My Jesus to know, and feel His Blood flow Tis life everlasting, tis heaven below "
her young female teachers belonging to the Sunday school and her
"Mr. Thomas Rowe, a venerable class-leader" _what a dissimilarity. In the ground of the two lives, a likeness; in all their circumstances, what unlikeness! An unlikeness, it will be said, in that which is non-essential and indifferent. Non-essential,_ yes; indifferent,_no. The signal want of grad charm _ in the English Protestantisms setting of its religious life is not an indifferent matter; it is a real weakness. This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.
Last of all I wish to point out to you here the most important quality of all, in the ese feminine ideal, the quality which preemily distinguishes her from the feminine ideal of all other people or nations a or modern. This quality in the women in a, it is true, is on to the feminine ideal of every people or nation with any pretension to civilisation, but this quality, I want to say here, developed in the ese feminine ideal to such a degree of perfe as you will find it nowhere else in the world. This quality of which I speak, is described by the two ese words yu hsienwhich, in the quotation I gave above from the "Lessons for Women, " by Lady Tsao, _I translated as modesty and cheerfulness. The ese word yu literally meaired, secluded, occult and the word hsien ( ?) literally means " at ease or leisure. " For the ese word yu, _the English "modesty, bashfulness" only gives you an idea of its meaning. The German word Sittsamkeit es o it. But perhaps the French pudeur es o it of all. This pudeur, I may say here, this bashfulness, the quality expressed by the ese word yu is the essence of all womanly qualities. The more a woman has this quality of pudeur developed ihe more she has of womanliness, _of femininity, in fact, the more she is a perfect or ideal woman. When on the trary a woman loses this quality expressed by the ese word yu, loses this bashfulness, this pudeur, she then loses altogether her womanliness, her femininity,
and with that, her perfume, her fragrand bees a mere piece of huma or flesh. Thus, it is this pudeur, this quality expressed by the ese word yu in the ese feminine ideal which makes ht to make every true ese woman instinctively feel and know that it is wrong to show herself in public; that it is i , acc to the ese idea, to go on a platform and sing before a crowd in the hall even of the fu Association. In fi is this yu hsien, this love of seclusion, this sensitiveness a-gainst the "garish eye of day;" this pudeur in the ese feminine ideal, which gives to the true ese woman in a as to no other woman in the world, _a perfume, a perfume sweeter than the perfume of violets, the ineffable fragrance of orchids.
In the oldest love song, I believe, of the world, which I translated for the Peking Daily wo years ago_the first pie the Shih g or Book of Poetry, the ese feminine ideal is thus described,
The birds are calling in the air, _ An islet by the river-side ;
The maid is meek and debonair, Oh! Fit to be our Prince s bride .
The words yao t iao have the same signification as the words yu sien meaning literally yao) secluded, meek, shy, and tiao attractive, debonair, and the words shu nu mean a pure, chaste girl or woman. Thus here in the oldest love song in a, you have the three essential qualities in the ese feminine ideal, viz. love of seclusion