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The Congressof women
u
HELD IN THE WOMAN'S BUILDING,
WORLD'S Columbian Exposition,
CHICAGO, U. S. A., 1893.
WITH PORTRAITS, BIOGRAPHIES AND ADDRESSES.
PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS,
MRS. BERTHA M. HONORE PALMER, PRESIDENT.
EDITED BY •
MARY KAVANAUGH OLDHAM EAGLE,
CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON CONGRESSES, OF THE
BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
OFFICIAL EDITION.
SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION.
S. I. BELL & CO.,
PHILADELPHIA, PA. CHICAGO, ILL.
1894
f^Q nob
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year A. D. 1894, by
W. B. CONKEY COMPANY,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.
This work being fully protected by copyright, any infringement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
EXCHANGE
sc^
• • • . •
COMME/^ORATIVE \ . -v. ; , ^
• • • « • • ,
Of the many pleasant and profitable days spent together.
THE COMMITTEE ON CONGRESSES.
By permission, dedicate this work
to the
President
and members of the
Board of Lady Managers
of the
Columbian Exposition.
9889,'58
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
•rjT^JIJS'.'Objedt 'a£:tJr6 "publication of this book is to present an account of some of the
^ most important assemblages of women the world has ever known. As a part of the
Columbian Exposition, the greatest event of its kind in history, there was a daily gathering
of women, who, in a great building devoted to their uses, expressed their ideas regarding
the social, business and political affairs of humankind and all that pertains to making
a greater future for the human race. This book reproduces the ideas advanced by these
women, who represented the civilized world. It is the record of most earnest and potential
and practical assemblages of women. What is in these pages indicates what women are
to-day. The book contains the addresses made by those representing the more active
women of two continents. It is a book every thoughtful woman and every thoughtful
man should possess, and must, from its very quality and the circumstances of its production,
be part of the important data of future histories. No publishers' preface will aid it much.
It is a book which will retain its place because it commands a status as describing an
important part of one of the most important events in history. It may be that it was even
the most striking part, since among the greatest problems of the times is aggressively
prominent that of the relations of men and women in the work of the world and in the
division of its profits and its honors.
MRS. BERTHA M. HONORE PALMER,
President of the Board of Lady Managers.
PREFACE.
THE Columbian Exposition, in its unrivaled physical beauty, has culminated and
vanished like the blossoms of a gorgeous Century plant, leaving only a memory
of its superb efiftorescence and subtle charm. In order that the efforts made in its
behalf may not all be lost, and that a reminder of its aesthetic and educational influ-
ence may remain with us, Mrs. James P. Eagle, the untiring and devoted chairman,
has collected in permanent form the valuable papers secured by herself and her
committee for the Congresses in the Woman's Building.
Nothing could be more broadly representative than the catholic presentation
given in these Congresses to many important topics from many points of view. The
names contained in the list of contributors are in themselves a sufficient guaranty of
the great merit of the papers, which were so warmly received at the time of their
presentation.
I trust that the final and important service performed by Mrs. Eagle in placing
these papers within reach of the public, may receive the indorsement which it merits.
Bertha M. Honore Palmer.
■President of the Board of Lady Managers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Pages.
Publisher's Preface 6
Preface .,......,....., , „ , g
Introduction 13-14
Index to Authors , 1 5-16
Index to Subjects 17-19
Index to Illustrations , . , . . 21-22
Opening Address 25-29
Papers Read Before the Congress 30-815
Presentation of Mrs. Palmer's Portrait 816-819
Closing Address > . . . o . . 820-824
MRS. MARY K. O. EAGLE,
Editor.
INTRODUCTION.
T
HE Congresses held in the Woman's Building were inaugurated under a resolu-
tion unanimously passed by the Board of Lady Managers on September 7, 1891,
which read as follows:
''Resolved, That a special committee of seven be appointed who shall have charge
of arranging for Congresses to be held in the Woman's Building during the Fair."
The president of the board appointed the following committee: Mrs. James P.
Eagle, Mrs. Helen M. Barker, Miss Laurette Lovell, Miss Eliza M. Russell, Mrs. L.
M. N. Stevens, Mrs. Susan R. Ashley and Mrs. Jennie Sanford Lewis (now deceased).
Mrs. Jno. J. Bagley and Mrs. L. BraceShattuck were afterward added to the commit-
tee, and Mrs. Bagley was elected vice-chairman.
On August 5, 1893, the board adopted a recommendation to publish the Congress
papers in book form to be sold for the benefit of the Woman's Memorial Building fund.
The chairman of the committee having conducted the correspondence necessary, and
arranged the entire program for the Woman's Building Congresses, having also been
present and presiding at each of these daily meetings, except on three occasions,
when the executive committee, of which she is a member, was in session, was regarded
a suitable person to edit the work of the Congresses which is herein presented to the
public: Mrs. Potter Palmer, president of the Board of Lady Managers, made the
nomination, which was confirmed by the unanimous vote of the committee at a meet-
ing held November 7, 1893, when only one member of the committee was absent.
It was considered in the interest of the Board of Lady Managers and the pub-
lisher, that this work should not be delayed longer than three months after the close
of the Exposition. A contract was entered into with the publisher to that effect. No
pains, or money, or diligence has been spared in our efforts to secure the complete
representation in this volume of each contributor to the Congress. It is sincerely to be
regretted that there are a few women, whose articles should appear in this work, that we
have either been unable to reach or unable to secure contributions from on account of
previous disposition having been made of their papers, proposed individual publications
or the difficulty of reproducing satisfactorily addresses delivered without notes. Over
one thousand letters and dozens of telegrams have been sent out in this interest since
November loth.
With much gratitude we acknowledge indebtedness to the hundreds of women
with whom we have had correspondence, for their unfailing courtesy and particu-
larly to those who appeared from time to time on the Congress platform. This inter-
course has been altogether pleasant and harmonious throughout the entire Exposi-
tion, and has been a most flattering revelation of woman's attainments in grace, cult-
ure, thought and literature.
To Mrs. Potter Palmer, president of the Board of Lady Managers, and to many of
the members of the board, we tender special thanks for their counsel, encouragement
and co-operation in the difficult and laborious task assigned to this committee.
The plan of the committee was to have a leading address, followed by free dis-
cussion whenever the nature of the subject invited debate. We publish only the
addresses.
The courtesy of these pages has been extended to women who prepared papers
and were prevented from appearing at the appointed time by bereavements and other
good causes, and in a few instances has been accepted.
One of the objects of this work has been to mirror the women of the Columbian
year — faithfully reflecting their purposes, plans and powers as they stand the chosen
representatives of the various states of this Union and of the nations of the earth. As
we succeeded in presenting representatives from thirty states and twenty nations we
feel justified in believing that this object has been attained.
Other purposes were to provide for communion and interchange of thought
between women engaged in the same and diverse lines of work and the compilation
of valuable literary and historical papers to serve as stepping stones to future prog-
ress which has also, to the minds of many, been realized.
We have not assumed to direct or dictate the utterances, and will not be expected
to indorse all articles admitted without discrimination.
The one thought of the president of the Board of Lady Managers and the entire
membership of the board, whether acting as a whole, as individuals or committees, has
been to serve well, the women of the present and the future. To the charity of
the public we trust the imperfections of our work.
Editor.
INDEX TO AUTHORS.
PAGE.
Abbott, Mrs. Alice Asbury 645
Aberdeen, Lady Ishbel 743
Adams, Mrs. Mary Newbury 342
Alcala de, Senorita Catalina 398
Anthony, Miss Susan B 787
Arcambal de, Mrs. Agnes. L 148
Baird, Mrs. Priscilla 414
Barlow, Miss Horence 797
Bates, Miss Octavia Williams 664
Bay, Mrs. Lillian Cantrell 260
Bayard, Mrs. Mary Temple 435
Bell, Miss Laura 516
Bjorn, Mme. Thora K 740
Blackwell, Rev. Antoinette Brown 633
Blake, Mrs. Lillie Devereux 32
Boyd, Mrs. Gaston 570
Brady, Mrs. Sue Huffman 306
Brazza di, Countess Cora Slocomb 697
Bristol, Rev. Augusta Cooper 80
Brotherton, Mrs. Alice Williams 67
Brown, Dr. M. Augusta 477
Bucklin, Miss Lorain Pearce 450
Bullock, Mrs. Electa 510
Bullock, Mrs. Helen L 143
Cantrell, Mrs. Ellen Harrell 253
Cappiani, Mme. Louisa 500
Chapin, Rev. Augusta J 393
Clark, Mrs. Laura H 512
Cohen, Miss Katherine M 428
Cohen, Mrs. Nina Morais 113
Cole, Miss Annette 600
Conway, Miss Clara 402
Cooper, Mrs. Sarah B 296
Cope, Mrs. Theresa Elizabeth 531
Corbin, Mrs. Caroline Fairfield 326
Corson, Miss Juliet 714
Craig, Mrs. M . K 198
Crawford, Mrs. Emily 87
Cummins, Mrs. Ella Sterling 184
Curwen, Mrs. Mary T. W 165
Devereux, Mrs, C. A. R 752
Dibble, Mrs. Martha Cleveland 704
Dickinson, Mrs. Mary Lowe 637
Dillaye, Miss Blanche 643
Dodd, Mrs. Anna A 754
Donohue, Dr. Mary E 727
Douglas, Mrs. Selwyn 383
Douglass, Mrs. Jean Loughborough 733
Drury, Mrs. J. Wilson 471
Duniway, Mrs. Abigail Scott 90
Eagle, Mrs. James P 15 and 816
Eastman, Mrs. Annis Ford 612
Edwards, Mrs. Amanda M 760
PAGE.
Fairbanks, Mrs. Caroline Fuller 503
Field, Miss Kate 77
Field (Catherine Cole), Mrs. Martha R 776
Foster, Mrs. J. Ellen 668
Fredericsen, Miss Kirstine 237
Fuller, Mrs. Brainerd 491
Gaddess, Mrs. Mary L 221
Gage, Mrs. Marie Mott 737
Galloway, Miss Janet A 337
Garrett, Miss Mary S 443
George, Mrs. Jonnie Allen 388
Gohl, MissCecile 316
Gordon, Mrs. Laura de Force 74
Gould, Mrs. Minna Gordon 660
Green, Mrs. Anna S 649
Greene, Miss Mary A 41
Grinnell, Mrs. Katherni V 628
Hanna, Mrs. John R 53
Hayes, Miss Mary V 474
Henrotin, Mrs. Charles 348
Hinds, Miss Ida K 438
Hitchcock, Mrs. Romyn 556
Holt, Mrs. Charlotte 190
Howard, Mrs. A. L 463
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward 102
Howell, Mrs. Mary Seymour 679
Hoxie, Mrs. Vinnie Ream 603
Hull, Mrs. Mary Hess 609
Hultin, Rev. Ida C 788
Jenkins, Mrs. Helen Philleo 686
Johnson, Miss Helen Louise 810
Johnston, Mrs. Adelia A. F 555
Keene, Miss Mary Virginia 194
Kenealy, Miss Annesley 354
Ketcham, Mrs. Emily Burton 361
Korany, Mme. Hanna K 359
Lake, Mrs. Isabel Wing 574
Lake, Mrs. Leonora Marie 508
Lankton, Dr. Freeda M 268
Lease, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth 412
Lewis, Mrs. Amanda Kerr 371
Lincoln, Mrs. Mary 1 138
Lipscomb, Mrs. M. A 469
Lock wood, Mrs. Mary S 816
Lord, Miss Eleanor 281
Louis, Mrs. Minnie D 639
Lundin, Mile. Hulda 104
Magnusson, Mme. Sigrid E 521
Manning, Miss Agnes M 107
Marsden, Miss Kate 213
Marshall, Mme. Marie 211
15
16
INDEX TO AUTHORS.
PAGE.
McDiarmid, Mrs. Clara A 723
McDonald, Prof. Cora M 264
McGee, Miss L. C 249
Meriweather, Mrs. Lide . 747
Messenger, Mrs. Lillian Rozell 227
Meyer, Mrs. Nicoline Bech 243
Meyer, Mrs. Annie Nathan 135
Miller, Mrs. Kate 782
Miller, Mrs. Annie Jenness 695
Mitchell, Miss Alice A 405
Monroe, Mrs. Harriet Earhart 311
Moore, Miss Aimee K. Osborne 308
Morgan, Miss Anna 597
Mott, Mrs. Emma Pratt 544
Norris, Mrs. Mary E. C 674
Ormsbee, Mrs. E.J 590
Palmer, Mrs. Bertha Honor^ 25, 821
Palmer, Mrs. Sarah Eddy 432
Peabody, Mrs. Mary H 205
Peck, Mrs. Maria Purdy 623
Pelham, Lady Arthur 576
Pitblado, Mrs. Effie 793
Pollard, Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie 293
Potter, Miss Jennie O'Neil 682
Potts, Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap 562
Prescott, Mrs. Lydia A 526
Proctor, Miss Mary A 301
Quinton, Mrs. Amelia S 71
Reed, Mrs. Caroline G 240
Reed, Mrs. Elizabeth A. 719
Reese, Miss Cara 328
Rich, Mrs. Ellen M 365
Richards, Mrs. Ellen H 713
Riggs, Mrs. Anna R 813
Rogers, Miss May 586
Roman, Mrs. Sallie Rhett 535
Romney, Mrs. Caroline Wescott 579
Salazar, Signora Fanny Zampini 157
Sawyer, Mrs. Winona Branch 273
Schahovskoy, Princess M 569
Schirmaches, Miss Kathe 181
PAGE.
Scull, Mrs. Sarah Amelia 423
Sewall, Mrs. May Wright 771
Shaw, Rev. Anna Howard 152
Sheldon, Miss Elizabeth B 790
Sheldon, Mrs. M. French 131
Sherman, Mrs, Caroline K 764
Sherman, Mrs. Julia Edwards 670
Smith, Miss Marion Couthouy 616
Smith, Mrs. Mary Stuart 408
Smith, Mrs. Wesley 217
Smith, Mrs. Clara Holbrook 332
Smith, Mrs, Virginia Thrall 178
Smith, Mrs. Eva Munson 416
Souville, Mrs. E. M 691
Spence, Mrs, Catherine Helen 458
Spencer, Rev. Anna Garlin 170
Starkweather, Mrs, Louise A 62
Stevenson, Mrs, Matilda Coxe 484
Stevenson, Dr. Sarah Hackett 708
Stone, Mrs, Lucy 58
Stone, Mrs, C, E. Whiton 101
Stone, Mrs, Lucinda H 446
Street, Miss Ida M 286
Sunderland, Mrs. Eliza Read 318
Todd, Mrs. Mary C 39
Trueheart, Mrs, S, C 804
Tutwiler, Miss Julia S 36
Twitchell, Mrs, Eliza Stowe 495
Villafuerte, Miss Virginia 406
Ware, Mrs. Eugene 277
Welch, Miss Jane Meade 30
Wheeler, Mrs. Candace 818
Wheelock, Miss Lucy 323
White, Mrs. Jennie F 123
Wilkinson, Mrs. Laura S 233
Wilson, Miss Alisan 488
Wilson, Mrs. Elizabeth M 203
Wilson (n6e Petrie), Mrs. Ashley Carus 651
Windeyer, Miss Margaret 97
Woolley, Mrs. Celia Parker 763
Wright, Miss Mary P 305
Zacaroff, Mile. Caricl^e 618
Zeman, Mrs. Josefa Humpal 127
INDEX TO SUBJECTS.
TITLE. PAGE.
Advantages and Dangers of Organizations. . .
Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer . : 170
^Esthetic Culture Mrs. Priscilla Baird 414
An African Expedition Mrs. M. French
Sheldon 131
Agriculture Mrs. A. M. Edwards 760
An Appeal of Art to the Lovers of Art
Mrs. Mary Cherry Norris 674
Art Mrs. Emily Crawford 87
Art of Elocution Miss Anna Morgan 597
Art of Living, The Mrs. Ellen M. Rich 365
Art Isms Miss Annette Cole 600
Assyrian Mythology. .Mrs. Elizabeth A. Reed 719
Avocations of English Women. . Mrs. Theresa
Elizabeth Cope 531
Business Woman in Kentucky, A.. Miss Flor-
ence Barlow 797
Certain Methods of Studying Drawing. , .Miss
Aimee K. Osborne Moore 380
Changing Ideals in .Southern Womanhood
Mrs. Sue Huffman Brady 306
Characteristics of the Modern Woman
Mrs. Caroline K. Sherman 764
Charles Lamb Mrs. C. A. R. Devereux 752
Chicago Miss Marion Couthouy Smith 616
Chicago Women. .Dr. Sarah Hackett Steven-
son 708
Children of the Other Half, The Miss Lucy
Wheelock 323
Cholera in Hamburg, The Miss Annesley
Kenealy 354
Citizens, The Making of Mrs. H. E. Mon-
roe 311
Closing Address Mrs. Potter Palmer 821
Columbia's Women Mrs. Amanda Kerr
Lewis 371
Columbus; or. It was Morning Mrs. Lillian
Rozell Messenger 227
Come South, Young Woman ! Mrs. Martha
R. Field 776
Compensation Mrs. Alice Asbury Abbott 645
Complete Freedom for Women. . . Miss Agnes
M. Manning 107
Congratulation on the Possession of Por-
trait Mrs. Candace Wheeler 818
Cookery Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln 138
Cooking as an Art. . . Miss Helen Louise John-
son 810
Culture; Its Fruit and Its Price (extracts from)
Mrs. May Wright Bewail 771
TITLE. PAGE.
Dawning of the Twentieth Century, The
Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell 679
De Stael, Madame Mrs. Helen Philleo Jen-
kins 686
Development in Eastern Washington Mrs.
Jennie F. White 123
Dress Improvement Mrs. Annie Jenness
Miller 695
Economic Independence of Woman Mrs.
Lydia A. Prescott 526
Educational Value of Applied Arts, The
Miss Elizabeth B. Sheldon 790
Education of Girls and Women in Glasgow . .
Miss J. A. Galloway 3:37
Education of Indian Girls in the West
Mrs. Mary C. Todd 39
Effective Voting, On Miss H. C. Spence 458
Eliot, George Miss Ida M. Street 286
Encouragement of Home Industries Lady
Ishbel Aberdeen 743
English Women of the Eighteenth Century,
Some Mrs. Caroline Fuller Fairbanks 503
Epic Mrs. E. M. Souville 691
Etching Miss Blanche Dillaye 643
Ethics of Social Life, The Mrs. John R.
Hanna 53
Evolution of American Literature Mrs. M.
K. Craig 198
Evolution of Home, The. . .Miss Juliet Corson 714
Faith of Islam, The. . Mrs. Laura H, Clark .... 512
Fate of Republics, The. .Rev. Anna Howard
Shaw 152
Feast of Columbia, The. .Mrs. Alice Williams
Brotherton 67
Financial Independence of Women, The
Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin 348
Finding of the New WorJd, The.. Miss Jane
Meade Welch 30
Food for .Students. . . .Mrs. Ellen H Richards 713
Footfree in God's Country. .Mrs. Marie An-
toinette Nathalie Pollard 293
Forgotten Foremothers, Our Mrs. Lillie
Devereaux Blake 32
George Meredith's Novels Miss Margaret
VVindeyer 97
Glimpse of Modern Spain, A Miss Laura
Bell 516
Glory of Womanhood, The Mme. Hanna
K. Korany 359
17
18
INDEX TO SUBJECTS.
TITLE. PAGE.
God's Thought of Woman Mrs. Anna
Rankin Riggs 813
Goethe and Schiller. .Miss Mary Virginia
Keene 194
H
Harmonious Adjustment Through Exercise. .
Mrs. Minna Gordon Gould 660
Harmonious Culture Miss Ida K. Hinds 438
Henrik Ibsen and Bjornstjerne Bjornson
Mrs. Nicoline Bech Meyer 243
Higher Education and the Home Mrs. E.
R.Sunderland ^ 318
Higher Lessons of the World's Fair
Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone 446
Higher Womanhood, The. .Mrs. Caroline F.
Corbin 326
Historic Women of Egypt. .Mrs. Caroline G.
Reed 240
Home and Its Foundations, The. .Rev. Annis
Ford Eastman 612
Home of the Future, The. . . Miss L. C. McGee 249
Home Side of Progress, The. .Mrs. Clara Hol-
brook Smith 332
Homer and His Poems. . . .Mrs. Nina Morais
Cohen 113
Household Economics. .Mrs. Laura S.Wilkin-
son 233
How Can We Aid ? Mrs. Agnes L.
d'Arcambal 148
I
Ideal Home for Children, An.. Mrs. Kate O.
Miller 782
Influence of Great Women of the Past. . . Mrs.
Mary Newbury Adams 342
Industrial Revolution of the Last Century,
The Mrs. Eliza Stowe Twitchell 495
Industrial Women Mrs. Electa Bullock 510
Intelligent Treatment of the Body Mrs.
Marie Mott Gage 737
International Arbitration Miss Eleanor
Lord 281
Ishmaelite of Oklahoma, The.. Mrs. Selwyn
Douglas 383
Is Woman the Weaker Vessel?. .Mrs. Sarah
Eddy Palmer 432
Italian Women of the Country, The
Countess Cora Slocomb di Brazza 697
Japanese, The Mrs. Romyn Hitchcock 556
Justice and Freedom for All Princess M.
Schahovskoy 569
K
Katharina in the Taming of the Shrew or "The
Rights of Men." . Mrs. Emma Pratt Mott . . 544
Kindergarten as a Character Builder, The. . .
Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper 296
Kindergarten, The Mrs. Virginia Thrall
Smith 178
Labor Dignified, Is Mrs. Lenora Marie
Lake 508
Landmarks Rev. Antoinette B. Black-
well 633
TITLE. PAGE,
Land We Love, The. .Mrs. Mary L. Gaddess 221
Law and Women Mrs. Maria Purdy Peck 623
Legal Condition of Women in 1492—1892
Miss Mary A. Greene 41
Legal Profession for Women, The Mrs.
Wenona Branch Sawyer 273
Leper, The Miss Kate Marsden 213
Life and Times of Isabelle of Castile Miss
Loraine P. Bucklin 450
Life of an Artist Miss Katherine Cohen 428
Lincoln and Farragut Mrs. Vinnie Ream
Hoxie 603
Literature for Young People. . .Prof. Cora M,
McDonald 264
Looking Backwards Miss Kirstine Fred-
ericsen 237
M
Margaret Fuller. .Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley 763
Medical Profession for Women, The Dr.
Freeda M. Lankton 268
Marriage Prospects in Germany Miss
Kathe Schirmaches 181
Mexico Miss Virginia Villafuerte 406
Monologue as an Entertainment, The. . .Miss
Jennie O'Neil Potter 682
Months in Old Mexico, Four. . .Mrs. Caroline
Wescott Romney 579
Moorish Women as I Found Them. . . Mrs. A.
L. Howard 463
Moors of Spain, The Mrs. Ellen Harrell-
Cantrell 253
Municipal Suffrage for Women in Michigan
Miss Octavia Williams Bates 664
N
Nationalism Mrs. Lillian Cantrell-Bay 260
Need of a Great College in the South Miss
Clara Conway 402
Needlework as Taught in Stockholm Mile.
Hulda Lundin 104
Nervous American, The. .Mrs. Martha Cleve-
land Dibble 704
New Field for Women, A Mrs. Julia
Edwards Sherman 670
New Liberty Bell, The Miss Alice A.
Mitchell 405
Next Step in the Education of the Deaf, The
Miss Mary S. Garrett 443
Next Thing in Education, The Mrs. Mary
Lowe Dickinson 637
Nineteenth Century, The. . Mrs. Whiton Stone 101
Norway and the Midnight Sun. . Mrs. A. A. F.
Johnston 555
Noted Writers of the South, A Few Mrs. J.
W. Drury 471
Not Things, but Women Mrs. C. B. Pit-
blado 793
Novel as an Educator of the Imagination, The
Miss May Rogers 586
o
Opening Address Mrs. Potter Palmer 25
Organized Motherhood Mrs. Lide Meri-
weather 747
Our Neighbors, the Alaskan Women Mrs.
Clara A. McDiarmid 723
INDEX TO SUBJECTS.
19
TITLE. PAGE.
Pacific Northwest, The Abigail Scott
Duniway 90
Peace Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease 412
Philanthropy for Girls in Paris. ..Mme. Marie
xMarshall 211
Piano Playing without Piano Practice. . .Miss
Mary V. Hayes 474
Pioneer Women of Oregon Mrs. Elizabetl
M. Wilson 203
Poetry of the Stars Miss Mary Proctor 301
Portrait of Mrs. Potter Palmer 816
Portrait of Susan B. Anthony 787
Possibilities of the Southern States Mrs.
Sallie Rhett Roman 535
Power and Purposes of Women, The Mrs.
Helen L.Bullock. 143
Presentation of Portrait. ..Mrs. Mary S. Lock-
wood 816
Preventive Medicine. . .Dr. Mary E. Donohue 727
Progress of Fifty Years, The . . Mrs. Lucy Stone 58
Samoa; Its People and Their Customs Mrs.
E. J. Ormsbee 590
Self-Support Problem, A. . .Miss Julia S, Tut-
wiler 36
Serving One Another Mrs. Ashley Carus-
Wilson 651
Signs of the Times Miss Alisan Wilson 488
Sketch of Home Life in Iceland, A. .Mme.
Sirgrid E. Magnusson 521
Spanish-American Neighbors, Our Mrs.
Anna A. Dodd 764
St. Catherine of Siena Hon. Mrs. Arthur
Pelham 576
Study in Goethe's Faust, A Mrs. Mary H.
Peabody 205
Study of Greek Art, A. . . . Mrs. Sarah Amelia
Scull 423
Swiss Customs Miss Cecile Gohl 316
Symmetrical Womanhood Mrs. Wesley
Smith 217
Talk, A Miss Kate Field 77
Tempted Woman, The Mrs. Isabel Wing
Lake 574
Turkish Compassionate Fund, The. .Mme. C.
Zacaroff 618
u
University Extension . . Rev. Augusta J. Chapin 393
Unveiling of Portrait Mrs. James P. Eagle 816
V
Virginia Women of Our Day, The. .Mrs. Mary
Stuart Smith 408
Vocal Art Mrs. Thora K. Bjorn 740
" Vocal Art," Extracts From. . Dr. M. Augusta
Brown 477
Voice Culture Mme. Louisa Cappiani 500
w
TITLE. PAGE.
We, the Women Miss Cara Reese 328
What the Women of Kansas are Doing To-
day Mrs. Eugene Ware 277
Who Are the Builders Mrs. Jonnie Allen
George 388
Wife of Blennerhassett, The Mrs. Mary
T. W. Curwen 165
Woman and Household Labor Mrs. Mary
Hess Hull 609
Woman and Religion Rev. Ida C. Hultin 788
Woman as a Financier. . Mrs. M. A. Lipscomb 469
Woman as an Investor. . Mrs. Louise A. Stark-
weather 62
Woman in an Ideal Government. .Mrs. K. V.
Grinnell 628
Woman in Journalism Mrs. Mary Temple
Bayard 435
Woman in Music Mrs. Gaston Boyd 570
Women in Politics Mrs. J. Ellen Foster 668
Woman in the Greek Drama. . Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe 102
Woman, the Inciter to Reform. . Mrs. Minnie
D.Louis 539
Woman, the New Factor in Economics
Rev, Augusta Cooper Bristol 80
Woman Who Has Come, The. . Mrs. Charlotte
Holt 190
Woman's Awakenment. . Mrs. Anna S. Green 649
Woman's Life in Asiatic Turkey.. Miss Mary
P. Wright 305
Woman's Place in the Republic of Letters.
Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer 135
Woman's Sphere from a Woman's Standpoint
Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon 74
Woman's Work in Kentucky. . .Mrs. Eugenie
Dunlap Potts 562
Women as Political Economists. .Mrs. Brain-
erd Fuller 491
Women Citizens and People? Are Mrs.
Emily B. Ketcham 361
Women in Sacred Song Mrs. Eva Munson
Smith 416
Women of Bohemia, The Madame Josefa
Humpal Zeman 127
Women in Modern Italy Signora Fanny
Zampini Salazar 157
Women's National Indian Association, The. .
Mrs. Amelia S. Quinton 71
Women of the South Mrs. S. C. Trueheart 804
Women Writers of California, The Mrs.
Ellen Sterling Cummins 184
Wonders of Nature and Art in Spain
Senorita Catalina de Alcala 398
Young Women of the South, The. .Mrs. Jean
Loughborough Douglass 733
Zuni Scalp Ceremonial, The Mrs. Matilda
Coxe Stevenson 484
INDEX TO PORTRAITS.
A PAGE.
Abbott. Mrs. Alice Asbnry 645
Aberdeen, Lady Ishbel... 743
Adams, Mrs. Mary Newbury -.. ...342
Albright, Mrs. Franc Luse opp. p. 632
Allen, Mrs. E. W... opp. p. 502
Angell, Mrs. Sarah 8. C .-.opp. p. 370
Anthony, Miss Susan B_. 787
Arcambalde, Mrs. Agnes L ...148
Ashley, Mrs. Susan R 23
Austin, Miss Isabella J - opp. p. 632
B
Bagley. Mrs. John J ...28— opp. p. 96
fiaird. Mrs. Priscilla A 414
Ball, Mrs. J.Frank opp. p. 1(54
Barker, Mrs. Helen Morton. 23 — opp. p. .502
Barlow, Miss Florence... 797
Bartlett, Mrs. Edward L. opp. p. 632
Biitps, Miss Octavia Williams 664
Bay, Mrs. Lillian Cantrell .• 260
Bayard, Mrs. Mary Temple 435
Beck, Miss E. Nellie opp. p. 232
Beeson, Mrs. Marie P. Harmon ...opp. p. 632
Bell, Mrs. Mary C opp. p. 232
Biorn, Mme. Thora K 740
Blackwell, Kev. Antoinette Brown 633
Blake, Mrs. Lillie Devereuz 32
Boyd, Mrs. Gaston 570
Brady, Mrs. Sue Huffman -.306
Brayton. Mrs. Ellery M opp. p. .'i02
Brazza di. Countess Cora Slocomb ...697
Briggs, Mrs. JohnS opp. p. 370
Bristol, Kev. Augusta Cooper 80
Brotherton, Mrs. Alice Williams 67
Brown, Mrs. H. F. opp. p. 370
Brown, Miss Lillian Mason - opp p. 370
Brown, Dr. M. Augusta 477
Bucklin, Miss Loraine Pearce -450
Bullock, Mrs. Electa .510
Bullock, Mrs. Hel«n L ...143
Burleigh, Mrs. Edwin C— opp. p. 304
Busselle, Miss Mary E.. opp. p. 434
Butler, Mrs. Thomas J opp. p. 6.32
C
Cantrell, Mrs.EUen Harrell 253
Cantrill, Mrs. Mary Cecil opp. p. 96
Cappiani, Mme. Lonisa 500
Carse, Mrs. Matilda B opp. p. 696
Chandler, Mrs. Ellen M opp. p. 568
Chapin, Kev. Augusta J 393
Clarke, Mrs. Francis B opp. p. 370
Clark, Mrs. Laura H 512
Clark, Mrs. Whiting S opp. p. 2.32
Cochran, Mrs. Mary A opp. p. 568
Cohen, Miss Katherine M 428
Cohen, Mrs. Nina Morais ...113
Cole, Miss Annette 600
Coleman, Mrs. Robert J opp. p. 164
Conway, Miss Clara 402
Cooke, Mrs. Susan Gale opp. p. .502
(hooper, Mrs. Sarah B _ 296
Cope, Mrs. Theresa Elizabeth .531
Corbm, Mrs. Caroline Fairfield 326
Corson. Miss Juliet 714
Craig, Mrs. M. K.. 198
Crawford, Mrs. Emily 87
Cummins, Mrs. Ella Sterling 184
Cunningham, Miss Floride opp. p. 502
Curwen, Mrs. Mary T. W ...165
D
Dailey, Miss Charlotte Field opp. p. .502
Deane, Mrs. James K opp. p. 164
Delaney, Mrs. A. K opp. p. 632
Devereux, Mrs. C. A. R ...752
PAGV
Dibble, Mrs. Martha Cleveland 704
Dickinson, Frances, M. D opp. p. 696
Dickinson, Mrs. Mary Lowe... 687
Dillaye, Miss Blanche 643
Dodd, Mrs. Anna A.. 754
Donohue, Dr. Mary E 727
Doolittle, Jr., Mrs. James B.. opp. p. 696
Doty, Master Willie K opp. p. 762
Douglas, Mrs. Selwyn 383
Douglass, Mrs. Jean Loughborough 783
Drury, Mrs. J. Wilson 471
Duniway, Mrs. Abigail Scott.. 90
E
Eagle, Mrs. James P 11 and 28— opp. p. 164
F^astman, Mrs. Annis Ford... 612
Edgerton, Mrs. Rollin A opp. p. 164
Edwards, Mrs. Amanda H ...760
F
Fairbanks, Mrs. Caroline Fuller 503
Farnum, Mrs. Anna E. M opp. p. 232
Faulkner. Miss Jean W _ opp. p. 304
Felton, Mrs. Wm. H opp. p. 282
Field, Miss Kate... 77
Field ((Catherine Cole), Mrs. Martha R ..776
Foley, Mrs. M. D opp. p. 434
Ford, Miss Ellen A opp. p. 96
Fosdick, Mrs. Anna M opp. p. 164
Foster. Mrs. J. Ellen 668
Fredericsen, Miss Kirstine ..237
French, Mrs Jonas H opp. p. 304
Frost, Mrs. Ruflus S opp. p 304
FuUer, Mrs. Brainard ...491
G
Gaddess, Mrs. Mary L 221
Gage, Mrs. Marie Mott 787
Galloway, Miss Janet A 887
Garrett, Miss Mary S... 448
George, Mrs. Jonnie Allen.. 388
Gillespie, Mrs. Laura opp. p. 502
Ginty, Mrs. Flora Beall opp. p. .568
Gohl, Miss Cecile 316
Gordon, Mrs. Laura de Force 74
Gould, Mrs. Minna Gordon 660
Greene, Miss Mary A 41
Green. Mrs. Anna S 649
GrinneU, Mrs. Kathemi V 628
Guthrie, Mrs. Genevieve..., --opp. p. 632
If
Hale, Mrs. Frances E ...opp. p. 568
Hall, Mrs; Daniel opp. p. 434
Hanback, Mrs. Hester A ...opp. p.304
Hanna. Mrs. John R 53
Harrison, Mrs. F. H opp. p. 56S
Harrison, Mrs. Mary S opp. p. 96
Hart, Mrs. Mary P opp. p. 434
Hartpencp, Mrs. Walter opp. p. 434
Hayes, Miss Mary V 474
Henrotin, Mrs. Charles 848
Hinds, Miss Ida K 488
Hitchcock, Mrs. Romyn.. 586
Holt, Mrs. Charlotte ...190
Hooker, Mrs. Isabella Beecher opp. p. 164
Houghton, Mrs. Alice opp. p. 568
Howard, Mrs. A. L 463
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward 102
Howell, Mrs. Mary Seymour 678
Howes, Mrs. Eliza J. Pendry opp. p. 870
Hoxie, Mrs. VinnieReam 608
Hull, Mrs. Mary Hess 609
Hultin, Rev. Ida C 788
Hundley, Miss HattieToney... opp. p. 164
Ives, Mies Frances S opp. p. 164
21
22
INDEX TO PORTRAITS.
J PAGE.
Jackson, Mrs. A. C opp. p. 304
Jackson, Miss Lily Irene.. ...opp. p. 568
Jenkins, Mrs. Helen PhiUeo 686
Johnson, Miss Helen Louise 810
Johnston, Mrs. Adelia A. F 555
K
Keene. Miss Mary Virginia. _ 194
Keneaiy, Miss Annesley ' 354
Ketcham, Mrs. Emily Burton [.]^!"361
Kidder, Mrs. George Wilson opp. p. 434
Kinder, Mrs. Mary Richards opp. p. 164
Korany, Mme. HannaK . 359
L
Ladd, Mrs. Mira B. F opp. p. 434
Lake, Mrs. Isabel Wing. _ ".1 574
Lake, Mrs. Leonora Marie... 508
Langworthy, Mrs. E. C opp. p. 370
Lankton, Dr. Freda M . 268
Lease, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth 412
Lee, Mrs. James W... opp. p. 370
Lewis, Mrs. Amanda Kerr _ 371
Linch, Mrs. W. Newton ^ opp. p. 568
Lincoln, Mrs. Mary J... . .138
Lipscomb, Mrs. M. A 469
Lockwood, Mrs. Mary 8 opp. p. 96
Logan, Mrs. John A ...opp. p. 632
Lord, Miss Eleanor 281
Louis, Mrs. Minnie D 539
Lovell, MissLanrette 23— opp. p. 632
Lnndin, Mile. Hulda 104
Lynde, Mrs. William P.. opp. p. 568
M
Magnusson, Mme. Sigrid E 521
Marsden, Miss Kate .213
Marshall, Mme. Marie 211
McAdow, Mrs. Clara L ...opp. p. 370
McCandless, Miss Mary E opp. p. 502
Mc( 'onnell, Mrs. W^. B. opp. p. 4.34
McDiarmid, Mrs. Clara A 723
McDonald, Prof . Cora M 264
McGee, Miss L. C 249
McLaughlin, Mrs. 8. W.. opp. p. 434
Meredith, Mrs. Virginia C opp. p. 232
Meri weather, Mrs.Xiide. 747
Messenger, Mrs. Lillian Rozell 227
Meyer, Mrs. NicolineBeck 243
Meyer, Mrs. Annie Nathan 135
Miller, Mrs. Kate O 782
Miller, Mrs. Annie JennesB... 695
Miller, Miss Ora Elizabeth opp. p. 232
Minor, Mrs. Katharine L... opp. p. 304
Mitchell, Miss Alice A.- 405
Mitchell, Mrs. Jennie S ...opp. p. 304
Monroe, Mrs. Harriet Earhart 311
Moore, Miss Aimee K. Osborne.. 380
Morgan, Miss Anna ,597
Mott, Mrs. Emma Pratt 544
Mulligan, Mrs. JamesA .-opp. p. 696
N
Norris, Mrs. Mary E.C 674
O
Oglesbv, Mrs. Richard J.. opp. p. 232
Olmstaad, Mrs. Charles H opp. p. 232
Ormsbee, Mrs. E.J 590
Opening of the Congress of Women . ; opp. p. 435
Owings, Mrs. Melissa D opp. p. .568
P
Palmer, Mrs. Bertha M. Honor6 7, opp. p. 696 and 816
Palmer, Mrs. Sarah Fxidy 432
Paul, Mrs. K. 8. G ...opp. p. 568
Payton, Mrs. Mary opp. i). 502
Peabody, Mrs. Mary H . 205
Peck, Mrs. Marie Purdy 623
Perkins, Mrs. Belle H opp. p. 304
Pierce, Miss Ada_ opp. p. 762
Pitblado, Mrs. Effie. 793
Pollard, Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie 293
Potter, Miss Jennie O'Neil _ 682
Potts, Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap 562
Prescott, Mrs. Lydia A 526
Price, Mrs. Charles opp. p. 434
Proctor, Miss Mary A.. 301
o
Qainton, Mrs. Amelia S 71
R PAGE.
Reed, Mrs. Caroline G 240
Reed, Mrs. Elizabeth A "."" 719
Reed, Mrs. William... opp.p. 304
Reese, Miss (^ara 323
Reitz, Miss Wilhelmine odd. d 232
Rich, Mrs. Ellen M l."'.'l..... 36.5
Richards, Mrs. Ellen H '...'.'. "llZ
Rickards, Mrs. Eliza... "rr"opp.'p.'370
Riggs, Mrs. Anna R _ ' 813
Rogers, Miss May J 596
Roman, Mrs. Sallie Rhett "II .535
Romney, Mrs. Caroline Wescott. .......[/... 519
Rue, Mrs- Parthenia P opp. p. 164
Rnssell, Miss Eliza M 23— opp. p. 434
Ryan, Mrs. Rosine.. opp. p. 96
S
Salazar, Signora Fanny Zampini .. 157
Salisbury, Mrs. Margaret Blaine. __ miopp. p. 632
Sawyer, Mrs. Winona Branch 273
Schahovskoy, Princess M ""..569
Scull, Mrs. Sarah Amelia " \'.l 423
Sewall, Mrs. May Wright ""III" 771
Shattuck, M rs. L. Brace I . .23— opp. p. 696
Shaw, Rev. Anna Howard 152
Sheldon, Miss Elizabeth B __'__ 1. 790
Sheldon, Mrs. M.French 131
Shelton, Mrs. Matilda Hart opplp. 502
Shepard, Mrs. Frances Welles opp. p. 232
Sherman, Mrs. Caroline K 764
Sherman, Mrs. Julia Edwards I... 670
Smith, Miss Marion Conthoay 616
Smith, Mrs. Mary Stuart _ 111408
Smith, Mrs. Wesley 217
Smith, Mrs. Clara Holbrook 332
Smith, Mrs. Virginia Thrall 178
Smith, Mrs. Eva Munson 416
Souville, Mrs. E. M ... 691
Spence, Mrs. Catherine Helen I-.IIIII458
Spencer, Rev. Anna Garlin 170
Starkweather, Mrs. Amey M.. opp. p. 502
Starkweather, Mrs. Louise A.. 62
Stevens, Mrs. L. M. N 23— opp. p. 304
Stevenson, Mrs. Matilda Coxe ..484
Stevenson, Dr. Sarah Hackett 708
Stone, Mrs. Leander opp. p. 696
Stone, Mrs. Lucy 58
Stone, Mrs, C. E. Whiton 101
Stone, Mrs. Lucinda H , 446
Stone, Mrs. John M.. opp. p. 370
Straughan, Mrs. Joseph C opp. p. 232
Street, Miss Ida M 286
Sunde.land, Mrs. Eliza Read 318
Thatcher, Mrs. M, D opp. p. 164
Thatcher, Jr., Mrs. Solomon opp. p. 696
Thatcher, Miss Claribel... opp. p. 762
Thatcher, Miss Florence opp. p. 762
Thomson, Mrs. Alexander . . .opp. p. 304
Todd, Mrs. Mary C 39
Trautmann, Mrs. Ralph _. opp. p. 434
Truehart. Mrs. 8. C 804
Turner, Mrs, Ida Loving . .opp. p. 502
Tutwiler, Miss Julia 8 36
Twitchell, Mrs. Eliza Stowe .495
V
Verdenal, Mrs. D. F opp. p. 96
Villafuerte, Miss Virginia ..406
W
Wallace, Mrs. M. R. M ...opp. p. 696
Ware, Mrs. Eugene 277
Welch, Miss Jane Meade "11 30
Whalen, Mrs, Tliomas A II I...oppIp. 632
Wheelock, Miss Lucy 323
White, Mrs. Jennie F.. ...123
Wilkins, Mrs. Beriah opp. p. 632
Wilkinson, Mrs. Laura 8 233
Wilson, Miss Alisan . 488
Wilson, Mrs. Elizabeth M 203
Wilson (n§ePetrie), Mrs. Ashley Cams 651
Wilson, Mrs. John R opp. p. 502
Windeyer, Miss Margaret 97
Wise, Mrs. John Sergeant opp. p. 568
Women's Building frontispiece
WooUey, Mrs. Celia Parker 763
Wright, Miss Mary P 806
Zacaroff, Mile. Caricl6e 618
Zeman, Mrs. Josefa Humpal 127
COMMITTEE ON CONGRESSES OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
2. Mk8^ Jno. J. Bag LEY,
V ice-Chairman.
4. Miss Eliza M. Rdssell.
7. Mas. L. Brace Shattlck.
1. Mrs. James P, Eagle,
Chairman of Committee.
5. Mrs. Helen M. Barker.
8. Mrs. Susan R. A^ley.
6. Mrs. L. M. N. Stevens,
8. Miss Latjrette Lovell.
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY MRS. POTTER PALMER,
PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE WOMAN'S BUILDING. M^X; jsi, .1893. -_
PUBLISHED BY PERMISSION.
Members of the Board of Lady Managers and Friends: — The moment of
fruition has arrived. Hopes which for more than two years have gradually been
gaining strength and definiteness now become realities. Today the Exposition
opens its gates. On this occasion of the formal opening of the Woman's Building,
the Board of Lady Managers is singularly fortunate in having the honor to welcome
distinguished official representatives of many of the able foreign committees and of
the state boards, which have so effectively co-operated with it in accomplishing the
results now to be disclosed to the world.
We have traveled together a hitherto untrodden path, have been subjected to
tedious delays and overshadowed by dark clouds, which threatened disaster to our
enterprise. We have been obliged to march with peace offerings in our hands, lest
hostile motives be ascribed to us. Our burdens have been greatly lightened, how-
ever, by the spontaneous sympathy and aid which have reached us from women in
every part of the world, and which have proved an added incentive and inspiration.
Experience has brought many surprises, not the least of which is an impressive realiza-
tion of the unity of human interests, notwithstanding differences of race, government,
language,, temperament and external conditions. The people of all civilized lands
are studying the same problems. Each success and each failure in testing and develop-
ing new theories is valuable to the whole world. Social and industrial questions are
paramount, and are receiving the thoughtful consideration of statesmen, students,
political economists, humanitarians, employers and employed.
The few forward steps which have been taken during our boasted nineteenth cent-
ury — the so-called age of invention — have promoted the general use of machinery
and economic motive powers with the result of cheapening manufactured articles, but
have not afforded the relief to the masses, which was expected. The struggle for
bread is as fierce as of old. We find, everywhere, the same picture presented — over-
crowded industrial centers, factories surrounded by dense populations of operatives,
keen competition, many individuals forced to use such strenuous effort that vitality
is drained, in the struggle to maintain life under conditions so uninviting and discour-
aging that it scarcely seems worth living. It is a grave reproach to modern enlighten-
ment that we seem no nearer the solution of many of these problems than during
feudal days.
It is not our province, however, to discuss these weighty questions, except in so
far as they affect the compensation paid to wage earners, and more especially that
paid to women and children. Of all existing forms of injustice, there is none so cruel
and inconsistent as is the position in which women are placed with regard to self-main-
tenance—the calm ignoring of their rights and responsibilities, which has gone on
for centuries. If the economic conditions are hard for men to meet, subjected as they
25
26 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
are to the constant weeding out of the less expert and steady hands, it is evident that
women, thrown upon their own resources, have a frightful struggle to endure, espe-
cially as they have always to contend against a public sentiment which discountenances
their seeking industrial employment as a means of livelihood.
The theory which exists among the conservative people, that the sphere of woman
is her home — that it is unfeminine, even monstrous, for her to wish to take a place
beside or to compete with men in the various lucrative industries — tells heavily against
her, for manufacturers and producers take advantage of it to disparage her work and
obtain her services for a nominal price, thus profiting largely by the necessities and
helplessness of their victim. That so many should cling to respectable occupations
while starving in following them, and should refuse to yield to discouragement and
despair, shows a high quality of steadfastness and principle. These are the real
^)ieroines ^qf life, whose handiwork we are proud to install in the Exposition, because
■;i^ has lae^rC.prpcluced in factories, workshops and studios under the most adverse con-
ditions an(^ with.tlje most sublime patience and endurance.
/^ ^. ; :Men;of -tHi? fiflest and most chivalric type, who have poetic theories about the
satlctity df the *n6me and the refining, elevating influence of woman in it, theories
inherited from the days of romance and chivalry, which we wish might prevail
forever - these men have asked many times whether the Board of Lady Managers
thinks it well to promote a sentiment which may tend to destroy the home by encour-
aging occupations for women which take them out of it. We feel, therefore, obliged to
state our belief that every woman, who is presiding over a happy home, is fulfilling her
highest and truest function, and could not be lured from it by temptations offered by
factories or studios. Would that the eyes of these idealists could be thoroughly
opened, that they might see, not the fortunate few of a favored class, with whom
they possibly are in daily contact, but the general status of the labor market through-
out the world and the relation to it of women. They might be astonished to learn
that the conditions under which the vast majority of the " gentler sex " are living, are
not so ideal as they assume; that each is not " dwelling in a home of which she is the
queen, with a manly and loving arm to shield her from rough contact with life."
Because of the impossibility of reconciling their theories with the stern facts, they
might possibly consent to forgive the offense of widows with dependent children and
those wives of drunkards and criminals who so far forget the high standard established
for them as to attempt to earn for themselves daily bread, lacking which they must
perish. The necessity for their work under present conditions is too evident and too
urgent to be questioned. They must work or they must starve.
We are forced, therefore, to turn from the realm of fancy to meet and deal with
existing facts. The absence of a just and general appreciation of the truth concern-
ing the position and status of women has caused us to call special attention to it and
to make a point of attempting to create, by means of the Exposition, a well defined
public sentiment in regard to their rights and duties, and the propriety of their becom-
ing not only self-supporting, but able to assist in maintaining their families when nec-
essary. We hope that the statistics which the Board of Lady Managers has been so
earnestly attempting to secure may give a correct idea of the number of women — not
only those without natural protectors, or those thrown suddenly upon their own
resources, but the number of wives of mechanics, laborers, artists, artisans and work-
men of every degree — who are forced to work shoulder to shoulder with their hus-
bands in order to maintain the family.
There are two classes of the community who wish to restrain women from actual
participation in the business of the world, and each gives apparently very strong rea-
sons in support of its views. These are, first, the idealists, who hold the opinion
already mentioned that woman should be tenderly guarded and cherished within the
sacred precincts of the home, which alone is her sphere of action; and, second, certain
political economists, with whom maybe ranged most of the men engaged in the profit-
able pursuit of the industries of the world, who object to the competition that would
THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN. 27
result from the participation of women, because they claim that it would reduce the
•"^eneral scale of wages paid, and lessen the earning power of men, who require their
present incomes to maintain their families. Plausible as these theories are, we can
not accept them without pausing to inquire, what then would become of all but the
very few women who have independent fortunes or arc the happy wives of men able
and willing to support them? The interests of probably three-fourths of the women
in the world are at stake. Are they to be allowed to starve, or to rush to self-
destruction? If not permitted to work, what course is open to them?
Our oriental neighbors have seen the logic of the situation far more clearly than
we and have been consistent enough to meet it, without shrinking from heroic measures
when necessary. The question is happily solved in some countries by the practice of
polygamy, which allows every man to maintain as many wives as his means permit.
In others etiquette requires that a newly made widow be burned on the funeral pyre
with her husband's body, while the Chinese take the precaution to drown surplus
female children. It would seem that any of these methods is more logical and less cruel
than the system we pursue of permitting the entire female population to live, but mak-
ing it impossible for those born to poverty to maintain themselves in comfort, because
they are hampered by a caste feeling almost as strong as that ruling India, which
will not permit them to work on equal terms with men. These unhappy members of
an inferior class must be content to remain in penury, living on the crumbs that fall
from tables spread for those of another and higher caste. This relative position has
been exacted on the one side, accepted on the other. It has been considered by each
an inexorable law.
We shrink with horror from the unjust treatment of child widows and other un-
fortunates on the opposite side of the globe, but our own follies and inconsistencies
are too close to our eyes for us to see them in proper perspective. Sentimentalists
should have reduced their theories to set terms and applied them. They have had
ample time and opportunity to provide means by which helpless women could be
cherished, protected and removed from the storm and stress of life. Women could
have asked nothing better. W^e have no respect for a theory which touches only the
favored few who do not need its protection and leaves unaided the great mass it has
assisted to push into the mire. Talk not of it, therefore, until it can be uttered, not
only in polite drawing rooms, but also in factories and workshops without a blush of
shame for its weakness and inefficiency.
But the sentimentalist again exclaims: " Would you have woman step down from
her pedestal in order to enter practical life?" Yes! A thousand times, yes! If we
can really find, after a careful search, any women mounted upon pedestals, we should
willingly ask them to step down — in order that they may meet and help to uplift their
sisters. Freedom and justice for all are infinitely more to be desired than pedestals
for a few. I beg leave to state that, personally, I am not a believer in the pedestal
theory— never having seen an actual example of it, and that- I always suspect the
motives of anyone advancing it. It does not represent the natural and fine relation be-
tween husband and wife, or between friends. They should stand side by side, the fine
qualities of each supplementing and assisting those of the other. Men naturally cher-
ish high ideals of womanhood, as women do of manliness and strength. These ideals
will dwell with the human race forever without our striving to preserve and protect
them.
If we now look at the question from the economic standpoint and decide for good
and logical reasons that women should be kept out of industrial fields in order that
they may leave the harvest for men, whose duty it is to maintain women and children,
then by all the laws of justice and equity these latter should be provided for by their
natural protectors, and if deprived of them should become wards of the state, and be
maintained in honor and comfort. The acceptance of even this doctrine of tardy justice
would not, however, I feel sure, be welcomed by the woman of today who, having had a
taste of independence, will never willingly relinquish it. They have no desire to be
28 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
helpless and dependent. Having the full use of their faculties, they rejoice in exercis-
ing them. This is entirely in conformity with the trend of modern thought, which
is in the direction of establishing proper respect for human individuality and the right
of self-development. Our highest aim now is to train each individual to find happiness
in the full and healthy exercise of the gifts bestowed by generous nature. Ignorance
is too expensive and wasteful to be tolerated. We cannot afford to lose the reserve
power of any individual.
We advocate, therefore, the thorough education and training of woman to fit her
to meet whatever fate life may bring; not only to prepare her for the factory and
workshop, for the professions and arts, but, more important than all else, to prepare
her for presiding over the home. It is for this, the highest field of woman's effort,
that the broadest training and greatest preparation are required. The illogical, ex-
travagant, whimsical, unthrifty mother and housekeeper belongs to the dark ages. She
has no place in our present era of enlightenment. No course of study is too elab-
orate, no amount of knowledge and culture too abundant to meet the actual require-
ments of the wife and mother in dealing with the interests committed to her hands.
The board does not wish to be understood as placing an extravagant or senti-
mental value upon the work of any woman because of her sex. It willingly acknowl-
edges that the industries, arts and commerce of the world have been for centuries in
the hands of men who have carefully trained themselves for the responsibilities de-
volving upon them, and who have, consequently, without question, contributed vastly
more than women to the valuable thought, research, invention, science, art and liter-
ature, which have become the rich heritage of the human race. Notwithstanding
their disadvantages, however, a few gifted women have made their value felt, and have
rendered exceptional service to the cause of humanity.
Realizing that woman can never hope to receive the proper recompense for her
services until her usefulness and success are not only demonstrated but fully under-
stood and acknowledged, we have taken advantage of the opportunity presented by the
Exposition to bring together such evidences of her skill in the various industries, arts
and proressions, as may convince the world that ability is not a matter of sex. Urged
by necessity, she has shown that her powers are the same as her brothers', and that like
encouragement and fostering care may develop her to an equal point of usefulness.
The fact that the Woman's Building is so small that it can hold only a tithe of the
beautiful objects offered, has been a great disadvantage. The character of the ex-
hibits and the high standard attained by most of them serve, therefore, only as an in-
dex of the quality and range of the material from which we have drawn. When our
invitation asking co-operation was sent to foreign lands the commissioners already
appointed generally smiled doubtfully and explained that their women were doing noth-
ing; that they would not feel inclined to help us, and, in many cases, stated that it was
not the custom of their country for women to take part in any public effort, that they
only attended to social duties. But as soon as these ladies received our message,
sent in a brief and formal letter, the free masonry among women proved to be such
that they needed no explanation; they understood at once the possibilities. Strong
committees were immediately formed of women having large hearts and brains,
women who cannot selfishly enjoy the ease of their own lives without giving a thought
to their helpless and wretched sisters.
Our unbounded thanks are due to the exalted and influential personages who be-
came, in their respective countries, patronesses and leaders of the movement inaugur-
ated by us to represent what women are doing. They entered with appreciation into
our work for the Exposition because they saw an opportunity, which they gracefully
and delicately veiled behind the magnificent laces forming the central objects in their
superb collections, to aid their women by opening new markets for their industries.
The Exposition will thus benefit women, not alone by means of the material
objects brought together, but there will be a more lasting and permanent result through
the interchange of thought and sympathy among influential and leading women of all
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 29
countries now for the first time working together with a common purpose and an
established means of communication. Government recognition and sanction give to
these committees of women official character and dignity. Their work has been mag-
nificently successful, and the reports which will be made of the conditions found to
exist will be placed on record as public documents among the archives of every
country.- Realizing the needs and responsibilities of the hour, and that this will be
the first official utterance of women on behalf of women, we shall weigh well our
words, words which should be so judicious and convincing that hereafter they may be
treasured among the happy influences which made possible new and better condi-
tions.
We rejoice in the possession of this beautiful building, in which we meet today,
in its delicacy, symmetry and strength. We honor our architect and the artists
who have given not only their hands but their hearts and their genius to its decora-
tion. For it women in every part of the world have been exerting their efforts and
talents, for it looms have wrought their most delicate fabrics, the needle has flashed in
the hands of maidens under tropical suns, the lacemaker has bent over her cushion
weaving her most artful web, the brush and chisel have sought to give form and
reality to the visions haunting the brain of the artist — all have wrought with the
thought of making our building worthy to serve its great end. We thank them all for
their successful efforts.
The eloquent President of the Commission last October dedicated the great
Exposition buildings to humanity. We now dedicate the Woman's Building to an
elevated womanhood — knowing that by so doing we shall best serve the cause of
humanity.
THE FINDING OF THE NEW WORLD/
By MISS JANE MEADE WELCH.
In the attempt to connect the New World with the Old in remotest times, it is
almost impossible to find a clue that leads to documentary history. Nearly every
European nation claims a hero, or group of heroes,
who reached America before Columbus' time, and
every eastern Asiatic race makes a similar claim. Of
all these alleged pre-Columbian voyages to America,
the only one that rests on actual proof is that of the
Norsemen. But Leif Ericsson's chance finding of
the North American coast somewhere between Cape
Breton and Point Judith, led to no permanent coloni-
zation, and did not impress itself upon the mind of
Europe outside the Scandinavian peninsula. Hence
it should not be mentioned in the same breath with
Christopher Columbus' heroic venture. He sailed
the Sea of Darkness, on the faith of a conviction, and
" reunited two streams of human life that had flowed
apart since the glacial age," establishing a permanent
connection between the eastern and western halves
of our planet.
A long chain of circumstances led to his dis-
covery of America. The closing of the eastern way
to the orient through the taking by the Turks of
Constantinople, made it necessary to find a new
passage to the Indies. Years were given to the effort
to find one by circumnavigating Africa, and one daring captain after another sailed
down the gold coast. While these expeditions were going forward, Christopher
Columbus, who may have taken part in one of them, was dwelling on the neighboring
island of Porto Santo, There, three hundred miles out upon the Sea of Darkness, the
idea of sailing due west to the Indies shaped itself in his mind.
The story of Christopher Columbus' repeated rebuffs need not again be re-
hearsed. As an example of courage he is pre-eminent, and no ingenuity of argu-
ment can take from him his glory. Like Newton in the discovery of the law of
gravitation, he did a thing that could be done but once.
When Columbus landed on the island of Guanahani, he there found a new race of
human beings whom he described as " gentle and uncovetous." They were of a red-
dish hue, with small deep-set eyes, high cheek bones, straight black hair, and almost
no beard. Our double continent was truly the great world of the red men, for with
the exception of the sub-arctic Eskimo, they were its sole inhabitants. This conti-
nent belonged to them. Their houses, while they varied in degrees of develop-
Miss Jane Meade Welch is a native of Buffalo, N. Y. She was born March 11, 1854. Her parents were Thomas
Cury Welch and Maria Allen Meade. She was educated at the Buffalo Seminary and Elmira College. She has traveled ex-
tensively in America and in Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. Her profession is that of
lecturer. She is the regular lecturer on American History at the Buffalo Seminary, St. Margaret's school, Buffalo; Mrs,
Sylvanas Reed's school. New York; The Misses Masters' school, Dobbs Perry, and Ogontz school, Pa. She has also lect-
ured at Cornell University. She is the first American woman to lecture at Cambridge, England, or whose work has been
accepted by the British Association. Her address is Buffalo, N. Y.
* [What here appears is a synopsis of the address, the object of which was to present the latest opinions qonceming the
origin and degree of culture attained by America's early inhabitants.]
30
MISS JANE MEADE WELCH,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 31
ment, were essentially the same, whether they were the skin lodges of the most
northern tribes, or the pueblos of the Aztecs. They were communal houses, in which
dwelt several, sometimes a great many, related families.
Upon this communal household was built their political fabric. The lowest
political unit in ancient America was the exogamous clan, next came the phratry, and
then the tribe. With the exception of the Iroquois league and the Mexican confed-
eracy, the tribe was the highest political organization in ancient America. Accord-
ing to the scientific definition of civilization, there was no such thing in ancient Amer-
ica. The tribes highest in development, social and political, were those in the Cor-
dilleras, running from the New Mexican tableland through Peru. Those lowest in
development were found, where many of them are still found, west of the Rocky
Mountains, in California, and in the valleys of the Columbia, Yukon and Athabascan
rivers. Large unexplored fields yet await the investigation of archaeologists and
geologists in both North and South America. But the work thus far accomplished
has convinced the majority of historians there never was a pre-historic American civ-
ilization. That Aztecs, Mayas and Incas were Indians no less than were Algonquins
or Iroquois.
Many of these groups, particularly Peruvians, Mayas and Aztecs, presented
strange incongruities of culture, but, tested by strict scientific standards, they were
not civilized. As to whence these aborigines came, and how long they had inhabited
America before they were found by the Spaniards, and succeeding Portuguese,
French and English explorers, science has not yet been able to yield what is to all
minds a satisfactory answer. Discoveries made by geologists in the past few years
have altered our attitude toward these questions. It is certain, however, that they
had been here a long time. The inhabitants of ancient America were indigenous.
OUR FORGOTTEN FOREMOTHERS.
By MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.
In speaking of " Our Forgotten Foremothers " I shall begin with that great queen
who, in some sort, may be considered not only as the foremother of this nation, but
of the whole New World — Isabella of Castile. Her
clear intellect first grasped the thought that there
might be a continent to be discovered, when her hus-
band, her councilors and her courtiers all derided the
claims of Columbus as mere idle dreams. Her stead-
fastness sustained him through all his vicissitudes, and
at last her action gave him the money with which to
fit out the expedition. Next after our debt to the in-
trepid navigator, this country owes its gratitude to
the brave queen. And yet how completely has she
been forgotten in all the celebrations and festivities of
this commemorative year! Orators speak of the great
enterprise of Columbus, poets rhymed in his honor,
but Isabella, the woman who made his expedition pos-
sible, was scarcely mentioned.
When New York City was arranging for the cele-
bration last fall, our City League wished to do honor
to the queen by some decorations at the stand we
occupied. We tried in vain to find a picture of her.
The city was filled with so-called portraits of Colum-
bus. He was depicted in every possible way, old and
young, bearded and close-shaved, smiling with an
amiable fatuity of expression, or frowning as if he hated all worlds, both old and
new. But nowhere could we find a likeness of Isabella at any price. High and low
through the city and up and down the land, we searched in vain. A lithograph of
Columbus could be purchased for two and a half cents, but no presentment of the
queen at any price, and we finally had one painted — enlarged from a small picture in
a book. Thus was this great woman forgotten.
Last winter, in New York, we honored the memory of the Pilgrim mothers by
giving a dinner on the anniversary of the landing on Plymouth Rock. This M^as the
first fime in the history of the country that these noble women had been remembered.
Year after year, the Sons of the Pilgrims, in the great New England societies of New
York and Brooklyn, have never failed to hold a feast in honor of the Pilgrim fathers,
but never before had the mothers been remembered. We wished to remind the world
of their virtues, and of their daughters', those noblewomen who have made New Eng-
land what it is, who carried the piety, the heroism, the devotion of their ancestors to
every part of our country. What fortitude, what self-sacrifice was required of those
Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake was born in Raleigh, N. C. Her father, George P. Deverenx, was a wealthy Southern
gentleman, of Irish descent. Her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Johnson, was of old New York and New England families. Mrs.
Blake was educated in New Haven, Conn. In 1855 she married Frank G. Q. Umsted, a lawyer of Philadelphia, who died in
1859, leaving his young widow with two children. In 1866 she married GrenfiU Blake, of New York. In 1869 she became
deeply interested in the movement for the enfranchisement of women, to which she has since so largely devoted her life.
In addition to contributing to many other leading periodicals, Mrs. Blake has published several novels, the best known
being " Fettered for Life." In 1883 she delivered a series of lectures in reply to the Lenten discourses on women, by the Rev.
Morgan Dix, D. D. These lectures attracted much attention and were published under the title of " Woman's Place Today."
Her postoffice address is 149 East Forty-fourth street. New York. N. Y.
32
MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 38
first women colonists! Many of them were nobly born and delicately nurtured, when,
for conscience' sake, they left home and friends and native land, to brave the dangers
of a long voyage, the hardships of an hostile country and of an inhospitable clime. We
who are the heirs of their labors and sacrifices should rejoice to render our tribute of
honor to the Pilgrim Mothers.
It may be asked why we chose to celebrate the landing of the Pilgrims on the
23d of December instead of the 22d, the day honored by the men. Simply because
the 23d was the actual day and date of the landing. You see men cannot even fix a
date correctly without the aid of women. I carefully studied the journal of John Brad-
ford, who was a young man on board the "Mayflower," afterward the famous Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts. He kept a careful record of the events of each day. On the
2ist land having been sighted, a boat was sent to reconnoiter the shore. On the 22d
the day being stormy, the ship lay off the coast, and the only event recorded is that
a wife, her name is not given, descended into the valley of the shadow of death. On
the 23d, the day we celebrated, there landed on Plymouth Rock thirty-two women
accompanied by sixty-nine men and children. There was one advantage in holding
our feast on the day after the feast given by the men, and that was it gave us the woman's
privilege of the last word. I carefully looked over the speeches given at the New England
dinners, but as usual could find no mention whatsoever of anything that women had
done. A noted educator spoke of New England as "she," which, considering how
all things feminine were ignored, seems a piece of presumption. The most appro-
priate toast given was that of one honored gentleman whose theme was "Their
Selfishness."
This forgetfulness of all that women have done for our country is only of a
piece with the usual proceedings at those masculine feasts. Year after year they have
assembled to do honor to men alone. Some time ago the late James G. Blaine, in an
address at a New England dinner, said: "Men settled and built up the country, men
struggled and labored; these good men were the progenitors of a great race," As, if
men alone did everything — settled the country, founded the families and reared the
children.
On that bleak December day, two hundred and seventy-two years ago, one hun-
dred and one persons came ashore on the cruel New England coast, of whom only
forty-one were men, and yet, with the usual modesty of their sex, in talking of the
deeds of these first settlers, their sons have followed the advice given last fall by the
leader of one of the political parties and "claimed everything;" whereas, the real heroines
and martyrs of those days were the women. What hardships confronted them in
the awful winter that followed! Only try to fancy what they must have suffered!
Living in a few huts — they could not be called houses — on that ice bound coast. Think
of the storms that howled about their frail habitations, the snows that swept over
them, the bitter cold that froze them! How helpless they were! On the one hand the
inhospitable forest that encircled them, the lurking place of wild beasts and hostile
Indians; on the other hand the wide ocean that stretched between them and their former
homes. How chill they must have been with only open fires fed with green wood,
with no clothing fitted for the rigors of that climate, with not enough food for them
and their children! What these women must have had to bear of hardship, misery
and home-sickness! No wonder thdy died and their deaths were scarce recorded.
Bradford does not mention even the death of his own wife.
And then it must be remembered, as Fanny Fern long ago wittily said, "These
women had not only to endure all that the Pilgrim fathers had to endure, but they
had to endure the Pilgrim fathers also." And these worthy men must have been very
trying, as all know that a cold house and a poor dinner does not conduce to any
man's amiability, and they were so censorious. A later chronicle records with displeas-
ure that a certain Mrs. Johnson was "given to unseemly pride of apparel," in that she
wore whalebone in her sleeves. The Pilgrim fathers went a grreat deal further than
their sons would like to go today, for they sat in solemn conclave to decide how many
(3)
34 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ribbons a woman might wear. Fancy the city fathers today holding sessions to dis-
cuss the width of a sash, and to decide whether or not certain styles of feminine ap-
parel are consistent with "a godly walk and conversation."
But to return to the first winter. Despite the effort made then, as now, to sup-
press the " skirt brigade," some record has come to us of the deeds, the heroism
and the noble self-sacrifice of the Pilgrim mothers. A woman's money fitted out the
ships that discovered the New World, and a woman's money fitted out the " Mayflower."
Mrs. Winston, a lady of position and influence, gave of her substance to equip the ves-
sel. Mrs. Carver's steadfastness nerved her husband, the Rev. John Carver, to join
the expedition. If it had not been for this grand woman, their "ghostly adviser"
would have let the colonists sail without any ordained minister of the Gospel. Then
there was Rose Standish, the dainty beauty of the expedition, a lovely, gentle flower
of a noble English home, too delicate to bear the hardships of the cruel life they led,
and who failed and died the first winter. But above all others should be mentioned
Ann Brewster, who was the very guardian angel of the colonists. A woman of mighty
energy and of dauntless courage, whose hope and faith never failed, even in the darkest
hours, whose sturdy health sustained her even through the most severe privations,
who encouraged the well, nursed the sick and comforted the dying, a heroine who
never lost her confidence and her cheerfulness, and also in her tireless regard for
others, her patience with illness and her fortitude in the presence of death displayed
heroism of a higher order than that of the men who faced only the activities of out-
door life.
Yet the sons and the grandsons of these women have forgotten to do them honor.
Their deeds have been unchronicled, their names unrecorded, and men have calmly
claimed all achievements and all enterprises as their own. The whole history of"
our country has been written from man's standpoint, and women, however great, how-
over noble, have been ignored. Abigail Adams, the wise and witty wife of John
Adams, who nerved him to action when he would have been indifferent, who gave
him the courage to stand by the struggling nation when he would have deserted it,
who is more than suspected of writing his speeches, is not mentioned. Mercy Otis
Warren, the sister of James Otis and wife of General Warren, has no need of praise
for her patriotic action in inspiring both brother and husband to do their duty. At a
later period the achievements of men in ridding the country of the curse of slavery
are vaunted and eulogized, while Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott and Harriet
Beecher Stowe have but scant praise. The heroes of the late war have monuments
raised high in their honor; where are the tributes to the heroines? Dorothy Dix,
Clara Barton and Mother Bickerdyke, the women who by their devotion sustained the
army and nursed the soldiers — who remembers them?
Among those of other nations who have come to these shores to make the repub-
lic great, the stalwart German women, the thrifty French women, the intrepid Spanish
women, where are the records of their deeds? The men of these nationalities have
perpetuated their memory by giving their names to mountains and rivers and cities.
What are the names of the women whose virtues, whose devotion made them what
they are or were ? And we have become so accustomed to this policy of silence that
we are prone to submit to it, without even a protest, ourselves even forgetting to give
honor where honor is due. We hear much of" " self-made men," when often if we
looked into the history of such persons we would find that they should more properly
be called " wife-made men," for many and many a man has owed his prosperity, his
success in life largely to the energy and intellect of his wife, though she, like her
foremother, is forgotten.
Probably the culmination of the annihilation of the women of this country was
reached in the declaration made by Judge Hoar, of Massachusetts, while presiding at
the National Republican Convention in 1880, when he said, " The American people
are gentlemen."
Today we will not say that the American people are ladies. That would be toe
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 35
poor a way of putting it, but we will ask who are these who are thus forgotten? Are
they so unworthy that their brave deeds may not entitle them to recognition? Cer-
tainly not! We ask that honor be done, not to the foolish and undeserving, but to
the mothers of the race.
But turning from the scenes of the past, let us look forward to the swiftly coming
time of our emancipation. The forgetfulness of the past is rapidly giving way to the
acknowledgments of the present. Already government has honored women by
equality of position in the great World's Fair, and the time approaches rapidly when
we shall have complete enfranchisement. To recall again the memory of the Pilgrim
mothers, we find the contrast between woman's position today and hers two hundred
and seventy-two years ago, as great as that between the comforts and luxuries we
enjoy and the hardships that the pioneers endured. Where they had cold and dark-
ness and wretched habitations, we have warmth and light and the palaces of our great
cities. Where our ancestors had oppression and subordination, we have opportunity
and almost equality. The end is nearly in sight, and the time will surely come when
the deeds and the achievements of the foremothers will be applauded with those of
the forefathers, and the daughters and the sons of the Pilgrims will sit side by side in
their councils and at their feasts.
A SELF SUPPORT PROBLEM.*
By MISS JULIA S. TUTWILER.
Some schools still make a boast in their annual reports that certain pupils have
paid all their expenses during the year by work performed out of school — so many
hours in the kitchen, laundry or sewing room. The
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children should
expostulate with the ill-judging managers, however
well intentioned, of these schools. There is not one
girl in a thousand between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-five who can do this without danger of
becoming a permanent inmate of an insane asylum or
a hospital. By all means, if possible, let the mature
generation bear the burdens of the rising one until it
also is fully matured, thoroughly developed, and
carefully trained. We do not allow even our baby
rose-trees and infant geraniums to bear blossoms until
they are well grown. We do not call on them fbr
production until they have had their due period of
nutrition from every kindly exterior influence that we
can bring to bear upon them. No, it is not desirable
that our girls should assume the burden of self-sup-
port during these years, with the accompanying dan-
gers of physical and mental injury. But what of the
girl who will not accept this decision? who says in
answer to our remonstrances that she will gladly
shorten her life, or even dedicate it to pain and suf-
ering, if she may but be permitted to enter upon her inheritance as the heir of all the
ages, if we will but give into her hands the key that opens the Gate Beautiful of the
wonderful Paradise of Culture? Are there such girls, and are there so many of them
that it is a present duty to spend thought upon them and make such provision for
them that they may not be degraded by becoming the recipients of charity to accom-
plish their end, nor embittered by going through life with the consciousness of powers
undeveloped and warped? Let us see. Katie is a farmer's daughter. She has
received all the elementary education which the little country schoolhouse or the
village academy can give her. She has a bright, eager intellect, whetted by the little
it has received to an appetite for more. Her father has other children, and is one of
that large class of worthy citizens who is just able to feed, clothe and physic his
family and meet the necessary expenses of keeping up his farm or his business. He
has no money with which to pay board for Katie, even at the least expensive school
or college. If she were living in the Arcadian days of factory-life, when Harriet Mar-
Miss Julia Strudwick Tntwiler is a native of Tuscaloosa, Ala. She was born August 15, 1841. Her parents were
Henry Tatwiler, LL. D., of Virginia, and Julia Tntwiler, nee Ashe, of North Carolina. Miss Tutwiler was educated at a
French boarding school in Philadelphia, Pa., at Vassar College, at a Normal Seminary in Germany, and has visited Europe
three times, remaining at one time three years for the purpose of studying and writing. Her special work has been in the
interest of the education of girls. At present she is principal of the Alabama Normal College for girls. In religions faith
she is a strong believer in Christianity, and is a member of the Presbyterian Church. Miss Tutwiler was a member of three
of the World's Congresses which met in Chicago during the summer of 1893 : Tlie Congress of Representative Women, the
Edacational Congress and the Congress of Charities and Corrections. Her postoffice address is Livingston, Ala.
*The title under which the address was delivered was " Is Self-Support Possible for Girls During the Years of Sec-
ondary Edncation. "
36
MISS JULIA S. TUTWILER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 37
tineau and Captain Hall visited us and described our institutions, she would take
employment in one and earn the money for her further advancement in knowledge.
But many things have changed since that time, and Katie must be carefully protected
for some years to come. There is something even more important for her than cult-
ure, as her wise mother knows. If her brother Jack has the same ambitions, there is
no trouble in his case. He has muscle and bone. These are not ill-paid in this
favored land. There are railroads to build, mines to dig, crops to gather at all times.
Jack can soon earn enough to take a course of instruction at one of the schools whose
advantages have been made so inexpensive by the beneficence of individuals or
denominations. But Katie's wage earning powers are very small, and she is too
young to go from home for the purpose of making larger gains unless she can have
watchful guardianship and protection. Is it possible for her to obtain this?
Katie will spend one-third as much of the year out of college as in college if she
is ever so fortunate as to get there. She will have in some places even more than
that proportion of leisure time during the year. In my own state, she will have
thirty-six weeks in college and sixteen out of college. Now suppose, instead of clos-
ing the college buildings for these four months, we were to keep them open, as you
so wisely propose to do with your new University — at least to keep open the dormi-
tory and refectory (I have in view the old-fashioned type of college). Suppose a suf-
ficient number of college officials to be kept on duty for guardianship and protection,
then let all the pupils who need self support engage daily in some profitable industry
in buildings belonging to the college and reserved for this purpose. There might also
be a night school, for backward pupils who wish to prepare for a particular class, but
this feature should be carefully l.ooked after that it may not become an injury, and
should never be allowed to occupy more than two hours. No wages should be paid
in rnoney. The employes should have board and lodging, and should be credited on
their board for next year with the amount of wages which they earn after deducting
the actual cost of board and lodging. They should sign a contract, agreeing to these
conditions, and to the further one that in case of their not remaining, to obtain pay-
ment of their wages in board, these should be forfeited to the college.
But the objection may be made that the capital invested in this industrial plant
must lie idle for three-fourths of the year. Even if this should be the case, it would
not be nearly such poor economy as the prevailing practice of letting thousands of
college buildings remain unemployed for one-fourth of the year. Why have not our
practical communities in all these years felt a little trouble at this great waste of the
capital invested in that plant? But we will not imitate the college in this respect.
We will try to arrange our industrial plant so that there shall be no unnecessary lying
idle of capital. There are several ways in which this might be done. I will not stop
to enumerate them all, but will only make one or two suggestions. Our industry
might be operated by relays of pupils, each having three months of work and nine
months of study. The companionship of the workers and students will be helpful to
both.
However, there is one industry in which capital necessarily lies idle during the
very months in which Katie has leisure. This is the canning factory. If I have been
correctly informed but a small capital is needed to establish a canning factory which
will employ twenty girls and have an output of five hundred cans daily. Twenty-five
acres of tomatoes and a few acres of corn, strawberries and peas will keep this fac-
tory busy for four months. The work is light and well suited to girls. In Michigan
there are said to be two factories carried on entirely by women without the aid of even
a boy. The pay is much more than Katie could earn by housework or sewing, and
she has not yet learned any skilled labor. In Michigan I learned that from one dol-
lar to a dollar and a half per day is the usual wages for girls. If Katie can earn
seventy-five dollars during the summer, and if the college is one where she is
charged only the actual cost of food and fuel, tuition being free, she will be able
to pay by far the greater part of her next term's school expenses. A benevolent
38 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
man or woman is often reported to have given five thousand dollars to found two or
three scholarships in some girls' colleges. The same amount invested in an industrial
plant to be attached to a college would pay for the education of a hundred girls, or
rather would enable them to pay for their own education, a much nobler form of
benevolence. Now, here are sisters from the East and West and the North and
South, and I ask them to tell me whether such a plan has ever been attempted any-
where, and if so, with what success?
I cannot close without expressing my sense of the great blessing to womanhood
of this wonderful opportunity of thus taking counsel together and unbosoming our-
selves to each other. So many women have schemes for the helping of their sex,
or still better, of their race, fermenting in their brains and hearts, and are brain-sick
and heart-sick for the lack of advice and sympathy. Here, for the first time, but not,
thank God, for the last time, we have come together from the ends of the earth to this
magic city to listen to each other's plans and hopes, and give wise warning or kindly-
encouragement.
eve's vow.
When angels oped at God's command,
With weeping, Eden's portal.
And our sad parents, hand in hand,
Forsook its joys immortal.
Our mother's deep prophetic soul,
Made wise by pain and sadness,
Beheld the coming ages roll.
Bereft of pristine gladness.
She saw our sickness, grief and tears,
Her breast maternal sharing,
Each bitter pang through future years
Her race should bear — are bearing.
To high resolve that hour gave birth
Her burning tears repressing.
She vowed to ope once more for earth
Lost Eden's gates of blessing.
And since to realize her vow
Hath woman ever striven.
Each mother to her child till now
This secret task hath given.
But man grew jealous as she strove,
And barred her pathway ever,
Nor understood what depth of love
Inspired the high endeavor.
Yet still her earnest spirit rose
Above his scorn undaunted
To struggle on, till should unclose
Once more the gates enchanted,
And give for sickness, grief and tears,
Our mortal lot attending, ,
Succession sweet of blissful years
In life immortal ending.
See, strong Evangelists and brave,
In sight the gates Elysian!
The earnest now of all ye crave,
Soon, soon its full fruition!
EDUCATION OF INDIAN GIRLS IN THE WEST.
By MRS. MARY C. TODD.
The social and business reconstruction which, in the past few years, has taken
women from their homes all over the country and placed them in various public
positions of honor and responsibility, positions re-
quiring education, intelligence and good business
judgment, has left untroubled but one class. With
their patient faces, whose pathetic expression is but
the shadow of the down-trodden life they lead, the
Indian women have stood aside and have seen other
women spreading into larger fields, and pluming
their wings for larger flight. Wondering and igno-
rant, they have never thought that to them any
jj# tt«X * good might come, or any release from the debase-
f ^Ft: >^ ment and servitude to which they have been born.
Beasts of burden themselves, and accustomed to the
slavish position which became theirs at their birth,
they have looked for nothing better for their daugh-
ters. The rough camp life, the field labor, the un-
cleanly and demoralizing ties of "home" (if such it
may be called), were accepted. Their sluggish
minds looked for no help. But faithful teachers have
gradually gathered into the government schools,
the young girls; preferring indeed, if they can but
get hold of them, children of two or three years of
age, hoping that they may grow into civilized ways.
