her woman
ly yearnings go out after them into all the paths of life.
And as man’s aims become higher, woman’s aims are high
er, for however different man and woman are in character they
are alike in aim. Taking this view of the general situation
it follows that whatever woman is capable of doing, north,
south, east and west, she should have the privilege of doing,
if practicable. More anon.
riathematics.
If the utility of everything should be tested by the pleasure
it immediately affords to the generality of mankind, math
ematics would certainly be considered the most useless study
in which men could possibly engage. It would be an index
of frivolity and misdirected genius for a man to engage in
mathematical reasoning. But it is almost a peculiarity of
this science that, as it becomes more uninteresting to the