If such very close intimacies
are all right under the gas-light or at the beach, why should there be
poison in merely passing near a disreputable character at the City Hall?
On the whole, the prospects of Mrs. Blank are not encouraging. Should she
consult a physician for her daughters, he may be secretly or openly
disreputable; should she call in a clergyman, he may, though a bishop, have
carnal rather than spiritual eyes. If Miss Blank be caught in a shower, she
may take refuge under the umbrella of an undesirable acquaintance; should
she fall on the ice, the woman who helps to raise her may have sinned.
There is not a spot in any known land where a woman can live in absolute
seclusion from all contact with evil. Should the Misses Blank even turn
Roman Catholics, and take to a convent, their very confessor may not be a
genuine saint; and they may be glad to flee for refuge to the busy, buying,
selling, dancing, voting world outside.
No: Mrs. Blank's prayers for absolute protection will never be answered, in
respect to her daughters. Why not, then, find a better model for prayer in
that made by Jesus for his disciples: "I pray Thee, not that Thou shouldst
take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the
evil." A woman was made for something nobler in the world, Mrs. Blank, than
to be a fragile toy, to be put behind a glass case, and protected from
contact. It is not her mission to be hidden away from all life's evil, but
bravely to work that the world may be reformed.
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