Keepmg these children, if their parents will permit, until eighteen years of age, there
is but little danger that when released from school life, they will return to savage
ways. Those who spend a few years in the schools look with loathing upon the early
betrothals and marriages into which they are often forced upon their return to their
homes. Many of these young girls beg to be allowed to stay always in the schools, and
never to be obliged to go home. For this reason, upon our reservation of school land,
a building is being prepared where such as wish may find a happy and civilized home
when their school days are ended. In these government schools all the appliances of
a thrifty and busy life are at hand. Kitchens and dormitories most beautifully
kept; neat tables supplied with wholesome and well-cooked food, all the domestic
work performed by these girls from all the western Indian tribes — this is the surprise
which awaits those who will visit the government schools. Most delicate and beautiful
needle work and well-fitting clothing are the products of the sewing rooms, where,
under a skillful teacher, they learn the use of the sewing machine and spend happy
days. This training of all kinds has one most excellent effect, and that is the over-
coming the shyness and reticence by which their intercourse with white people is
Mrs. Mary C. Todd, nee Mary McCabe, was bom in Terre Hante, Ind. Her parents were Virginians. In 1858 she
married James H. Todd, of Peru, Ind., and in 1869 moved to Kansas. She is the mother of Mrs. Geo. C. Strong, of Wichita.
When a child she attended the Academy of St. Marie des Bois, and afterward Putman Female Seminary, having, as classmate,
Mary Hartwell Cathwood, the authoress. Later she was a student at College Hill, Cincinnati. In Kansas she was for a time
president of the " Relief Corps " in connection with the "Garfield Post No. 40," and since 1876 has been engaged in literary
work, principally newspaper and magazine articles. She has for years been connected with the " Social Science Club," of
Kansas and western Missouri, and is a charter member of the " Hypatia," was its president and went as a delegate to the
General Federation of Women's Clubs in New York, in 1869. Her postoffice address is Wichita, Kan.
39
MRS. MARY C. TODD.
40 . THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
always marked, and the almost inaudible tone which they always use. They learn
from this association with their teachers, to speak; their minds develop, their
thoughts grow, and they learn to clothe them in language. Their affections are developed
and they become fond of their teachers. The writer witnessed an unexpected meet-
ing of a class of girfs of about fourteen years of age, with a teacher who had been
absent over a year. While their manifested pleasure lacked the forwardness of many
school girls, their pleasure at meeting her was unquestioned, as they followed her
about, seeming unwilling to leave her, their conduct, reminding one of the silent and
faithful affection of an animal.
The western schools established and supported by the government are most of
them in Kansas, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory. These are mixed schools, and
in every sense industrial schools. Shops for the carrying on of every kind of man-
ual labor are provided for the boys, and the large grant of land which lies about every
school is farmed by them.
The arrangement which the government has recently made with the various tribes
for the opening up of their lands for settlement, will go far toward the civilization
of the young people. For twenty-five years the government will extend to them its
support. At the end of that time it is expected that, from their intercourse with
white people, and their school education, they will have become self-supporting.
It is hoped that at the end of a girl's school life she may go home to a house instead
of a tent; to a permanent residence instead of a nomadic gypsy life; to a family
clothed instead of blanketed; to a father and brothers who will serve her instead of
exacting servitude. In the past, the years of study and training have been almost
lost as the girl returns to the untidy tent upon the bleak and barren ground. What hope
is there for her to maintain the tidy and systematic method which she has learned,
when surrounded by the sights and sounds and blood-thirsty ways of an Otoe or a
Ponca camp?
But surrounded by whites, and encouraged and taught by their teachers and native
preachers, surely a bright future is before these poor Indian girls. Surely the dor-
mant mind will awaken, and the sluggish energies quicken, when she sees around her
the homes of intelligent white women. The education of the Indian girl means the
uplifting of the tribes in every way, and yet it means also and soon, the losing of the
races of red men from off the face of the earth.
LEGAL CONDITION OF WOMAN IN 1492-1892.
By MISS MARY A. GREENE.
The condition of the woman of a nation is an index of that nation's civilization.
From the days of Hatasu, who, as queen, ruled over Egypt, sixteen centuries before
Christ, down the ages to Isabella, of Spain, the first
monarch of a new world, until this year of grace, 1893,
when Victoria holds sway over lands which encircle
the globe, has it ever been true that that nation which
most elevates and honors its women most elevates and
honors itself? The legal condition of woman is but a
mirror reflecting her social condition. Laws are
framed to meet the necessities of the social environ-
ment. It is only when the body of the law has failed
to keep step with the social development, that the
legal condition of a sex or a class works an injustice.
In order, then, to understand the legal condition
of woman in any country, or at any era, we must
study the social condition that existed at the time
the laws were framed. At the date of the discovery
of our continent, the dawn of a new civilization was
breaking upon Europe. This intellectual awakening
of the world awakens women as well as men. Women
of gentle birth apply themselves with enthusiasm to
the study of Greek and Latin, in order to obtain for
themselves the learning of the ancients. So it hap-
pens that we know much about the women of the
higher classes in 1492. But of the women of the lower classes very little is recorded.
They were truly and absolutely " the submerged tenth," not worth the notice of his-
torians. Here and there a glimpse is caught, which suggests to us their social bond-
age. A wedding custom among the German peasants was that the bride's father
should remove her shoes and deliver them to the groom, who tapped the bride's
forehead with them, in token of his matrimonial authority over her. The woman who
married a slave could, by law, be put to death by her relatives, or be sold by them
at their will.
The civilization of ancient Rome favored the domestic seclusion of woman. The
European states, which arose out of the fall of the Roman empire, favored the same
idea. Restriction and submission to a higher power was the policy of the middle
ages. The laity were to be submissive to the clergy, vassals submissive to their lords,
wives submissive to their husbands. In the rude and warlike society of those times,
when shut up within his closely fortified castle, the feudal knight poured boiling oil or
Miss Mary Anne Greene was bom at Warwick, R, I., in 1857, Her parents were John Waterman Aben Greene and
Mary Frances (Low) Greene. She was educated for the legal profession at the Boston University Law School, receiving in
1888 the degree of Bachelor of Laws magna cum laude, and was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in Boston in September, 1888,
where she practiced several years. Her principal literary works are articles upon legal subjects, for magazines and papers,
such as " The Chautauquan," " The American Law Review," etc. She is the regular lecturer on Business Law for Women, at
Laaell Seminary, Aubumdale, Mass., and was invited to address the Congress of Jurispmdence and Law Reform, of the
World's Congress Auxiliary in August, 1893. She spoke upon "Married Woman's Property Acts in the United States and
Needed Reforms Therein," An extremely fragile constitution obliged her to refrain from the active practice of her chosen
profession, since her return to her native state, and hence she has never applied for admission to the Rhode Island bar. Miaa
Greene is a member of the Baptist Chorch. Her postoffice address is Providence, R. I.
41
MISS MARY A, GREENE.
42 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
shot arrows from his towers upon his neighbors, or sallied forth to encounter like-
assaults at their hands, the safe seclusion of the castle and the quiet occupations of
cooking and spinning were, no doubt, the best for the women of the family. As
refinement increased, women were able to come out of their seclusion a little, and to
participate to some extent in the social life of the men. The growth of chivalry also
helped to elevate the women of the higher classes in feudal days. Religion and
gallantry were blended together. The love of God and the ladies was enjoined as a
single duty. At the institution of the Order of the Golden Shield, Louis II., Duke of
Bourbon, enjoined his knights to honor above all the ladies, " because from them, after
God, comes all the honor that men can acquire." The laws also recognized this chiv-
alrous homage and extended their protection. James II., of Aragon, enacted a law
"that every man, whether knight or no, who shall be in company with a lady, pass safe
and unmolested, unless he be guilty of murder."
With the incoming of the Renaissance and the Reformation, with the new spirit
of personal dignity and independence, begotten of a wider knowledge and broader
culture, the crudities of chivalry and the restrictions of feudalism began to fade away.
Expansion and independence took the place of restriction and submission. Since the
condition of the higher classes of women had been tending toward a higher position
of esteem and honor under the later feudal system, their advancement could not fail
to be rapid under the new order of the new age. This is shown by their educational
elevation at the close of the fifteenth century.
Spain and Italy had at that time begun to admit women to the higher education
of the universities. The Spanish Arabs were devoted to letters, and many of their
high-born women publicly contended for prizes in science and arts at Cordova and
Seville. The reign of Isabella counts among its many glories a galaxy of women
whose scholarship would have been rare in any age. Isabella herself was learned in
the classics, and her Latin instructor was a woman, Dona Beatriz de Galindo, who was
called La Latina, on account of her rare acquirements. At the same time the Univer-
sity of Salamanca had as lecturer in the Latin classics another learned woman, Dona
Lucie de Medrano, while at Alcala, Dona Francisca de Lebrija filled the chair of
rhetoric.
In Italy, a century earlier, Dotta, daughter of the celebrated Accursius, gave
instruction in law at the University of Bologna, and nearly contemporary with her was-
Novella, the beautiful daughter of Andrea, who delivered her lectures upon the canon
law from behind a curtain, as tradition has it, lest her beauty should distract the young^
men who were her pupils. These were the earliest of a long line of distinguished
Italian women professors, reaching down to our own day, when Dr. Josephine Catani
fills the chair of histology in the medical school of the ancient University of Bologna.
The political status of woman in 1492 in Continental Europe was a survival of ancient
ideas, of Roman jurisprudence. Even under the repression of the feudal system the
capacity of woman to be a sovereign, a judge, an advocate and an arbitrator, was not
denied. But the Roman law excluded her from all public offices, not, however, on
the ground of incapacity, but simply on the ground of etiquette and expediency, as the
Roman code puts it, "because it is not fitting that women and slaves should hold pub-
lic offices." The system of civil law, which was built up in the fifteenth century from
the ruins of the Roman code, incorporated this idea, so that we find it declared in the
laws of Continental Europe that a woman may not be an advocate or a judge.
In England, where the influence of the Roman law was slight, the capacity and
fitness of women for public office was to some extent recognized, and when Queen
Mary came to the throne she placed women in judicial office. Lady Berkeley was
made a justice of the peace for Gloucestershire, and Lady Rous, as justice of the
quorum for Suffolk, " did usually sit on the bench at assizes among the other justices,
chicta gladio, girt with the sword." The hereditary office of high sheriff of West-
moreland was held at one time by a woman, and women were held to be eligible to
election as burgesses, overseers of the poor, constables, sheriffs and marshals, and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 4S
they occasionally occupied these positions. There is no doubt that women land-
owners were allowed to vote as well as to hold public office, but the privilege was
so very seldom exercised that instances are very rare. Still, in theory, the single
woman or widow had a lawful right to cast a vote, while her married sister was rep-
resented by the vote of her husband. The capacity of woman to be a sovereign was
everywhere recognized, and even where the Salic law excluded woman from the
throne her right and ability to rule as regent during the king's minority was fully
admitted. Thus, in France, from 1483 to 1491, Anne of Eeaujen held the office of
regent during the minority of her brother, Charles VIII,
The royal Isabella, ruling in her own right as queen of Castile and Leon, and as
co-equal with her husband, Ferdinand, of Aragon, in the government of the united
countries, is a sufficient instance of the legal recognition of woman's right to the high-
est and most responsible of all public offices.
As our American orator has recently said: " It was a happy omen of the position
which w'oman was to hold in America that the only person who comprehended the
majestic scope of his (Columbus') plans and the invincible qualities of his genius was
the able and gracious Queen of Castile. Isabella alone, of all the dignitaries of that
age, shares with Columbus the honors of his great achievement. She arrayed her
kingdom and her private fortunes behind the enthusiasm of this mystic mariner, and
posterity pays homage to her wisdom and faith." And in less than a century after
Isabella, another woman, Elizabeth, of England, the virgin queen whose flag swept
the seas, was the mistress and patroness of the first permanent settlement of her race
upon our shores, a race which was destined to possess and dominate this northern
continent of the New World.
Turning to the personal and property rights of the woman of 1492, we look at a
darker side of the picture. This branch of the law affects rich and poor, high and low,
alike. Only the high-born woman would be likely to hold public office, but every
woman has a right to protection of her person and property. The laws of England
differed from those of the continent of Europe in form and theory, but scarcely in
their practical effect upon the woman. The theory of the common law of England,
derived from our Germanic forefathers, was that of a division of duties. As the wife
had the care of the household, and the responsibility of rearing her family, it was
thought unreasonable to subject her to the annoyances of a suit at law to protect or
defend her rights and to preserve her property. This was laid upon the husband's
shoulders. He was to protect her and perform these duties for her. The wife in
English law was considered as under the protecting wing of her husband, which cov-
ered her from legal annoyance; hence, the old law — French term for a married
woman, z. femme covert, a.nd her legal condition is her coverture. That this is the true
theory of the law is evident from the laws governing the queen's consort of Eng-
land. Such women, upon marriage, retained all their property and legal capacity to
transact business. For as Sir Edward Coke puts it, " The wisdom of the common law
would not have the king (whose continual care and study is for the public and circa
ardua re^/ii) to be troubled and disquieted on account of his wife's domestic affairs;
and, therefore, it vests in the queen a power of transacting her own concerns without
the intervention of the king, as if she were an unmarried woman."
The theory of the civil law of Continental Europe, coming down from the Roman
code, was very different. These laws are based upon the weakness, frailty and in-
capacity of the sex. The husband is made the curator of his wife much as the father
is made guardian of his minor child. Upon this theory, also, a woman could not in
early times be a witness in court, and long after she was made legally competent to
testify, her testimony was held to be of slight worth. Whether the English or the
Continental laws be considered, the effect upon the married woman was practically
the same in respect to her ownership and control of her property. The husband had
complete control of the wife's property, and was able to dispose of it at his own pleas-
ure, without her knowledge or consent. She was not capable of making any binding
44 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
contract whatever. The legal custody of the children was in the father, and by feudal
law after the father's death, unless he had by his will appointed a guardian, the lord
of the manor became the custodian of the person and property of the orphaned child.
The consent of the lord was necessary to the marriage of a female ward, and in
England the lord could dispose of her in marriage, exacting a heavy fine if she
refused to marry according to his commands. Where, as in England, the possession of
landed property qualified its owner to vote and hold public office, the husband of a
woman who owned land, voted and sat in parliament by right of his joint ownership
in his wife's land. This right of the husband has disappeared from American law,
except in Rhode Island, where it still lingers only slightly modified by recent legis-
iation. The condition of the widow under this regime was truly pitiable. She had
no claim whatever upon the personal property of her late husband, not even though
she had brought that property to him at her marriage.
In England the widow had from very early times a right to the income of one-
third of the deceased husband's lands, during her life, and this life interest, known
as "the widow's dower," was all that she could claim, unless, indeed, she had been so
fortunate as to possess a marriage settlement. By a deed to trustees before her mar-
riage, her property could be preserved to her and her heirs, free from any claim of
her husband. This device of the English equity courts relieved in some degree the
hardships of the common law, but obviously could only benefit the wealthy women
of the kingdom. The widow under the civil law of Europe had no claim upon her
deceased husband's property. It all went to his heirs. Under the feudal system,
at least in England, a widow could remain for forty days in the mansion house of her
husband without paying rent. At the end of this time her dower was assigned and she
was then turned adrift upon the world at the mercy of her family and friends. If she
married again, the lord of the manor could exact a fine from her for so doing, and
it was no uncommon practice for these feudal masters to compel a widow to re-marry,
in order to obtain the fine to replenish their exhausted treasuries.
The single woman under English law possessed all the legal rights of a man.
On the Continent, the idea of woman's mental incapacity affected the legal condi-
tion of the single woman, as well as that of the wife. She had not the freedom of
her English spinster sister. She had very limited contract powers, and could only
make contracts to pay in money or in kind for purchases made by her. On the other
hand, she had, by reason of this same conception of mental inferiority, less criminal
responsibility, and where the English woman suffered the same penalties for her
crimes that a man would do, the European woman had but half the penalty. As an
old law quaintly says : " A woman shall suffer but half the punishment, where a man
suffers the full penalty. * * * * Thus, a woman should not be put in irons, nor
sent to the galleys, nor placed in a prison, which might enfeeble her body or wound
her, or cause her to lose her memory, for women are frail by nature."
Offenses against the person of woman were not severely punished. One could
scarcely expect that they would be when the social inferiority of woman was so
clearly marked. A husband could chastise his wife by right of his position as head of
the family. The degradation of marriage under the Roman law left its stain upon
later generations. The monastic ideas of the middle ages sympathizing with the
Roman theory, incorporated into the canon law the principle of the inferiority and
subjection of woman.
At the time that the Renaissance began to elevate woman's social condition, the
Reformation began to sweep away the errors that had collected around the original
ecclesiastical conception of woman's sphere. The advancement of woman was assured
when her intellectual and spiritual equality with man began to be perceived. Her
social elevation thus secured, her legal enfranchisement must follow.
Let us pause and think how small a portion of this vast globe of ours shared in
this great awakening of the fifteenth century. Not more than half of the European
Continent saw this light. In Asia, in Africa, in the New World, lying unknown in an
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 45
unknown ocean, in the undiscovered islands of the sea, what intellectual and moral
darkness! Can we bear to think of, much less to relate in detail, the social degrada-
tion of woman in these dark places of the earth! Even where the heathen civiliza-
tion had reached its highest mark, the condition of woman was scarcely one to be
desired in point of personal respect and protection.
In the interval between 1492 and 1892 the social and legal development of woman
was slow. The leaven of new ideas was working, but the mass of ignorance and
prejudice, the accumulation of centuries, was not easily permeated. In England the
condition of the widow was improved by granting to her a fraction of her husband's
personal property, in addition to her dower in his real estate. The power of the lord
over the widow and children of his vassal disappeared with the complete abolition of
the feudal system in the seventeenth century. On the Continent the contract capacity
of woman was enlarged, and greater personal protection accorded to her by law. A
few persistent women secured for themselves the benefit of a liberal education.
Italy continued to honor women as professors in her University of Bologna. Mary
Somerville in England won recognition for her attainments, and here and there other
women less known to fame gave proof of their ability and skill. But the gains of three
hundred and sixty years were little compared with those of the last forty years. The
long, slow process of seed sowing, the ages of germination, have been crowned in
our time by wonderful fruitage. The inventions of science, which have brought
together into closest relationship the nations of the earth, have also opened a high-
way for the advancement of women.
In order to get any adequate idea of the legal condition of woman in 1892 we
must know of her present and past social condition and trace the history of the an-
cient laws affecting her. For these ancient laws, some of which are still in force, are
responsible for the present anomalies of woman's legal condition. When enacted, they
may have justly reflected woman's social condition, but now they should give place to
new laws, framed to meet the existing social environment. To go into minute detail
is impossible, and this address would become a mere catalogue were it to be at-
tempted. We shall consider first the higher education of woman at the present day;
secondly, the professions and occupations open to her; thirdly, her political status;
fourthly, her personal rights; fifthly, her property rights, and lastly shall attempt
to draw some lessons and conclusions from this historical survey of the legal condi-
tion of woman.
I. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
On the Continent of Europe women are admitted to the universities in Italy,
France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Roumania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark
and Iceland, and may in some of them receive university degrees.
In Great Britain the following are open both for instruction and degrees: The
University of London, the universities of Ireland, and the Scottish universities of
Edinburgh and of St. Andrews, the two latter very recently.
Women are excluded from the universities by express prohibition of law in Ger-
many, Austria and Russia. In the latter country a medical school for women stu-
dents, which was for a time suspended on account of political complications, is
about to be re-established through the exertions of the czarina. While the conserv-
ative universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England do not admit to their lect-
ures or degrees, they do permit women to take the university examinations, and
we have not yet forgotten the triumph of Philippa Fawcett, who in 1890 over-
topped the senior wrangler in the mathematical examinations at Cambridge. Under
the shadow of these venerable universities, the colleges for women, Girton Newham
and St. Margaret's are distinguished by the high attainments of their students.
In our own land there are over a hundred first class colleges and universities
open to women. Some of these, like Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr, are
for women exclusively; some like Barnard College of Columbia University and the
46 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Woman's College of Brown have an organic connection with a university for men;
some like Tufts College have after establishment -opened their doors to women on
the same terms as men, while many others, like Michigan University, Boston Uni-
versity, Cornell and nearly all the universities and colleges of the Western States, like
the youngest of all, the great Chicago University, have been co-educational from their
very foundation. Of our older universities. Brown in 1891, and Yale and the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania in 1892, are the latest to open their post-graduate courses and
degrees to women. Harvard, the oldest of all, seems to stand alone in its refusal
to recognize oflficially the eligibility of women for the Harvard Annex, so-called, has
no official connection with the university.
Nearly all the universities and colleges of Canada are open to women, and all
those of Australia. In India the universities of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.
Opportunities are also increasing in Japan for the higher education of women.
Since Oberlin College in Ohio granted, in 1838, apparently the first collegiate
diploma ever given to a woman in this country to this time, when in nearly every
civilized country women may obtain degrees on the same terms as men, how great has
been the advance! And nearly all this advance has been made within thirty years.
II. PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS OPEN TO WOMEN.
It naturally follows that the professions should be entered by women. Appar-
ently the medical profession was the first sought by her. Sixty years ago the first
woman medical student began her course of study, and now countless thousands of
•women practitioners of the healing art are scattered over the world, pursuing their
profession with most signal success. In the East Indian zetianas, the homes of the
helpless foot-bound Chinese, as in the homes and hospitals of Europe and America,
they are doing a work that no man could possibly accomplish.
The profession of theology has attracted fewer women, and it has been less easy
for them to obtain recognition as pastors and preachers, but the theological schools of
Switzerland, and some of those in the United States, notably those of the Unitarian and
Methodist Episcopal churches, admit women as students. There are ordained women
preachers in the Baptist, Congregational, Universalist, Unitarian, " Christian," Prot-
estant, Methodist, and Primitive Methodist denominations, and over three hundred
and fifty women preachers among the Society of Friends. There are perhaps seven
hundred women preachers to-day in the United States.
The legal profession was the last of the three so-called learned professions to be
opened to women; not because of reluctance on the part of the courts, but because
women did not so early apply for admission. Although isolated instances may be
cited from the Roman Calphurnia to our own time of women who have pleaded
causes in court, it was not till 1869 that a woman was formally admitted as an attor-
ney and counselor at law. To the United States belongs this honor. Mrs. Arabella
A. Mansfield was admitted without objection to the bar of the Supreme Court of Iowa
in that year (1869). About the same time women students were received into the
law schools of Washington University, St. Louis, and the Union College of Law at
Chicago. There are now not less than eleven law schools in the United States open
to women. Twenty-five States and Territories admit women to the bar. As to the
rest we cannot safely say that they exclude women, for as a matter of fact no woman
has as yet applied, except in Virginia, which has for three years steadfastly refused to
grant admission to a lady lawyer. There are probably over two hundred women
lawyers in the United States to-day, nine of whom are admitted to practice before the
Supreme Court of the United States.
The universities of Paris, Brussels and Zurich have within five or six years gradu-
ated women from their law departments. The three graduates at Paris have not
applied for admission to the bar. At Zurich Dr. Emilie Kempin, although denied
admission to the bar, is a lecturer upon law in the university. Dr. Marie Popelin, a
graduate in law at Brussels, has been formally denied admission to the bar. Italy,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 47
Russia and Denmark have also refused the petition of women for admission as advo-
cates at the bar. India, Japan and the Hawaiian Islands recognize the woman lawyer.
The Royal University of Ireland has recently conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws
upon a woman; and in Canada, in the Province of Ontario, women have very recently
been made eligible to admission to the study of the law. In England, no attempt
to gain admission to the bar has yet been made. Several ladies, practicing as attor-
neys and solicitors, are patiently waiting for a change in public sentiment before
asking for admission to plead as barristers.
Every known profession, occupation and trade seems now to be open to woman
in some part of the civilized world. She can be a minister, doctor, lawyer, professor,
lecturer, journalist, mechanic, architect, sculptor, painter, merchant, day-laborer. In
fact, whatever she chooses to undertake she is permitted to do, if not in one country
then elsewhere. In view of this entire revolution in her social status, should "she not
logically possess the same civil and legal rights, and be subject to the same civil and
legal liabilities as a man in the same position.
III. POLITICAL STATUS OF WOMEN.
After this preliminary glance at the social condition of women in 1 192, let us look
at her legal condition, and see whether her legal emancipation has kept pace with her
social emancipation. The political status of women will first be considered. Women
enjoy a more or less extended right of suffrage in a majority of all the civilized
nations of the world. In the United States they have full suffrage in Wyoming and
municipal suffrage in Kansas. In Montana, women have school suffrage, and if tax-
payers, they can vote upon all questions involving the levy or disbursement of moneys
for public purposes. In twenty more states they have a right to vote for school offi-
cers or upon school matters, and in at least six more states they may vote by petition
upon certain local matters, such as local improvements, or the granting of liquor
licenses; so that there are at least twenty-nine out of a total of forty-eight states and
territories of our Union where women enjoy some form of suffrage. In Canada women
can vote for all municipal officers throughout the length and breadth of the Dominion,
although no married woman can vote except in Manitoba and British Columbia. The
women of all the colonies of Great Britain, from Australia to Canada and from Cape
Colony to New Zealand, enjoy municipal suffrage, including the presidencies of
Madras and Bombay in India, if taxpayers, and the same is true of the rural districts of
British Burmah. In England, Scotland and Wales single women and widows vote for
all officers except members of Parliament. In Ireland they vote for guardians of the
poor. In Continental Europe women are also to some degree enfranchised. In
France women teachers vote for women members of boards of education. In Italy
widows and wives separated from their husbands vote by proxy for members of
Parliament (law of 1882). In Austria they vote by proxy at all elections, including
elections of members of provincial and imperial parliaments. In Russia, and in all
Russian Asia, women who are heads of households vote by proxy at municipal and
village elections upon all local questions. (Law of 1870.) In Sweden,for many years,
women have voted at local elections, and since 1862 they have had municipal suffrage.
In Norway they have merely school suffrage. In Finland, all women, except wives
living with their husbands, can vote for all elective officers save one. (Law of 1865.)
In Iceland, as in Wyoming, and also on the Isle of Man, women enjoy full and
equal suffrage with men. (1882.)
Woman's right to the ballot is recognized even in some very conservative countries,
countries so conservative that by the same law which extends the franchise to woman
she is herself excluded from occupying the offices voted for. This is the case in Italy,
Russia, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Austria, except as to a few petty positions.
The general principle of American law seems to be that where no express excep-
tion is made by law, the electors for an office are qualified to fill the office. Thus in
Wyoming women are eligible to every public office on the same terms as men; in
48 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Kansas to municipal offices, and in the states where women may vote for school
officers they are generally eligible to election to the office. Many of the states of the
Union admit women to public office even though they refuse to them the ballot. A few
of the strictly public of^ces now held by women in America are county recorder of
deeds, assistant register of deeds, notary public, town clerk (Vermont), county clerk
(Missouri), assistant clerk of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, receiver of public
moneys in Mississippi, custodian of the Mississippi state capital, mayor of cities in
Kansas, and all kinds of school offices. Many offices connected with the public chari-
ties are held by women in this country. Thus they are members of state boards
of charities in Massachusetts and Connecticut, visitors, managers and trustees of
reformatory and penal institutions, physicians, visitors and trustees of state insane
hospitals, overseers of the poor, and police matrons. By act of Congress in 1870 the
clerkships of the Executive Department of the United States Government were opened
to women, who now make up a large percentage of the total number of government
clerks.
In England women serve as poor-law guardians, visitors to and physicians in gov-
ernment hospitals and insane asylums, as assistant commissioners of the Labor Com-
mission, and the position of meteorologist at the Government Observatory at Hong
Kong is now held by a lady. In France women are members of the boards of education.
In the Austrian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina women have recently received
appointments as government medical officers.
The political condition of woman to day may be briefly summed up thus: While
she is not yet admitted to the full exercise of political rights, except in Wyoming and
a few small islands, still she possesses very generally some right to vote upon local
matters more or less closely affecting her as a citizen, and to hold many executive offi-
ces. Legislative and judicial offices are not as yet granted to women, except in a
very few countries and states, and even where granted are not actually occupied by
women.
IV. PERSONAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
With respect to the personal protection of woman by law, there has been a
change for the better, as the dignity and sacredness of her person is more com-
pletely recognized. Severe punishments are inflicted for offenses against women,
but still in many instances they are altogether too slight for the gravity of the
offense. The " age of consent," which in many states was placed at the age
of ten years, has been raised by very recent legislation to fourteen, sixteen,
and in some states, eighteen years. For the better protection of women under
arrest, police matrons have been placed in the station-houses of some of our
American cities, to take charge of such women during the time of their deten-
tion. In New York and Massachusetts, by state legislation, all cities having a stated
population, must provide police matrons. Much of the recent labor legislation is
in favor of women. The laws forbidding women to be employed about dangerous
machinery, those requiring shopkeepers to provide seats for saleswomen, and the
statutes requiring the appointment of women factory inspectors maybe cited. As to
the law in many states prohibiting women from making a contract to work more hours
a week than the time fixed by law, while by the same law a man is free to contract for
as many hours' labor as he chooses, one may question whether it does not really
work an injustice, since, by interfering with her individual freedom to contract it
places her at a disadvantage. An employer prefers to take an employe who is legally
free to make agreements for extra work. Therefore, the woman's wages are likely
to be decreased and her opportunities for employment lessened by this restriction.
A married woman is now protected from the violence of her husband by the legal
right given her to prosecute him for assaults upon her. The old theory of the hus-
band's right to chastise his wife has disappeared from English and American law.
In the famous Jackson case in England the Lord Chief Justice, in setting free a
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 49
woman whose husband had deprived her of her liberty, said, that he did not believe that
it ever was the law of England that a husband could restrain his wife of her liberty, and
that it certainly is not English law today. In India, under the power of a Christian
government, the burning of a widow upon her husband's funeral pyre is forbidden by
law, and the day seems not far distant when the seclusion of the zenana and the prac-
tice of child-marriages will also disappear. In Japan, where women are more respected
than among many Eastern nations, a wife may still be divorced upon the very slightest
grounds, even if she talks too much to suit her lord and master. The codes of Con-
tinental Europe fail to do justice to woman in respect to her personal protection in
the matter of divorce for certain criminal offenses, where the privileges of the man
are greater than those of the woman, making it less easy for her than for him to
obtain a divorce. This seems to be a vestige of the ancient conception of woman's
inferiority.
V. PROPERTY RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
The subject of the present property rights of women is lastly to be considered.
In England and America the unmarried woman is now, as she was four hundred
years ago, possessed of all the property rights of a man. She can buy and sell her
property, carry on business, bind herself by her contracts of every kind, make a will,
and adopt a child if she chooses, just as her brother may do. She can sue and be sued
in court, is a competent witness in all cases, and can be executrix of a will, administra-
trix of an estate, and guardian of children. On the Continent of Europe the unmar-
ried woman is still hampered in some degree by the former legal conception of the
essential frailty and incapacity of woman. She is bound by her contracts and may
do business as a public merchant. She can make a will and adopt a child. But she
cannot, except in Italy and Russia, sign her name as a witness to any legal document;
neither can she, with a few exceptions, be a guardian of children, or act as a legal
member of family councils. As to the property rights of the married woman, a most
radical change has taken place within the last fifty years. Every state in the Union has
passed statutes widening to some extent the legal powers of the married woman; and
in England, by the Married Woman's Property Act of 1882, all legal restrictions are
removed from the wife, who is capable of holding and transferring property, and can
sue and be sued as if unmarried.
Rhode Island appears to have led in this reform in 1841, which gave to a wife
coming into the state as a resident, being already separated from her husband, the
sole ownership and control of her property. This was followed, in 1844, by an act
securing to the wife her own property, including her earnings, so that it could not be
taken for the husband's debts, and providing that in case she survived him it was
to be her sole and separate property. Massachusetts followed, in 1845, with a similar
statute, and New York, in 1848, passed a much more liberal one.
It is impossible to trace the history of or give in detail the law of each state.
Only the general features can be presented. In every state of the Union, except Ten-
nessee, the wife's property is so far secured to her that it cannot be taken for her hus-
band's debts, and if she survives him it becomes her sole and separate property. But
many, indeed a majority, of the states go much further than this, and give to the
wife the sole ownership and control of her property as if she were unmarried. In
nearly all the states, however, the real estate of the wife cannot be sold without the
joinder of her husband in the deed, both signing it. In California, Colorado, Illinois,
Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New York and Wisconsin the wife's deed is good
without the husband's signature. All the rest of her property she is free to dispose
of as if she were single. In all the states a wife may make a will. In some of these
she cannot by any means by her will deprive her husband of the legal share in her
property which he would take if she made no will; but in a few, as in Massachusetts,
she may cut off her husband's legal claim by securing his written consent thereto.
The earnings of the wife belong to her in all but nine states and territories. In
(4)
50 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
these the wife's earnings are either absolutely the husband's, or "subject to his con-
trol." The wife's power to do business and make contracts varies greatly in the
different states. In most of the states she may be a trader and bind herself by any
contract made in her business. In fact, there seems to be but four states which abso-
lutely prohibit the married woman from doing business on her own account. These
are Wisconsin, Vermont, Rhode Island and Texas, and in the two last named the wife
has scarcely any more power to make any kind of a binding contract than she had at
common law. The power to sue and be sued in court is a necessary consequence
of legal permission to make a contract; so in every state where a wife can independ-
ently of her husband make a valid contract, the law furnishes a remedy upon such con-
tracts by a right of suit by or against the wife for a breach thereof. An interesting
question is, How far can husbands and wives have direct business dealings with each
other, so that they may sue each other for breach of an ordinary business contract?
Under the old English equity system, still in force in our country, also, if a wife
loaned money to her husband upon his promise to repay, a court of equity would upon
her petition compel him to refund the money. This was the only instance where a
wife could sue her husband. A court of law would never allow husbands and wives
to sue each other, or even to testify for or against each other. But our modern stat-
utes are in many states sufficiently broad to allow husbands and wives to contract
as freely with each other, and to sue and be sued, as if they were not married. This
is especially true of the states west of the Mississippi, but a number of the older states,
as New York, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and South Carolina, grant a like freedom.
Although the legal separate existence of the wife is now a fact in our country,
the husband is still viewed as the head of the family, the natural guardian of the
children, and he alone is liable for the support of the family. In some of our newer
western states, all property acquired by either husband or wife during the marriage
is the joint property of both, and in such a case the parents are jointly liable for the
support of the family. The same is true in a few other states, which hold the parents
jointly liable (while not recognizing any joint ownership of property) out of their own
separate estates. In but six states of the Union is the mother's right to the guardi-
anship of her children recognized by statute as equal to that of the father. These
states are Oregon, Washington, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and New York.
In England the wife has full property rights and contract powers. Turning to the
condition of the married woman under the codes of Continental Europe, we see that
very much progress has been made. The doctrine of all those countries which have
for a fundamental law the code Napoleon, is that of the marital supremacy of the
husband and the complete subjection of the wife. It is the old idea of the frailty of
the sex. It is true that the code recognizes a common ownership of property, but the
complete management and control of the same is in the husband. If the dowry of the
wife is imperiled, or the husband's affairs are in a serious condition, the wife may have
her property set apart for her out of the common purse. The earnings of the wife
belong to the husband, and he can pledge her personal effects for his debts. She
may be a merchant, but she must first be authorized by her husband to do so, and even
then her contracts are not as absolutely binding upon her as upon a man. She cannot
be the guardian of her children. In Italy and Russia these features are somewhat modi-
fied, and the wife's property is, as with us, her sole and separate property. In Russia
she maintains a completely separate legal existence, and can do business, sue and
be sued, independently of her husband. The husband is obliged to support the family,
however, and the wife is not bound to do so. In Italy she needs merely a general
power of attorney from her husband to enable her to act as a single woman in respect
to her property, and not even this is necessary for her to be a merchant, nor in case
of the minority, imprisonment or absence of the husband.
The condition of the widow is much changed in England and America. The
ancient law of dower, that is, the life interest in one-third the husband's real estate, has
been very generally abolished, and instead thereof the widow or the widower is entitled
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. ^ 51
to an equal share in the estate of the deceased spouse, with full power to alter the
same by will. This is the case in many American states, but still in many others the
old common law estates of the widow's dower and the widower's courtesy are even
now recognized and cannot be cut off by will. In a few states, too, the old rule of law
survives which gives to the widower all his deceased wife's personal property, unless
she has otherwise disposed of it by will. In every state the widow and children are
entitled to support out of the husband's estate for a length of time varying from
forty days in Massachusetts to a year in many western states, and during this time
of support the widow may remain in the mansion house without paying rent, and
even longer than this in some states. If the laws of the state recognize a homestead
estate in the dwelling house of the family, this secures a home to the widow until she
marries again, and to the family until the youngest child is twenty-one.
In Europe, exclusive of England and Italy, the widow has a very limited interest
in the property of the husband. Under the French and Belgian codes she only
receives the husband's property when all heirs to the twelfth degree have failed. In
Germany she has a certain portion of his property set apart for her. In Italy the
laws resemble those of the most advanced of our United States in giving to either
spouse a child's share in the property of the other, and if no children or heirs sur-
vive the widow or widower has the whole estate. In England and America a widow,
like a single woman, has the legal freedom of a man, and can be executrix of his will,
administratrix of his estate, and guardian of her children. In Europe the widow has
not full power to be guardian of her children; she must act under the advice of a
special council appointed by the father in his will, if he has seen fit to do so, and the
widow cannot discipline the children without the concurrence of the two nearest rela-
tives on the father's side.
In most of our states a father may appoint, by will, a guardian for his minor chil-
dren, but this guardian cannot act as such if considered by the probate court to be an
unfit person.
In England a father may appoint by his will a guardian to act conjointly with the
mother. The Asiatic and African colonies of European and English nations are slowly
receiving the benefit of their laws, as civilization and Christianity advance.
There are still dark spots upon the earth's surface where the condition of woman
is no better than it was four hundred years ago; where she is the slave, machine and
plaything of the tyrant man, with no hope for the future, either in this life or a life
to come, unless she holds the Mohammedan faith of future salvation by a union
with man.
In summing up the results of our survey of woman's present legal condition, let
us first observe that while theoretically the legal condition of woman is determined
by her social condition, yet now, in fact, because of the survival of ancient laws,
which are out of joint with woman's present social and intellectual emancipation, the
reverse seems to be the case, and woman's social development is hampered by useless
legal restrictions. Take for example the law, still existing in some places, that a mar-
ried woman shall not do business as a trader. This law is powerless to prevent a
married woman from going into any kind of business if she chooses. Its only effect
is to encourage her in dishonesty, by absolving her from any legal obligation to pay
her just debts incurred in the business. Her employes and creditors are absolutely
dependent upon her sense of honor, and cannot compel her in any way to pay them,
if she refuses to do so.
This law may have been well enough in the days w^hen no woman could attempt
with social propriety to carry on business. It is now demoralizing to the woman it
protects, and unjust to those who deal with her. The same is true of the laws exclud-
ing woman from public ofifice, those rendering her incompetent to be a witness, to
make a valid promissory note, and those denying to her the guardianship of her chil-
dren. Women are nearly, if not quite, upon a recognized social equality with men in
respect to freedom to labor and earn money, and in justice to men and women alike
52 ^ THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
they should be made equally responsible before the law. It is as true as it was four
hundred years ago that the condition of the women of a nation is the measure of its
culture and civilization. Whether we look at our own land where women may vote,
hold office, do business, enter upon any profession as the social equal of man, enjoy-
ing respectful consideration and chivalrous treatment; or whether we turn our eyes to
our sisters in Eastern lands, shut up in the harems and ze?ianas of the rich, or toiling
like slaves in the hovels of the poor, where woman's social condition is so low that
to mention a man's wife in his presence is an insult to him, we shall still find it true that
the condition of woman is a true gauge of a people's advancement in civilization. And,
lastly, another great truth comes before us, that while intellectual culture and other
systems of religion have tended to elevate the women of the higher classes, it is
Christianity alone that elevates the women of the lower classes.
Investigate, as you will the legal freedom of woman under the civilization of
ancient Egypt, her intellectual culture in the palmiest days of Hinduism in India, the
courtesy and respect shown to her in Japan, and whatever privileges are accorded to
her in China; or turn to the honor paid her in the days of chivalry, and the half
heathen civilization of the middle ages — you will find that the light shines only upon
the woman of higher birth and gentle breeding, and that a heavy, dark cloud of
ignorance, superstition, helplessness and hopelessness weighs down the women of the
lower classes. But under our modern Christian civilization the working-woman is
recognized as the peer before the law of her wealthier sister, with a legal right to
•equal advantages of education, to equal protection of person and property, and equal
freedom to use her powers for the good of herself and mankind. And where, in
fact, woman's equality with man is not yet fully recognized, it is because of the sur-
vival of ancient ideas, which are to disappear very speedily. Thus we are more
and more closely approaching the time when woman shall be recognized as the full
legal and social equal of man, and the ideal of human as of Divine law shall be
attained when " there can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor
free, there can be no male or female — for ye are all one man in Christ Jesus."
ETHICS OF SOCIAL LIFE.
■>¥^^jf¥«**»2
By MRS. JNO. R. HANNA.
However we have come by it, we have a code of morals which forms a standard,
to which we bring, all our fellows for trial, and pronounce them innocent or guilty, as
the case may be. We make due allowance for ignor-
ance, in the long run, although in individual cases
some personal pique may give us such a bias that
we cannot be just. That standard or code has varied
in the past, and there seems to be no doubt that it
will continue to change in all future ages. The pivot
on which hangs this code conscience does not change.
It is an invariable quantity. It simply declares, "Do
the Right;" "Do not the wrong." But what the right
or the wrong may be in any given case, it does not
pretend to decide.
That is the result of the evolution of the cen-
turies, and is only absolutely fixed at any given
moment.
All Ethics is social in its nature. Were we
isolated beings, there would be no one to injure, no
one to benefit. The beauty and the heroism of self-
sacrifice could never be seen. Mental qualities now
developed by the stimulating contact of mind with
mind, and the aspirations of purpose that come from
the observation of good deeds, and the spiritual eleva-
tion resulting from ennobling association — all would
be wanting. The most beautiful thing in the world, real goodness, could never have
been born. As all Ethics is social, by its nature, it follows that all acts are to be tried
by one standard. The question with regard to each act should be : " Will this act
contemplated by me do good or ill to any member of the human race, myself
included?"
In that wonderful compendium of the resulting wisdom of human experience, the
Bible, we find this saying of St. Paul, which has been true in the past, and will remain
true forever. Likening society to the human body, he says: "If one member suffers
all members suffer with it."
There is one underlying constructive principle in character, and only one, and all
superstructure must be built upon it. It is the constant purpose to do the right, the
good, the true, and whatever contravenes or supplants this purpose, destroys rather
than constructs.
Man, however, is a swaying creature. At one moment he is actuated by the
highest motive; at another he yields to what he knows to be ignoble and unworthy.
Mrs. lone Theresa Uanna is a native of New York, and was born in 18.37. Her parents are Lyman Mnnger and Martha
8. Whitney Manger, of New England origin. She gradoated from the Literary Course at Oberlin College in 1859, after which
she taught in Grand River Institute, Austinburg, Ohio, and in the Pennsylvania Female Academy. She married Mr. John R.
Hanna, of Pennsylvania, in 1851. They removed to Denver, Colo., in 1871. She is one of tlie original members of the Den-
ver Fortnightly Club, and is a director for Colorado of the Association for the Advancement of Women. She traveled
abroad in the summer of 1891. On May 1, 1893, she was elected a member of the School Board of East Denver. She is an
advocate of Woman Suffrage, and was much interested in the campaigns in Colorado, which terminated sacceesfoUy, giving
women the ballot Nov. 7, 1893. Mrs. Hanna is a member of the Congregational Church. Her postoffice address ia 500
Fourteenth St., Denver, Colo.
53
MRS. JNO. R. HANNA.
54. THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
So the whole experience of life seems to be for the purpose of unifying him, making
him at one with himself and the universe.
Then all our acts are religious acts; all have a moral quality. It then follows that
what others have proved to be wise courses of conduct, or what we have discovered
ourselves in the experience of life to be acts of wisdom, these are as obligatory upon
us as are the commandments of the Mosaic code: " Honor Thy Father and Thy
Mother," "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Kill," etc.
Now, in the evolution of social life, what wisdom has come to us from the imme-
diate past that is yet partially or wholly unheeded?
First, in the matter of dress: How notorious a fact it is that Hygeia and Fashion
are goddesses who reign over separate and warring kingdoms! One declares that the
feminine form should be given perfect and entire freedom; the other, that every physi-
ological law may be set at naught so that the prevailing mode be accepted.
There is another form of servitude that enslaves well-to-do women. It wastes
their energies, belittles their lives, and prevents that expansion of mind and thought
that is necessary, if they would appropriate and fill the places now so widely opened
to them. It is what is termed the " Customs and Usages of Good Society," and
includes the matter of dress above referred to. It also imposes upon women the most
constant and unremitting attention to the toilet.
Ladies must have —
All manner of things that a women can put
On the crown of her head or the sole of her foot;
Or wrap round her shoulders, or fit round her waist.
Or that can be sewed on, or pinned on, or laced;
Or tied on with a string, or stitched on with a bow.
In front, or behind, above, or below;
Bonnets, mantillas, capes, collars or shawls.
Dresses for breakfast, and dinners, and balls;
Dresses to set in, and stand in, and walk in.
Dresses to dance in, and flirt in, and talk in;
Dresses in which to do nothing at all.
Dresses for winter, spring, summer and fall;
All of them different in color and pattern —
Silk, muslin and lace, crape, velvet and satin;
Brocade and broadcloth, and other material
Quite as expensive, and much more ethereal;
In short, all things that could ever be thought of.
Or milliner, modiste, or tradesman be bought of;
From ten-thousand-franc robes to twenty-sous frills.
This seems like a caricature on the modern fashionable woman; but it can hardly
be called so, and remarkable is the memory of the man who from observation, and not
from experience, compiled this list with a poetic jingle that is found in most " choice
selections of poetry."
If this interminable list of articles of the toilet were left for the possession of the
exclusively fashionable woman it would not so much matter; but sensible women,
actually busy in the necessary work of the world, are more or less affected by these
mandates of fashion. Add to this the series of expensive entertainments, with their
wearisome menus, and the visits of ceremony which must be received and returned, and
life is made so burdensome and artificial that spontaneity and joy is well-nigh dried up.
Most women of intelligence deprecate this condition of things, but do not quite
see the way of escape from it.
A friend of mine who does not mingle in what is termed general society, and escapes
many of its restrictions and limitations, yet feels this bond, and says: "My life is spent
in busy idleness;" by which she means that the unreal and unimportant demand the
most of her time.
^ THE CONGRESS'OF WOMEN. 55
y^nother respect in which modern society is seen to be defective is in the main-
tenance of a double standard of morals, one for men and one for women. It is
demanded of women that they be absolutely pure and true; but men may be eligible
to the best and most intelligent circles of society and yet not be held to the same high
standard. It works evil, and only evil, continually to universal society; but its most
painful and blighting effects are visited upon women.
There is another double standard in the upper stratum of society, one for men
and one for women, which works evil, viz., that of occupation or employment.
A young man may start out boldly into the competitions of business life whether
he be rich or poor. He may adopt the calling for which he is fitted, employ his
faculties as he shall choose, receive pecuniary compensation therefor, and be confident
that he is but fulfilling what a wise public opinion demands of him.
But let a young woman of wealth, who is surrounded by sheltering friends,
attempt the same career, and she quickly discovers that the gates are closed. The
capital that would be generously bestowed upon her brother is withheld from her
through mistaken kindness. Those nearest and dearest to her will prove so many
obstacles in her way rather than helps. Even if a father intend to leave his daughter
a handsome fortune, he will in the majority of cases educate her to be so helpless as to
be absolutely dependent upon her brothers or male relatives for business guidance and
control, which is only a shade less bitter than to be dependent for one's daily neces-
sities, rather than teach her intelligently to take care of money herself.
On the other hand, she hears the cry from another quarter: "Oh! she is taking
away the opportunities of the poor. She is receiving the money that should be given to
the less favored."
So it results that custom, the most arbitrary of lawgivers, forbids the daughters of
the well-to-do to pursue a calling that will reward them pecuniarily. They may do
benevolent or charitable work; they may be domestic and interested in the adorn-
ment of the home; they may study provided they do it with no practical end in view;
and they may become wives and mothers, which latter position is likely to require
all their energies. All these things, the charitable work, the little home services, the
study and the marriage, are worthy of one's best effort, but they do not begin to afford
a wide enough range of choice. No two human beings are alike, and consequently
the field of choice should possess an infinite variety.
I have seen young women not sufificiently developed in character and power of
thought and imagination to be interested in philanthropic work, and who were too
wide-awake to be quietly centered at home, who perhaps did not care to study
without a definite purpose in view, and for whom marriage was an undetermined
factor in life. As the customs of society now are, there is nothing for these young
women but impatient waiting for somebody or something to turn up, Micawber-Iike.
They become weary, and are perhaps induced to accept a marriage that under more
favorable circumstances they would not make, or else they form one of the army of
discontented women suffering for an inspiriting occupation, for whom the chances
of marriage are daily lessening.
Can it be possible that parents who yield to this tyranny of custom never think
what it is to be absolutely without a chosen end and aim in life?
Suppose your daughter is just out of school, where she has been busily occupied
preparing for life. She comes home. She tries to adapt herself to her surroundings.
She has lofty ideas and needs the healthy struggles involved in carrying out a chosen
line of work to perfect her character and to establish her personality. Instead of this
she has nothing to induce her to a sufficient employment of her time and her
capabilities. She reads a little. She studies the fashions. She plans her wardrobe.
She goes to balls and receptions. She takes a journey, and then she returns to go
through the same round again. She gets restless; the monotony is unendurable. She
keeps wishing for something new. You think her ungrateful. You feel she has a great
deal to make her happy and to be thankful for, and yet she is miserable and makes
56 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
everybody miserable about her. She constantly seeks change. She is going some-
where all the time. Her frame of mind, with the late hours and excitement of
society life, rob her of her youthful charms, and her spirit loses its sweetness and
fastens unerringly the lines of pain and suffering upon her face. It is so strange that
parents do not see that their daughters, as well as their sons, are really human beings.
You wish your son to make a choice of profession or calling. You strive to assist
him in every possible way to do so, and feel dissatisfied with him if he continually
puts off this choice and seems to center upon nothing. But it is far otherwise with
your daughter. The kind of limitation spoken of is what is most often imposed
upon her, and a great part of the viciousness of this whole order of things consists
in the absolute dependence in which she is placed. These girls are made to feel that
their own judgment is not final in any respect; that they are pensioners on the bounty
of their father or male relatives; that the services they render have no money value;
and it is the surest of methods to produce weakness of judgment, irresponsibility in
expenditure, and incapacity for any useful service. What all about us expect from us
that is what we are most likely to give; and we either sink or rise to the level of the
opinions of our friends concerning us. We are in a world of material things. Our
feet are on the solid earth. It seems to be a law of nature that we desire to acquire
something that we can call our own.
A young man never makes a success in life until he has some capital of money,
profession, or business training. He must be a center, and be capable of gathering
and holding something. He does not get a foothold in a community until he accom-
plishes this. He does not become conscious of his own possibilities or capabilities
until he does it. Neither does the community about him.
Now is it so easy a matter to train the young for life that we can afford to throw
away the strength and dignity that come from the acquisition of property, simply
because the young man chances to be a young woman. Now I hear some one say,
" You are leaving marriage out of the question." No, I am but speaking for those
for whom a desirable marriage does not yet appear. I would not ignore marriage, but
I would have a young girl so trained and prepared for life that she should enter into
it only because of the compelling persuasiveness of a genuine love.
And I th'ink most women would bear me out in the opinion, that the power to
acquire and to properly care for money would rather sweeten the path of matri-
mony than lessen its advantages.
Anything that is so powerful in the human make-up as the love of possession, the
desire to feel "This is mine," and is so inherent in our very nature, we do wrong to
cast aside and give no legitimate field of action. Our daughters are crippled and
dwarfed, and are not the grand and well-rounded women they might become.
Then this extreme dependence we impose upon them causes them to look upon
marriage as the only loop-hole of escape from an irksome bondage, and they come to
seek marriage as a means to this end. There is something terribly degrading in this
attitude in which many of our well-to-do young women of today are placed. In a
sneering way it is said, "They are in the market."
How much nobler and finer is the attitude of a woman who prepares herself for
some useful profession or calling, and finds enough of interest in the busy activities
of life to engross her best energies, to expand her powers, and to make her what God
intended her to be — a ministering, self-helpful woman. Then when love speaks, and the
love of her own heart answers, is she the less prepared for a happy marriage? I think
not.
Many of us have known the genteel lady of poverty and have seen her willing to
beg or borrow without the slightest idea of return, rather than do the useful things of
life.
A bright friend has suggested that when the stress of need and trouble has come
the battle of life is half won; when one's own opinion^, which act as suckers upon
the roots of strength and energy, are cut down, an open field is left free and clear.
'THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 57
But can you not see, my friends, that when you allow in yourself, or cultivate
in your daughter, the idea that useful labor is degrading, you are preparing for a moral
descent in the day of adversity that may include a darker region than the one of
unpaid debts.
In this brief essay the effects upon the women themselves who cherish these
opinions, and are bound by these customs, have been treated. But they have a wider
bearing. They reach out into all grades of life and touch every .social center in the
land. The discredit that is fastened upon labor for remuneration, if performed by the
well-to-do women of our land, extends to the classes of people engaged in such labor,
and distinctly builds rather than pulls down the barrier which exists between labor
and capital, the rich and the poor. And I believe the difficulties of the labor question
can never be solved until this barrier has been melted away by acquaintance, knowl-
edge and sympathy. Anything that builds this barrier, that fortifies these walls of
separation, is injurious and hurtful. But those philanthropies founded upon the
principle that he is my neighbor who most needs me, and which ignore the prevailing
artificial conditions and distinctions, are bringing forward the day of "the Parliament
of Man, the Federation of the World."
Personal contact, and the love and influence that flows from one to another in the
social body, is the only agency that really wins, the only key that opens hearts. ^
Of late philanthropic institutions have sprung up, founded on this principle, viz.,
that of constant and free intercourse of the favored and cultured with the more
humble and less fortunate.
Hull House, in this city, is a notable and successful example. It is a house
planted by two women in the midst of a foreign population, mostly self-supporting,
but comparatively destitute of a social life that brings joy and hope. These women
in wise and winning ways have reached out socially, and have won their way into the
hearts and confidence of the people by proving themselves real friends. No supe-
riority has been assumed, but a footing of social equality has been their aim to estab-
lish. From the needs of these people, which were many, there has sprung a system
of most diverse educational facilities too numerous to mention.
Now if it is good for ^' homes" to be founded in less favored neighborhoods
to carry social life into them, how much more may be accomplished when the natural
homes that cover our land extend a helping hand to the needy and less favored?
Now it is quite common for our social life to rest on a commercial basis,
receiving so much for so much, and using it as a means for selfish promotion; and
interminable calling lists and crowded reception halls are some of the consequences.
Wearisome these self-imposed burdens are, and often we feel that we cannot bear
them any longer. How much better it would be to bestow ourselves and our hospi-
tality on those who need us and whom we can really benefit, and not look for a
material reward, but take it in the inward satisfaction such a life would bring. As
Browning says: " Give earth yourself, go up for gain above."
THE PROGRESS OF FIFTY YEARS.
By MRS. LUCV STONE.
The commencement of the last fifty years is about the beginning of that great
change and improvement in the condition of women which exceeds all the gains
of hundreds of years before.
Four years in advance of the last fifty, in 1833,
Oberlin College, in Ohio, was founded. Its charter
declared its grand object, '* To give the most useful
education at the least expense of health, time, and
money, and to extend the benefits of such education
to both sexes and to all classes; and the elevation
of the female character by bringing within the reach
of the misjudged and neglected sex all the instruct-
ive privileges which have hitherto unreasonably dis-
tinguished the leading sex from theirs." These were
the words of Father Shippen, which, if not heard in
form, were heard in fact as widely as the world. The
opening of Oberlin to women marked an epoch. In
all outward circumstances this beginning was like the
coming of the Babe of Bethlehem — in utter poverty.
Its first hall was of rough slabs with the bark on still.
Other departments corresponded. But a new Messiah
had come.
Get but a truth once uttered, and 'tis like
A star new born that drops into its place;
And which, once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.
Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the' heal-
ing of the nations. About this time Mary Lyon began a movement to establish Mt.
Holyoke Seminary. Amherst College was near by. Its students were educated to be
missionaries. They must have educated wives. It was tacitly understood and openly
asserted that Mt. Holyoke Seminary was to meet this demand. But, whatever the
reason, the idea was born that women could and should be educated. It lifted a
mountain load from woman. It shattered the idea, everywhere pervasive as the
atmosphere, that women were incapable of education, and would be less womanly,
less desirable in every way, if they had it. However much it may have been
resented, women accepted the idea of their intellectual inequality. I asked my
brother: "Can girls learn Greek?"
The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the
slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking
Mfb. Lucy Stone was a native of Massachusetts. She was born August 13, 1818. Her parents were Francis Stone
and Hannah Matthews Stone. She was educated in the public schools at Monson and Wilbraham Academies, and
Mt. Holyoke Seminary and Oberlin College, and has traveled over most of the United States and Canada. She married Henry
B. Blackwell in 1855, but she did not change her name, finding that no law required her to do so. Mrs. Stone was a well-
known Woman Suffragist. Her principal literary works are editorials in the "Woman's .Journal," extending over twenty-two
years. In religious faith she was a Hicksite Quaker or liberal Unitarian. She died October 18, 1893. Her life was a busy
and useful one. She lived to see the Columbian Exposition with all its glorious opportunities, and to use them for the
good of the cause most dear to her. Mrs. Stone's closing days and hours were blessed and crowned with comfort and tran-
quillity, that always rewards a self-eacrificing, noble, Christian life. Almost her last articulate words were : "Make the
world better."
58
MRS. LUCY STONE.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 59
fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sarah
Grimki and Abby Kelly went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been
heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some
of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti-
Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its
very foundation in opposition. The Association of Congregational Churches issued
a "Pastoral Letter" against the public speaking of women. The press, many-tongued,
surpassed itself in reproaches upon these women who had so far departed from their
sphere as to speak in public. But, with anointed lips and a consecration which put
even life itself at stake, these peerless women pursued the even tenor of their way,
saying to their opponents only: "Woe is me if I preach not this gospel of freedom
for the slave." Over all came the melody of Whittier's:
"When woman's heart is breaking
Shall woman's voice be hushed?"
I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can
never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has
been earned. Abby Kelly once entered a church only to find herself the subject of
the sermon, which was preached from the text: " This Jezebel is come among us also."
Theyjeeredat herasshe went along the street. They threw stones at her. They pelted
her with bad eggs as she stood on the platform. Some of the advocates of the very
cause for which she endured all this were ready to drive her from the field. Mr. Gar-
rison and Wendell Phillips stood by her. But so great was the opposition that one
faction of the abolitionists left and formed a new organization, after a vain effort to
put Abby Kelly off from the committee to which she had been nominated.
The right to education and to free speech having been gained for woman, in
the long run every other good thing was sure to be obtained.
Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their
occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a
band of steel on society. But the spinning-wheel and the loom, which had given
employment to women, had been superseded by machinery, and something else had to
take their places. The taking care of the house and children, and the family sewing,
and teaching the little summer school at a dollar per week, could not supply the needs
nor fill the aspirations of women. But every departure from these conceded things
was met with the cry, "You want to get out of your sphere," or, "To take women
out of their sphere;" and that was to fly in the face of Providence, to unsex yourself
— in short, to be monstrous women, women who, while they orated in public, wanted
men to rock the cradle and wash the dishes. We pleaded that whatever was fit to
be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did it well; that the
tools belonged to those who could use them; that the possession of a power presup-
posed a right to its use. This was urged from city to city, from state to state. Women
were encouraged to try new occupations. We endeavored to create that wholesome
discontent in women that would compel them to reach out after far better things. But
every new step was a trial and a conflict. Men printers left when women took the
type. They formed unions and pledged themselves not to work for men who
employed women. But these tools belonged to women, and today a great army of
women are printers unquestioned.
When Harriet Hosmer found within herself the artist soul, and sought by the
study of anatomy to prepare herself for her work, she was repelled as out of her
sphere, and indelicate, and not a medical college in all New England or in the Middle
States would admit her. She persevered, aided by her father's wealth and influence.
Dr. McDowell, the dean of the medical college in St. Louis, admitted her. The
field of art is now open to women, but as late as the time when models for the statue
of Charles Sumner were made, although that of Annie Whitney, in the judgment of
the committee, took precedence of all the rest, they refused to award her the contract
60 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
for the statue when they knew that the model was the work of a woman. But her
beautiful Samuel Adams and Lief Ericsson, and the fine handiwork of other artists, are
argument and proof that the field of art belongs to women.
When Mrs. Tyndall, of Philadelphia, assumed her husband's business after his
death, importing chinaware, sending her ships to China, enlarging her warehouses
and increasing her business, the fact was quoted as a wonder. When Mrs. Young,
of Lowell, Mass., opened a shoe-store in Lowell, though she sold only shoes for
women and children, people peered curiously in to see how she looked. Today the
whole field of trade is open to woman.
When Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine and put up her sign in New York,
she was regarded as fair game, and was called a " she doctor." The college that had
admitted her closed its doors afterward against other women, and supposed they
were shut out forever. But Dr. Blackwell was a woman of fine intellect, of great
personal worth and a Idvel head. How good it was that such a woman was the first
doctor! She was well equipped by study at home and abroad, and prepared to con-
tend with prejudice and every opposing thing. Dr. Zakrzewska was with her, and
Dr. Emily Blackwell soon joined them. At a price the younger women doctors do
not know, the way was opened for women physicians.
The first woman minister, Antoinette Brown, had to meet ridicule and oppo-
sition that can hardly be conceived to-day. Now there are women ministers, east and
west, all over the country.
In Massachusetts, where properly qualified " persons " were allowed to practice
law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a " person," and a special act
of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to
the bar. But today women are lawyers.
Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives,
widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in
how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage
lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went
to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman earned a dol-
lar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with
it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the copy-
right of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in
many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might
have when her husband died. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had
bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as
to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal exist-
ence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither
sue nor be sued. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all
her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of " the
estate by courtesy." When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one-
third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance."
While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly
with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her
child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the laws in
regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and
improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.
We have not only gained in the fact that the laws are modified. Women have
acquired a certain amount of political power. We have now in twenty states school
suffrage for women. Forty years ago there was but one. Kentucky allowed widows
with children of school age to vote on school questions. We have also municipal
suffrage for women in Kansas, and full suffrage in Wyoming, a state larger than all
New England.
The last half century has gained for women the right to the highest education
and entrance to all professions and occupations, or nearly all. As a result we have
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 61
women's clubs, the Woman's Congress, women's educational and industrial unions,
the moral education societies, the Woman's Relief Corps, police matrons, the Wom-
an's Christian Temperance Union, colleges for women, and co-educational colleges and
the Harvard Annex, medical schools and medical societies open to women, women's
hospitals, women in the pulpit, women as a power in the press, authors, women artists,
women's beneficent societies and Helping Hand societies, women school supervisors,
and factory inspectors and prison inspectors, women on state boards of charity, the
International Council of Women, the Woman's National Council, and last, but not
least, the Board of Lady Managers, And not one of these things was allowed women
fifty years ago, except the opening at Oberlin. By what toil and fatigue and patience
and strife and the beautiful law of growth has all this been wrought? These things
have not come of themselves. They could not have occurred except as the great
movement for women has brought them out and about. They are part of the eternal
order, and they have come to stay. Now all we need is to continue to speak the
truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the
side of equal and full justice in all things.
WOMAN AS AN INVESTOR.
By MRS. LOUISE A. STARKWEATHER.
I would hesitate to come before you with a paper upon the unsentimental, and to
many, the uninteresting topic of finance, but for the fact that woman is such an import-
ant factor in the financial world. Coming as I do from
a field of strife, where ambition to attain sudden
wealth often wrecks the present and embitters the
future lives of men and women whose investments
of money are at best attended with a certain degree
of hazard, I feel a certain sense of duty to woman in
calling her attention to three important branches of
investments, which, as far as she is concerned, come
in the following order: Insurance, banking and loan
associations. There is not an incident in the history
of war of cruelty or justice meted out in obedience of
some law, as cruel, as cold-blooded, or as heartless as
is shown in the history of finance of today. True,
hundreds have been swept out of existence in a single
hour on fields of battle; but the suffering was soon
past, the life gone out was cheerfully given for a cause
sacred to the giver and revered by those who
mourned their dead. Death is far preferable, as there
can be no anguish nor suffering as great as that en-
dured by the happy, successful man who suddenly
finds himself a beggar; a lifetime of work and savings
swept before his helpless eyes and hands, leaving him
to witness and share the hardships of those dependent upon him, and perchance his
failure may not excite the sincere sympathy of those in whose behalf he risked his all.
Censure is too often the rule. The world of finance knows no pity for the man who
fails; it has smiles only for the successful man without much inquiry as to the modus
operandi of his success. Now in this whirlpool of money getting, money losing and
money keeping, what of woman?
Read the list of the millionaires of the world and do you not find women as well
represented as men? Read the records of any banking institution and who do you
find as the principal stock owners? Women! Look over the books of any and every suc-
cessful Loan and Building Association and who has been the purchasers of stock and
builders of homes by this method of Loan? Women! But she is there in name only,
as a rule. For many long and weary years she has been clamoring for political rights
and political honors, equal suffrage and men's clothing, the pantaloons in particular,
if one is to draw a conclusion from the recent dress reform display held here in Chi-
cago. It is claimed aloud by some men, and whispered by others, that she has been in
possession of the article of apparel just mentioned for all time; be that as it may, my
Mrs. Loaise A. Starkweather is a native of West Virginia. She was born March 28, 1858. Her parents were Thomas B.
Hall and Sarah A. Hall, of English and Scotch descent. She was educated at Normal Dni versity. Normal, 111. She spent four
years as a teacher and six years as a principal of schools. She has traveled throughout the United States and part of Canada.
She married Oakley B. Starkweather in Chicago, April 20, 1889. Her principal literary works are newspaper work over the
signature, "Antique," for the papers of Alton, 111., Bloomington, 111., and Chicago. She has been superintendent of the
Woman's Department of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, for several years, and has written some of the
largest policieB held by women in America. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian. Her postolRce address is 421 Olive
Street, St. Louis, Mo.
62
MRS. LOUISE A. STARKWEATHER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 63
only wish is that if the disguise of man's clothing would open woman's eyes to her
own importance and responsibility in the financial world, I shall not object, but I doubt
it. Strange as it may seem coming from a business woman as I am, I do most
emphatically assert that woman is the most inconsistent of God's creation. There are
women who by inheritance of stock in the great industries and banks of this age might
wield a power far more telling, far more vital than anything politics could give, yet
they never think of asserting the rights they already have. I shall not take your time
in giving a recapitulation of history as to the wealth and power of our revered mater-
nal ancestors. The pages of ancient and modern history teem with the facts and you
may read if you will.
It is my purpose to talk of woman as I find her today, good, honest, earnest and
inconsistent! First let us look at the matter of banks and bank stock. Did it ever
occur to you that a very large portion of bank stock in the United States is owned by
women ? Did it ever occur to those women that they have a vote and voice in the direc-
tion and management of a work far more important than the election of a Kansas
Senator or a Ward politician? True, there are some women who are holding offices in
banks. I met the vice-presidentof a Texas bank and in a conversation upon her duties
learned that she always signed papers when brought to her even though she stopped
her bread-making or any other household duties to do so; but as to any knowledge
of the securities held, money, markets, etc, she had none further than that her money
was in the bank's business and she was notified regularly of the dividends, and had
money to use as shechose. But as to whether the dividends were larger or smaller than
any preceding year she could not say. Some day that woman will be notified that
her stock is not drawing any dividends, then maybe she will look after her interests
and exercise her right to the ballot. Men are willing to grant woman all the rights
she may have in the financial world, yet they look upon her as a legal prey if she per-
sists in remaining ignorant in matters pertaining to her property and prosperity. No-
where in the business world is woman more applauded than in this department of
economics, and nowhere is she more swindled and wheedled out of her property than
right here. As I before stated there is no sentiment in finance, but there is commendation
to the successful, be that person man or woman. In Suffolk County, Va., two-thirds of
the bank stock is owned by women, yet there is but one bank officer a woman, as far as
can be learned, and many of these women do not know how to draw a check and can-
not discover the difference between a dividend and an assessment and would be as
pleased over a notice of one as the other until better informed. Who votes the
shares of stock owned by women, do you ask? Some man who by proxy votes as
best suits his purpose, and attends to her loans and interests as is most profitable to
himself.
A rather amusing story is told of one of the wealthy women of St. Louis, whose
husband, tired of attending to her dressmakers' and milliners' bills, decided to give
her an account at a bank, so she might attend to these affairs herself. So he handed
her a bank book with the account opened, and a good round sum at her credit, also
a check book, and told her to pay her bills by checks; shortly after he was notified
that his wife's account was overdrawn at the bank. He called her attention to the
fact and was assured it could not be. She brought him the check book, saying: "See,
there are several checks yet I have not used." Is it any wonder that money left in
the hands of such a woman is soon mismanaged by some man who sees her ignor-
ance. Woman suddenly finds herself in possession of money, by reason of death of
her husband or father, and unless she is on the alert, it will soon be dissipated by bad
management. Life insurance has made woman rich, and lawyers have profited by her
ignorance in financial matters. The judge of the probate court in one of the counties of
New York gives a most startling statement of his observation on the bench. It is
this: Eighty per cent of the money left to widows and children in that county dur-
ing his term of office was dissipated by mismanagement. Women left with money
are looked upon as legitimate prey by a class of men who have over their office
64 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
door the word " Investments." Chicago courts of this year disclosed a most appall-
ing state of affairs that women should blush to acknowledge. A firm consisting of
four brothers closed their doors one morning, and in the investigation following, this
fact was brought out: One of the brothers testified that his duties in the transac-
tion of the firm's business was to look up widows and women of means, and by a sys-
tem of flattery and attention gain their confidence and a full statement of finances. He
claimed a few lunches, a theater party, a ride or other attentions of like nature usu-
ally gave him the information desired, and he soon had the management of the
woman's property, borrowed her money, and the best account he could give was a
memoranda stuck in his vest pocket and afterward destroyed. That women should
be such weaklings is a matter* of both regret and shame to all the world, and that such
a case could be recorded against her good sense and judgment is a great blot upon
her.
Very few men would say to their wives or daughters: " Here, take care of the
bank or store, or factory; I shall take a, trip around the world, and may remain
indefinitely. You attend to the affairs and take care of the children's interests." Yet
every day we see women thrown in that position, in addition to the grief attendant
upon a sudden bereavement. She must take up a work in which she has had no
preparation — and too often no knowledge. She must either see her interests ruined or
lay aside her grief and begin where, until now, she was not supposed to have ability
or comprehension to warrant even her husband's confidence. This very fact has made
woman what she is today, and it will make her the rule, not the exception, in business
relations of the future.
Women soon discover that the mysteries of business are not as impenetrable as
she supposed. The time has come. She must occupy chairs in directors, meetings;
must keep informed on the subject of money making, as well as money spending;
must know her check book from her bank book; her deposits from overdrafts; divi-
dends from assessments of stock, and be willing and ready to vote and lend her ideas
in this branch, as she has elsewhere in the world with such good effect.
Insurance formerly offered to man a contract with two conditions, viz.: First.
Payment of a certain sum at a stated time until death. Second. Return to the family
a specified sum upon proofs of death being satisfactorily given. It now offers to
woman more than that. There are no reforms or changes so marked as in the insur-
ance world of today and that of the past. Women are now considered equally as
good risks, are carried by companies for the limit of their indemnity, and by this
investment may have many opportunities never offered before. For instance, a
woman may insure her life and have the policy payable to herself at a certain time.
That is, she need not die to win. This policy is as negotiable as a government bond,
and may be used in business transactions as are other securities. At the expira-
tion of a stated time she may have all the money she has invested in this manner
returned to her, together with interest on the same for the time, thereby giving her
the same advantages of savings banks with greater security than they can afford, or,
if she so desires, she may turn the cash value of her policy into an income for life,
thereby providing for the old woman a safe and happy old age, without the worries
of business details. This last feature of the investment in insurance is a most import-
ant one, for with the continuance of life there is for all of us an old woman for whose
care and comfort the younger woman is responsible. Charity, no matter how sweet,
is yet a bitter dose to the old. None of us can foresee our peculiarities in the future,
and we are too well warned by the fate of old women of our acquaintance to neglect
our own declining years. A woman owes it as a duty to herself as well as her child-
ren to place herself in that position which will make her not a burden upon any. A
son-in-law cannot be expected to love and care for the mother-in-law, unless she is a
rich one. A daughter should not be expected to add to her own cares that of help-
less imbecility of a husband's relative. We will be as unwilling as the most unwilling
of our relatives to take that which is given under such circumstances. Do you know,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. «5
that by a small saving each year for a period of ten years a woman may place herself
beyond the accident of dependence. This is a much happier future to contemplate
than the uncertainty of some one's possible care, whether given grudgingly or not.
Insurance for women today provides an estate left, in case of death, a savings bank
for her money, and a guaranteed annuity for old age; yet there are women who are
sentimental enough to not only deny themselves such a provision, but who will induce
husbands to cancel any they may have, and too often live to repent their folly. Let
me tell you another story — my stories are all true ones, by the way: A woman of more
than ordinary business ability in a western town was approached by a real estate man
who knew of her contemplation of investing a sum of money she had received. He
suggested the purchase of a three-thousand-dollar piece of property that was then
rented at ten per cent of the value, or three hundred dollars a year; he showed her
that by a few repairs needed this property would bring her four hundred and fifty
dollars a year, or fifteen per cent of her investment. Fifteen percent on money
invested is always a temptation to man and woman both, and our western woman was
not an exception. She purchased the property and the agent then set about the
repairs and changes required to secure an advance rent. When the new roof was put
on, the sides of the house cried out for paint, and when that was done the fence fell
dovyn with shame before the new clothes of the house; and so it went. The house was
entirely remodeled; time was lost, as the tenants were compelled to move and new
ones must be secured. But they were finally secured, and then came the trials of our
woman investor in keeping peace between tenants and agent. She resolved herself
into a peace committee and lay awake nights thinking out plans to ameliorate the
woes of first one and then the other, all the time paying the agent for services ren-
dered in keeping her tenants either moving in the house or out of it. Well, to be
brief, she cast up her accounts one day last month, and, during the time, two years,
she had made a net profit of one dollar and fifty cents upon her investment. I could
give you her name and address that you might verify my statement, but you do not
need my case, there are hundreds of your own knowledge that are parallel. Had this
woman invested one-tenth of her three thousand dollars in some large and secure
insurance company two years ago, the dividends of that company would have been
almost forty per cent of her investment, and she need not have added lines of care to
her face in the endeavor to keep her money making one dollar and fifty cents in two
years, besides providing an income for her future that would not require the services
of an agent. A wife has as much need to provide an estate for her children by the
means of an investment in some insurance company as has the husband. She ought
to have a sum of money to leave her children that they might have the advantages
she would have given them had she lived. The husband is more helpless when left
alone with the children to rear than a wife; he cannot adapt his hours of bread-win-
ning and home-making as can a woman when left alone to face the world. Too often
children are scattered or given into the care of unwilling relatives to be cared or
uncared for, as the case may be; home ties are broken, affections alienated, ignorance
encouraged, and crime often follows the loss of a mother's care or the provision she
may have made to complete the plans for her children. Every woman in this great
and good republic should insure, for has she not the same right to accumulate a com-
petence as has man, and in this branch her rights are equal, her returns as great, and
her provisions for self and others just as beneficent as man's. Real estate may decline
in value and at best brings but small returns, a failure to pay one deferred payment
loses all, if an hour of need comes it is a burden; but insurance is co-operation. If you
die your children never needed money more than when death and sickness hampers
their grief-stricken efforts; they may draw from the accumulated resources of thou-
sands of others a fund carefully secured against loss, says one of the wisest business
men of the times. Loan associations have enabled poor women to build a home, they
have made her pay for it to be sure, and she has struggled through a term of eight to
ten years for this end; had death overtaken her all would have been lost unless she
(5)
66 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
carried a policy to cover the mortgage hanging over the home. Without the policy
she would have left a debt, an unfinished obligation for those left behind to assume;
with a policy the debt is canceled, the home safe, and she has not lived in vain even
should she not be able to stand the strain of her duties to those dependent upon her.
Did you ever hear of a woman attending the meetings of the directors of a loan asso-
ciation and learning anything of its transactions unless she was to become a borrower?
I regret that my business has shown me woman's indifference in a matter of so much
importance as this of money making. Yet to be truthful I must state facts and urge
it upon all to look into your bank accounts, your investments, the money markets
and the provision for your old age. An old woman cannot have too much money.
The more disagreeable she is the more she will need that which makes all paths
smooth and services rendered lighter by a recorripense greater than love can buy or
importune. This great branch of business, larger by far than the banking systems
combined, opens its doors to woman, making her not only the beneficiary as formerly,
but owner of the shares of stock and shares in the profits of the vast amounts invested
for her future needs. Her age and sex cut no figure here; she is from the insurance
point of view equal to man in all things.
THE FEAST OF COLUMBIA. 1493-189^
By MRS. ALICE WILLIAMS BROTHERTON.
"Hither," Columbia said,
With a smile to her daughters four,
"From prairie and gulf and sea
Come hither and toil with me.
'Ere the century turns from our door,
Let us set a feast for the ancient East
Upon the New World's shore."
From the rising sun came one,
A sturdy colonial dame.
With a rugged, cheery face.
Tanned by the wind and sun,
And a stately, old-time air,
Dark eyes with courage aflame
Under her powdered hair.
Of cloth from the whirring looms.
Woven so soft and fine.
Deftly she spread a snowy webb;
Said, "Here is a gift of mine.
But many another thing
To grace your halls I bring.
Marbles, polished and varied and rare.
And granites strong and good;
Fish from my sea beat coasts,
Masts from my tall pine wood,
Yet something better than these I boast.
This ancient blade with the battle nicks.
Lo! here is a pen.
And the musty parchment deed;
Framed in our hour of need
By stalwart, single hearted men
In Seventeen and Seventy-Six."
And the people of the land,
From the oldest to the least
Cried, "Hail to the steadfast band
Who saved for us Freedom's land:
Hurrah, Hurrah! Once and again,
Hail to the Mother of Men!
Hail to the East!"
Mrs. Alice Williams Brotherton iB a native of Cambridge, Ind., bat has passed nearly all of her life in Ohio. Her
parents were Rath Dodge Johnson Williams and Alfred Baldwin Williams, of Cincinnati, Ohio. She was educated in
various private schools, in the St. Louis Eliot Grammar School, and in the Woodward High School, of Cincinnati. She
married Mr. William Ernest Brotherton, of Cincinnati. She is the mother of two boys and one girl; the eldest son died in
1890. Her principal literary works are contributions in prose and verse to such periodicals as Ttie Century, The Atlantic, The
Independent, and "Beyond the Veil," "The Sailing of King Olaf," and other poems, and "What the Wind Told," in prose and
verse. In religious faith she is a Unitarian of the non-conservative type. Her postoffice address is Bidgeway Avenne, Avon>
dale, Cincinnati. Ohio. ^_
67
MRS. ALICE WILLIAMS BROTHERTON
68 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Out of the North one paced
With a stately step and slow,
As one whose going crushed
The crispness of the snow.
"I bring my flour for the feast
From the thousand mills you know,
The tasseled ears are torn
From my serried ranks of corn.
Take" them and eat
The loaves of the finest wheat.
Here are copper and lead and iron,
Whose bands already environ
The world, and lumber to frame
The walls of the home.
The home that redeems the waste,
In whose keeping all life is placed.
With these and more I come;
Take ye these at their worth,
These, my gifts," said the North.
And the people shouted, and said,
"Hail to the Queen of the Lakes,
From whom the nation takes
Grateful, its daily bread!
Hail to the North! Once more —
To her million beds of ore!
To the lumber on her shore!
And the wheat she sendeth forth
The whole world o'er!
Hail to the North!"
And one from the sunset came.
With steps as a panther's free.
And dusky cheek aflame.
"I am the child of the Western wild,
And bring my gifts to thee.
Red meat I give you here
From the bison and the deer,
Herds on a thousand hills
Where the sunset shines
Are yours for the feast," said the West.
"But take with these my best
Silver and gold from the mine;
And a strange new story to read
Of an old world in the new.
Over canyon written, and mead,
Story the Aztecs knew.
Of the great new states to be
The years shall write for me.
Oh, the old is good," quoth she;
"But who shall call it the best?
Take the best of my gifts from me,"
Said the mighty West.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Then the land rose up with a shout,
"Hail to the Westering Star
That leads our conquests afar,
Most welcome, oh noble guest!
Hail to the Prairie Queen
With the eagle's plumes for a crest.
Pearls of the gulf in her hand
And rails of steel for a girdle band!"
Where the moccasined foot has pressed
The coming millions shall stand.
Hail to the West!
Who comes up from the South
With a smile on her full round mouth.
But trace of a tear in her eye?
Who says, twixt smile and sigh,
(Oh sweet as her own south wind her words)
"These my offerings be, look.
The ploughshare beaten from sword.
The spear made pruning-hook,
And the fruits of my pruned vine
Today are thine.
Take what my tillage yields —
The cotton-boll from my fields.
Tobacco leaf and cane,
And snowy rice from the brakes
Where the balmy east wind wakes
And the noontides reign.
My wealth of flowers fair
To grace the feast I bear.
And a tropical fruitage rare:
Oranges ripe — a mimic sun
Molded in gold is every one;
Bananas that melt in the mouth.
Lemons sweetened with sun —
Take ye these, all and one
My gifts," said the South.
And the people of the land
Cried, "This is the harvest fair
After the years of drought.
And the rain of blood and tears.
No land so fruitful appears,
And her wheat shall know no tares! "
And her sisters pressed anear
And they kissed her on the mouth.
And the nation shouted and cried:
"Hail to the South in her glad new pride
Hail to the South!"
Smiled the Great Mother, and said,
"Peace. The old issues are dead.
And the wars are over and done.
In one sky glitter afar
Southern Cross— Northern Star.
70 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
We know from rise to set of sun
No North or South, no West or East,
No first or last, no best or least,
For the many in one are one."
"Come," Columbia said
To the nations of the earth,
"See what the rolling years
Have wrought in the land of my birth.
