We may go so far as to declare that it is a
great duty, laid upon the young womanhood of civilization, to protect
itself and the future, and to serve its own contemporary manhood, by
taking up this attitude towards alcohol. Would that this great
missionary enterprise were now unanimously undertaken by these most
effective and cogent of missionaries, whose own happiness so largely
depends upon its success!
Of course it should not be necessary for any man to set forth, for the
instruction of girlhood, the qualities which it should value in men. All
who train and teach girlhood and form its ideals should devote
themselves scarcely less to this than to the inculcation of high ideals
for girlhood itself; yet it is not done. We do not yet recognize the
supreme importance of the marriage choice for the present and for the
future.
Fortunately, if Nature alone gets a fair chance, she teaches the girl
that a man should "play the game," and should not be afraid of "having a
go," that of the two classes into which, as one used to tell a little
girl, people are divided--those who "stick to it," and those who do
not--the former are the worthy for her. But Nature is specially
handicapped by stupid convention, not least in Anglo-Saxon countries, as
regards a woman's estimation of _tenderness_ in a man. The parental
instinct with its correlate emotion of tenderness, is the highest of
existing things, and though it is less characteristic of men than of
women, it is none the less supreme when men exhibit it.
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