Increasing Personal Efficiency
Women
Musical Culture
Oratory
Self Help
Some Advice to Young Men
By
RUSSELL H. CONWELL
VOLUME 5
NATIONAL
EXTENSION UNIVERSITY
597 Fifth Avenue, New York
Observation—Every Man His Own University
Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Increasing Personal Efficiency
I
WOMEN
Some women may be superficial in education and accomplishments,extravagant in tastes, conspicuous in apparel, something more thanself-assured in bearing, devoted to trivialities, inclined to frequentpublic places. It is, nevertheless, not without cause that art hasalways shown the virtues in woman's dress, and that true literatureteems with eloquent tributes and ideal pictures of true womanhood—fromHomer's Andromache to Scott's Ellen Douglas, and farther. WhileShakespeare had no heroes, all his women except Ophelia are heroines,even if Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril are hideously wicked. In themoral world, women are what flowers and fruit are in the physical. "Thesoul's armor is never well set to the heart until woman's hand hasbraced it; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor ofmanhood fails."
Men will mainly be what women make them, and there can never beentirely free men until there are entirely free women with nospecial privileges, but with all her rights. The wife makes the home,the mother makes the man, and she is the creator of joyous boyhood andheroic manhood; when women fulfil their divine mission, all reformsocieties will die, brutes will become men, and men shall be divine.There are unkind things said of her in the cheaper writings ofto-day—perhaps because their authors have seen her only inboarding-houses, restaurants, theaters, dance-halls, and atcard-parties; and the poor, degraded stage with its warped mirror showsher up to the ridicule of the cheaper brood. The greatest writings andthe greatest dramas of all time have more than compensated for all thisindignity, and we have only to read deep into the great literature to bedisillusioned of any vulgar estimations of womanhood, and to understandthe beauty and power of soul of every woman who is true to the royaltyof womanhood.
There are few surer tests of a manly character than the estimation hehas of women, and it is noteworthy that the men who stand highest in theesteem of both men and women are always men with worthy ideas of[Pg 121]womanhood, and with praiseworthy ideals for their mothers, sisters,wives, and daughters. As men sink in self-respect and moral worth, theiresteem of womanhood lowers. The women who become the theme for poets andphilosophers and high-class playwrights are the women who have been bredmainly in the home. They seem without exception to abhor throngs, andonly stern necessity can induce them to appear in them; the motherly,matronly, and filial graces appeal strongly to them—such as areportrayed in Cornelia, Portia, and Cordelia. They may yearn for society,but it is the best society—for the "women whose beauty and sweetnes