See what the brain has thought,
And the busy hand has wrought.
We have gathered from every side
All that we hold of worth;
Come ye, and see," Columbia cried
To the nations of the earth.
"Where the savage war-whoop rang,
And the red men hunted the deer.
The hammers of labor briskly clang
And the city's streets appear.
Man from Nature has won the land.
And held it this many a year.
Where art has pointed the way.
And industry wrought with the hand,
Come sit at the feast with me today
In the center of my land."
"Come," said the world of the West
To the great world of the East,
"Join hands across the sea
In token of amity.
'Ere the century is done
Let us sit down and feast;
In all lands shineth one sun.
And the world is one."
THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL INDIAN ASSOCIATION.
By MRS. AMELIA S. QUINTON.
The story of the Woman's National Indian Association is, like that of similar
movements, largely a personal story. The work had its rise in individual interest in
Indians, and this, communicated to and shared by
others, originated a philanthropy now of national pro-
portions. The motives were Christian, and the in-
spiration had its birth from the missionary spirit.
The history of the Association, therefore, as is natural,
is largely a history of missionary activity. Even the
first movement, though for five years wholly devoted
to gaining political rights for Indians, was as truly
from the missionary spirit as was afterward the plant-
ing missions in the tribes. In the present brief out-
line of the work reference must be made to the above
l^oints; to the condition of things among Indians at
tliat date — the spring of 1879 — the home circum-
stances of the people aided, their character as then
seen, the results of the labors of the Association, and
to the important work still remaining to be done.
And first a personal reference. A devoted Chris-
tian educator in Philadelphia became specially inter-
ested in the Indian race through references in the
daily press, related the facts observed therein to a
friend, and these two secured the interest of others;
an organization was proposed by the friend referred
to, and effected after two years of preparatory work which was planned, provided for,
and done chiefly by these two. It was seeing "the need" which moved the "com-
passion," and the kindred impulse to "go tell" naturally followed. Christians were
believed to be millennium bringers by the application of practical righteousness to
specific needs, and this "faith justified" itself by the events which were its sequel.
The appeal of the association for united effort to move our government to grant a
legal status to Indians, the protection of law, lands in severalty, and education;
appeal was made to the Christian press and ministry, to ecclesiastical bodies and to
patriots, and soon sixteen states were included in work to these ends. The first appeal
was for covenant-keeping with tribes to which .solemn pledges had been given, and
that no treaty should be abrogated or broken without the free consent of the Indian
tribe named in it. It was of this association's service that .Senator Dawes, chairman
of the Senate Indian Committee, said: "The new government Indian policy was born
of and nursed by this woman's association," and it was his own .Scveralt)- Bill which
became the law of the land in March, 1887, that granted to the Indians of the United
States the rights and privileges asked in the petitions of the association.
Mre. Amelia S. Quinton was bom near Syracnse, N. Y. Her i>arent« were Jacob Thompson Stone and Mary Bennett
Stone. She was educated in Homer, N. Y., under the tuition of Samuel B. Woolworth, L L.D. She has traveled in every
state and territory of the United States but three, and has made several trips to Europe. She is a woman of large experience
and much culture, and most gracious manners. She married Rev. James F. Swanson and resided in Georgia several years,
and after her widowhood married in London, England, Richard Quinton, A. M. Her special work has been for our North
American Indians, in whose interests she organized the Woman's National Indian Association, and has been its president for
the last six years. She has for many years prepared the literature of that Association and edited its paper. Mrs. Quinton is
a Christiau, and a member of the Baptist church. Her postotfice address is 1823 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
71
MRS. AMELIA S. QUINTON.
72 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
When it became evident that this great reform would be a success, the attention
of the association was given to missionary work, to home building, hospital, educational
and other work needed among the Indians on the reservations, and soon ten depart-
ments of practical work were shared by interested helpers in nearly all the states of
the Union, and with encouraging success. During the last nine years, since these lines
of effort were undertaken, the society has established directly or indirectly thirty-three
mission stations, transferring these to permanent missionary societies when well
established, giving with the mission its land, mission cottage, chapel, and all its prop-
erty and improvements. The association has given special education to bright
Indians, training them as physicians, nurses, teachers and missionaries to help and
lead their people. It has built houses by loans, placing thus about a hundred Indians
in civilized and Christian homes, and the loans are being honestly repaid. It has hos-
pital, library and industrial departments, and has built twelve missionary cottages,
chapels and schoolhouses. During its last year it expended $28,000 sending goods
to tribes in special need to the amount of $3,000.
A glance at the oppressions of Indians at the beginning of this work shows them
to have been practically without legal rights. They were subject to enforced removals
from their own land; they were constantly robbed by marauders' and ruffian frontiers-
men; they were under agents possessing despotic power, who could forbid trade among
them, could suspend their chiefs, and arrest or drive from the reservation any unwel-
come visitor. The Indians were not permitted to sell the natural products of the soil
even when in a starving condition. They might be banished to reservations where
farming was impossible though farming was required, and yet under such conditions
were sometimes deprived of arms and ammunition for hunting, their only source of
subsistence. Our nation practically prohibited all lines of work natural to the Indian,
and then falsified its promises to furnish him means for farming. Today, by the suc-
cess of the movement inaugurated under Divine Providence by the Women's National
Indian Association, the Indian is lifted out of his old helplessness into the status of a
man and citizen under law, is given the privilege of education, and his home and family
can now be protected from ruffians and criminals.
In the old days, as a rule, the Indian home was a tepee or tent, a wickyup, hogan,
bark campooda or dug-out, destitute of furniture and with no garden, field, meadow,
wells, improvements, or domestic animals. Today there are thousands of comfortable
homes, built of planks, logs, or better materials; many in different places are really
tasteful and complete homes, and these are now surrounded with gardens, fields,
orchards and other features of civilization, all constituting a wide beginningof the better
era which has really dawned for the Indian race. Nor is the change in Indian charac-
ter less marked. Under the old order of things the better human impulses were
hindered or throttled; manhood and womanhood were humiliated and degraded, and
many a character noble by nature, and many a mind finely endowed was stultified into
utter helplessness and inaction by tyrannous conditions and the inescapable bondage
of the reservation system, the sum of all oppression. Today the Indian, man or
woman, who is conscious of the possession of character, the impulse to action felt by
ability, the aspiration of power,physical or mental, has freedom to go where he will
and make his own life; while he who desires education, development, culture — and
there are not a few of these in the many tribes — can find his opportunity, his work,
and his reward. Indian women are at last free to express the best that is in them, to
embody in deeds the noblest instincts of maternity, and bravely to ask for their chil-
dren the protections and privileges which have so lately come to themselves.
The results of the great change for the race are surprising when one considers
the time involved. Gradually the way was preparing by Providence, and even under
the reservation-government civilized industry had a beginning; but the great facts of
progress are due to the changes of the last few years. One cannot but be surprised
that already more than twenty-four thousand families are engaged in agriculture;
that there is provision now made for three-quarters of the Indian children of school
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 73
age; that there are at least twenty-five thousand real Indian citizens of the United
States; that the seventy-one military posts formerly set to control them are reduced
to ten; and that of the two hundred and fifty thousand Indians of the country two
hundred thousand are already self-supporting. The efficiency and excellence of the
work done for and by the Indians in the schools has surprised the whole country, and
one need but look over the well certified reports of these schools to see that their
results compare well with those of schools for any race under like conditions. Those
who have visited the schools operating for one month each within these exposition
grounds need no added testimony to the natural ability of the Indian, or to his will-
ingness to work when the usual motives of civilization are permitted him. Did time
permit, many interesting illustrations might be given of the success of well-endowed
Indian young men and women who have in a few years obtained a good elementary
English education; of others who have graduated from colleges and institutions for
special professional education; of some who have been trained by our own associa-
tion as physicians and nurses, or been aided in the study of law, and even of art.
The first Indian woman physician was thus educated, and is now an honored gov-
ernment physician and Christian worker among her own people. The achievements
of some of these Indian patriots among their own people would read like epics could
they be written.
We can here cite but one case: One who followed the wild, free life of an Indian
boy — happil}' remote from vicious rough white borderers — till fourteen years of age,
when, hearing from beloved lips the story of the Christ, and being won, he followed
his Divine star to an Indian school one hundred and fifty miles distant; finished his
course there, entered and graduated from college, achieved a three years' medical
education, again graduated with honor, and to the persuasions of white fellow-stu-
dents to stay east and get rich he made answer: "Do you suppose that I have studied
here seven years to stay and make money? No. 1 go to help my people." And
back to barbarians, to isolation, to hardships, but to noble service, he returned, expos-
ing life again and again in the emergencies of his consecrated labor.
In the fifteen years given to work for this race, and in visits to tribes in every
state and territory of the Union but three, it has been my happy lot to meet not a few
men and women, sometimes in blanket, paint and feathers, who were jewel souls by
nature, richly worth the effort of any patriot to save and uplift them into noble man-
hood and womanhood; and some of these have by God's grace become jewels in
Christ's crown and consecrated workers in His kingdom. Some of them have heard
of Him for the first time in dying hours and have .said, "Now I am not afraid," and have
with the last breath asked the Divine light for their people. Reproaches that can
never be forgotten have fallen from some dying lips for a gospel withheld from be-
loved ones; from many tribes now come earnest pleadings for schools and for Chris-
tian teachers.
Amcng the many noble endeavors of today, what is nobler than redemptive work
among these native Americans, to whom we are under so great and so lasting obliga-
tion? There are still needed forty mission stations in order to bring the Divine light
to all these native tribes, and the presence and effort of a consecrated pair of friends
and helpers in each tribe would discover the jewels worth polishing; would detect
and go far to remedy wrongs among them; would foster all good impulses; would
evolve and strengthen manhood and womanhood, and would inspire toward industry,
patriotism and Christian living the worthy men and women of the tribe. With forty-
four states it should be easy to provide these needed missions; and, rich in mental,
moral and spiritual power, it should be easy for American Christian women to finish
the solution of the Indian question.
WOMAN'S SPHERE FROM A WOMAN'S STANDPOINT.
By MRS. LAURA DE FORCE GORDON.
One of the most noted features of the whole woman question is the zeal and
persistence with which men of all classes and conditions have from time immemorial
been defining and explaining woman's natural sphere.
Eloquent divines, grave jurists and profound states-
men have all added their quota to the ponderous
literature that has accumulated for ages, in which
woman's place in nature has been set forth i?i extenso
from a masculine standpoint. The fact that it has
been found necessary in each generation for the past
six thousand years, more or less, to repeat and reiter-
ate this definition of woman's sphere — her legitimate
sphere in life — is proof that woman is a most rebel-
lious subject, or that men have not yet reached a
point where they can successfully locate all women.
Those who are so much concerned about women
remaining in a certain sphere which they have been at
such pains to define, and so earnest in their appeals
and demands that she should accept, ought to learn
something from experience. It is becoming more
and more evident that women — most of them — are
not satisfied to remain in a state of innocuous desue-
tude, or to submissively follow indicated paths along
life's highways, for they are continually breaking
over the lines drawn by masculine authorities, and
are most unruly subjects. Today there are thousands of women everywhere in open
organized rebellion against the social and political despotism which denies woman
the right to choose her own vocation, or those who should rule over her. Woman is
no longer content to remain a subject. The spirit of "divine unrest" which enwraps
the century has her in its embrace.
This persistent effort by one-half the human race to mark out a line of thought,
a rule of action, or sphere of life for the other half, and seek to compel adhesion
thereto, is such a wanton disregard for the rights of man, so palpable a violation of
the inherent principles of justice from which the love of liberty is born, that nature
herself rebels against it, and everywhere we find evidences of her emphatic protests
by the placing of masculine brains — if power and capacity of intellect is to be the
criterion of sex — into feminine craniums.
The rational man evolved from savagery could not estimate worth save by use.
This environment made war a necessity, and prowess in arms was his whole standard
of merit or superiority. Hence woman, the mother of the race, the builder of the
home, was the conservator of peace, and perforce, was relegated to the position of an
Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon was bom in Erie County, Pa. Her parents were Abram de Force and Catherine
Doolittle Allen de Force, also of Pennsylvania. She was graduated in the public schools of Erie County, Pa., and Chau-
tauqua County, New York. She has traveled extensively in the United States, British Provinces and Mexico. She married
Capt. C. H. Gordon, of the 3d R. I. Cavalry, but has been a widow for seventeen years. Her special work has been in
advancing the interests of women. Her principal literary works are the "Great Geysers of California," a hand-book for
tourists, and the publication of a daily and weekly newspaper. Her profession is attorney at law. She has attained great
distinction, both in civil and criminal practice. She was officially engaged in the World's Columbian Exposition as a Juror
of Awards. Her postoffice address is Lodi, Cal.
74
MRS. LAURA DE FORCE GORDON.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 75
inferior; but with the advance of civilization, the diffusion of enlightenment, there is
no excuse for this relic of barbarism to exist. Starting in the iron age, with the
assumption that woman was an inferior, man has found it hard to acknowledge the
value of brain power, of intellectual capacity, of inventive genius and artistic skill,
unless coupled with brute or physical force. Having assigned woman an inferior
place in a lower civilization, all the training, instruction, discipline and education which
have since been accorded her have been carefully shaped and permeated by a spirit of
authority which would tend to keep her there.
AH through the ages there has been a system of repression, suppression and
oppression practiced toward women that is incomprehensible. Often the little girl, who
dares to express an opinion in opposition to her brother's view of some juvenile sport,
is met with the exasperating and insulting reminder of her inferiority, imperiously
expressed, "Well, you are a girl. What do you know about it?" Should a girl in
the youthful buoyancy of health, and full of latent life and energy, give expression
to her exuberant spirits by gymnastic exercises or athletic sports, she suffers a sort
of social outlawry, and is stigmatized as a "tomboy," a hoyden, a romp, etc. Even
in the family circle, if the conversation is turned upon educational or political topics,
in which the young maiden takes great delight, and she ventures a remark or asks a
question, she is politely, but none the less insultingly, assured, "Little girls are to be
seen and not heard." Under such adverse conditions have women been reared for
generations. The repression and suppression of all her natural aspirations toward a
healthy, intellectual womanhood have gone on and on, and when the woman ques-
tion is under discussion, we are gravely told that woman is by nature wholly unfitted
for, and incapable of occupying, a broader or more intellectual field of thought or
action. What an outrage to common sense.
Both law and gospel have combined against woman to render her position in life
unnatural and subservient. From her first hour of consciousness she has been cau-
tioned, repressed, and finally oppressed by invidious distinctions and unjust discrim-
inations against her. Up to within a few years colleges and universities have been
closed against her; society has sneered at learned women; and if one possessed of
inventive genius fashioned a new and useful device, even her nearest male relatives
and friends advised her to patent it in the name of some man, as it would not be com-
patible with womanly modesty to attain such notoriety as a patent to herself would
bring.
Think of the opposition to women entering the ministry and the medical profes-
sion, two vocations that one would think the whole world would accord her the right to
enter, and hail with delight her administrations in such Divine work. Instead, how-
ever, of encouragement, the pioneers in these fields of labor have had to struggle
against fearful odds, meeting insult, derision and always the sneers and ridicule of
tyrannical public opinion.
In my chosen profession of the law, the statutes of California, as in most states at
that time (fifteen years ago), denied women the right of admission to the bar; and
after a long and wearying contest with determined and able opponents, we secured an
amendment removing the unjust discrimination. The Hastings College of Law, the
Law Department of the State University, etc., closed their doors in our faces because
we were women. Again, after a long and expensive legal contest, another victory was
won for the women of California. But this experience only accentuates the fact that
women everywhere have most unequal and disadvantageous opportunities in any
given direction.
But some will say, "Those women who have distinguished themselves, who have
evidenced great mental capacity, are exceptional cases." We might reply: The
number of men who have become noted for their brilliant intellectual attainments are
but a fraction compared with the whole number of men in the world. But what a con-
trast between the educational facilities and other advantages accorded to men and those
that are extended (permitted would better express it) to women. The boy is taught
76 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
that all life can yield is his; that he must aim high; must aspire to greatness. He has
the fond encouragement of his parents, friends and society, and the whole world
approves his efforts and applauds his success. But the girl — alas! the case is far
different.
I have only touched upon some of the innumerable discouragements that the
ambitious girl, striving to cultivate and develop the mental or intellectual force with
which God has endowed her, has always had to contend; but what chapters, aye, vol-
umes, could be written of the wasted lives, disappointed hopes and blighted
ambitions that have fallen to the lot of women through all time. Some may say,
"Such has been the sad experience of men also." Yes; but men have failed or fallen
in spite of all the encouragement, all the privileges, all the superior advantages and
all the aids to success which have been so cordially extended to him, while woman
has faltered and failed because of discouragements. If she has succeeded at all in
accomplishing anything outside the nursery, the kitchen or church work, it has been
as a warrior battling for his rights against fearful odds. Constantly assured that she
has not the natural ability or capacity to compete with man in the learned pro-
fessions or in scholastic attainments; that she is by the designs of the Almighty
wholly unfitted for any work or mission that requires more than the veriest modicum
of common sense, and that even to aspire to anything more is to fly in the face of
Divinity, as was once said of the invention of the lightning-rod.
The conservative, repressive training of the home has been supplemented and
emphasized by the religious teachings of the church. In law she has always been a
ward, first of her father, and second and always of her husband. Occupying an
inferior place in her family, what wonder that her children have grown up with an
idea of woman's weakness. Theology has held her morally responsible for sin in the
world, and its partner in authority, the law, has decreed that she should not be
trusted to manage her own interests financially, and denied her the right to the cus-
tody of her own offspring. Such has been the condition of woman for thousands of
years, in the sphere which law and gospel, state and church have assigned to her.
But a new era has dawned. She has discovered for herself (what man did long ago)
that she has a mind of her own, and that such mind, or brain through which it works,
is just as capable of expansion, cultivation and development to the highest degree of
intellectual power as if it were perched upon masculine shoulders. She has learned
that maternity is something more than a mere physical function, and that motherhood
implies responsibilities and duties that only the most intelligent can faithfully per-
form, and to have good mothers there must first be wise women. She begins to realize
that men who have constituted themselves her protectors, and claim to have legislated
in her behalf and the best interests of her children, are not to be unquestionably relied
on, and that it is just as well to investigate such claims and look after the interest of
her offspring herself. She entertains some doubts about this government deriving its
power from the consent of the governed. The woman of today has become a discov-
erer! The great Christopher, whom we are all honoring above all men, discovered a
new world in the fifteenth century, but behold, a greater than Columbus is here. The
woman of the nineteenth century has discovered herself. She has discovered that
she has a distinct objective existence. This magnificent building, planned by women,
designed by a woman, filled to repletion with woman's handiwork and brain work
along all lines of human activity, from the primeval domestic wares of the stone age
to that beautiful picture (in the exhibit of Spain) of the first woman lawyer admitted
to practice that learned profession in her royal kingdom; all these, and the magnifi-
cent work done, and active participation of women in all the wondrous exhibits of this
beautiful " White City," demonstrate the fact that henceforth and forever "woman's
sphere " in life will be defined and determined by herself alone. Her place in nature,
no longer fixed by masculine dogmatism, shall be as broad and multifarious in scope
as God shall decree her capacity and ability to accomplish.
A TALK.
By MISS KATE FIELD.
Mrs. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Some weeks ago I received a communi-
cation from the Board of Lady Managers. I have a great respect for the American
eagle, particularly when it screams for my sex in the
gracious person of Mrs. Eagle, the Governor of Arkan-
sas, or at least the wife of the Governor. When Mrs.
Eagle asked me to appear at some future time in the
Woman's Building I replied that if I were in Chicago
I should be happy to comply with her request. At
the same time, when asked to give the subject of my
address, I replied that that would be impossible, and
that calling it an address was quite contrary to my
desire, as I should depend entirely on inspiration. It
is really too hard work to sit down and write a paper.
In fact, I think that too many people are now being
read to instead of being talked at. The little I have
to say is said on the spur of the moment, and if you
don't get your money's worth you must remember
that I never promised anything.
What am I here for? I came first to deliver a
talk before the Press Congress. It so happened that
at this talk last Friday night an interesting incident
occurred which if it had been planned could not have
been better done, as far as dramatic effect is con-
cerned. I heard Miss Anthony was in the audience,
and asking her to come to the platform gave in my adhesion to woman's suffrage.
She has labored long for her cause, which is now beginning to be recognized. I said
that I never believed in woman's suffrage. I never opposed it, but occupied neutral
ground, because I did not believe in universal suffrage. That is highly unpopular, I
expect; but I do not believe in it, and as this country is free, I suppose I am entitled
to my opinion, however unpopular it may be. Not believing in universal suffrage for
men I certainly do not for women. But I have always advocated, and always shall
advocate, although I never expect to get it, a restricted suffrage founded on education
and character regardless of sex. That is what we can not get; and why? Because of
the politicians. It doesn't make the slightest difference which party it is — one is as
good and one is as bad as the other.
Only a few days ago I read what a Republican convention did in Louisville.
They said that the Republican party needed new blood, and with that I surely agree.
Much more important was the proposed revision of the naturalization laws. As we
are on this subject of immigration I want to state that if we leave the doors open in
the East then we should leave them open in the West; and I don't believe in either.
The other day in California I was called upon to address a large assembly made up of
Miss Kale Field is a native of the United States. She was born in St. Loois, Mo. Her parents were Eliza Riddle
and Joseph M. Field. As editor of Kate Field's Washinoton, published in Washington, D. C., she has made a repata-
tion for great brilliancy and execntive ability. Miss Field addressed one of the largest audiences that as8einble<l at the
Woman's Building Congresses. Her speech, however, was wholly impromptu, and it is regretted that Miaa Field— having
filled many similar engagements during the Colombian Exposition— was unable to fnrnisli even a brief synopsis for this
pablication, hence the newspaper report of the address is given. Miss Field's jiostoffice address is Washington, D. C.
77
MISS KATE FIELD.
78 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the middle class — made up of neither rich nor poor. This audience was made up
of the better middle class. I said I failed to see the virtue of opening our arms
to the scum of Europe and of closing them to the Chinese, who never get drunk,
who do their work and don't vote, and ask nothing in return except to live. The
audience was so enthusiastic that I thought it would tear the benches up. This
most infamous Geary Bill, opposed to every principle of liberty, was the work of
politicians.
One of the congressmen who had supported this bill in Washington asked me
what I thought of his speech. I said to him: " Do you want to come back to Con-
gress?" He said: "No." "Very well," I said, "why don't you tell the truth, for
you know that it is a lie." He said: " I don't want to come back, but I want to have
the pleasure of refusing the renomination." So in order to get a possible renomination
he lied about the whole Chinese race. I do not expect any applause for what I am
saying — [applause] — I dare say Californians here do not agree with me, but if they
are women they feel as I do, because they know that without the Chinese servants
they will have to do their own work.
But to return to Louisville. I said that the only new departure the Republican
party advocated was woman's suffrage. Seeing it is utterly impossible to get a
restricted suffrage I said to Miss Anthony last Friday night that from this time forth
I should advocate woman's suffrage, because I was tired of being classed with crim-
inals, idiots and children, and I did not want politicians to make the laws for me if I
could help it. So Miss Anthony came upon the platform and accepted me into the
fold.
What am I here for today? I am here not to celebrate myself, but to celebrate
the World's Fair. Do you know what this means? It means the dawn of a new
era for woman. For the first time in the history of the world women have been
officially recognized in a world's exposition. You have this wonderful Woman's Build-
ing, designed by a woman, managed by women, and filled with the work of women;
and if you don't take your new departure from 1893, women of America, it is your own
fault. You have the chance and you should take advantage of it.
I am here today to endeavor, if possible, to get from this audience expressions of
opinion as to the best way to make the World's Fair popular. I am not only an
editor of a national review, but I am here as a contributor to one of the leading papers
of Chicago. I want to be a friendly critic. I think I fully appreciate the greatness
of this Exposition, The idea of criticism of many Eastern writers is the noble art of
finding fault. It is not noble; it is ignoble. What I want to do with this fair is to
popularize it. Now the question arises: " How shall we do this? " If there are per-
sons in this audience who have an idea of what they think would be an advantage to
the World's Fair I wish they would get up and speak to me about it. I hear that Dr.
Swing is present. Is he here? Evidently not; and I am afraid that not one of you
has courage enough to speak. I will tell you what I think.
But just here a woman's voice piped up from a front seat:
" It the railroads would reduce the fare I know hundreds ot people who would be
here."
Miss Field repeated her remark for the benefit of the audience, and then a
Wyoming woman made a remark about the cost of living, on which Miss Field com-
mented:
A lady from the splendid State of Wyoming says that a great many people have
staid away because of the increase of prices in board and lodging; that rooms which
have been renting for ^15 to ;^20 a month now rent for 1^65 and $70, and even $100 a
month. That is too great a profit. I don't think it is fair. We all know that the com-
mercial system of today is quick returns and small profits. We should impress upon
those charging too much that it would be a great deal better if we had a great many
people here and not so much profit on a few. Is there anything else?
A lady from Logansport, Ind. — Keep the fair closed on Sunday.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 79
Ladies and gentlemen, it is but right that I should be the mouthpiece of the lady
from Indiana, but I thoroughly oppose the closing of the fair Sunday.
A lady from Milwaukee — Keep the fair open Sunday.
I do not believe m closing the fair. I think it is a retrograde movement. I
came out last Sunday and worshiped here all day, and the sermon I listened to with
all my eyes was such a sermon as has not been preached to me out of the Bible in all
my life. I looked around and saw well-dressed people conducting themselves in a
well-dressed way, and I remembered how many of those people the Sunday before
had clamored at the gates and had not been permitted to come in. I also know,
what perhaps you may not, where a good many of those same people went afterward.
It was not to church. Therefore, as a moral movement, I say that to close the fair
Sunday would be most retrograde, and with all my heart, and with all my head, and
with all my soul I am going to do everything in my power to keep this fair open
Sunday.
It is a matter that does not concern the United States Government. It has no
right to dictate on a matter of local right, and I think it will be beaten. Jackson Park
belongs to the people, and the people gave the park to the Exposition on the condi-
tion that it should be open every day in the week. If vox popiUi is vox dei, and I
fully believe it is, the World's Fair will be open on Sunday from now on until the
end of the fair itself.
I think the railroads should reduce their rates. But they have a good argument
on their side. They say: "Why should we always be expected to bring down the
prices when the hotels are continually raising them?" But there is no use arguing with
the public, and it will be money in the pockets of the railroads if transportation is
reduced, and we must have it reduced. If everyone of you who knows a railroad
man will go to him and buttonhole him and talk to him like a father, I think we
can get it. Everyone of us should go out and make everybody else come to the
fair, and make everyone a committee of one to advertise the greatest show on earth.
WOMAN, THE NEW FACTOR IN ECONOMICS.
By REV. AUGUSTA COOPER BRISTOL.
When a speaker or writer is assigned a theme for elucidation, it is important at
the outset to have a clear understanding of the terms of that theme. " He shall be as
a god to me who can rightly divide and define," said
Plato, and as the world gets older it subscribes more
and more to Plato.
A definition of the terms of my subject, as pre-
sented in dictionary and encyclopedia, arrays it as a
paradox; establishes woman as the oldest, as well as
the newest, factor in economics; the earliest and the
latest, according to the area to which the term eco-
nomics is applied. It is important to note all that
this fact involves. We find that economics in its
primary application signified the science of house-
hold affairs; the adjustment of domestic expenditures
to the income. We may rationally conclude that in
early phases of society the responsibility of the then
l^^^S^^^B^KBBt} ' narrow domain of economics fell chiefly upon women,
' ^^^^H^Wf* f since we find that fact illustrated at the present day
among races that have not yet risen out of primitive
phases of society. A recent writer upon the customs
of Central Africa states that the work in an African
village is performed chiefly by the women; that they
sow the seed, hoe the fields and reap the harvest.
Upon them also falls the labor of house-building,
brewing beer, grinding corn and looking after nearly all the material interests of the
community.
It is from this, primitive social aspect that we find woman to be the principal factor
in economics, the initiator at least of the whole system which follows, whether its area
be the family, the community, or the nation. For, although political economy, as
defined, " is a science of the laws which Providence has established for the regulation
of supply and demand in a community," yet the same authority affirms "that the dis-
position to regulate the expenditures of a family to its income is one of the phenomena
which make up those laws of nature constituting political economy." From this point
of view woman is the original factor in all systems of economics; the demure goddess
at the fountain head, directing the quantity and the quality of the waters which flow
therefrom.
As an organic body obtains vital force by virtue of the cells which compose it,
and as the family is the cell of the social organism, so domestic economy is the original
unfolding principle of all larger economics. I am desirous that this fact should
become established in the consciousness of woman; here, now, and ever more, that
she may have a just estimate of her place and power in the evolutionary scheme of
life when it reached the point of the social beginnings of the race; that she may per-
Rev. Augusta Cooper Bristol is a native of New Hampshire. She was born April 17, 1835. Her parents were Otis
Cooper and Hannah (Powers) Cooper. In 1866 she married Louis Bristol, a lawyer of Connecticut. She is a woman of big
brain, well stored with valuable information, and one of the most graceful and profound writers and speakers of the present
day. Her principal literary works are a volume of poems and various published lectures, some of which have been translated
into French. She is a member of no special church at present, but in faith is Unitarian, and not infrequently speaks from,
the pulpit. Her postoffice address is Yineland, N. Y.
80
REV. AUGUSTA COOPER BRISTOL.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 81
ceivc' that it is neither from the present nor the future that she receives or will receive
her credentials as an economic factor, but from the primal condition of society itself,
being the original necessity of that vast scheme of economics which introduces and
links the nations to each other, and of which man alone has hitherto been the recog-
nized exponent and director. Although man has cast a blind eye upon this truth, yet,
if woman perceives it clearly, she can well afford to smile serenely on his self-gratula-
tion as umpire of economics. F"or the woman soul, in the discovery and realization
of its high assignment in the scheme of things, will find that power of equanimity,
which sooner or later converts all obstacles into auxiliaries, all hmdrances into means
of advance. This internal ascension of the spirit into an imperturbable equanimity is
our great need as women, if we would make all external advantage more surely and
successfully our own. Abolish within all sense of bondage, and advancing on the
wings of freedom, believe and take the whole arena of affairs as our native domain.
Emancipate the thoughts from the ever-cramping sense of personal wrong and inter-
national disadvantage, and a miracle. follows. The spirit at once assumes its proper
majesty and gathers up the reins of directing power. A few individual examples
among women illustrate my statement, and we call them the world's representative
women. Their persevering and telling efforts for woman's emancipation is not from
the standpoint of woman as woman, but from the standpoint of the social unity and
solidarity of the race, the proper balance of the social organism. Woman has been
and will forever be a hero worshiper; but the hero enlarges. It is neither man nor
woman, but humanity. She labors for justice for woman as a means to an end, and
that end, the adjustment of civilization to the perfecting organic principle which
Spencer styles "a moving equilibrium."
The women invested with largest power to bring about this .state of social equity
are women who, in their own spiritual forces, have attained this condition of a " moving
equilibrium." There is perhaps no vantage-ground that will so surely bring the rank
and file of women into this condition of spiritual balance and power as a realization of
the magnitude of woman's relation to the entire scheme of economics.
The lad who believed himself to be the child of a peasant, expressed in his person-
ality and bearing only the common manners and nature of the peasant life, but hear-
ing one day from a stranger that he was the child of a king, he was transformed by
his consciousness of the fact from the peasant weakling to the dignity and power of
his true relation.
Woman, then, being the oldest factor in economics, under what aspect shall we
now regard her as the new factor? Looking at her economic relationships today, and
comparing them with those of the past, the contrast is as marked as that of day with
night. It is the recognition of this contrast that fixes her as the new factor in eco-
nomics. The light of morning is new to one who wakens, but the same light has been
on its way through the darkness, and it is old with travel. What engineering ever laid
out the line where darkness terminated and dawn began? So with woman's industrial
advance. She attains new areas, but the attaining is old with unflinching continuity
and struggle. When the face of Ramona appeared to Father Salvierderra through the
tangled thicket of old mustard, the vision was new. But long before its appearance
there had been perceptible tumult in the fragrant thicket, a bending and weaving and
tossing of branches, some persistent agile force pressing its way through the interlaced
foliage that seemed to defy advance. The vision was new, but Ramona had been
coming long before, and as she disentangled the network around her, sung her canticle
to the sun.
The new economic area to which woman has attained during the latter half of the
nineteenth century is that of the creation of wealth. Her economic responsibilities
are no longer limited to the application and distribution of supplies. She is a wealth-
producer in the broadest meaning of the term; not indirectly, but directly, and this
constitutes her a new element in industrial development. What is it to be a creator
of wealth? What is wealth? No one has given us a better definition than Henry
(6)
82 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
George. "Wealth," he says, "consists of natural products modified by human exertion
so as to gratify human desires. It is labor impressed upon matter in such a way as
to store it up. When a country increases in wealth, it increases in certain tangible
things, such as agricultural and mineral products, manufactured goods of all kinds,
houses, cattle, ships, wagons, furniture, etc." Into this spacious wealth-producing
domain, the autonomy of which determines a nation's place among nations, woman
has found entrance as an active agent among its complex forces.
Still further is she completing Henry George's definition of wealth when he adds:
" Nor should it be forgotten that the artist, the teacher, the poet, the priest, the phil-
osopher, though not engaged in the production of wealth, are not only engaged in the
production of utilities and satisfactions to which the production of wealth is but a
means, but by acquiring and diffusing knowledge, stimulating the mental powers and
elevating the moral sense, are largely increasing the ability to produce wealth. ' For
man does not live by bread alone.' " Into this higher atmosphere of wealth produc-
tion, where professions are ranked and ideas generate, woman has seemingly com-
pelled her own ascent; for whenever and wherever we lift our eyes to these intellect-
ual ramparts she passes before our vision, she is there also. I state this advisedly,
for I am informed from a variety of sources that the number of occupations and pro-
fessions now open to woman are from four to five hundred, and one authority informs
me that all callings of whatever nature are now open to woman if she have the
courage to enter them. For myself, I am somewhat apprehensive of the full signifi-
cance of the word " courage " in that statement. If a general should say to his soldiers,
" My boys, the enemy's entrenchments are ours if you have the courage to take them,"
he would not mean that the entrenchments were thrown open for possession. So far
as woman has hitherto made headway into the promised land, she has cast up this
highway of courage every inch of the route. So I dare not claim new comfort from
this authority, certainly not sufficient to justify us in casting aside our armor or stack-
ing our arms. The hopefulness of the outlook lies in the fact that the area yet to con-
quer narrows; the line of struggle shortens; the entrenchments of opponents weaken
and diminish, and this is due not simply to our persistent courage as women, not to
our tireless importunities, but to very many causes inherent in the nature of modern
civilization of which our courage and importunity are effects, which in turn become
causes.
Society being an organism, it experiences all the expansions and transformations
of any nucleated cell or egg. There is a time in the history of an egg when the lim-
itations of the shell are a protection to the homogeneous, inchoate substance within.
But differentiations being once set up in this life substance, functions being special-
ized and the whole individualized, that which was protection becomes imprisonment.
The organism wrenches and struggles, the walls yield, and the organism steps forth
into the light and responsibility of freedom. If the beak of the hatched eagle could
speak for itself, it would surely claim that the weakening of its prison walls was due
to its own persistent knocking and battering, and the wing and the talon would put
in a similar claim of merit for themselves. But it was the increasing perplexity of the
whole organism, the one differentiating life within that compelled the beak to knock,
the talon to scratch, and the wing to push and struggle.
There is a seed in Southern California, I think it is a variety of clover, that if it had
consciousness would surely believe that it planted itself. It lies upon the surface of
the packed soil during the dry season, but when the rains of winter come it takes a
notion to bore a little depression in the softened earth and put forth roots. " Behold
my efficiency," it might well say. " But mine made yours available," a week's rain
might reply; but the incubating genius of life, brooding over mountain and canon and
mesa, could say: " I am the awakener and supply of all your forces." A like inde-
pendence of progressive forces permeates the entire structure of modern society. Sim-
ultaneous transformations, seemingly foreign to each other, are transfusing the body
politic, the genius of evolution burning at its center having the providence to initiate
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 83
all normal expansion in radii, thus preserving the equilibrium of growth. Impartially-
breathing her quickenings throughout the entire structure, she thereby secures balance
with movement, and links order to progress. A very long-headed adviser does this
genius of evolution prove herself to be, in that she puts in the heart of each separate
reform a feeling that the welfare of society depends almost wholly on its own special
success. It is this feeling which secures the most remarkable concentration of effort,
and leads each separate reform to battle victoriously with the obstacles of progress.
In the vantage-ground of industrial emancipation which woman has already attained,
I would in no wise divest her of the feeling of the super-importance of the woman
cause; for I believe Spencer affirms that it is feeling and not opinion that moves the
world; but I seek rather to establish scientifically and philosophically in woman's
understanding the fact that her special movement has the backing of the universal
movement; that the Divine mania which has taken possession of her for self-culture,
full responsibility and complete freedom holds even cosmic relations. Most truly
says Heine : "We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them.
They master us and force us into the arena, where, like gladiators, we must fight for
them." Woman will not abate, but give larger possession to the ideas which compel
her to do battle for them when she understands that they emanate, not from woman
in the interest of woman, but from the one life in the interest of life.
This is the true basis of our faith, the genuine substance of things hoped for.
The credentials which insure woman's emancipation from every phase of thralldom
are from universal belongings, not dependent upon chance or fortune, social fad or
political caprice. " Attractions are proportioned to destinies." The line of attraction
or movement is forward and upward, and the future destiny of woman is above, not
-below, the present outlook. The urgent fire in the woman's soul forever impelling her
to larger venture and enterprise, that leads a Mrs. Sheldon into the wilds of Africa, is
the Pentecostal flame of this same destiny. When we stand on this true mount of
vision, there is no room for uncertainty to put in an appearance. Indeed, uncertainty
in regard to woman's emancipation is getting pass^ even with our opponents, and
must ere long vanish in thin air.
It is well to remember the inter-relation of the entire output of social reforms,
and the fact that the success of each and all of them depends upon this inter-relation.
It is not difficult to perceive that the woman cause and temperance reform are allies.
It requires closer scrutiny to perceive its relation to tariff, tax and ballet reform, to
government ownership of railways, and a financial system less subject to individual
and class manipulation. Nevertheless the fact is there, for woman being a recognized
factor in the production of a nation's wealth, every reform that effects the produc-
tion and distribution of that wealth touches the woman cause; for upon woman
as a free economic factor hang all the law and the prophets of her complete emanci-
pation. After this manner and direction has been the movement of freedom for any
class or people from the beginning. The inter-relation of all economic forces always
reveals itself along the lines of justice and injustice. Xake for example the unequal
wage. It is pre-eminently a matter of equity that woman receive equal compensation
with man for like quantity and quality of work. When this is withheld, the standard
of wages which working men combine to maintain in their own interest invariably
lowers. There is no real security for man's good fortune except through equity to
woman. The want of this has been the bete noire of all his woes. Note the
social scourges that follow in the train of the unequal wage. How it bears direct
relation to the dark problem of poverty! How this darkness widens and merges into
the sloughs and slums of immorality! How it broadens the margin of unemployed
men, who constitute the industrial reserve which enables capital from time to time to
dictate its own terms to labor! How it compels the latter, on the matter of wages,
to often array itself against its own kith and kin and do battle for its enemies! How
it necessitates, in the name of sympathy and pity, the effort and expense of organized
charities to eke out the earnings which are either not sufficient for maintenance, or
not sufficient to meet the exigencies of misfortune!
84 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Surely a knowledge of the one fact, that the average yearly income of the work-
ing woman of Boston exceeds her expenses for positive needs only about eight dollars,
might well fill the consciousness of any woman who is tolerably bright and appre-
hensive with a sense of impending doom. Yet this is but one illustration of the evils
which follow in a special line of injustice, afflicting the wrong-doer even more than
the wronged; and were we to follow out all the iniquities in which woman has been
involved, we would surely find a point in all these entanglements where the same dis-
astrous lesson and result is revealed for man. "Every benefactor," says Emerson,
"becomes a malefactor by continuation of his activity in places where it is not due."
From the hour in which woman was sufficiently awakened, through intellectual quick-
ening, to deliberately and voluntarily board the car of progress, every obstacle that
man puts in the way of her advance reveals him as a malefactor, a train-wrecker, and
all the constabulary of the universe are after him. A benefactor he might have been
before the moment arrived for her decisive journey; but from that moment he becomes
a malefactor if he does not leave the track clear, and the law of equilibrium or equity
deals out punishment to him proportioned to his crime. Yet what better evidence
could there be of a concession and recognition on the part of man, which must ulti-
mate in the fulfillment of our largest hope, than the place so cordially assigned to
woman in this Columbian Exposition by the powers that be? It is no less than a
world-wide announcement of her coming on, verified in every form of art and indus-
try. For the first time in the history of the race the governmental powers have
fashioned an auditorium where a world gives hearing to woman, and through her own
powers of creation and invention she speaks the same language as man, varying only
in a tone and modulation which beautifully and forever enhances the distinctive
attributes of sex.
No niggardly dole is this to us, but the grandest privilege of all history, dating in
myriad forms of art, literature and invention the fullness of time for woman's eco-
nomic debut; and permit me to direct your attention to the wonderful significance of
this sentence, " the fullness of time." There is no sentence in all Scripture so plenary
with philosophic meaning as this. It solves for us the vexing problem of pro-
crastination and delay which has seemingly attended woman's advancement. If hope
deferred has heretofore made the heart sick, this sentence should from henceforth
preserve us from all such abnormal lapses; for we must learn and remember that
nature or evolution delights in appropriateness, and will have all things in keeping.
She will not vary one hair's breadth from this principle, though humanity, wild with
desire, frantic with importunity, should go down on its knees to her. As a woman of
great taste will seek to have the details of her costume express an equalness of grade
and quality, which secures harmony, so Nature, with faultless and exquisite judgment,
arranges in like manner her evolutionary series through all the realms of matter and
mind, proceeding always from the simple to the complex, from sameness to vari-
ety, from the coarse to the fine, from the crude to the finished; and though an eon
should be necessary to eacl\ grade in the series, yet shall the detail of each grade be
held in perfect relation and keeping; for Nature is congruous whatever else she may
be. There is due preparation for the advent of her successive creations or becomings,
each of which waits on her fullness of time, and the longer the precedence of prepa-
ration, the higher the outcome ranks in the scale of her series.
Who can guess how long the vegetable life waited on the trouble of chaos and the
perturbations of protoplaspi before cosmic propriety permitted the first lichen to
drape the earth's nudity? How long did the vegetable kingdom creepingly unfold as
the expression of organized life before the animal creation put in an appearance and
accepted all that had preceded it as a gratuitous offering to the animal economy?
How long before man capped the climax of the vertebrate series in mathematical con-
currence with the fullness of time and announced himself as monarch of all he sur-
veyed? If he had tolerably good sense at the date of his appearance on this
planet, he must have congratulated himself on the minutiae and perfecting of
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 85
detail which delayed his coming. It is ever the last result which utilizes and
epitomizes preceding effects. The richer the macrocosm the grander the microcosm.
Man found himself invested with aptitudes and characteristics in perfect keeping with
his habitat. Convulsive throes of Nature, gigantic powers of vegetation, hugeness and
antagonism in the brute creation, heralded and attended Man the militant, Man the
conqueror; and these in turn gave place to more intricate expressions of Nature, as
Man the subjugator became Man the social being. Wonderful utilities did he wrest
from the close clutches of Nature by strength of muscle and mind, and he named the
ages after them, as he builded communities, kingdoms and nations along his militant
path; and he said, "the stone age served me here and iron there, yet surely some
individuality other than my own must sooner or later co-operate with me in the
economy of things, or Man will become an incongruity, an anachronism, not able to
keep pace with the increasing complexity of society and its moral needs.
All things herald finer citizenship. "My good sword rusts in its scabbard for lack
of use, for the press age has transferred the arena of battle to the realm of ideas. The
good fellowship also of the steam age, introduced by the genius of commerce, renders
it no longer appropriate for the spirit of forceful antagonism to dominate the nations."
Man, urged on by the " power that makes for righteousness," advanced into the
tangle of civilization, like Father Salvierderra into the wild mustard maize. But
Ramona was not there. Not yet the fullness of time. And had he dreamed that far
away in the distance she was patiently parting the thicket that she might join him in
the advance, he would surely have cried " halt!"
A new age, shod with lightning, has overtaken man's bewilderment. Its incan-
descent fire reveals the occult forces of nature, the eluding principle of things, and the
material reservoirs of power. And, lo! Ramona is here, standing clear in the white
light of the electric age, as the new factor in economics. The magnitude of the prep-
aration has been fully proportioned to the ripe event. For woman, the magic of
events has transformed obstacle and hindrance into those necessary equipments of
character which belong not to partial but complete citizenship. What does this
equipment for complete citizenship indicate? It is no superfluous trick of evolution,
mark my words. Desired or dreaded, woman is proceeding straight to the inevitable
goal of largest social and political equality. We might as well endeavor to avert the
fact that we were born as this fact. We are under equal necessity to resignedly
utilize the one as the other of these facts. Industrial emancipation broadens by an
inevitable law into social and political equality, and as the combined forces of the
stone, iron, press and steam ages were engaged in shaping and molding civilization
into fitness for woman's economic co-operation, so, far back in the mist of ages, the
genius of religion and government began the preparatory work of her final debut as
the full complement of man.
Old Thor strove with giants until, in the twilight of the gods, his hammer returned
to him to be hurled no more. Jupiter, the weather-clearer, moved heaven and earth,
swayed the tides of battle, and fostered in the hearts of men the ideas of law, justice
and order, until he, too, sat frozen on his Olympian throne. Hermes, as he crossed
the horizon of man's superstitious belief, scattered science and music in his flight, and
passed to the paradise of the Egyptian gods. Brahma existed to abolish desire and
initiate the human soul into the salvation of continued patience. Buddha, through
contemplation and suffering, conquered the secret of deliverance for the human spirit
as his bequest to the race. Confucius came, bearing reverently his system of moral
philosophy, and dropped it into the world's ethical caldron; and, later, the carpenter's
Son, poor, unlettered, filial, yet transcending at need all ills of earth and flesh, all
schools, all human institutions — Jesus — stood upon the Mount of Olives and gave
briefly to the world the full redeeming utterance of love, revealing the way, the truth,
and the life, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of the race.
Note the long process of ethical and religious culture filtering and refining through
all the ages up to this present date of the Columbian Exposition; and, in the name of
86 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the universal law of correspondence, mark the prestige it lends to woman, the new
factor in economics, and the warranty it establishes for her final emancipation into all
the efificiences and prerogatives of free citizenship. When that fruition arrives, when
man and woman — the dual unity of the race — are equal partners in directing the
forces of social destiny, we might almost imagine and believe that the material king-
dom also may become transformed into joyous correspondence with the loving equity
of the human world; that the serpent's venom and the insect's sting, the earthquake's
mumbling threat and the direful sweep of the tornado's wing, will no longer find place
in nature's record. Note also, that, parallel with the transformations in religious and
ethical ideas which antedated woman's economic debut, have been the change in
forms of government and social institutious. A beast of prey the primitive man rose
to nomadic forms of culture, patriarchs gave place to kings and emperors, these in
turn to constitutional monarchy, and this slowly to the democratic idea and the rights
of man. The bloody track of governmental evolution, conspicuous with the panoply
of war, was built upon fallen thrones and devastated dynasties, the sentiment of
patriotism broadening, in the red struggle, from the family to the nation.
And woman — waited! Not yet the fullness of time for her awakening to the
world's need of her citizenship. Something more of brute crudity must be eliminated
from the tumultuous forces of civilization. Some broader conception of human life
and its universal relations must modify the world's ferment ere woman would arise
from her world-old, hypnotic trance to a realizing sense of her individual ability and
power, and the need of her taking an equal hand with man in working out a universal
order. The ages had thundered from the date of chaos, and she had not awakened.
But there came a noiseless, white-winged thought into the human atmosphere, and
woman arose and stood upon her feet, and knew herself, and the world's need, and
this was the white-winged thought: "There is but one life and humanity is its spiritual
image."
As the genius of the springtide sets all the forces of nature in sweetest passion for
expression, so does this thought quicken the hearts of men and women into a mania to
make the material interests of the entire humanity correspond to this spiritual fact. To
a no less work than this is woman called and awakened: to convert discord into harmony,
rivalry into emulation, jealousy into magnanimity, competition into co-operation, pov-
erty into comfort, and the love of money into the love of man. Need I say that such a
transformation^of the motives of human action — slow, silent, invisible — must sooner or
later work out a system of society and government in which each shall stand for all and
all for each. It is but a question of time. The century plant that waits a hundred
years for its life's fulfillment is no less certain of its final glory than the convolvulus
that greets the dawn with expanded petals.
There is no uncertainty in the eternal goodness, and the inevitable advance of
woman into all the lines of free citizenship is but a part of "that Divineevent to which '
a whole creation moves."
ART.
By MRS. EMILY CRAWFORD.
The subject is rather a comprehensive one, as the Arts when allied to the Sciences
are the most important factors in our modern lives. Whether we eat or drink, rush
about the world in luxurious trains or mammoth
steamers, or lounge at home in beautiful rooms, resting
our weary bodies on exquisitely fashioned and com-
fortably cushioned seats, recreating our tired minds
with the work of others' brains, the too often abused
"fiction," the Arts everywhere encompass us with a
cloud of beauty and comfort, which has become so
much our natural atmosphere that we fail to notice it,
accepting it as the usual thing, until a day comes
when we find ourselves in wilder and more uncivilized
regions, where nature only provides the art material.
Then we speedily and very gratefully recognize how
artificial or made up of arts our own habits of exist-
ence are. The Sciences provide us with a solid frame-
work, and the Arts clothe and embellish that basis,
for our use and enjoyment. The higher arts, or high
art, as it is more popularly called, meaning painting,
sculpture and literature (it is still a disputed point
:;i«^Pf': whether architecture should be called an art or a sci-
ence); high art may be defined as the expression of
MRS. EMILY CRAWFORD. ^"X ^^^^ o^ cmotlon, thc arrcsting of it as it first pro-
ceeds from the mind, the giving to it a more solid
and durable form, a sort of body, in which it can be shown to others and started on
its career in the world. A single noble idea from one noble mind so fitted out can
go on and onward, illuminating and firing other minds in its course, leaving its lumi-
nous track behind it. The traces of its passing will be very evident; it would be
impossible to overestimate its influence when it becomes translated into works and
lives.
In looking over the collection of the various works of art accumulated in the
museums of the countries where they originated, or to which they were transplanted
from countries still older, so old, in fact, that their histories only remain written in their
sculptures, potteries or carved gems, which, from their substance, are imperishable, and
which are from time to time dugout of the masses of fallen masonry, earth and sand
that have almost obliterated the traces of the cities where they were made; in looking
over such collections we easily recognize one of the first uses to which art was applied,
the recording of passing events for the instruction of succeeding generations. Con-
sider with what difficulty those records were cut into the granite of the colossal blocks
of the Assyrians, or burnt into the cylinder of the Egyptians! It was certainly pur-
suing literature under difficulties. One cannot imagine flashes of wit being chiseled
Mrs. Emily Crawford was bom in New London, in the County of Middlesex, England. Her parents were thouglitfol
and cultivated people. She was educated at home, and with considerable tlioronghness, especially in art. She has traveled
in many lands. She married James Alexander Crawford, B. C. 8. Her principal i>ainting8 up to the present time are life-
sized portraits in pure watercolors. She was appointed judge of Special Handicraft for the Colombian Exix>sition, and has
been invited to write the special report on Japanese Bronzes, Japanese Cloisonnes and the Enamels from all nations. In
religious faith she is a Protestant, and is a member of the Church of England. Her permanent postoliice address is The
Well House, Chilworth, Surrey.
87
88 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
out in such laborious fashion; their delicate essence would have disappeared. All
such trifling with the thistledown of fancy had to wait until the medium united to
such ephemeral conceits was invented — the stylus and wax-tablets, that could be scrib-
bled on and the writing erased in a moment. The stylus and tablets soon became
highly ornamented, and had their fashions like our lizard-skin note-books and ivory
tablets have.
But the medium that lent itself so painfully to literature, lent itself to another
art — sculpture — with far more satisfactory results, no less painfully to the artist, per-
haps, because all good art is brought out in discomfort. There is no such thing as
ease in art. It is effort, mental and bodily, all the time, and the huge figures of the
ancient Egyptian kings, priests, doorkeepers, and so on, remain to awe us with their
grandeur and an earnestness which we seem to have altogether lost. After all, the
greatest artist is Time. I knew of a colossal lion that lay for ages at length on a
promontory and looked out over the blue seas, while the suns of centuries burnt his
gigantic hide into very nearly the color of the living one, and into his raised and
watchful visage grew an expression and a pathos that was most assuredly beyond the
power of his sculptor to produce. There is a something about the Egyptian art that
appeals to our human sympathies more than the more modern, and the much more
materially perfect Greek art, whose most splendid statues leave us plunged in wonder
at their knowledge and correctness and beauty of form, but seldom prompt us to wish
we knew more of the individual and his thoughts and fancies. Of course this doesn't
hold good for such statues as are portraits — of the Caesars, or the great philosophers,
for instance. About such people the ordinary rank and file of the world must always
feel a vivid curiosity. In pictorial art, the earliest known specimens are all of coarse
frescoes, mural decorations. We have some very interesting ones of about the time
of Moses, before or since, and they give us a very good idea of how the Egyptian of
that period lived his life. We see the farmer among his cattle or driving his geese,
the hunter going after game, the warrior returning from battle with his captives, and
we see the society functions of the time. One especially perfect fresco shows us an
entertainment devoted to the ladies, who are seated in rows, in an elegant hall, and
are listening to probably the best orchestra to be had. The ladies fan themselves
with the peculiar palm-leaf. They are much draped, and appear to feel the heat,
while, gliding about among the company, offering trays of cakes and fruits, are very
young girl attendants, whose black ringlets are kept in place by a fillet of white or
gold, with a blue lotus lily stuck through it, an effective costume and their only one.
While touching upon dress I only mention that we have a little Egyptian figure
whose dress is " accordion-pleated " from throat to feet ; it also wears a little
"accordion-pleated" cape. So the fashions and arts of dress come round.
The frescoes that cover the walls of the exquisite little houses of Pompeii are
wonderfully elegant and fanciful in device and brilliant in coloring, exquisitely fine
and finished as everything in that jewel-box of a city was even to the delicate mosaics
that covered its floors. It is a whole education in art to wander alone through the
deserted streets of Pompeii toward sunset, when the purple and red shadows begin to
sweep over Vesuvius, that wonderful background to that wonderful town; that mount-
ain, that still roars and threatens and shoots up its fiery column, as it did of old, un-
heeded, until at last it poured its fiery lava over the town and preserved to us those
gems of its arts by which we are now profiting. Here we can see where the Italians
acquired their sense of color. It was in the nature around them, in the translucent
skies, the glowing light, the sun-mellowed marbles of their homes, the garments dyed
with indigenous pigments that could never clash with their native surroundings.
Portraiture seems to owe its origin to various motives besides the vanity to which
it is most generally ascribed. We all know the pretty fable of the young Ionic girl
who parted from her lover in the sunset, and as he went from her she saw his shadow
thrown on the wall near by, she took a piece of charcoal and ran it over the shadow's
outline, and so kept a faint image of him till he came again — a pretty story that em-
THE CONGRKSS OF WOMEN. 89
bodies the universal desire to keep some sort of foothold on this transient existence,
to leave a something that will at any rate testify to the fact that such a personage once
really lived and labored, or to secure this kind of remembrance for one's beloved.
Occasionally one touch of nature will do this.
In the cloisters of Westminster Abbey there is an unremarkable stone; cut on this
stone in old characters is a very short inscription, "Jane Lyster- — deare Childe."
Nothing more. Yet every traveler goes to see this simplest of gravestones, and if he, or
more particularly she, has any imagination or human feeling at all she will understand
all that was left unsaid those many years ago. I think this inscription touches the high-
€st point of suggestiveness in art, the what to leave undone is well-nigh as important
as the what to do.
Those extraordinarily accomplished artists, the Japanese, have long grasped this
fact, and, I believe, more than one treatise exists on how much can be or should be
expressed by a single line as the very climax of the art of representation or sugges-
tion,
I have attempted to give very concisely some notions of what must always be
somewhat vague, the beginning of art. You will be able to form your own estimate
of what it was, how arrived at, from the examples from all countries gathered together
in this magnificent Exposition. You will find admirable specimens of the primitive
attempts at ornamental art in the Smithsonian loan collection exhibit down-stairs,
"Arts of Women in Savagery." Some of them are perfectly classical in form, funda-
mentally identical with the ancient relics of Etruria. All these will well repay a care-
ful study. The pictures and statuary from the various countries I need scarcely recom-
mend to your attention; the galleries that contain them are here as everywhere the
great center of attraction.
THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.
By MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY.
If the illustrious navigator in whose honor we are now holding this wonder-
ful World's Columbian Exposition, had so shaped his adventurous voyage as to
have first sighted land on the western slope of
the two Americas, the history of this continent's dis-
covery and development would have been strangely
metamorphosed. Then the star of Empire, lured
by balmy skies, would have made its way east-
ward, loitering leisurely in its course, often halting
for generations to enjoy the equable temperature
of the Pacific Coast, and never pressing onward to
encounter the more rigorous climate of the Atlantic
border until compelled to advance by the civilization
surging behind it. But the destiny which directs the
progress of civilization in every age never for a mo-
ment forgot the golden West; and with a wise design
of which we, today, are reaping the benefits, the pre-
serves of the Pacific Northwest were held in reserve
in the nation's youth, that they might become the
heritage of the fortunate descendants of the hardy
stock of Anglo-Saxons who long ago conquered the
adverse climatic elements of the Atlantic seaboard, in
blissful ignorance, through all their years of toil, that
the balmy zephyrs of the Pacific were playing at hide-
and-seek among Sierran vales, or singing summer-
laden peans through the mighty trees where rolls the Oregon.
And yet, this favored land had not been left for long without a witness. Destiny,
as if mindful that some day the children of men might wonder at her apparent
partiality to later generations, began as early as the year 1513 to make preliminary
preparations for carrying out her plans.
Let us turn the search-light of history upon the inland empire of the Pacific
Northwest and study its discovery from a landsman's standpoint. In the year 1804
an expedition, led by Captains Lewis and Clarke, started westward from a point east
of the Mississippi River into the unexplored and almost unknown wilds stretching
across the North American continent.
After a summer of wild, enjoyable adventure in the wilderness, the party went into
winter quarters in the fall of the same year, on the banks of the Upper Missouri River,
in what is now the State of Montana. The following year, after having grown accus-
tomed to their adventurous life, they pitched camp for winter quarters at the mouth
of the Lou Lou fork of the Bitter Root River, a branch of the Upper Missouri, near
Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway is a native of Illinois. She was born in .1834. Her parents ■were John F. Scott and
Annie Boloefron Scott, who were natives of Kentucky, but emigrated to Illinois with their parents in childhood. She was
educated, chiefly by her own efforts, after marriage, when surrounded by her own children in the Oregon frontier. She has
lectured in all the large cities, and has traveled extensively over the Pacific Northwest. She married Mr. B. ('. Duniway in
1853, in Oregon. Her special work has been in the interest of Equal Suffrage and the diffusion of practical business methods
among those women who must help themselves. Her principal literary works are a poem entitled " David and Anna
Matron," and numerous serial stories published during a period of twenty years in her own newspaper, The Nero North-
west. Mrs. Duniway is a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Her postoffice address is 294 Clay Street,.
Portland, Oregon.
90
MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 91
what is now the thriving modern city of Missoula. From this point they made fre-
quent excursions, and by ascending Lou Lou fork discovered the now famous Lolo
trail through the otherwise formidable Bitter Root Mountains. After having suffered
severely from cold and hunger the party reached a Nez Perce village in the early
sprmg, situated on an open plain contiguous to the south fork of the Clearwater, an
important tributary to the Snake River.
In passing down the Clearwater the party noted three creeks, the most famous of
these being now known as the Potlatch, which fructifies the beautiful and extensive
Paradise Valley of Idaho, in the midst of which sits Moscow.
The journey of Lewis and Clarke was a series of exciting, laborious and often
perilous adventures. But they reached the coast in safety and erected a rude fortifi-
cation for winter quarters, which they named Fort Clatsop. They started on their
return after a stay of some time, and after a leisurely voyage up the Columbia they
reached the Willamette River, called by the natives Multnomah, which was discovered
by Captain Clark on the second day of April, 1806.
Continuing their journey up the Columbia, they found the Dalles and Deschutes
Indians very hostile and inhospitable. Doubtless the premonition of their forthcom-
ing fate had dawned upon the tribes, and the instinct of self-preservation, powerful
even when hopeless, had been awakened by rumors of a dreaded invasion of which
these explorers were indeed forerunners.
But Yellept, the head chief of the Walla Wallas, inspired no doubt by the same
premonitions, although they affected him differently, received the party with savage
demonstrations of joy. He begged them to partake of his hospitality, and urged them
to invite all nations to treat the Indians kindly. Setting an example himself, he
brought them an armful of wood and a platter of roasted mullets with his own hands,
a most peculiar service from the hands of an Indian chieftain, since it is a well-known
part of the Indian's unwritten code to delegate every kind of domestic duties to women,
including every burden of the camp and fire incident to their primitive modes of life.
Colonel Gilbert, in the " Historic Sketches," tells us that Yellept had five sons,
who were all slain in battle, or perished miserably from white men's diseases. A num-
ber of years after Lewis and Clarke had partaken of his hospitality this noble chieftain
saw the last one of them die. Heart-broken, the old man called his tribe together,
and, lying down upon the body of his son in the grave, he sternly commanded them
to cover him up with his dead.
A wail of lamentation went up from his people, but they buried him alive as he
had ordered, and the glory and greatness of the Walla Wallas had departed.
The modern psychic tells us, upon evidence that to him is demonstration, that
the Indians' heaven is located within the earth's aura, and directly above the earth
and beneath the American pale faces' " Devochan;" that in this heaven all genuinely
" good " Indians find their happy hunting-grounds restored to them in duplicate, with
all the modern improvements added. In these Elysian shades the pale face cannot
enter to rob them of their homes, or possess their squaws or maidens, or spread among
them the diseases and disasters of civilization and death.
The swaying pines of the lands the pioneers loved, and left to us as a heritage,
chant their eternal requiem. The mighty mountains wear white crowns of everlast-
ing snow in their honor, and the broad prairies adorn their lowly graves with regularly
returning flowers, as the seasons come and go. The iron horse wakes shrillest echoes
now, where erst the bellowing of the belabored ox was heard. Steam and lightning
have out-distanced time and conquered space in the years that have flown since they
fell asleep. The echoes of the mountains and the rocks are answering back to new
conditions, and the sons and daughters of the pioneers are confronted by new prob-
lems of which their parents scarcely dreamed. These pioneers, in goodly numbers,
found their way to Oregon early in the " forties " and " fifties," making their way across
the continent in the dim wake of Lewis and Clarke. The four-wheeled ship of the
desert was their vehicle and the rough-ribbed ox their motive power. In peril often,
92 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in fatigue always, and sometimes through sickness,death and deprivation they struggled
onward toward the setting sun.
But these early settlers found at length a country that well repaid them for their
toil; a country of surpassing beauty and diversity of scenery, soil and climate; a
country in which the giant minds that planned their exodus from older lands might
have the ample room they needed to extend and grow. After reaching the Territory
of Oregon, they settled, often in widely separated fields. For several years they lived
in isolation, but also in health, peace and primitive plenty. They made friends with
the Indians, and, forming a provisional government, protected themselves and the red
man alike within its statutes.
But the discovery of gold, first in California and a little later in Oregon, was the
lever that worked the change in the provincial habits of these Spartan-souled heroes.
By the beginning of the year 1850 the whole world had caught the gold fever.
Men left their homes and families and flocked together to the new Eldorado like cor-
morants scenting the means of subsistence from afar. They settled California with a
heterogeneous multitude from all the nations of the earth, and gradually, as the con-
tagion spread, extended their peregrinations into Oregon, where nature had, in many
places, been equally successful in storing up and hiding away her precious ores.
The entire region lying west of the Cascade Mountains, within the " rain belt,"
rejoices in two seasons, the wet and the dry. And yet, there is no drought in summer,
nor is there any long continued spell of rain at one time in winter. The climate is
mild throughout the year. Here is the home alike of the fruit and the grain, the
forest and the mineral. If you fancy that you prefer to settle upon government
lands there are yet many openings for such homes, where, by going from twenty to
one hundred miles away from present railroad facilities, thus following in a much
modified form the heroic example of early pioneers, you may, by overcoming com-
paratively few of the obstacles they encountered, achieve a like or a greater success.
Do you wish a climate with more marked extremes of heat and cold? The exten-
sive tablelands of the eastern portion of this great domain invite you to possess
them. Here, also', in many places, are the homes of the fruit and the grain. Here
are mountain fortresses with intersecting valleys and limpid streams. Here, too, is
the home of irrigation, the home of the stock grower and the stronghold of the baser
metals, as well as of gold and silver and precious stones.
While I do not believe in a one-sexed country, any more than a one-sexed home
or government, I do believe that women should have equal chance with men to
acquire the homes, that both the sexes equally need, and must jointly occupy. The
one great obstacle in the ^ay of women getting homes in the country is their too fre-
quent desire to possess lands of area so great that to live upon them means isolation.
But if women as well as men, when in quest of homes, would be content with farms
containing five, ten, or at most forty acres, bringing with them, to a new country,
sufficient means to carry them through the first year or so of settlement, say any-
where from five hundred dollars up, there are comparatively few of you, M^ho are
often rack-rented in the great cities, and overstrained in every way in trying to keep
up appearances, who would not find youselves and those dependent upon you very
soon in independent circumstances. When you live in the country, on land of your
own, you are free from the exactions of house rent, water tax, and the constantly
accruing wood, milk, butter, eggs, fruit and vegetable bills that make your lives a
burden. In your city garrets are old clothes enough to keep your families clad in the
country till an income grows; and through the care-free lives you may lead under
such conditions your broken health returns.
Bear in mind that it is difficult at this late day to find room for large settlements,
even in small holdings, directly along the established railroad lines. If you would
grow up with the country you must first establish yourselves on its frontier.
I have at this moment in mind many places where deeded lands, held at reasona-
ble prices on easy terms, can be bought in the Pacific Northwest for just such homes.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 93
I also know of whole townships on the still farther frontier where irrigation lends the
magic of its power to such marvels of production as are never seen elsewhere. These
lands are from twenty to eighty, and even one hundred miles away, at present, from
railroads. But many thousands of acres are there awaiting possession, where many
hundreds of ideal home sites could be secured, contiguous to inexhaustible summer
range for stock; where alfalfa yields prodigious returns from irrigation for winter's
feed for stock; where a farm of forty acres or less would make an independent home.
In these places chickens thrive like magic on sunflowers bigger than dinner-plates;
hogs grow fat on barley, harvested by themselves, after having thriven to maturity
on alfalfa, also of their own harvestings; small fruits, cereals and vegetables yield
enormously. The air is as pure as ether, and the scenery is as grand as Heaven. Here
can be grown in inexhaustible quantities the sugar beet, the mangel-wurzel, and all the
other staples on which man and beast do thrive, except, perhaps, your Indian corn,
for which the delicious air of night is too cool to permit its superabundant growth.
Adjacent mines abound in all directions, awaiting the toil and money of man for their
development.
Again, I think of evergreen forests, humid skies and fruit-bearing vales, hard by
the sunset seas. But many of these are also away from present lines of railroad,
though not more than twenty, thirty, or at most one hundred miles away. Think of
it! Only one hundred miles! Why, we of the Pacific Coast went two thousand and
three thousand miles away from railroads to get our start!
Oh those primitive times! How, amid all these scenes of wonder, do I love to
pause and live over again the far-off days when everybody in my great bailiwick knew
everybody else; when there were no extremes of wealth or want, but everybody had
enough and to spare. Families living hundreds of miles apart made annual visits to
each other's homes at convenient seasons. Their vehicles were the same battered,
creaking ships of the desert, their teams the same old oxen, grown fat and festive,
that, half starved and footsore, had brought them across the continent in the bygone
years.
Anon, the railroad era dawned upon the land. The shout of its coming was heard
in the air, and songs like this floated out upon the breeze:
From the land of the distant East I come,
A railway abroad, and I love to roam,
In my lengthening, winding way.
On my ballast of rock and my ribs of pine,
And my sinews of steel that glitter and shine,
While my workmen sap and sow and mine.
As steadily, day by day,
They tunnel the mountains and climb the ridges.
And span the culverts and rivet the bridges.
And waken the echoes afar and anear
With the shout of triumph and song of cheer.
The State of Oregon, or what is left of it since it married off its three territorial
daughters, Washington, Montana and Idaho, to state governments, contains in round
numbers an area of 95,275 square miles. Washington, the eldest of Oregon's "three
stately graces," possesses about an equal area. Montana comes next, with skirts nearly
as ample, and Idaho sits proudly at the eastward gates, holding aloft, as shown on the
maps, the rough similitude of a huge arm-chair on her mountains' summits, inviting
you to come and be seated.
There is much mountainous country throughout the Pacific Northwest — so much
that the pure air of heaven, playing at random among the heights, frightens away the
cyclones of the flats and sends them howling over the Kansas prairies and the great
plains of Texas, leaving our rock-ribbed vales in smiling security. Tornadoes, drought
and pestilence, from the same cause, escape us.
94 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The trend of the main mountain ranges is north and south, with innumerable spurs
reaching out in all directions, breaking the country into diversified valleys, well watered
and fertile. Every cereal known to agriculture, every fruit and flower of the temperate
zones, and many products of semi-torrid climes, find congenial homes in different por-
tions of this broad domain. Every mineral known to man abounds within our borders.
Our forests are gigantic and inexhaustible, our rivers are big and deep and rapid, and
our creeks and rills and lakes no man can number.
But don't come to a new country wholly empty-handed, expecting the few who
are on the ground ahead of you to furnish you with remunerative employment. Come
prepared to take care of yourselves till you can have time to raise a crop. Come pre-
pared to help each other, just as did the early pioneers, just as all must do who leave
the mark of success upon the age in which they struggle.
*' The world belongs to those who take it,
Not to those who sit and wait."
Once, when I was twenty years younger than now, though not a whit less enthu-
siastic, as I was journeying westward across the continent by rail, I perpetrated some
stanzas with which to please my friends at home; and now I will conclude the address
by their recital here:
Ho! for the bracing and breezing Pacific,
As surging and heaving he rolleth for aye;
Ho for the land where bold rocks bid us welcome,
And grandeur and beauty hold rivaling sway!
Yes; ho! for the West, for the blest land of promise,
Where mountains all white bathe their brows in the sky;
While down their steep sides the cold torrent comes dashing,
And eagles scream out from their eyries on high.
I have seen the bright East where the restless Atlantic
Forever and ever wails out his deep moan,
And I've stood in the shade of the dark AUeghanies,
Or listened, all rapt, to Niagara's groan.
Again, I have sailed through grand scenes on the Hudson,
.Steamed down the Fall River through Long Island Sound;
The Ohio I've viewed, and the weird Susquehanna,
Or skirted the Lake Shore when West I was bound.
I've sniffed the bland breeze of the broad Mississippi,
And dreamed in the midst of his valley so great.
Have crossed and re-crossed the bold turbid Missouri,
As he bears toward the Gulf Stream his steam-guided freight;
And I've bathed my hot forehead in soft limpid moonbeams,
That shimmered me o'er with their glow and their gold.
In the haunts where the loved of my youth gave glad welcome,
And memory recalled each dear voice as of old.
But though scenes such as these oft allured, pleased and charmed me,
Euterpe came out with her harp or my lyre;
Yet when I again reached thy prairies, Nebraska,
To sing she began me at once to inspire.
And, as westward we sped, o'er the broad, rolling pampas,
Or slowly ascended the mountains all wild.
Or dashed through the gorges and under the snowsheds.
The Nine with crude numbers my senses beguiled.
• THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 95
Colorado's wild steeps, and the rocks of Wyoming,
Their lone stunted pine trees and steep palisades.
And afar to the west the cold, bleak Rocky Mountains,
At whose feet the wild buffalo feeds in the glades,
Have each in their turn burst sublime on my vision,
While deserts all desolate gazed at the sky,
And away to the south rose the snow-crested Wasatch,
Bald, bleak and majestic, broad rolling and high.
I have stood where dead cities of sandstone columnar.
Loom up in their grandeur, all solemn and still,
And mused o'er the elements' wars of the Ages
That shaped them in symmetry wild at their will.
I have rolled down the bowlders and waked the weird echoes,
Where serpents affrighted, have writhed in their rage.
And watched the fleet antelope bound o'er the desert
Through vast beds of cacti and grease-wood and sage.
I have sailed on the breast of the Deseret Dead Sea,
And bathed in its waters all tranquil and clear;
Have gazed on the mountains and valleys of Humboldt,
Strange, primitive, awful, sad, silent and sere.
I have climbed and reclimbed the steep, wind-worn Sierras,
Peered in their deep gorges all dark and obscure,
Dreamed under the shadows of giant Sequoias,
Or talked with wild Indians, reserved and demure.
I have trusted my bark on the billows of Ocean,
And watched them roll up and recede from the shore,
And have anchored within thy fine bay, San Francisco,
Where the Golden Gate husheth the Ocean's deep roar.
But not till I reached thy broad bosom, Columbia,
Where ever, forever, thou roll'st to the sea,
Did I feel that I'd found the full acme of grandeur,
Where song could run riot, or fancy go free.
Then my Pegasus changed his quick pen to a gallop,
Euterpe's wind harp waked yEolian strains.
And the Nine in their rapture sang odes to the mountains.
That preside over Oregon's forests and plains.
Hoary Hood called aloud to the three virgin Sisters,
Who blushed with the roseate glow of the morn;
St. Helen and Ranier from over the border
Scowled and clouded their brows in pretension of scorn.
The Dalles of Columbia, set up on their edges.
Swirled through the deep gorges as onward they rolled,
Or over huge bowlders of basalt went dashing.
Dispersed into spray ere their story was told.
To the north and the south and the west rose the fir trees,
With proportions colossal and graceful and tall.
Dark green in their hue, with a tinge of deep purple,
Casting shadows sometimes o'er the earth like a pall.
Bold headlands keep guard o'er the Oregon River,
Whose dashings are heard far away o'er the main,
As roaring and foaming and rushing forever.
He struggles with Ocean some 'vantage to gain.
96 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
White cities sit smiling beside the Columbia,
Where, though land-walled, the breeze of the sea she inhales,
While wind-worn Umatilla and gale-torn Wallula
Keep sentinel watch o'er her broad eastern vales.
Then ho! for the bracing and breezy Pacific,
Whose waves lave the Occident ever and aye!
I care naught for the grandeur of Asia and Europe,
For my far Western home greets me gladly to-day
Yes, ho! for the west, for the blest land of promise.
Where mountains, all green, bathe their brows in the sky;
While down the tall snow-peaks wild torrents come dashing.
And eagles scream out from their eyries on high.
COMMISSIONERS-AT-LARGE OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Mrs. John J. Bagley.
Michigan.
2. Miss Ellen A. Fobd,
Sew York.
S. Mrs. Rosine Ryan.
Texas.
4. Mrs. Mary S. Harrison,
Montana.
5. Mrs. D. F. Yerdenal,
New York,
6. Mrs. Mary Cecil Cantrill,
Kentucky.
7. Mrs. Mary S. Lix^KWooD,
District of Columbiiu
GEORGE MEREDITH'S NOVELS.
By MISS MARGARET WINDEYER.
It would be a difficult task to criticise George Meredith's novels in such a manner
as would seem to his admirers adequate to their marvels, and as would not seem
extravagant to those readers who have not had time
to study these books, or who have not given their
keenest sensibilities to the understanding of them.
Able reviewers of England and America have given
their doughty opinions upon them in phrases of lit-
erary worth, and with a wealth of diction which is not
at my command. So to criticise is not my intention,
but merely to draw your attention to Meredith's com-
prehension of the intuitions, idiosyncrasies and sensi-
bilities of women, and to his knowledge of the diffi-
culties of their environment, which stand between
them and their perfect development. It might be
questioned whether he always has pity for women;
I think he always has, and paints them with a
master hand. As it may enable you to recall as to
whether you have read any of Meredith's books or not,
I will give a list of them: "Evan Harrington," "Harry
Richmond," "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," "Vit-
toria," "Rhoda Flemming," "Beauchamp's Career,"
"The Egotist," "Diana of the Crossways," "The Shav-
ing of Shagpat," "One of Our Conquerors," and "The
Tragic Comedians." In these books there are such
instances of the insight and self-denial, the tenderness and devotion and faithfulness
of women, that they should be more read by women than they are, and, besides this,
they are enriched with a humor that is fascinating in its variety; for instance, "The
phantom half-crown, flickering in one eye of the anticipatory waiter," or, "Dacier has a
veritable thirst for hopeful views of the world, and no spiritual distillery of his own."
"To see insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing is your anecdotal
gentleman's annoyance." "A woman's 'never' fell far short of outstripping the sturdy
pedestrian Time to Redworth's mind." "A rough truth is a rather strong charge of
universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of fact."
One of the Scotch reviewers, J. M. Barrie, I think, says that a course of Mere-
dith's novels should commence with "Rhoda Flemming;" but I do not agree with him.
Though less intricate in its relationships, it is so painful a lesson upon the danger of
family pride that some readers would not read other books by an author who pro-
duced so dismal an impression. In this book we have before us Mrs. Margaret Lovell,
Miss Margaret Windeyer ie a native of New South Wales, AuBtralia. She was born in 1866 at Sydney. Her parents are
Sir William Charles Windeyer, LL. D., Judge of the Snpreme Court of New South Wales, and Mary Elizabeth Windeyer,
daughter of Rev. R. T. Bolton. She was educated at home and afterward attended university classes by H. C. L. Anderson.
31. A., at Miss Hooper's school, and passed junior public examination in five subjects in 1882. She has traveled in Europe,
Canada £ind the United States. Miss Windeyer was honorable secretary Department Educational in the Exhibition of
Woman's Industries held in Sydney in 1888; honorable secretary Woman's Literary Society. August. 1890. to Aagost, 1892; hon-
orable secretary Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, December, 1891, till March, 1893; representative New
South Wales, World's Congress of Representative Women, Chicago, 1893, and was honorable commissioner for New South
Wales at the World's Columbian Exposition. In religions faith she is a Unitarian. Her postoffice address is Roslyn Oar-
dens, Sydney, N. S. W.
(7) 97
MISS MARGARET WINDEYER.
98 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
who belongs to that company of women at whose head stands Becky Sharp. "Boys
adored her. These are moths. But more, the birds of the air, nay, grave owls (who
stand in this metaphor for bewhiskered experience) thronged, dashing at the appari-
tion of terrible splendour." Mrs. Fryar Gunnett, the Countess of Saldar and Mrs.
Marsett, Lady Blandish and Lady Grace Halley are all different species of the siren
genus of woman. Rhoda and Dahlia Flemming are sisters. Dahlia falls into the toils
of Edward Blanscove, and Rhoda, to save her sister's reputation, she says, but really
to save and spare her own and her father's name, arranges a marriage between Dahlia
and Nicholas Sedgett. After the marriage has taken place it is then discovered that
Sedgett has a wife elsewhere., Poor, broken-hearted Dahlia, doubly wronged, will not
marry Blanscove when he urges it. "There was but one answer for him, and when he
ceased to charge her with unforgiveness, he came to the strange conclusion that,
beyond our calling a woman a saint for rhetorical purposes and esteeming her as
one for pictorial, it is indeed possible, as he had slightly descried in this woman's
presence, both to think her saintly and to have the sentiment inspired by the over-
earthly in her person. Her voice, her simple words of writing, her gentle resolve,
all issuing of a capacity to suffer evil and pardon it, conveyed that character to a mind
not soft for receiving such impressions."
" The Tragic Comedians " contains a highly dramatic love story. Alvan is the
hero, the incidents taken from the life of Ferdinand Laysalle. The lesson it teaches
is that one should accept what is nearest to perfection within our reach, and not lose
by striving for the unattainable that joy, beauty and honor which comes to our hand.
Alvan would not accept his bride unless she came to him dowered with the sanction
of her parents to her marriage, and she, her mind narrowed and cramped by conven-
tional surroundings, lacks the power to seize the highest happiness offered to her.
When we contemplate Alvan's scorn of Julia's want of moral courage, the thought
that women are what men have made them seems borne in upon one's mind. Men
have not sought in woman straightforwardness and moral courage. They have
decried both. They have rather desired them to be " educated for the market, to be
timorous, consequently secretive, etc." So when to a woman of fertile brain there
comes an opportunity for the exercise of power, it is perhaps exerted hy Ji?iesse, by
dexterous underhand play, and then are women held up to scorn as not having the
honesty of men — so the world says. " Men create by stoppage a volcano, and are
then amazed at its eruptiveness."
" Diana of the Crossways " is the story of a beautiful, clever, generous, high-
spirited girl, who at nineteen is an orphan. She acquires that difficult position known
as social success, and finds, to quote our author, that "there are men with whom it is
an instinct to pull down the standard of the sex by a bully-like imposition of sheer
physical ascendency whenever they see it flying with an air of gallant independence."
Then Sir Lukin, the husband of Diana's friend. Lady Dunstane, by his behavior in
what he terms " a momentary aberration," closes for her the house that should be her
home. We learn how Diana concluded that in marriage was her only safety, and
here the reader will find passages surcharged with weighty ideas, and we are brought
face to face with that man of men, Thomas Redworth, who has waited to tell Diana
that he loves her until he shall be able to give her a home which shall be a worthy
setting for such a jewel. Mr. Warwich, "the gentlemanly official" whom Diana
married, after two years of wedded life tries to obtain a divorce from her, with Lord
Dannisbrough in the position of defendant. The hearing of the case resulted in that
the plaintiff was adjudged not to have proven his charge. About a year after this
Diana meets Percy Dacier, Lord Dannisbrough's nephew, at the Italian Lakes, and a
pronounced friendship results. Six months after, he and she keep watch by the
mortal remains of his uncle. Then their friendship is remarked, and we come to the
stage where they agree to unite their fates. Her trunks are packed; the tickets for
Paris are taken; he waits at the station for her; she does not come, because her friend,
Emma Dunstane, has sent for her in the extremity of illness. The author says that
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 99
afterward, on the safe side of the abyss, it wore a gruesome look to his cool blood.
