I would have every man know—­who has a wife—­that “mutual benefit from harmonious partnership work” is an axiom in as full a sense as “in union there is strength.”

There are two sides to every question, and in this article I shall deal with the woman’s side.  I want to present especially the wife’s side of the question to every Odd-Fellow, hoping that it will be of lasting benefit in many ways.  I know full well that only one accustomed to deal with high and holy things, one whose glance is ever at sacred things, one who, as it were, administers the treasures of the kingdom of God, can fittingly touch this subject.  It would be easy for me to be a cheap wit, to rake up the old scandal of Mother Eve, to even declaim with windy volubility that a woman betrayed the capital, that a woman lost Mark Anthony the world and left old Troy in ashes.  But far be it from me!  Rather would I assume a loftier mood; rather would I strike a loftier note, and, with blind Homer, beg for an unwearied tongue to chant the praise of woman.  It is true Eve lost us Eden, but in that garden of monotonous delight, had we been born there, we would never have truly known what woman is.  O, Felix Culpa!  O, happy fault! that has shown the world the mines of rich affection of woman’s heart, that else would never have been discovered.  O, happy fault, that has shown the world a wealth of woman’s nature, her capability for love, the radiance of her tenderness, her infinite pity, her unswerving devotion, the solace of her presence in sickness and sorrow, the depth and sweetness of her mercy.

A river of pure delight flowed through paradise, but blind Adam never saw it, never dreamed of it until the flaming sword cut him off forever; but he has since drank of it, and so has every man who has ever tasted the sacramental wine of woman’s true affection.  The seamy side of life has been laid bare to me.  Its sorrows and its anguishes have I often witnessed, but into that pool of Bethesida of the world’s anguish, with healing do I see ever come an angel, a pitying woman.  The influence of wife and mother is ever near me; their faces are the most lovely; their hearts the most tender of all in this world—­my mother and my wife.  And for their sake, and for the sake of all the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, whom I daily meet doing good, I long and I earnestly yearn for the eloquence and grace to half express the thoughts that rise within me of what the world owes woman.

To me every good woman is the fair fulfillment of dreamed delight.  She is the first at the cross and the last at the grave.  All that is highest and best in the world is nurtured and fed by the milk of her nobility.  The Christ of all greatness and hope was born of a woman.  The noble women of the world!  O, would that the days of chivalry were not past, that I might unsheath a lance in their name, for their glory!  But in our more prosaic days, what can I do but let the will suffice for the