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Show : Woman's World. Character: Specially Prepared for Our Feminine Readers. St- Genevieve's Bell. ' i (WritU-n by a Sister of the Ursuline Convent, Santa Ro.sa, on the occasion of The hlchsing of St. Genevieve's bell in the Catholic church at Sebaptopol.) i 'Twcen heaven and earth, in one fair j ! dell. Suspended is a Fwect-toned bell: 151(ss(vl for God's ti, it hanpeth there I To call the village folk to prayer. ! ! 3n time of jov, the country round Doth echo back each joyful pound, ,s pral on peal doth music weave From that tweet bell, St. Genevieve. f On Sunday morn the vine-clad hill I Beverlierates its music still, ;- .And sons of toil with joy receive ; The message of St. Genevieve. I Jts dulcet tones have maple power ; To call to mind the prayerful hour: Tliev seem to say. "List, and receive The" loving call of Genevieve," ' When Sorrow's mantle falls to earth, .And tenrs succeed to sound of mirth. When loved ones take their final leave, ; Then sadly tolls St. Genevieve. I Yes. tolls and tolls. 5ad-voiced and low. l A sharing in her children's woe; l et in each knell these words are said: ! "Ah, breathe a prayer for the dead.' 1 Teal on. dear friend, in times of joy, And softlv toll when sorrow's cloy, KiKicared 'to all, a? all believe. Jg our village bell, St. Genevieve. Bishop Spaulding's Address. At a mooting of the National Conference Confer-ence of Charities and Corrections, held in Detroit June 1. Rig:ht Rev. J. L. Spalding- discussed physical and moral rvils. His talk aroused considerable controversy from all sides. In his , speech the bishop said: illSUlUllOHS, 11 lias irt-cil wu, aic 111 the control of men, public opinion in that of women. Women decide how we i shall build our houses, what we shall rat and wear, what we shall find beautiful beau-tiful and entertaining, where we shall live, what we shall, read, whom we shall consider friend or foe, what beliefs be-liefs or prejudices we shall hold, what religion we 'shall have.- From them we learn our mother tongue; from them cur notions of right and wrong, of propriety pro-priety and justice. If they were more i large-minded, more intelligent, more unselfish, more serious. 1 more loving, three-fourths of the depravity and sin : which make life a curse would disap pear. The funtain head of social good or evil, of vice and crime or of honor and virtue, is in the home; and if the wife and the mother make or unmake the home. Whatever view we may take ks to whether man or woman was the more guilty primal offender, woman bears the greater responsibility for the wrongs and miseries which af- I flict and oppress the modern world: . I since the force of public opinion, which j is in her keeping, is mightier than - riches and arms and laws." The bshop has found an unexpected champion in the person of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The following is her view of the subject: "I am afraid that instead of reprov- ing the bishop, I shall agree with him ' ' to a great, extent. ; , "Much of the crime in the world can ; be traced to pre-natal conditions of the criminals. "Mothers who hate their unborn children and dwell night and day on i thoughts of destruction bring children ; into the world who are destructive and ; whose minds are filled with hatred. "Mothers who allow themselves to be swayed by violent tempers mark their children" w ith such passions, and a violent temper is frequently the first Step toward crime. "Again, after the child comes into ; the world, unhappy home conditions, discord, quarrels, contentions, a lack of Fj-mpathy, or a too great indulgence of selfish des'res, are all steps toward producing that soul orphanage which ponds children into the streets, or any where to get away trom nome. "The father may be equally guilty in rendering a home an unhappy place, yet a mother's disposition is the one which gives the home its atmosphere. I have seen a sunny, cheerful, patient and loving woman turn a house into a veritable Eden, in which all her own c hildren and the children of neighbors and riends found sympathy and pleasure, pleas-ure, despite the presence of the serpent ser-pent in that Eden a cross and cranky man. "Again I have known the dispositions of two generations of people to be ruined by the disagreebale and quarrelsome quar-relsome nature of one woman. The inmates in-mates of that home and many such homes found any other place more desirable. de-sirable. If the sons took to drink and M ild ways, could it be wondered at? ;"An uncontrollable temper, and a tendency ten-dency to be nagging, are home destroying destroy-ing vices which ought to be preached . against from the pulpit. "Mothers