A year after, Diana and Percy are friends again. How she betrays a political secret;
how cruel, yet how comprehensible, is Dacier's conduct, the reader will learn in chap-
ters full of charm. The last is called the " nuptial chapter," and relates how a barely
willing woman was led to bloom with the nuptial sentiment.
Meredith portrays the modern villain unsparingly, " men who are not free from
the common masculine craze to scale fortresses for the sake of lowering flags." He
gives some noted and titled examples, and in treatment of such characters we find
these words: " Men appear to be capable of friendship with women only for as long
as we keep out of pulling distance of that line where friendship ceases. They may
step on it; we must hold back a league."
"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel " I do not advise many women to read, as it is
likely to produce a sense of helplessness, with which will come hopelessness, which
we must avoid. But in the main, from reading Meredith's sermon-novels, there comes
the wish not to leave the world, but to set it straight. The light of every soul burns
upward. Of course, most of them are candles in the wind; and then Meredith says:
^'The less ignorant I become, the more considerate I am for the ignorance of others.
I love them for it;" which speech is the essence of the" charity "that suffereth long
and is kind," the pity which is akin to love. The author who wrote, "The something
sovereignly characteristic that aspires in Diana enchained him. With her, or, rather,
with his thought of her soul, he understood the right union of woman and man, from
the roots to the flowering heights of that rare graft. She gave him comprehension of
the meaning of love, a word in many mouths not often explained. With her wound
in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify a new start in our existence, a finer shoot
of the tree planted in good, gross earth, the senses running their live sap, and the
minds companioned, and the spirits made one by the whole-natured conjunction,"
must of necessity be able to write a love-passage with tenderness and grace, so I quote
the following: " It was not in him to stop or to moderate the force of his eyes. She
met them with the slender unbendingness that was her own, a feminine of inspirited
manhood. There was no soft expression, only the direct shot of light on both sides,
conveying as much as is borne from sun to earth, from earth to sun." Passages such
as these lend interest to the life-loves of Evan Harrington and Rose Joselyn, Beau-
champ and Renee, Richard Feverel and Lucy, Rhoda Flemming and Robert Eccles.
There is such painting of nature in Meredith's novels that we behold the scenes
he describes instead of dimly imagining them, and the metaphors he employs have
always a quaint conceit, which makes his style so peculiarly his own. This picture of
a sunrise from "One of Our Conquerors:" "Now was the cloak of night, worn thread-
bare and gray, astir for the heraldingof golden day visibly ready to show its warmer
throbs. The gentle waves were just a stronger gray than the sky, perforce of an inter-
fusion that shifted gradations; they were silken, in places oily gray," maybe fitly hung
beside the sunset picture in "Diana of the Crossways:" "The sunset began to deepen.
Emma gazed into the depths of the waves of crimson, where brilliancy of color came
out of central heaven, preternaturally near our earth, till one shade less brilliant seemed
an ebbing away to boundless remoteness."
In "The Egotist," Sir Willoughby is the central figure, who, in his lofty conceit,
rejoices in the knowledge that Lastitia Dale pines for love of him. The vicissitudes
of his love affairs make a charming book, in which wit is ever sparkling, and although
the keynote of woman's subjection is sounded, there is no undertone of tragedy.
"One of Our Conquerors" is remarkable for its complete presentation of the Mere-
dithan style, and the lessons to be learned from the characters are profound; existing
relations between men and women are diagnosed thoroughly, and one comes from the
reading with a longing to leave the world a little better than he found it. Metaphors,
similes, analysis, all the fraternity of old lamps for lighting our abysmal darkness, are
scattered through the pages of this book. I shall close this paper, so unworthy of this
interesting subject, with Meredith's own words: "The banished of Eden had to put
100
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
on metaphors, and the common use of them has helped largely to civilize us. The
sluggish in intellect detest them, but our civilization is not much indebted to that
major portion."
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
By MRS. WHITON STONE.
It is the world's high noon — Meridian height
Of the great Sun of Progress, in whose light
The continents are bathed — blazing, as sign
That Thought is principle of Life divine;
That Thought is God, and God in thought must shine;
That from the heavens, its primal source.
Has lit the Past, and on its matchless course
Has shone with ever gathering force,
Until, in this consummate hour,
The Thought of all the Centuries has burst to splendid
flower.
MRS. WHITON STONE
Upon this central spot we stand.
Encircled with immensity.
Nay — by infinity —
Transfixed with wonder at the grand
Discoveries of human souls — the plans conceived,
The mighty deeds achieved;
The engine's lightning speed — electric speech —
The flashing fires that far off shores can reach;
The current, that in such mysterious way
Connects today with the whole world's today;
The science, art and music, all expressed
In genius of the East, and genius of the West,
And soaring higher than Olympian ways.
Working great problems out in rounded days.
Our modern Sapphos sing to Heaven, nobler than Lesbian lays.
Oh, thou great Sun of Progress! All thy glow
Is but as shadow in the light we know
Will flood the coming ages — Thought will grow.
And souls a larger stature gain.
And truths divine diviner truths attain;
The things today, that we have known.
Perchance, shall all have been outgrown
In those far centuries' Tomorrows,
Yea! even human sorrows:
Thou art immortal on thy dazzling throne.
Thou wert not meant for Time alone,
For Time
Is but a measure in Life's song sublime;
And thou wilt shine — shine on forevermore
Lighting the way to that mysterious door,
That radiant door — starred with the mystic seven
From out the world's high noon to the high noon of Heaven.
101
WOMEN IN THE GREEK DRAMA.
EXTRACTS FROM JULIA WARD HOWE'S LECTURE.
In some of the comedies of Aristophanes the women's cause is presented in a
light intended to provoke ridicule.
The great comedian, it is thought, was moved to
present these impersonations by those passages in
Plato's republic in which the political rights of women
are asserted as precisely similar to those of men, that
is, from the point of view of ideal justice.
Barring the indecencies which belong to the com-
mon taste of the time, and which are largely omitted
in translations, the Greek of Aristophanes does not
appear to me very damaging to our position as advo-
cates of the rights of women. In one of these plays,
Lysistrata, the women of Athens, weary of the
absence of their husbands in the Peloponnesian war,
take the negotiation of the peace into their own
hands. Lysistrata, the leading spirit among them,
has summoned together the women from various
parts of Greece, with the view of wresting the man-
agement of public affairs from the hands of the men
entrusted with them, and of putting an end to the
sinuous and devastating war. Whether intentionally
"^ or not, Aristophanes puts very sensible reasoning into
MKs. JULIA WARD HOWE. ^^^ mouth of this Icadcr among the women.
*******
Aristophanes, despite his satirical intention, preserves for us pictures of the
Athenian women of his own time. Quick witted, public spirited, as far as opportu-
nity will allow, devoutly attached to married life, a thrifty domestic worker and cal-
culator, this is, or was, the reality. For ideal types we must go to those dramatists
who deal with the historic and mythic traditions of the past. I have before me at
this moment a vivid picture of two such women shown in startling contrast
The Siege of Troy is over, and the beacons have flashed from one watch tower to
another the signal of victory. The watchman, weary with ten years' waiting, thanks
you that his long task is ended, and flies to communicate the good news to Agamemnon's
Queen, Clytemnestra, who soon appears upon the stage with boastful words of exulta-
tion, beneath which she veils her wicked purpose. A herald arrives in haste to confirm
the welcome tidings of the fall of Troy. Clytemnestra parleys with the chorus, express-
ing the joy she would be expected to feel in her husband's victory and near return.
She says: "What light more welcome to a woman's eyes than this? When Heaven
sends back her husband from the wars, to open him the gates? Go, tell my lord to
come at his best speed, desired by all; so would he find at home a faithful wife, just
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe is a native of New York City. She was born May 27, 1819. Her parents were Samuel and Julia
Cutler Ward ; she was educated at private schools in New York, and devoted much time to the study of foreign languages
and literature ; has traveled six times to Europe, once to Egypt and Palestine, and twice to (California. She married Dr.
Samuel Gridley Howe, the eminent philanthropist and teacher of Laura Bridgman. Her special work has been in the inter-
est of literary and philosophical culture, and of woman suffrage and higher education of woman. Her principal literary
works are "Words for the Hour." "Trip to Cuba," "Later Lyrics," "Life of Margaret Fuller," " From the Oak to the
Olive," " Modem Society," and " Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Morse." In religious faith she is a Unitarian of the Channing
or James Freeman Clarke Bcbool. Her postoffice address is 241 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
102
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 103
as he left her, watch-dog by his house, to him all kindness, to his foes a foe, and for
the Test unaltered."
In the female characters put upon the stage by Sophocles we can trace within
the influence of his friend Socrates, or the sympathy of view which may have formed
the bond between them. My present limits will only allow me to speak of two of
these characters, Electra and Antigone. Both of these women are rebels against
authority. In both of them high courage is combined with womanly sweetness and
purity. Electra is the unhappy eldest daughter of the murdered Agamemnon, con-
demned to live in the daily sight of her mother's contented union with her paramour,
the accomplice of her bloody crime. In this crowned triumph of evil Electra does
not for one moment acquiesce. Her first act after her father's death had been to con-
vey her child brother, Orestes, to a place of safe concealment. Her only hope in life
is that he will return to avenge his father's untimely end. In her first appearance
upon the scene she bewails the tragedy of her house.
" And thou, my father, hast no pity gained,
Though thou a death hast died so grevious and so foul;
But I, at least, will never, while I live,
Refrain mine eyes from tears,
Nor get my voice from wailings sad and sore;
But,lfke a nightingale of brood bereaved.
Before the gates, I speak them forth to all."
In the Clytemnestra of /Eschylus we are shown the full, fiery sweep of feminine
passion, in the height and boast of its rebellion redeemed from vileness by the dread-
ful antecedent of Iphigenia's sacrifice, and the unquenchable anger sternly kindled in
the mother's breast. In his Cassandra we have the wild sibyl, gifted with superhuman
insight and touched with divine fire, but all unable to avert the doom which she fore-
sees.
And in these gracious and more purely feminine types presented by Sophocles,
we admire the union of womanly tenderness with womanly courage.
NEEDLEWORK AS TAUGHT IN STOCKHOLM.
By MLLE. HULDA LUNDIN.
Educational methods of the present day demand that instruction in general shall
be given according to a carefully considered plan, which shall be at the same time
simple, logical and progressive. It is not sufficient to
give out lessons to be committed to memory; these
must also be thoroughly explained and illustrated by
the teacher. Suitable mediums of instruction must
be sought and class-teaching maintained in order to
insure thoroughness and inspire interest. It is a mat-
ter of great satisfaction that these principles have
been adopted in all instruction from books; but if one
examines the methods heretofore employed in manual
teaching of needlework training whose educational
value can hardly be overrated, the strange fact is dis-
covered, that as a rule not one trace of the intelligent
principles governing instruction in other subjects is
to be found here. Therefore, while instruction in all
other branches has developed, that in manual training
has remained in its old, elementary condition. Man-
ual training has been regarded as an outside branch,
not subject to the same laws as other educational
branches, whereas it ought to stand side by side with
them, because it has the same educational aim to ful-
fill. The aim of the instruction in Girls' Sloyd (this
term embraces in Sweden all kinds of handiwork) is:
First, to exercise hand and eye; second, to quicken the power of thought; third, to
strengthen love of order; fourth, to develop independence; fifth, to inspire respect for
carefully and intelligently executed work, and at the same time to prepare girls for
the execution of their domestic duties.
The instruction has two objects in view: {a) It shall be an educational medium;
(d) It shall fit the girls for practical life. But if the desired aim is to be reached, the
fundamental principles of pedagogics must be applied to manual training.
Formerly, satisfaction was felt with purely mechanical skill in manual training,
when the only thought was to procure even, beautiful stitches in sewing; while the
practical skill required in measure-taking, cutting-out and planning a piece of work,
was wholly neglected. The introduction of the sewing machine has developed
entirely new conditions. We must now tell our pupils something the machine cannot
perform, namely: To take measures, to draft patterns, to cut out, to put together and
to arrange garments; also to train them to skill in darning, mending and marking at
the same time that we teach them to take correct stitches. This desired result is not
easily attained, but experience has proved that it is best reached by, first, practical
Mile. Holda Lundin is a native of (^hrietianstad (SkAne) , Sweden. She was born in 1847. She was educated at various
Swedish schools in her native town and at Stockholm. She has traveled in England, Scotland, Italy, Germany, France, Bel-
gium, Denmark, Norway, Ireland and America. As one of the leading educators of today she has an established position.
Her principal literary works are "Dressmaking" (for schools) , "Female Sloyd," and "French Schools." She is at present
superintendent of needlework in the public schools of Stockholm, and there has introduced many new and excellent methods
of training. In religious faith she is a Lutheran. Belongs to Idun (Woman's Club), Woman's Suffrage League, and varioas
educational societies. Her permanent postoliice address is Brunkevrgs Hotel, Stockholm, Sweden.
104
MLLE. HULDA LUNDIN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 105
demonstration on the subject; second, progressive order with regard to the exercises;
third, class instruction.
First: Practical demonstration in sewing is accomplished by means of a sewing
frame, and in knitting by means of large wooden needles and colored balls of yarn;
at the same time blackboard drawings are constantly being made. "With a piece of
chalk and a blackboard a teacher can work wonders," I once heard a clever teacher
say. Even if this were somewhat overstated, as I readily admit, it is nevertheless true
that a teacher who understands the value of these media can, by their help, reach
remarkably good results. French schools furnish fine proof of this. As no one is
born a master, and as we cannot afford to cast away material at hand, it is necessary,
until skill is obtained, to make use of preparatory exercises, but much judgment must
be exercised in their use. I consider it to be a great mistake to keep pupils engaged
term after term with preparatory exercises which they may not put into practice till
long after, and by the time they are needed have perhaps forgotten. As soon as
an exercise is well learned it should be applied to something useful, either in the
school or at home. In this way the pupil's interest is awakened and strengthened.
The child will, in such a case, see a result of its work such as it can understand. And,
moreover, the parents' sympathy with the instruction is won.
Second. Progressive order with regard to the exercises: The exercises are
planned and carried out in the most strictly progressive order, so as to enable the
pupils to execute well the work required of them. Nothing is more discouraging to
see than a badly executed piece of work. "One cannot expect more of a child" is
given as a kind of excuse. This may sometimes be true, but one can expect that a
teacher will not give a child exercises beyond its capabilities and before which it must
fail. To fail continually has an injurious effect on a child's character. No; let us take
simple exercises; let us execute them well, have our aim well in view and not be dis-
couraged even if the result looks plain and simple. In other words, in manual train-
ing, as in other subjects, there should be a systematic plan, which is simple, logical
and progressive. »
Third. Class instruction: When instruction became obligatory in our schools, and
it was necessary to have from thirty to forty pupils, and sometimes more, in one class,
class instruction became an absolute necessity, and it was soon found that develop-
ment of the individual was better secured through its means than when each pupil
received instruction by herself. Strangely enough, one subject — manual training —
remained unreformed, to the great injury of the subject; for, by appealing to the whole
class at once, a teacher can secure the attention of her pupils and awaken a lively
interest in the work. Her teaching can then be deep and interesting. The teacher
finds time to talk about form, size, and reasons for doing this or that. Yes, the pupils
even find time to think out why things shall be so and not so, and discover the best
way to carry out an exercise. In this way the instruction becomes both developing
and educating, and the pupils lay a firm foundation on which to build further in the
future. But class teaching is only an effect,and should not be an aim. One must not
have the mistaken idea that the teacher is to guide every step, P'ar from it. It is only
the new in every exercise which should be explained to the whole class. After the
pupils have learned through explanation and illustration what they must do, and how
they shall do it, they should work independently of each other. Meanwhile, the
teacher should go around the class, and notice whether all the pupils are performing
correctly the required exercises. She should at the .same time observe the position
of hand and body, also whether the pupils hold their work at a proper distance from
their eyes, so that they may not gain skill at the expense of their eyesight. The
teacher of manual work should not only instruct, but also educate the pupils as well.
Therefore the choosing of teachers is not an insignificant matter. Besides manual
dexterity, teachers ought to be possessed of pedagogical skill. Therefore, for the
training of teachers in manual training either special normal schools should be estab-
lished, or— what without doubt is better— existing normal schools should place man-
106 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ual training in their curriculum on an equal footing with other branches of education.
That is now done in Sweden and in several other countries in Europe. Not only girls,
but the younger boys.should be instructed in girls' sloyd. The boys should be taught
this because it introduces variety and interest, trains the hand and eye, and renders
them able, in case of necessity, to darn their stockings and mend their garments.
From the foregoing we deduce the following:
First — Practical demonstration in sewing is accomplished by means of a sewing
frame, and in knitting by means of large wooden needles and colored balls of yarn.
At the same time blackboard drawings are constantly being made.
Second, — The exercises are planned and carried out in the most strictly pro-
gressive order, so as to enable the pupils to execute well the work required of them.
Third. — The instruction in sloyd should — like that in other branches — be given to
the whole class at the same time, otherwise the time which. the teacher could devote
to each pupil separately would be insufficient to secure the desired results.
In order to illustrate the progress from the simple to the more complex in the
teaching of sloyd, we give the following class divisions of the subjects which are in
use at the present time in the public schools of Stockholm:
School age, seven to fourteen for both girls and boys.
Class I. — Plain knitting with two needles — a pair of garters. Plain knitting — a
pair of warm wristers.
Class II. — Plain knitting — a towel. Practice in the different kind of stitches:
running, stitching, hemming and overcasting — a lamp mat. The application of the
already named stitches — one small and one large needle workbag.
Class III. — A needlework case. Simple darning on canvas — a mat for a candle-
stick. An apron.
Class IV. — Girls. Plain and purl knitting — slate eraser and a pair of mittens.
A plain chemise.
Class V. — Knitting — a pair of stockings. Drawing the pattern, cutting out and
making a chemise.
Class VI. — Patching on colored material. Plain stocking darning; buttonholes.
Buttons made of thread. Sewing on tapes, hooks and eyes. Drawing the pattern,
cutting out and making a shirt or a pair of drawers.
Class VII, — Fine darning and marking. Drawing the pattern for a dress. Cut-
ting out articles such as are required in Standards II-IV. Drawing the pattern, cut-
ting out and making a dress.
The time given to needlework: Class I, two hours a week; Classes II, III and
IV, four hours a week; Classes V and VI, five hours a week; Class VII, six hours a
week.
i
COMPLETE FREEDOM FOR WOMEN.
By MISS AGNES M. MANNING.'
I advocate freedom for the woman because it will elevate her politically, socially,
financially and morally. It has been well said that without it, on the roll of her
country she has no recognized status. She is classified with minors, idiots, Indians
and criminals.
Man has followed the words liberty and equality through seas of blood in his
attempts to wrest their meaning to apply to himself. The woman, however, who stood
by his side, who endured his hardships and followed him into all his dangers, who was
his patient slave, his uncomplaining victim, for six thousand years, he has never
allowed to share either his liberty or equality. In the earlier ages he made no
explanation for this wrong. He did what the Sioux and the Apache does today — he
condemned her to be a mere beast of burden, performing the menial task he con-
sidered beneath himself.
Among the Hebrews, a woman who had given birth to a child was excluded from
the sanctuary for forty days if it were a son, but if it were a daughter she must remain
away eighty days. In Athens the father of a girl ordered in disgust that a distaff
should be suspended outside of his door, instead of the garland of olive with which he
had hoped to announce the birth of a boy. In Sparta, of every ten children abandoned
because the state did not choose to rear them seven were girls. In Rome every newly
born child was placed at its father's feet. If he took it up it was the signal of life and
care. When too many daughters came, he turned away, and the unwelcome girl was
condemned to death.
Under the Feudal system, the birth of a girl was considered a misfortune. When
Jeanne de Valois was presented to her father, Louis XL, being his first child, he would
not even look at her, and forbade all public rejoicing.
We know how the Salic law of France came to shut a daughter out from the
throne. It was an old barbaric law that had not been enforced since the Franks were
converted to Christianity. It was suddenly sprung upon the legitimate heir, a defense-
less baby girl. She was defrauded by the relative that should have been the first to
protect her. Nature, as if in revenge, gave him only a daughter, and by his own
decreed law she could not succeed him. Napoleon divorced the faithful Josephine,
but the son he coveted never reigned in France. Fate here, too, placed the grand-
child of the wronged Josephine, by her first marriage, on the temporary throne.
In England, in every entailed estate, great is the disappointment at the birth of a
girl instead of a boy and heir.
" In France," says a well-known writer, "If you ask a peasant about his family,
he answers: ' I have no children; I have only daughters.*" The Breton farmer says to
this day when a daughter is born, " My wife has had a miscarriage."
The old religion of our Bible, while it lifted women to the level of the prophets
with one hand, branded her as inferior with the other. The harem began with the
Patriarchs. They took the vile institution from Babylon. The early kings added to
their wives as a man adds to his acres. They were the visible signs of his wealth.
Miss Agnes M. Manning is principal of the Webstor School, San Francisco, Cal. She has lived so long in the Golden
State that, although not a native daughter, she calls herself a Californinn. Her first signed literarj' work was for the "Oak-
land Monthly," when Bret Harte was editor. Some of her poems have been published in a volume of " Californian Writers."
She has written sketches of travel, essays, various poems and short stories. She is a member of the Century Club, one of the
Board of Directors of the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association, and also member of the California Botanical Clab. Her
postoifice address is 1215 Sutter street, San Francisco, Cal.
107
108 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
No polygamist ever rose above a contempt for woman. Every libertine has it. You
are safe in estimating a man's character by his valuation of your sex.
In these old days, and for long generations after, no woman's consent to her own
marriage was asked. Look at the story of Leah and Rachel. Leah is forced upon
Jacob as an extra animal might be, and accepted in the same manner. A woman
was only valued for the children she produced. We have a graphic picture of the
agony and despair of Rachel, because she knew if she were childless she must descend
to a lower social level than her unloved sister.
All the progress of civilization has been retarded through unfairness to women.
No person, people or race that is discriminated against ever attains the highest possible
development. If woman, through her servitude, ignorance and subordination did not
help to raise man, she yet had power to often drag him down to her own low standard.
She was a clog in his advancement, and he knew it. All literature is full of the biting
scorn for the poor creature who was content to take the role he gave her. No man
respects the woman that willingly accepts a slavish subordination. No man ever did
respect her, and when he enacted such brutalities as that a husband might chastise his
wife with a stick of a certain thickness, or appropriate her fortune or her earnings, she
was his slave and not his equal.
Time, and a certain enlightenment, have made him ashamed of these old savage-
ries. In later years he has dropped the tone of the tyrant and taken up that of the
hypocrite. He now pretends that he allows her no voice in the making of her own
laws, and keeps her in childish subjection for her own good. Fancy any man allow-
ing another man to openly defraud him of all real liberty under any such flimsy pre-
tence. The theory would be blown to the winds, and men would rise in revolution
against it. Yet this is what many men expect women not only to accept — they have
forced them to do that — but also to believe.
Man likes a willing slave, and so for all the ages he has taken care to have her
taught that her highest happiness lies in belonging to him. His needs, his comforts,
his pleasures, his surroundings, his ambitions, his hopes and joys are her chief con-
cern. He has taken good care to teach her that her prize in life is the chance of min-
istering unto him. He has implanted in her mind that her greatest good fortune is to
be chosen by him. He has heaped ridicule through the ages on every woman that
escaped him. He has taught girls to look on a woman's single life as a waste of
herself because he was excluded from it. The highest aim of a woman is to be a wife
and mother. He never allowed that the highest aim of a man is to be a husband and
a father. Yet all that is high, sacred and beautiful in wifehood and motherhood was
meant by a just Lord to be equally high, sacred and beautiful in husbandhood and
fatherhood. He has, moreover, denied her any other means of earning her bread.
For long centuries he gave her matrimony or starvation to choose between; often
she discovered this to be a choice between evils.
There have always been in all ages small minorities of men who have opposed
the degradation of women. True religion has always opposed it. The Divine Com-
mandments were not given to a woman. They were given to Moses to be kept by
men. In Christianity you find no doctrine that makes one color of a sin for a woman
and another for a man. On the contrary their sins are equal, and must be expiated
the same way. " With us," cries the great St. Jeromfe, " what is commanded of woman
is commanded of man." The laws of Christ and the laws of emperors are not the
same. The old law stoned a woman to death for betraying her husband; or it con-
demned her to be expelled with a whip from under the conjugal roof and chased naked
through the town, or exposed on a pillar in the public square. On all sides curses and
blows were flung at her by men, who called her sin a " fault" only when it was com-
mitted by themselves.
Among such laws appeared the Master, and, lo! the unfortunate is dragged before
him. His answer tore the veil from hypocrisy, and was the first wedge in breaking
the heavy chains of woman's bondage.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. K)9
God does not send sons into one family and daughters into another. He sends
them together to grow up in peace and love around one hearth, and to help, not to
defraud, each other in after life. Society, however, as man has made it, consistently
tries to forget the lessons of Christianity. It deals out very different punishments for
the sister and the brother. His sins are " wild oats," errors of youth, and, if continued
into age, a man's mistakes; but hers are crimes from the first, and no life of penitence
can ever wash away the stain.
I advocate the complete freedom of the woman, because I foresee in the coming
education of the masses she will need all her freedom to preserve her best interests
and the best interests of the home and family. If I have read history aright, I havt,
learned this lesson from it, that my sex has not received justice from her brother
always because of his superior knowledge.
If you are familiar with Greek life as it is given to us in Homer, you are aware
that woman, though from our standard she was in a barbarous position, yet she was
far higher than she was four centuries after in the time of Plato. Yet during those four
centuries the Greeks had made a wonderful advancement. Plato, whose mind and
genius were of the greatest that ever existed, saw through the thick veil of prejudice
and wrong that shrouded one-half of the human race. He saw what the wise have
always seen: that the highest human effort was held back by the degradation of
women.
We know that the Spartans were inferior to the Athenians in all the arts and refined
accomplishments; yet the Spartan women possessed far more influence than those of
Athens. If you read Euripides you will understand the scorn with which the philoso-
phers of Athens regarded their wives and sisters. Women then despised the freedom
they were denied, as many despise it now. A Greek woman taunted her rival that
she wanted to be like a man, and go in through the front door of a house. Under our
old regime "free nigger" was the greatest term of reproach, but when emancipation
came, which of the scoffers remained in bondage?
Mr. Horace Piatt, an able lawyer of San Francisco, in an address of much
research, recently, dwelt on the gloomy picture of law as it dealt with us in ancient
times. Yet the greatest monument that has comedown to us from the Roman Empire
is her jurisprudence. Our laws are simply copied from it. Mr. Piatt did not tell us,
however, that many of the worst laws of England and Germany against women were
added after the Reformation. Many of the old brutal statutes that had well-nigh died
out under the influence of chivalry were again revived against her. He told us there
was one later Roman enactment in favor of women holding property that was in oper-
ation when California was a Mexican province. Our state adopted this law into its
code and we have the advantage of it. Mr. Piatt did not tell us, however, how the
Roman women wrested this law from their masters. He did not tell us how they held
meetings, made speeches, and pushed themselves into the Senate Chamber to resist
the infamous decrees that had culminated in one, that no daughter should inherit
either property or money from the family. About the year 600 there lived in Rome
Anius Ansellus.* He had acquired a large fortune in trade. He had only one child,
a daughter, whom he idolized. His great wealth had only one value for him, that it
should enrich his daughter; yet he knew that according to law she could not inherit it.
Roman citizens were divided into six classes. Five of these classes paid taxes.
The sixth class were people too poor to own property, and were excluded from all
political rights. They were the middle class, between the freeman and the slave, the
citizen and the alien. To belong to this class was to be degraded, yet the law, as if
in fine sarcasm, allowed its fathers to leave all their effects to their daughters.
Ansellus, because of his great love for his child, renounced every privilege dear to
the heart of a Roman, and publicly enrolled himself in this class. He gave up every
honor in his own life to baffle the cruel injustice of his country, and leave his large
fortune to his daught-er.
Mr. Piatt had sought for no such illustration as the story of Ansellus. In telling
-"La Caase de la Mannmission des Femmes.
110 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
us of our modern Wyoming, he did not mention that no sooner was suffrage conferred
on women than the thieves, tramps and hard characters that infest every new territory
vanished. The social evil fled from Wyoming when the first woman sat on the jury.
The chief justice gives his testimony that after years of trial, woman's suffrage is a
success. There have been less robberies and murders in Wyoming than in any state
in the Union. There has never yet been a woman committed to the penitentiary.
It surprises me how a man like Mr, Piatt can go so far in his contempt for injus-
tice to women, and yet be willing to perpetuate it. It teaches me the lesson with yet
stronger force, that we women must make our own laws, and trust to no man's senti-
mental ideas of doling out to us a standard of freedom he would not accept for
himself.
The distinguished president of the Stanford University, in his lecture on sex, as
it is treated from a scientific standpoint, shows how the old theories are exploded.
Alas, how much of the story of the sufferings of women may be traced to this sub-
ject? Even the great Aristotle held that the mother was only the nurse of the child;
she was but as the field that nourishes the grain. In yEschylus the doctrine laid down
is that the son is not a parricide because it was only his mother that he slew. You all
know the story of how Agamemnon was slain by Clytemnestra, and how her son
avenged the death of his father. Apollo himself pleaded for Orestes. He said the
mother does not generate what is called her child.
In Greece the mother has no other part in the marriage of her children than to
bear the nuptial torch, and to prepare the peculiar repast for the women. In the
marriage of Iphigenia at Aulis, the mother, Clytemnestra, angrily demanded a place
near her daughter during the ceremony as a maternal right. Agamemnon had not
asked her consent. She asks him anxiously of what country Achilles is, and where
he will carry her child.
It was an illustrious French physician who first attacked the robbery of the
mother. Armed with all the resources of modern science, he claimed for her that
she was equal in all things from the first. Nature had always proclaimed the equality
of the mother in her child. She suffers for it. She knows neither pain nor fatigue
when it is in danger. What mother ever forgets the death of her little one? The
newly-made mound that covers it is always fresh in her memory. Neither the mar-
riage nor the death of her children divide them from her. For them she has endured
through the ages the barbarity of men's laws. Many a husband has held his wife
silent under the worst outrage because she knew he would strike her through her
children.
Almost all famous men declare they owed what they have become to their mothers.
Schiller, Lamartine and our own Washington are examples. St. Augustine was con-
verted by his mother; St. Chrysostom was educated by his mother; St. Basil was
saved, he tells us, through maternal love, and St. Louis was sanctified by his strong
and holy mother. Professor Jordan says that the first difference came from the female
having the care of the young. The male works to feed her and the little ones. The
valuation of the male by the female is measured by this care for herself and young.
Nature here stamps the legitimate use of man. He was made to toil for and care for
his family. He is a miserable wretch when he shirks this task; he is so made that he
finds his chief happiness with wife and child. There is a fiction in law and society
that all men support their families, and that all women are supported by them.
Never was there a greater fallacy. Fully two-thirds of the women of today earn their
own bread. In San Francisco, one-half of the married women of the poorer class
help to support their families. In my school of more than one thousand pupils,
more than half the mothers support their children. Numbers of them are not widows,
but have the sole support of their families because of worthless husbands.
No man of the nineteenth century has had a wider influence on its thought than
John Stuart Mill. No man's influence of our time will last longer or weigh more with
the generations that will come after us. If there is a woman here who has not read
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. Ill
Mill on "Liberty, or the Subjection of Woman," I would advise Herat once to beg, buy
or borrow this book. Mill demands the liberty of women, not alone for the benefit
that it will confer on the whole human race, but because it is her inalienable right.
Herbert Spencer, like our Mr. Piatt, has shown the barbarities of the subjugation of
women, and then he shirks her enfranchisement. He has shown that the fine intuition
possessed by women would be of incalculable value and benefit to man in all his
researches, if she were only educated enough to use her God-given faculties. Henry
Thomas Buckle declares that so far from the mind of women being inferior to that of
men, those men who have gained the greatest victories in science have approached
their studies after the manner of women. He avers that the flimsy thing called woman's
education has been solely to blame that so few women are distinguished in thought.
He points out how men reason from induction. They collect first facts and build their
theories from these facts. This is the modern method of scientific investigation, but
he says the great achievements in science have not been mastered in this way. Newton
discovered the law of gravitation because he had great imagination. He could follow
the force that made the apple fall, to great heights — to the moon — and saw how our
Earth kept her satellites in order. From this he followed the same law to the planets,
and saw how the sun held them in their courses. There was no inductive reasoning in
this. It was pure deduction. It was what is sneered at in woman as intuition, that
grasped the mighty problem. It was the same sublime power of imagination that
taught Keppler his three wonderful laws, that revealed a true knowledge of the plan-
etary worlds to us. It is akin to the mind of the poet. Shakespeare had it when he
drew forth his creations of real beings, who live through all the generations. Hamlet,
Shylock, Othello, Rosalind, Desdemona and Portia are as real to us as they were to
the people of three hundred years ago. George Eliot, whom the foremost critics of
our age declare to be the greatest creator of character since Shakespeare, who is, in
fact, the only writer of our own time that has ever been classed with the master, had
it. This woman, whose works will live in literature with increasing value as the ages
come and go, showed what might be accomplished by women of genius if they were
fully educated. Her mind did not receive the ordinary training of her sex. It was
developed and strengthened by the same processes that go to build up scholarship in
men.
Mr. Buckle also points out to us that it was the womanly intuition or poetic
faculty that brought about the greatest discoveries in botany. Everyone who takes
up this interesting study now knows that the stamens, pistils, corolla and petals are
simply modified leaves. These parts, unlike in shape, color and function, we know
are the successive stages of the leaf. No botanist discovered thissecret. It was found
by the greatest poet that Germany has known. When Goethe announced his discovery,
the botanists received it with scorn. They who had collected their facts and filled
their herbariums were the ones to find nature's secret of the morphological generali-
zation of plants. What had a poet with his verses and imagination to do with it?
Nevertheless, time, that works out her slow revenges, saw the botanists of the whole
world receive Goethe's idea and join in praise of it. Nor was that the only one of the
poet's discoveries. Wandering like Hamlet through a cemetery he came upon a skull
lying on the freshly turned earth beside an open grave. Like Hamlet, he took it up
and mused upon it. Suddenly there flashed into his mind the then unknown truth
that the skull was composed of vertebras, that the bony covering of the head was an
expansion of the bony covering of the spine. This great discovery was stubbornly
fought in ELngland, and it was fifty years after it was known in Germany and France
before English anatomists would acknowledge that the mind of the poet had soared
above all their facts and dissections.* What the world has lost in denying the mind
of women free development, only future civilization can tell.
Our last lecturer on this subject, Professor Clark, of Stanford University, in his
excellent paper, gave us much hope for this future. His eloquent appeal to women to
stand by their cause until the last shackle of bondage was removed, must have found
•
♦From Henry T. Backle.
112 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
an answering echo in every heart worthy of beating in the nineteenth century. The
woman whom such an appeal does not reach should have lived in the feudal age and not
in ours. Professor Clark is a product of the modern education of the West, where the
boy and girl, working side by side in the same schoolroom, learn to properly respect
each other, and understand that brains like souls are sexless.
I claim complete freedom for women because, without it, she cannot be the equal
of father, brother, husband or son. I claim, with Harriet Beecher Stowe, that liberty
for a nation means, liberty for every individual of that nation. I claim for women an
equal voice in making the laws that govern her, and an equal chance in developing
the gifts with which a just God has endowed her. I claim, in short, an equal right to
all that man claims for himself.
HOMER AND HIS POEMS.
By MRS. NINA MORAIS COHEN.
From the storm and stress of political strife, the grand old man of England turns
to Homer for rest. In an age so supremely subjective as our own, the objective out-
look of the antique life, its heroic action as opposed
to the introspection of our time, carries the sharp salt
breath of the boundless sea to the dweller in crowded
cities. Let us also turn to Homer seeking that fair-
flowing fountain of the young world for a draught
which shall help to banish the "obstinate question-
ings" of the world grown old. Our talk today shall
be of the poet and of his winged words — what is
known of his personality and of his works. We shall
review briefly his stories, linger a moment upon some
of his beauties, and give our attention especially to
the Homeric criticism which aims to decide whether
Homer is, or is not, the author of the Iliad and the
Odyssey.
For over two thousand five hundred years tradi-
tion told its tale of a blind minstrel of Asia Minor,
who begged his way from door to door singing his
immortal verses. These verses, committed to mem-
ory by professional singers or reciters, became the
supreme treasure of intellectual Greece, and their
text was as familiar to the ordinary Greek as that of
the Bible to the English peasant. The poems entered
into the curriculum of common-school education; they were the authority upon the
genealogies of families; to them vexed questions in theology and custom were
referred; the current stock of quotation was mainly drawn from them. Learned men dis-
cussed in hair-splitting debate such questions as these: "Why did Nausicaa use clear
water instead of sea water to wash her clothes?" "In which hand was Aphrodite
wounded?" Alcibiades did not scruple to strike a schoolmaster who did not possess
a "Homer"; and Alexander, it is well known, slept with a gold-encased copy under his
pillow. The poems were inextricably interwoven with the life of the most cultivated
nation that ever existed. What did this people know of Homer?
Of his actual life nothing was known in historic Greek times, nor is known today.
The word "Homerus" means fitted together, and is used generally to denote a hostage
in war, and not a fitter of verses. Gladstone thinks Homer an appellation and not a
genuine name; but upon this, as upon almost all other points of criticism, the doctors
disagree.
The date of Homer's existence was greatly debated among the ancients. Aris-
tarchus, a very distinguished critic of the Alexandrian school, places him as early as
1044 B. C, while Herodotus, the historian, thinks 850 the proper date. Could the
question of time be settled it would be of vital import as bearing upon the historic
Nina Morais Cohen is a native of Philadelphia, Pa. She was born December 6, 1855. Her parents were S.
MoraiB, LL. D., minister of the Jewish Congregation Mecko6 Israel, of Philadelphia, and Clara E. Weil Morais. Her father
is an Italian from Leghorn, her mother an American. Mrs. Cohen was educated in Philadelphia. She married Emannel
Cohen., of the law firm of Ketchel. Cohen & Shaw, Minneapolis, Minn. She is a contributor to various joarnals. In relig-
ions faith she is a Jewess. Her postotfice address is care of Mr. Emanuel Cohen, Minneapolis, Minn.
(8) "3
MRS. NINA MORAIS COHEN.
114 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
authority of Homer; for, were he but a generation or two later than the events described
in the poems, his exposition of the social life, religion, morals, learning and general
character of the Greeks would be possessed of a supreme historic value. In regard to
this value of Homer, modern critics form a sliding-scale of disagreement. Gladstone
believes Homer to have lived at a very ancient date, and accepts his dictum, in gen-
eral, as a final test of the Greek status. Prof. Evelyn Abbott, at the other pole,
regards the Homeric life as almost entirely imaginative. If it be true that the author
of the Iliad composed his verses several centuries after the Fall of Troy, that tale
would, for obvious reasons, be much less authoritative as a standard of Greek life than
George Eliot's" Romola" is of life in Florence during the Revival of Learning.
Eight biographies of Homer were known in historic Greece, but by general ver-
dict they are all spurious. We know that " Seven cities now contend for Homer dead,
through which the living Homer begged his bread," and so vigorous did this conten-
tion grow that the people of Smyrna displayed Homer's monument, and the people of
los his grave. The general belief is that the poems were brought in historic times
from the Ionian cities of Asia Minor into Greece proper; some cities, however, claim
that the poems, being very ancient and originally composed in Greece, were carried
into Asia by the Achaeans fleeing from the Doric invasion, and were afterward reim-
ported by them. Gladstone brings many arguments to bear in support of this view,
the most important being Homer's thorough acquaintance with Greece proper, both
on the coast and in the interior, and his slight descriptions of the Asiatic country.
The tradition of Homer's blindness seems to have arisen from a mention thereof
in a so-called Homeric hymn to Apollo, which is considered spurious. In support of
this popular notion it may be observed that the minstrel of Scheria in the Odyssey,
praised most tenderly by Homer, is blind; that color is rarely mentioned in the poems,
and when mentioned not very appropriately. But the descriptions of sea and shore,
of movement and action, render it almost impossible that Homer should have been
blind, at least until of a very mature age. That he honored the office of bard is like-
wise shown in his characterization of the same blind minstrel. Minstrelship in his
day was one of the very few learned professions, and it was held in great honor. The
bard was usually retained by some noble house; but this does not seem to have been
Homer's position, as he left no traces of any patron's influence upon his work — such
traces as may be seen in the writings of Horace or Tasso, or even of later recipients
•of noble patronage. Thus Homer speaks of Demodocus, the Divine minstrel of
Scheria:
"Then the henchman drew near, leading with him the beloved minstrel, whom
the Muse loved dearly, and she gave him both good and evil; of his sight she reft
him, but granted him sweet song. Then Pontonus, the henchman, set for him a high
chair, inlaid with silver, in the midst of the guests, leaning it against the tall pillar, and
he hung the loud lyre on a pin, close above his head, and showed him how to lay his
hands on it. And close by him he placed a basket, and a fair table, and a goblet of
wine by his side, to drink when his spirit bade him. So they stretched forth their
hands upon the good cheer spread before them. But after they had put from them
the desire of meat and drink, the Muse stirred the minstrel to sing the songs of famous
men."
On another occasion Odysseus, the hero, thus honors the minstrel:
" Lo, henchman, take this mess, and hand it to Demodocus, that he may eat, and
I will bid him hail, despite my sorrow. For minstrels from all men on earth get their
meed of honor and worship; inasmuch as the Muse teaches them the paths of song,
and loveth the tribe of minstrels."
Homer's works are traditionally believed to be the Iliad (the story of Ilium or
Troy) and the Odyssey (the adventures of Odysseus on his return home). Several
hymns, smaller epics and other works formerly attributed to him, are now generally
considered spurious. " Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles" are the opening words in
the poem miscalled the Iliad. It is essentially the tale of the Wrath. At the open-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 115
ingof the poem the Greeks (then called Achaeans) are sitting before Troy in the ninth
year of the siege. The story of the seduction of Helen is not set forth by Homer, nor
any of the now famous events preceding the ninth year; neither is the conclusion of
the struggle pictured, nor the oft-foreboded death of its chief hero, Achilles. The
action is confined to a few days, covered by the Wrath and its sad termination.
The story of the Iliad is as follows: In the distribution of spoil after the plunder-
ing of the town of Chryse, Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, the priest of Apollo, had
fallen to the lot of Agamemnon, chief of the Achaeans. The father of the maiden
came to her captor with a ransom, which, being refused, the old man prayed to Apollo
to revenge his wrong.
" So spake he in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him, and came down from the
peaks of Olympus wroth at heart, bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered
quiver. And the arrows clanged upon his shoulders in his wrath as the god moved;
and he descended like to night. Then he sate him aloof from the ships, and let an
arrow fly; and there was heard a dread clanging of the silver bow. First did he assail
the mules and fleet dogs, but afterward, aiming at the men his piercing dart, he smote;
and the pyres of the dead burnt continually in multitude."
After nine days of the plague, a council of the nobles is summoned, and Agamem-
non is by them advised to return the maiden. Now the chief of these advisers is
Achilles, fleet-footed, golden-haired Achilles, like unto the gods. Agamemnon
enraged at this advice threatens to take from Achilles his captive maiden Briseis,
whom Achilles loves. Words wax hot between them and Achilles is about to draw
his sword when the gray-eyed Athene catches him by his golden hair, being visible to
him alone. Terribly shines her eyes as she forbids him to take any action. So
Achilles must needs submit to the loss of his maiden, but he nurses his resentment in
his breast, and weeps anon, and sits upon the shore of the gray sea, gazing moodily
across the boundless main. His mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, arises like a mist from
the depths at the prayer of her son, agrees to petition Zeus that the battle may go
against the Achaeans, so that they may bitterly rue the injustice done to Achilles.
This petition Thetis makes, and here we are introduced to the Olympic Court, which
is divided in interest between the Achaeans and Trojans, and which aids and frustrates
the various heroes, and even participates in the combats. Interesting indeed is the
theurgy of Homer; distinct, picturesque and full of subtle individuality are his char-
acterizations of gods and goddesses. But we must perforce confine our attention t*o
the main action.
Achilles sulks in his tent, and his wish is fulfilled. The Achaeans meet fearful
reverses. During the retirement of Achilles the several books are filled with accounts
of the doings of the various chiefs, with descriptions of wounds in all conceivable
forms, with pictures of Troy and Trojan life; yet so rapid is the movement of the
poems, so vivid the individuality of each chieftain, that these details rarely drag.
Even the famous catalogue of the ships is enlivened by bits of gracious description
and fitting epithet.
After serious losses Agamemnon sends ambassadors to the tent of Achilles with
ample apologies, full of restitution and promises of large gifts. Achilles, with mar-
velous eloquence, refuses all. The Trojans continue to gain upon the Achaeans, driv-
ing them behind their ramparts, and setting fire to their ships. All the noted chieftains
are wounded and disabled. At this juncture Achilles' dear friend, the companion of
his boyhood, whom he loves with a love passing that of woman, Patroclus, begs Achilles
to join the combat. Achilles refuses, but he allows Patroclus to don the famous armor
of Achilles and to lead the Myrmidons into the battle. The Trojans, thinking that
Patroclus is Achilles, are driven back in flight; but the valiant Hector, leader of the
Trojans, fights with Patroclus and slays him. When the news is brought to Achilles
he tears his hair, lies in the dust moaning terribly, and swears never to taste food until
he has revenged his friend. His mother and her sea-maidens rise from the deep to
comfort Achilles. Again Thetis proceeds to Olympus with a petition to obtain from
116 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Hephaestos (the smith-god) a most wondrous suit of armor. Clad in this glittering
mail, the light of his shield shining afar off, as shines the light of the moon, the infu-
riated Achilles shouting his terrible war-cry, his teeth gnashing, his eyes blazing, dashes
his steeds into the fight.
Everything yields to him; the Trojans flee within their gates; the River Scaman-
dros rears his furious wave against him. But the gods fight for Achilles, and Hector,
in the sight of his aged parents, is slain, mutilated, bound to the swift chariot of
Achilles, and his fair head trailed in the dust. Now Achilles had sworn to give the
corpse of Hector to the dogs; but the gods put into the heart of old Priam the thought
of going in person to Achilles to beg the body of his son. He proceeds to the tent.
What happens Homer shall tell: "But they were unaware of great Priam as he
came in, and so stood he a-nigh and clasped in his hands the knees of Achilles, and
kissed his hands, terrible, man-slaying, that slew many of Priam's sons » * * *
So Achilles wondered when he saw god-like Priam, and the rest wondered likewise,
and looked upon one another. Then Priam spake and entreated him, saying: ' Bethink
thee, O Achilles, like to the gods, of thy father that is of years with me, on the
grievous pathway of old age. Him haply are the dwellers round about entreating
evilly, nor is there any to ward from him ruin and bane. Nevertheless, when he hear-
eth of thee as yet alive, he rejoiceth in his heart and hopeth withal day after day that
he shall see his dear son returning from Troy land. But I, I am utterly unblessed since
I begat sons, the best men in wide Troy land, but declare unto thee that none of them
is left * * * * Yea, fear thou the gods, Achilles, and have compassion on me,
even me, bethinking thee of thy father. Lo, I am more piteous than he, and have
braved what none other man on earth hath braved before, to stretch forth my hand
toward the face of the slayer of my sons.
"Thus spake he, and stirred within Achilles desire to make lament for his father.
And he touched the old man's hand and gently moved him back. And as they both
bethought them of their dead, so Priam for man-slaying Hector wept sore as he was
fallen before Achilles' feet, and Achilles wept for his own father and now again for
Patroclus, and their moan went up throughout the house."
So Priam takes home the dear son's body; and Hector's aged mother, Hekuba,
and his sweet young wife, Andromache, make lament; and Argive Helen wails for
him who was ever gentle to her and reproached her not — her at whom all men shud-
der. And the Trojans make a lofty pyre, and mourn nine days, and on the tenth
they hold the funeral for Hector, tamer of horses. So closes the Iliad.
Let us turn now to the fascinating adventures of the steadfast, goodly Odysseus,
that crafty man of many devices. The plot has been admirably told in a simple man-
ner by Charles Lamb, in his "Voyage of Ulysses." But in simplicity of narration, and
in absorbing interest, the text itself is supreme; and apart from any poetical value,
the story is a never-failing delight to the imagination of old and young. As the
Iliad treats of war, the Odyssey deals mainly with domestic life; " the one," says
Bentley, " is for men, the other for women."
In the opening chapter Odysseus, after a wandering of ten years, is held an unwill-
ing guest by the loving nymph, Calypso, on her Island Ogygia; but the gray-eyed
Athene, his protectress, prays Zeus to restore him to his home. Calypso, commanded
by the deathless gods, allows Odysseus to build a raft which she stores with provis-
ions, and then reluctantly she sends him on his way. During the time of Odysseus'
long absence from Ithaca, his son Telemachus has grown to manhood, and his wife,
the wise and gracious Penelope, is besieged by suitors in marriage. Now Penelope,
still longing and hoping against hope for the return of Odysseus, tells her suitors that
she will choose among them after she has woven a web that shall be the shroud of
her father-in-law, the aged Laertes. This she weaves in the day and ravels by night
until the trick is discovered. The suitors then wax clamorous; they remain about the
house of Odysseus and devour his goods. When the story opens Telemachus resolves
to submit to the waste of his substance no longer, and impelled by Athene he fits out
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 117
a vessel and goes in search of his father. He visits the courts of Nestor and Mene-
laus; sees the beautiful Helen restored and repentant, and hears many stories of the
war. After vain seeking he returns to Ithaca. Meanwhile Odysseus on the raft of
Calypso is wrecked by the sea god Poseidon, whose anger he had incurred when he had
put out the one eye of Poseidon's son — the Cyclops, Polyphemus. Saved by the aid of
his patron Athene, Odysseus is tossed upon the rocky shore of the Island of Scheria,
bleeding and exhausted. Upon this island dwell a colony of cultivated Phoenicians.
The daughter of the King Alcinous is the lovely Princess Nausicaa. She is in the
dawn of womanhood, and into her gentle heart comes the dream of married love; so
she wishes to wash her linen for her bridal day. But she does not acknowledge her
thought even to herself,and under the plea of washing the linen of the king she drives
with her maidens to the shore where sea and river meet. After trampling the clothes
in the clear wave, the maidens play at games and so disturb Odysseus asleep among
the leaves. Naked and bloody, soiled by the wave and the earth, he appears like a
wild beast before the maidens, driving them back in a fright. But his ever ready
tongue wins the heart of the princess, and giving him clothing she tells him to follow
her to the city behind the wain, yet not to keep close to her after they reach town,
lest the gossips should talk. So Odysseus throws himself upon the hospitality of
King Alcinous and Queen Arete, and having rested and bathed his glorious limbs, he
tells to his wondering listeners his adventures from the time of the F'all of Troy. He
speaks of his hail -breadth escape from the one-eyed giant Polyphemus whom he
had blinded, an escape made by suspending himself to the wool on the belly of a
ram; of the gift of the bag of the winds by King yEolus, pierced by his curious fol-
lowers, and of how the freed winds then blew them to and fro upon the wide sea; of his
life on the Island of Circe, on which his men were turned into swine; of his adventures
in dread Hades, where he converses with the ghosts of the dead heroes; of his sail
through the Sirens' Pass, when he is bound to the mast lest he should be beguiled to
destruction by the entrancing song; of his passage through the fearful Straits of Scylla
and Charybdis; and of other enthralling adventures ended by total loss of men and
ships and his imprisonment on Calypso's Island.
Then he begs of his host to give him safe convoy to his home in Ithaca. This
request is granted, and many guests-gifts are bestowed upon the man whose speech
wins all hearts, and the princess, his savior, may cherish only his words, but worthy
words they are: " May the gods grant thee all thy heart's desire; a husband and a
home, and a mind at one with his may they give — a good gift, for there is nothing
mightier and nobler than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house, a
grief to their foes, and to their friends great joy, but their own hearts know it best. "
So Odysseus is taken by his friends to Ithaca, and there, disguised as a beggar, he
goes to the hut of the faithful swineherd Eumaius, and learns all that has occurred
during his absence. At this point Telemachus returns, and the father revealing him-
self to the son, they lovingly embrace, while pitifully falls the tears beneath their
brows. Then the two, with the aid of Athene, devise a plan for killing all the suitors.
Odysseus goes to his home still in the guise of a beggar, receives the insults of the
suitors, talks with Penelope, and is nearly betrayed by his old nurse who discovers a
familiar scar while washing his feet. The suitors make trial of their strength by
attempting to draw the bowjof Odysseus, but no one can draw it until Odysseus takes
it in his hand and easily sends the arrow through the twelve axe-rings. Then he turns
upon the suitors, and by the aid of the gods all are slaughtered, and Odysseus is re-
venged. The wise Penelope, however, refuses to believe that the stranger is her husband,
and tries to prove him by ordering the nurse to bring out the goodly bed ofOdysseus,
which he made for himself. But- says Odysseus: " Verily, a bitter word is this, lady,
that thou hast spoken. Who has set my bed otherwhere? Hard would it be for one,
how skilled soever, unless a god were to come, that might easily set it in another
place, if so he would. But of men there is none living, howsoever strong in his youth,
that could lightly upheave it, for a great marvel is wrought in the fashion of the bed,
118 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and it was I that made it and none other. There was growing a bush of olive, long of
leaf, and most goodly of growth, within the inner court, and the stem as large as a
pillar. Round about this I built the chamber, till I had finished it, with stones close
set, and I roofed it over well and added thereto compacted doors fitting well. Next I
sheared off all the light wood of the long leaved olive, and rough-hewed the trunk
upwards from the root, and smoothed it round with the adze, well and skillfully, and
made straight the line thereto, and so fashioned it into the bed-post, and I bored it all
with the auger. Beginning from this head-post, I wrought at the bedstead till I had
finished it, and made it fair with inlaid work of gold and of silver and of ivory. Then
I made fast therein a bright purple band of ox-hide. Even so I declare to thee this
token, and I know not, lady, if the bedstead be yet fast in his place, or if some man
has cut away the stem of the olive tree and set the bedstead otherwhere. So he spake
and at once her knees were loosened, and her heart melted within her, as she knew
the sure tokens that Odysseus showed her. Then she fell a-weeping, and ran straight
toward him and cast her hands about his neck, and kissed his head."
Absorbing are the plots of these poems, and wondrous the literary dexterity with
which they are handled; yet these features are the least of those which make them a
joy forever. In the drawing of individual character, Homer has never been excelled;
and while in range he is at least equaled by our Shakespeare, it seems to me that the
English poet never breathed the breath of life into so god-like yet human a creation
as Odysseus, skilled in devices. Both poets are eminently objective; each is at home
equally in the hut and the palace, but Shakespeare, living in a more enlightened age^
has given us no sweeter specimen of girlhood than the Princess Nausicaa of the Odys-
sey, nor of wifely dignity and grace than the wise Penelope, nor of gentle loveliness
than poor Andromache. Achilles, noble but resentful, may be compared in these
qualities with Coriolanus, but the beauteous golden-haired Achaean is infinitely more
lovable than the stern Roman. Old Adam in "As You Like It" is but a silhouette of
the well-rounded picture of Eumaeus, the swineherd of Ithaca. Even the gods and
goddesses of Homer are endowed with pulsating life, and forever remain with us the
gray-eyed Athene, the ox-eyed, white-armed Hera.
Of the form in which these images of genius present themselves, it may be said
that Homer wrote in the most beautiful language that was ever spoken by human
tongue; of it he had supreme command. He fitted sound to sense as no other poet
has done. "No one who is a stranger to Greek literature," says Professor Jebb, "has
seen how perfect an instrument it is possible for human speech to be." In clear-
ness, in flexibility, the Greek is unrivaled, having by force of its particles the power
of expressing delicate shades of thought, untranslatable except by tedious circumlo-
cution. The measureof the poems iscorrespondent to our iambic hexameter, of which
the most notable example in English is Longfellow's "Evangeline" —
" Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of Heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels."
This is a classic measure, foreign to the genius of our English tongue, and no satisfac-
tory translation of Homer in the native meter has ever been made. In fact, while
translations are legion, no adequate rendition as a whole, in any form, has been pro-
duced. The necessities of English versification so pervert the simple directness of
Homer's style, so retard his swift-winged flight, that a sympathetic presentation in
prose best conveys to mind of the English readers the characteristic traits of Homer's
style. Such a version is Leaf, Myers & Lang's of the Iliad, and Butcher & Lang's of
the Odyssey — the translations used in this paper. Yet it will readily be seen that to
those who read Homer in translation, the charm of his literary style must, in a large
measure, be missing. Matthew Arnold, in his delightful essays on translating Homer,
expresses the hope and the belief that an English poet, capable of handling Homer in
his native meter, will yet be born. "The perfect translator," says Arnold, "must be
rapid in movement, simple in style, plain in language, natural in thought, eminently
noble — in grand manner."
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 119
But while the full enjoyment of the flavor of his style is reserved for the scholar
in keenness of wit, in tenderness of pathos, in fitness of epithet, in loveliness of senti-
ment, in grandeur of simile, Homer appeals to the unlearned as well as to the scholar.
I wish that I had the time to read to you such passages as the parting of Hector and
Andromache; the meeting of Odysseus with his old father, or with his neglected dog,
who moans and dies upon once more beholding his beloved master; or that I might
show you the glorious Hector bursting through the Achaean gate, his face like the
sudden night, shining in wondrous mail, with two spears in his hands.
Would that I might take you to the shore of the unharvested sea, where the dark
wave singeth about thestorm,and roareth on the long beach, while the main resoundeth.
And again to this same echoing beach, where the sea-wave lifteth up itself in close
array before the driving of the west wind; out on the deep doth it first raise its head,
and then it breaketh upon the land, and belloweth aloud, and goeth with arching
crest about the promontories, and speweth the foaming brine afar. I would show to
you the assembling of the people like thronging bees from a hollow rock, ever in
fresh procession, flying among the flowers of spring, some on this hand and some on
that.
So much for Homer and the poems ascribed to him — so much for Homer, the
poet, as he appeals to a lover of poetry. His value to the student of comparative
religions and folk-lore, to the archaeologist and ethnologist, to the historian and
sociologist, we shall not even touch upon. For we have set our faces toward the
long vista of Homeric criticism, and of this criticism Seneca said in his day, that life
was too short to enable one to arrive at a just conclusion. But we will pause for a
passing glance and be not tempted to consider too curiously.
The first authentic point in the literary history is the fact that the poems were
publicly recited by the rhapsodists at the festivals of Athene in the sixth century,
B. C. Of the manner of their perpetuation from the prehistoric days of Homer, noth-
ing positive is known. A tradition tells that Homer left a school of disciples, and
there seems to have existed a society or guild called the Homeridae in Chios. But
whether these were a literary society, or descendants of Homer by blood, or really
custodians of his verse, does not appear. When the rhapsodists come upon the
historic stage as the authorized reciters of Homer, Solon orders that they should
" proceed with promptings," thus implying that the prompter held a recognized text
Pisistratus, the enlightened tyrant of Athens who followed Solon, is generally
credited with having caused a commission of learned men to collect and put in proper
order the songs of Homer. On the one hand, it is claimed that this commission
merely gave forth what would be termed in our time a correct edition. On the other
side, it is contended that the commission collected "stray songs," vaguely known as
Homer's, making additions and subtractions which they deemed suitable to the con-
struction of a harmonious work of art; in fact, that Pisistratus made our Homer. The
latter view is weakened by the recorded custom of promptings in Solon's time before
cited, and by the statement of Hipparchus, the son ol Pisistratus, in a Platonic
dialogue. Hipparchus there tells us that the rhapsodists took up each other in order
" as they still do." This leaves no doubt as to Plato's opinion, and to the current
opinion in Plato's day concerning the traditional character of the text.
The first study of Homer that can really be called critical was made in the Alex-
andrian Age. Then arose a school of Separatists (about 170 B. C.) who believed that
the Iliad and the Odyssey were by different authors. Zenodotus, the first chief of
the great mu.seum, wa.s also the first critic of the Homeric text, and he was soon fol-
lowed by Aristarchus, the greatest of ancient critics, to whom is ascribed the present
division of Homer into books. Aristarchus discovered a number of spurious passages
in the poems, but he had no doubt that Homer was virtually their author.
At the end of the eighteenth century there was found in V'enice, in the library of
St. Mark, a manuscript of the Iliad, dating from the tenth century. Around this
transcription were marginal notes, called "scholia." These were textual criticisms by
120 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Aristarchus and other learned grammarians. The finding of the "scholia" gave a new
impulse to Homeric criticism, and led to the famous Recension of the Iliad by the
German scholar, Frederick Augustus Wolf, in 1795. Previous to Wolf, the idea that
Homer was not the sole author of epics ascribed to him had been suggested by
Bentley, Rousseau, and others in modern times, and, it is said, by Josephus, Cicero, and
others in ancient times. But no serious attempt at proof had ever been made until
Wolf, in his revolutionary Prolegomena (preface to his edition of the Iliad), shook the
literary world to its foundations, and inaugurated a new era of literary criticism. The
celebrated Wolfian theory, is in the main, as follows: Alphabetic writing, according
to Wolf, was not known to the Greeks until about 600 B. C. There is no evidence
that the laws were written until that time, and certainly a prose literature, which calls
for writing, was not in existence previously. It is true that many verses were older,
but verse was the original form of extemporaneous oratory or chanting, and the
profession of rhapsodist was that of one who recites from memory. In Homer him-
self, there is but a single mention of a message by characters, and that is the case of
Bellerophon, "who bore tokens of woe, graven on a folded tablet, many deadly
things," to the King of Lydia. This was in some form a written message to the king, in
which the writer requests him to slay Bellerophon, and it was not until the tenth day of
Bellerophon's visit that the king asked to see "what token he bore." Now, this token
on the folded tablet does not by any means imply alphabetic writing, and throughout
the rest of the poems we hear of no communication as passing between any of the
chiefs in Troy and their families at home. Even if letters were known, nobody read,
and wooden or leaden tablets were unable to contain lengthy works. If the poems
were not written, it is impossible that the text could have been preserved from cor-
ruption during several centuries. Besides, there are manifest discrepancies in the
poems themselves. In one case a chief, who has been killed in an early book, is made
to attend the funeral of his son in a later book, and there are other discrepancies of
time, place and style. Then, too, the exploits of all the chiefs have nothing to do
with the story of the Wrath of Achilles, and are manifestly inserted to glorify local
heroes. These are the main grounds of the Wolfian theory. The conclusion is that
the Iliad is a series of short songs put together in a later age. In regard to the
Odyssey, the opinion of the Wolfian school is that it is of different authorship
altogether from the Iliad.
Wolf's theory has been violently attacked, learnedly defended, and largely elab-
orated. Grote, the historian of Greece, makes two distinct works of the Iliad: One
he calls the Wrath of Achilles, mainly by Homer; the other the Iliad, composed of float-
ing songs. Lachman, a celebrated German scholar, finds in the Iliad all the joints of
sixteen small works. Mr. Walter Leaf has recently issued his edition of the Iliad,
compiled by getting together twenty-six passages from different books of the poems.
He, of course, has scholarly reasons for considering all the rest spurious. "The
Nation," in reviewing this work, declares that "in a century after the promulgation
of the Wolfian idea (that is, in 1895), ^^e number who believe in the theory of genu-
ineness of Homer's works as traditionally received, will be so small that first-class
scholars will not consider it worth while to waste time in endeavoring to convince
them of its untenableness."
A singular feature in all these later criticisms is the fact that the very noblest
portions of the poem are considered not Homeric. The embassy to Achilles, con-
taining the finest eloquence of the poem; the meeting of Achilles and Priam, contain-
ing the noblest pathos — these and other passages of like significance are relegated to
floating songs of unknown poets, and the Iliad becomes to the layman a Hamlet with-
out the Prince.
But the Wolfian theory and its progeny have not gone unchallenged by eminent
scholars. The English critics are its choicest defenders. The answers to the theory
are mainly these:
First. Writing may have existed at the time of Homer, for the Greeks were in
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 121
close communication with the Phcenicians as early as iioo B. C. The Phoenicians
were skilled in writing, and the quick-witted Greeks would not be slow to imitate so
useful an art.
Second. Even if writing were unknown, transmission by memory was not at all
impossible. Rhapsodists were a professional class, trained purely for the purpose of
memorizing, and the public recitations in which each might criticise the other, insured
the integrity of the text. Extraordinary feats of memory are not unknown in our own
times. Macaulay could, without effort, recite half of "Paradise Lost;" Dr. Bathurst is
said to have known the whole Iliad in Greek when a boy. If such performances are
possible by non-professional reciters in an era when writing has weakened the power
of memory, they certainly were not impossible in a trained and picked class of mem-
orizers who could not depend on writing.
Third. There are discrepancies, it is true; but they are only such as might occur
in long poems by a single author, especially if not written; and while some interpola-
tions may be granted, they are not sufficient to disturb the general integrity of the
text.
Fourth. The plots are essentially bound together by an underlying unity; the
style and turn of language and thought in both poems are those of the one master;
and if the author of the Iliad and he of the Odyssey are not the same, then nature
must have produced bountifully the supreme poetic inspiration when the world was
young.
This is, in very small mold, the modern Homeric question; its bibliography is enor-
mous, although the controversy is really in its incipiency. Its solution will be aided
by archaeological researches, by studies in comparative mythologies and folk-lore, by
philological investigation. The work ofSchliemann on the Hill of Hissarlik (his Troy),
which promised so much in confirmation of the Iliad, is now being taken into question.
His so-called tomb of Agamemnon is said to be that of a barbarian woman of a much
later age. I shall conclude my paper with two charming fragments of translation.
The first, by Dr. Hawtrey, gives to the English ear the swing and meter of the Greek
hexameter. Helen has been called by Priam to the walls of Troy to tell him the
names of the Greek chieftains. She says:
"Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia;
Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember;
Two — only two — remain whom I see not among the commanders;
Castor, fleet in the car, Polydeuces brave with the cestus—
Own dear brethren of mine— one parent loved us as infants.
Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedaemon,
Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through the waters,
Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of Heroes,
All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?
So said she; they long since in earth's soft arms were reposing,
There in their own dear land, their fatherland — Lacedaemon."
' I
The other is a noble blank verse rendition by Tennyson of one of the loveliest
passages in the Iliad:
"So Hector spake; the Trojans roared applause;
Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke,
And each beside his chariot bound his own;
And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep
In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine
And bread from out the houses brought, and heap'd
Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain
Roll'd the rich vapor far into the heaven.
And these all night upon the bridge of war
Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed;
122 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart;
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse, the steeds
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn."
DEVELOPMENT IN EASTERN WASHINGTON.*
MRS. JENNIE F. WHITE.
By MRS. JENNIE F. WHITE.
The theme assigned me for this address is "Art and Educational Facilities for the
Women of Eastern Washington." These are both influenced much by the surround-
ings and conditions of life. What a country for art is
our loved Washington! Here are the well-known
Palouse or Yakima valleys, responding to the invita-
tion of man with fruit-burdened tree, rich green grass
and waving golden grain, bursting forth so wonder-
fully prolific as to astonish their owners, and in many
places retaining a moisture beneath the surface which
sustains them in the greatest degree of abundance in
fruitage and harvest, even though for months not a
drop of rain falls.
Where still uncultivated the prairies are dotted
with flowers of every hue, which succeed each other
in order, spreading a perfect carpet of golden butter-
cups first in the springtime, followed by purple, pink,
Scarlet or blue, each in its season predominating,
though hundreds of varieties can often be found in a
day's collecting.
Through these valleys wander ever beautiful riv-
ers, carrying the bright sparkling waters from the
mountain rills and snows. Gradually rise the foot
hills, or suddenly the rocky bluffs, while far away and
above tower the ever snow-capped mountain peaks,
and when one of our glorious sunsets floods all in golden glory; when clear across
the sky flames the crimson, gold and amber, touching the edge of every cloud into a
radiant, dazzling brilliancy, while every shade from these to deepest purple may be
traced, so softly blended; then these snowy peaks are capped with living, blazing gold,
as if the dear old mountains sought to express to man their knowledge of the pure
gold and silver hidden below.
Dead indeed would be the soul not stirred as by a master's power; poor indeed
the talent not inspired by such scenes, ever changing, yet always grand, bold, sublime.
Washington has been ever courteous to her daughters in many ways. There are
no schools from which they are excluded within her boundaries, and there was a time
when they voted in all elections, united with their brothers in the work of caucus
and copimittee, sat on juries and served in positions of trust not usually open to
v,^omen; yet we believe our women are as gentle and womanly, as good and true as
any in the whole wide world, and we try very hard indeed not to ape airs masculine.
Today we vote at school elections and serve on school boards; but the greater
Mrs. Jennie F. Drake White was born in .Maine. Her parents were Joseph T. Drake and Betsy Lonnf ellow Chapman
Drake (arelativeof the poet Longfellow). She was edncated in the seminary now known as Ricker Classical Institute,
Houlton, Me. She has traveled extensively in America and Eastern Canada. She married Robinson G. White in 1879, and is
the mother of one son. Her principal literary works are nuraeroos poems, essays, addresses and sermons. Her profession
is that of a joarnalist, at present a member of the editorial staff of the Spokane Daily and Weekly Chronicle. In reliRious
faith she is a Universalist, and occasionally supplies the pulpit of that church, though she is not a minister. Mrs. White is
still young, being little more than thirty years of age. and is now at work on a novel bearing on social conditions, which
critics declare will win notice, being quite unusual in lines of thought. Her postoifice address is Chronicle office, Spo-
kane, Wash.
*The title of the address as read was : ".A.rt and Educational Facilities for the Women of Eastern Washington.'*
123
124 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
privileges or responsibilities have been removed from our hands. Many hesitate
about coming to the great Northwest with their families, fearing the loss of educa-
tional advantages in our savage wilds. They are greatly surprised when they arrive.
No state in America has more beautiful, commodious and improved school build-
ings than we have in the new State of Washington, or better conducted schools within
them. A hamlet is started on some quiet hillside near a running stream, a few cots, a
mill, a store, a schoolhouse, and, later, when the children are provided for, a church,
and in a year quite a little village, with electric lights, water plant and other modern
necessities, has appeared as if by magic.
The High School of Spokane is a beautiful brick structure, with neat play-
grounds and green sloping yards. A photograph of it may be seen in the Washing-
ton school exhibit, as well as an excellent model carved in wood by the pupils. In
every part of the city stand similar buildings, though not so commodious, and other
cities of our state are equally well provided. We have agricultural colleges, business
colleges, church colleges, and in aU of them excellent teachers in every department.
In giving you a brief sketch of the departments of art and educational work in
which Washington women are interested, I will present my own city of Spokane as
the type, and you will please remember that we have many other cities which to a
greater or less degree are repetitions of what is really the leading city of Eastern
Washington, though not the oldest.
That art is highest which is most free from things material, hence the goddess of
music leads them all. And we are great music lovers in the Northwest. At the con-
cert given as a test of the ability of six young ladies to represent us as state singers
from Washington at this great fair, in this yet greater Chicago, our large opera house
was packed to the doors and hundreds were unable to enter.
The young ladies rendered classical selections in a manner to win* storms of
applause. Numerous floral tributes crossed the footlights, and when Miss Berry of
Walla Walla sang, a shower of roses and lilies fell around her from boxes and balcony.
The state has a host of charming singers, and Palouse City is the happy possessor of
a ladies' brass band, which is the pride of Eastern Washington. They play with much
skill and accuracy many difficult selections, and are highly applauded in every locality.
Their uniforms are neat and becoming, and they are cultivated ladies, every one of
them.
Our Conservatory of Music is conducted entirely by women, with the best teachers
obtainable in vocal and instrumental music, physical culture and voice training.
We have a Mozart Club, which employs a professor of high musical ability as
instructor, and which presents the compositions of the old masters in a manner to win
applause from a critical audience, and which for variety occasionally favors the pub-
lic with light opera.
We have a school of oratory, also classes in elocution and movements, excellently
managed by women. Spokane is also very proud of its Young Ladies' Seminary,
where all departments of modern education are taught, with teachers who have had
the advantage of foreign travel and years of study in Germany in painting and, music.
The citizens of Washington are fortunate in all lines of education, and the ad-
vantages offered their children, and especially so in the knowledge that their daugh-
ters can have such care and instruction at home. If the work continues as it is now
so well begun, St. Mary's will ere long rival the famous schools of the East, to which
our daughters have been accustomed to go for finished education.
Several art studios are owned by women who teach in every department of draw-
ing and painting. An art league is in active work, with excellent teachers in land-
scape painting, china decoration, wood carving, molding and art needlework. Lessons
are given by the League, which numbers more ladies than gentlemen by far, at low
prices, to those who desire to learn and who cannot afford private lessons.
The paintings in the Washington State buildings are largely the work of her
daughters, as are the collection of three hundred varieties of wild flowers done in
water colors, and well worth the time of looking over.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 125
A kindergarten is also sustained in each of these schools, and private kindergar-
tens in different parts of the state are preparing the little ones for the next step in
life's advancement, aiding as well in building up healthy, robust bodies for the
spirit's dwelling-place. Each of these is duplicated again and again. Walla Walla»
having the best of educational privileges; Yakima being ornamented by school build-
ings which are a credit to the enterprise of her citizens. Ellensburgh has, in connec-
tion with the other departments of knowledge, which are her pride, our State Normal
School, Pullman our Agricultural College, and all the lesser towns and cities their
fair proportion of honors educational.
In women's clubs Spokane has the Cultus Club, with membership limited to twenty-
five, holding weekly parlor meetings devoted to the study of literature, music, art,
science and theology, giving entertainments frequently and having as its aim mutual
improvement and social enjoyment. The Spokane Indians use the word "Cultus,''
meaning " no good," or " know nothing." The Spokane Sorosis, named for the New
York Club so well known to you all, contains a larger membership studies parliament-
ary usages, the constitution and national laws, and includes literature, history, art,
science and questions of the day in its discussions.
The Daughters of Rebekah and the Eastern Star Lodge are large, well organized
societies, while Daughters of Veterans, young ladies' institutes and similar societies
add much to social pleasures, and the aid ever derived from intelligent conversation,
well written papers and discussion, such as are of frequent occurrence at regular and
special meetings prevailing under the direction of each of these.
In literature we have many prolific writers of prose and poetry, whose bright
original style in both lines of literature promises to bring them recognition even
beyond the confines of the West. Several woman journalists are connected with the
editorial staffs of our daily papers, and contribute also to journals and magazines of
the East, where their writings are gladly made use of. That we have no great writers,
as yet is to be accounted for by the fact that we are too young; but, where every-
thing else is so great, even our trees, our rivers and our vegetables, surely our writers,
when fully developed, will measure up to the average. Allow me to close with a poem
rendered by the poet of our Washington Press Association, who is a woman:
" Dear is this West to us;
Dear as a cause becomes to men who fight
With odds against them for a righteous end,
'Till, from the blood they shed, springs greater love.
We each to the upbuilding of this land
Have freely given our manhood's fullest strength.
The strenuous push of youth's hot energy.
And ripened judgment of our later days.
At first, we came planning our own success;
Thought but to build that we might enter in;
Possess the land. But zeal, lit at this brand.
In all our hearts mounts to a higher flame.
Which of us all would now betray his place?
Or which be recreant to his chosen trust?
We who preach hope when our own hearts despair,
And hold them firm, though coward prudence
Whispers our defeat, are pledged to courage.
We bear the colors and they hold us true.
From our high hopes failure has gleaned new pain
Since we have hoped for more than selfish gain.
And yet this land for which we toil and pain
Is not our home. -To every one of us
Home is some other place, and at the word
Springs a swift vision, to each. different.
126 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Yet all seen through the golden haze of time,
That mists our eyes with tender memories.
To me a village street — above the road
The May flushed maples meet in Spring's caress.
To you a low gray farmhouse, at whose door
A dear old face smiles at you through its tears;
For each of us that dear, familiar face,
We dare not think if we may see again.
Home is with them, and we are exiles here,
To build for others who come after us;
To whom this fruitful land shall be sweet home;
That is our part, and no ignoble one.
Then let us build, that, in the coming years.
When youth, untempted, strong in self-belief,
Puts our life-work to its untarnished test,
We may stand up and dare to meet
The searching inquest of those clear young eyes.
^
THE WOMEN OF BOHEMIA.
By MRS. JOSEFA HUMPAL ZEMAN.
You have heard how in the beautiful forests of Bohemia there blossom millions of
sweet scented violets, modestly hiding their drooping heads beneath the velvet moss;
they live their short life quietly, yet steadily, per-
forming the duty assigned to them by their Creator;
they live and breathe the sweet breath that fills the
air, invigorating the wearied passer-by with new
a strength for his daily toil; intoxicating the nightin-
gales, who, bursting in songs of joy, soothe and inspire
souls, who, like Keats, need new vigor to enliven tneir
k fainting hearts. And like these violets that blossom
B in the bosom of our forests, so the women of Bohe-
^ mia live quietly, hidden within the sacred walls of
^ ' their homes, unostentatiously performing their duties;
and yet their influence has filled the air with the sweet
scent of encouragement, and inspired our men to
deeds of heroism. Our women always have lived
closer to the men than the women of the western na-
tions. They have been their true helpmates in home
and national life, and not unfrequently have their
words, their faith, their example, poured fresh vigor
t^-- into the fainting hearts of the worn-out warriors. As
^ ^ far back as legend and history can reach we find our
w„= ,^c.,r.» .^„v.n*T ,rMAv women participating in national welfare. The third
MRS. JOSEFA HUMPAL ZEMAN. r , i i^ i t -i i • •
ruler of the Czechs was a woman, Libuse, and it is
said that under her rule the nation prospered, and today she lives as an embodiment
of all that is desirable in a good king; as noble, just, kind and wise queen ! Later,
Drahomira was another brave queen, and among the first Christian women. St. Lud-
mila is a good illustration of the interest that women have shown in public life as far
back as the eighth and tenth centuries, A. D.
In the times of the great tribulations that came to Bohemia during the Hussite
wars, when whole armies of Catholic soldiers swept into the quiet regions of Bohemia,
tearing away from the hearts of the people that which was most sacred to them— their
religion and their mother tongue — it was then that our women showed their heroic
nature, sending their husbands away to war, and they themselves marching with them.
They carried stores, nursed the wounded, and frequently stepped into the place of
their husbands and sons when the cruel shot swept these out of their places. Thou-
sands of women left their homes, their friends, and went into exile, when, after the fall
of Bohemia on the White Mountain, in 1620, after the long Thirty Years' War, Rome
and the Hapsburgs were victorious; and all those Bohemians who would not become
Mrs. Josefa Hampal Zeman is a native of Bohemia. She was born Jannarjr 9, 1870. Her father waa a prominent
Bohemian leader and speaker, who came to this conntry in 1873. She was educated in the pablic schools of Chicago, and
later spent two years in studying at the High School of Pisek, Bohemia, where her parents returned, and since 1800 has been
studying at the Woman's College, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. She has traveled extensively in Austria,
Germany, England and America. She married a Bohemian editor, Robert Zeman, in 1887. Her special work has been in the
interest of the women of her own nationality, philanthrophic and educational. All her literary works have been published in
the varioas Bohemian journals. She is a Christian and a member of the Presbyterian Church. She is a regular contributor
to all the leading Bohemian journals. As a lecturer she is intelligent, sparkling and attractive, and the only Bohemian
woman speaker in America. Her postoffice address is No. 513 Arcade, Eoclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.
127
128 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Roman Catholics were exiled, their property confiscated and given to foreigners, who
filled the land like ravens, preying upon helpless, suffering Bohemia. In the Middle
Ages our women were queens of the castle, and often were very learned. Many
wrote in Latin, Greek, and some even knew the Hebrew. We have traces of literary
efforts done by these women as early as 1502, and all through the so-called "Golden
Age" of Bohemian literature in the sixteenth century. The "old embroideries" prove
the high artitsic talents of women, for the designs are all made by women copying
the creations of nature in their beautiful embroidering. The blending of colors and
choosing of design, all testify to a great development of aesthetic tastes and love of
nature "for its own sake." It is, however, this century that best unveils to us the
hearts of our women. Standing by the side of our poets, they went from village to
village, from house to house, awakening the people to new life and new courage, carry-
ing with them literature, and teaching the peasants how to read and write. This is the
time that Mme. Bozena Nemcora formed her little salon, and, like Madame De
Stael, gathered about her the best sons of Bohemia, inspiring, helping and teaching
them. She was the "good star" of the brave men who tried to resurrect the nation
from a death of more than two centuries.
During those days of tumult and strife, when the Bohemian language was almost
forgotten, when it was a shame to be a Bohemian in his own fatherland, when there
was no literature left — for the Roman clergy had burned all that came within its grasp,
because the best class of literature was written by the "Bohemian Brethren," a Prot-
estant sect — it took more than courage to stand up as a patriot, and Madame Nemcora,
braved the storms. She is the first one who cultivated novel writing, and her "Babicka"
or "Grandmother" has been translated into German, Russian, Polish, French, and by
Frances Gregor into English (published by McClurg, Chicago). It is a classic in the
language. Her literary productions would fill a small library. She is to Bohemian,
what George Sand is to French, and George Eliot is to English. Around her, during
the first half of this century, in the time of revolutions and upheavals in society,
gathered nearly thirty women, who began to cultivate " Belles-lettres " and help in the-
patriotic efforts of the men. Up to this time the girl's sphere was limited. She had
been brought up like the girls of other nations, to regard household duties as her
proper sphere. The Bohemian housekeeper was well known, the Bohemian cook was
famous, and so each young woman was carefully trained in these arts. Fancy work,
fine embroidery, a little music, French and German were about all the arts which were
opened to the girls. The women of lowest class, the "laboring" women, were, how-
ever, allowed "equal rights" with the men, and could work in fields, in winter spin, and
in the cities these women often worked with the masons, carrying brick and mortar
and doing such rude work. The life of the "laboring class" of women is a hard
one indeed; but they don't complain, they remain loyal to their homes, and often from
these lowly homes come the greatest men, and many of these men have thanked
their mothers for their success in life.
