From “Letters To Young Ladies” by  Lydia Sigourney, 1852

“The natural vocation of females is to teach . . . they possess peculiar facilities for coming in contact with the unfolding and unformed mind. . . . she modifies by example, her dependants, her companions, every dweller under her own roof. Is not the infant in its cradle her pupil? Does not her smile give the earliest lesson to its soul? Is not her prayer for the first messenger for it in the court of Heaven? Does she not enshrine her won image in the sanctuary of the young child’s mind so firmly that no revulsion can displace, no idolatry supplant it? Does she not guide the daughter, until, placing her hand in that of her husband, she reaches that pedestal, from whence, in her turn, she imparts to others the stamp and coloring which she has herself received? Might she not, even upon her sons, engrave what they shall take unchanged, through all the temptations of time, to the bar of the last judgment? Does not the influence of woman rest upon every member of her household, like the dew upon the tender herb, or the sunbeam silently educating the young flower? Or as the shower and the sleepless stream, cheer and invigorate the proudest tree of the forest?”