who allow their children to be disorderly, extravagant and selfish fire helping them to tread the path toward to-ward crime. ; "Disorderly personal habits make dis- , ; orderly minds. Selfishness and extrav agance are the root of many of the ? crimes of the day. The daughter who is brought up to believe it her right to have whatever she wants, no matter who suffers to gratify her, is the woman who drives her husband into forgery or defalcation, defalca-tion, if he is not wealthy enough to iner-t her demands or strong : enough to deny her. Often when he does deny lier she figures in the divorce courts, ini the co-respondent is a man of fortune. for-tune. . It . is jiot infrequently the father's 1 fault ' that a daughter is selfish and extravagant and idle. Yet the mother who possesses love, sympathy, tact and ! patien'ce can t counterbalance .such a ! ; paternal influence in the long run. My faith in the influence of the right kind of a mother is unlimited. There is nothing she cannot .do (and undo) with her child, if she begins to mould 5ts character before and continues after its birth. . There ought to be a "chair of motherhood" in every woman's college, col-lege, teaching young women this in-contestible in-contestible truth. Start with a child rightly born and veil reared in a sensible, happy, loving, lov-ing, orderly, economical home, and we have three-fourths of the causes of crime headed off. Idleness, extravagance, extrava-gance, selfishness, ill temper, greed. ! disorderly habits when these vices are prevented by right generation and right education, there remains but the ! sexual passions to lead to crime. i It is woman again here who figures as angel or demon, to save men from ' wrecking their own lives and hers. Woman should be taught that she is the stronger rather than the weaker sex; for she has been forced by the ' , ; la vs of God and society to develop end exercise her self-control, where ? man has been allowed to follow his riesires. until she has ten-fold the moral strength he possesses. .Where her vanity, her love of power or her mercenary impulses do not lead her to be weak, she can guide and control con-trol men as she chooses in these matters. mat-ters. She can bring out the divine or the animal nature as she will. She can lead them to the heights or the depths. She can send a man temporarily beside be-side himself with a -wild infatuation back to the bosom of his family .shamed and repentant, or she can drag him through the mires of scandal; she can change an unhappy passion; into a healthful ambition to be useful mid to achieve, or she can feed it with its own fuel until it destroys and devastates. de-vastates. She can by wile and art IT, y "'' ' I" '.'-in ii mmmmm. arouse jealousy and anger, or by womanly wo-manly wisdom and sweetness allay and dissipate them. She can incite cupidity, cupid-ity, or control extravagance. She can, in fact, make or mar the life of man, for her influence begins before he draws breath and lasts to the grave. Great, awesome, wonderful is her mission mis-sion as mother, wife, friend. Let her beware how she fills it. Any thoughtful person must admit the truth of the bishop's words, and simply by misconstruing what he said some people feel that it is their duty to become indignant. The bishop's only .thought was -to raise the ideal of womanhood as high as possible, because of the belief in her influence and power. The Lady at the Confessional. Rambler writes in the Catholic Union and Times:- "Have you seen her? A writer in ar. always truthful contemporary says of her: "It is the morning of the first Friday and the priest is hearing confessions. Mass will be at 8 o'clock. At 7:30 Mrs. Blank rushes into the church. Th?re is a crowd kneeling in the vicinity of the confessional. Mrs. Blank must have been rummaging in the dark closets of her conscience while on her way to church, for her prayers after, entering the sacred edifice are brief. YVe i.pte, too, that she must have found something some-thing hideous, because she rises, genuflects, genu-flects, gallops charges right over the kneeling penitents, pushing her 'vay through to a point very close to the confessional. The only person ahe.ii of her is Mrs. C . The moment the ier- in UiC lUULCSSiUHttl iuue, IV'IS. Blank is on her feet, and before poor Mr. C realizes what, has happened, she is between him and the coveted goal. She is the woman of push, pluck and perseverance, and there are many of. her. "Indeed there are many of her. She can be found in every parish, and though it is not within my province to judge, I fear she'll have much to answer an-swer for when it comes to opening the books on the other side. Pray for her, my brothers." |