The " Middle Class " consists of the families of the professional men, merchants,
officials, and such as have income enough to keep their families in comfort. In this
class the women, as a rule, do not help the men to earn the living. The daughters in
these families, in addition to the elementary education received in the public schools,
receive a supplementary one, which is to put a sort of varnish over the other. They
are taught a little German, French, music, a little painting and a good deal of fancy
work. But all this is done, not with the view to enabling them to earn their own living,
but rather of giving them some accomplishments to help them to win a husband.
These women expect to be supported by some man, since there is no way open to
them by which they may earn their living. The " Nobility " of course, live like the
same class everywhere else: besides, we have, with very few exceptions, no nobility that
is really Bohemian. Since 1870 the condition of our women has changed, and there
are now certain professions opened to them. These are the teachings (there are twelve
hundred teachers in Bohemia now), nursing, type-writing, telegraphing, clerking and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 129
some trades. There are only two physicians, and these studied in Zurich, and are not
allowed to practice in Bohemia, although the government has acknowledged their
ability by appointing them to be regular staff physicians in Bohemia among the
Mohammedan women.
These openings for self-support to young women have been made by the organ-
ization of "The Bohemian Women Commercial and Industrial Society," organized by
our great novelist, Mme. Karolina Svetla, in 1870. This organization has a school
in Prague, where the girls are taught, in addition to various branches of higher studies,
all kinds of handiwork, mainly dressmaking, millinery, bookkeeping, type-writing,
cutting and various fancy works. The school can only accommodate about five hundred
students, and hundreds of promising girls must be turned away because the society has
not funds enough to enlarge its school. A similar school is also sustained at Briinn by
the women of Moravia. The school is something like Drexel Institute in Philadel-
phia. This society has also founded the first and best Bohemian " Woman's Journal,"
whose editor is the famous poetess, Eliska Krasnohorska, the founder of " Minerva," a
society composed of the best men and women in Bohemia, under whose auspices a
Gymnasium for girls was established in 1890. The Gymnasium is the first school of its
kind in Eastern Europe, and has now been copied by the German and Austrian women.
The students are to be prepared for admission to the University. The funds for sup-
porting the school are raised by Madame Krasnohorska, the indefatigable author and
worker in the cause of women. The school now numbers more than eighty students.
It is a task of great importance and very difficult, since, with the exception of the
University of Zurich, no university in Northern Europe opens its doors to women.
There are not less than one hundred and eighty societies of women in Bohemia, and
yet out of all there is none that we might call a " suffrage club," although the Society of
Bohemian Teachers in Prague has given considerable attention to this subject, hav-
ing arranged for lectures, and many of its members write articles upon the theme.
Bohemia, like all of Austria, has not universal suffrage, and only those who have prop-
erty can vote. In many towns and cities the women vote also; in others they are
represented indirectly. In some towns they may even vote for the delegates to the
state Diet; but not for those of the Reichsrath. Although in some cases they may
vote, they themselves are ineligible to office. Some towns have a committee of
women appointed to oversee the work in the primary and industrial schools for girls.
As I have said before, since the "Mediaeval Era" of the Bohemian literature,
women appear in the ranks of authors, and today some of the most popular authors
of drama, poetry and novels are women. The Bohemian women exhibited and
donated to the Woman's Building three hundred and twenty books, all original, not
one translated, written exclusively by women. This is a good showing, when we
remember that the nation is continually in a fierce struggle for self-preservation;
that until recently no avenues of higher education were opened to women, and that
the nation is comparatively small, of only five million inhabitants. The German
women had only five hundred copies, and the French women only .seven hundred. But
not only do the Bohemian women write poetry, novels and drama; they have made some
very successful attempts in scientific and educational literature, some having written
well in history, hygiene, physiology, geology, travels, and as art critics. There is one
remarkable fact which I wish to note in closing, and that is that all the students of the
University of Prague are very friendly to the attempts made by women pleading fur
admission. The women of Bohemia have done this work quietly; they are pressing
toward the same mark to which the women of the whole civilized world are directing
their desires and ambitions; but whatever they do, for whatever they may long, they
never forget their obligation to the nation, and are first patriots and then women.
They stand in the ranks of soldiers, fighting for the sacred right of Bohemia, bearing
the heat and smoke of the battle, ministering to the wounded, and yet performing
their duties as wives, mothers and sisters. They cannot point to glorious buildings,
clubs and enterprises, for every penny is needed by the country, and no one can under-
(9)
180 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
stand the difficulties and burdens that are laid upon the shoulders of our women. It
is harder for them to get a penny than for people of this country to secure dollars.
Their efforts may appear small, but to those who know the hard situation in Bohemia
they speak of zeal, enthusiasm and perseverance, such as only a Slavonic woman,
endowed with her splendid physique, could accomplish. We are only in the dawn of
the morning. Before us lie the whole possibilities of a splendid day, and I can only
say that the Bohemian women are on the march, and they will keep step with the
ranks of all womanhood marching on to progress.
AN AFRICAN EXPEDITION.
By MRS. MAY FRENCH SHELDON,*F. R. G. S.
During the month of January, 1891, in order to put to the test a long-cherished
and carefully-considered plan, I made preparations to leave England, and essay to
organize, equip and personally lead and command an
. independent caravan of blacks — solely at my own
expense, without the assistance or companionship of
white or black men or women above the rank of ser-
vitors — through a much-reviled section of East Africa
among alleged hostile as well as some peaceful tribes.
" For what good?" " Why?" " What prompted
you?" are inquiries confronting me on all sides.
Inbrief: Having listened unwillingly to the officious
opinions volunteered by all classes and conditions of
men and women, as to the utter absurdity of my pro-
ject; denounced universally as a fanatic, entertaining
a mad scheme, if not mad myself — principally mad
because the idea was unique, a thorough innovation;
there was no precedent on which to predicate action
or draw deductions upon which to formulate a feasible
line of procedure; it never had been done, never even
been suggested, hence it must be beyond the conven-
tional pale of practicability; and above all, having
ever flouted in my face the supercilious edict that it
was outside the limitation of woman's legitimate pro-
vince, I determined to accomplish the undertaking.
Success resulted. I seriously contemplate a second expedition, animated by innumer-
able desires to investigate personally and independently the mooted difficulties of an
African expedition, and craving the opportunity to study raw natives before tampered
with or tainted by so-called civilization, and thereby be enabled to interpret Natives as
Naturals, with a mind that repudiates the idea that all aboriginals are savages to be
subdued, coerced, forced into an alien's mental, moral and civic condition under the
vaunted pretense of wresting the benighted ones of creation from degradation, and
having always resented the verdict, given from the white man's standpoint, that all
natives, irrespective of environment, and without weighing circumscribed opportun-
ities, are inherently deficient in mental scope, devoid of the best and ennobling traits
of human nature as exemplified in white races.
After eight years of study to acquaint myself with the methods of procedure pat-
ent to almost all would-be colonizers, civilizers and treaty-makers, I resolved to make
a peaceful, unprejudiced attempt. Then, too, the inadequate accounts of the women
Mrs. May French Sheldon was born in Bridgewater, Pa., May 10, 1B47. Her parents were Col. Joseph French, a
civil engineer of note and a grand-nephew of Isaac Newton, and Elizabeth J. Poonnan French. The daughter was educated
in New York and abroad, and in 1876 married Eli Lemon Sheldon, American-bom, bat later a bcmker and publisher in London,
England. Mrs. Sheldon is widely known as the translator of "Salammbo" and as the author of a number of successful novels,
short stories and essays. She is the owner of the publishing house of Saxon & Co., of London, which issues "Everybody's
Series." She has studied art and produced a number of portrait busts, and lias also made a study of medicine under Euro-
pean specialists. In 1891 she undertook an exploring expedition into Africa, unattended by any white man or woman, and
succeeded in circumnavigating Lake Chala, an exploit which has attracted universal attention. Her exhibits of objects of
interest from the region visited received medals in three departmenta of the C/olnmbian Exposition. She has been electee) a
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, and is a meml>er of the Writer's Club, of the Anthropological
Society, Washington, and of similar organizations of note.
131
MRS. MAT FRENCH SHELDON, F. R.
132 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and children, the home life, have ever been portrayed from a superficial, biased point
of view; for the white man has, by his own confession, been denied a full and com-
plete acquaintance with the more intimate lives of the East African women.
It is a conceded fact that a caravan going into the interior or up country in Africa
is like a migratory community; and, with forethought and great discrimination, must
be provisioned and armed for the entire term of the expedition, whether for three
months or three years. Sufficient goods, consisting of iron, brass and copper wire of
different sizes, beads of all colors, styles and sizes, cotton cloths, ten or twelve varie-
ties, to barter with the natives and itinerant Arab traders for food and to purchase
the right of way, called toll or hongo, as well as blackmail, through a sultanate; also a
nameless variety of all sorts of articles varying from penknives to music boxes, vel-
vets and brooches, shawls and fancy blankets to trumpery trinkets for tribute and
gifts to natives of importance or merely as souvenirs. Then, too, there must be a
good supply of medicines and certain tinned goods and little luxuries and camp-
ing outfit, for one must live under canvas.
As a community, a caravan on Safari must have order and laws of its own for the
safety of the every individual and the whole; it must in itself form a body politic to
enforce these laws and each and every one conform to or assist in the preservation of
order and discipline. The first manifestation of insubordination or mutiny has to be
promptly quelled and as promptly chastised. Responsibilities, anxieties and hardships
grew apace, yet I was not willing to shirk or relegate to hirelings any part of the same
which legitimately belonged to a leader. My caravan consisted of one hundred and
thirty-eight slaves, porters and subsequently recruits, raising the number to two hundred,
coming from every tribe throughout Africa, and, with few exceptions, only a brief
time removed from their primitive condition, but called collectively Zanzibaris. A
Zanzibari porter proper never carries a load on his shoulders or back, and his head
seems provided with a thickness of scalp for his accustomed duty peculiar to his race.
The loads are carefully apportioned and weighed so as not to exceed fifty-six to
sixty pounds.
The native porters have been denounced as untrustworthy, lazy, vagabondish^
unfaithful and doing nothing without full compensation. This much am I con-
strained to say — that when I looked with considerable amazement over all the*
strange black and every conceivable shade of brown faces of my caravan, discerning
much brutality imprinted thereupon, with few exceptions, I marveled if I should
always be able to control them and make them subservient to my commands, and for
a moment was somewhat dubious as to my ability; however, after experience with
them, when I had to trust my life to them, they proved faithful, uncomplaining, chival-
rous, and marvels of patience, endurance, and consistent marching day after day.
Useless to deny that constantly obstacles arose on all sides, and many a time I
quaked silently under the forecast of possible defeat; but I soon learned that several
honest failures need not necessarily mean defeat, but to the contrary developed cau-
tion and latent resources which eventually made success more secure.
My aim was ever to protect the natives, to meet the men of tribal importance in
their own sultanates,as a woman of breeding should meet the highest officials in any
land, under any circumstances, and be civil and polite for favors granted; to extend
amity to those who are amicable, and avoid disturbances with those who might decline
the friendship of a white woman. Having at heart the desire to study the natives'
habits and customs in their homes; to know the women as wives, mothers and sisters;
to know the men as husbands, fathers, brothers and lovers, and see the children as
they were; in fact, to obtain an unprejudiced insight into the general social condition,
and consider the future possibilities of these people, it would have been more than
rash to have entered Africa as a freebooter.
It seems to be the popular thing for travelers to demonstrate how exceedingly
difficult and hazardous have ever been their expeditions; they delight in depicting in
graphic language thrilling adventures and hair-breadth escapes from the dangers which
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 133
have beset them, and especially do they portray in gruesome colors the hopeless
depravity of the African. I found the people and conditions very much what I
aspired to make them, and certainly the natives are not so black as painted, and are
peculiarly amenable to gentleness and kindness, and tractable through their vanity
and love of power. They are all of one piece of a common humanity.
In their homes and villages the universal evidences of personal familiarity or fel-
lowship had something very quaint and unlooked for in its various manifestations. A
group of dusky natives equipped for war. while holding their palavers and reviewing
their plan of action, would loll one upon another, with hands clasped over the shoul-
ders or on the hips of the forward man. The women, too, when convened socially with
their swarthy companions, although men and women alike perfectly nude, unencum-
bered with any clothing, if quantities of metal and bead belts, fringes, chains, necklaces,
bracelets and anklets are excluded from the semblance of such, exhibited a certain
fearless freedom, and yet I never witnessed a single indelicate or indecent action.
They have but few manners of evincing affection — spit upon each other in lieu of
kissing — and the only embrace I ev^er witnessed exchanged between brother and sister,
man and wife, friend and friend, lover and sweetheart, was a clasping of the hands over
the shoulder of the one addressed, a little apparent pressure applied, and a slow draw-
ing of the unclasping fingers apart, and in a cat-like way stretching them wider and
wider until the muscles grew quite tense; then a gradual drawing together and reclasp-
ing, all the while clinging to the shoulder.
They loan their ornaments and charms or medicine necklaces or armlets. They
share food, and without let or hindrance participate in their brewed drinks called pombe
and tembo. Men, women and children among many tribes carry, slung over their shoul-
ders, a gourd ladle, ever ready to help themselves to the beverage as they circulate
about from boma to boma. The land is fertile, crops prolific, food in abundance; except
when the tsetse fly is a plague, their cattle, sheep, goats, and in some parts donkeys,
thrive. They also have vast bee ranges, and make honey and butter, and pound in
wooden mortars, with wooden or stone pestles, banana and maize to an impalpable
flour. Chickens thrive, but only the eggs, not the fowl, are eaten by the natives, and
these, also, when very high, and a spoiled egg with African gourmets is decidedly 2i pot
au fell.
Blacksmiths — fundis — or craftsmen in metal work, have attained great skill, and
their products perfection, and throughout Chaga Land the renowned blacksmiths all
have been or are celebrated chiefs or sultans, whose deftness in foiging spears, knives,
pipes, agricultural implements, tools, bells, and most delicate little charms, necklaces,
armlets and leglets, as well as various metal ornaments, has given the sultans a dis-
tinctive prestige in other spheres of tribal significance. The men are great hunters,
and skilled in tanning hides. The women do all the agricultural labor, and herd the
cattle and flocks, which are as a rule stall-fed. The fertility of the soil makes their
duties far from arduous, and they are happy and content. By a strange reversion of
the conventions of civilization, the men do all the needlework, and embroider their
own and the women's bead and metal belts and ornaments, and also do the fighting;
and the women are the unmolested purveyors between hostile tribes when they are at
war. The young men are great dandies, dawdling about the villages with their hair
coiffured in marvelous fashion, their skins .stained with yellow clay, and sometimes
painted in splotches. Many and various are the dances to signalize certain fetes, or
merely to give vent to youthful exuberance. Some exclusively indulged in by one
sex or the other, whereas others are participated in together.
Marriage is first by purchase; then by mock capture, which is followed by an
atrocious practice. Polygamy existent among them is to my mind a geographical
incident — a matter of topographical environment or necessity in a land where
there are no workers except slaves or wives, and not prompted by the licentiousness
of Oriental countries. A man accumulates more land or more cattle than his first wife
can attend to without becoming a toilsome task, he takes another wife, and so on. The
134 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
established wife or wives are far from being jealous of one another; to the contrary-
are delighted to welcome a new wife, and make great preparations for her home-
coming, realizing that the work of all will be commeasurably lessened. Each woman
has her own personal boma, or hut, and is not housed as in harems of other peoples.
Also every wife is allotted a certain amount of property, and each child also has
property given on birth. No change of times or circumstances deprives either of
their titles. Their individual families are small, and the mother has supreme right
over her children. Women are permitted to enjoy exactly the same moral freedom
and standard as the men, only declassed when she may be indiscreet and holds a liai-
son with porters in a caravan, or with an enemy of her tribe.
Women when ill are doctored by the old women of the tribe, who are very skill-
ful; however, as a rule they enjoy immunity from the sufferings of their civilized sis-
ters. The men are doctored by men, and magic doctors are supported. In true
Spartan fashion, the deformed, the disabled, the infirm, are quietly sent to la la (sleep)
— no matter the sex. This is common to many people exposed to the elements and
the attacks of wild beasts, or surrounded by inimical tribes, and deemed a mercy
often pathetically enjoined, and even earnestly besought by the victims. Emblems of
war, likewise of peace, play an important role. Observance of the same, especially
the peace emblems, have much to do, if not all, with my attaining immediate admis-
sion among tribes disposed to be forbidding, and at times hostile. Familiarity with
several of their dialects permitted me a better understanding of the people by sparing
me the delusion of misinterpretation or careless and garbled reports. Moreover, the
Africans are eloquent in gestures and facial expression. An observer can comprehend
without a word there. Their dialect, however, is musical, circumscribed, epigram-
matic, full of metaphor, and, above all, ceremonious.
They are far from being inept. To the contrary, are quick to imitate; without,
however, wise discretionary powers to guide them as to what to avoid or what to adopt.
After deliberate contemplation it appears to me the true method of civilizing Africa
is by the establishment of industrial manual training stations and medical and nurses*
posts, and the presence of practical, honest, sober, decent, industrious white men and
women, whose daily life will carry the highest precepts of enlightenment. Africa is
no place for impractical zealots of any kind, nor should the natives be made the wards
of an enervating philanthropy, robbing them of self-support, and ennobling individual
responsibility.
My geographical work consisted in circumnavigating Lake Chala, situated on the
northeastern slope of the African Olympus, Mount Kilimanjaro -30° 22' south lati-
tude, 37"^ 17' east longitude, 3,000 feet above the sea. My pride in the triumph is pardona-
ble considering that no less an explorer than Thompson writes respecting the inacces-
sibility of this sheet of water, cupped within the escarped walls of an extinct crater.
" I went all around it, and although I am not deficient in enterprise or nerve, I saw no
place I dare descend, not even if I could have swung from creeper to creeper like a
monkey."
In fine, without bloodshed, without loss of but one man, who was killed by a lion,
by peaceful, tactful, humane measures, it has been my privilege to traverse the coun-
try of thirty-five African tribes, and return to the coast with all my porters, leaving
behind a record women need never blush to consider.
Conclusion: It was worth while if my venture may be instrumental in bringing about
peaceful, humane methods of would-be colonizers, and banish forever the military
attitude of aliens, when intruding themselves upon the Arcadians of East Africa. In
due course I propose to return and lend my efforts to a " common-sense " method of
colonization, and substantiate the principles many explorers look askance at, and
criticise as too Utopian for Africa.
WOMAN'S PLACE IN LETTERS.
By MRS. ANNIE NATHAN MEYER.
I am going to begin by telling you something very pleasant. An officer of the
A. A. W. told me the other day that when the association first began to hold con-
gresses, twenty-one years ago, they had great diffi-
culty in keeping the annual reports down to anything
like the necessary economical limit. All the speakers
^^^^t^^ were so very anxious to see themselves in print, and
j^^^^^^fcl^ so unaccustomed to it, that any attempt at condensa-
f V *'°" ^^^ fiercely resented, while to omit a paper was
tHv|H||k ^B to offend deeply. "We have difficulty with our re-
w V ports now," she continued, " but it is a difficulty of
another kind. A difficulty in securing a sufficient
number of the addresses to make a respectable show-
ing ; for the women who address the annual con-
gresses today are loath to give their papers for the
report, because they can command their own price in
the leading magazines." We know that women are
writing a great deal today, and are doing some very
good work. They are doing so much that it would
be absurd to attempt to treat this subject fully. I
shall merely, therefore, look at certain phases of the
subject. I am interested particularly in the question:
Has woman something specific, something sui gen-
eris to contribute to literature? One of our women writ-
ers tells us: "Once let woman wield the pen and
thoughts will be put into books that have never been put there before, or at least
some of the old things will be told from a side never before dreamed of. Unfor-
tunately I am so constituted that when I encounter an interesting theory I always ask
myself. Is it true? It is so easy to be philosophical and learned if one does not hap-
pen to be hampered by knowing very much about one's subject. We are told by
Browning, Sludge the medium: " Don't let truth's lump rot stagnant for the lack of
a timely helpful lie to leaven it." But I think on the contrary, with Ameil, that "An
error is dangerous just according to the amount of truth it may contain."
Much as I would be interested in believing that woman, with the pen in her hand,
has turned a new page of life before us, candor compels me to admit that if there is
such a thing as sex in literature, I have not succeeded in discovering it. I look about
me and observe that the very subjects upon which one would naturally expect women
to throw a new light have really inspired the masterpieces of men. No woman,
burning with the sense of wrong, could have painted the injustice of the social code of
morals more forcibly, more tragically than Thomas Hardy did in his " Test of the
d'Urbervilles." No woman, eager to reconstruct and ennoble our ideal of marital
obligation, could have held up its pitiable sham and conventionality with more
inspired pen than was wielded by Henrik Ibsen in his "Ghosts and Doll-house."
Annie Nathan Meyer was born in New York City, 1867. Her parents were Robert Weeks Nathan and Annie Florence
Nathan. Mrs. Meyer is a remarkably bright and attractive young woman, having mach worth and great influence. She mar-
rieti Dr. Alfred Meyer of New York. Her special work has been in the interest of woman's education, having been largely
instrumental in founding Barnard College. Her principal literarj' works are. " Helen Brent, M. D.," "Woman's Work in
America," and various essays and stories appearing in periodicals. In religions faith she is a Jewess. Mrs. Meyer is a mem-
ber of A A. W. Her postoffice address is 749 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y.
135
MRS, ANNIE NATHAN MEYER.
136 . THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Could any woman have depicted more sympathetically the hard, dull life of the faith-
ful woman of the fields and prairies than Hamlin Garland and Major Kirkland and
Bret Harte have done it? There was a little anonymous story that appeared in the
*' Century" a couple of years ago — I think it was called " A Common Story" — and I
remember every one, myself included, was certain that only a woman could have
written it, because only a woman could possibly have had the necessary insight. It
revealed the love story of an old maid, and it struck a note that must have vibrated
in every woman's heart. Yet this story was by that gifted young man, Walcott Bales-
tier. I have heard various receipts for discovering the sex of an author, but have
seen them all go down ingloriously before the simple strategy of the nom de plutne.
It was generally conceded that no one but a man could have painted the rugged
solemnity of the Tennessee Mountains and the primitive poetry of the lives of the
mountaineers as Charles Egbert Craddock did. At least it was conceded, before Mary
Murfree modestly appeared before the startled eyes of the editor of the " Atlantic
Monthly;" and I am sure that the claims of a certain man to the novels of George
Eliot were immensely strengthened by the current view that it would be absurd to
abscribe the simple, vigorous strength of "Adam Bede" to the hand of a woman. When
we turn to those that would theorize about woman's place in the republic of letters,
what ideas do we find current: First, and I think this reasoning is not entirely un-
familiar to you; we hear them say: " Woman is the heart, and man the mind. Woman
stands for the emotions and man for the intellect." Therefore we should find that women
may write charming love stories, but that it will be impossible for them to reveal any
intellectual grasp; impossible for them to probe down into the deeper problems of
life.
What do we find as an actual fact? We find the men critics showering anathe-
mas at the authors of "Robert Elsmere" and "John Ward, Preacher," for bringing into
the domain of a novel serious problems and non-emotional material that properly
belong rather to the domain of philosophy or theology. Then, of course, we are told
that women lack the broad sympathy that is so necessary to the novelist of today.
As Mrs. Browning's Romney tells Aurora, "Women are sympathetic to the personal
pangs, but hard to general suffering." And yet, think of the exquisitely tender delin-
eation of the forbidding New England old maid by Mary Wilkins, and those two
great stories that immortalized the wrongs of two races, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and
"Romola." Then we are told that it is easy for women to write on fashionable soci-
ety or of the village sewing circles, but in the very nature of things women are limited
in their scope. It is impossible for them to depict the rough pimitive life of the fields
and mines, and yet right here in America we have Mary Hallock Foote, Octave
Thanet, and Miss Elliot, the author of "Jerry," and so many others who seem to have
gone straight down to the soil for inspiration. Then, of course, women have not had
what are called "experiences." How can a woman in her sheltered innocence know
anything of certain phases of life, or if she does possess sufficient imagination, how
will she treat it? Surely she can only give us what some one has called: "The moral
harshness of copy-book maxims," and yet with what passion and fireMrs. Humphery
Ward has given us the Parisian episode in the life of David Grieve; and think of
Elizabeth Stewart Phelps' powerful and pitiful story, "Hedged In," and the breadth
and insight of Olive Schreiner. I am sure no one has dealt with the character of a
guilty woman more exquisitely, more tactfully, more sympathetically, and yet with
more powerful irony and pathos than Mrs. K. Clifford did with her Mrs. North in her
story, "Aunt Anne." While her Mrs. Walter Hibbert is a capital hit at the timid atti-
tude of the average "good woman."
Iheard the other day that Mr. Brander Mathews so keenly misses the sense of humor
in woman that he has resolved the next time he marries to marry a man. No, I am
not going to get angry about it, it hits Mrs. Mathews so much harder than it hits me;
nor am I going to assist Mr. Mathews to prove his cause by taking his skit too seri-
ously. But I cannot resist just a reference to the delightful quality of the humor of
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. ' 137
Agnes Repplier, Mary Wilkins, Sarah Orme Jewett, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, and Mrs.
Craigie, who is generally known, by her pen name of John Oliver Hobbs. The humor
of the last is so subtle, so whimsical, and so utterly pervasive that I have a suspicion
in my mind that Mr. Mathews, in his ignorance of t\\& nom de plume, \\2iS thinking
of taking a certain Mr. John Oliver Hobbs as that second wife.
Let me here say something in connection with that terrible tirade that was
launched forth by a certain Molly Elliott Seawall, a writer herself of novels of no
common order. She said: "If all that women have ever done in literature was swept
out of existence, the world would not lose a single masterpiece." I was amused the
other day by a lady saying that it was our own dear president, Mrs. May Wright
Sewall, who was the author of this attack. "Do you think," I said, when I had recov-
ered from laughter sufficiently to speak, "that the president of the Woman's Interna-
tional Council could say such things without suffering impeachment?"
I am not discouraged by such remarks, although I think it absurd to say that
women had produced no masterpieces, yet I am perfectly willing to admit that they
have produced no genius of the very highest rank, the rank of Dante and Shakespeare
and Milton and Goethe. But do you know the same thing precisely has been said of
American literature? It is not interesting that they say both of American literature
and woman's literature, if I may coin the phrase, that it has produced some clever and
delightful writers, but no genius of the very highest rank. Mr. James Bryce has a
good deal to say oi this on his work on America, and he puts a good deal of the onus
on the shoulders of our hurried, interrupted, unrestful life. But he thinks that America
in time will Settle down to create the highest kind of literature. That the time will come
when America (and the same thing is true of woman) will no longer feel the necessity
of proving her right to be. I am cheered by the words of Emerson: "The scholar of
the first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; and uttered it
again. * * * It came into him life; it went out from him truth and poetry."
Well, woman is still in her first age. She is slowly awakening from a long sleep,
and is just beginning to look about her and see the world around. She is still brood-
ing thereon. I am sure the time is not far distant when she shall translate life into
forms of perfect truth and poetry.
COOKERY.*
By MRS. DAVID A. LINCOLN.
It is not my purpose in this paper on cookery to give you any new recipes, or to
discuss methods of making the latest variety of cake, or the most fanciful combina-
tion for dessert. Indeed, when I think of the vast
amount of information which is now offered on this
subject, from the household column of the local
papers to the scores of household magazines; from
the dainty collections of recipes compiled by our
church fair committees; on through the legions of
cook books of all sizes, shapes and styles, some of
them devoted to one branch of the culinary art, and
others encyclopedias of it, it would appear that noth-
ing more could be said or written. But, on the other
hand, when I remember the self-styled "competent
cooks," who spend their time alternately ruling in our
kitchens or lounging in the intelligence offices, warily
waiting for new victims to their skill; when I recall
the multitude of housekeepers who prepare the daily
meals after a stereotyped or hap-hazard plan, with no
knowledge of the principles of culinary science, and
whose ambition as cooks is satisfied so long as the
food they provide can be eaten by hard-working hus-
band and ravenous children; when I hear school-girls
fret and resent any suggestion from mother that a
portion of their holiday time be spent in helping in
the kitchen; when I see young ladies willing to assume the highest office of woman-
hood, and yet boasting of their ignorance of household duties, caring more to learn
the latest and craziest design of decoration, or how to fashion dainty raiment, than
for any true knowledge as to how to perfect their own physical condition and keep
the health of those entrusted to their care on the highest plane of development; when
I think that such ignorance and indifference can exist, notwithstanding all that has
been taught, is it not enough to make one long for the wisdom of a Solomon, and for
strength to enable her to use every opportunity to convince women of the importance
of a better knowledge of cookery; an occupation which is not to be regarded as igno-
ble labor or drudgery, but as one of the highest and most essential arts? It is encour-
aging to note the interest in this subject of cookery, which seems to be widespread
and constantly on the increase. Magazines devoted to the household, and especially
to culinary art, are springing up all over the land. Nearly every paper has its column
Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln was born in South Attleboro, Mass. Her father was the Rev. John B. M. Bailey, of the Con-
gregational Charch. She lost her father at seven years of age and was reared by her widowed mother, a "woman of model
character and much ability, who trained her three children in early youth to be useful and economical. She indelibly
impressed upon them that character and education were the finest garments in which they could be clothed. Mrs. Lincoln
was educated at Wheaton Seminary. The summer after she left school she married Mr. David A. Lincoln, who was already
established in business. Her natural ambition to do well whatever she undertook led her to study with care the prepara-
tion of every dish she pl&ced on her own table, and fame as a teacher of cooking came to her gradually and unexpectedly.
She first taught in Boston, afterward at Lasell Seminary. Mrs. Lincoln has delivered many lectures and published many
books on the subject of cooking, all of which are full of merit. Her postoflBce address is Wollaston, Mass. (Comfort Cot-
tage).
* The full title of the article was "Extracts from Cookery, or Art and Science versus Drudgery and Luck."
138
MRS. DAVID
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 139
of " household hints." " Cooking Clubs " are formed among experienced housekeepers
as well as among those just assuming domestic responsibility, and even among the
little children.
Many ladies who have been unusually successful in some special culinary work
pose before the public as teachers of cookery, or offer their work for sale. Private
cooking schools and training schools for teachers are heard of in nearly every large
city. Now, what does all this interest in cookery mean? Does it mean that we are
tired of the good old ways of our mothers and grandmothers? That we are disgusted
with the miserable compounds offered us by inefficient cooks who demand the wages
of skilled workers? Is it simply a desire for new combinations of food that shall
tickle our palates? For surely we have not many new food materials.* Are we actu-
ated mainly by a desire to emulate those who have become experts in the art? Or
are we merely seeking our own interests and thinking of the work only as a means of
getting a living? We think that it means that many of our people have awakened to
the fact that eating is something more than animal indulgence, and that cooking has
a nobler purpose than the gratification of appetite and the sense of taste. Cooking
has been defined as " the art of preparing food for the nourishment of the human
body."
There is no such thing as "luck" or "guesswork" in good cookery, and though
good results will sometimes follow hap-hazard work, a person cooking successfully in
this way really has learned certain facts, and follows, though unconsciously, certain laws.
In a general way we all know that we need food to keep us alive; but how many of us
understand the threefold purpose of food, which is, to generate heat, to give us
strength, and to furnish material for growth and repair of bodily tissues? To render
this threefold service, our food should consist of such materials as will give out heat,
and are similar to or capable of being changed into substances which can be built
into the various tissues of the body. Hence, a knowledge of the composition of the
body and of food substances is indispensable. Without it we cannot properly select
our food. Our choice of food may be partly determined by instinct or appetite, and
possibly might be wholly so were it not that by the law of inheritance, or our own
indiscretion, the vigor and promptitude of operation of this natural guide have been
greatly impaired. We must, therefore, summon reason and intelligence to our aid in
selecting proper food. A knowledge of the needs of the body, and of the elements of
our common food substances, will help us greatly in combining our food so that our
daily diet shall supply the daily need; for a substance which fulfills only one of the
purposes required in our food will not support life. A man cannot live on water or
salt, yet he would soon die without them. If our clothing be torn, we do not repair it
with sand. So, if the muscles are worn out by hard work, we cannot replace them by
eating sugar or fat. If more fat be taken than the oxygen will burn, or than is needed
for storage, we may suffer in many ways. Many articles of food do not contain all the
necessary elements, and few foods contain them in the right proportion. It is neces-
sary, therefore, to have different kinds of food, and to prepare them rightly, so that
one kind will supply what another kind lacks. We need not so much a great variety
of foods at each meal, but a variation in our daily bills of fare, and just here is where
many of our American housekeepers err. Our choice of food must also be adapted to
the state of one's health, and to the various circumstances of age, occupation, climate
and means. It is also well for every woman to know why we need to prepare or cook
our food. First, it is to save time and energy.
Some one has said: "Man is the only animate object that has both to seek and
prepare his food." Plants have their food prepared for them, and, provided they are
surrounded by it, they take it in continually and make it into food for the animal.
Animals wander about and seek their food, but take it very much as they find it; and
some of them have nothing else to do but to eat and build up this plant food into their
own flesh, ready for man. Savages take all their food with little or no preparation,
and go for long periods without any while hunting, then gorge themselves to the
140 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
utmost limit and sleep until digestion is complete. But civilized man has to seek his
food and carefully select and prepare it. The higher he is in civilization, the more
time and thought must be given to its preparation, that he may have some of the
large amount of energy that would be spent in making this food into a part of himself,
to use for some other purpose. Many food substances can be eaten in their natural
state, but the greater part of them require to be changed or especially prepared before
they can be eaten, and all foods require to be in a state of solution before they can be
made into our bodies.
This change in food is made first by cooking, or the combined action of heat,
water, air and other agencies; and, second, by digestion, or the muscular motion of the
walls of the alimentary canal, combined with the solvent action of several digestive
fluids. Cooking develops and improves the flavor, changes the texture, odor, and
taste, and by tempting the appetite, increases our enjoyment of food, and thus aids
the second change or process of digestion. The end and aim of all this changing of
food is solubility, for only in a state of solution can food penetrate through the walls of
the digestive canal, and become a part of the body. By this it neqd not be inferred
that we must take all our food in a state of solution, but we should understand the
process of digestion and how to make food digestible, or soluble. If we study diges-
tion, we find that the process varies with the different kinds of food, the albuminous
foods being digested in the stomach by an acid fluid, and the starches in the intestines
by an alkaline fluid. The fats are only separated from the others in the stomach, but
in the intestines they are converted into an emulsion. Both of these processes of the
changing of food are really one process, and may be regarded as a kind of cooking,
for cooking means " changing by the application of heat." In all the processes,
heat is the permanent factor, and food is cooked, or prepared for us, first, by the heat
of the sun, then by our application of artificial heat, and lastly by internal, anfmal
heat. Water is equally necessary in these changes, and it is therefore highly impor-
tant to understand the effects of water and heat on the different food substances, and
how best to use them.
When we know what substances we need to use as food, and the proportion of
each, and how to prepare them, great care should be taken that each shall be the best
of its kind, not necessarily the highest priced, but that from which we can get the
most nourishment and which has the fewest objectionable qualities. We may not be
able to detect all the tricks of adulteration, but we can easily learn how to select good
flour, sweet butter, sound fruit and vegetables, and the name, location and food value
of the different cuts of meat.
Another point which should receive especial attention is the preservation of food.
Science has taught us much on this subject. Care must be taken not to expose food
to the action of bacteria, unpleasant odors, or contact with unclean substances.
Scrupulous neatness in personal habits of those who prepare food, and cleanliness of
all utensils used, and of storage places, are no minor matters.
All labor in the preparation of food, which does not tend to make the food more
digestible, or is done solely to give variety, or to cater to an unnatural appetite, is
unprofitable. Except in cases of illness or convalescence, if a person has a fickle
appetite, and he cannot enjoy a meal of good, wholesome food, simply and carefully
prepared, you may be sure that the trouble is somewhere else, and tempting the appe-
tite is not the true remedy.
Women would lessen the labor of cooking greatly if they would cease making
mixtures of food materials which require much time and labor in their preparation,
and also the expenditure of great digestive energy. Why should we take anything
so simple and delicious as a properly roasted or boiled chicken, and expend time and
labor in chopping it, mixing it with so many other things that we cannot detect its
original flavor, then shaping, egging and crumbing it, and making it more indigestible
by browning it in scorching fat? Butter and cream are the most wholesome forms of
fat, and fat is necessary to a perfect diet, and is digestible if not too closely enveloped
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 141
in starch, or if not subjected to so great degree of heat as to change it into acid and
acrid substances. Pure sugar, taken in suitable quantities, is easily digested, and enters
quickly into the circulation, giving us its carbon for warmth. Eggs eaten raw, or
properly prepared, that is, cooked at only a moderate degree of heat, are palatable and
easily digested; but when hardened by intense heat they become difficult of digestion.
Knowing this, why should we overtax our muscular strength by beating butter, sugar
and eggs together, mixing them with milk and flour and baking them as cakes, or
rolling and frying them as doughnuts, when these same perfect food substances might
be as palatable if prepared with far less labor? Why should we subject food materials
to the intense heat necessary to cook them when prepared in these compounds, when
less heat would suffice, if they were more simply prepared? Or why make them
indigestible by uniting so closely substances which must be digested separately; or
by over-heating the albumen and scorching the sweet globules of fat, or entangling
them in starch and albumen?
Why will women be so foolish? I cannot say, unless it be that we are still slaves
to the ways of our mothers and grandmothers, or to the latest freak of fashion, and
think we cannot keep house without our patchwork quilts and an unlimited supply of
cakes, gingersnaps, cookies, wafers; tarts, doughnuts and pies, or dare not invite a
friend to luncheon without serving croquettes, patties and some novel ice or cream.
I hope I shall see the time when this subject of food in all its various phases, from the
chemistry of its formation to the physiological changes in its effects, shall be a science
by itself, and taught in all our schools made a leading feature of the curriculum.
A beginning has been made in this direction by the teaching of cooking in our
public schools. For seven years classes have been successfully conducted in Boston
in school kitchens especially fitted for the purpose. New Haven, Providence, Phila-
delphia, Pittsburg, New York, Milwaukee and other cities have followed in the good
work. Recently some of our Massachusetts legislators are considering the question
of introducing cooking into the high schools of every city of twenty thousand inhab-
itants. Many objections have been urged against the teaching of cookery in the pub-
lic schools — want of time that should be devoted to other studies, home the best place
for such instruction, etc. But in many homes no such instruction can be given, for
there is no knowledge of anything but the mechanical part, and often not the best of
that; and where it can be given there certainly is no study that could be more effect-
ively carried on by the combined and happy working together of the school and the
home.
Girls should be taught the magnitude of this responsibility, and while they are
still girls, for no one can tell how early in life it may be thrust upon them. The com-
fort, purity and influence of the future homes of this country are in the hands of our
school-girls. It is for them to determine, that out of the love-lit center husband and
children shall go, not with the lagging step and downward look of disappointment,
doubt and ill-regulated passions, but full of the sweet courage and hopes that spring
from the noblest human aspirations.
It has been urged that cooking-schools only increase the work of the already
over-worked housekeeper; that many new and costly utensils are required, and that
the new dishes are too expensive, too elaborate, etc., etc. I admit that these objec-
tions might well be raised if the teacher's only aim has been to show you how to make
novelties and unwholesome combinations, or to outshine your friends in your enter-
tainments. But no teacher who is in earnest in prompting this reform would make
these objects paramount. I have for a long time felt, instead of teaching my pupils
how to prepare elegant dinners of many courses, and to compete with chefs and cater-
ers, I should spend more time in teaching them to prepare the essential dishes per-
fectly, and until they can do that to give no time to elaborate menus.
Cooking is only one of the duties of the housekeeper, but it is the most important
one; for the body plays so important a part in this world that its preservation in
comeliness and health is one of our first duties. But alas! How many of us allow its
142 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
outward adornment to be the chief aim in life. The preservation of the body, the
temple and instrument of the soul, can be secured only by observing the laws of hygiene
in all our habits, especially in the choice, preparation and eating of our food. I do
not advocate devoting all our time and thought to this subject of cooking. We should
avoid the two extremes: on the one hand that of indifference, which follows a mistaken
interpretation of the Biblical injunction, "Take no thought what ye shall eat, or what
ye shall drink;" and on the other hand, the untiring vigilance which examines every
particle of food, weighs to the fraction of an ounce each portion, and analyzes every
sensation after eating. Between these two there is a happy middle ground, where all
may safely roam.
I think that all will agree with me that if we would have our food serve its highest
purpose it should be prepared by those who can combine culinary taste, mechanical
skill, imitation, invention and general intelligence with scientific principles. But if
these words of mine fail to impress you with the importance of a correct understand-
ing of the preparation of food, allow me to remind you of the mythological, Biblical
and practical requirements which Mr, Ruskin considers necessary in a good cook.
He says: "Cookery means the knowledge of Circe and Medea, and of Calypso
and Helen, and of Rebekah and of all the queens of Sheba. It means the knowledge
of all fruits and balms and spices, and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and
groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness, inventiveness, watchfulness, will-
ingness and readiness of appliance. It means the economy of your great-grand-
mothers and the science of modern chemistry. It means much tasting and no wasting.
It means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality. It means, in
fine, that you are to be always and perfectly defined ' ladies,' which in its true signifi-
cance means 'loaf-givers;' and as you are to see imperatively that everybody has
something pretty to put on, so you are to see still more imperatively that everybody
has something good to eat."
POWER AND PURPOSES OF WOMEN.
By MRS. HELEN L. BULLOCK.
We are all doubtless aware ere this that Columbus discovered America. America's
uncrowned queen, Miss Frances E. Willard, once said, "The greatest discovery of the
nineteenth century is the discovery of woman by
herself." This wonderful Woman's Building, in
which are represented fifty woman's organizations,
with its woman's library, and these congresses, have
demonstrated the truth of this statement. Even the
new revision of God's Holy Word has, in at least one
instance, inspired woman with new courage for her
work by giving a truthful and unbiased interpretation
of the eleventh verse of the sixty-eighth Psalm. In
the old version it reads: "The Lord gave the Word;
great was the company of those that published it."
In the revised version, so ably and critically trans-
lated, the same verse reads, "The Lord giveth the
Word and the women that publish it are a great host."
Even the little colored girl in the mission school in
benighted Africa has made a discovery in this century
which solves the problem regarding the reason for
there being more women then men in the world. She
wrote a composition on "Girls," in which she said:
" The Bible which the missionary gives us says, that
in the beginning God made the world and then He
made a man, but, not being quite satisfied, thought he
could do better, so he tried again and made a woman. He saw that she was so much
nicer than man that he has made more women than men ever since." Rev. Dr. Black
says: "Whatever difference of opinion may exist concerning the range of woman's
intellect, there can be no question as to her superior moral and religious status. In
all ages of the Christian chxirch women have constituted a large proportion of its
membership, and in the realm of philanthropy women predominate, therefore it is for
the best interests of humanity everywhere to utilize woman's power and influence in
the most effective possible manner, especially in all the activities of religion and
philanthropy."
The first law ever enacted in the interest of woman's education was in New York,
in 1818. Through the earnest efforts of Mrs. Emma Willard, Gov. Dewitt Clinton
was induced to urge the passage of a bill to make appropriations for schools for
women as well as for men, and it was done.
Only by actual experience are all our grandest theories demonstrated, and realiz-
ing all the barriers which have been placed in the way of woman's progress, we can
Mrs. Helen L. fiallock was born in Norwich, N. Y., April 29, 1838. Her parents were Joseph Chapel, of Connecticut
and Phebe Chapel, of Maseachnsetts. She was edacated in Norwich Academy'and by private tntors, studied mosic with S. B,
Mills of New York City and others, and has traveled in all parts of the United States, sometimes eleven thousand miles in
a year. She married Mr. Daniel S. Bullock. Her special work at present is in the interest of the Woman's Christian Tem-
perance Union. For the past eight years she has made pnblio speeches and four years been national organizer. Her
department is narcotics, organizing and rescue work for girls. She is president of the " Anchorage " in Elmira, a rescue
home for girls. Her principal literary works are, " Improved Musical Catechism," and "Scales and Chords." Mrs. Bullock
was a teacher of piano, organ and guitar music for thirty-five years. She is a member of the Baptist church. Her poetoiBce
address is Elmira, N. Y.
143
MRS. HELEN L. BULLOOK.
144 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
but acknowledge that we get but a faint glimpse of her power by what she has in the past
been able to accomplish. First in the home — we have only to point to Queen Esther,
who risked her life to save her people by coming unbidden into the presence of the
king. She knew the danger of incurring her husband's displeasure, but trusted in the
God of Heaven to move upon his heart, and give her power over him, which would
save her oppressed people.
All through the ages illustrious men without number have attributed their great-
ness to the power of mother love, thus the true woman manifests her power in the
home, according to the depth of her affection and the strength of her character. Lucy
Webb Hayes, true to her total abstinence principles, bravely bore the criticisms of the
aristocratic devotees of fashion, lifted a standard in Washington society which caused
an arrest of thought, and abandonment by the best and most conscientious of our leaders
in social life of the dangerous custom which has sent thousands of our brightest men
and women to a drunkard's eternity. From that day the power of her influence has been
felt for good throughout the entire social fabric of this nation. Across the Atlantic
our Margaret Bright Lucas, and Lady Henry Somerset, with tongue and pen, have
stirred the social circles of England on the same moral question, thus banishing the
wine and ale from dinner-table and banquet-hall in thousands of homes.
In 1821 Mary Lyon became assistant principal of an academy of Ashfield, Mass.,
a position never before occupied by a woman. Later, at Derby, N. H., she gave the
first six diplomas received by young women for a three years' course of study. She
saw the need of a seminary for women, and pleaded for an endowment. The public was
apathetic and her appeals fruitless.
In 1834 she determined to found a permanent institution designed to train young
women for the highest usefulness. She laid her plans before a few gentlemen in .
Ipswich, Mass. They were pronounced visionary and impracticable; her motives
misunderstood and misinterpreted. The domestic feature of her seminary was regarded
as unwise; but the peculiar features of her plan became its success, and within two
months she collected Si, 000 from women of Ipswich, She obtained a few large gifts,
but chose to gain the intelligent interest of the many with their smaller sums, and in
1836 the corner-stone of Mt. Holyoke Seminary was laid. Three years later the
school opened, filled with eager students, who knew that twice their number were
waiting to take their places. As the preparation required to enter this seminary was
in advance of what had generally been regarded as a finished education for girls, it
was feared that students could not be found to fill the building; but on the contrary,
two hundred students were refused the first year for lack of room, and nearly four
hundred the second vear.
Although Latin and French were taught from the first, she waited ten years before
she could get Latin included in the course, such was public opinion on woman's edu-
cation. She lived, however, to realize much of the fruitage of her seed-sowing, and
Mary Lyon and Mt. Holyoke Seminary will never be forgotten by the thousands who
were lifted to a higher educational plane by her heroic efforts.
Within the last generation (1852) we have pointed with pride to Maria Mitchell,
who was the first woman to receive the title of LL.D. from Hanover College. She
was astronomer in Vassar College for twenty-three years, and was the first woman
elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Alice Freeman Palmer was for six years president of Wellesley College, and has
since been one of its trustees and a member of the Massachusetts board of education.
When girls were first admitted to the public schools of Massachusetts in 1822, no one
would have dreamed that in sixty-six years a woman would have been president of
one of its most noted colleges and a member of its state board of education.
Mary H. Hunt has shaken the physiological world from center to circumference,
made liquor dealers and tobacconists tremble for their deadly merchandise, has
turned on the light of science, and through the W. C. T. U. set in motion influences
which have convinced the legislatures in thirty-nine states, as well as our representa-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 145
tives in Congress, that the hope of this nation is in teaching total aostinence in the
public schools. The celebrated Henry Thomas Buckle says: "When we see how
knowledge has civilized mankind, when we see how every great step in the march and
advance of nations has been invariably preceded by a corresponding step in their
knowledge; when we, moreover, see what is assuredly true, that women are constantly
growing more influential, it becomes a matter of great moment that we should
endeavor to ascertain the relation between their influence and our knowledge."
Notwithstanding all the di.scouragements in the way of woman she holds a high
place in the literary world. Our Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose poetic gems enrich
the choicest library, our Charlotte Bronte, whose name is familiar in every home
of culture, and our George Eliot, whose rare literary worth was quickly recognized
and acknowledged when the world thought her a man, have few equals as writers.
Pardon a little personal experience to show you how prejudice against woman's
work has reached all classes.
A few years ago, from sense of duty to her profession as a teacher of music, your
speaker published some musical studies, and a catechism, and one of the largest pub-
lishing houses in New York bought the copyrights, but modestly asked that the pre-
fix of "Mrs." be omitted before the initials of the name of the author, that the public
might suppose they were written by a man, and thus the sale of the same might not
be hindered by the prejudice against woman as a musical author. Caring only for the
advancement of her life work, the author was glad to escape publicity, and quickly
consented, never dreaming at that time of the injustice of robbing woman of the little
crumb of encouragement which even that humble effort would afford.
Prejudice hindered woman in the medical profession, although all will admit her
natural fitness and power of endurance as a nurse. Elizabeth Blackwell found the
doors of medical colleges closed to women, but after severe trials and repeated efforts
she gained entrance to the Geneva Medical School, where she graduated with the
highest honors of her class in 1847. ^^e also traveled in Europe, visiting hospitals
and medical institutions in order to acquire a fitness for her calling, but on locating in
a metropolis of America was ostracised by the profession solely on account of her sex.
Since she opened this door, thousands of brave, cultured women have entered and
today stand in the forefront of the profession, skillful, conscientious, disarming preju-
dice and winning their way to the hearts and homes of the people.
In the philanthropic world Grace Darling and Ida Lewis risked their own lives
on the stormy ocean to save those imperiled there. A multitude of earnest conse-
crated women have left home and friends, being maligned and persecuted, have taken
their lives in their hands, going forth at the call of God to protect the homes which
are the foundation stones of the nation, and open up avenues of usefulness and
development to women.hitherto unknown. Josephine Butles, of England, and Amer-
ica's Mary A. Livermore, Mary Clement Leavitt, Susan B. Anthony, our loved and
revered Frances E. Willard, and hosts of others, are today in the field toiling for the
uplifting of humanity and to save the homes of this world. The enemy scoffs and the
narrow-minded question the right of woman even to save souls outside the sacred
place she calls home, but she hears the voice as did the Maid of Orleans, " Daughter
of God, go on, go on; I will be thy help," and she will never waver or turn back.
The work of Lady Huntington stands out before us as an enduring monument of
woman's power in the church. Leaving her high position with its many social pleas-
ures and advantages, she bravely met rebuffs from associates of her own rank and
made the watchword of her life, "My God, I give myself to thee." She established
sixty-four chapels (selling her jewels to build one of them), organized a mission in
North America, and maintained a college for the education of ministers in Trevecca,
Wales. Doddridge, Whitefield, Berridge, the Wesleys and Doctor Watts were among
her chosen friends.
Wesley justified female preaching on the same ground on which he defended lay
preaching. The following are his words: "What authority have I to forbid the doing
(10)
146 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
what I believe God has called them to do? He encouraged such grand women as
Sarah Crosby, Mary Fletcher and others. After Wesley's day female preaching
became common among the Friends, and Elizabeth Fry began her ministry in 1810,
after feeling for twelve years that God called her to this work. The results of her
public labors were marvelous, and her own family of eleven children were never neg-
lected. Hers was a model household, and her work for unfortunate women in New-
gate was the beginning of prison reform which commanded the respect of the world.
Seventeen European sovereigns honored themselves by honoring her. When she
first entered the prisons their condition was most revolting, and it was considered
unsafe to do so without a guard. The thought of reforming these inmates of both
sexes, and all grades of crime, huddled together like wild beasts, seemed the apex of
madness. The keepers remonstrated with her, but the love of Christ constrained her,
and with no protector save Daniel's God she was locked in the prison with a band of
fiends in human shape. As her sweet voice rang out in those grand old hymns she
awed them into silence. So heartfelt and eloquent was her appeal that hope sprang up
in the hearts of these degraded creatures and hundreds were saved. Industries and
schools were introduced into prisons, sanitary conditions improved, and the criminal
jurisprudence of the civilized world was revolutionized in some of its aspects through
her instrumentality. In London the Elizabeth Fry Refuge stands today as a fitting
memorial of her life and labors. The first Methodist Episcopal Church in America
was started in New York City by Barbara Heck, whose unwavering fidelity to Christ
gave her the moral courage to sharply rebuke the sins of the converts of Wesley who
had come to America and grown cold in the cause.
But you hear little of Barbara Heck; it is the old story of Betsy and I killed the
bear, but, friends, Betsy is coming to the front. Again we turn the pages of history
and see what she has accomplished in the government, even while surrounded by walls
of prejudice and hindered by ridicule and criticism. Let us catch a glimpse of the won-
derful Maid of Orleans. She believed God had called her, and by her modest and
wise replies to the many insults of learned priests and powerful nobles, she won their
confidence and obedience. This noble woman died for her country in the most
ignominious manner after rendering it such unprecedented service; and not until
twenty years afterward was tardy justice done her memory. It is now over four hun-
dred years since this great event of the world's history, and most impressive services
and festivals annually commemorate the great victories won by this brave, godly
woman. Many beautiful monuments have been erected in honor of her work.
Queen Victoria has proved herself a wise ruler of a great government, and none
the less a faithful, true wife and mother, Isabella, Queen of Spain, born 1451, was pro-
claimed queen at twenty-three years of age, and at once applied herself to reform the
laws, to encourage literature and arts, and to modity the stern and crafty measures of
her husband by the influence of her own gentle and elevated character. She intro-
duced the first printing press into Spain, and clad in armor, personally directed the
operations of the army that besieged Grenada. She established the first field hos-
pitals and appointed surgeons to attend her army. But for her cheerful endorsement
of Columbus, and her ready self-denial, we might not be able to celebrate this four,
hundredth birthday of America,
And now having spoken of the power of woman, let us consider for a few moments
her purposes. For what does she desire higher education except to prepare her better
to fulfill her mission to help the world upward? For what does she desire to enter
various avocations heretofore denied her? I answer that she may honorably maintain
herself and those dependent upon her in an occupation for which God has naturally
fitted her, and in which, for this reason, she will best succeed. Why does she desire
to enter the ministry? For the same reason that her brother desires to save souls in
the way that he can reach the largest number, hoping thereby to best glorify God.
For what reason does she desire to aid in governing the nation? Aside from her
natural and God-given right, I believe the highest purpose of woman in her desire to
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 147
stand side by side with man in the government is to purify it, protect the home and
make the world better and more Christ-like.
Is she not in a great measure robbed of her power to do this?
I saw in Pomona, Cal., a beautiful Woman's Christian Temperance Union banner
which impressed me deeply. Painted on white satin was the picture of a charming
young mother, holding with her left arm her little boy as high as possible above the
serpent coiled about her feet, with head raised ready to strike her darling. In her
right hand she held a dagger with which she was trying to destroy the deadly serpent,
but that hand was chained to the ballot box below, and she was powerless to save her
beautiful boy. So are the purposes of woman thwarted in protecting her home and
the children which God has given her; but a better day is dawning, and our noblest
brothers are already convinced that to best uplift humanity and advance Christianity
is to confer upon woman her right of suffrage. To Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. James
P. Eagle, and the brave self-sacrificing women who have so grandly served on this
board of managers, thus advancing the interests of the womanhood of the world, we
owe more than we can now realize; but as the years go by we shall see more of the far-
reaching and wonderful results. Your power has been felt, and your purpose for the
advancement of woman has been served. Gerald Massey beautifully describes the
struggles of woman during this century:
Our hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes
With smiling futures glisten;
Lo ! now its dawn bursts upon the sky;
Lean out your souls and listen.
The earth rolls freedom's radiant ways,
And ripens with our sorrow;
And 'tis the martyrdom today
Brings victory tomorrow.
'Tis weary watching wave by wave,
And yet the tide heaves onward;
We climb like corals, grave by grave.
Yet beat a pathway sunward.
We're beaten back in many a fray.
Yet newer strength we borrow;
And where our vanguard rests today,
Our rear shall rest tomorrow.
HOW CAN WE AID?*
By MRS. AGNES L. D'ARCAMBAL.
All along the seacoast of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, out on rivers and down
into the lakes, our government has built the lighthouse for the safety and relief of the
storm-tossed ships. Within every lighthouse theie
are lifeboats and life preservers, and lights and life
lines to throw out to the drowning crew and traveler.
So upon the shores of the stormy ocean of vice,
which surges in and through the great city of Chicago
and all other cities, we find life-saving stations for
the help and restoration of poor, perishing souls.
Here, too, are lights and life lines thrown out by lov-
ing, strong arms to draw in to rescue the weak and
erring girls.
When a vessel, its crew and passengers, are
wrecked, thousands and thousands of people hear
and repeat over and over the tale of dreadful disaster.
" That fearful shipwreck, the loss of life and prop-
erty." The daily press reports and the people tell
with exactness just the number of souls on board,
and mourn that freight and vessel have gone down —
lost. Alas! who knows of the hundreds of thousands
of weak and erring girls that are going down, down,
lost, perishing in this sea of vice that rolls in and
about us on every side. The press may tell a part — •
MRS. AGNES L. D'ARCAMBAL i i ^1 i i i Mi- , , 11 1,-1 1
doubtless would be wilhngtotell more — but the people
draw the veil, saying, " It is too horrible to read of such things in our daily papers."
Many good people condemn the papers and the reporters for 'giving to the public
" these horrible details." Even those who deem themselves the Christian people of
the city may read; but they rush by the wrecks with upturned faces, but few lips dar-
ing to speak and few arms outreached to rescue, even a girl, though she be but a
child. Yet it is characteristic of this age in which we live to employ all forms and
oflfices of Christian charity and sympathy, indeed to the most elaborate and far-reach-
ing organizations and societies. We have homes for the foundling, homes for the
aged, the blind, the deaf and the dumb, homes for sailors and soldiers, homes for the
inebriate, homes for the incurable, asylums and hospitals everywhere.
And so broad and wide and strong are the arms of this great spirit of loving
kindness to all the human family, it still has place and thought for the dumb animals
and the fowls of the air, their rights are made incorporate among the laws of our
land. Generously are all these homes and asylums supported by a generous people.
All are proudly mentioned from the pulpit and by the press. Only one stands out in
the loneliness of its unpopularity — the refuge for erring girls — the home for fallen
women. This one true Christian charity, as it were, stands alone, unpopular, almost
an orphan, for few venture to adopt this child of sin and sorrow. I assure you, kind
Mrs. Agnes L. Harrington d'Arcambal is a native of Bnrlington. Vt. She was born March 8, 1832. Her parents wer©
William and Eliza Harrington. Has traveled thronghont the United States. She married Charles L. d'Arcambal, a native
of France. Her special work has been in the interest of suffering humanity. She has been for twenty-five years a voluntary
worker in several lines of charity. In religions faith she is a Christian. Her postotfice address is Detroit, Mich.
♦The original title of the address as read was : " How Can We Help the Weak and Erring Girls and Women?"
148
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 149
friends, that it is with gravest feelings of a deep responsibility that I stand before this
congress to speak on this important subject: *' How can we help the weak and erring
girls?"
I wish I could tell of this work; how it was made the loving, consecrated work of
a man over two thousand years ago; "a man who went about doing good," and whose
loving service to humanity stands out so plainly the work of his heart — the pardon
and purification of lost wornen. It is through the divine history of this man that
hearts have been inspired to enter the vineyard, and with loving hands and kind
words reclaim many a weak, sinful girl, and draw her away from sin and hell up into
a purer and better atmosphere of light and life.
The reformation of women, " How to help the weak and erring," is a work and
subject that has many sides, and is fraught with the deepest interest to the entire
human family. We all acknowledge that " prevention is better than cure," yet we all
realize that humanity is and has ever been prone to err. So we must find some way to
reach these unfortunate creatures. With many years of experience behind me in this
kind of work, I realize that to be successful and to bring about good results there must
be intelligent organization and co-operation. I find where homes or houses of refuge
have been founded they gradually grow into favor and usefulness. I know there
come many struggles, often sad disappointments, sighs and tears to the women who
are brave enough to associate themselves with this reform work for their own sex. No
worker can be half-hearted or faint-hearted who enters the places where they find
these poor abandoned girls. Eyes they must have to see and realize the depth of sin
and degradation of their living hell. Ears to hear, not the scoff and jeers, but the
sad confession of some sin-sick soul. Hearts of pity and grace from God and the
divine love and patience of the loving Saviour, the gentle Jesus who dried the sinful
woman's tears and bade her sin no more. When this Son of God began His ministry
in His native town. He took this text: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal
the broken-hearted and preach deliverance to the captive and the restoring of sight
to the blind; to set at liberty those who are bruised." He is the preacher, and His
preaching has inaugurated all the sympathy, all the love, all the humane movements
of our modern world. All the leading spirits of this reform have avowed again and
again that the reformation of these unfortunate women is a religious question, and
that unless the worker in this uninviting, unpopular field is sustained by the religious
sentiment of the community, and upheld by the faith and prayers and sympathy and
co-operation of both Christian men and women, they may as well lay down their
arms. I hold that we as workers hav^e a right to expect from every Christian com-
munity intelligent sympathy with the work, and the moral support of an educated
public sentiment, and the creation of an atmosphere of hopeful feeling in which the
rescued and the reformed may breathe and live again. This work demands tenderness,
humanity and self-sacrifice. You and I as Christian people carry in our hands and
hearts the power to give life and bring it unto these abandoned creatures. God's
command is: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
This is the true inspiration of all work for the outcast. There is no soul so far
steeped in sin that it cannot be saved by Jesus. Some who hear my voice and know
of my work may find fault with me for stooping to aid these poor outcasts of society.
But listen. There arises the story of Christ and the abondoned woman, and His
words, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Herein is the inspiration
of this work.
I must tell you, for I am sure it will interest you, the story of a poor, innocent girl.
Twenty-five years ago — twenty-five years tell many hopeful results, for even at that
time I was as zealous a worker as I am this day; our poormaster often called to ask
my assistance, some child was sick, or some poor family might be tided over and kept
from the poor house if a little help were given them, therefore I was not surprised to
receive a call from him at any hour. This time he came in haste, and asked me
150 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
whether I would go down to a saloon on Water street, where a young woman lay
dying. Poor thing, dying of consumption, and in such a place. He said to me: " Can
you go soon? You will know better than I how to say a word to the poor girl. She
evidently does not belong to the class that frequents saloons." I readily promised to
go, provided myself with a few lemons and a glass of jelly, and got all the Christ-love
possible into my heart, for I well knew what it must be and what it meant to go into-
" a saloon on Water street." As I neared the building I saw a coarse looking man
standing in the door. The blinds had not been removed, and evidently he was expect-
ing me, for the poormaster had promised to send me. I asked, " Is there a sick woman
here?" He replied, "Yes, good woman, hurry up those stairs. Poor thing, she don't
belong here. No such sort as the other girls. But my wife is awful tender hearted;
she found this girl at one of the hotels, where she was trying to wash dishes to pay for
her board. Poor thing; dying by inches. My wife brought her over here, and we
gave her the best little room we had upstairs, and my wife has been a mother to her.
But, poor bird, it is all up with her. I wasn't going to open up this place or take
down these blinds. Can't do it. She was a good girl, only everybody deserted her
because she was sick and couldn't work. I reckon she is true, and would keep her
virtue even if she starved. Please, good lady, hurry up to her. I hear that dreadful
cough." I hastened upstairs, and in a little room several gaudily dressed girls stood
around the bed — girls with the marks of dissipation on their faces so plainly that there
was no mistaking the kind of life they were leading. Over the sufferer bent a plain
but motherly woman, whose strong arms were pillowing the head of a beautiful girl,,
for she could scarcely be called a woman. Her jet black hair fell in long curls in one
rich mass over the pillow. For an instant all was silent. The coughing ceased, but
only for an instant. The girls who were watching the woman wipe the blood-stained
lips of the beautiful sufferer cried, "She is dying"" The woman looked up and said^
" Silence; she breathes." As she held a cup to her lips she said, " Darling child, take
a drop of this, it will soothe you; drink, dear." Oh, what a scene. I shall never for-
get it to my dying hour. I stepped forward, for I had not been noticed by the girls
or the woman, they were weeping and wringing their hands. One of the girls had
just remarked, "That woman (meaning me) will never come. Oh, Daisy is dying; do-
hold her up ! Open wide the windows, bring a fan, call somebody — get help!" I
moved toward the bed, untied my bonnet and handed it to one of the girls. I then and
there realized where I was — in one of the low dens, a house of prostitution — realized
through the creatures before me. A dying girl, whom the poormaster and the man
of the house told me was innocent and a helpless creature. The woman who was-
partner in the house had, from the goodness of her heart, brought the girl to her home^
th^t "the child," as she called her, might die in a comfortable bed. Another fit of
coughing, and the sufferer turned her eyes toward me and motioned to me, reaching
out her cold, cold hand. She cried, " I am dying! Oh must, must I go to hell?" She
sank exhausted on the pillow and the arm of the woman, whose rough cheeks were
being washed with the flowing tears. She, too, had seen me, and said, " Daisy wanted
you, and the poormaster said you would come." I offered to relieve the woman who
was so tenderly caring for this poor stranger under such strange circumstances. The poor
child looked up at me for a moment. Oh, those big, brown eyes. Can I ever forget
them. And her words, "lam dying, and must I go to hell?" Holding that tired
head close to my own I whispered, "No, no, dear child; I hear the Saviour calling
you. Jesus and the angels are waiting your coming. There, don't move and fret
about that. It makes you cough, and I want you to listen. Hark! Listen! Keep very-
quiet. Hark! don't you hear that voice whispering, 'Come home, poor wanderer,
come home.' Please, Daisy, drink a drop of this lemon water. Don't move. We'll
help you. There, hush, dear girl, the Saviour calls." The poor girl believed. A faint
" Yes " came from her lips; one slight struggle for breath, and her hand, holding fast to-
mine, she whispered so low and faint, yet clearly audible, " I do hear the sweetest
music " — and she was dead. Dare you, my hearers, or I say that Daisy did not hear
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 151
the sweet music of Jesus' voice. Dare you pass judgment and tell me I committed a
sin or gave a false impression when I told the poor dying girl — dying in an atmos-
phere of prostitution, and in the presence of those abandoned creatures — dare anyone
say that Jesus was not there, with a band of waiting angels, to wing the spirit of Daisy
to the heavenly home? The woman and the girls stood weeping and crying, "What
shall we do; what shall we do?" A moment's silent thought and I answered, "Seek
pardon here and now. While Jesus is waiting to hear you, ask him to wash your sins
away. He is calling to you now to give up this fearful life." Two of the girls
promised over the dead body of Daisy to seek another home.
A Christian burial was given poor Daisy, and through her great sorrow and suffer-
ing two souls were led to seek pardon and entered into a new life.
To save the souls of the sinful, to lift the fallen and say to the outcast, " There
is hope for you in the love of Jesus," this is something that all can do, and, moved by
this Christ-love, will do.
I believe that those who have gone on before and are now in Heaven are gathered
from all lands and all nations and classes, from the sinful and from the moral, for, for
such the blessed Jesus died.
THE FATE OF REPUBLICS.
By REV. ANNA HOWARD SHAW.
The study of the rise and fall of great republics shows a remarkable corre'
spondence in them all. They all had like beginnings, having been established by a
body of people whose views were in advance of the
age and the people among whom they dwelt; who
were driven forth from their native country or became
voluntary exiles, wandering into new lands, establish-
ing a new system of government, the central idea of
which was civil and religious liberty. About this
central idea, by industry, perseverance, indomitable
courage and patriotism, republics have grown more
rapidly and attained to their period of glory in much
shorter time than any other form of government.
They have also decayed and come to their ruin more
rapidly than other equally great nations, until states-
men are beginning to ask. Is it possible for a republic
to become a permanent form of government? Re-
publics have also grown along like lines, and have
come to their ruin from similar causes. The lines of
growth correspond with those elements in human
nature where men are superior to women. Point out
a line of strength which is peculiarly masculine, and
}'ou will find a corresponding line of marked prog-
ress in all great republics — business enterprise, and
inventive genius, the aggressive spirit and warlike
nature, are the lines of strength in all of the great republics of the world.
On the other hand, Republics have decayed along the lines of our human nature
in which men are inferior to women. Those of morality and purity, temperance and
obedience to law, of loyalty to the teachings of religion and a love of peace. No
republic, ancient or modern, ever died from the lack of material prosperity. Rome,
Greece, Carthage, the Dutch Republic, all manifested evidences of decay while rich
and powerful. Vice followed in the wake of great wealth, corruption close following
on vice, then barbarism, the final fate of all. When we find a uniform result in any
system of government, it is the part of wisdom to seek for the cause, and if the result
is disastrous to the best interests of the nation, it is then the duty of patriots to
remove the cause, regardless of prejudice or precedent.
It is an axiom in political economy " that in a republic, the class which votes
affects the government in the long run along the lines of its nature." Following this
law, it will readily be seen why republics into whose structure men have built their
own nature, have manifested in all their lines of growth the strength of the masculine
character; and on the other hand, since women have been excluded from all
Anna Howard Shaw is a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Was born February 14, 1847. Her parents
were Thomas Shaw of Manchester and Nicolas Stott Shaw of Alnwick, She was'educated at Abion College, Michigan, and
took degrees from the Boston University in theology and medicine, and has traveled extensively in the United Slates, Canada
and Europe. Her work is in the interest of women in all her broader fields of usefulness. In religious faith she is Methodist
Protestant, is a clergyman and member of the New York Conference. For eight years after her graduation in theology she
was pastor of two churches in Massachusetts, of the last one, at East Dennis, pastor seven years. Since then she has been
lecturing, traveling more than 40,000 miles each year. She is a most eloquent and logical orator. Her postoffice address ia
HomertoD, Philadelphia, Pa,
152
REV, ANNA HOWARD SHAW.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. I53
participation in governmental affairs, the peculiar characteristics of their nature have
never been developed in the nation's life, therefore republics have always become
weak and have ultimately come to their death through the decay of the moral and
spiritual side of their life.
The question before us then is this: Is there anything in the nature of woman,
differing from the nature of man in such a manner, that if women were permitted to
vote it would enable them to affect the government differently from the way in which
men affect it? In a speech made in Kansas some time since a United States senator
said, " The nature of woman is as different from the nature of man, as the East is from
the West." From which fact, he drew the conclusion that women ought to be dis-
franchised. He further states that, "If women were permitted to vote, the result would
not be changed, as the>' would affect the government just as men affect it." In his
speech the senator made a strong plea for the superiority of his sex on the ground of
their reasoning and logical powers, and said: "Women cannot reason, but arrive at their
conclusions intuitixely." On reading the senator's speech one is led to inquire what
woman's head he borrowed to enable him to arrive at his conclusions from the premises
with which he started. If in a republic every class that votes affects the government
in the long run along the line of its nature, and the nature of woman differs from the
nature of man as the East differs from the West, how can any reasoning or logical
mind conclude that the votes of women would affect the government exactly as those
of men? Reason, or intuition, or by whatever mental process women reach their con-
clusions, they would claim the result of woman's voting to be as different from that of
men as the East is from the West.
We need no argument to prove that the liquor class is able to affect the govern-
ment, and that it influences it because of its power in the caucus, at the ballot box and
in halls of legislation. Recent laws tn many states show us how men interested in
many forms of gambling and vice are able to affect the government through the power
of the ballot. In one of my old parishes in Massachusetts, a body of men interested
in cranberry culture were equally successful in defeating another body of men engaged
in the fishing industry, because the cranberry men elected their candidate to the legis-
lature, who through his ability to exchange votes, secured the passage of a bill in the
interests of his constituents. Had women owned the property, in whose behalf legis-
lation was secured, they could have done nothing but watch the shiny herring swim
up and down the stream which was dammed by legislative enactment, until the last
trump had sounded; because, not having votes, they could have sent no represent-
ative to the legislature to look after their special interests. If in a republic liquor
men, gambling men and cranberry men having votes are able to affect the govern-
ment, and to affect it along the line of their nature, then women, if they have votes,
could affect it along the line of their nature; and if women differ from men, as the
East does from the West, then the effect of their participation in government would
differ less from that of men in like manner.
Wherein does the nature of women differ from that of men in such a way that if
they voted they would be able to affect the government. It is universally admitted
that w^omen are more moral than men. The great moral factor of the world is its
womanhood. Men recognize this fact even more than women, as, in all their argu-
ments against the extension of suffrage to women, they claim it would degrade them
to the level of men. In the congressional debate over the admission of Wyoming
territory into the Union as a state, every gentleman who opposed it based his argu-
ment upon the woman suffrage plank in its constitution, urging that women are " too
good and pure to vote." For the first time in history goodness and virtue were made
the basis of disfranchisement. In response to this sentiment Mr. Carey, the United
States delegate from Wyoming, declared this very characteristic of womanhood had
compelled both great political parties in that territory to nominate their best men in
the caucuses, since the women defeated the immoral men at the polls. Said a woman
in Wyoming: "We are not particular to hold offices ourselves, but we ar^ very par-
154 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ticuiar who do hold office." Women are more temperate than men; yet when the
state has a temperance question to settle, the ballot is placed in the hands of every
distiller, every brewer, every saloonkeeper, every bartender and every male drunkard,
and is kept out of the hands of the women, the great temperance factor of the world,
which, to our intuitive natures, is a mark of very poor statesmanship. Women are
also more religious than men; nearly three-fourths of the church members are women,
^nd nine-tenths of the spiritual and philanthropic work of the world is done by them.
Yet when it comes to building up the life of a republic this spiritual factor is counted
out. And this men call statesmanship. It is charged that women, if possessed of
political power, would seek to unite church and state. This statement is wholly with-
out foundation; knowing as we do that such a union would be disastrous to both church
and state, women would oppose it even more than men. Yet we answer the gentle-
man who claimed that, "there is no place in the politics of this country for the deca-
logue and the golden rule," that if it be true, then there is no place in God's universe
for the politics of this country. He has no place for the politics of any country in
which there is no room for the decalogue or the golden rule. What we need more
than the settlement of any of the problems which are at present agitating the political
mind is an infusion of the golden rule into politics, and of the decalogue into the laws
of the land. This cannot be accomplished either by putting the name of Deity into
the Constitution, or by the union of church and state, but by bringing to bear upon the
government the influence of that class of people who are the spiritual strength of the
church.
Again, women are more peace-loving than men. This has led some to say that'
women ought not to vote because they cannot bear arms This claim is usually made
by men who, in the hour of their country's need, sent substitutes to the army, or fled
to Canada; or else, by the young men who have been born since the close of the
war. The class who never make the statement that the ballot and the bayonet go
together, are the heroes maimed in battle or broken in health, and prematurely old
because of exposure and suffering in their country's behalf. They know the value of
women in war time, and that women do go to war. Had it not been for the forty
thousand women who went to the hospitals, visited the camps and battle-fields to care for
our wounded heroes, there are thousands with us today who would never have seen
home or friends again, but who would be sleeping in unknown graves. These heroes
remember not only the services of the women in the field, but the great sanitary com-
mission, sending its millions of dollars' worth of those things which were made for health
and comfort, to hospital and fields during those terrible years of suffering. But, best
of all, they remember the Grand Army of the Republic that staid at home, who,
when the citizen soldiers laid down the implements of peace, to take up the weapons
of war, took those implements of peace and went to the workshop, the factory, the
counting-room, the store and the farm, filling the places of men and earning the live-
lihood for the family, when prices were such as had never been known in the histore
of our time; and when the news came flashing over the wire that they who had gone
forth would never more return, the broken-hearted wives, forgetting the agony of their
own loss, gathered their children about their knees, and asked God that they might
be both father and mother to their fatherless little ones; and alone and single-handed
all over the land women have reared to manhood and womanhood the children left
by their dead heroes as their only legacy. Then some man who never struck a blow
in behalf of his country exclaims: "Women must not vote, because they cannot
fight." In the face of the loyalty of America's Womanhood the darkest stain on the
escutcheon of our country is its utter forgetfulness of their services. From the begin-
ning of its history to the present hour, by no act of Congress or of any state legislat-
ure has there ever been any public recognition of the services of its women. By no
monument of granite, or marble, or bronze has it ever commemorated the memory
of their patriotism. They are as utterly forgotten as if they had never lived, suffered
or died for their country.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 155
When a committee appealed to Congress, asking that when the negroes were enfran-
chised the loyal women might share their freedom, Congress answered: "It is the
negro's hour, women must wait." The negro's hour struck, again women asked for
liberty, and were again assured that Congress had weightier measures to consume
its time and attention — it had the South to reconstruct, and the North to bring
back to a sound business basis. The severest form of punishment it could devise
for the crime of treason was disfranchisement, reducing traitors to the level of loyal
women, who had given all they had for their country, and this is the only recognition
that Congress has ever granted them. I have traveled in many countries, and in every
one, save in these United States, I have seen stately monuments erected in grateful
memory of the patriotic services of women. We had a faint hope of at least a part in
one, when we learned that a national monument to the Pilgrims was to be unveiled
at Plymouth, Mass. On the great day, scores of women gathered to witness the
ceremonies. We were told that this government had taught the nations of the
world the great principle that, "taxation without representation is tyranny." We
sighed as we remembered the taxes we had paid, and yet were still refused representa-
tion. We were also told that in this country under God the people rule, and yet the
constitution of every state in the Union, at that time, declared it was the males, and not
the people who rule. The orator again assured us that the powers of this government
were just, since governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed;
but they recently hung a woman, in one of these just states, who had never given her
consent to the law under which she was executed, nor had the consent of women, her
peers, ever been asked regarding it. Then we were told that as the voice of the peo-
ple is the voice of God, and this was repeated both in Latin and in English, that there
might be no doubt in regard to it, that the laws of our land were the crystallized voice
of Deity. The speaker, forgetting that in the compass of the people's voice there is a
soprano as well as a bass, and that if the voice of the people is the voice of God, we
will never know what His voice is until the bass and soprano unite in harmonious
sound, the resultant of which will be the voice of God. After many other statements
of a similar character, which are true in spirit, but had never been practiced by any
nation, the monument was unveiled, and our hearts sank with intense disappointment
when we read the inscription, "Erected by a grateful country in honor of the Pilgrim
Fathers." We had again witnessed the evidence of a country's easy forgetfulness of
its debt to women. We felt just as we do when we gaze on that picture so familiar to
you all; a ship in the background, between it and the shore is a man carrying what
seems to be a woman in his arms, on the beach kneel a company of people, and farther
up the beach stand another group with uplifted hands, thanking God for their deliv-
erance. They look like men and women. You wonder what company of people it is,
and read the inscription beneath the picture to learn, that it is not a company of men
and women at all, but is a representation of "The landing of the Forefathers." You
instinctively exclaim how kind the forefathers were to carry each other ashore, and
how much some of them resemble mothers, but they were not mothers, they were all
fathers, every mother of them.
There never was another country which had so many parents iis we have had, but
they have all been fathers — pilgrim fathers, Plymouth fathers, forefathers, revolutionary
fathers, city fathers and church fathers, fathers of every description — but, like Topsy,
we have never had a mother. In this lies the weakness of all republics. They have
been fathered to death. The great need of our country today is a little mothering to
undo the evils of too much fathering. Like Israel of old, when the people were
reduced to their utmost extremity, in order to save the nation, there was needed a
ruler who was at once a statesman, a commander-in-chief of the armies and a right-
eous judge, who would render justice and be impervious to bribes. God called a
woman to rule, and Deborah tells us in her wonderful ode that the great need of the
nation in this hour of its extremity was motherhood applied to government, when she
exclaims, "Behold the condition of Israel when I, Deborah, a mother in Israel, arose."
156 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
"Then was there peace in Israel" and prosperity and success, as "Deborah ruled the
people in righteousness for forty years."
Women are more law-abiding than men. It is universally accepted that the class
of people who best obey the laws are best fitted to make them. It is also stated that
everything in a republic depends upon the obedience of the citizens to law. I visited the
penitentiary of a state whose senator made this statement, and asked the warden how
many prisoners he had. He replied, "Eight hundred and eighty-nine, of whom eight
hundred and eighty are men and nine are women," so that in the State of Kansas
the women are a hundred times more law-abiding than the men. In the United States
the same year there were sixty-eight thousand and five prisoners, of whom fifty-three
thousand were men and only five thousand and five were women, showing that in the
whole United States there were ten times as many men criminals as women.
It has been claimed that the small number of women prisoners is due to the fact
that women have no part in politics, for in the thought of some people politics and
prisons are synonymous terms. If, however, this statemen. were true of women, then
where they are most in politics they would be most in prison We have but one state to
which we can turn for statistics. At the close of the census in 1890 Mrs. Clara Bewick
Colby, of Washington, consulted the statistics of crime, and learned to our great satis-
faction that the only state in the Union in which there was not a woman criminal in
jail or penitentiary was Wyoming, the state where women had voted for twenty-one
years.
It has also been charged that on account of her emotional nature woman's mental
condition would be unsettled if she engaged in anything so exciting as public affairs.
But Mrs. Colby also learned from the same source that the only state in which there
was not an insane woman in public or private asylum was the State of Wyoming,
where women have been voting for twenty-one years. She also learned that Wyom-
ing was the only state in which but few men were insane — only three — and concludes
that the exercise of suffrage makes women so peaceable to live with that very few
men go insane. The same authority points to the fact that Wyoming is the only
state in which during the last two decades the per cent of marriage has increased
over the per cent of divorce.
If, then, in a republic the class which \otes affects the government in the long
run along the line of its "nature, and women are more moral, more temperate, more
religious, more peace-lov^ing and more law-abiding than men, then if they were per-
mitted to vote they would affect the government along these lines. It needs but a
glance at the world's history to show that these are the lines of weakness in republics,
and that they have all died because of their immorality, licentiousness, intemperance,
their disregard of their own laws, the violation of the statutes of God and by their
warlike nature, and they can only become strong by the incoming of that class of
people who are strong where they are weak. Then shall the voice of the people
become the voice of God, and for the first time in history the voice of God shall be
crystallized into the laws of a republic.
WOMEN IN iWODERN ITALY.
By MADAME FANNY ZAMPINI SALAZAR.
Social customs, family habits, popular prejudices and individual opinions differ
GO utterly from the north to the south of Italy that to give a fair view of the subject I
should exhibit two different studies of my country-
women, if I did not feel it my duty not to trespass
on your kind attention. So I must try to generalize
my study and mark briefly the differences existing
between one and another part of modern Italy, the
north being far in advance of the south. Since
national culture began to offer means to educate the
minds of the people, some women earnestly profited
by this light of the soul, and today we have groups
of learned, enlightened women who seriously strug-
gle for the elevation of our sex in Italy. Here also
we must take into consideration the difference of
these groups in the different provinces, and notice
how the north is still in advance of the south as far as
these groups are concerned. This may be explained
by the fact that the south was for long years the prey
of ignorant rulers, while the north was governed by
more intelligent sovereigns, though no less tyrannical
and oppressive, who did not, however, consider it im-
proper to offer means of culture to their people.
And while this happened in the north and south,
in the two extreme parts of Italy, the central portion
was no better off under the dominion of the popes, whose religious mission, unfortu-
nately, changed into a political one. Since 1870 this political aim has increased and
spread all over Italy, the priesthood regarding it as a duty to keep control, not only
over souls and religious matters, but in other concerns in life, and above all in politics.
Feeling that men escape such control, priests concentrate all their efforts to keep women
under their influence. Allow me an explanation. If such influence was exercised in
good faith and for pure religious purposes, all that is best might come of it. But
unfortunately the strangest anti-patriotic feeling rules their behavior. The ardent
dreams dreamed by our patriots, in prison and in exile, during the long years of sub-
jection, and realized in the union of Italy, with Rome for a capital, leaves them worse
than cold and indifferent — dissatisfied and angry. Hence a perpetual struggle to
regain temporal power makes of the purest of human feelings, religion, a question of
politics ; not in view of the welfare and the popularity of the nation, but for the meanest
ends of worldly ambition. Men influenced by women, though often unconsciously,
are kept from taking any part in elections; and these being left mostly to ignorant and
Signora Fanny Zampini Salazar is a native of Italy, danghter of Demetro Salazar. She traveled in England, stodying
the industrial institutions for women in that country, made a report to the government of Italy which was favorably received
and an appointment was given her for like service in America. At one time she published a paper, The Queen, in the
interest of Italian women, for whom she has been a zealous worker, endeavoring to raise both the industrial and intellectual
standards. Among her published works are, " A Glance at the Future of Woman in Italy," " Life and Labors of Demetro
Salazar," " Guides to Physical and Moral Health of Italian Children," "Old Straggles and New Hope«." She was sent as an
Italian representative to the Congress of Representative Women, which met in Chicago in 1898. She was also elected one of
the judges of awards of the Columbian Exposition. She is a graceful writer, a jmoet charming lecturer, bat above all •
noble woman, devoted mother and faithful wife.
157
.MADAME FANNY ZAMPINI SALAZAR.
158 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ambitious people, are used for mean personal ends of obtaining power, fortune and
influence. The results are what lately created shameful scandals and made the hearts
of true Italians bleed with sorrow at these disgraceful facts. And while the priest-
hood, in hope of repressing progress and reconquering Rome, work in every way,
extending their influence even over persons whose position and interest ought to keep
them far from their reach, the Italian government, for a sort of counteraction, has
no religious culture in public schools. The result is a relaxation in morality to the
great detriment of religion and politics, regarded in the highest sense of their noble
meaning. Women consider themselves pious if they follow religious practices, and
men good citizens if they look on, complaining if all does not go right in the country,
but seldom rising to the consciousness of their great responsibility as pertains to their
political duties. All this has its origin in and is the consequence of the general indif-
ference to all that concerns politics.
Uncultivated women cannot understand what noble influence they might exert
for the welfare of their country, and the elevation of the family and of society. The
few who realize such a duty and try to accomplish it are wearied by misunderstand-
ings, opposition and unfair criticism. Men are more easily led, in general, by the
so-called feeble women who rule over them, and who seem to be entirely subjected
to their will. Strong, earnest, noble-minded women, whose interest in educational,
social and political matters, combined with their culture, makes their conversation
much prized in society, though admired, are feared, and are kept carefully apart because
of a strange sort of prejudice about their becoming too influential in the country.
Of course, men wish to keep their predominance, and though willingly disposed to
accept privately woman's seasonable advice and moral help, they take great care not
to make her conscious of her power, and in society they make much more of light,
wel -dressed, insignificant women, whose influence they fear not, being unconscious in
this case that such negative influence leads them down to the lower level of such
charming, empty-minded, useless creatures.
Again, the great difference to be found in the various social classes makes it difiicult
to define a woman of typical character in Italy. We have aristocracy, from which class
little is to be hoped. In this class a few, a very few, exceptions are worthy of notice
for giving their lives a really noble aim. In general, old prejudices, ignorance, pride,
a sybaritical conception of life, considered with the most selfish views of satisfactions
of a mere material order, reign supreme in that part of society which might so easily
do so much good. The middle class has good elements, cultivated persons actively
busy in some sort of serious aim in life. We have there a group of intelligent, learned
women, gifted with modern ideas, and trying to their utmost to contribute to social
progress. They do not turn to the higher classes for help; none or very little, indeed,
would come to them from that source; but they look to the common people hopefully
for the future moral regeneration of Italy. We have, indeed, all to hope from this
much neglected and greatly oppressed social class.
The Italian people have the best human instincts; with a little culture and much
love anything may be made of them. But allow me to observe that we must not
judge the Italian people by some specimens of poor emigrants, stupefied with the long
struggle with want and sorrow before they make up their minds to break the old home-
ties of the beloved fatherland. In general, Italians belonging to the popular classes
are full of heart and kindness, frugal, simple, much attached to their families and the
place where they were born. They only need the enlightenment of culture to rise,
strong and powerful, in the full consciousness of their most sacred rights, to a nobler
life. But here, again, priesthood and prejudice, political fears and negligence neutral-
ize the few efforts made in favor of their elevation. They are flattered when their
service is required, helped occasionally by the humiliating charity offerings, and kept
down in the dark regions of ignorance and poverty. Badly fed, badly paid, oppressed
by heavy taxes, often without work — no wonder their life is a hard struggle to keep
it up in sacrifice and suffering, unconscious of any right to a brighter one. I have
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 159
often tried in the southern provinces and in Rome to arouse humanitarian feelings in
the idle upper classes, speaking and writing about all that had been done in England
for the moral and intellectual elevation of women and the people generally; but
I only obtained praises and nice words, without ever being able to begin, even on a
small scale, something practical in the way of associations of cultivated persons to
promote popular classes, artistic societies in favor of these neglected portions of our
country-people.
The press in Italy encourages such a movement; but the fearful indifference of
the public, and the opposition of the officials, of the clergy, and other prejudiced per-
sons are still to be overcome.
This work, I consider, must be undertaken by women, and I am glad to be able to
say that we have begun to undertake it in the northern provinces, and I trust that
persevering through all difficulties it will bring its fruit in time.
In Bologna, the ancient university town, where learned women taught one day in
the character of acknowledged professors, in Milan and in Turin, associations exist
and are being established with the view of promoting woman's progress and culture.
In Bologna ladies have been at work for the past two years; and, indeed, it is there I
noticed the most important group of intelligent women actively busy in promoting
the interests of their moral and judicial condition. What struck me in Bologna was the
solidarity of these cultivated women so earnestly at work together. It is there that
the noble influence of one of our greatest Italians, Mazzini, is deeply felt, for a nobly-
gifted Englishwomen, whose soul was given to Italy in marrying Mazzini's best friend,
Aurelio Saffi, has perseveringly been at work in the sunny years of her happy youth,
and the sad ones of her widowhood, always endeavoring in all ways to elevate those
with whom she comes in contact. She has established at Forli women's associations,
the objects of which are to promote culture, sisterly help in need, and to find work for
all. In the fullness of a richly gifted nature, Giorgini Saffi honors our sex in Italy,
andsimply goes on with her noble work, blessed by all that know her. Nor did this work
prevent her from educating most highly her sons, and giving always the example of a
beautiful life spent for the welfare of all those around her. I fully believe that the
higher level of the women at Bologna is due to her influence.
In Milan we have a very remarkable group of intellectual women, but which is
disintegrated, each working in her own way, very few of them following together the
same high purpose. But these few, who are just beginning to aggregate, have felt the
need of establishing an association to promote the interests of their sex. When I was
there lately Pauline Schiff, a learned university teacher of German origin, published
the program of an important association, to which many gave their names. In Milan
are some very excellent schools and institutions for girls. I met there a most remark-
able woman, Alexandrina Navizza, whose life is entirely devoted to good works, and
who has no end of trouble to go on with them, because she would have nothing to do
with the clergy, and is full of human pity and sorrow for unfortunate girls whom she
tried to help and save from disgrace. In Turin is also a very interesting group of cul-
tivated women, actively busy trying to unite their efforts to establish some useful
association of like character to those at Milan and Bologna. In Rome we have two
societies, but of quite a different order, most conservative in their aims and views.
One was lately established by the persevering efforts of a brilliant, earnest, learned
young professor and deputy, Angelo Celli, who succeeded in interesting a band of cul-
tivated ladies of the aristocracy in the fate of poor women struggling in want of work
and help. The society is called " Work and Help," and was organized two years ago
under the patronage of our Queen Margherita. It is now prospering, and much good
comes of it. Poor women find work and help during times of sickness or want, their
young children being cared for during hours of work m a sort of nursery school estab-
lished by the daughters of the ladies who aided Professor Celli to organize the society.
Still, useful as it is, no attention is given to intellectual culture or recreation as is
done for similar institutions in England. The other society in Rome was established
160 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in 1873, twenty years ago. It was established for the purpose of promoting the edu-
cation and general culture of women, but it is such a mystification that it deserves
honest criticism. I think nothing could better reveal the subjection of our women to
prejudices and old ideas than this association of theirs, which pretends to promote
woman's culture by a weekly lecture, mostly regarding ancient history, and carefully
excluding any and all of the modern questions regarding social, educational, legal or
political matters. In place of awakening the mind to examine these most important
subjects, it seems that the aim of this society is to put it to sleep by the constant repe-
tition of that which we all can read or have more or less been learning at school.
Now and then, very rarely, some beautiful and interesting lecture is given, but in gen-
eral they are very dull indeed. Fashionable ladies go because the Queen goes, but I
have often noticed how uninterested they seem to be in the lecturer's old-fashioned
theme. Another strange feature of this society is that lady lecturers are excluded
from giving lectures there, though we have now in Italy a large number of successful
lady lecturers. I believe that this society, infused with modern spirit and purpose,
can be made a powerful factor in the promotion of woman's culture and education.
Three years ago Prof. Angelo de Gubernatis, with the purpose of associating
all who were willing, and offering them a study of the progress made by women of
Italy, organized in Florence an exhibition of woman's work, and also arranged for a
course of lectures along this line, to be given by ladies. These lectures were published
in book form, and some of them are worthy of notice because of the originality of
thought and ideas. But the exhibition and lectures were a source of great trouble to
the professor, mainly because he could not obtain the patronage of persons in high
position who obstinately refused to recognize the question of woman's development
in Italy.
Considering woman's education in modern Italy, I have not much to say. We
have public schools for elementary work, higher schools for girls, but a lack of com-
petent teachers for them, and normal schools for those wishing to become teachers;
but no proper training college for them, and the course of study is defective in nearly
every department. Our present minister of instruction, Ferdinando Martini, is for-
tunately a high-minded man of modern ideas regarding woman's culture, and he is
studying a project for the entire reform of education for both sexes. His work is very
hard, for in Italy much is expected from the government because of the great lack of
individual effort. Women are now admitted to the universities, lyceums and gym-
nasiums, but there are none of these exclusively for women. This, with the indiffer-
ence of the parents as regards the education of girls, or their opposition to mixed
schools, leaves little profit from these institutions to girls. Schools of art are open to-
girls, but the same objection obtains here also, and the young men who attend these
schools are not always as refined as they should be. In the way of education we have
still much to do, as, in general, not all understand that culture is one thing and edu-
cation another, and that both are demanded. We easily find such a thing in some
private schools, established by refined and cultivated women, whose personal influence
has a good effect upon the pupils.
Two such institutions in Naples I visited with great interest. One is a daily
school, kept by the Misses Vittori, daughters of a most superior woman, who, having
lost her husband, and been left with a young family to support, very courageously
determined to do it with her work. She studied to obtain her degrees, and was soon
entitled to a principal's position as inspector of girls' schools. With this she had also
taken private pupils to teach, and withal, she succeeded in bringing her children up
nobly, and they are now the crown of her old age, one of the girls being a distin-
guished pianist, and the others are very good teachers. Their school is considered one
of the very best in Naples. The other private institution is a boarding-school for girls,
situated in one of the most beautiful and healthful country places, a few miles from
Naples. There are Froebelian kindergartens, and from the elementary to the higher
classes, and normal classes for those wishing to become teachers. This school has
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 161
been very courageously started by the six daughters of Garibaldi's friend, Dr. Occhi-
pinti. It is, indeed, just opened, but the oldest girl has a very good head, and sound,
practical ideas on education, and truly she deserves full praise and encouragement for
having taken upon herself such a difficult enterprise. It is prospering, however, many
families sending their children as day students, and a few boarders have already been
admitted, and I left my own dear daughters there, being sure that they could not be bet-
ter off elsewhere. The Misses Occhipinti are religious, but Italians before all, having
been raised under Garibaldi's noble influence. I am sure that in time this school will
be one of the first in Naples. This school is called, by royal permission, after our
Queen, "College Queen Margherita." The two very best schools we have in Naples
besides those named, are due to the private enterprise of foreigners. They are Mrs,
Julia Salis Schwabe's School and Seminary, which takes girls from childhood in the
kindergarten to the seminary, which they leave with the degree of teacher. Still,
before seeing this splendid institution prospering as it is now, Mrs. Salis Schwabe had
to overcome no end of difficulties and opposition. I am proud to remember the help
given her then by my dear father, who was always ready to encourage all intellectual
pursuits. The other is an International College for girls, where they receive a most
complete education, and are also taught to speak the principal modern languages.
We have also in Italy several professional schools for the working-classes, and
these answer their purpose, though I think they ought to provide for more mental
culture, and not limit their aim to manual work. This I generally regard as the prin-
cipal defect in most of our Italian schools, the little or no regard that exists for the
moral culture — that culture which tends to elevate the soul and give it a high concep-
tion of life, and of the high and sacred duties that make it full and worthy to be lived.
The teaching of mere reading, writing and other branches is nothing if with it the
mind is not led to think and consider life's problems, its duties and its rights, to make
it noble and beautiful. Some new and well-organized institutions answer such an
end, for they are the work of noble hearts and highly gifted Italians. One is the
Suor Orsola College in Naples for girls, entirely reformed by the Princess Strongoli
Pignatelli, a learned, high-minded woman, whose life is entirely devoted to good
works. She is one of Queen Margherita's most esteemed and beloved ladies of honor.
Besides having reformed this college, where girls receive a complete homely educa-
tion, and whose hearts are guided to high principles by the constant care of the dis-
tinguished lady principal, Princess Strongoli Pignatelli has also established in Naples,
together with Contesse Sansa Verino Vimercati Tarsis, another college for poor orphan
girls. A beautiful college for the daughters of public teachers was also lately organ-
ized by one of our greatest Italians, Ruggero Bonghi, This college is near Rome, in
a pleasant, old-fashioned country place, and is fairly prospering. Her Majesty, the
Queen of Italy, patronizes it, and it bears her name, "Margaret College of Savoy." In
Naples we have three remarkable old colleges for girls, bound to old-fashioned, con-
ventual systems of education. But to give you an idea of our customs, I only state
that while the entire staff is composed of ladies, most of whom reside in the colleges,
the institutions are superintended entirely by gentlemen. Two of these are distin-
guished young writers, the Duke Richard Carafa D'Andria and Benedetto Croce, The
superintending of the schools by ladies has never even been thought of. That women
are competent to take part in public affairs of any kind is still a hard thing to establish
in Italy, Even when obliged to work but few ways are opened to their activity besides
teaching, and the only reason is the strong prejudice existing against women. They
are not considered fit to work, and are not much trusted. If they follow the superior
studies and obtain a degree they are actually prevented from competing with men in
any but the medical profession. A young Turinese lady, Miss Lydia Poet, having
followed successfully the university courses, obtained some years ago her degree in
law. Well, men got so frightened at such competition that they managed to exclude
her from the practice of her profession, stating that it would demoralize the Tribunal
if women were allowed to work therein. The press tried to explain the injustice and
(U)
162 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
illegality of such a proceeding, and quite a fuss was made about it, but nothing
resulted. No other woman took the law course, and the noble girl, who had a right
to the profession she had chosen, was obliged to give it up, though privately she
works in the law office of her brother, who considers her a most useful aid. As medi-
cal doctors women could have a large practice and a most important field of action;
but here again prejudice is against them, although our Queen gave her moral support
to the profession, naming as her honorary medical attendant a Turinese lady. Miss
Mary Valeda Fame. This learned and well-known woman would have a brilliant
career anywhere else, as she was also appointed medical assistant at the principal hos-
pital in Rome by one of our greatest doctors, Bacelli; but she could not overcome
public prejudice and she must be satisfied with her small, though very select, practice.
Music is a profession allowed to women in Italy, and several struggle on as music-
teachers, and a few rise to the summit of art as opera singers or concertists. I may
name as one of the leading concertists Miss Castellani, and also a sweet young girl
just at the threshold of her career, Margaret Brambilli, who promises to rise high.
We have in Italy very good conservatories, where, besides music and singing, a proper
literary education is given. The most noted of our conservatories are at Naples, Rome
and Milan.
In Italy women may occupy positions in the post, telegraph and telephone offices,
but the competition for these positions is so strong that they are most difficult to
obtain.
So the highest public position a woman may hope to obtain in Italy is something
connected with the educational work, the highest position therein being inspector or
principal of the highest government schools. These positions are much sought after
notwithstanding that at the yery best they seldom pay more than one thousand dol-
lars per year.
However, we have now a remarkable number of women who are fairly struggling
for economic independence by their own work. The larger number of these are wait-
ers, some of whom succeed in making a living, though a very modest living at the best.
Publishers seldom pay more than from one hundred dollars to four hundred dollars for
a book, which they sell in no less than a thousand copies in one edition, thus receiving
about eight hundred dollars for it, even when the book has little or no success;
but when three or five thousand copies are sold, the publishers' profits are immense.
Printing is not costly in Italy, and so we have rich publishers, but I know of no
writers who have made a fortune with their pen. My esteemed and dear friend.
Miss Alice Howard Cady, of New York, who came to Italy last year, worked hard
to induce our lady writers to send their books to the World's Fair. They thought
their productions did not deserve such honor, for one of the characteristics of my
charming country-women is a remarkable modesty or shyness. So several of them
wrote to Miss Cady in that sense, that they were flattered and interested to be con-
sidered worthy of notice, and felt grateful to Miss Cady, etc., etc. The latter suc-
ceeded, however, in gaining her point and winning their confidence and friendship.
Only to aid Miss Cady in her noble efforts, I published an appeal to Italian women
employed in literary, scientific, artistic and educational work, explaining their patriotic
duty to join in an exhibition wherein women from the world over would send their
intellectual productions. However, lately, in my tour through Italy, I found that
many women had not sent their books, simply because of that timidity which they
could not overcome. Still many others gave me their books, which I had the honor
to present to the beautiful library in this building. Because of the fact that the pro-
ductions of Italian women are not as fully represented as they might have been in this
great international exhibition, you must not judge us by our display. Besides, woman's
intellectual work is not encouraged in Italy, not even by those who should regard
it as a duty, and so, without encouragement or organization to that end, one band
of distinguished, cultivated women could not manage to send all their intellectual
productions.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 163
As for industry, the beautiful, artistic lace work my country-women do will
prove this to the fullest advantage. Much honor is due to your noble country-woman,
Countess Cora di Brazza, for it is to her intelligent efforts and spirit of organization
that we owe all that is to be admired in the Italian section of the Woman's Building.
The rich historical laces of our royal family she obtained herself from the Queen, and
many others from personal friends. But her perseverance in organizing schools for,
and teaching lace-making herself, so as to give easy and beautiful work to our Italian
peasant girls, is, indeed, worthy of all praise. Many noble ladies have lately become
interested in this industry in Italy, foremost of whom was the late lamented Countess
Marcelio, who revived the old lace manufactories in Venice, and the Countess Maria
Pasolini, one of the few ladies in the aristocracy remarkable for her culture and her
interest in the girls of the working classes.
As for women's papers, we have a few nicely written, but of a light literary kind,
and several stupid ones, devoted exclusively to French fashions. Having dared, sev-
eral years ago, at my own expense and alone, to establish a review for promoting the
intellectual, moral, and legal interests of women, after fourteen months I was com-
pelled to give it up, although I had the good fortune to interest the Queen and a large
number of intellectual women. But the review did not please the clergy, that so ener-
getically opposes woman's promotion, and they managed things so well that the paper
had to come to an end. So tired was I that I would then and there have given up my
work but for the promptings of duty to the contrary. This led me, lately, to publish
a book, in which is an account of the struggles during the best twelve years of my life,
spent in endeavoring to raise the intellectual standard of the women in Italy. Indeed,
I am happy and proud to say that I owe to that book my presence here, as the Italian
Minister of Instruction asked me to write a similar report of woman's institutions in
America. This book, besides containing the lectures I have delivered on the subject
of woman's intellectual development, also contained my report to the Italian govern-
ment of woman's culture and work in England. It also cleared away many misunder-
standings, and was considered by eminent writers of both sexes to contain a true
conception of the true ideal of womanhood we have yet to attain in Italy. During my
last tour in Italy I had the pleasure to observe a great change in the general public
opinion regarding the woman question. Many ideas, not understood ten years ago,
are now perfectly admitted. So I look forward hopefully to the future, trusting in the
reviving of education to promote the much needed reforms in our laws to control the
fearful injustice that oppresses womankind in Italy.
This leads me to say a few words about the legal condition of women in Italy, and
for this I have only to repeat what I said four years ago on this subject in England:
*'If we look at the civil and penal code of Italy concerning women, and at the laws
concerning their rights, their culture and their work, we easily see that a general opin-
ion of their moral weakness inspired these laws. It is commonly believed in Italy that
a woman is morally, intellectually, and physically inferior to man; that she can not
stand by herself in life, nor presume to be respected and considered if she is not sup-
ported by the protection of man." What this protection often means is misery to
reveal!
Italians, both men and women, have very distinct characteristics, of which we
must also take notice to understand better their present condition and the reforms
required for their social and intellectual progress. Above all, they are intensely pas-
sionate people, and family links are very strong; this much more in the south, where
woman's individuality rarely exists. Woman lives the life man makes for her. As a
child, a girl, she blindly obeys her father; and as a woman, her will submits entirely to
her husband, whom she regards as the absolute master of her body and soul. If she
does not marry, old as she may become, she remains always the obedient child of her
father or brother, and never dares regard herself as a free human being. This is the
worst of all — the general want of a consciousness of one's own individual rights.
Very often I tried to arouse such feelings in some naturally intelligent women of our
164 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
southern provinces. They looked at me with wide-open eyes, as if I spoke some
unintelligible language ! In the northern provinces the chains exist too, but of a dif-
ferent sort, lighter, because women have a relative liberty, and easier to bear because
more apparent than real, more in form than in substance.
So all reforms pertaining to women in Italy must tend to simultaneous training
of mind and heart, the intellectual and moral faculties, bearing in consideration the
eminently passionate instincts of the race, which, well developed and controlled,
would make splendid characters of our people. Humanitarian feelings are latent in
the souls of Italians, and intelligently developed would become the best agent for
the development of the people. It is, I fully believe, by kind, affectionate, earnest
interest and sympathy in each other that life could be made easier and brighter for
all throughout the whole world.
To accomplish this most sacred duty, and see Italy as great and powerful as our
fathers wished it to be, we cannot trust in the help of those who are satisfied with
everything, when all their personal concerns prosper. We must rely on the efforts of
the pure and enthusiastic souls of our young people, principally our sweet girls, whose
ideal of life is noble and high, who feel in their hearts the needs of modern times, and
wish to live a true life, uncorrupted by the homage to appearances.
The need of elevating life is felt all around the world; we are near a great change.
The cry of woman for freedom and her rights appeals to all those God blesses with a
right mind and a kind heart; and I cannot help but believe that to us women, the
mothers of the race, a great part is reserved in this grand work; and I think we are
all willing to undertake it, feeling what a sweet and holy mission is entrusted to us, a
mission that will highly bless our lives, even among the difficulties we have to overcome
and the sorrows we are called upon to bear and endure. United all around the world
in this glorious effort, we must feel sure of winning gloriously at last in the name of
the purest and highest ideal of human brotherhood. The dream of the age lies in the
enfranchisement of the human race, and when life shall be built on truth, in respect
to holy natural laws which govern the great mystery of our existence, and all human
beings shall be equally considered, socially and legally, without any privilege for one
sex or one class above another, then human kind will be great, and the nations will
for them be great, and the world reconquer then its Paradise Lost!
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Miss Hattie Toney Hundley, 2. Mrs. Anna M. Fosdick, 8. Mrs. James P. Eagle,
Alabama. Alabama. Arkatuat,
4. Mrs. Rollin A. Edgerton,
Arkansas.
5. Mrs. Partiienia P. Rue,
California,
6. Mrs. James K. Deane,
California.
7. Mrs. Robert J. Coleman, 8. Mrs. M. D. Thatcher, <i. Miss Frances 8. Ives,
Colorado. Colorado. ConnecticuU
10. Mrs. Isabella Beccher Hooker, 11. Mrs. Mary Richards Kinder, 12. Mrs. J. Frank Ball.
Connecticut. Delaware. Delaware.
rs
THE WIFE OF BLENNERHASSETT.
By MRS. MARY T. W. CURWEN.
Little is known of Blennerhassett, still less of his wife. It is not much more than
fifty years since she died, but in examining the details of her life they assume a
strange indefiniteness. To write her history is like
making a picture from " the shadow of a dream."
Her grandfather, Brigadier-General Agnew, was
killed in the Battle of Germantown, October 4, 1777.
Her father was for many years Lieutenant-Governor
of the quaint, picturesque Isle of Man. To have
spent her childhood and youth in that museum of
antiquities, to have lived among the weird sights and
peculiar people of that island must have influenced
her character.
L^.^. ^' Ideas of wild adventure would take root in the
ICZ^ w soil of a mind so prepared. The most improbable
^^^^ m^ hopes might bloom out in such an atmosphere. The
ff^^Tj^^^^- ^^^^ ^^ ^^" '^ ^ kingdom by itself, a beautiful wonder-
JK^^H^f^^.- _ land. The mild, equable climate, tempered by the
jmB^^^^t sea, makes the whole country a garden. Geraniums
grow all the year round in the open air, and their red
vv^ clusters look in at the second story windows of the
'**^ peasants' homes. Ambitious fuchsias drape the rocks
and hang their crimson eardrops twelve feet high on
MRS. MARY T. w. CURWEN. ^^^ branchcs of the forest trees. The men are stal-
wart, the women rosy and handsome, for they live out
of doors and breathe the invigorating sea air. To the Manx people life is indeed a bless-
ing. Fashion has not found much foothold among this primitive people. They do
as their forefathers did. Fishermen's daughters wear the same quaint, striped petti-
coats and blue jackets which constituted the costume of their great-great-grand-
mothers. Still the Manx fishermen, descendants of the Vikings, in their herring fleet
expeditions, trust to the guidance of the gulls to lead them to a school of herring, just
as their ancestors had done hundreds of years before.
This unique island is only thirty miles long and twelve broad, but every foot of
land is historical. From the low northern point of Ayr, where women and children
wait, singing songs for the returning fishing boats, to the Spanish headland at the
south, where the red and blue revolving light plays down hundreds of feet below, and
the waves sing triumphantly of how they dashed to pieces the ships of the Armada,
the whole air is as full of inspiration as it is of ocean spray.
No piece of Western limestone is more closely packed with petrifactions than the
Isle of Man with the remains of former races.
The youthful daughter of the governor could scarcely take a walk without
encountering some relic of superstition, some suggestion of antiquity or patriotism.
Mrs. Mary Thew Wright Curwen was born in Cincinnati, O. Her falher, Hon. Nathaniel Wright, of New Hampshire,
was a distingaished member of the Cincinnati bar. Her mother, Caroline Angnsta Thew, of New York, was a granddaughter
of Dr. William Barnet, Surgeon-General in the Army of the Revolution. Mrs. Cnrwen has travele<l extensively, both in this
country and in Europe. In 1855 she was married to Marshall Ewing ("nrwen, a native of Philndelphia, then a prominent
member of the Cincinnati bar. Mr. Curwin died in London in 1888. Mrs. Cnrwen has written a number of short stories,
mostly for children. Her postoffice address is 27 Mason Street, Mt. Auburn. Cincinnati, O.
165
166 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
There are the frightful dungeons beneath Castle Rusline, its Doric columns with
inscriptions in Latin and Greek placed there before the Christian Era. The Druidical
remains are the most perfect in Great Britain. Relics of St. Patrick, crosses, religious
emblems, ruined churches which remind us that in 1488, before America was discovered,.
Pius II. named the Isle of Man the "Sacred Isle."
To be sure inscriptions in Greek and Arabic get mixed up, and are found in the
most miscellaneous manner on door-steps, stiles and other places. They are merely
put there for ornament. The schoolmaster not being abroad, they cannot often be
deciphered.
Sometimes the epitaph of a Saxon warrior has been transported to the grave of a
child. We read with wonder of the death on the battle-field of this three-year-old who
might have died with the measles. There are mysterious secrets hid in Runic characters,
often upside down, which have been transported to the sides of barns or humble
cabins. But in spite of this grotesque vandalism there is an air of romance and
antiquity throughout the island.
This little island, so far behind the world in many things, is in advance in others.
Women have always voted in the Isle of Man. Their right is never questioned. From
time immemorial women had the legal right to dispose of half of their property,,
independently of their husbands. Would you know why they are more privileged
than their English sisters? Ask some Manx peasant woman to tell you. Her eye
kindles and she stops her spinning to relate the story. "Long, long ago the Danes
attacked the little Island of Man. The battle was going against her people — the king
was desperately wounded, the bravest warriors lay dead upon the ground, when a
band of women rushed into the midst of the fight, snatched the weapons from the
hands of the dead and drove the enemy to their ships. Many a woman fell by the
side of her dead husband, but the country was free. Our land is small, but Manx
women own it with the men. Our voices led to victory, and we can raise them on
Tynwald Mount on election day with the best and bravest of the men."
The Isle of Man has a masculine sound, but there, women without asking have
their rights.
Everything in this island is quaint, made after a type of its own. The little cats
have six toes and no tails to swell out in fury at the sight of a dog. Was there ever so
absurd a coat of arms as three armed legs with no body or head, only the motto^
"Whichever way you throw me I stand!" A sort of kicking defiance to the three
larger neighbor islands. '
It was in this mysterious island that Margaret Agnew grew up, reveling in the
antiquities and traditions of the place. To her the life of adventure offered by a resi-
dence in the New World had great charms. There was a fascination in the very vast-
ness of the Western Continent.
Harmon Blennerhassett was the son of a wealthy Irish gentleman, though he was
born in Hampshire. After studying law in King's Inn, Dublin, he visited France. It
was soon after the destruction of the Bastile. He did not agree with his friends, the
Emmets, but believed that a revolution would be bloody but hopeless for Ireland. He
was already wealthy when by the death of his father he inherited a great estate.
Scholarly, devoted to science, he determined to leave the Old World and make his
home in America. Amid the agitations and political excitements of Europe he sought
repose. He visited his sister in Kingsale to bid her farewell. She was the wife of
Admiral De Courcy — Lord Kingsale. How all the patriotism and chivalry of the
English heart is wakened up by the name of De Courcy! "The fearless De Courcy^
who fought for the honor of England, but not for false King John."
I believe were I an Englishman I would rather give up the Magna Charta than
the story of De Courcy, perpetuated as it is by the honor granted to his discendants:
"And the sons of that line of heroes
To this day their right assume.
And when every head is unbonneted
They walk in cap and plume."
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 167
At all events it would be hard to choose between our rights and our romance.
People will get their rights some time, but romance may escape us.
While visiting Lady De Courcy, Blennerhassett met Miss Agnew. She was a
young, beautiful, enthusiastic girl, trained in a school of romance and with a passionate
love for her island home. With great energy of character, intelligence and a wealth
of affection, in Blennerhassett she met her fate. Such a woman must have a hero to
worship; the young Irishman was her ideal. They were married, I believe, in 1796.
Mrs. Blennerhassett never wavered in her affection for her husband. She always
believed in him. Eagerly adopting his views about settling in America, she was
charmed to go with him to that land of her dreams.
Mr. Blennerhassett was kindhearted, devoted to science, but could not adapt him-
self to those around. He certainly lacked common sense. He was one of those students
who are more careful in their cross-examinations of nature than of humanity. Such
people are often made game of by the average boy. Though a gentleman in all his
feelings, he was not quick to see those side lights upon a subject which result in humor
or wit in many minds, and keep people from being absurd, but in the eyes of his
wife he was perfect. The young girl had absolute faith in her husband. Was he
imposed upon, she never blamed him; did he fail in any undertaking, it was the fault
of adverse fate; did he stoop as he walked, it was only a proof of his devotion to
science. So thought his devoted wife. What cannot a glowing imagination paint
when it is inspired by love!
How shall I describe Lady Blennerhassett? Not ennobled by anyearthly monarch,
but by the grace of God, who made her what she was, and by the unrecorded vote of
those among whom she lived, and who best know her, so she was universally called
in her Western home, and so we must speak of her.
Lady Blennerhassett! The glamor has not yet faded from her name. She was
taller than most women, but exquisitely proportioned. Fair, with Grecian features —
but we can not bring her before you by a catalogue of her beauties of mind and person.
Her winning, gracious manner would have adorned a court. It was prompted by a
warm heart and quick interest and sympathy in all that appealed to her, either in
enjoyment or misfortune.
In 1797 these two favorites of fortune started for the New World. Like the prince
and princess in the fairy tale, they went to seek their fortune in an unknown country.
Mr. Blennerhassett took his chemicals, his retorts, his telescope and extensive library
with him. A' large fortune placed almost everything at his command; the hopeful
nature and enthusiasm of his beautiful wife was more than any mine of gold in its
promise of happiness. They crossed the AUeghanies, and a keel boat carried them
from Pittsburg to Marietta, Ohio. Four miles below this town, and two below the
Little Kanawha, they were entranced by the sight of Bacchus Island. The willows
dipping into the water and forest trees garlanded with vines made a magical picture to
the two homeseekers.
Mr. Blennerhassett paid forty-five hundred dollars for the upper part of the island.
The house that he built upon it cost sixty thousand dollars.
The mansion has been variously described. As it has long since been burned to
the ground, no mirage eludes us more effectually than the truth about it. One author-
ity speaks of the magical effect of this palace on the voyagers descending the river:
** The colored glass, the groups of turrets are not unlike a Moorish palace in Anda-
lusia, as embowered by shrubbery, with long, sweeping vistas, showing grand forest
trees, and suggesting wilder scenes of sylvan solitude." On the other hand, Parton,
resenting Wirt's flowery description on the trial (as if the beauty of the house made
Burr more guilty), speaks of it as " the country seat of an eccentric, romantic, shiftless
Irishman, who contrived to spend a fortune in building a house of original ugliness."
He says, " It suggests the idea of semi-circular barracks, though, of course, there were
gardens and bits of primeval wilderness, forming a pleasant but not very sumptuous
residence." Oh for a good photograph! Prejudice does not influence the sun. He
gives us impartial pictures.
168 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
In this fairy isle Lady Blennerhassett passed eight years of ideal happiness.
Devoted to her husband and children, she still entered with quick sympathy into the
sports of her friends and neighbors. The corn-huskings lost much of their rusticity,
but none of their merriment, when she was present. She adorned the primitive feasts
of log-rolling and barn-raising, and was the ruling spirit of every assembly. She was
interested in wrestling matches, foot and boat races. In deer hunts and parties for
chasing the fox she was a Diana Vernon. Her grace in dancing was the poetry of
motion. She was beloved everywhere and inspired everyone to do their best. She
w^as a fearless horsewoman, and attired in her scarlet broadcloth habit and cap, whose
ostrich plume fell over her shoulders, she was a delightful vision. A young farmer
rented a cornfield on the island simply to catch a glimpse of Lady Blennerhassett in
her daily walks and rides. It was a oelight to her to teach her slaves to read, to visit
the sick, and often to act in plays in her own house. She was particularly fond of
Shakespeare's. This woman made people good by first making them happy. Her
life was brimming with enjoyment. She was universally called " The Queen of the
Isle." Poetry she composed with ease and pleasure. The poems that I have seen
were written after the sad change in her life, and their pathos disarms all criticism.
And now Colonel Burr appears upon the scene. In considering the life of this bril-
liant man, we must bear in mind the words of St. Augustine: " The human mind is never
altogether a sanctuary, or altogether a sewer. There are potentialities of good in the
felon and of evil in the saint." We all know how the fascinating Aaron Burr entered
this paradise, and won the heart of the lady of the mansion to his views. Guileless
herself, she had no conception of his treachery. By forged papers, purporting to be
government endorsements, and plausible arguments. Burr obtained complete control of
the Blennerhassetts. He ruined them financially and in reputation, and then sacrificed
them remorselessly. We cannot but pity Blennerhassett after the President's procla-
mation, calling for all residents of the United States to bring to punishment all per-
sons engaged in such treasonable enterprises as Burr's Expedition. The unfortunate
Blennerhassett was sitting in the cabin of a flatboat with Burr — betrayer and betrayed —
when one dark, dreary night they sunk the chest of arms in the middle of the Missis-
sippi River. So ended all the hopes of the success of Burr's conspiracy. Though
Burr was acquitted by jury of the crime of treason, the verdict of the nation was
guilty, and Blennerhassett shared the odium.
Whether we see Lady Blennerhassett in her scarlet riding dress flying along in
the sunshine, the embodiment of hope and womanly beauty, the guardian spirit of the
" Fairy Isle," or on a December midnight, escaping with her sons in a flat-boat, cheer-
ing, encouraging the frightened boatmen as the ice crashed and ground around them;
or whether we see her supplying her husband with energy and pluck in his last
venture on a cotton farm in Mississippi, energy which, but for the embargo, would have
retrieved their fortunes, we see hope, blossom of immortality, ever alive in her heart. We
behold her again in the Old World, sustaining her husband in his miserable search after
health and employment. We see her standing by his deathbed in the Island of Guern-
sey; but though the shadows close around her, and the air is full of minor music, she is
always the same unselfish, noble woman, who cannot be subdued by circumstances,
because undying affection gives her strength. Unconquered, she had seen her home
rifled, destroyed by Virginia militia; she had looked calmly upon its ashes, and beheld
an utter ruin where she had once reigned queen.
After her husband's death Lady Blennerhassett used every effort to support and
educate her children in England. It was in vain. She determined to return to
America. She petitioned the government of the United States. Her house and
furniture had been destroyed by the officers and soldiers of a government pledged to
protect its citizens. Her husband had been put to great expense in defending himself
in Richmond. She asked for her rights, not for alms. Robert Emmet forwarded the
memorial of his friend's widow to Henry Clay, who was in the United States Senate.
It prayed for redress for her. Mr. Clay presented the memorial and eloquently
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 169
advocated its justice. The committee to whom it was referred returned a report,
" Not to grant this memorial would be unworthy a wise and just nation."
But it was too late. Before any compensation reached her Lady Blennerhassett
died in a humble chamber in New York City. She was tended in her last hours by
Sisters of Charity.
Alone, in a foreign land, under a darkened sky, she drifted from our sight to that
shore where " the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF ORGANIZATION.
■Vfi.
By REV. ANNA GARLIN SPENCER.
I know no better exercise for man or woman capable of real thought than the
study of this problem which we may phrase briefly thus: What is the just and true
relation of the individual to the social organism? Let
such a student take the question on its political, its
industrial, its religious or ethical, or its more flexible
side of custom and convention; in any direction he
will find such difificulties as courage feeds upon and as
appall all intellectual cowardice or moral pessimism.
I will speak more particularly of the voluntary
organization of women. What is its history, what its
■^ ^ "W^^ growth and tendency, what its advantages, what its
^^KM^ '^' IP dangers?
^^^^B %^ In the first place, let us distinctly recognize one
^^^^^^^^ ,_ ^* fact, for herein lies the kernel of the matter; let us
j^^^^^^ .^■.«^. . i distinctly recognize one fact, namely, the history of
^^^IIHl ^B^SHl. ^^^ voluntary organization of women in every depart-
^^^^f'~ 'W^^^% -fe ment of thought and action begins with the self-con-
sciousness and self-assertion of woman's individuality.
So long as women were universally considered by
themselves, as well as by men, nothing but the attaches,
wards and subordinates of the masculine half of crea-
tion, women never dreamed of cooperation with each
other upon any line either of resistance to tyranny,
or self-improvement, or of philanthropic effort. In
religion, which contained in the ancient world all germs of growth, so long as it was
doubtful whether women had a soul of her own to save, no women dreamed of uniting,
even in the most subdued and modest form, in helping to save other's souls. We read
that in old times, in the earliest history of Christianity, this or that man "was converted
and was baptized with his whole household." The mference is that the household
followed the head from paganism to Christianity, without anyone waiting for the indi-
vidual assent from the wife. Yet in this same history of early Christianity is abun-
dant evidence that the individuality of woman in religion was awakened and sustained
by the new gospel in a way previously unknown in the Pagan world. The sharpest
criticism made by learned and moral Pagan writers against the new faith was that
women, mothers, wives, daughters and sisters were forsaking their family gods and
turning deaf ears to the~authority of the heads of their families to follow the humble
Nazarene. And when we realize, faintly only and for one moment, the tremendous
power of ancient Pagan religion, we can better imaginewhat amarvelous fascination for
women was in the new faith that they could thus break free, as individuals, from the
inherited bonds.
Kev. Anna Garlin Spencer is a native of Massachusetts, U. S. A, She was born April 17, 1851. Her parents were Francis
L. Garlin and Nancy Mason Carpenter Garlin, of old New England stock. She was educated in Providence, R. I., public schools
and by private instruction. She married William H. Spencer, a Unitarian clergyman, in August, 1878. Her special work has
been in the interest of religious, ethical and educational concerns. Her principal literary works are varied contributions to
daily papers and magazines, lectures and sermons. Mrs. Spencer is an ordained minister, and is now settled over an inde-
pendent religious society connected with Bell St. Chapel, in Providence, R. I., ministering to a large congregation, and her
husband is settled over the Fourth Unitarian Parish of the same city. In religious faith, Unitarian. Her postoffice address
is Providence, R. I.
170
REV. ANNA GARLIN SPENCER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 171
In Pagan religion woman was a passive receptacle and channel for the transmission
of all life, physical and spiritual. When she married her father passed her from the
charge of his own family deity into the keeping of her husband's family deity. And
the worship of the male heads of the family after death, ancestor worship in its purest
and most powerful form, made her subordination a part of her most vital religious life.
The Pagan philosophy, indeed, which had for its leaders men of the most exalted char-
acter and of as high thinking upon great problems as the world has known, penetrated
the veiled individuality of some women before Christianity was born. The noble stoics
were not all men. And the growth of the plebeian class in Roman civilization, the
growth of this class in learning, wealth and all national power cut deeply into the
patrician stronghold of the religious subordination of women; so much so that the
plebeian divorced wife of a patrician noble acquired with that divorce a social and
legal independence unparalleled in history. But these influences, strong beyond
measure in the few, penetrated so slightly the great mass of womanhood in the ancient
world, that I hold it true to history to say that until the advent of the Christian
religion, the sense of individuality was not a part of the consciousness of women in
general. The family sense was theirs, the sense of high worth and use as humble
purveyors of spiritual and physical life forces, the sense of dignity as loyal guardians
of ancient virtues and powers, the sense of social service wherein all personal wish or
vagary is swallowed up in devotion to superior ideals of inherited order. Hut to the
woman passionately devoted to the old Pagan religions of Greece and Rome there
was, there could be, no glimmering of the modern sense of rightful individual choice,
of personal responsibility, of that spherical unity of the single soul which is the core
of today's religion.
The Christian appeal in religion was to the single soul, the separate individuality;
not to family feeling, not to state allegiance, not to linked bonds of any sort of human
association. And this religious appeal, always the most potent in effect upon the
feminine nature, woke women generally to a sense that their souls were their own.
And in spite of bad laws of Christendom, in spite of priestcraft and formal literalism,
in spite of insults heaped upon the woman nature during the Middle and Dark ages, in
spite of church intolerance, which puts woman in an inferior position professedly by
the will of God, in spite of all this, the call of the Christian religion to each soul of
man or woman, of bond or free, to work out its own salvation, was womanhood's
Declaration of Independence, for our inherited civilization at least. Therefore, we
may say that sense of individuality in woman, which is the only patent of her co-oper-
ative power in modern life, was born when she learned that her soul was her own.
At first, and for long generations, she knew nothing of aught save purely religious
applications of that truth. She had no refuge from oppression in family or state but
the martyr's death, or the devotee's renunciation. But gradually, very slowly, the soul
that owns itself has come to believe that it has right to some freedom of growth and
expression. At first the growth of women in these directions was strictly along the
line of the newly awakened individualism. The great persons among the mass of
women lifted themselves to freedom and power. And the practical result has been
that the individualism, which once awoke the few women to revolt for their own sakes,
has now touched with stimulating power the multitude of women to organization for
personal development and world service.
And just as soon as the main body of womanhood began to sense the freedom
and opportunity which the specially endowed had procured for them, the principle of
voluntary organization began to permeate all departments of woman's thought and
work. So today, to take a leap in history, what have we? We have the general
benevolence of women organized for independent, or well-nigh independent, action, so
far as man's control is concerned. We have the intellectual craving of women organ-
ized in clubs of women, in collegiate alumnae associations from women's colleges.
We have the desire for full freedom among women organized in woman suffrage
associations and leagues, and in special combinations for securing juster laws. We
172 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
have the protective power of women organized in friendly societies to succor young
and exposed women seeking work in strange places; in associations which aim to
guard those solitary children and women whom God has not set in families; in indus-
trial and educational unions which aim to surround the less favored feminine life of
great cities with the dignity, the power, the uplifting self-respect which the best and
strongest womanhood displays; and we have the moral conservatism of women
organized. We have the wonderful Woman's Christian Temperance Union, with its
temperance center and its ever widening circumference of purification and moral
growth in almost all directions of woman's power. And last, we have the new move-
ment which, like the charity organizations, aims to make a synthesis of those analyzed
.specialties. We have the movement toward a national and international conference
of women which shall leave each smallest club and most insignificant association free
to do its work in its own way, but link all together in an army where weakness shall
gather strength, ignorance shall gather wisdom, bigotry shall gather tolerance, and
selfish exclusion shall gather world sympathy, by the elbow touch of a common aim
to grow freely toward goodness and truth, and give generously what is received from
the universe to the world's poorer souls and bodies. I look upon this latest move-
ment among women inaugurated in that wonderful Washington meeting as the finest
flower of woman's special organization.
We have traced the history of woman's organization for specific development of
power, private and social, back to its germ in the religious call to a personal consecra-
tion. We have traced it by hints through its era of self-assertion of the great few,
which self-assertion we find, even in its coarsest and most selfish aspects, has contrib-
uted mightily to the inherited freedom and individual power of the modern woman.
This all means what? In brief this: When woman found herself, when she began
to learn that she was a person and not merely a passive conveyor of personality from
generation to generation, she began to see also two other things; not clearly at
first, but little by little has her sight come in these two great lines. The first thmg
woman began to see was that, being a person as man is a person, being herself an
individual and not merely a purveyor to the individuality of men, she had both a
right and a duty to intrepret her own nature and grow according to the law written in
her own being. This meant freedom to learn for herself, freedom to outline her own
powers and uses. This meant again resistance to such crippling laws and conditions
as forbade free expansion. This meant again, do you not see, the joining together of
such isolated women as had come to self-knowledge and self-respecting love of free-
dom, in order that these crippling laws and conditions might be more successfully
resisted, and these opportunities for growth and self-development might be increased,
as single effort was powerless to increase them. You can have no esprit de corps
among slaves who are slaves in spirit. It is only when they are united in a common
impulse toward freedom that they can depend upon one another for support. So
long as they look for personal advantage in slavery they are treacherous, and know
no loyalty save to their masters. So of women, until they had come to a time when
they looked not to manhood for reflected power and conferred privilege, but to their
own womanhood for patent of their own nobility, they could not work together.
Men have an easy comradeship which does not strike deep; they have a free and
happy ignoring of little differences in opinion and taste which it is the first duty of
large-minded women to imitate; they have a breadth of view, a sense of proportion
in working together for special ends which conscientious, fastidious women must
emulate, if they are to do some of the things they wish to undertake.
The first joining of hands of gifted women for mutual improvement was along
religious lines and generally within church bonds. But when neighborhood meeting
grew to the city club, the local church gathering to the county conference, and these
both grew again to the state or national association, women's organization also en-
larged. Nor will we forget the second insight which came to woman with awakening
individuality. Not only did it become increasingly clear to her that being a person as
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 173
man is a person, she had right and duty to interpret her own nature and grow accord-
. ingto the law of her own being, but it became also increasingly clear to her that, being
a person like and yet different from man, she had a right and a duty of world-service
which she alone could fitly discover and fulfill. Hence, hand in hand from the first,
the organizations of women for self-development and for others helping, have climbed
the road toward freedom and power. With some leaders, the master impulse has been
justice; with others, the master impulse has been duty. With some, the watchword
has been rights; with others, the watchword has been service. With some, the call has
been, " Make the most of yourself." With others, the cry has been, "Behold a world
in sin and sorrow; behold how faint home's light shines upon the highway; behold
how virtue cries for knightly service and innocence for succor; behold the weak, the
ignorant, the tempted, the despairing. Linger not by the hearth-fire in selfish com-
fort. Go out and share the light and cheer it has brought you. Give, oh woman, of
your own store, nor suffer longer any fiat of man's bigotry or hindrance that would
cramp your giving, nor tremble at any penalty of publicity which sets the seal of
devotion to a suffering world."
It is true that the aims and methods of women thinkers and workers have
deepened and widened with the growth among them in power of organization. The
charity that gave without question to him that asked is fast becoming the wise help-
ing that takes for motto, " Not alms, but a friend." The religion that exacted minute
shadings of its shibboleth for fellowship is fast growing to that faith which sees a
temple of the Divine
"Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice."
The advantages of organization among women are patent-beyond all cavil. The
isolation of woman when she was a fragment, or a " relict," must have been, beyond
all present understanding, terrible and dwarfing. The mind of a feminine Shakes-
peare, the moral devotion of a feminine Savonarola, the heart of a feminine St. John,
must have been smothered in such loneliness and misunderstanding as marked the lot
of all exceptional women in the older time. We feel but thrills of pity and indigna-
tion when we read of the saintly, dignified Quaker maiden, Abby Kelly, being dragged
out of a meeting feet foremost because she lifted up a woman's- voice for the slave.
We think with shame of the lonely Harriet K. Hunt and Elizabeth Blackwell seeking
in vain so long, the one in Boston, the other in London, for a respectable house to
shelter them, because they, being women, determined to be also doctors. But those
who had learned to speak and to do, and who were no longer in spiritual bonds, the.se
were those glorious and not unhappy martyrs who wear the crown while yet the pang
is sharp!
But for the ancient women, those daughters of illustrious men, in whose veins
throbbed the dominant blood of generations of conquerors, for the ancient women
who could only beat helplessly against an unyielding cage, for these we sigh. What
poet shall yet arise who can fitly sing in epic tragedy their pathetic fate, their martyr
service?
Today, not only the exceptional but the common woman can do, without greatly
daring, almost her full pleasure. Today a cord of helpfulness, formed of great-
hearted and clean-handed womanhood encircles, almost without break, the least of
women's needs and desires. And if one arise, a prophet of miraculous gift in an
unawakened country like India, she finds, as found Dr. Joshu and Pundita Ramabai.
a sisterhood to help her from the uttermost parts of the earth. In face of such facts,
it almost seems ungracious to speak of the dangers of organization connected with
women and their work.
Yet as soon as perfection of one era is in sight for the multitude, the elect .souls
who are in the vanguard of progress see the next step of modification or balancing
change. And there are two classes of danger in that organized effort of women and
for humanity which make a special glory of our epoch.
174 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The first danger is of woman's organization. The second danger is of women's
organization.
The first, then, of woman's organization.
The time has come in the development of individual power and associated
effort when a large minority of women can work not only as women, with women,
for women, and undeveloped men, but as human beings, with women and men, for
every sort of human interest; a minority, I say, yet a large minority. Men have
widened and sweetened and grown more just, until they now welcome a great woman
almost everywhere. And all elect women, having the requisite balance of powers,
can find numberless openings for co-operation with men on broad grounds for highest
ends. And there is no question but such co-operation has in it greater promise of
self-development for both men and women, as well as of full-orbed usefulness to the
world than associations under sex limits can be at their very best. Today, however, we
witness a curious phenomena in social life. In religion, philanthropy, intellectual
culture and social enjoyment, women, the minority of the best and strongest women,
are doubly organized, with men and without men.
In intellectual lines, many colleges are open to both sexes, many associations of
mature thinkers give women equal rights and privileges with men. Yet women's col-
leges, from which male youths are excluded, are growing in numbers, and the gradu-
ates of these colleges work by themselves for women's higher education instead of
throwing their weight of influence with men for co-educational effort.
In social science and natural science, the two National associations in America,
founded by men, offer membership on equal terms to women, and give official plat-
form representation to women almost commensurate with the proportion of feminine
membership. Yet the "A. A. W." seeks to do a similar work for women by women
only, and many scientific women limit their appeals and efforts to sex lines.
Women's clubs also, and associations for mutual improvement, are increasing very
fast, and do not move in the least in the direction of seeking vital union with existing
men's clubs for the same object, or in the line of greater hospitality to harassed and
busy men, who are not progressive enough to have clubs of their own! Now the
expression of any misgiving lest this tendency create an extreme sex feeling on the
part of women is met with one invariable answer, viz.: that only a few women have
the courage and ability to command equal recognition for their word and work among
men, and that the great majority, even of progressive, cultivated, earnest women need
the separate drill by themselves for many years before they can take a balanced part
in the associated effort of men and women. All very true. Yet it is not the whole
truth. Women in clubs and associations, when they compare themselves with men,
select for comparison only the best drilled men, professional men, master specialists.
But take men and women jn America as a whole, and the women are better educated
and more drilled in the understanding and discussion of everything but technical,
political and financial questions than are men. The average girl stays in school longer
than the average boy. In many circles in society, where the brother is almost sure to
be dedicated to mercantile or manufacturing business, the sister is trained for a teacher.
And the wife and mother, although overburdened and often overmastered by cares,
has still in America, as a rule, in the great middle class, which sets the common stand-
ard of thought and conduct, a better chance for intellectual and moral development
than the husband and father. The proof of this is in the fact that her old age is gen-
erally richer than his in all that makes life happy and helpful — in the fact that she,
oftener than he, finds elevating work for intellectual and moral ends when the drudgery
of personal cares is lifted. In how many families the men live only for business; the
women do all the higher spiritual work! How many husbands let their wives represent
the entire family interest in education, in philanthropy and in religion, and perhaps
cannot help it, so voraciously do business demands devour the whole man.
But if this tendency of the average husband and father to be absorbed in financial
specialties until taste for general culture becomes obsolete; and for the average wife
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 175
and mother, with widening opportunities and freedom, to become more and more gen-
erally cultured; if this tendency increases I say, a gulf will be fixed between women
and all but professional and learned mcH which will be as hurtful to both as the older
forms of sex separation. I hate to see this tendency divide as often as it does today,
I should fear its extreme as a social menace. Therefore, I believe that now that the
average woman has learned the delight and value of women's work with women, for
women; the exceptional women should make haste to assume their places as human
beings, with men, in associated effort for highest ends. It is time that the most clear-
eyed women should cease to spend themselves chiefly in women's things, and should
press wider open the doors now ajar which lead to channels of high commerce of
mind and heart transcending sex limits.
And lest a new caste of sex, in which women shall show themselves the selfish
superiors, shall be created, I think it high time that women whose husbands are too
busy to make, or too ignorant to enjoy, literary and philanthropic clubs, should
patiently, sweetly, charmingly woo their other halves to the delights they them-
selves feed upon!
Next, the danger of women's organization.
Did we not agree that sense of individuality preceded power of associated effort
in the growth of womanhood?
Then is it not equally clear that m the individual woman all healthful develop-
ment must follow the self-same order? Is it not clear that until a woman has some
understanding of her own nature, its worth, its use, its social power, its supreme obli-
gations, she can gain nothing vital by associated life with others? Mind, I do not say
the ignorant woman must grow wise before she belongs to a club seeking wisdom. On
the contrary, in the associated scheme she may gain far more, and sooner learn to give
as she gains, than in any separate study. But this I do say, the ignorant woman must
know her ignorance and long to grow wise before she can gain anything but a foolish,
make-believe knowledge from the brightest club.
Mind, I do not say the religious woman must first outgrow her selfishness before
she can join with profit a society for philanthropic effort. But this I do say, the
selfish woman must sense her selfishness and long to grow nobler before she can gain
much but self-righteousness even from the communion of saints.
Mind, I do not say the woman, stung by some personal injustice to a new appre-
hension of sex wrongs, must first learn impartial and abstract justice before she can
usefully work with other women for equal rights. But this I do say, the woman who
does not sense her union to what has been and what shall be, and long to understand
it, can never gain true breadth of view even from the sages of woman's leadership.
Today the organization of woman's effort in thought and action has reached a
position of such dignity, such power, such charm, such helpfulness, that small natured,
pretentious, vain and selfish women see its advantages, and seek to share them in some
form or other. And the chief danger of it all lies just here, that on the one side
the leaders will be " leveled down " as the membership is leveled up, and a half-
growth only be secured; and on the other hand that pride of form, devotion to the
letter of woman's association, shall kill its spirit. Look at the question as it relates to
religion and charity, the first specialties of woman's associated effort. An item from
a society journal which I clipped not long ago will illustrate my thought In the
column of " Correspondence " the question is asked, " How may I, a stranger in New
York, with ample means, but with no first-class letters of introduction, best acquire
social standing?" The response was this: " Hire an eligible sitting in a church fre-
quented by people of high social influence, join two or three popular charitable asso-
ciations managed by society women, subscribe liberally to their work and get elected
if possible on their boards of directors." Comment on this seems unnecessary, but I
wonder if any of us fully realize how degraded from its high uses a church and a char-
itable organization must become, if a majority of its membership considered it only in
the light of a ladder to social distinction.
176 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Nor is the danger less in intellectual ways. " It is fashionable in Boston to
patronize classical music," says a cynic observer; " so people lie by the thousands.
They say they like it and go to the concerts, to be bored, or else outrage true music
lovers by whispering and stirring about." We may well say, better a fashion for high
things not understood, or yet really liked, than a fashion for bull-fights or coarse min-
strel jokes. Yes; but true growth for the individual, and so for the social organism, is
along lines of sincerity. And a pretence never truly educated anyone.
It is fashionable in many circles for women to belong to a literary or artistic
"club." A good fashion, infinitely better than the set " party " with its horrors of
commonplace, or an informal tea with slander, spiced gossip or belittling gabble
called conversation. Yes; but many a woman thinks she is " cultivated " because she
hears swiftly-forgotton "papers " by the bushel; and snubs women far superior to her-
self who modestly disclaim absorbing devotion to literature.
Beware of danger in intellectual club-life if it makes you only willing to accept
all that wisdom and knowledge can pour into you from another's thought and study.
No woman grows from club-life as she can and ought who does not feel stimulated
by it to individual study and personal strenuous thinking.
Beware of the danger in charitable club-life if it makes you contented only with
giving in the mass to the mass. No woman is ennobled by such effort. What is
wanted for all true growth for the individual woman as for the sex is the awakening
to self-knowledge, the stimulation to personal study and work. And herein lies one
of the great gifts of the Woman Suffrage Association to woman's growth. By its very
nature, so broadly inclusive and so sharply logical is it, the woman suffrage demand
has been debarred an easy popularity. It has never had any social distinction to care
for, any personal ambition to serve which might not be more easily and quickly
attained from other sources. Always has its emphasis been strongest of all the
organizations of women upon the full and free development and expression of the
individual. And in it men and women have always worked side by side.
Beware of the danger in associated demand for rights and privileges if it leads
you to forget personal duty toward your inferior, in nature or circumstances, in the
abstract demand for equality of rights. No woman grows in individual justice by
*' resolutions," or even by most strenuous and wise labors which base themselves on
that virtue, unless her homage and service to the universal principle constantly leads
her to practice it downward as well as demand it upward.
I have known a woman visit "slums" with benevolence, and beat down the wages
of her children's governess. I have known a woman gloat over a fine essay at a
club and neglect the simplest rules of intellectual development in her own life and
family. I have known a woman to spend unceasing devotion in defending and
establishing abstract principles of justice, who never stopped to inquire if the money
on which she lived was unstained by oppression, or if the labor she exacted from her
servants was righteously compensated.
But say you all, I am sure, just here, such women are not made worse by the
associated effort; they have only not yet pulled themselves up to their own standard.
Yes, true;but a subtle danger to character, unknown to the isolated woman, lies in these
modern associations, the danger that we pretend to be what we are not, that we think
ourselves leading in the march of progress when we are only tagging on because the
crowd attracts us.
The "Time Spirit" speaketh these words, I repeat. Individual Development
Associated Effort.
Beware lest, as was said of George Eliot by a too severe critic, " we keep our
ethics only for foreign export."
Beware lest the show of learning cheat us of the substance, of that true knowledge
which must be fibered upon our own thought to produce fruit of wisdow.
Beware lest the lazy, modern way of getting smatterings of things deceive us as to
the leanness of our own mental cupboards.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
177
Beware lest we join on to things from shallow motives before there is anything in
us fit to root itself in the eternal laws of growth.
Beware of the tyranny of organization, of that partizan spirit which exacts wor-
ship of some intellectual or artistic "cult" as if these were absolute truth and beauty.
Beware of that spiritual dogmatism which makes the phrasing more than the
message in all that feeds life's nobler part.
az)
THE KINDERGARTEN.*
By MRS. VIRGINIA THRALL SMITH.
The world moves notwithstanding the assertion of fault-finders to the contrary,
and intelligence, goodness and unselfishness do increase as time goes on. It is
nowhere more conclusively proven than in a look at
the wise efforts made in solving the problem of what
is true charity. That a wise discrimination and care-
ful benevolence is to be maintained by thinking
people will be seen by close observation of methods
now quite universally in active operation in all our
large cities and in many of our smaller towns.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
The most hopeful of all charities are those which
elevate the very young. Every community stands
under a moral obligation to give to every helpless child
born within its border the best possible chance to
grow into honesty and virtue. The expense to the
community of prevention will be far less than that of
any attempt at care in all the moral diseases caused by
the poverty, ignorance or vicious surroundings of its
young children.
The poorest children in a community now find the
beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age
of two and a-half to six years. Too young heretofore
to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired
in their babyhAod the vicious tendencies of their own
depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age has been due
the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example or education has heen
able to restore to them. The kindergarten comes, in these helpful,later days, to these
moral standings with sweet attractiveness, happy entertainment, wise development and
instruction for little heads, hands and hearts, and with many a motherly lesson in
cleanliness and those heretofore undreamed of amenities of life out of which we may
hope, in some far day, may be evolved, " Peace on Earth, and Good-Will to Men."
The testimony at hand already as to the prosperity and value of the kindergarten
is absolutely convincing. It is essentially a woman's work. It is natural that it should
be, as it is simply for the period of infancy, and is only an extension — a disciplined
and orderly extension — of the development and training of little children in nice
homes with wise and loving mothers.
The kindergarten system is based upon the belief, laid down by the greatest
authorities on education, that the most important formative period in youth is before
the child has finished seven years of life, and before the regular training of the public
school belongs to. him by right of age. Habits, associations, desires and experiences
Mrs. Virginia T. Smith was born in Bloomfleld, Conn., and educated in the common schools, the Suffleld Institute
and Mount Holyoke Seminary. She married young, and many years were devoted to the duties and pleasures of domestic
life with which she combined philanthropic work. Mrs. Smith has held the position of city missionary for sixteen years,
and served as a member of a board of charities for nine years. Mrs. Smith established the first free kindergarten in Connecti-
cut, and finally secured a law attaching kindergartens to the public schools; and is receiving hearty support in her effort to
establish a State Home for incurable children. Her postofRce address is Hartford. Conn.
♦The title under which this address was delivered was: " The Kindergarten: Fresh Air Work and Family Homes for
Children. "
178
MRS. VIRGINIATHRALL SMITH.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 179
are acquired which last through life. The faculties are developed, the senses quick-
ened, and good behavior, discipline, self-control, manners, morals — all begin with the
first awakening powers of the child.
One writer says : "The kindergarten attempts to do for children what should be
done for them, but is not always done, in the family at home. It is a lament-
able fact that all mothers are not fitted to train up infants in the way they should go.
Even in the well-to-do classes there is a lack of knowledge, of the right temper, of
experience, or of leisure to give the young child the kind of discipline that ensures
good manners, good morals, or the kindly development of his natural powers.
Home training of the right sort is no doubt the best training. There is no education
in the world so valuable as that unconsciously imbibed in a refined and cultivated
household before the child is six years old. But what shall we do for children who
do not have homes at all worthy of the name? We know that the child is father of
the man, and yet our civilization is very slow to begin at the right end of a social
reform. We build prisons for adults and reformatories for children. These have
become necessities, and testify to an inability to deal with the evils of our society."
So then we must begin in the right way to educate the children of the very poor.
We must pick up out of the swearing alleys and gutters of depraved neighborhoods
the neglected, harshly treated, half-fed and half-clothed, unwashed and uncombed
prattling child, whose greatest knowledge of language is of slang and profanity, cleanse
it and cover it with wholesome garments; teach it how to play and how to talk and
what truth is, and so, lovingly and carefully, plant the germ of good in its receptive
mind, and fill its hopeful heart with happy dreams of doing something noble in the
future that the results must be beneficial to a great degree to the race we are trying
to save. It is a higher duty of society to prevent crime than to punish it. The one
•is ennobling and pleasant and the other harsh and deterrent.
Already in Connecticut we see the kindergarten added to the public schools, and
the fruits of such a union are, we believe, bound to be worth far more to society than
is the advanced instruction of the highest departments in the languages and mathe-
matics.
None of the modern philanthrophic enterprises seem to give more satisfaction to
those who enjoy them, or more pleasure to those who furnish them, than the little
outings which poor city children receive by reason of fresh-air funds. The benevolence
is contagious, and every year it is developing into wider usefulness.
Children are sent into the country for several weeks and their health is naturally
benefited by the change. It brings color to thin cheeks, elasticity to their bodies,
awakens in their minds the love of simple pleasures, ideals of beauty, cleanliness and
purity All through the pleasant country, in villages and farmhouses, people are found
willing to take one or more of these little waifs into the family and give them a good
time. We do not know whether the children or their kind and generous entertainers
are the more benefited, for this opening of the heart and home is such a lovely char-
ity that it is invaluable to those who participate in it. F'amily selfishness says that
one's duty is all done when one's own children are carried into green fields, beside
laughing waters, and into wholesome chambers in pleasant country houses for the
nights; but the new and tender spirit of this later day claims that the little children
of the poor need a change quite as much as any others, and that it should be a pleas-
ure to see that it is given to them. This new benevolence becomes a threefold bene-
diction, blessing the community where the children go, the givers, and the children,
and it goes on increasing and enlarging its beneficence every year, so that one may
not be able to over-estimate the moral benefit it holds.
In the kindergarten and the fresh-air work, and in the deeper child-saving work,
which means the rescue of perishing little ones in the midst of moral stagnation and
death by a permanent transplanting into the sweet soil of honest and pure living,
comes the dawn of better things for the little children. In these most gracious oppor-
180 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
tunities are the true methods for the nuture and direction of the little children, who
should each be so advantageously situated that his best inheritances should be nour-
ished and strengthened, his evil tendencies repressed and overcome, and the atmos-
phere in which he lives and grows up should be one of such unselfishness, gentleness,
and Christian love as to be a constant inspiration toward all that is good.
The work in this line, so thoroughly begun in some localities, should extend
from one end of our Union to the other, and the workers go out to their sister
states, that have not yet realized their needs in this direction, with a force that
shall overcome all apathy and awaken a new and earnest interest that will not rest
till the work is thoroughly established.
The work of kindly effort for the children depends for its success upon the
underlying principle of our efforts. If actuated and energized by a vital love for
others, they must succeed. Constantly increasing light will be given, so that the
wisest course of general action may be adopted, and the remedies at hand shall be
so discriminately applied as to meet the real needs of each individual nature.
MARRIAGE PROSPECTS IN GERMANY.
BY MISS KATHE SCHIRMACHES.
The marriage prospects of every woman depends as a rule upon three circum-
stances, the first of which is the number of eligible men living in the country. In this
respect the German women are not particularly favored, for their number exceeds that
of the men by a round one million and a half, so that it is impossible every German
woman should marry, unless you institute polygamy, put a tax on bachelors,' or forbid
young men to emigrate.
The second circumstance the marriage prospects of a woman depend upon, is the
more or less facility her countrymen find in founding a household of their own and
supporting a family. In this direction the prospects are not bright. All over Ger-
many you hear the same complaint; the needs are great, money and employment
scarce, no new openings to be found, and the possibility of making both ends meet
less than before. Under these circumstances the number of marriages is likely to
decrease, and it actually does.
I come to the third point to be considered. It is of a less material character than
the two preceding ones, but of a still more vital interest. It implies the views the
two sexes hold on marriage in general, and the ideal type they expect one another to
live up to. Now, what is, as a rule, a German man entitled to expect his wife to be?
The answer is very short — his inferior, but a pleasant one; inferior, but at the same
time one who is a lady and meets with all the outward marks of respect due to a lady,
yet remains an inferior. This is no exaggeration.
Consult the church in Germany, she says: The Christian wife is an obedient wife.
Consult the German law; it says: The German wife is a person supported by her
husband; has in all circumstances to submit to his will, and in affairs of greater
importance may not act without his permission.
Consult the army; as the most privileged and most highly considered class of
Germany, it will answer. A wife is a very pretty, rich and lovable object, but incap-
able of doing military service. Consult the men of science, and except some of
broader views, they will pretend, should it be the teeth of fact, that a woman is
incapable of rough work, high intellectual training, and high intellectual achievement.
Consult the German government; it has hitherto shut out women from the univer-
sity as a student, from the upper classes of girls' high schools as a teacher, from the
school board and advisory councils, in all public affairs and all public functions. A Ger-
man woman is no citizen. Consult the German press, and except some liberal papers and
reviews, they but reach the judgments quoted above, and even liberal-minded editors
of great liberal papers are taken aback at the idea of a woman discussing political
economy and politics. Consult German literature, and you will find it only knows of one
relation between men and women, the relation through love and passion. The relation
through thought, opinion, work, seem to be perfectly unknown hitherto. Then, after
having consulted all these authorities, address yourself to a German average man on
the point of getting married, and ask him what he expects his future wife to be. I
think he will answer: "Pretty and gay, ignorant of life, able to follow in my thoughts,
but by no means independent." Now, a modern woman may be pretty, and she may
be gay, but she is never ignorant of life, and always independent. Therefore, her
marriage prospects in Germany, and all the countries sharing the German ideal, are
bad ones. This is the chief point where her difference from the older type lies.
Hitherto a German woman on the average had but one way of getting happy, use-
181
182 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ful and respected — through marriage. She could attain this without a special train-
ing of her faculties, or a thorough development of her character.
A modern woman, on the contrary, does not consider marriage as her inevitable
fate; nor is she convinced that it be ever woman's chief gift, to fulfill the duties of a
wife and a mother; nor does she believe that without a special training of her facul-
ties and a thorough development of her character a woman can be able to fulfill these
duties as they should be. She therefore asks as her right, considers as her personal
duty, considers as a general necessity that a woman should, in the first place, be a
character and full-grown personality; should, secondly, make sure of her chief gift
or capacity, train it so as to know what regular work means, and be able to support
herself. Then, having attained this, she asks for the liberty of choosing marriage, if
she feel particularly disposed toward it, and of refusing it if she see another way of
being more happy and more useful to the world. And this latter decision she wants
to be allowed to take without being pitied by the world, nor blamed for it. A mod-
ern woman, having thus developed her brains and her will, there is still one quality
she cannot do without — a warrri heart. She must have a feeling of fellowship toward
all other women, pulling, so to say, at the same rope with her; the wish to help all
those striving in the same direction with her, who may be less gifted or less fortunate
than she, or to help all those who, loosing courage, have ceased to fight. Unless she
have the backbone of a conviction and the feeling to stand with others for a cause,
and to claim justice, she is no modern woman. I now repeat my question: Is this
modern woman the wife her German countrymen expect? And I repeat the same
answer as before. No; she is not; and therefore her marriage prospects are bad
in Germany, Yet, though the modern woman knows that marriage at its actual
state of development in Germany is not meant for her, yet she is not at all averse to
marriage in itself.
Being a full-grown and fully developed woman, she is perfectly capable of love,
of passion and devotion. She does' not pride herself on being insensible of love, nor
affect a lofty and ridiculous disdain of men in general. On the contrary, knowing
how hard it is and how much it has cost her to make her way, to grow a character,
she will fully appreciate a man, who, having done the same, expects the same from
her, with whom she may share her ideas, thoughts and feelings, her experiences, her
tendencies, perhaps even her profession; whose comrade she will be and whose wife,
for the modern marriage is based in the first place on comradeship and mutual under-
standing
Unless the modern woman find a man to appropriate her strength of will and ten-
acity of purpose, as she does his; unless he admit her on a footing of perfect equality,
for the simple reason that she is his equal; unless she be sure to find all this and
be asked to give all this, I think she will not marry. For what outward motive could
else lead her to that resolution? She supports herself, so does not want to marry in
order that she may be provided for. She is fond of her work, absorbed by it, makes
friends by it, is respected for it, so need not marry in order to obtain the regards due
to a useful member of society. That at times she will suffer from being alone, that
she will have her hours of temptation, crisis and depression, the modern woman is far
too upright to deny. Yet, so far as I can see, a character of this stamp, a modern
woman, will cherish liberty above all, and will be happier still when living alone, free
to think, to feel and act as she likes, as if, having married for marrying's or passion's
sake a man she does not thoroughly agree with, feels bored by his presence all her
life. And the modern women begin to be somewhat bored. Hitherto they were taught
to look up to man, and on a whole they did. How this innate feeling of respect for
a man as such is more and more declining in the soul of modern women, and this
change I consider as most destructive for the marriage prospects to our sex. It is no
change one could rejoice in. It is very painful to realize, for who would not prefer
admiring, venerating with all her heart, to blaming judging and condeming?
Yet this change from innate respect to downright indifference is actually coming
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 183
about. It cannot be avoided, for it is the natural result of the modern woman's deep-
ening experience of life. It is the knowledge of the realities of the world. It is this
knowledge which mostly estranges woman from man. It comes to a woman who has
come to know by direct personal experience what this world actually is like; what
she may meet with, in spite of being a lady, when trying to make her wav by herself
and going out unprotected by a great name or a chaperon.
A woman comes to realize that there are two moral standards, and that what is
morally wrong with her is allowed to men. A woman that has looked into the
depths of society and understood its sham and shame, such a woman is not likely to
consider men as her superiors nor to be satisfied with the world's standards from her
own experience; her own reflection, a quiet, concentrated and very earnest protest, is
rising. Taking into account her character, how could it be otherwise?
But considering the views of the German husband, this state of affairs can but
displease him. For women leading independent lives, holding certain decided views
of their own, women with ideas and principles, women that, before they got married,
have brushed their own wings and fought their way in the world; women judging
men and asking them to account for various very unpleasant things of the world — such
women are, in Germany at least, a very great and startling innovation, and therefore,
I repeat, their marriage prospects are bad ones. Things will not always remain like
that. Th^ modern woman is superiorly organized. The weather all over Europe is
black, and times of storm and stress are always favorable to the rising types. Let the
modern woman stand the test of our troubles to come, and she will see her claims
admitted; let her exemplify the survival of the fittest, and she will be respected; let
her be that woman and she will be desired. Until the time come when the modern
woman shall meet the modern man, we have to work to sow and plant with a never-
resting hand that there should grow great characters for the world, characters able to
grapple with the great probjems at issue; it is character we want. Walt Whitman
says, "Have great men and the rest will follow."
THE WOMEN WRITERS OF CALIFORNIA.
MRS. ELLA STERLING CUMMINS.
By MRS. ELLA STERLING CUMMINS.
The people of California have a peculiar .standard of their own from which they
judge of the value of a story or an article. They have to be fed on strong meats.
They require the boiled down process. They insist
on the essence of things. Pretty little love stories or
homespun tales won't do for the Californian public.
So great is the demand for that which is strong that
there is no objection to the improbable element being
introduced into a story so long as the possible veri-
ties are maintained. But a possible story which is
not true in its ring merits, in their eyes, immediate
condemnation. The possible improbable is all right,
but the improbable possible is all wrong. For instance,
they will read with pleasure and delight of the gen-
tleman who w^as found and thawed out after being
"eighteen centuries in ice," if he is dressed in ancient
garments and speaks the tongue of that time, and
otherwise comports himself as he should to carry out
the illusion. But woe be unto the story of a man told
of as living in San Francisco who does not comport
himself historically correct with the times, nor act as
an average citizen might in every particular. The
writers there cannot create people out of their imagi-
nations; they must be types of living people. Per-
haps sometimes this requirement brings to light queer
creatures, just as if you overturned a stone and studied the unpleasant living things
below — the bluish bugs, the beetle, the angle worm, the thousand-legged worm, the
little red spider, the uncanny things usually to be found in such a place — but we
know the artist's studio is always lined with unpleasant studies, and the writer, like
the artist, cannot paint beautiful things only. It would not be true; and besides, it
would pall upon the taste like too many sweets. The Californian reading public cares
nothing for sweets, very little for that which is merely beautiful, a great deal for that
which is strong and for that which is true. The result is a rugged, picturesque litera-.
ture, which is to be found in the old files of the journals and magazines rather than in
book form. Thus it is that, all unknown to the great world east of the Rockies, has
arisen a school of writers, including women, which has achieved a style and quality
of composition distinctly original and native to that latitude. While it was first
evolved and made known by means of the genius of Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller and
Mark Twain, yet this literary movement has not been confined to them alone, nor has
it ceased with their departure from the state.
Mrs. Ella Sterling Cummins was born in Sacramento County, Cal. Her parents were Sterling B. F. Clark, of Vermont,
and Rachel H. Mitchell Clark, of Pennsylvania. After the death of her father her mother married Mr. D, H. Haskell, and
with her little brothers and sisters she received the name of Ella Clark Haskell. She received her education from her mother
and from the Sacramento public schools. She was also much influenced by her husband, the late Adley H. Cummins, of San
Francisco, whom she married in 1872. He was a scholar and orator as well as lawyer, and was phenomenal in his attain-
ments, having a knowledge of sixty languages and dialects. They had but one child, a daughter. Mrs. Cummins' principal
literary works are : " The California Story of the Files," "A Review of Californian Writers and Literature ; " a novel, " The
Little Mountain Princess," and many short stories and articles contributed to "Lippincott's," to "North American Review,'
and many Californian magazines and journals. In religious faith Mrs. Cummins is a Christian. Her ancestors were Method-
ists. Her postotfice address is 1605 Baker Street, San Francisco, Cal.
184
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 185
. Having made a study of this literature for the past seven or eight years, in order
to prepare a work upon the subject, I have been much impressed by the part women
have played in this literary movement.
There has been a list of books by California writers catalogued by a society of
San Francisco women. In this list I find the names of ninety women and one hun-
dred and fifty-five volumes. In the list of the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Associa-
tion I find the names of over one hundred women connected with matters of the pen
and pencil. Besides, there are many (women writers unchronicled and unrecorded)
who are connected with newspapers, or who have been occasional contributors all along
the route for the past thirty years or more, making about fifty more. Today their
services are necessary to the columns of the journals or magazines; today they carve
out niches which no one but themselves can fill. And today the work from their
pens is so honest and so correct that in many cases their ephemeral articles may be
classed under the head of literature, while the vivid short stories which appear from
time to time are gems which have come from the lapidary's hand. But this story of
the literary movement in California for women begins rather sorrowfully. Woman
has been called the "Peaceful Invader," but along her path is to be found tragedy as
well as comedy. The first literary effort made in California by women was as far
back as 1858. A sincere and honest publication was the " Hesperian," which lasted till
1864. But as is now said of both publication and publisher, "Like her nice little mag-
azine, Mrs. Day is dead." The first woman who entered journalism and tried to live
by means of her pen fared poorly and died. She wrote under the names of " Topsy
Turvy " and " Carrie Carleton " as early as 1865. She was a bright, sweet, lovable little
woman, with a cheery style of composition which has earned her that most unusual
title for a woman of " humorist." A few days before her death some one said to her:
" When you are dead I shall kiss this lily-white hand." That night she set up to write
the poem which has made her best known. It is entitled "When I Am Dead."
WHEN I AM DEAD.
When you are dead and lying at rest.
With your white hands folded above your breast —
Beautiful hands, too, well I know,
As white as the lilies, as cold as the snow —
I will come and bend o'er your marble form.
Your cold hands cover with kisses warm.
And the words I will speak and the tears I will shed
Will tell I have loved you, when you are dead!
When you are dead your name shall rise
From the dust of earth to the very skies.
And every voice that has sung your lays
Shall wake an echo to sound your praise.
Your name shall live through the coming age
Inscribed on Fame's mysterious page;
'Neath the towering marble shall rest your head,
But you'll live in memory, when you arc dead!
Then welcome, Death! thrice welcome be!
I am almost weary waiting for thee;
Life gives no recompense, toil no gain,
I seek for love, and I find but pain;
Lily white hands have grown pale in despair
Of the warm red kisses which should be their share.
186 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Sad, aching hearts have grown weary of song,
No answering echo their notes prolong;
Then take me, oh Death, to thy grim embrace!
Press quickly thy kiss on my eager face,
For I have been promised, oh, bridegroom dread.
Both love and fame, when I am dead!
The best known of Californian women writers is Ina D. Coolbrith, who stands
peerless at the head. There is strength and there is beauty in every line she writes.
Emma Francis Dawson is the author of that celebrated poem "Old Glory." Virna
Woods has written "The Amazons," a beautiful little drama of Greek life. Lillian
Hinman Shuey has issued a book called "California Sunshine." A quatrain of hers
upon the Golden State runs thus:
Sown is the golden grain! planted the vines;
Fall swift, oh loving rain, lift prayers oh vines!
Oh green land, oh gold land, fair land of the sea
The trust of thy children reposes in thee.
A poem by Carrie Stevens Walter is entitled
A WIFE OF THREE YEARS.
He goes his daily way and gives no sign
Or word of love I deemed once fondly mine.
He meets my warm caress or questioning eye
Without the tender thrill of days gone by.
Once at my lightest touch or glance or word
The mighty being of his love was stirred.
And now the clasping of my yearning hand
He meets unanswering, does not understand.
He gives no word of praise through toiling years,
To say he reads my truth through smiles or tears.
I cannot take for granted as my own
The love that speaks not in caress or tone.
For this, my life's sweet hopes fade sad away;
For this, my heart is breaking day by day.
Madge Morris Wagner is a woman upon whose talents an entire chapter might be
spent. Suffice it to say that the Liberty Bell, which has lately been cast, was done
so at the instance of her poem upon that subject, and she is invited here to the
Columbian Exposition to set that bell ringing. But she is a frail creature, physically,
in spite of her splendid literary powers, and fears that possibly she may not have the
strength for this wonderful day that is awaiting her.
A poem by Madge Morris is as follows:
ON THE DESERT.
Thou brown, bare-breasted, voiceless mystery.
Hot sphinx of nature, cactus-crowned, what hast thou done?
Unclothed and mute as when the groans of chaos turned
Thy naked, burning bosom to the sun.
The mountain silences have speech, the rivers sing,
Thou answerest never unto anything.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 187
Pink-throated lizards pant within the shade;
The horned toad runs rustling in the heat;
The shadowy gray coyote, born afraid,
Steals to some brackish spring and laps and prowls
Away, and howls and howls and howls and howls.
Until the solitude is shaken with an added loneliness.
Thy sharp mescal shoots up a giant stalk,
Its century of yearning, to the sunburnt skies,
And drips rare honey from the lips
Of yellow' waxen flowers, and dies.
Some lengthwise sun-dried shapes, with feet and hands
And thirsty mouths pressed to the sweltering sands,
Make here and there a gruesome, graveless spot
Where someone drank thy scorching hotness and is not;
God must have made thee in His anger, and forgot.
Another poem is that entitled •* Motherhood," by Mary H. Field.
MOTHERHOOD.
Far, far away, across a troubled sea
My wistful eyes espy
The quiver of a little snowy sail
Unfurled against the sky.
So faint, so far, so veiled in softest haze
Its quiet shimmering,
Sometimes methinks no mortal thing it is,
But gleam of angel's wing.
With my own heart-throb throbs the tiny sail;
My sighs its pennons move;
And hither steadfast points its magnet toward
The pole-star of my love.
What precious gifts do freight this mystic bark
There is no sign to show.
What frail, small mariner is there enshrined
No mortal yet may know.
I only know the soul divine moves there,
'Mid two eternities;
Before this secret of the Lord I bow
With veiled and reverent eyes.
And vainly does my restless love essay
To haste the coming sail;
Dear God! not e'en to save from sunken reefs
Can love of mine avail.
Yet, will I keep vigil, and in peace,
Like Mary, "dwell apart;"
Close to the mysteries of God art thou
My brooding mother heart.
Ah, heavenly sweet will be my recompense
When, every fear at rest.
My little bark, all tranquilly, shall lie
Safe anchored on my breast.
188 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
In journalism we have many bright names — names of women who find it easy notv
to survive by means of their pen. The late Mary Therese Austin, under the name of
"Betsy B.," achieved fame as a dramatic critic. Adele Chretien is a follower in her foot-
steps — the one who was represented in the congress lately held.
"Annie Laurie " is the pen name of one of Chicago's daughters — the sister of
Ada Sweet, but now is Mrs. Winifred Black — a writer on the San Francisco Exammer,
who has achieved great things by her powers with the pen. She is a true journalist,
like a soldier, ready to obey orders without question, and thus has investigated and
made known many a wrong perpetrated upon the public — has improved the methods
of the hospitals and set straight many a wrinkle. These articles in some cases are
studies of human nature worthy of preservation as history, or for the use of the future
novelist to guide him in writing of the present time. Adeline Knapp writes well
and strongly. Charlotte Perkins Stetson is a genius in her line, and has developed of
her own accord without regard to the taste of the public, either east or west.
Eliza Keithis an industrious worker, who says of herself that she has written "for
the San Francisco papers miles of space articles unsigned." She is better known as
"Di Vernon" (her pen name).
Millicent W. Shinn is the editor of the " Overland," and surrounded by a coterie of
young women who already take the rank as writers of promise, fulfills her destiny
like Diana surrounded by her maidens, I wish I had the time to tell you of our story
writers, for it is they who have given us our literature.
In regard to the portrayal of the simi-Spanish civilization of California, it is a
woman who stands easily first — so says the editor of the " Argonaut," who is a critic.
Her name is Yda Addis. I can always tell one of her stories before I see the signa-
ture. It moves along with a characteristic snap-of-the-whip in it,
Margaret Collins Graham has many stories of Southern California life now appear-
ing in the " Atlantic " and other Eastern magazines. Flora Haines Longhead has writ-
ten short stories which have made a profound impression upon the minds of the pub-
lic. She deals in a kind of heroism that must do the right though the heavens fall.
There are many more, but I must hasten.
The women novelists known abroad, as well as at home, are Mrs, Gertrude Frank-
lin Atherton and Mrs. Kate Douglass Wiggin. Mrs. Atherton has achieved a style of
composition original and strong. Her last stories show a constantly increasing power
and grasp, a taking hold on literary workmanship. Her " Doomswoman" is a remark-
able book of semi-Spanish civilization, full of pictures of early days. "Amidst the
silence of mountain tops in a snow-storm " is one of the felicitous images found in
her sentences. A quotation is here made of the picturing power of Mrs. Atherton,
which she possesses in a high degree: "We were followed in a moment by the gov-
ernor, adjusting his collar and smoothing his hair. As he reached the doorway at the
front of the house, he was greeted with a shout from assembled Monterey. The plaza
was gay with beaming faces and bright attire. The men, women and children of the
people were on foot, a mass of color on the opposite side of the plaza; the women in
gaudy cotton frocks, girt with silken sashes, tawdry jewels and spotless camisas, the
coquettish rebozo draping with equal grace faces old and brown, faces round and
olive; the men in glazed sombreros, short, calico jackets and trousers; Indians wound
up in gala blankets. In the foreground were caballeros and donas on prancing, silver
trapped horses, laughing and coquetting, looking down in triumph upon the duenas
and parents who rode older and milder mustangs and shook brown, knotted fingers
at heedless youths. The young men had ribbons twisted in their long, black hair, and
silver eagles on their soft, gray sombreros. Their velvet serapes were embroidered
with gold; the velvet knee-breeches were laced with gold or silver cord, over fine,
white linen; long deer-skin botas were gartered with vivid ribbon; flaunting sashes
bound their slender waists, knotted over the hip. The girls and young married women
wore black or white mantillas, the silken lace of Spain, regardless of the sun, which
might darken their Castilian fairness. Their gowns were of flowered silk or yellow
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 189
satin, the waist long and pointed, the skirt full ; jeweled buckles of tiny slippers flashed
beneath the hem. A few Americans were there in the ugly garb of their country — a
blot on the picture."
(And far more true to life than Helen Hunt Jackson's " Ramona " which, beauti-
ful as it is, does not suit the California standard, because it is not based upon such abso-
lute fidelity to history as would make it true.)
The pen of Kate Douglass Wiggin is employed in studies of character, humorous
and pathetic, containing that heart touch that makes the whole world akin. This is
the bare recital of the literary movement in California for women thus far, as typified
in a few names of those who have shown by their clever, original work that they are
capable of greater things, and worthy of achievement. But the field of encourage-
ment is small, and thegrowth of genuineness is more rapid than there are laurels for
them to wear.
What is to be said of those with hearts aflame, who have died unchronicled and
unrecorded? What is to be said of those yearning to tell the story that is in their
hearts, who day by day are condemned to fill the journalistic sieves with water?
What answer is there for such unfulfilled hopes as these? What answer is there for
any of us who have aspirations, longings and desires, and yet fall asleep by the way-
side with empty hands? Only the profound belief that that which is good is worth
doing without recompense can sustain us through the years. Only in producing that
which is true can bring us genuine satisfaction, even though our hands be empty.
I believe in resistance to false standards even though we perish voiceless. I
believe that woman in literature must reach out her hands ever toward the infinite
standards of right and truth though she perish from hunger and want.
The rank weeds spring in a single night, ,
While rarest plants take years;
An evil name may leap to fame,
While the good name scarce appears.
But the rank weeds die in the morning light,
While the rare plant still lives on;
And the evil name will sink to shame
While the good name's in its dawn.
The way that is won without any work
Is not worth winning at all;
A sudden light, a meteor flight,
A sprinkle — a trail and a fall.
Fear not, brave heart, whate'er thy lot,
Like the coral build deep in the sea.
And a beautiful land, with a glittering strand,
Shall owe its existence to thee.
And if failure be thy part, oh heart,
What compensation shalt thou find
For thy weary years and bitter tears.
And thy mission half divined?
But this can comfort bring to thee.
That like a sounding bell.
Men shall say on thy judgment day,
"This little work's done well."
THE WOMAN WHO HAS COME.
By MRS. CHARLOTTE C. HOLT.
It is said that Max O'Rell, the celebrated French wit, recently made the assertion
that if he could choose his nation and his sex, he would choose to be an American
woman. If confirmation were needed, therefore, of
the fact that this is woman's day, that statement, if
true, ought to supply it, for in any other age of the
world who ever heard of a man wishing he were a
woman. But it seems that in these later days of the
nineteenth century — notably this quadri-centennial of
our continent's discovery, the women are making
such a stir and assuming a position at once so envi-
able and so unique as to attract the attention of many
distinguished people. Indeed, a number of our for-
eign visitors have expressed themselves very much in
the same tenor as Professor Dincha, a Russian dele-
gate from the Bureau of Instruction to the World's
Fair, who, on being asked what had impressed him
most among the national characteristics during his
visit to America, replied, " La Femme."
"Your women," he said, "seem very strange to me
— they are equal to the men. Down in the city I see
a great building, and I am told it is the Woman's
Temple. Out at the Exposition one of the finest
buildings is the Woman's Building. In the Congresses
at the Art Institute, I see they take an equally prom-
inent part with the men. They talk radically on all subjects, even to the changes of
the laws and emancipation. This could not be in Russia. I do not understand it."
These and other statements of equal force from quarters equally noteworthy are tend-
ing to strenghten a belief which we are very willing to hold that the hour and the
women have met — that this is woman's day.
We no longer hear of the coming woman. She is here, every one knows it.
Aside from a merely intangible spiritual influence, which it is conceded she has been
these many years, she is here now as a great visible corporeal and moral factor. Yes.
it is a fact; this is the day of woman, and when the excitement and glitter of this
wonderful period of the fair is over, when we cease to shine in the reflected light
of woman's glory, what have we seen and heard and learned concerning women that
we may take with us to inspire us to higher thoughts, to truer aims, to nobler deeds?
This is the great question.
Is this to be anything more to us than a great panorama? Is this kaleidoscopic
vision to become something more to us than a memory ? Woman in the abstract, or rather
in the aggregate, seems to have done so much. May we not know woman in the con-
crete — that unit from whom we may gather our personal inspiration? It is useless to
point out to us the works of art, the paintings, laces, decorations, which this building
Mrs. Charlotte C. Holt was born at New Orleans, La. Her parents were John C. Gushing and Charlotte Waddington
Cashing. She was edncated at the Chicago High School, and has traveled in the Eastern and Southern United States. She
married Granville M. Holt in 1882. Her profession is that of a lawyer. She is a member of the boards of " Chicago Women's
dub," " The Protection Agency for Women and Children," and the " State Guardians for Girls." Her postoffice address is
5816 Lexington Avenue, Chicago.
190
MRS. CHARLOTTE C. HOLT.
THE CONGRESS OF WOxMEN. 191
is so lavishly displaying. These are all the works of genius. We wish to know a little
something about the common, everyday, ordinary kind of a woman, to whose emi-
nence we may any of us hope to attain. It is of her I wish to speak to you to-day.
Not in a spirit of criticism or captiousness, not to detract a particle from the credit
due to achievements unparalleled in any age, not to quench the ardor or cool the
enthusiasm of any woman, but because I feel, in common with many thoughtful peo-
ple, that there is much now in the so-called woman's movement which is superficial and
much that may be ephemeral, much that depends for its support upon artificial means
and that may be reactionary. We will be apt to take promise for fulfillment, shadow for
substance, the means for the end. I believe a little wholesome reflection just at this time
is greatly needed. We need to realize that cities do not grow in a day. Characters are
not formed in six months, and that the great principles of growth are as absolutely
essential in this movement as they have proven to be in all others.
Now the thought which I wish to leave with you today is: That our ideal woman
has become a reality. She is here. She is the inspiring cause of much, if not all, of this
work; and I wish to present her to you, as 1 believe she is worthy of emulation, and I
believe she will compare favorably with the ideals of other times. She is not drawn
from imagination, she is a living, breathing reality, and while I must admit that I have
failed to find all of her qualities in many women, she is in the main drawn sufficiently
from life to convince us of her existence. She is only here and there among the
crowds, but if we search for her we may find her. She is not on exhibition, as I
intimated before; she is no genius, and the kind of work she does is not susceptible
of statistics or exposition. In the lecture-room she is more often on the benches than
upon the stage, and only among her friends is her true worth fully known. None of
the superlatives are required to describe her, but when she is once known and fully
understood she can always be counted on. She is neither young nor old, she may be
rich or poor, plain or beautiful; these are accidents she is in nowise responsible for —
but she has a beauty of soul which shines out of her face and makes her seem lovely.
Time has not hardened her nor has he passed her by unmarked. She is not over-
popular with the world. She cannot train with every passing wind of doctrine, her
convictions are strong and she changes them only upon the most unquestionable
proof that they are untenable. She has been to school in the great world and is a part
of it. Not from choice, nor from the realization of broader opportunities for women,
but through stern and bitter necessity. She has learned the great lessons of life under
a discipline as unflinching as that of the German army. She long since realized that
the greatest good she could do the world was to find the place she was fitted for and
to fill it to the best of her ability. She understands herself, is well poised and ready
for emergencies. She is not easily diverted from the great purposes of life and
devotes herself with great fidelity to the pursuit of her chosen avocation. She realizes
that the great drawback to the success of woman in the higher professions, as well
as in the less skilled callings is the lack of permanency. And herein is the great secret
of absolute equality between the sexes. It is useless to talk of equal work and equal
wages until women do give equal work. And we are sure that so long as work is made
only a convenient stepping-stone instead of the great object of life, women do not
and will not give a service as satisfactory as men do. And I maintain that she may
do this without sacrificing any of her higher interests, or the interests of those whom
affection or relationship may have made her responsible for. Indeed, all the interests
of her life may be adjusted to those of her profession without loss to any.
She does not depend for her success so much upon her knowledge of the amount
of gray matter she has in her brain as she does upon the faithful performance of each
day's duties. Industry, punctuality and a keen intelligence of the subject matter are
more important factors in her work than her influence or a diploma. In work she
knows no sex, and while she recognizes the necessity for many such distinctions now,
she hopes that if she lives to see another World's Fair there will be no Woman's
Building, no woman's separate exhibit, but men's and women's work exhibited
192 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
together, held up to a common standard and rated only upon their merit. This ideal
woman is intensely human. She is conscious that whatever else she may be, she is
first of all a human being, with all the desires and limitations, with all the faults and
aspirations, with all the virtues and failures that are common to the human family.
She asks for herself only that which she is willing to concede as right for everyone
else.
She has learned to look for and find the soul of goodness in things evil, the ele-
ment of truth in things erroneous; her greatest quality, the spirit of justice which
animates her. She takes reason, not sentiment, for her guide; she requires facts, not
feelings, to persuade her; she condemns none, but seeks to find some cause of justifi-
cation for all. If man's inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn, she knows
that woman's inhumanity to woman is death to millions more. She has ceased to com-
plain of the cruelty of man to her sister woman, for she knows that doubly refined is
the cruelty of women to those of her own sex. It is impossible for any man to inflict
upon a woman the bitter injustice, the intensity of suffering that is possible for a
woman. In warfare men may be cruel to each other, but in peace and among the
ordinary types of men there is a freemasonry of spirit, a fraternity of interest which
is rarely found among the higher types of women. The sisterhood of woman is talked
of, but seldom realized among women, and it is a part of the lifework of my ideal
woman to cultivate and extend this spirit of kindliness and courtesy which goes so far
to sweeten and soften the dreariest pathway. She has a sister's heart for all women.
None are outside the pale of her sympathy and her compassion. She believes with
Olive Schriner that "true holiness is infinite compassion for others." She is not dilet-
ante; she is earnest. Life is serious with her. She has learned that society at its
best is the science of living together in harmony; she believes that the mission of
woman is to bring the feminine side of humanity into the world. We have been too
long dominated by one sex. She does not desire, however, that we should be domi-
nated by the other. The tyranny of woman would be as oppressive as the tyranny of
man. The day of muscular force is gone, the day of nervous force has come, and with
it has come the works of peace, the hum of industry and the need of women in the
outside world — not because she has chosen to enter the field heretofore supposed to
be the field alone of men, nor because she has been influenced by others to change so
radically the ordinary tenor of woman's way, but because the great unseen forces of
life, aching unconsciously, have brought her there, and she appreciates now the impor-
tance of her mission. Her journey was begun with as great a reluctance as ever the
children of Israel felt on leaving the fleshpots of Egypt for the wanderings in the wil-
derness; the luxuries of slavery seemed so much more desirable, even with the sure
promise of the milk and honey of freedom; and when we know there are days and
years of dreary wanderings in the wilderness, it is no wonder that many stand back
appalled and decide to remain — and it is all right for them. Only the man or woman
who has faith can ever hope to reach the promised land.
My ideal woman is essentially a domestic woman in the broadest sense. It is im-
possible to my mind to conceive of a woman of high type as the woman without a
home. If she has but one room she will make a home of it, and it will shine forth as
the expression of her own individuality. It is the garden in which she grows herself.
It is the one great distinguishing difference between men and women, and in behalf of
my ideal woman, my woman of the world, I believe she is more devoted to the idea
of home than many of the women of the old regime. And I believe that I can assert
without fear of contradiction that hotels and boarding-houses are patronized propor-
tionately more by women who are supported by their husbands or fathers than they
are by women who support themselves. And further, I believe that every woman
whose mind has been broadened by contact with the world is a better housekeeper,
knows better how to keep the wheels of the domestic machinery oiled than the woman
who never goes outside of the four walls of her home. She manages her household
with the same kind of sagacity that a business man manages his factory or his count-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 193
ing room, one of the first essentials of which is to employ the best help she can find,
pay them what their services are worth, trust them, and never nag them. As to the
children, it is a wise woman who knows when she is not fitted to raise her own children.
On the other hand, if she is so fitted, that is her profession, and she may make its prac-
tice remunerative by taking the children of some woman in other professions and for
a consideration raising those children. In fact, no more changes will be required in
the adjustment of the domestic relations to professional life than the same changes
necessitated in the readjustment of economic conditions in other fields now so rapidly
taking place. It resolves itself into a question of division of labor, and will naturally
settle itself as it is being settled every day by the need that every woman finds of doing
tlie best she can for each day. When women find that by education and training they
are worth in some trade or profession twenty dollars to fifty dollars per week, they will
not be willing to spend their lives as nurse girl at three dollars per week and board,
when for that sum or less or more they can engage the services of a special kindergarten
teacher who will undoubtedly train their child more carefully than they can. This
may seem a heresy to those who have believed from time immemorial that a mother's
first duty was to her children, but I am sure that when we look about us and find how
very badly most of mothers do raise their children, my statements may be taken into
consideration at least, and I am sure a thoughtful examination of my proposition will
demonstrate its correctness. I speak with knowledge and from experience when I say
that women who have devoted themselves to the professions usually occupied by men
have been women who are remarkable for the fidelity with which they have served
their homes and their families, and on the other hand women of the clinging-vine type,
who faint easily and are afraid of rats, are women who neither keep house well nor
raise well-behaved children.
To sum it all up, the more intelligence any one person possesses the better all
the work of their lives is accomplished, and by changing that intelligence into broader
channels you do not change the nature of the person. Therefore, you men and women
who are wise do not check the inspirations of any child or women for broader condi-
tions of life because of any preconceived unfitness for those conditions which you
approve. The more she knows and grows physically, mentally and morally, the richer
will be her life and the lives of all who are near to her. And now for the last of the
qualities of my woman who has come: She is not conceited. She thinks that other
people have lived who are as great and good as she is. She does not agree with the
correspondent of one of the morning papers who claimed that no ideal man could be
found who w'as worthy of the ideal woman. She thinks supply and demand are about
evenly balanced on both sides, and she does not feel at all lonesome. She believes in
the survival of the Anglo-Saxon race, and she believes that however many stopping-
places there may be that race is making for righteousness. She believes in men and
women. She also believes in that land, on the hills of which walk brave women and
brave men hand in hand.
(18)
GOETHE AND SCHILLER.
By MISS MARY VIRGINIA KEENE.
In the physical world, he who seeks for nuggets must dig deep in dark recesses
where the treasure lies hidden. He must possess untiring strength, and much
patience, to enable him to wrest from the grasp of
the rocky Titans the mass of shining metal half hid^
den by its baser alloy. Then the dross must be
separated from the metal and the latter purified and
refined before it can be used in the service of utility
or beauty. Once upon a time there were two intel-
lectual miners who sought to wrest from the mines
of knowledge its richest nuggets of thought, its
brightest gems of fancy. These men were known as
Goethe and Schiller. The elder one, Goethe, was aided
in his quest by Winckelmann, the Antiquary, who, like
a torchbearer, preceded him, illuminating his way, pen-
etrating to dark places where he himself had wrought.
There he taught the young poet how to choose and
where. But Goethe used also his own divining rod of
Genius, whereby he discovered new treasures. These
he cast into the glowing alembic of his mind, there to
be transmuted into finer shapes. "Like unto plate of
rare device, or jewels of rare and exquisite form," for
a creative faculty was his law. In his love of form he
was Greek. This love of the artistic was partly intu-
Miss MARY VIRGINIA KEENE. . jtlvc, partly thc rcsult of culture. He had been greatly
impressed by his study of Lessing's "Laocoon" but Winckelmann's "Philosophy of Art"
was the real key which enabled him to unlock the door of achievement. Thence he
passed on into a sort of intellectual Vatican, where he beheld the artistic creations of
the artists who had preceded him. Let us suppose that he enters the "Hall of the
Muses." Here he beholds Chaucer's pictorial views of the Canterbury Pilgrims, gleam-
ing like stained glass windows in the temple of primitive literature. Near by hang
the brilliant tapestries of Spencer, woven in the loom of Poesy, depicting scenes in
the life of the Faery Queen and her court. He gazes with reverent awe at Milton's
statuesque verse, so like sculpture, and Shakespeare's wondrous word-painting, por-
traying every phase of human passion and emotion. Here it was Goethe's privilege
to enrich this collection by placing in German niches many a white statue of thought,
many a polished gem of expression.
In childhood Goethe was taught by a good and gifted mother, who aroused his
intellect and stimulated his ambition and imagination by inventing stories containing
scientific truths disguised as fairy tales. From this clever mother he inherited his
gift of story-telling.
He was young, rich, well-born, handsome, gifted. Is it any wonder that he was
flattered, courted, feted? He delighted to bask in the sunshine of adulation, or like
Miss Mary Virginia Keene was born in the city of Erie, Pa. Her parents were Galen Bryant and Annie B. Keene. Miss
Keene's ancestors were'English people who came to this country and settled in New Hampshire. She is a lineal descendant of
Captain Miles Standish. One of her great-grandfathers helped throw the tea overboard in Boston harbor. She was edu-
cated in the Grammar Schools of Buffalo and in a French Academy for girls. She has traveled in the United States and
Canada. Miss Keene is constantly engaged in literary pursuits and is a pleasing lecturer. She belongs to the Episcopal
Church. Her postoffice address is 339 Niarara Street., Buffalo, N. Y.
• 194
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 195
a butterfly flutter above every flower of pleasure which grew in the garden of his
experience. Providentially there came to Weimar at this period the noble, gifted
Herder, who became Goethe's friend, and gave to the young poet a better knowledge
of his wonderful possibilities.
Herder's influence upon Goethe was manifold, but mainly in the direction of
poetry. He taught him that the Bible best illustrates the truth that " poetry is the
product of a national spirit and not the privilege of a cultivated few." From Hebrew
poetry they turned to the study of Homer and Ossian. The latter poet, then making
the tour of Europe, so aroused the enthusiasm of Goethe that he made a transla-
tion of "Selma," and introduced into his own sentimental novel "The Sorrows of
Werther."
There is a great diversity of opinion concerning Goethe's philosophical romance,
"Wilhelm Meisfer." The author says: "I cannot give the key to its solution." Its
leading idea is renunciation; the power to sacrifice the temporary for the permanent.
While studying law at Strasburg, Goethe became interested also in theology, but
he was more particularly interested in alchemy and the .study of mysticism. It was
then that he conceived the idea of writing his dramatic poem of " Faust," which he
did not complete, however, until sixty years after. It embodies the varied experiences
and the ripe scholarship of a lifetime. This drama reveals the triumph of Repent-
ance over sin for not only is the soul of Marguerite redeemed, but that of her lover
also.
In another dramatic poem, "Iphigenia of Taurus" the powers of evil are disarmed
by the truth, fidelity and purity of Iphegenia of Taurus. One must make an exhaust-
ive study of Goethe's writings to form any adequate idea of the manysidedness of his
genius.
His mind was like a prism, owing to its great powers of refraction. Eckermann,
who knew the poet well, says that " Goethe was most valuable in balancing the judg-
ment and in suggesting thought. He cared more for the perfecting of the few than
the improvement of the many. He believed more in man, than men; in thought,
than action; in effort, than success; in Nature, than Providence. Goethe has been
called " The Prince of German Poets," a title which he well deserves if we consider
only his wonderful ability to assimilate all knowledge in the service of poetry. He
is an excellent dramatist and a fine lyric poet, and the best writer of the German lan-
guage, which he greatly improved by his own felicitous style and method of expres-
sion. As a critic of art and literature he is fearlessly independent, although it may
not be true that he taught Pantheism by his deification of Nature. In him the intel-
lectual dominated the spiritual. He has said, however: " I doubt not the immortality
of the soul, for Nature cannot dispense with our continual activity, and she is pledged
to give me a better form of being when the present no longer sustains my spirit." He
solved the enigma of life after his own fashion, independent of creed or dogma.
Perhaps, when the world has grown older, a remoter historical standpoint may
afford the coming critic a better post of observation and a riper judgment of the
great man, who Bayard Taylor said was " Universal in the range of his intellectual
capacities and in his culture." A marked contrast exists between Goethe and Schiller.
The younger poet belongs not to Germany alone, the literature of the world
claims him. The influence of his genius is too great to be restricted to one country.
Unlike Goethe he was not a favorite of fortune. His boyhood and youth were full of
trials. Wishing to become a minister, he began the study of Latin with the village
pastor. The lad's aptitude attracted the attention of Duke Carl Eugene, and he deter-
mined upon a military career for Schiller. The slavery of a life in a military acad-
emy was soon exchanged for service in the garrison as an army surgeon. The duties
of his position were so irksome to him that the burden became insupportable, and he
fled from his country, and for a time became a homeless wanderer. In spite of pov-
erty, ill health and debts, which pursued him like cruel arrows sped from the bow
of adverse fate, he managed somehow to complete his. education. We find him in his
196 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
thirtieth year at the University of Jena, occupying a professor's chair, which, how-
ever, lacked the comfortable cushion of salary. He did literary " hackwork " to earn
money for his daily needs. He was finally granted a pension of two hundred dollars.
The restrictions of his youth awakened in him a love for liberty; thus he became
" the poet of freedom." The idea of freedom is the underlying principle in all of his
writings.
His fine play of " William Tell " possesses more than a literary significance in Ger-
man history, written at the time when Napoleon's idea, the annihilation of Germany,
seemed to be realized. When the patriot Stein found on German soil only an inse-
cure footing; when the poet Kleist took his own life rather than witness the misery of
his country; when Germans were found to fight Germans like gladiators, bedimming
with their heart's blood the soil of alien countries — then in this time of oppression the
story of Tell rang like a trumpet call throughout the land. It reanimated despondent
hearts and kindled patriotic impulses and self-sacrificing ideas. This drama is a vin-
dication of national and free government. It sustains a fine moral purpose in awaken-
ing a love of country in the heart of him who reads it.
When Schiller began to write his noble poems, our country was at war with Eng-
land. By the time peace was declared, his judgment had matured. He then wrote
" Don Carlos." In this drama one of the characters lays down the law to the tyrant,
Philip of Spain, for Schiller well understood that old laws sometimes becomes abuses,
and reforms must be introduced to infuse new life into free political society. Such
reforms must, however, be gradual, not a sudden upheaval of old ideas, lest the remedy
should be worse than the disease.
While Schiller was sojourning at Rudolstadt, he became acquainted with Goethe;
thus were brought together two men of exalted genius, but dissimilar in character.
The older poet took an interest in humanity, and was broad and generous in his
views. Schiller concentrated power as vast on fewer subjects.
Carlyle says: "Goethe was catholic, Schiller sectarian. One was endowed with
a comprehensive spirit, skilled by personal experience in human passion, therefore
tolerant, fighting neither for men nor principles. The freedom he allowed himself he
accorded to others.
" Schiller was earnest, enthusiastic, full of Quixotic impulses, feeling intensely
because his nature was intense." To me he seems to have been at odds with himself
and the world, because his ideal nature unfitted him to cope successfully with some
of the stubborn facts of real life. Another point of difference was their environment.
Goethe was then thirty-nine years of age, settled in life. Schiller was twenty-nine,
without a fixed destiny. Goethe had traveled in Italy, had studied art, was a brilliant
talker, possessed of a vast fund of knowledge and a keen sense of humor, which made
his conversation like a display of intellectual pyrotechnics whose brilliancy dazzled
and dazed poor Schiller, increasing his natural timidity and constraint.
Schiller thought that Goethe was an egotist, and that no intimacy could be pos-
sible. The latter entertained a like unfavorable opinion. Subsequent intercourse
caused each to recognize the good in the other. Goethe's zeal and love for literature
made him an invaluable friend to Schiller.
Rousseau says that the best basis on which to build a friendship is: " Same senti-
ments, different opinions.'
May we not claim that the best coin for general circulation are kind words and
good actions issued from the mint of a loving heart? The purchasing power of such
currency can not be overestimated. Its mighty power was felt by these two great
geniuses.
Goethe's nature was too noble to harbor envy or jealousy, as he beheld his young
rival climbing to the intellectual heights which he had gained. Neither did he pose
as a patron, but treated Schiller as his friend and equal, until at last they became
co-workers, each one assisting and benefiting the other, Schiller was an earnest seeker
after truth, a hater of shams and deceit. His aim was to make mankind, happier and
better.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 197
He seems to have been an apostle of aesthetic idealism. Only by comparison
with Kant and other philosophers does he appear to be a realist. He lived in an
atmosphere of contemplation, and possessed the magic power of presenting old truths
in new forms. The winged Pegassus of his imagination soared aloft, bearing him to
the highest regions of ideal and spiritual conceptions. His intellect was as clear as a
cloudless sky, his fancies as brilliant as the rainbow after a summer shower.
In some instances his poetry is half philosophical, bearing the impress of his
scientific studies. History and philosophy soothed his restless spirit and furnished
inspiration for his historic records of noble deeds. Goethe taught him how to ma.ster
and arrange his subjects, and Schiller aided him by helpful suggestions. Goethe once
said : " People dispute as to which is the greater poet, Schiller or I ; but they ought rather
to rejoice that two such fellows as we are in existence."
The elder poet doubtless possessed a greater fund of knowledge, a better educa-
tion and more varied accomplishments. Schiller knew much by intuition and reflec-
tion. In personal appearance there was as great a dissimilarity between these two
men as we find existed between their mental attributes. Lewes tells us that " Goethe's
beautiful head, the calm, victorious grandeur of the Greek ideal; Schiller possessed
the earnest beauty of a Christian looking toward the future." Schiller's blue eyes
were eager and spiritual. His brow tense and intense; irregular features lined by
thought and suffering and weakened by illness. Goethe's face wore the majesty of
repose, Schiller's the look of conflict. The Greek ideal represents realism, the Chris-
tian ideal represents idealism. Goethe said once, " Schiller is animated by the idea of
freedom, I with the idea of nature." We observe that this distinction characterizes
all their writings, Goethe always striving to let nature have free development and pro-
duce the highest forms of humanity; Schiller's seeking, aspiring mind striving for
something greater than natu^^e, wishing to make men demigods.
The points of resemblance between the poets, which made them congenial, were
these: Both believed that "art w^as a mighty influence, related to religion, by whose
aid the great world-scheme was wrought into reality." They believed that culture
would raise humanity to its full powers. A's artists they knew no culture equal to art.
With Goethe the moral ideal was evolved from the artistic; with Schiller moral ideals
were instinctive, a part of his own pure nature.
Schiller has beautifully defined the idea that the " truth shall make one free " and
that " beauty is its own excuse for being," in the following lines, which I quote from his
"Hymn to Art:"
"I am not held in bonds, unfettered, free,
I rove throughout all space, rove near and far;
Thought is my boundless realm, and here I flee,
Upon the wings of words, from star to star.
What heaven and earth accumulate in store.
What nature spins in her mysterious deep
I daringly unravel and explore,.
For endless is the poet's soaring leap;
But what more lovely can be sought or found
Than in fair frame, a soul with beauty crowned."
EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
MRS. M. K. CRAIG.
By MRS. M. K. CRAIG.
Evolution implies priority, and in tracing the evolution of American literature,
we acknowledge a common ancestry with the Chancers, Miltons and Shakespeares of
England; but evolution does not imply finality, and
our end is not to be found in the literature of the
Mother Country.
We claim the independent and organic develop-
ment of American literature, and by American we
mean and include only the authors of the United States,
for no other authors on the American continent are
known distinctly as American, and moreover, in the
centuries that have elapsed since Columbus set foot
on American soil, ours is the only nation of the
New World that has developed an independent litera-
ture of high original thought.
To go back to the origin of our literature would
be to go hand-in-hand with England's great men and
women down the corridors of time, and follow the
savage Teuton as he crosses the German Ocean, carry-
ing with him in his frail bark the Scald and Saga men
to cheer with song the hearts of the old Vikings,
These long ago Scalds and Saga men were the germ
of the geniuses that have passed down the torch of
prose and poetic light until caught up by our own
Emersons, Hawthornes, Irvings, Poes and Laniers.
Still American we are, born on American soil, struggling in infancy, Herculean-
like, with the serpent of doubt, disputing in the temple of tradition with the English
doctors, now standing forth in the young manhood of time, slaying the scorning
Thackeray, Dickens and Edinburgh Goliaths. " Faulty" — "Why not? We have time
in store."
The attempt in this limited paper shall be to prove that our nation has developed
authors of peculiar merits, differing widely in style and ideals from the Tennysons,
Swinburnes, Carlisles and Eliots of England. In order to do this it is necessary to
open the book of time, and study the motives that prompted the settlement of the
two colonics, Massachusetts and Virginia, and to show why we have seen two distinct
lines of thought in the North and ^outh for nearly three centuries. We must ever seek
behind the deed for the motive; and when we trace the purpose that moved our fore-
fathers to attempt the settlement of a new country, we probe the source of our
literature.
When we turn over the pages of history and pause at the landing of Capt. John
Smith on a southern shore, we read in this heroic man, handcuffed and chained, the
symbol of the bondage of the Old World to be broken by the spirit to be born in the
New. When we follow the little band of Puritans borne in the frail Mayflower across
Mrs. M. K. Craig is a native of Mississippi. Siie was born November 17, 1842. Her parents were Dr. W. J. and Mrs.
E. M. Kittrell. She graduated at Wilcox Female Seminary, Camden, Ala., and has been a close student all her life. She has
traveled in the Southern, Eastern and Middle States, and visited most of the large cities of the United States. She married
E. E. Craig, a planter of Alabama, moved to Texas in 1873, her husband dying in 1891. Her profession is teacher in Enislish
and Latin. Her literary works are essays for literary clnbs, and magazine articles. In religious faith she is Protestant, and
a member of the Presbyterian Charch. Her postoiBce address is 256 Cadiz St., Dallas, Texas.
198
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 199
the stormy Atlantic, see them set foot upon the frozen shores of Massachusetts, we
know that this resolute deed is no fanatical impulse of the hour, but is a deed born of
the spirit of the age. From these two migrations sprang our ancestry; and to follow
the development of American literature is to follow the East and South in the develop-
ment of each in almost separate lines for nearly three centuries; and to account for
the marked difference is not to attribute it to climate, as many have done, but to
ancestry. Virginia was not settled, as some claim, by worthless, broken-down gentry,
nor Massachusetts by blind fanatics. Bad men came over with all the colonists; but
the ancestors of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Patrick Henry and Henry Clay could
not have been entirely worthless, and neither could the ancestors of Franklin, Irving
and Hawthorne have all been narrow fanatics. Yet there was a difference of character
and purpose in the early colonists, the influence of which tells as greatly upon the
sections of our country as do the character and purpose of the Scotch and English
upon the sections of Great Britain. The Puritans, Quakers, Walloons, Salzburgers
and Baptists were all dissenters, descendants of the Roundheads, the Luthers and
Calvins of the Old World. They came to America as Moses went to Judea, dissatis-
fied with the church, the government and all the institutions of the Mother Country.
They came to establish for themselves a new church and a new government. The
Cavaliers came to America as men go West today, in order to better their fortunes.
They came with hearts loyal to the Mother Country, with the intention of perpetuat-
ing her institutions, socially, politically and spiritually. The Dissenters settled north,
and the Cavaliers settled south, and the influence of the two originated the differences
in thought that have been evidenced in our speech and literature.
Colonial literature can hardly be called American, and even if it were so counted,
it Could not be called literature, for dry chronicles help to make history but not litera-
ture. Our colonial ancestors were too busy providing for the material necessities of
their new life to find time for extensive reading or writing. White, in his "Philosophy
of American Literature," says that the ideal of the Southerner was ever on a lower
plane than that of the Northerner. Strange that a man should say this when a South-
erner is called by his people, " the father of his country;" when a Southerner wrote
the Declaration of Independence; when a Southerner is called "the father of the Con-
stitution." He also speaks of the dearth of authors in the South.
The value of literature is determined by its quality and not by its quantity, and
when we subtract the worthless, the his'tories and text-books from the authorship of
the north, but few authors would be left of which she could boast.
The Puritan life was idealistic, and it was natural that'it should develop writers.
The Southerner was a man of deeds, developed the statesman, warrior, the orator and
the colonizer of America. The one was as necessary to the building up of a nation
as the other, and while we accord to the North the majority of authors, let it not be
done to the disparagement of the South, which has contributed in other ways just as
honorable and necessary as the contributions of the North.
New England established the first college, Virginia the first university and Georgia
the first female college. The broad university training of the South has told upon the
culture of her people, and the narrow intense, college training of the North told upon
her Cotton Mathers and Edwards.
The Puritan spirit of New England developed theologians, psychologists and
melancholy poets. Her narrow training has given us our text-book literature. The
Cotton Mathers, Hopkins, Emersons, Dwights, Brad fords, l^radstreets, Edwards and
Hookers have given us the greatest divines and metaphysical authors of America.
When man becomes extreme in thought, his extremity is God's opportunity, and
out of the extreme Puritanism of Wigglesworth and John Cotton was evolved Ben-
jamin Franklin, who was really the first man to show that the old life had done its
work, that the persecutions and bigotry of the fathers had reacted in the broad spirit
of a new man in a new world. Benjamin P>anklin, the printer, lightning-rod man,
stove man, newspaper man, author, statesman and diplomat, an all-around Yankee, a
200 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
typical American. A new spirit is born, the old eliminated, and with the period of
Franklin we can begin to lay claim to American literature. To him can be traced the
humor of our American authors, the birth of the " short story " in " Dogood Papers."
His services were required along other lines than that of authorship, else we should
have seen in Franklin an American Swift or Smollett,
Pre-revolutionary writers can be summed up in a few names. Men were busy
making history then, and not literature, yet in the pamphlets of Tory and Whig we
see the germ of our future authors.
For some time after the Revolution our people were absorbed in the work of fram-
ing the Constitution and in restoring order, and were too busy in the details of nation-
forming to devote attention to literature. We should like to dwell upon the spirit of
those days, but in a limited paper like this we can only point out the leading authors
in American literature.
Charles Brockden Brown, who belongs to the early part of the nineteenth cen-
tury, might be brought up as our first novelist of note. PVeneau, Trumbull, Hopkin-
son, Barlow, Thomas Paine, Jefferson — all contributed their share in laying the foun-
dation of American literature. We shall be disappointed if we expect to find any
such legends in our early literature as the Arthurian or Carlovingian, for our people
did not nurse their children to sleep with song of fairy, or quiet them with story of
valiant knight. Our ancestors were stern, practical men and women; Indians, wolves
and wild-cats were realities and not myths, and the Puritan religion forbade the little
Franklins from believing even in Santa Claus.
The "doubting Thomases," Paine and Jefferson, the Prometheus Franklin, dealt
with reality and cared little for romance. Yet we must not think that the germ of
romance in Brockden Brown, or the ideal of Trumbull, was lost in political and military
heroism, or in Franklin's utilitarianism. Though America had not the myths of the
Old World she had her peculiar legends, and these Washington Irving invested with
all the romance of Scott, and enlivened them with a humor known nowhere but among
Americans — American authors. "The Legends of Sleepy Hollow" make up for the
lack of an heroic people in our aborigines.
Cooper introduced the Indian into romance, but it was not the matter of his
words so much as the form that made them popular. Neither the Indian or the
negro is heroic, although Harriet Beecher Stowe at an opportune moment succeeded
in introducing the latter into her novel, and Helen Hunt Jackson with the Indian
worked upon the sympathies of her readers without appealing to their reason.
Edgar Allan Poe in this new life of American authors stands not only as a typi-
cal Southern poet, but as one of whom the world loves to hear. He was a master
of verse, but he lacked that inspiration that will give him a seat "with those saints
who see God." The weird charm, the strange fascination of Poe's verse is without
rival. "His heart-strings are a lute; none sings so wildly nor so well."
For a while after Irving and Poe's period our country was so torn with sectional
hate that there was no motive for high literature. The John C. Calhoun, Wendell
Phillips and Garrison oratory; the Harriet Beecher Stowe romance; the Bryant, Father
Ryan and Whittier poetry, were engaged too much in stirring up jealousy and hatred
to inspire lofty thought. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bryant, Father Ryan and Whittier,
and even Longfellow, based their writings upon events that are not universal in sig-
nificance, and, like Wigglesworth's writings, will meet their doom.
Rodman Drake, our American Keats, in his "Culprit Fay," kept alive the ideality
and sincerity of the poet of this period.
From this great strife there was born an ethical spirit, and Emerson, an almost
Christ-man, arose in strange contrast to the Garrisons and Calhouns of the day. The
Alcotts, the Fullers, Thoreaus and Channings followed as disciples of Emerson.
Theories and speculations of all kinds set men's minds wild in those days, and
as Irving worked up the follies and superstitions just anti-dating him, so do we have
Hawthorne evolved from the extremes of his age. As was Franklin evolved from
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. ::0i
the extreme Puritanism of the days of witchcraft, so was Hawthorne evolved from the
extreme Puritanism that overshadowed the North prior to the Civil War. Like Frank-
lin, he could transcend the party spirit of his age; like Irving, he worked his people's
follies into a moral; and Hawthorne, the master artist, remains the interpreter of his
people in all that is high and holy for all time.
With the Civil War came the interregnum of authors that war naturally brings.
After the war men were again busy reconstructing the nation — making the nation,
but not literature. With the Centennial of 1876 was ushered in a new era, and while
up to that period we had American authors. North and South, yet ours was not a
national literature. The past is a book with seven seals, and there arises in the pres-
ent a new generation to begin a new page in our literature's future work. The Cen-
tennial of 1876 reached out the hand of brotherhood to North, South, P^ast and West;
the New Orleans PLxposition strengthened the bond of affection; the World's Fair at
Chicago riveted it with the everlasting ties of love, and our people will now turn their
attention to their own country, its tales and traditions, and, as Hawthorne and Irving,
point them with morals worked from the souls of the people. We have traditions of
the fore time, ruins of an old civilization, and buried temples; we have Nature in her
freshness and beauty; we have pure domestic life molded by freedom; we have the
spirit of the ages, the spirit of him who taught the equality of man and the elevation
of woman. The South, with an institution no longer retarding her progress, is again
being heard in song and romance.
Of Southern birth and education, the daughter of a slave-holder, I am ready to
admit that slavery burdened literary growth, especially as we smarted under the sense
of wrong done us by those who were as responsible for slavery as we. But now that
feeling is sealed in the book of the past, and never since the days of Washington has
there been as strong love for the Union and for the Stars and Stripes as is now felt in
the South. The South will ever remain the picturesque part of the Union; its peculiar
scenery, its picturesque laboring class, will give themes for poetry and romance.
Despite many changes, our relations in society are greatly the same, with deferential
black men and superior white men, with our ideas of dependence of woman still
lingering, and, strange to say, the newcomer adopts our customs instead of intro-
ducing new ones.
George Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, Gottschalk, Thalberg,
Henry Grady, James L. Allen, Father Ryan and Sydney Lanier could have been born
under no other than our peculiar Southern institutions, and the South will continue to
enrich American literature with song and story.
The South is not what it was before the war, as far as the old life is concerned;
but its men and women are more than they were. Sorrow and sorrow's reflux of
energy, the strong natures made better thus are awakening us to a new life; and as we
turn over the pages of Eastern magazines, and see there recorded names from the
South and West, we feel that now ours is a national literature, to the roll-call of which
men and women answer from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the great lakes to
the Gulf.
The sunny Southland yet tells of desolation. As the traveler passes through the
broad plantations, ruins and negro cabins strangely impress him in their loneliness
and emptiness. No young lovers promenade the broad piazzas with admiring negroes
in the background. The cedars along the broad walks stand with breaking limbs,
untrained and dying; the Doric pillars of the broad piazzas are stained by loose,
untrained vines, and only a few negroes or white people are seen here and there. At
night the jassmines and magnolias make fragrant the air, the warbling of mocking
birds, the chirping of katydids -all remind the listener that much yet remains to
inspire Southern literature and art.
The West, too. has joined the national brotherhood, and with her Egglestons,
Ridpaths, Bret Hartes, Rileys and Monroes prophesies a glorious future in literature
for the West.
202 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
We would like to enlarge upon this era of good feeling of our Howells, War-
ners, Holmes, and all others of our authors, men and women; but the time is too short,
and we can only breathe the wish that now the practicability of the East, the senti-
ment of the South, and the vigor of the West are combined, that no one section will
be overbalanced by the other, but that with the strong warp of the North, filled in
with the sparkle of the West, and shot with the beauty and colored with the warmth
of the South, our nation may weave a garment fit for divinity to wear. A nation is a
moral person, and to the authors is the soul of the people committed. We are imper-
fect; our mathematics as yet form but broken arcs, but time will shape them into
perfect rounds. The heroic here is often too hard, the high too lofty, but the effort
ascends to God, and will bless us by and by.
I have attempted to show you the qualities of each section, and now that we are
united it remains for the future to decide the possibilities of American literature.
Columbus found a new world, and Galileo found new heavens, and we with the micro-
scope lay bare the secrets of nature, send messages upon the lightning with heaven's
own bolt, bind the ends of the earth together; our knowledge of the conservation of
energies makes eternity confirm the conception of the hour and time is no more.
Foreigners look in vain for the standing-army of the United States, for our nation
marshals her hosts in the hearts of her people, proclaiming that earth did rise and
heaven did bend. America, sitting in the barge of state in Columbus fountain, facing
the statue of Liberty, shows woman's elevation ever is man's, too. This consumma-
tion of science united with spirit Homer foretold mystically in his conception of God
in man. Isaiah foretold Christ's reign on earth; Dante saw on top of Mount Purga-
toria where a woman led him up, for when woman rises man follows. On our own new
America we go not back to the mythical past for the Golden Age, but as Christ taught
us Heaven is now, and the Golden Age of Love is ours, which began in the night of
the Nativity, was hastened when Capt. John Smith and Miles Standish brought the gos-
pel of liberty to our shores, was confirmed when the shackles of slavery fell from every
hand in our Union, and when R. E. Lee signed the treaty of peace that binds North,
South, East, and West in bonds of union that Puritan and Cavalier, not even Washing-
ton and Franklin, could understand; for they read not the liberty of the Gospel as did
our Christian heroes, Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, who have left with us the
pattern of heroes of the greatest Christian drama that has ever been acted upon the
stage of history.
PIONEER WOMAN OF OREGON.
By ELIZABETH M. WILSON.
The early history of Oregon's settlement confirms what has been so often said,
that " man cannot advance in the march of progress except by the side of woman."
If he thinks to march ahead without her, he is com-
pelled to halt and wait for his inevitable partner.
Turkey has tried to advance without woman; witness
her rank among the nations of today. The remarka-
ble recuperation which was shown by France after
her exhausting wars was explained by the fact that
the French woman is an integral part of the nation.
She is part of all that contributes to the wealth and
prosperity of France; above all, she is there the gen-
eral bookkeeper and accountant. She knows where
the money goes. The policy of the Hudson Bay
Company, the first white men who went west of the
Rocky Mountains to stay, required their employes to
leave the English Bessies iand Jessies, the Scotch
Peggies, the Irish Norahs, to pine unmated in the old
home, while they attempted a travesty of home mak-
ing with only such help as could be found in the sav-
age wigwam of the native inhabitants. Not so the
American settler. When he started on the long path
the wife of his youth was beside him, and together
they faced the trials of the new life. When in the
spring of 1835, ^rs. Parker and Whitman were sent
by the American Board to inquire into the feasibility of establishing missions west of
the Rocky Mountains, Dr. Whitman left his. coadjutor when the journey was but half
completed, being already convinced of the practicability of the scheme, and when next,
in 1836, Dr. Whitman rode abroad, Mrs. Whitman rode by his side. So firmly con-
vinced were the missionary boards of the necessity of sending their appointees thus
fully complemented, they refused to appoint single men to the work, but required that
they should finst be made whole men. Reinforcements to mission workers in the field
were often followed by wedding bells.
Of the results of the work of the early mission settlers I have personally little
evidence. Once while at White Salmon we all went up the mountain-side to where
on a small plateau were a number of tepees, the occupants of which were going through
the ceremonies of the .Smohallo excitement or belief. I soon wearied of what to me
was utterly meaningless, and went into a tepee where sat an old smoke-dried crone.
She was glad to sec me and seemed to have some burden on her heart that I must
hear. After much repetition on her part, and bewilderment on mine, I gathered
that in spite of her appearance she was not like them. I did not quite know at
what she was aiming till I caught the name of "Jason Lee" repeated over and over
again. Then she asked me to listen, and with her teeth tightly closed, she sent
through them some vocal sounds, which at last I caught to be two or three measures
of Greenville. I began to sing " Come ye sinners, poor and needy,' she accompanying
Elizabeth M. Wilson is a native of South Argyle, N. Y. Her ptarente were Rev. Jae. P. and Amanda Miller. She mar-
ried Joseph G. Wilson, jadge of the Sapreme Court of Oregon. She is a member of the Congregational Church. Her jmstoffice
address is The DaUes, Oregon.
•203
ELIZABETH M. WILSON.
204 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
me with what sounded like singing on a comb. She enjoyed it and so did I. Her
story I translate to be this: That at one time she had been in the Salem School or
under the teaching of Jason Lee; that she had glimpses of a higher life than savagery
had given her; that in the years following she had held on to the little she had, stoutly
refusing to countenance by her presence the Smohallo incantations. The wigwam
smoke and the wild life had well-nigh obliterated the little she knew; but to the name
of Jason Lee she held on as to a watchword. Most truly she seems to be one feeling
for God's hand in the darkness.
In thinking of the long past, why is it that the more prominent happenings seem
all tinged with sadness? There were bright and beautiful days then, days of long
sunshine. The few holidays that frontier life afforded were, by contrast, very keenly
enjoyed. Yet if I am to tell of incidents of those early times one might think there
was little but doing without things, in common times, varied by the days of sickness
and death. " Not all the preaching since Adam can make of death other than death."
Yet to the new settler it sometimes came in a manner that, with the inevitable home-
sickness, no matter how stout-hearted they were, gave an added pang to those who
looked on. In September of 185 1 I was riding on horseback through the then quite
unsettled counties of Polk and Yamhill. Somewhere in the north part of Yamhill
County we saw the cabin of a new settler. It might be miles to the next house, and
uninviting as the prospect was, we thought it better to beg shelter for the night. My
escort rode to the man, who was still with his plough, and I dismounted at the cabin,
where two little children, perhaps two and four years of age, were looking at me
through the rude fence, and said to them: "Please tell your mother to come out."
They did not speak, but looked at me. I tried again in what might be the vernacular.
"Go call mammy," but with no better results. I then went in, and, taking them by
the hand, said: "Take me where mamma is." The little thing led me around the
house to the other side of the inclosure, and stopped by a new-made grave!
In February, 1855,1 was going on the steamer Canemah to Oregon City. A very young
couple, married that morning, were accompanied by the bride's mother, a poor widow,
who had reached Oregon a year or so before, stripped by death and disaster of every-
thing but her children. The oldest daughter, not much over sixteen, was now mar-
ried to a youngster, and they were going to the Cascades, where he had work in a saw-
mill, and his wife was to cook for the mess. He was a promising looking fellow, and
I fully believed the answer that he made to the again bereaved mother, when, with
quivering lips, she said: " Be good to my girl." The bride had evidently felt that to
be truly married she must be attired in what she supposed to be bridal array. All
the cash possible had been spent in the thin Swiss dress with its bit laces and ribbons.
Her appearance brought a hardly concealed smile to those who were in the cabin, but
in that terrible winter rain-storm it was likely to bring worse to her. I began talking
with her and when she said it was the first time she was ever on a steamboat, I could easily
say, "Then you don't know what a place it is to take cold, with its hot fires and cold
air rushing in when we are obliged to open the doors," and soon showed her where
behind a portiere, the only retirement possible, she could change her thin, open-sleeved
gown for something warmer, and at the same time in better accordance with the cus-
tom of travelers. 1 became very much interested in their hopes and plans, and it was
with a sense of personal bereavement that, the following fall, I read the name of the
young husband as being hanged by the Indians in his sawmill, having first witnessed
the butchering of his wife.
From the Cascades' frozen gorges to where the Columbia plunges jubilant to the
sea, by many a bright prairie and pleasant valley, they still live who shared in the
early, if not the earliest, work of saving to our country the fair heritage of Oregon.
Give them, from your older and richer civilization, a kind, sisterly thought as they sit
waiting in the lengthening shadows.
A STUDY IN GOETHE'S FAUST.
By MRS. MARY H. PEABODY.
It is a notable fact that within very late years much attention has neen given to
the study of Goethe's poem of " Faust." It has not been idle reading but serious
inquiry, an acknowledgment that in this drama there
lies something which is of general value, which
appeals to experience and can bear exposition.
People who have scarcely known the poem, who
have a fragmentary idea of a part of the story of
Faust, through its renditions upon the stage in opera
or in play, now catching a hint of its power as edu-
cation and philosophy, turn to this masterpiece of
literature, eager to know more of its meaning. Liter*
ature is often popular because of its pleasing form,
its melodious movement, its appeal to single lines
of sympathy, the presentation of single elements of
life in tragic or happy aspects. These lighter forms,
lovely in their places, are like graceful melodies
which are easily repeated from mouth to mouth; but
the poem of Faust is like a symphony, whose inter-
woven parts are so many that even to know the
leading theme and idea of the work one must listen
carefully and more than once. For this reason, to read
the entire poem of Faust and know it all is to study
it; and the interest now aroused in the drama as one
of the world's greatest literary works, by intelligent
sign of progress. The drama of Faust is a drama
MRS. MARY 11. PEABOnV.
people, has a significance as a
ot life.
But so it is with the work that men do. They see the word within, which must
be said, yet they know not for whom they labor. Emerson said: " Without a thought
of fame must true work be done." The test of fame is time, and from that crucible
now comes to us the poem of Faust, and we are reading it, and reading it now, for
reasons which lie in the character of the work itself.
The poem of Faust stands in literature with striking individuality as the only
great writing which within itself endeavors to present life as a whole, in a universal
aspect. It uses the entire scale, the whole sphere of life. It presents within its limits
all passions of human nature, bad and good; it shows men and women equally, in all
relationships, lowest and highest; it is in its fullness the picturing of all lives — it is
the poem of humanity. Because of this recognition of life as a whole each reader
reads as for himself, yet he comprehends that his own part comes from the very
largeness of the writing — from the fact that there is no effort to teach separate and
particular lessons, but only through the outer form of the poem to carry onward the
strong lines of its broadly human intention. The elements of the poem of Faust are
nature on the one hand and the soul of man on the other, and the meeting of the two
upon the planes of daily action in ordinary human life. In this drama the outer form
Mrs. Mary H. Peabody was born at Hartford, Conn. Her father was Dr. S. Saltmarsh, who married a Miss Sanford, of
Philadelphia. The daughter was educated principally at home, and finally at the school of Mr. Emerson in Boston. She
married Mr. D. W. Peabody, who was a lawyer in Nashville, Tenn. Her special work has been in the interest of the kinder-
garten and the studies of history and literature. Mrs. Peabody has been engaged in instructing parlor classes, clubs and
kindergarten training classes. She is regarded as "Having clear views in her department of work, and has a method of utter-
ance that gives her writings both strength and grace." In religions faith she is of the New Church, and is a member of the
Society at Cincinnati. Her postoffice address is No. 128 East Sixteenth Street, New York City.
205
206 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
is varied, frequently abrupt in transition, and therefore broken as to harmony of its
literary movement. It is as though one twining a wreath had set together rose, weed
and thorn, blossoms and fruits, that nothing should be left out, giving externally
appearances ill-sorted or beautiful as the case may be, out within, as the student dis-
covers, there flows a current of life strong, clear, unbroken — one movement of power
which resolves itself into a single principle, moving with a single purpose from center
to center, from heart to heart of all forms of life. This interior idea, upon which rests
the writing of Faust, is the idea of the relationships of things one to another, of the
relation of thought to action, the relation of man to nature, to God, and, supremely
for its emphasis and culminating force, to the relationship of man to man here and
now in human life.
Under the dramatic guise of figures, who move on both sides of the mystic hori-
zon of earth, as human beings and spirits, high and low, evil and good, with Faust,
Mephistopheles, Margaret, Helen, Homenculus and Euphorion as leading characters,
this majestic drama inclosed at its heart a single thread of light, clear burning to
illuminate the whole. If we call it by its simplest name, that line of noblest teaching
is human duty — the Brotherhood of Man. And this is the reason why, in these clos-
ing years of our age, this- poem of Faust is for the first time being studied by us. In
these years, when the conflict of conditions is stirring the whole world to collision,
argument, rebellion and agreement; when polity and economics, the having and the
not having of life, are forcing us to higher planes of thought; when justice from man
to man is the demand of the hour, this wonderful drama, which has lain biding its
time, now opens its pages, and with its devils and its men, in the light of two worlds
at once, presents to us our own question of the relationship of man to man, the question
of that clear-eyed daughter of the gods — whose name is Duty; relationship truly bal-
anced—justice among men.
That Goethe foresaw our needs and wrote for us, we know, of course, was not the
case. In youth something pressed upon him to be done. To satisfy himself, he
reached outward after all of life above, below, and here. He drew the circle of his
desire, " the near and far," set Faust therein to mark its center, and part by part, as he
lived his own life, he set his figures in their places and bade them play their parts as
revelation of the thoughts that arose within him. Perhaps not until he was old did
he know, himself, what task it was that had been set for him; what it was that he had
done. Faust represents Humanity, and as years went on, Goethe, rounding out his
work, reached backward, introducing the scenes which now stand as the opening parts.
Catching sight of his own thoughts in the ripeness of his maturity, he inserted "The
Dedication," " The Prelude on the Stage," and '* The Prologue in Heaven." These
three are the keys by which we may interpret all that follows — and this brings us to
our especial subject of to-day, the briefest study of " The Prelude on the Stage."
In this scene three men are present — the manager of a theater, the stage jester and
a poet. The manager wants a new play for his theater. He wants something not
ordinary, but, on the contrary, exceptionally good. He tells the poet that he wants to
amuse and attract the crowd. They are of all sorts and kinds, these people. They
have read not a little, they are interested in life, expectant as to the theater. The
play must appeal to them all, for it is but just that they who support him, and whom
he hopes to see crowding to his doors, should have something to reward them for their
coming. In such a case what can be done? So the manager goes on talking of his
needs and his scheme. He is shrewd and business-like as to the people and the play,
and he is evidently intelligent as to his chosen author, for when he has gone over the
ground of his requirement, acknowledging that the task is by no means a light one, he
turns to his companion and says, that the poet alone among men is he who can accom-
plish the great task of pleasing men of such varied character. The manager has
spoken with a certain degree of caution, leading to the greatness of the work, before
he really offers it. But even so, he has not won the interest or the heart of the poet.
Turning from the subject in an outburst of repulsion, " Speak not to me," he cries,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 207
of these throngs of people; these crowds of yours. What men may or may not wish,
is to him nothing, he says. This surging mass of humanity, even to see, in him, " puts
out the fire of song." He cries for sweet silences and the visionary forms of the inner
world. Shall the fair thought, he asks, and the high expression that comes to the
poet as a precious gift — shall this be put to low usage, for the amusement of the vulgar
crowd? Closing, he says he does not care to work for popularity and the passing
moment. He would leave his labors for posterity.
The manager is silent and the jester comes forward. "Posterity!" exclaims he
''If everybody should work for the future, what would become of present pleasure."
This is but a passing word, but to the student of the drama it touches one of the prin-
ciples of the play— the present moment, its value here and now — an idea and principle
which is carried through the poem. The jester has much to say, and, becoming
serious, in a few lines of fullest meaning he moves inward to the heart of thnigs, and,
facing the poet with utterance of deep-felt truth, by what he says in this first speech
of his, sets before the reader the great motive of the whole Faust poem. He remarks
first that in any case the people, it is to be noticed, will have their " fun." Then, re-
verting to the words spoken by the poet, in answer to his expressed aversion to "the
crowd," he says that to his mind the presence of any fine young fellow has in itself a
human value and should be of worth to everyone. Brief as this word is, and quietly
spoken, it strikes the theme of personality. Upon the reader's imagination rises like
a statue the jester s " fine young fellow ' — one of the crowd, it is true; still a son of
man, a fellow mortal strong to labor, with eyes to see and heart to love. The poet in
his self-protection may shrink therefrom, yet none the less the man is there, and as his
jester shows he stands a claimant upon respect, if not upon regard. Having thus set
his young man upon the stage as a figure for suggestion, typical of the crowd, the
jester goes on, and with the privilege of speech allowed to professional fools, with
gentle audacity he takes it upon himself to instruct the poet. Without calling him
narrow-minded or small-hearted the jester states a principle, saying that in society
whenever a man gives out his own nature and power to others in a happy, cheerful
way, allowing free utterance of his own best in genial fashion, he does not become
irritated by the varying conditions and moods of the crowd, but rather he grows to be
himself the greater, because, by contact with human nature, he widens the circle of his
own knowledge and sympathies, and, the jester says, such a one, meaning if he is great
enough, can even from the people draw inspiration. "So, then," he says, returning to
the question of the desired play, he bids the poet "take heart and give them sterling
coin, not counterfeit of high feeling." The manager is encouraged by this direct
address from his jester, and hastening to speak as if, upon this higher ground, the
matter were even now quite settled, he tells the poet to be sure to have plenty of inci-
dents in the play, so that each who listens shall find something for himself and all shall
be amazed and delighted. He says there is no need to compose a drama altogether
smooth in its unity — only to bring his facts and scenes, and have, among them all,
enough to please the varied audience. But this assumption of success is of no use.
The poet, still untaught and untouched, replied that they cannot understand him.
That to make a trade of his art is impossible. He is an artist and loyal to himself. Such
stringing together of scenes to amuse people; such pretence of literary art is not for
his gifted hand, although he says, smilingly, he perceives that it is a principle with
them.
The manager docs not allow himself to be ruffled by this sarcasm. He shows
himself quietly determined to get this play written; and going back to the crowd
again for argument, he, in his turn, thrusts at the poet. He described the people as
they come, already wearied with knowledge orgayety, yet eager for something to lift
them out of themselves. Men and women— there they are; and now does not the
poet recognize their faces? As he writes, dramatist that he is, does he not in reality
work for these same people? Does he not desire full houses also, and if he should look
his audience over, follow its feet as it dispersed, would he not find it much the same in
one case as the other— "half coarse, half cold?"
208 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Then, directing his attack still personally, dropping the crowd, the manager says
that as to glory it depends not upon the audience, but upon the poet. The more he
gives the more he wins of fame. The writing of this play is opportunity; and now
what has the poet to say?
For reply the poet bursts into passionate speech. He bids the manager go else-
where for obedience to a low demand. What! he cries; shall he use his gift of nature,
the highest gift to man, the very utmost of human expression — shall he degrade this
gift for the enriching of the manager's purse? In his earnest words we hear the voice
of Goethe himself — the voice of the artist speaking for his noble birthright, for the
privilege of a high holding of his poet power.
He is not speaking arrogantly, but with the loyalty of true reverence for a power
which he felt was given. Accepting the poetic gift as from above, Goethe stands like
the East Indian, who in earliest centuries looked upward and rejoiced in the down-
ward flight of song; and while the drift of this entire scene, taken as a whole, is to
reconcile all degrees of life in human action, it is evident that, both by the appeal of
the manager to him as the only man who could do that great work, as well as by the
poet's first feeling against it, Goethe meant to give utterance to his recognition of the
beauty of the great gift of poetry. The poet continues: From whence comes his
empire over human hearts? How does he conquer the elements of life? Is it not
because of the secret accordant power of his own heart, which passes with its great
beating pulse to the utmost confines of life, to know, to feel it all and to express it?
When even nature's threads grow strained or slackened, when all creation is out of
harmony, when her myriad voices jangle together, when depression and confusion
reign — who then has power to touch again the order of existence, to recall wandering
forces of life and bid them move once more with rythmical vibration under the cen-
tral fire of life above?
"Who is it," he cries, "wakens the heart of man at will?
Who scatters every fairest April blossom
Along the strewing path of love?
Who braids the plain green leaves to crowns, requiting
Desert, with Fame in Action's every field?"
Who is it brings the very gods to earth in unity with man but he, himself — the
poet.
The passion of his words have filled the air. The jester, wise man that he is,
comprehending that it is at once justice to the poet and to the people, and success
for the manager to work with nature, and not against the laws of things, now accepts
the poet as he shows himself, and, uniting himself harmoniously to this ardent soul,,
without yielding in the least to the principle for which he, with his young man, has
been pleading, now begins a diplomatic reply. Still leading to the manager's desire,
and urging the writing of the play, he says: since these things are so, as the fine
forces of life do act together to result in expression; since they are far-reaching and
come by inspiration — if poetry comes, like love, unsought, then let this poet power be
acknowledged; let it express itself, and let that expression be their play.
" Let us, then," he says, " such a drama give." Let the poet be true to himself;
let him reach out after that life universal, which it is so given him to feel, and let
what he can grasp and bring be the play of which they are in need.
The audience will find itself reflected in such a writing; each will select from the
whole the part to which it can respond, and though " Few may comprehend, where'er
you touch there's interest without end," the people will be moved to "weeping or
to laughter," and without knowing why will still " enjoy the show they see."
The jester ends contentedly, for having met and accepted the poet's own estima-
tion of himself, he feels that the case is won, the play will be written, and here, argu-
ment and persuasion being at an end, he yields to himself, falls into a bit of phil-
osophy, and gives to the reader another of the vital threads upon which the Faust
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 209
drama is to be woven. It is Goethe himself speaking again, when the jester says in a
meditative way that there are two great classes in an audience which are typical of the
world at large — those who grow, and those who do not. There are those who, grown
to a certain point, have stopped there, marked out certain lines as sure and fast, sat
down within them, and with steadfast rejection of new ideas have never been pleased
with progress. While on the other hand are those who are alive to each breath of
thought, who drink in all truth as they can find it, seeking eagerly for means of
growth, and those, he concludes, as are known to the poet will be ever grateful.
The poet has been met upon his own ground; still the task before him gives no
hint of inspiration. His heart fails, and like many another, weary in the service of
art, he for the moment forgets to look upward and onward, and with a purely human
impulse turns to the remembered days of youth when, as he says, he had nothing, yet
had all things.
"When like a fount the crowding measures.
Uninterrupted gushed and sprang."
Illusion was his, and as for truth, vigor of love and hate,
If he must write, give him his youth again.
The jester listens. We can almost see his gentle, quizzical smile as he, quietly
surveying the whole of life, replies to this natural, yet inferior attitude of the poet.
Touching him gently, pointing this and this way, with intention to lead his artist to a
nobler, greater state of mind, he says that youth was very well in its place and season;
it was well for love and dancing, and for combat and the winning of prizes, but he
says (and again we know how the words indicate Goethe's own feeling), to play upon
the harp of life itself, to play with strength of love and skill of hand,
"With grace and bold expression,"
comes only from experience. He shakes his head. "They say age makes us childish,
but 'tis not true."
This is the jester's closing word. A powerful man he has shown himself to be. far-
sighted, large of heart, adaptable in temperament and a master of philosophy touch-
ing the doctrine of growth and the brotherhood of man.
As the jester ceases speaking the manager begins, bringing the business and
the scene to a close. They have talked quite long enough, he says. 'Tis deeds that
I prefer to see. They can be more useful if they will drop compliments, talks about
inspiration and all that, and without further delay let the poet go to work. The man-
ager is not making himself disagreeable, however. Having gained his point, he now
desires to aid the poet in every way that he can. So, although he says to him
briefly:
" If poetry be your vocation.
Let poetry your will obey,"
he still recognizes the mood of the poet, who stands despondently silent, weighted
with the sense of what he has to do; and as if to reassure him, even while he urged
him forward, the manager, too, drifts into philosophy, and touches a point in life
which well appeals to us, according with experience and with that upward progressive
spirit, which is one of the leadings of today. He says:
" Tomorrow will not do.
Waste not a day."
Then most kindly, with true sympathy, he bids his author be resolute and courageous,
and above all trustful to the power within. He bids him look abroad for incentive and
thought, and so looking, to seize upon every impression, catching and holding and
using what first may come. " You'll then work on because you must." Evidently
the manager had himself battled with discouragement, and had learned the value of
(14)
210 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
impressions used and trusted as the first way out of the cloud. And we do work on
" because we must." Pushed from behind, beckoned to from the beyond, so has the
world written its poems and solved the problems of its days.
The manager continues, not waiting for reply. The poet has no lack of material.
As to the German stage, it is open as a fair arena for thought of all degrees. It wel-
comes what may come, however unlike what went before; so without restriction the
poet may take the universe: " And all you find be sure to show it."
" The stars in any number,
Beasts, birds, trees, rocks and all such lumber;
Fire, water, darkness, day and night."
And he finished his counsel and direction with those notable words, that thus within
the little sphere of their stage shall appear that greater one, "The Circle of Creation;"
and all things brought thus into their guiding hands, in the action of the play, shall
move as they shall direct, "From Heaven across the world to Hell."
The phase opens a line of thought which can only be expressed by the interpre-
tation of the entire drama. To speak of it briefly is to show only its significance as
the suggestion of what is to be looked for in the play. A careless reading seems to
imply that the action of the play beginning nobly, on the heights of Heaven, is to
end in destruction. Such a course would be true enough to much of life as we see it,
and as the first part of Faust ends with the death of Margaret and the grief of Faust,
and as man}^ have never looked into the second part, it has been a popular impression
that the name of Faust is synonymous with evil and damnation. But there is a second
part to this drama to which the first is but introduction; and here, following to its close,
the reader is led along an upward pathway, which is opened step by step by the
struggle and the upward movement of Faust, as upon the earth, among men, he works
out his salvation.
The opening scenes are an introduction to the drama. Their completion lies in
it close. Putting the two together we have Goethe's " Circle of Creation," and com-
prehend what he meant when he said to his friend Eckermann that this much consid-
ered and questioned line was " not an idea, only the course of the action."
In this scene the manager was talking to two highly intelligent people, and this
closing phrase is the gesture by which he shows them his idea. He lifts his hand and
sweeps a part of his circle from heaven to earth, and that, for his companions, is enough.
A circle is a mathematical figure; it belongs to nature, not to invention. It can
not be altered; if perfect, from whatever point it begins to that point it must return in
its completion.
If the elements of this play begin above, and if the play itself, as the poet
insists, is to be a unity, showing the Circle of Creation in its imagined perfection,
although such art may surpass most human living, it is evident that the progress of
life must carry the elements of existence downward to earth and upward again toward
heaven. This is the progress of the P^aust drama. The theme of the relationships of
man to nature, to the invisible world and the visible, to man and tc woman in society,
government, ideal culture and art, in all aspiration for the beyond and all right usage
of the earthly and human; this theme is pursued as Faust passes from scene to scene
to the close.
As we turn the page the curtain, falling on this " Prelude on the Stage," rises
directly upon "The Prologue in Heaven. '
" Who e'er aspires unweariedly," says Ariel in the opening of the second part, " is
worthy of redeeming."
With late years we have had the rendering of this theme in the exquisite music
of Robert Schumann. Lending it to Goethe's words the two in harmony show this
Circle of Creation in the power of its re-ascension; but even without that, in the
drama alone, the closing pages are linked to those of the introduction, and by them
we comprehend what was in Goethe's mind when in the empty theater he set his
manager, his poet and his wise man, the jester, to call into being and announce to us
this drama of life.
"PHILANTHROPY FOR GIRLS IN PARIS."*
By MADAME MARIE MARSHALL.
Every young girl, from the university down to the unfortunate girl that is left
friendless and destitute, must be taught enough of domestic work that she may not be
only an ornament in society, unable to provide her-
self with the most elementary and necessary things
of material existence, to wit: a good wholesome food
that will keep aloof that disease so common among
you, dyspepsia.
We have heard that the highly educated girls take
an interest in that part of a woman's education so
neglected nowadays; let me tell you about that no less
interesting class of girls, friendless and destitute, for
whom there is no other way to escape starvation or a
life of shame than to take up domestic service, even
though they have not the remotest idea as to what
will be expected from them.
Something should be done to help the helpless,
and to that effect I began in Paris two years ago
an experiment that bids fair to succeed.
Many of our girls in large cities are wonderfully
ignorant of any kind of domestic work; the reason is:
worthless parents, careless of their children's welfare,
spend their time at the drinking shops or in places
fully as disreputable, while the little ones are sent at
an early age begging in the streets, until the habit
becomes a second nature, and from such childhood grow into girlhood so pitiful to
witness that I am wondering there has not been more attempts made to open to
these unconscious victims of degenerated parents small shelters, where, in groups of
not more than fifteen, at most, the girls could be trained as in a family for domestic
work, and then placed out in worthy families, where their life would become like an
Eden compared to that of earlier years.
Being connected with the Society of. Prevention of Cruelty to children in Paris, I
came across such cases of child misery that I was for a long time anxious to find a way
to better the condition of the girls who are so unprotected in our fair land; yet I am
happy to say great efforts are tending to make laws more favorable to our sex.
The class of girls of which I speak must be also trained morally and religiously,
without any sectarianism, if we want the material training to bear good results; then
they will become honest, intelligent women, loving the work that will enable them to
go through life with head and heart uplifted.
Mme. Marie Marshall is a native of Paris, France. She was bom in 1849. Her mother moved to California to practice
maternity clinics. She studied in Paris and California, and iias traveled in the United States, France and England. She
married in San Francisco, and is the mother of a son now an ordained minister of the Gospel. She spent fifteen years of her
youth in California, and lately eighteen years in France. Her special work has been in the interest of the poor and the work-
ing class in Paris, especially the young girls. Her principal literary works are referred to above. Her profession has been
teacher and principal in the pablic schools of San Francisco and Paris ; she studied art, painting and singing, teaching the
latter, and lately for the benefit of a " Domestic training school for destitute girls." In religious faith she has been converted
from Catholicism to Congregationalism. Her poetoffice address until May, 18W. is care of Mr. F. A. Booth, 19 East Sixteenth
Street, New York (^ity.
MADAME MARIE MARSHALL.
♦The fnll title under which the address was delivered wan, " Philanthropy and Charity for girls in Paris.'
211
212 THE CONGRESS OF VVOxMEN.
Many an appeal have I read in Paris about the necessity of starting a school for
young domestics; yet when I began this new work I met with what one usually meets,
e. ^., incredulity, indifference, and perhaps a little ill-will; I was advocating a new
system; the Old World has not yet put off its old mantle of routine.
My fifteen years spent in the United States, teaching in the public schools, where
I had the honor of being a principal, had given me ideas that could not always meet
with a thorough understanding on the part of some of our best women in philanthropic
and Christian work, because they bore in themselves a fragrance of independence
perhaps too strong.
As I said before, I only began my work two years ago, January lo, 1891. The
incident that made me try it, with no help but my own modest resources, and a Guide
that never fails whoever will follow Him, has been related in the report to Congress of
Philanthropy; I will therefore only speak here of the advantages which I think can derive
from my system: Homes and not Institutions. In France our institutions keep the
girls entirely away from the world in a great many cases, up to sixteen, eighteen and
twenty-one years of age, letting them out exactly as unfit for the world as the young
brood taking its first flight from the nest — unsteady, bewildered, as it meets the broad
immensity for the first time. Many a fall is due only to the insufificient preparation
and complete ignorance of the dangers to be encountered.
Domestic training schools have been started in this country, as well as in others;
but whenever they bear only the character of institution they prove failures. In spite
of what many say to the contrary an institution will never take the place of the home;
each individual in a home can be morally and mentally trained with the greatest care.
"Saving by guarding against evil," will prove far better work than rescuing, even
though rescuing must not be neglected.
The family training affords many an opportunity to point out all dangers to the
young girl; she is not shut up from the world, neither is she allowed to go through it
unprotected; she is made wise and strong by being shown the consequences that
await all those who, for one reason or another, have not shunned the flattering words,
the tempting gayeties that may be offered to the poor girl now fallen, through igno-
rance more than evil desire.
Can that be so easily pointed out to our girls shut up and trained between the
high walls of tradition and conventionalities centuries old?
Certainly not; and as the number of the friendless and destitute increases with
distressing rapidity in our large centers, I believe we must elevate the standard of
domestic service by elevating the moral character of those who volunteer to accept
that humble calling.
Let us remember the noble characters whose names have been synonyms of loyalty
and devotions to their masters.
Every year the French academy delivers one or more rewards, " Prix Montyon,"
to some humble, faithful, noble hearted man or woman servant who will surely receive
a still better reward at the hand of the Master who came here below to serve all
mei?
When domestic service will be better understood because better taught, then will
those honored exceptions become a thing of the past, and the young girl will have a
heart to honor both herself and masters by accomplishing her modest duties with a
love that can only receive its impulse from above.
I expect to return to Paris and make most strenuous efforts toward carrying out
my domestic work for destitute girls as a preventive work, and on the plan explained
here; should I find resources and sympathy not answer my expectations, I want every
Christian man and woman here to know that I am ready to do the same work wher-
ever there are girls to be saved from danger. You only have to call on me at 38 Rue
NoUet, Paris, France, or until May, 1894, care of Mr. F. A. Booth, 19 east Sixteenth
street. New York,
THE LEPER.
By MISS KATE MARSDEN.
When I first turned my attention to the condition of lepers my idea was to go and
work for them in India; but to do that it was necessary that I should have help and
experience. With the view of getting help I obtained
an introduction to her Majesty, the Queen, and I
thank God for it, as it has given me the e7ttre to for-
eign courts, and without that my efforts would have
been fruitless.
With the view of getting experience as to how
lepers are treated, I decided to visit some leper settle-
ment. I had first seen lepers during the Russo-Turk-
ish war when I was on hospital duty. I have seen
them in the Holy Land and at Constantinople. While
at Constantinople I accidentally heard of an herb
which was said to be a cure for leprosy, and I also
heard that it grew only in Siberia. Had it been
Kamtchatka or the North Pole I would have tried to
reach it. In the Caucasus I again heard of the herb
and again in St. Petersburg, but was told by very
high authorities, and even by the Empress herself
that there were no lepers in Siberia. I, however, felt
that I must find the herb, and persevered; by the help
of many friends I was able to start on a journey of
fourteen thousand miles, there and back. It is hardly
necessary to speak of the start from Moscow except
to say that I remember with gratitude the kind friends who evinced interest in my
project by making me presents. One lady knowing I was very fond of plum pudding
sent me forty pounds; another sent me tins of insect powder, and, said the lady who
sent the little gift, " the more use you make of it the better for you." With regard to
food one of the principal articles was soup frozen in blocks, which were hung outside
the sledge. On arrival at a post station bits were chipped off and thawed as required.
From Zlataonet part of the journey was accomplished by sledge, some varieties being
about equal to a plow cart void of springs or other conveniences, while others were
still less comfortable. The roads were very bad and very much resembled the waves
of the sea, owing to the large amount of heavy traffic which was passing over them
on its way to the annual Siberian Fair. On account of the extreme cold I was so
enveloped in furs that I could scarcely move. I wore three pairs of fur boots reach-
ing over the knees and several fur coats; only a few inches of my face were visible.
Getting into my sledge was not an easy matter with all these incumbrances. Indeed,
I generally tumbled in full length, and had to be arranged, poked here and there, until
I fitted into some nook among the luggage. At first, every night we stopped at a
Miss Kate Marsden was born in The Parade Edmonton, London, England. Her parents were J. T. Marsden. Esq.. solic-
itor, and I. M. Marsden. She was educated near London and has traveled over moat quarters of the globe, bat uspecially
through Russia and Siberia. Her special work has been in the interest of the poor, outcast lepers, for whom she has endared
great hardships in the dreary wastes of Siberia. She will soon return to that cold, cheerless count r>-, where she expects to
remain three or four years, working to alleviate the Buffering of this wretched and forgotten class of afflicted humanity. Miss
Marsden is a noble, self-sacrificing Christian woman. Her principal literary work is " On Sledge and Horseback to Out-
cast Siberian Lepers." Her profession is that of a Sister of Charity. In religious faith she is a Protestant. She is a mem-
ber of the Church of England. Her postoHice address is Redcliffe Gardens, South Kensington, London, England.
213
MISS KATE MARSDEN.
214 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
post station. These are very tiny, very dirty houses, the rooms heated beyond endur-
ance, and often crowded beyond endurance also. Every possible chance of air enter-
ing is prevented by stuffing windows with paper. For a bed you take a fur coat,
throw it on the floor and yourself upon it. Sleep comes if you can only manage to forget
that the walls of the room are almost covered with very suspicious-looking dark objects.
In the morning you wake with a dreadful headache, half suffocated by the heat. After
trying this sort of resting for some nights, you find it is preferable to sleep in your
sledge, traveling all the time. On my way through Siberia I stopped at intervals to
visit some of the prisons, and used often to meet gangs of prisoners walking through
the snow, their leg chains clanking dismally as they moved slowly along. Friends
had provided me with testaments to give these poor people when I should meet them,
but I remembered that our Lord fed the hungry and then taught them, and so with
the testament I always gave a little brisk tea and a few pieces of sugar, and if I could
possibly get any, some soup.
My friend, Miss Field, who had accompanied me from Moscow, was obliged to
turn back on account of ill health, and I went on alone to Irkutsk. Here I again heard
of the herb, and also learned for the first time that there were lepers in Siberia. At
Irkutsk I formed a committee from which I obtained assistance and information.
This committee consisted of His Excellency, the Governor General, His Grace, the
Archbishop of Irkutsk, His Eminence, the Bishop, the Cathedral Priest Vuangradoff,
His Excellency, the State Councillor Sievers, the Inspectcr of Medicine, the Aide-de
Camp of the Commander of Troops, Captain Luoff, the Mayor and myself. I found
that the lepers were living in the forests in the northeastern part of the province of
Yakutsk; that for sixty-four years they had been pleading for help, but owing to want
of funds no sustained help had been given. I heard that I should have still a v^ery long
journey before I could reach and visit these poor lepers, but I also heard that the lepers
were living in the utmost misery and I determined to reach them and help them. The
journey from Irkutsk to Yakutsk was made principally by water. I traveled by cargo
boat on the river Lena, one of the largest rivers of Northern Siberia. On this boat
quarters were rather cramped, and I slept in a space that was cleared for me of about
five feet three inches, and as I happened to be longer than that, I was not very com-
fortable. At length the friends of the cargo came out — black beetles and other
crawling things. I am afraid I used to feel rather a cruel satisfaction when I lay down
at night and realized that I was probably crushing with the weight of my body a good
many of the black beetles that would otherwise have crawled over me while I slept.
I found that dinner was more enjoyable if you didn't attempt to see how it was cooked;
the tea was not strong, generally about three tea spoons full for a dozen people, but
still we had enough to eat, and after all this only lasted three weeks and then we
arrived at Yakutsk.
There was some little difficulty at Yakutsk in convincing the officials that I had
really traveled so far, overcome so many difficulties, and was prepared to overcome
many more, simply to find an herb and to help those who were in misery. They
thought I must have some political object in view, and Yakutsk is the country of
political exile. At length, however, I was able to form a committee in Yakutsk as
I had done in Irkutsk and Moscow, and to obtain assistance and advice as to the best
way of reaching the lepers. These poor outcasts were living in the depths of the
densest forests, sometimes alone, sometimes in large numbers herded together in one
small hut. Each community looked after its own lepers and met once a year to
examine any member who was suspected of being afflicted with leprosy. This disease
is so dreaded by the Yakout (a devil and a leper are synonymous terms in their lan-
guage), that it sometimes happens that a man who is not a leper, but is afflicted with
some skin disease, is turned out to live in the forests. The lepers live on food of the
coarsest description, rotten fish and the bark of trees. This is taken once or twice a
week to within a certain distance of the hut, and the leper has to walk or crawl, accord-
ing to his condition, to get it. When he becomes too weak to get the food, he dies of
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 215
starvation. If there are many lepers in a community, men, women and children are
herded together in one hut. This happens in a country where there is a short summer
of three months of tropical heat and nine months of winter, when the thermometer
goes down to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, and the lepers, therefore, do not
stir out for days together.
As I learned more and more of their misery, I felt that God had given these poor
outcast lepers into my hand; that I must go to them. God had guided me thus far,
and would guide me rightly to the end. In order to find them in the forest I learned
that I must ride long distances on horseback through a very difficult country. Thirty
brave Yakout men volunteered to accompany me, and at last I was able to leave
Yakutsk for my long ride. I had with me some Roman Catholics, some belonging to
the Greek Church, and I am a Protestant, but we had not a single discussion, and
although I was entirely in the hands of these thirty men for two months, I was always
treated with the greatest respect and consideration. I had never been on horseback
before except for a few minutes, and as there was nothing obtainable but the native
wooden saddle, there was nothing for it but riding like a man. I had great difficulty
in keeping on, but managed it with a great deal of bumping up and down. We trav-
eled first in the day time, but owing to the heat of the summer in this part of Siberia,
and the worrying of mosquitoes and other insects, we were obliged to travel at night
at last. We soon left post houses behind, but I carried a tent with me, and when we
stopped it was put up and I rested as well as I could, but it was not very comfortable,
for inside the tent we were obliged to have a fire to keep off the mosquitoes, and
I dared not undress for fear of being dangerously stung. Although I slept in gloves
and boots the mosquitoes somehow stung me so that sleep was almost impossible.
After a few days' riding in the native wooden saddle I became so sore all over that
I could not get on or off my pony without assistance, and I was in such pain from
stings and bruises that it was not easy to rest. Part of the way lay through dreary
marshes and part through dense forests. We were sometimes caught in heavy thun-
der storms, and when we came to a place where it was possible to stop a fire was
made, I was lifted off my horse, laid before the fire, and turned first on one side and
then on the other and gradually dried.
Our food was cooked in an iron pot, and when it was ready we all sat on the
ground round it, each man dipping in his spoon in turn, but I made it a rule never to
look at the man who was dipping in his spoon before me, and then I managed very
well. We had taken provisions with us from Yakutsk, brown and black bread in fish-
skin bags, tinned and preserved meats, etc., but everything that was capable of break-
ing was broken with the constant bumping. Our food consisted for the most part of
bread reduced to a powder, of which we made a sort of paste, well flavored from the
fish-skin bag, tea, and sometimes a wild duck. We had great difficulty in obtaining
water, and had often to squeeze it out of the marshes, and were once even obliged to
take water from a lake in which lepers had bathed. There were many bears in some
of the forests through which we passed, but we were never attacked. One night we
had to pass through some miles of burning earth. The earth is mostly peat, and dur-
ing the heat of summer, from some unexplained cause, combustion takes place and
spreads for miles. Only one little baggage horse, frightened by the flames, broke
loose from the rest and galloped away, disappearing in the smoke. We did not see
him any more, only heard for a time the thumping of the packages he was carrying,
which had fallen both on one side and, knocking together, frightened the poor little
horse still more. Through the providence of God we passed through all these dangers
unharmed.
It is in this inhospitable country that I have been describing that the poor lepers
lived, and it was in some of these dense forests that I found at last the lepers I had
come so far to help. I forgot the difficulties of the journey and the comparatively little
injury I had undergone when I saw their misery. I found one woman living alone,
and I shall never forget seeing the look of hopelessness in the woman's eyes change
216 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
to one of gratitude when I touched her and told her I had come to befriend her in
Christ's name. I found another woman, who had been living with a mad leper, com-
pelled to do so because they both belonged to the same community. I found mothers
separated from their children, husbands from their wives. In some cases the leper
huts were crowded, and in this crowded condition they had had small-pox among
them, and only filthy sheepskins, the cast-off sheepskins of the Yakout, for clothing.
The ground in this northeastern part of Yakutsk is perpetually frozen, and only thaws
during the summer to a depth of three feet. During this time, by the help of fires,
the lepers have to make a number of graves sufficient for those whom they think will
die during the winter, and outside the leper hut you see the big crosses that mark the
graves, or holes prepared for graves. Where a Yakout dies the body has, by law, to
remain unburied for three days, so when a leper dies in these crowded huts the body
has to remain for three days among the living. I saw altogether seventy-three lepers,
but the official report records about two hundred. I returned to the town of Yakutsk
after a trip of two thousand miles, not having undressed or washed for two months.
I had found the herb, but it is not a cure for leprosy, it only alleviates the suffering.
On my return to St. Petersburg I was graciously permitted to have another interview
with Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress. I appealed in Christ's name for help, and
five devoted Russian Sisters from the hospital of the Princess Shahovsky, in Moscow,
have already gone to Yakutsk. I asked that a collection might be made once a year
in the churches for the help of lepers on the Sunday when the Gospel of the healing
of the leper is read, and this has been granted, and by that means the village to be
erected will be maintained. I believe that improper food and bad sanitary surround-
ings greatly predispose the people to leprosy, and by improving these I believe it
would be possible to stamp out the disease. I wish to establish a settlement of ten
small houses, a couple of hospital wards, a school and church. The lepers cannot
come here to plead for themselves, and I come as their substitute to plead for them;
to ask you to help me to build this colony, and to help me to return to them, to dress
their wounds and teach them proper sanitary conditions.
In my book "On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers " you will
find official documents that vouch for the truth of all I have told you as to the mis-
ery and helplessness of these poor outcast lepers. Before concluding I wish to give
Mrs. Eagle my heartfelt thanks for her unfailing help to me during my stay at the
Exposition in Chicago.
SYMMETRICAL WOMANHOOD.
By MRS. WESLEY SMITH.
Said the poet Goethe, to his friend Eckermann, in the seventy-seventh year of his
age: "Had I earlier known how many excellent things have been in existence for
hundreds of years, I would not have written a line,
but would have done something else;" and Lord
Byron, early in his literary career, wrote: "All that
can be done has been done." And when these serene
stars, in the blue heaven of thought, thus falter, how
shall we, who as yet but look upward, dare give our
message.
Writes Oliver Wendell Holmes, our genial auto-
crat: "An author does not always know when he
performs the service of the angel who stirred the
waters at the pool of Bethesda. It gives many read-
ers, a singular pleasure to find a writer telling them
something they have long known or felt, but which
they have never found anyone to put in words for
them." And so, be it mine today to plead for some
old-fashioned virtues, and to repeat some old, old
truths of life and love and womanhood.
Mother Nature loves a trinity; her handiwork,
material and immaterial, is largely made up of three-
fold creations. A geometrician would tell us that
the triangle is often the keynote of her handicraft.
Men and women are the highest type of this visible
trinity. With a three-fold nature have they been endowed, mental, moral and physical ;
intellectual, spiritual and corporeal; a mind, a body, and a soul. The word sym-
metrical, Webster tells us, means " each part in proportion to the other." How shall
our trinity be beautiful, or our triangle perfect, unless each of these sides be sym-
metrically developed?
It is the unfortunate fashion of the hour to adopt some theory, some hobby, some
fashion or fancy, "and forsaking all others, keep only to it, so long as the hobby shall
live." It may be physical culture is the modern woman's fetich, and she drapes her-
self fearfully and wonderfully, passes much of her time in weird and mystifying
motions, and assures you that she shall never grow old. Intellectuality is perhaps
her shrine, and she soars in the empyrean of mind over matter, cares not for the
adornment of her bonnet or the cut of her gown, pities you because you have not read
Ibsen and Tolstoi, laments that you cannot rise to her higher plane and frowns upon
all trivial conversation as to dress, disease, or domestics. Again, sweet charity may
engross her time, and she founds a home for distressed cats and wandering dogs, or
Mrs. Wesley Smith is a native of the United States ; she was bom in Chicago. Her parents were Edson li. O'Hara and
Tcnsley O'Hara. She was educated at Park Institnte, Chicago, Kenwood Seminary, C'hicago, and the Convent of Loretto
Abbey, Toronto, and has traveled in the United States, Germany, France, England, Holland and the Bahama Islands. She
married Hon. 8. Wesley Smith, M. D., of New York City. Her special work has been in the interest of literature, charities
of all creeds, clubs, congresses and organizations of women and literary sucieties. Her principal literary works are
addresses, orations and papers for public reading. In religious faith she is Protestant, and is a member of the Episcopal
Church. She is a most graceful and attractive woman, an elocationist and writer, though not a professional. Her pemut-
aent postoffice address is No. 24 West Thirtieth Street, New York City.
217
MRS. WESLEY SMITH.
218 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
makes little pinafores for the chilly children of Greenland, and sometimes forgets
that charity means loving kindness, the womanly courtesy to the maid-servant and
the gentle word to the man-servant.
The perfect woman shall cherish all of these, hold fast that which is good in each,
and remember that she owes an equal allegiance to every part of her being. She who
neglects health — some rational means of physical culture, or the like — shall reap a
whirlwind of weariness and wretchedness; she who aids not beauty by all reasonable
means has lost one of the strongest levers whereby to move the world. She who fails
to expand her intellectual faculties unto the highest, cannot seek recognition or honor
among men. The woman who slays love does ill, for, like the wounded lion, it shall
turn and rend her, and leave her at last desolate, and stricken, and alone; while for
her who knows the grace of a heavenly spirit, " her deeds shall drop as the rain, her
speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the
showers upon the grass." All these things are lovely when rightly proportioned and
nicely adjusted to the eternal balance. The ancient Greeks, that most perfect race
physically and mentally the world has ever known, had engraven upon the arch of
their academies, that he who ran might read, this motto: " Do nothing too much,"
and to we moderns this message comes today with timely warning.
The history of the world is rich with the tales of famous women who would have
been beyond cavil had they but remembered, a woman to realize the highest must
cultivate harmoniously her threefold being. Elizabeth, Queen of England, of whom
Laud writes: " I am proud that such a woman has lived and reigned and died in
honor;" she who was rich in mind and estate, but who lacked the gentler side, whose
heart was not attuned to love and whose life missed those sweet chords in its music
which only a fond affection can bring. Cleopatra, who could charm the colossus
Caesar, whose intellect was broad and great, whose beautiful body was a fit temple for
a noble soul — but, alas! the casket was empty of the jewel, else the world's story had
been nobler. Madame Recamier, whose gracious heart and lovely spirit made all men
her knights, but who failed in that mental force which should have thrown her power
into the world's work and aided its upward and onward march. Madame de Main-
tenon, whose piety was deep and sincere, but cultivated to such an excess that the
god-like virtue of tolerance was forgotten, and the reign of Louis, the grand monarchy
sullied with one of the darkest political crimes in history, the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, whereby eight thousand faithful subjects were exiled or imprisoned.
George Eliot, the brightness of whose descriptive pen we may never see surpassed^
but whose intellectual faculties were allowed to exhaust and warp her nature so that
her days were largely those of an unhappy invalid, and discord rang within them.
" 'Tis strange that a harp of a thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long,"
sings the poet, and we shall only hear life's harmony aright when the bass and the
treble and the medium register shall sound aloud together in one triumphant sym-
phony. Lord Lytton writes the praises of " a various, vigorous, versatile mind," and
Goethe observes: "The object of life is culture, not what we can accomplish, but what
can be accomplished in us."
Let us divide our threefold being into a sexagon — from our physical nature we shall
have health and beauty, from our mental endowment knowledge and sentiment, from
our spiritual side morality and piety, and cultivate each unto the utmost, but each in
its due proportion. The peach that grows toward the sun's warm kisses becomes
first ripe and mellow and fragrant, but unless Phoebus travels on to touch its other side,
is soon o'er-ripe and blackened and decayed. And so with us, if we let not the genial
sun of culture shine upon us equally from all directions, we shall grow blackened with
the vice of narrowness and littleness and scrupulosity, and fail our perfect fruitage.
The world today is, oh, so largely, what we women make it. Let us strive ear-
nestly until all womanly vices shall cease to be.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 219
" Oh! lift your natures up;
Embrace high aims, work out your freedom,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed;
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and envy
And slander, die. Better not to be at all
Than not to be noble."
Woman cannot reign until she is worthy to be a queen. It is not by crying like
a fretful child for more, that we shall attain all things, but by bearing our duties and
our work so bravely, so wisely, that men shall gladly call us unto the high places to
aid, until we stand —
. *' Two in the council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life."
The meanest pool by the wayside can hold the stars in its bosom, and give back
the gleam of the sunlight, and receive the showers from heaven even as the mighty
ocean. To all of us it is not given to climb the mountain, and few may wear the
laurel, but who shall say what constitutes success, who deny she has achieved her
highest mission, who has been simply a good woman. Says Victor Hugo: "There is
in this world no function more important than that of charming. To shed joy, to
radiate happiness, to cast light upon dark days, to be the golden thread of our destiny,
the spirit of grace and harmony, is not this to render a service?"
It is so pleasant to dwell upon the ideal side of life, to lay far-reaching plans and
dream great deeds, but be you the most orthodox of Christians or the broadest of
ethical culturists, we shall yet agree that the truest and most searching test of char-
acter lies in " the trivial round, the common task," along life's wayside. The great
Creative Power takes as infinite patience and care in fashioning the facets of an
insect's eye, as in marking the course of a Niagara or building a Matterhorn. And
George Eliot preached to us a great gospel when she wrote:
"The growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts, and
that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to
the number who have lived faithfully hidden lives and lie in unvisited tombs."
It is more satisfying to efficiently perform our duty of the hour than to hope
that large opportunities may yet be ours. It is better to live today nobly than to muse
on a radiant tomorrow. You cannot dream yourself into a character, you must
hammer and forge one out.
It was of some fair woman who held herself worthy of being symmetrically devel-
oped unto a perfect whole that Longfellow said: " When she had passed it seemed
like the ceasing of exquisite music;" and of her, also, Mrs. Hemans wrote, it was a
life-long happiness
*' To have met the joy of thy speaking face.
To have felt the spell of thy breezy grace,
To have lingered before thee, and turned and borne
One vision away of the cloudless morn."
In the twilight time we see her — that fair woman yet to be. She stands serene
and beautiful, looking forward to meet the coming years, with calm eyes that tell of
inward grace and the peace of God upon her forehead. She is robed in the white gar-
ment of modesty. About her throat she wears a circle of rare gems, and these are
the pearls of truth. Her feet are shod with the winged sandals of a willing heart.
Her eyes beam love and courage into the soul of Him who is her other self. Her cool,
white palms are made to lay soft touches on some sweet baby brow, and to clasp the
hand of manhood when it falters, so that they two shall climb together up the white
heights of God.
220 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
She shall cherish both the meanest flower that blows and the highest stars in
heaven. She shall do all things possible with honor to herself and to her Maker.
She passes on life's highway, gathering here the rose of beauty, and there the stately
lily of a faithful soul. She stoops for the green mosses of love that grow all about
her feet, and will yield her ever fragrant favor. She lingers long in the grateful
shade of the tree of knowledge; of its wide-spreading branches she gathers the leaves
to weave a garland for her forehead. She plucks the olive branch to bear within her
hand. She treads the beaten path of life, and in her wake the way appears a little
greener where her feet have trod, until she stands at Heaven's gate and the angel
saith: "Come in. All hail, fair woman yet to be; love bless thee, joy crown thee,
God speed thy career."
Jf^m
THE LAND WE LOVE.
By MRS. MARY L. GADDESS.
Is there a man or woman in America who has not at times, with deep feelings
of emotion, exclaimed, " I love my native land?"
Its hills and dells, its mountains high,
Whose summits almost touch the sky,
Its broad, clear rivers on whose breast,
The commerce of a world might rest.
Its balmy air from orange grove,
Where in a dreamy trance we rove,
Its prairies wild and canons deep
Where mammoth trees as watchmen keep
-, For ages guard about the spot,.
« Once seen, never to be forgot.
% This land, this bright and happy land,
W With ocean girt from strand to strand,
/ We call our home, wheree'er we rove,
: We thankful say — " that land we love."
It has been asserted, next to the love of the
Father of us all, the deepest, purest, grandest emotion
the human heart is capable of experiencing is affec-
tion for their native land. In all centuries and climes
MRS. MARY L. GADDESS. ,,.. i ,,• ,• , it r t • J
this has been the mcentive to deeds or darmg, and
has taught men to defy chains, dungeons and torture; has taken the agony from mar-
tyrdoms, shed undying luster over many a battleground and placed a halo above
many a weary brow. Thousands of names are deeply graven upon history's pages.
Switzerland sings of her Tell till the mountains reverberate from their fastnesses the
remembered name; Scotland of a Wallace who bled, but left a memory which still lives
in the hearts of his countrymen. America has her soul-stirring names, as every land
beneath the sun; but there are myriads who will never be known till the great roll-call
on the other side the river, who have worn no laurel wreath, and lie in nameless graves,
who laid down their all for their country — and it is a land to be proud of.
With broad arms stretched from shore to shore,
The proud Pacific chafes her strand;
She hears the dark Atlantic roar.
And nurtured on her ample breast
How many a goodly prospect lies
In nature's wildest grandeur drest,
Enameled with her loveliest dies.
Mrs. Mary L. Gaddess is a native of Baltimore, Md. Her parents were, Oliver P. Merryman, of one of the oldest fam-
ilies in the state, and her mother a talented English lady. She waa educated at Baltimore Female College, and after leaving
school took special lessons from the best teachers, giving i>articalar attention to elocution. She has traveled extensively.
She married Virginias Gaddess, of Baltimore. Mrs. Gaddess is a contributor to numerous periodicals, and is a successful
lecturer on literary subjects. Her principal literary works are Cantatas, and " Woman of Yesterday and Today." Her lect-
ures number twenty-five. In religions faith she is a Methodist by birth and education, but for years a communicant in the
Protestant Episcopal Church, a member in good standing in both. She is a member of Grace M. E. Church, Baltimore, and
the Ascension Protestant Episcopal of the same city. Her postofiioe address is 821 North Arlington Avenne, Baltimore, Md.
221
222 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Rich prairies decked with flowers of gold,
Like sunlit oceans roll afar;
Broad lakes her azure heavens behold,
Reflecting clear each trembling star;
And mighty rivers, mountain born.
Go sweeping onward, dark and deep,
Through forest, where the bounding fawn
Beneath their sheltering branches leap.
And cradled mid her clustering hills.
Sweet vales in dreamlike beauty hide;
Dear land, we truly love thee well;
May happiness and peace abide;
Thank God for giving us this home.
This bounteous birthland of the free;
Surely it was His hand that led
The mariners across the sea.
In simplest language, then, I will tell the oft-told story of the finding, like a gem
upon the bosom of the water, America, the land we love.
With piercing eye and vision clear
He waited long in doubt and fear,
Laughed, jeered at, both by friends and foes,
Poor, burdened by a weight of woes,
Yet still declared "across the sea
He knew another land must be."
They pointed to the ocean dark,
Told of its perils to their bark;
And soon the caravels would be
Engulfed beneath " that great black sea."
Then called him " mad, a dreamer wild,"
From common sense and ways beguiled.
From land to land he journeyed long.
Repeating still the same old song,
Till years had flown, and sad of heart
He saw the hopes of youth depart.
Did he despair? Thank Heaven, no!
After his wanderings to and fro
He found a friend to hear his plea
And listen to his "theory."
While wise men doubted or delayed,
A woman's heart was not dismayed.
But pledged her jewels to supply
The means when others would deny.
Nothing of good was ever done.
But at great cost was victory won;
Long hours of toil and days of pain
Succeed and fail, again, again.
Tis only he who will not yield
To any foe who wins the field.
The conquerer too often wears
The martyr's chaplet unawares.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 223
'Twas even thus long years ago,
Columbus feared not friend nor foe,
But ever watched for "time and tide"
To bear him to the other side.
Fair India! was his destined goal —
The one great hope of Jiis^^^/ soul.
And when at last as ever, " Fate
Will bring all things to those who wait,"
His dream came true, he murmured not
O'er the past trials of his lot.
When skies were fair, one August day
From old Palos he sailed away.
With compass set, and ropes all taunt,
(An argosy, with bright hopes fraught).
Days passed, with rudtler broken, lost!
By angry seas and tempests tossed.
They anchored in Canaries Isle,
And rested there a little while.
Then off, across the treacherous main,
•* Fearing they'd not see home again,"
This weary-hearted little band
Set out to find the " Western land."
From sun to sun, for many days.
The adverse winds blew different ways,
The crew in muti?iy declared
"That no one his wild visions shared."
Alone he stood, with lifted eye!
And prayed for succor from on high!
(Still raged the storm), while o'er the wave
His cry went up, " Oh, hear and save!"
At length, when hope was almost dead.
And every buoyant dream had fled,
A light shone out across the sea —
The promised land it proved to be.
Four hundred years ago, 'tis true.
This happened I relate to you;
Yet down the cycles of the years,
That voyage made in hopes and fears,
'Mid dangerous seas, has proved to be
The greatest one in history.
Columbus year we celebrate!
What was it made the man so great?
Others had dreamed as he had done,
And yet no continent had won!
All who will read his life may see
The man's great faith and constancy!
Firm ever in his cause he stood
And waited, knowing it was good.
His way he trusted unto heaven.
And the reward at last was given.
224 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
To all the nations, near and far,
America, the guiding star,
Has proved to be a light indeed
To other lands in time of need.
Her grain has fed their starving poor,
And vessels carry from her shore
Abundance! for this fruitful land
Can scatter with a liberal hand.
God was the guide across the sea,
Or else a miracle 'twould be;
Those tiny caravels at last
Could anchor safe, all trials past.
Upon our shield we ever must
Inscribe our faith, "/;^ God we trust."
As Bethlehem's babe was found afar,
By shepherds following a star;
So by that light shed o'er the sea,
(A little light 'twas said to be),
A wondrous land was opened wide
To shed great light on every side!
Today she stands both strong and free,
God's people and God's country.
Many followed where Columbus had opened the way, among the number one who
published an account of his voyage, describing the lands visited; and this being the
first written account, and the name of Columbus not even mentioned, it was named
after him, Am-a-ree-go-ves poot-chee.
It would tax your patience to repeat the story we have heard so often of expedi-
tions sent out from the Old World one after the other. We can only faintly imagine
the trials and sufferings of the pioneers, hard work the lot of all, forests to be cleared,
buildings for shelter and defense erected, and ever at their sideatreacherous foe eager
to turn the plowshare into an implement of warfare. Poor, miserable cattle, inferior
implements, food of the poorest kind and frequently not sufficient of it, multitudes of
wants and no means to supply them. Yet the perseverance and intelligent industry
of the people, combined with their inventive genius, constantly smoothed the way by
devising means to produce greater results with diminution of manual labor. Thus
by degrees forests were converted into flourishing farms, villages into towns, towns
into cities, and as they grew their founders began to question the utility of connection
with the mother country which had proved a hard task mistress. Duties increased
until the burden grew intolerable, and in 1774 a congress of thirteen colonies con-
vened in Philadelphia, declared they would no longer remain under the control of
England, ahd established principles of liberty in the New World, and on July 4, 1776,
Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, wrote the Declaration of Independence, which stated:
" We hold it self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." Then giving an account of the various reasons which had led
up to that issue, closes with these words: "And for the support of this Declaration,
with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Men starting out with such a
platform could not fail; yet we know of the long years of strife that followed^ — wars
within and without, mistakes many, failures and imperfections not a few. In many a
campaign barefoot soldiers marked with blood the ground over which they marched.
When the Revolution broke out there were nearly three millions of people in the col-
onies, but the government of the states was held very loosely together, and it was not
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 225
until some years after the peace that a strong one was formed. And notwithstanding
the terrible record various wars have left on the pages of her history, from that time
it has been steadfast, solid progress in things material and immaterial, business, morals
and intellect, until today, one hundred and seventeen years after, she stands a power
among nations. Waves of sadness and billows of gladness have rolled alternately
over human hearts, while threatening storm clouds have lowered, but the bright bows
of promise and hope ever gilded the horizon, eloquent and prophetic of the magnifi-
cent future which has dawned already. Daniel Webster said with regard to it: " There
is no poetry like the poetry of events, and all the prophecies of this land lay behind
the fulfillment." We recall the parable of the grain of mustard seed, which is indeed
the least of all seed, but it has become a tree so great the birds from all lands rest
amid her sheltering branches, and her roots are deeply hidden in the century of
strong, true hearts that open the ground, planted and nourished the seed. Their
sons, honest, brave men, still safely stand with that same Declaration their bulwark
and stay.
Well may we be proud of America, " the land we love," stretching from the blue
Atlantic to the broad Pacific, from the Arctic to the Antarctic oceans. Snow-clad
mountains towering three thousand feet above sea level, mighty cataracts, giant
geysers, vast prairies, broad rivers flowing between fields heavy with golden grain.
And deep in the bowels of the hills
Is coal and mineral wealth untold.
New riches every year unfold
As nature opens wide her gate
That stood ajar so long, we wait
Expectant, thankful, glad to say
This is the land we love today.
Placid lakes that would bear on their bosoms the leviathans of the centuries, cities
whose magnificence vies with those across the ocean, and sixty-five millions of people
brave and true as ever God's sunshine smiled upon. On every sea her vessels float,
and in every land her people are found. She is at peace with all the world, and
plenty and prosperity and strength surround her.
To our great festival, this Columbian Jubilee, from all lands visitors have come to
rejoice with us. Welcome, welcome, welcome, one and all! Without doubt each
heart and voice will unite in the Nation's Hymn and say:
"Long may the land be bright
With freedom's holy light,
Protect her by thy might.
Great God, her king! "
How wonderful the discovery he had made Columbus never knew, for he believed
it to be a part of India. The gold he sought in large quantities he never found, yet
the land teems with mineral wealth. It has filled the coffers of many nations, and
when famine gaunt and grim stalked among less favored people we could throw open
immense granaries, and blessings of plenty and abundance bestow cheerfully and
gladly, for are we not all brothers? So lavish is Nature from the Western prairies
and Southern cotton fields, her Northern pines and Eastern granite hills, we can
gather the richest products and bid all to come and share our abundance, while her
starry flag floats proudly above them as an emblem of that country, able and willing
to protect the stranger within her gates. The pulse and pace of this land has been so
niarvelously quickened during the last century, time will not permit me to even men-
tion the thousands of noble ideas that have enriched the world and startled it into
wondering applause, while as a manufacturing people we have won first rank. All
forces seem to be at our bidding and the nations wait in awe, whispering what next?
Steam and electricity, says one, have compressed the earth till the elbows of
(15)
226 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
nations touch. We recognize with heartfelt joy the pleasant amenities of this
occasion. Looking around we fancy old-time fairy tales have come to be true. The
stories of Arabian knights no longer a myth, for nothing could be more wonderful
than this reality. In the distance we hear the beating pulsations of the heart of the
great city, which phcenix-like rose from its own ashes to become the eighth wonder
of the world. Only a year and a half ago this place about us was a wilderness. The
White City now standing before us, more beautiful than artist's dream or poet's fancy
could portray, rivaling in dazzling glory the tales we have read of Babylon of old,
wonderful in conception, no less magnificent in execution, it stands a completed
picture, worthy of the land and the century of progress it so nobly demonstrates.
In New York harbor stands the colossal statue of " Liberty Enlightening the
World," the largest ever erected in modern times; its total height is three hundred and
five feet eleven inches. It cost over a million francs, which were paid in France by
popular subscription and presented to the United States. Many of us have seen it
standing as guard over the city. Beyond that we need not devote time now to describe
it, wonderful and elegant in detaib although so large in size. A fitting emblem at the
gateway all must pass to enter this free and happy land, ours by inheritance, as they
would desire to make it theirs by adoption. The years have taught us many lessons,
and to one and all we would say: Leave behind you Old World superstitions and ideas
of anarchy and confusion. Liberty can never here mean license. Let all learn what
Columbus began to teach four hundred years ago — that indomitable perseverance and
courage, with faith, in the right, will at last bring success; and no better motto can we
give to each man, woman and child who visits America this Columbian year, than that
we bear on our nation's coin, "In God we trust."
Then nation and people and land shall be blessed,
Prosperity dwell with us ever a guest,
Each century add to the stars in her brow.
From thirteen they've grown up to forty-four now.
So bright is their luster that over the wave
They call us "the land of the true and the brave."
Long, long may the red, white and blue testify:
"America's honor was not born to die."
Proclaim far and near, from the lakes to the sea,
This national birthday, July Fourth, '93;
At peace with the world doth America stand.
To welcome the world as it comes to our land.
Then throw out your flags to the breeze, let it tell
The tale of this country we all love so well:
"The Star Spangled Banner, oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"
"Columbia the gem of the ocean has proved.
And favored of God seems the land we love."
COLUMBUS— OR " IT WAS MORNING."
By MRS. LILLIAN ROZELL MESSENGER.
(Copyright, 1893, by Lallian Rozell Messenger.)
Fame's voice sublime, a magic siren song
Sung to the youth about his sea-girt home.
The sea's wild grandeur early was first page.
Earth turned to him. To him the firmament
Was not blue space and blank, but handiwork
Of the Invisible his soul had learn'd
To love — beside his mother's earnest love —
Beside her knee, as lights burn'd low at eve,
And her sweet love made earth and heaven one.
When science taught him first, Columbus saw
Through nature's silence all — God's mighty truth
Reach'd to the clouds; and law and order His.
The Pleiades, Arcturus and Leo,
Orion bold, and all that starry chase
Would nightly woo his thought and wonder-flight;
When truth and wisdom, from the deep-toned years
Wearing the phantom veils of hope, lastly
O'er-arch'd his world with highest majesty,
And beauty inexpressible. In awe
He dwelt upon old ocean's shifting page,
'Tween Venice and his sea-kiss'd land, full oft
His father, mother, sail'd with gleaming prows
When galleys splendid borne on sunset waves
To this ocean queen, bride of War and Fame.
Throughout long years he oft intently thought
Of one lov'd scene which burned in holy fire
Upon his brain, a holy flame as 'twere,
That lighted Mem'ry's altar, tower and dome;
In depths of night, when on the solemn deep,
Alone, his mother bent above his couch
To watch his slumber light, in sweet concern
Of happy love, as storms march'd o'er the waves
With lightning spears, and dark and thunder cloth'd:
She, trembling in pathetic solitude
Lest some hid terror seize his little life.
Mrs. Lillian Rozell Messenger is a daaghter of Dr. F. O. Rozelle, and a native of Millersbnrg, Ky. She moved in
early life to Arkasas, moving later to Washington, D. C, where she still resides. She married North A. Messenger, an
editor of Tascambia, Ala., who died four years later. Mrs. Messenger's education was completed at Forest Hill Seminary,
near Memphis. It was here her poetry first attracted pablic attention. Her principal works are " Fragments from an Old
Inn," " The Vision of Gold." "Disappointment," "Importuning," "Halloween," "The Southern Cross," and "Colnmbns;
or, It Was Morning," first read on July 4, before the Woman's Building Congresses of the Columbian Exposition. Mrs.
Messenger is a dramatic reader, and has met with singular success in her own state and elsewhere. She delights in mosic
and painting as recreations. Her postoffice address is No. 25 Lafayette Street, Washington, D. C.
227
MRS. LILLIAN ROZELL MESSENGER.
228 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
In sea-hunting his father bore him oft
To distant waves, when galleys swiftly sped
With high emprise, and splendors from the East.
'Twas then the boy heard marvels of strange lands,
Saw stranger peoples and their curious wealth,
Heard Wisdom speak from Persia and the Ind
Of Eastern lore, and sages not a few.
Yet solitude, and isolation strange
Had borne the lad, first, love of truth, the same
That maketh man as gods, the love of sea,
Whose stormy waves his first playfellows were;
Deep love of nature, through whose veil he gazed
On God's eternal truth and secret laws.
The father had quick wrath, so earnest he
Lest youth should fail; he oftener thrust the boy
Unto the sea, and strange and cruel men,
To lonesome lands, and thence to Venice proud.
For thus he thought to harden this brave youth.
Whose nobler soul and larger mind surpass'd
By hundred years his puny world and age.
Visions for him had thrown a golden scale
Unto his gaze, wherein he saw his world
Weigh'd strong in light, and error sink in cloud.
Musing, he said: this world is but the deep,
And where, as in a cradle, truth, and love —
Man's guardian spirits — rock this little life.
Till muffled to sleep. Why should I pause.
When faith and soul and nature call me hence,
To turn that page which men have never seen.
What is my body? What is every life
But one fleet airship? He alone then takes
Some guidance — plants my pole star — stilleth waves,
And shows me once by His own light on them
That nether world — all worlds my vision sees;
Deep calleth unto deep, and I shall on!
Meanwhile Columbus' brain held surer thought
And visions vast, that ray'd the beamy wings
Of tireless faith with their undying light.
To Isabella's larger heart and mind
He would unfold his scheme: I'll pierce this realm
With my sword of truth, ay, England, and France,
And Italy, unto the utmost sphere!
The unknown deep hath won my youth, and well;
It bore my love, Felipa, in soft folds.
To mystic death, and now, God will, it shall
Give me that virgin world men disbelieve.
Yon deep allures me on, and she, our queen.
May light a path o'er undivided waves
To newer Eden lands, henceforth her own.
Such image looms before my waking soul,
Columbus, meek and brave, his sovereigns sought;
The king was kingliness, and Isabella
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 229
Most queenly fair, and stately shown; her hair
Of sunny waves just rippled o'er her brow
So sadly pale, yet tinged with faintest flush
Of proud delight, and dewy violet eyes,
Mute melodies, or homes of lofty thoughts.
The queen spake: "Gold nor wealth hath now our realm
To venture thee, most brave and noble one;
But these, my jewels, seeming yet to hold
The sunshine of my past, and years of joy,
Or brave and daring hist'ries of my race,
And memories too precious for one life —
These shall command the way; a power within
Nerveth my hands to lift that veil which hides
Yon stars that burn in Truth's fair sky, and o'er
Thy world unknown."
. Columbus scarcely heard,
For th' music of his hopes and her sweet voice
And blessing prayers and thrilling faiths that grew,
For it was morning now; and Error paled.
From evening lands, at morn, half hour ere rose
The sun o'er Spain, he loos'd the falcon birds
Of fate, of Heaven-born hope — his vessels three —
And sail'd and sail'd, to one vast far Unknown.
Three days the Lord and Prince of Righteousness
Entomb'd did close his eyes for sake of Death,
For sake of Man; three days may mean more time —
Fullness of Fate — than twice three thousand years.
Three vessels frail were yet to bear to men
Earth's other half of life, unclaim'd, unknown.
It was morning when they sail'd; and sail'd away
Three vessels brave from Spain, true land of love,
Of wild romance, and song, where Beauty dream'd
In Nature's arms, and beamed from woman's eye.
Alhambra's splendid towers paled from sight.
Like phantoms thro' a dream; the " Moor's Sigh "
(That mount o'er which he pass'd to alien worlds)
Rose distantly against the blue, with dreams
Of glory 'cross its brow, solemn and grave
As th' exil'd Moor's glance, when he in tears
Forever bade Alhambra's halls farewell.
So beat Columbus' heart with hope insistent.
Had silver clouds on those blue mountains clove
The heavens then, with blue-white ships a-sail
From hidden realms, an angel at each prow,
Calling through golden trumpets, " Hail the day!"
He had felt no surprise, but follow'd on.
Since man first left his Eden vales, his step
Hath wander'd to the West, his morning land.
The East but holds his life's embalmed past,
The West, the glory of his dream-ideal.
Soon trackless waves come tumbling out of space,
230 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Like oceans fresh from Chaos, on before
The vessels three; when raged the deep and all
Mad demons of the winds howl'd forth in glee,
Columbus sent his prayer across the storm
On wings of faith, and touch'd the realm of Peace —
Deep call'd to deep, alluring him still on.
Last, brilliant birds, and musical, in throngs
Flew near, fleet messengers of hope to him.
On waste of waters, over which had flown
No form or breath of spirit-life save his.
Since morning stars first sang in golden choir —
The Maker's voice called forth. Let there be light.
Sublime, he rose, to speak and cheer his crew;
With lofty mein he bared his brow to Night,
Brooding o'er boundless seas, and parted thus
From deeps abysmal by the trembling ships;
He fed their minds with hopes of richest Ind.
And Faith's true bravery, when Silence wrapt
Them and the world as in an endless tomb;
While pleasant winds from starry head-lands bathed
Their brows, and fled, the demons of despair.
Lo! suddenly their deap calm broke in joy,
And blissful shout of land. Now Night's thin veil
Just hid from gaze a new and virgin world.
While stars their golden shadows cast they watch'd,
As Wonder, like a rainbow, clove the dark.
Yet perfumed-laden winds bore them no tales
Of flower'd homes, and Beauty's summer land.
And it was morn, when rose their gorgeous world;
As though the sun, more brilliant than when robed
For common days, at midnight shone, and smote
Mankind in awe; so to their wondering gaze
The New World rose august in youth and bloom.
The epic grand Columbus gave to man,
• Look'd on the gladsome wave all beautiful,
Crown'd by Heaven's smile, serene in Heaven's calm;
Here, Death pass'd on, o'ercome by Beauty's gaze,
Nor touch'd this Eden, throned on purple waves.
October's golden haze, an autumn dream,
Stole o'er the virgin woods and dreamy world.
Columbus and his braves knelt on the sod;
They heard God's rosy, fragrant silence breathe;
They kiss'd the earth, and lifted souls in prayer.
To muse alone he left his joyful crew.
And went some paces deeper in the glow
Of fragrant woods. Approaching this deep joy,
He would all earthly sandals leave.
Hard by
A velvet plot of moss, that ne'er had thrill'd
To human touch — this took his weary form.
While thrilling thought, and lofty hopes yet breathed
Their music to his soul.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 231
Down tangled heights
The crystal waters fell o'er mossy cliffs,
From broken urns of sea nymphs who had lost
Their way and fled from sight. A hoary limb
Midway the lucid pool, and, tendril twined,
Let fairies cross to wayward paths in joy;
And od'rous breadths of land kiss'd tuneful lips
Of flowery waves. Arcadian vales were fed
By pearly streams and purple winds, and clouds
That held no gloomy thoughts of cold or storms.
Thro' spicy groves came lissome dusky forms.
Night-phantoms fleet, with wonder-sparkling eyes;
Dusky sons, whom beauty in shadow veil'd
And stealthy, to view the pale-faced men.
Borne on white pinions of the clouds, they thought.
In awe Columbus mused: "Alas for her,
My loved one lost! the cruel waves that claimed
Gives now me this for bride, my fair world-bride!
Ah, would that she, our queen, they two might smile
On me this hour, as doth th' morn and heav'n."
List'ning, he turned to note strange, lovely birds,
And heed his New World's song from scented groves
An' cooler depths of green, where sunbeams slept
Or held lost moon-rays of fair evenings gone.
The air was balmy soft, enticing life.
As though of roses made, or lover's sighs, low breath'd
In moonlight yester eve. Silent he gazed.
Like one of old on Patmos Isle,
Seeing hid realms not lawful earth could see.
"Now doth there pass before my prophet soul.
Some vision swift, prefigured as a dream.
Soft glowing on the rose-gray mists of sleep.
Of this New World's fair future! blest of peace,
Blest of all nations' praise — of Liberty,
Whose flag shall take the azure dome and stars;
Whose mighty mountains, streams and forests grand
Shall move to Freedom's hymn, and ope new gates
To larger life, to highest truth for men? "
Saw he the mighty ships? Heard he the roar
Of vasty cities, labor's thunders loud;
As Toil and Art wore garments radiant
In Time's fresh loom for this fair virgin world
That, like a star, should light the voyageur
From stormy Wrong to God's wide seas of Peace?
He dwelt on spirit truths that dome this life;
Of ancient lore, of inspiration new.
For he had delved in wisdom old, once hid
By seers Iberian, the Greek, and Egypt's wise,
Who called the stars and grouped the Zodiac,
And with the Hebrew learn'd the steps of God
In solitudes of space, afire with worlds.
What means that fable old of Orpheus,
Of Amphion sweet, if not to symbol forth,
This fair world shall to heavenly place be built
232 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
By harmonies of wisdom, and the pow'r
Of Justice — these two, flowing into Love,
Gives back our earth complete into His hands.
Long, long alone he wrestled, planned and dreamed,
Of what this giant young world held for man;
Saw with prophetic, deeper sense, more plain
Than he of Bethel fame, new angels come
And go along the secret steeps of God,
With banner'd thoughts, and hymns, he only read
And heard of his New World's fair destiny.
By joy and thought oppress'd beyond all speech,
Still from the eternal, hearing melodies
Shipward, he grandly moved and faced the sea.
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Mrs, Mary C. Bell,
Florida.
4. Mrs. Charles H. Olmstead.
Georgia.
7. Mrs. Richard J. Oglesby,
Illinois.
2. Miss E. Nellie Beck,
Florida.
5. Mrs. Anna £. M. Farnnm,
Idaho.
8. Mrs. Frances Welles Shepard,
Illinois.
10. Mrs. Virginia C. Meredith, 11. Mrs. Whiting 8. Clark,
Indiana, Iowa.
8. Mrs. Wm. H. Felton,
Georgia,
0. Mrs. Joseph C. Stranghan,
Idaho,
9. Miss Wilhelmine Reitz,
Indiana,
12. Miss Ora Elizabeth Miller,
Iowa,
HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS.
By MRS. LAURA S. WILKINSON.
When the woman's branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary was formed, and a
committee was appointed to take charge of Household Economics, I was asked to
act as chairman. I am here today to report what has
been done in our short history, and what are our
hopes and aspirations for the future. The National
4 Columbian Household Economic Association is a
^ direct outgrowth from one of the committees of the
World's Congress Auxiliary.
The objects of this association are, as the consti-
tution announces, "To awaken the public mind to the
importance of establishing a bureau of information,
where there can be an exchange of words and needs
between the employer and employed in ^v^xy depart-
ment of home and social life. Second, to promote
among its members a more scientific knowledge of
the economic value of the various foods and fuels, a
more intelligent understanding of correct plumbing
and drainage in our homes, as well as need for pure
water and good light in a sanitarily built house; also
to secure skilled labor in every department of woman's
work in our homes."
The work of the association was to be done
through seven committees. It was not our intention
to confine our work to Chicago, and for this reason
we adopted the name of "The Columbian Association of Housekeepers." Since, the
word " National " was added to it, and by the end of the first year, our secretary's
book showed that we had members all the way from San Francisco to Boston, and
Texas to Duluth.
The Columbian Association of Housekeepers has held meetings regularly since
its organization in 1891. No special program is prepared beforehand; but the secretary
announces on her postal what will be the most interesting feature of the meeting.
Essays have been read, plans discussed, in hope of solving the vexed question of
" domestic service." We had one small excitement, when at one of our meetings it
was announced that all women who belong to the Columbian Association of House-
keepers were to be boycotted by the hired girl. Exactly why, we never have been
able to understand. But, in point of fact, we could not find anyone who had refused
to work for a member of the association.
The one thing that has been most persistently discouraged in our meetings has
been that of relating of personal experiences with the family domestic. As some one
has most wittily said: " Wc have avoided those experience meetings where each one
• Mrs. Laara Starr Ware Wilkinson is a native of Deerfield,Ma88. She wa« born June 20, 1843. Her parent* were Edwin
Ware and Harriet 8. Ware. She was educated in Deerfield schools «uid Mrs. David Mach's school, Belmont, Mass. She has
traveled in England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and America. She married John Wilkinson, Esq., of Syracuse, N. Y.,
November 20, 1867. Her special work haa been in the interest of domestic economy. DuriuK the World's Fair she was chair-
man of the Congress of Household EVsonomics, and organized the National Columbian Household Economic Association,
which proposes to have a vice-president in each state, and a chairman of Household Economics in each county in each state.
In religious faith she is a Unitarian. Her postoffice address is No. 482 La .Salle Avenue, Chicago.
23;^
MRS. LAURA S. WILKINSON.
234 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
is eager to relate her own personal grievance, and never willing to listen to another's
tale of woe."
Our aim has been to consider the condition of the girl at service, her limitations,
her hours of labor, and constantly to ask ourselves if we, in her place, without a special
training, could do as well. Failing in our efforts to improve the intelligence offices,
we next turned our attention to what could be done toward establishing schools where
instruction could be given for housework, and to see what could be done to induce
girls to take a three months' course of training before she went out to service.
We found that there were no such schools. To establish one would demand
trained teachers, salaries, buildings, etc. And then, where could we find the girl to take
this preparatory course when every kitchen is open to her to learn at the employer's
expense?
We have brought the topic before the association, committees have been appointed;
but the fact is slowly but surely being impressed upon our minds that the fault lies
with the housekeeper. Recognizing this, we decided to have a course of lectures on
domestic service. These lectures were given by Prof. Lucy M. Salmon, of Vassar Col-
lege, who brought before us, in a most historical and scholarly way, the condition of
domestic service as it now is and has been since earliest time. This was a most valu-
able course of lectures for those who had made a sociological study of the question, but
few women and fewer housekeepers realize the importance of adjusting themselves to
the condition of the era they now live in.
Not succeeding in arousing enthusiasm for our school of household science, we
next turned our attention to what could be done in the way of establishing a house-
keepers' emergency bureau, which is, as its name indicates, to supply temporary help,
the employe returning to her home each day. A committee of ladies have charge of
this work, look up the references of those who apply for the work, and a book of regis-
tration for employer and employe is kept at the office.
On these books are found women wishing and willing to do all kinds of work;
sewers, menders, housekeepers, teachers, stenographers, caterers, nurses, scrubwomen
and daily governesses, etc.
The monthly reports for the housekeeper's Emergency Bureau constitute one of
the most interesting features of our regular meetings, and we have many testimonials
testifying to the ability of those who constitute a corps of workers for the Bureau, and
we have also had many complaints because we cannot find trained girls. But who will
give the time to the work? We need more helpers in our work.
Owing to a continual storm, the attendance was not large at anyone meeting; but
it was a most enthusiastic audience, and it was voted that another convention should
be held the same time and place the next year, it being the sense of the meeting that
the Conventions of Housekeepers should be a yearly occurrence.
Early in 1893 the chairman of the food supply committee began her market
reports. When these reports were read at our regular meetings, they proved so accept-
able that it was voted that the association print them in pamphlet form for distribu-
tion. These reports make a general survey of the condition of the markets, both East
and west, and contain many valuable hints in regard to purchasing food, as well the
most practicable suggestions all the latest improvements in prepared foods are
mentioned; and it is usually the case that these preparations have been tested by the
one who prepares the report, so that they go out with the recommendation of the
association.
The question of what is the advantage of becoming a member of the National
Columbian Household Economic Association, is constantly asked.
The first is, because it brings those women who are most interested in the real
study of economic problems in closer relation with each other.
We aim to put everything upon a scientific and hygienic basis, to understand what
is the true economy of time, material and strength, to find out the best ways of per-
forming our daily routine of housework, and to thoroughly understand what is good
housekeeping. It is not to be learned in any one course of lessons in cookery.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 235
While the cooking schools have played a most important feature in the revolu-
tionizing of the preparation of our daily food, still, they have not solved the prob-
lem. They have rather added to the complications. However, we wish to do full
justice to the work that these schools have done.
The difficulty in this department of women's work is that many of those women
who are the best housekeepers do not join with us and give us the benefit of their long
years of experience.
If one has found a better way of doing some part of housework, why not share
this knowledge with those who are wasting their strength and time by going on in the
old way? It is the little things that count in the wear and tear of housework, and the
trouble is, so many have not the time to give to the investigation of some shorter and
easier way. It is the reporting of these small items which add to the usefulness of an
association like ours.
We do not endeavor to suddenly change the existing order of things in our
kitchens. The work of the association is not in any sense revolutionary. We do not
establish, or try to establish any set rules as to how this work should be done; but,
what we do hope to bring about is a more intelligent understanding of the existing
condition. First, we must fully understand the case before we can suggest any
changes, or make any efforts to remove the cause of dissatisfaction. Each woman in
her home, not comparing her method with that of another, has little or no chance of
getting out of the dull routine. That there is this routine we think no one will ques-
tion.
Spasmodically, in our newspapers and in our magazines comes up this outcry of
what can be done to obtain a better class of domestic service in our homes. This
wave of inquiry goes over the country periodically; but dies down with little or no sat-
isfactory answer.
The justice of the remarks, the correctness of the criticisms made upon the queer
way women conduct their household affairs is justly merited. Occasionally, remedies
are suggested; but, very little advance is made, and the interest dies down at the end
of the year to be taken up by another set of writers before the next ten months have
run their course.
It is the hope of this association that the next ten years will bring about quietly
and steadily a better state of affairs. For this reason we have adopted the constitu-
tion and by-laws. We have carefully considered every line in this long constitution
and by-laws, and we feel convinced that no one can question the importance of the
objects for which we are organized.
This is said to be an era of women's clubs. But we find it would be easier to
organize art clubs. Browning clubs, classes in the study of mediaeval art, or even the
study of Sanscrit, than to start housekeeper's clubs in our various towns and villages.
The explanation for this state of affairs is, women are willing to let housekeeping
drift along in the old way, not recognizing that housekeeping is one of the fine arts,
and can only be acquired by study and patient work.
In summing up the year's work last October, one thing which we had pledged
ourselves to take hold of, was to establish a school for household science. We had
made a study of the plans outlined in the Pratt Institute, of Brooklyn, N. Y. We
found this the best of any we had heard of, but with our limited means could do
nothing to establish such a school; yet nothing short of that would be satisfactory
to us.
In the meanwhile, Armour Institute was started on Thirty-third street, with Dr.
Gunsaulus as president, and we soon learned that Armour Institute was to be modeled
after Pratt Institute.
Dr. Gunsaulus has recognized the importance of a school of household science,
and added that to their curriculum, and in their institute will be given the opportu-
nity for our young girls to become fully instructed in scientific housekeeping. The
Columbian Association of Housekeepers is recognized on their advisory council.
236 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
We know what has been taught in the domestic department of Pratt Institute, and
will be in Chicago in the Armour Institute.
Those of us who remember all the opposition when training schools for nurses
were started take heart, and ask why not do for domestic service what has been done
for the sick?
We must stand by our own convictions, and ask women to come forward and
furnish the money for the dormitories, where the girls can live while receiving
instruction.
When we recognize the fact that the girls in domestic service need the same
thoughtful consideration as the girls in shops and offices, then shall be found college
settlements springing up to help the servant girls, by establishing clubs and study
classes.
It will not break up our homes to have our cooks and our maids come at regular
hours to do their work and depart. But it will occasion a more systematic arrange-
ment of all housework, and will ultimately end in establishing a system of co-operation
differing from those plans of co-operation which have been tried and found wanting;
because, in this new era of co-operation, skilled labor will be demanded in each depart-
ment, and the work will be done by those who really like the work. Each department
will be filled by the workers choosing the work.
Women, as a rule, do not object to housework, but to its many complications;
and to be mistress of one occupation demands a long training, while in every home
the woman at the head must know how to do fifty things equally well. In point of
fact, she does not, and becomes discouraged. She cannot do the things she likes to
do, and has to waste her time and strength in doing those things for which she has no
aptitude.
It is my conviction that two -thirds of the trouble in having housework done is
because the majority will not make a study of the dainty ways of doing the work.
There is always a great enthusiasm to receive lessons in cooking; but few or any are
willing to learn to wash the dishes and cooking utensils in the most skillful and
artistic way.
Artistic way of washing dishes I know will cause a smile; but still, it can be done,
and if the methods are carried out it is not drudgery, but a delightful occupation.
The simple rules embodied in the kitchen garden manuals, if put in practice in our
kitchens, would establish a new order of things, and housework would be done with the
least possible friction.
When business methods shall have been established in the kitchen as in the shop,
none will be selected for any line of labor save those educated in that line.
A bookkeeper in accepting a situation in a store, takes no thought of the duties of
a porter, and as little should a person employed as cook those of a chambermaid.
LOOKING BACKWARDS.
By MISS KIRSTINE FREDERICSEN.
Woman's demand for her rights is generally considered as a revolutionary move-
ment. I, for my part, do not object to revolutionary movements; I believe that the
world cannot do without them. But truth must have
her say; and, to my mind, the Woman's Rights' move-
ment may as correctly be called conservative, for, in
a certain sense, it means going back to a more simple
arrangement of the relation between the sexes, which
have been artificially separated by a differentiation,
carried too far. This is the lesson I read on the
pages of history, and which I would like to impress
on the mind of my kind audience.
The subject of which I will treat to this end, is
the influence on the position of woman of the general
evolution of mankind, especially of the development
of industry. I remember, when quite a child, I saw a
picture in some cheap almanac, which struck my eye
and set me thinking on the strange fate of woman.
Two pictures of family life were there: First, an
Indian chief adorned with beads and feathers, march-
ing proudly onward, followed by his wife, who
carried heavy burdens — the children, the tent that
sheltered the family, and a great many other articles
belonging to the household. The other picture was
meant to show modern family life. Here it was the
wife who marched in front, and who wore the beads and the feathers, while the hus-
band worked hard, wheeling the babies and carrying the dinner-basket for the family
picnic.
To my childish mind the last situation was as little becoming to woman as the
first, and since then I have often had occasion to reflect on the two phases of woman's
life depicted on that rough sketch; for, although caricatures, these pictures showed
one side of the change which historic evolution has brought to woman.
In the barbaric age, man did not think it fit for him to do anything but hunting
and fighting, and woman had to do outside as well as inside work, to dig the ground, to
build the houses, to look after the cattle; in fact, all those things are done still by
women, not only among Indians and Greenlanders, but, to a certain extent, also by
women belonging to civilized peoples, as, for instance, by some of the inhabitants of
the smaller islands in my fatherland, Denmark, where the men are occupied, not, to
be sure, by hunting and by war, but by ploughing the sea and fighting the storm.
Now these women are by no means subjugated. On the contrary, they are very
independent, really much more so than their sisters in the city. As far as I under-
stand the story told by a lady — I believe, Miss Alice Fletcher, in Washington, at the
Miss Kirstine Elsebeth Fredericsen is a native of Denmark, Earope. She was born Febraary 6, 1845. Her parents
were Johan Ditlev Fredericsen and Maria Hansen Fredericsen. She was educated at home under the care of a tutor till
her sixteenth year, when she began studies in Copenhagan. She has traveled in England and America. Her principal
literary works are editorial work, " Woman's Society," " Object Lessons," " Book for Teachers," " Mental Life of Childhood,"
and an " E?>say on Education," for which she was awarded a gold medal by the University of Coi>enhagan. Her i>oetoffioe
address is Kastanievy 4, Copenhagan, Denmark.
237
MISS KIRSTINE ELSEBETH FREDERICSEN.
238 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
first International Woman's Congress — this was exactly the impression she brought
back from an inquiry into the life of the Indian women of this country.
If you take work out of the hands of woman, it may be a relief to her, but, at the
same time, it means taking influence away from her. The Pilgrim Fathers of New
England, who would not let the women cut their hair short, because they would keep
them modest and womanly; who chased Anna Hutchinson out into the wilderness
because she spoke out frankly opinions of her own; who forbade unmarried women to
live in a house of their own — those harsh Puritans were obliged to pass exceptional
laws of freedom for the women who did the spinning and the weaving, because they
could not do without their help. It is told in the Saga of one old Danish king,
Erode, that he once got into great trouble; he had offended his daughter so that she
left him with all her damsels, and neither he nor his men could have their clothes
mended till he had softened her heart. What makes woman independent and
influential is real usefulness.
But mankind does not stand still; evolution made the men lay down the sword
and take up the spade and the hatchet, and later even more refined instruments of
work. Woman by this change was thrown back upon her household. She had the
first opportunity to make a home for herself and her family. She did it; but, while
she had her hands full of work in the house, she still kept an eye on what was going
on outside. Only little by little was she outdone by the men. In the middle age the
women of Germany fought bravely for their right to artisanship, but had to give it
up. Laws were passed forbidding more than a limited number of women to work
together with one man; laws against a widow taking up her husband's work on the
same conditions as he had it; finally it was denied a woman to take out a license as
artisan of any kind.
In Denmark and Sweden the noble born ladies not only very often managed their
estates, but to a large extent busied themselves with the establishment of new indus-
tries — cloth manufacturing and even shipbuilding, much of which was considered
patriotic work. No law was passed against this kind of woman's work, but custom,
strong as the law, little by little, compelled the ladies to take care of their own clothes
instead of other people's, and to manage their kitchens instead of their farms, forests
and lakes.
The next historic transition was made when machinery took the place of hand
work. To nobody has the wonderful inventions of modern times brought greater
change than to woman. She never need be the household drudge, the slave of the
spinning wheel — the spinning Jenny has relieved her of that — and even as the spin-
ning, the weaving, the baking, the sewing, and so much more has been monopolized
by machinery, so, very likely, will the washing and the cooking. Of course this has
had some good effect on the life of woman, especially on her education P'ormerly
only the hand and not the brain of the girl was trained. In Poland down to this day
the girls in the public schools are taught nothing but sewing and knitting. Only
thirty years ago some highly honored members of the Danish parliament most ear-
nestly maintained that a woman was not able to teach, even to girls, the art of writing,
nor the principles of true religion. Going back to the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury, it was forbidden by law for Danish women to teach boys more than four years old.
All this is changed now. Everybody acknowledges the necessity for unmarried women
to go outside the home to earn their living, and consequently the necessity of their
training for their work. This is largely the effect of industrial development. But
still I hold that modern evolution in some degree will tend to degrade woman if she does
not look out sharp. A striking example from the very last times illustrates this:
Not more than twenty years ago the head industry of Denmark — butter making —
was under the direct supervision of woman; she had the honor, if not always the profit
of it. It is not so since machinery has come in, since it is no more the farmer who
makes the butter, but the butter factory that buys the milk and makes it profitable.
To be sure, woman works in the factory, but she only does the lower work, the super-
vision has gone out of her hands; if she wants it she will have to fight for it.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 239
This is only a single example, for civilization has a general tendency to subvert
woman either into the handmaid of labor or into the queen of the drawing-room.
Only a few days ago I found in an American paper that civilization was claimed for a
new place — Yellowstone Park, I think it was — on the ground that the ladies there
changed their dresses three or four times a day. Is not this a false civilization? Has
not Henrik Ibsen been applauded by the public, as well as by the critics, when he
showed us in Hedda Gabler that the last kind of woman is no more likely to find true
happiness than the first? The gifted and accomplished Hcdda Gabler ends in suicide,
because she cannot bear to live without influence. Take then a simple-minded woman,
like the one old Pestalozzi paints, "Gertrud, who teaches her children." In her humble
way, just by teaching her children, she succeeds in reforming not only her own house-
hold, but a whole village. And does not history, as well as poetry, teach us that the
pioneers of new womanhood are the women who work and gain their influence through
personal exertion? In the long run it is neither birth nor money, nor what can be
bought for money, but personality which conquers the world. And, as in private life,
so in public. Woman, when she demands her rights, is only taking back what belongs
to her. Who cared for the sick, the poor, the children in olden times, if not the women?
Only when all these cares were put under public supervision was woman shutout from
them, and now has to fight her way back to the duties which her mother heart and
her womanly feeling cannot let alone. Even political rights, for the first time in civil-
ized life, have been taken out of her hands by modern constitutions. In 1661, when
the last Danish parliament, according to the old constitution, was held, votes were
passed for women owning property. Since then thousands and thousands of men,
who had no rights formerly, have come in as voters, but no woman's vote is now laid
upon the scale in the old countries. As the New England women taught the Puritans
that they could not do without free and equal women, so is the Western woman of
America of our day teaching the world that womanhood must not be shut out from
public life if we do not want it to be crippled, one-sided and poor. It is for the woman
of civilization — nay, any woman, wherever she lives, if she knows how to reign — to
make her influence felt for good, as the society lady does, and at the same time to
work, to make herself real useful, as the factory girl does — it is she who is the pioneer
of modern womanhood.
HISTORIC WOMEN OF EGYPT.
By MRS. CAROLINE G. REED.
Eve, the beautiful mother of our race, with every function, physical and mental, in
perfect order to transmit health and immortality to her posterity, must have trodden
in its pristine verdure the soil of the wonderful land
of Egypt.
Three hundred and thirty-four years after Menes,
the first king of Egypt, the succession of women to
the throne of Egypt was made valid, and nearly a
thousand years later Nitocris, " the beautiful woman
with rosy cheeks," while floating in her barge from
Philae to Memphis, beheld with pride the glory and
pomp of her own people. Three hundred years after
the reign of Nitocris history discloses a woman who
should become the mother of nations, Sarai, the beau-
tiful wife of the rich Chaldean Satrap Abram, jour-
neying from the plains of Chaldea by way of Haran
and Damascus toward Egypt, the seat of learning
then at the zenith of its glory. So beautiful was Sarai
that the princes and courtiers of Egypt reported her
charms to their sovereign, who brought her to his
court. In the retinue of Sarai at her departure, as one
of her bondswomen, presented to her by Pharaoh,
was Hagar, a magnificent Egyptian woman, who like
MP« r-Apr„,»i.7 .^AiTiTi. uKxrr, ^^^ mlstrcss was to become the mother of mighty
MRS. CAROLINE GALLUP REED. . autit !• r i i-
nations. All of the Israelites from that day to this
have looked to Sarai as their mother, and all of the Arab races and the Bedouins of the
desert and the Ishmaelites of the East rejoice in being called the sons of Hagar.
A century later the famous Queen Hatasu, as she gazed from her terraced palace,
and lifting her eyes northward, could see, glittering like constellations, the points of
the obelisks which she had set there in honor of her father. Two-and-a-half centuries
after Hatasu, in the grandest era of Egypt's glory, we see descending from the porch
of the palace of the great Rameses a princess of the blood royal with her train of maid-
ens to bathe in the river of Egypt. There, amid the flags on the banks, she beheld a
Hebrew child, a weeping infant boy, hidden by his sister Miriam to escape the edict
of the monarch who had commanded every Hebrew male child to be destroyed. The
heart of the royal lady was touched with compassion. She sent Miriam for a Hebrew
nurse, and his mother pressed her child to her breast again. Adopted by the Prin-
cess, taught by his mother in the knowledge and faith of his own people, Moses
became the deliverer and lawgiver of his people. It was Miriam, the prophetess, the
sister who had watched over him amid the rushes of the Nile, who stood by hi.m on
Mrs. Caroline Gallap Reed was born in Albany County, New York, Augusts, 1821. Herparents were the Hon. Albert
Gallup and Eunice Smith Gallup, both descended from the founders of Connecticut. She was educated at the School of St.
Peter's Church, Albany, N. Y., and at the school of the Misses Carter, Albany. After four years at the Albany Female Academy,
graduated in 1839, and has traveled several times in Europe and in the East, spending the winter of 1891 and 1892 in Egypt. She
married in 1851 the Rev. Sylvanns Reed, a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Her special work has been in the
interest of the Episcopal Church, the care of her family and of the Reed School, New York City, which was founded in 1864,
and has graduated many of the most accomplished women in this country. She has written many essays on various topics.
Her profession has been for thirty years that of a teacher and head of a school. In religious faith she is a member of the
Anglican branch of the Catholic Church. Her postoffice address is East Street, New York City, N. Y.
240
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. . 241
the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and with all the women of Israel came out with
timbrels and dancing to take up the great autiphon to the Song of Moses and the hosts
of Israel.
Then came the Greeks to Egypt with their graceful women and modern customs,
and later on, Cambyses the Persian, with his beautiful wife, true heir to the throne of
Egypt, and for two hundred years the Persians had dominion, until Alexander con-
quered Darius at Issus. The Ptolemies brought their learning and gayety to Egypt,
The Cleopatras became co-regents with the Greek kings of Egypt for half a century.
It was by the seductive charms of Cleopatra VII., when Caesar and Antony in turn
were her captives, that Egypt became a Roman province.
About this time there arrived in Egypt a family party journeying from Bethlehem.
They were Joseph, a just man, the young and gentle Mother Mary, and her perfect
child Jesus. They had fled to the land of Egypt to preserve the life of the Divine
Child, and that Child sanctified the land by the first steps He ever trod.
Roman matrons, pagan and Christian, dwelt in Egypt for two centuries. The
Empress Helena built religious houses throughout Egypt near to the ancient temple
of Osiris, Horus and Pan, lifting the cross of Christ amid the emblems of heathenism.
The privacy and seclusion of the Moslem women have not prevented them from
influence and intrigue in the politics of the past twelve centuries. In our days, in the
triumphal pageant of the Suez Canal, the Empress Eugenie vied with Cleopatra in
pomp, and luxury, and the cicerones descant upon the places visited by her with as
much pride as upon those associated with Cleopatra.
And what shall we say of the gentle and beautiful wife of Tewfik — his only wife?
Only one who has seen her in her great palace surrounded by her maidens can fully
appreciate the life of the highest woman in Egypt today Of high breeding, and with
the various accomplishments of European women of her rank, familiar with modern
literature, of most affable manners and sprightly conversation, she might pass for a
Parisian of the highest social talent. Her description of the devices to which she
resorted to see the performers at the opera over the screens, without showing her face,
was most amusing as well as historic, as an incident of Oriental customs. The Harem
of the opera is as impenetrable as that of the palace or the home, As the screens
were high, they could only see by standing and holding their cushions above their
faces and peeping between the cushions and the screens. She talked with maternal
pride of her sons, then at school in France, and exhibited their photographs. P"ar
from envying the European princesses and American ladies, she said: "Oh I could
know well but twenty or thirty men at most, and I am content with the affection and
society of one. " There must indeed be a power in custom and education which could
make such a woman happy and contented to have a fancy ball in the superb salons of
her own royal palace, with music and flowers and feasting, filled with the beauty and
chivalry of all nations, and, though herself dressed for the ball in the costume of Mary,
Queen of Scots, to view the scene through a screen embroidered with palms and
flowers. She saw her husband and his nobles talking and dancing with English, French
and American ladies, but none of the ladies could enter the sacred precincts of her
presence. The only man allowed to enter the house of a modern Egyptian woman is
the physician, and then, whatever the occasion of his visit, the eunuch is always
present.
In a visit to the Khedive with Lady Greenfel, whose husband, Sir P"rancis, is at
the head of the P^gyptian army, a line of Egyptian women stood in the antechamber
to speak to her as she passed. Each had a petition for place or promotion in the
army for husband, brother or son. Not to the wife of Tewfik within her own palace,
but to the wife of the English commander were the appeals of the Egyptian women
made.
The prominent and presiding women of a few years ago were Lady Baring, now
Lady Cromer; Lady Greenfel, the young, beautiful but unconventional wife of Gen.
Forrester Walker, and Lady Charles Beresford. The Civil Service, the Army of
(16)
242 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Occupation, the Egyptian army and navy were there to guard the interests of Egypt.
Young Englishmen of noble families dance and flirt with English girls at private balls
and clubs. Social rivalries and social mistakes in a system not yet crystallized con-
ventionally make as much gossip as when Caesar and Antony and the Romans
entered upon the social platform before the Ptolemies had departed.
While I was in Egypt a censor came from England to review the armies and to
define some lines of military and social etiquette, which caused unreserved comment.
But the highest power had spoken, and though a Briton may scold yet he obeys.
When the Duke of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief of the English armies, repri-
manded a young officer who forgot to order his company to salute, saying, "You
spend time in dancing which should be spent in studying your tactics," all the army
approved. When he said to the pretty wife of the general commander of the Army
of Occupation, who drove upon the parade ground with a young girl in a pony cart,
" Madam, you are the wife of the highest military officer in Egypt. You represent the
women of England, and you should sustain the dignity of the situation. In this
pageant on this day only Lady Baring should precede you. Your equipage, with all
the pomp you could command, with your runners and your mounted postilions,
should have been next to hers, and preceded Lady Greenfel and all others. You must
acquaint yourself with the rules, responsibilities and duties public and social of your
position; and, Madam, if you flirt, which I suppose you must, let it be with your hus-
band's equal, a major or a general — let it not be with your husband's aid-de-camp.'"
I did not hear it, but authority and all Cairo affirm that her ingenious reply was, " I
do not know what your grace can mean!"
At the time of my visit there were sojourning in Egypt very many American
ladies, some who had filled at home the highest position which society and the gov-
ernment can give. One had entered the White House at Washington a young girl,
and taken position, not as wife or daughter, but niece of the President of the United
States. No authority ever gave a reprimand to her, no censor ever found a flaw in
her administration.
Egypt is now trodden by women, and one who has just departed this life. Miss
Amelia B. Edwards, has done more to discover and reveal to others the interesting
story of this land than any other woman who ever lived.
HENRIK IBSEN AND BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON.
By MRS. NICOLINE BECH-MEYER.
It is said about great men that they create their own age or a coming age. In
one sense of the word this is not true. Man cannot create a leaf on the tree, much
less a coming age. It is the eternal spirit of life,
existing from times unknown, that spirit which con-
stitutes the light of our eye and the strength of our
hand, which is leading humankind along inexplicable
roads toward one and the same aim — fulfillment of all
promises, perfection of all possibilities. The spirit of
humankind, being at the same time contents and form,
must work through outward forms; undividable as it
is, the spirit of all mankind works at the same time,
through the single individual. There are times for
rest and for consummation of what was given; and
there are times where burning tides of spirit sweep
across the world, where it makes way for itself and
bursts forth through man and woman.
Thus our great men and women are created by
the accumulated forces of past and present genera-
tions. Hence we in great poets, philosophers, musi-
cians and artists find the standard progress of their
age. " He was ahead of his time," some say. Not so.
But the hidden forces of the time were to such a
degree personified in one individual that it seemed to
those hitherto blind as a revelation. Great minds
have ears which hear the voices of by-gone ages and catch the unspoken prophecies
of times to come; they have eyes which look through the covers of their own time
and through the curtain of the future. Time and eternity is through them brought
together in unity. There are times where the pressure of the spirit is so powerful that
no single individual could give vent to it; then we see two or more kindred spirits
raise side by side, revealing the same facts, though each in his own way. So in the
Roman nations in the days of the renaissance, and the same again in Germany, when
Goethe and Schiller represented the spirit of their time.
The Norsemen, those contributors to the common treasury of mankind, unequaled
among occidental nations, had for centuries appeared to be asleep. It seemed as if
the creating spirit of mankind had left the icebergs and taken its abode in warmer
climates.
Those northern people who, in "the old and the young Edda," gave to the world
Nicoline Bech was bom on the heaths of Jutland, where her father was a teacher. She was educated in her home by
studying the Bible, the old Gothic sagas and the folk-lore of the Northern nations. Later she went to Copenhagen and regis,
tered in Natalie Zahle's college for public teachers. She took a diploma with the higheHt degree. She there took up her pen
as writer to the best Scandinavian illustrated weekly, " Nutiden." She became engaged to Axel Meyer, of Copenhagen. The
young man went to Kansas, and about a year after she followed him. They were married in Stockton, Rooks County, Kan-
sas. In the seventh year of her married life some of the leaders of the reform party in Denmark wanted Mr». Bech-Meyer to
come home and lecture about the United States. She went with her children, her husband moving to Chicago. For half a
year she remained in Denmark, lecturing. Her books, "Sketches from Kansas" and "Divided Opinions," s novel, were
published in Copenhagen. Toward the fall of 1891 she with her children set sail for Chicago again, where she engaged in
writing for several jwipers: " The Parthenon," "The Union Signal," "Goodform" and " The Sculptor News." In 1893 her
native country entrusted her with the honor of representing Denmark at the Woman's Congress and at the Peace Congress.
Her postofiSce address is Chicago.
243
MRS. NICOLINE BECH-MEYER.
244 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
what the Bible and Homer was to the southerners, were through climatic and geo-
graphical conditions so excluded from the rest of the world that it seemed as if all
they could do was to preserve the treasures from the childhood of the nation. Den-
mark, being the country closest connected with the continent, had its great minds of
the eighteenth and nineteenth century, none of whom, however, being wide enough to
become universal, except Hans Christian Andersen.
Norway, during its " four hundred years of sleep," seemed to have lost its power
of production; but those who looked with eyes undimmed by the cover of time would
have seen a work going on deep in the life of the nation. The folk-lore bursting
with tales about brownies, hobgoblins, spirits of icebergs, waters and mountains, the
sagas of their warriors and kings, were there, though unknown to the world. When-
ever the eternal spirit was revealed to man through man, it has been in the garb of
the nation in which it appeared. In the childhood of the race the outward forms
attracted the eyes more than the contents. Thus the early literature became object-
ive more than subjective. It was descriptive and picturesque, as in Homer. With
the growth of the nations the subjective element appeared, until it, as in the German
school of philosophers and poets, threatened to run into abstraction.
The present time brings the dawning idea of universal unity, of the oneness of
soul and body, of man and woman, of nation and nation; therefore, the great minds
of our age must represent the objective and subjective element as inseparably one.
The ancient times, with their intense love of life and beauty in outward forms,
must-be united with the search for eternal principles revealed in those forms. And
when it comes to that, where could we expect to find the intense desire for individu-
ality — that is, the one as a world, the world in one — more than in the nation which,
during centuries, had the echoes from the Edda's sounding in its ears.
When at last the spirit burst forth, astonishing the world, locating itself in old
Norway, there were such uncontrolled forces to gather, such walls to be broken, such
floods of light to be dealt out in all directions, that one individual would be insufficient
as medium. And the nation saw Henrik Ibsen and Bjornstjerne Bjornson arise side
by side. Through their work is sounding the words from the Edda:
See, it is rising,
The sunken land;
Green as a springtime,
It grows from the ocean.
* * * *
Harvest shall come
From fields unsown.
Weak and strong together inhabit
Abode eternal.
Do you understand this?
* * * *
As children we only saw half of a table; only a corner of a room at a time was
brought to the consciousness of our mind. Growing up, we slowly commenced unit-
ing fragments, and with surprise we saw a whole grow out of them. Thus with the
evolution of the human race. At a, time only body was acknowledged; at a time only
soul; humankind has been divided into races, into nations, into men and women and
children. The leaders of the spiritual life of this generation would, according to the
laws of evolution, have to represent the unity of one and the unity of all. Therefore,
it is said about the newest literature, that its peculiar feature is its striving to solve
individual and social problems, while the greatest minds of the German school mainly
were dealing with philosophical problems. Ibsen's mission might be defined as the
seeking to find " God in one; " Bjornson's as the seeking to find " God in all." Thus
the two are completing each other. Ibsen's book, " Brand," was the first work to
carry his name all over the brother countries.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 245
Brand is a preacher who, in his search for truth above all things, leaves the
orthodox church, refuses a sure income, sees his child die and his wife suffer through
all the hardships to which they are exposed in his self-chosen working place. "Noth-
ing or all " is his motto.
If you wish the name of soul.
You must be an entire whole.
« 4K « «
Not in fractions, not in halves;
Be a whole, or thou art doomed.
* * * #
^ It is not martyrdom to perish
In suffering on a cross of wood;
But are you willing thus to die?
Willing in suffering of flesh,
Willing in agony of mind.
Willing to conquer in the strife?
Your will shall be your crown of life.
He came seeking individuality in a society where public opinion was the opinion
of each single individual, where everybody acted as the rest acted; hence there at times
was almost bitterness in his view of society. In the poem, " The Miner," he says:
Down below, down below.
That is where I want to go;
There is peace from chaos sleeping.
Break my way, thou heavy hammer,
To the treasures safe in keeping.
Hammer blow on hammer blow,
Till the hours of life are waning;
Here no morning star is shining;
Here the sun of hope is hidden.
« * « «
And in the song, " On the Heights:"
Now I am stalwart;
I follow the call
Which tells me the heights to explore.
Here on the mountains is freedom and God;
Down below they are groping in darkness.
* * * * *
Sorrow and joy are really expressions of the same kind of feeling; they are both
born of the longing for life in its fullness. They are lying close together, the element of
sorrow being an intense desire to embrace joy and become one with it. Goethe has
felt this when he said:
•' Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sasz,
Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen asz,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte!"
(He who never through the live-long nights)
(Sat weeping on his bedside,)
(He who never ate his bread with tears,)
(He does not know ye, ye heavenly powers!)
Thus he who has the clearest conception of the ideal set before us; he who with
a burning will wants to see this ideal established among us— he will feel with the deep-
246 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
est sorrow how far from perfection both he and the rest of humankind still is standing;
with sorrow; and with bitterness if he realizes that society at a given time is deaf to
his expostulations. But never was Ibsen despairing; never did he in his war against
privileged fractions and halves reach the point where he lost his faith in life and truth
as the triumphing powers at last. He who sees the ideal in its beauty, but despairs
of its ever being realized among mankind, will lay down his weapons and prefer death
to a life without meaning.
From the time when Henrik Ibsen in " Brand" showed colors, he never has ceased
to declare the same over and over again: the necessity of each individual being an
entire whole, if we ever want a society which represents an entire whole.
He is solemnly earnest in his way of working, and his force is so great that he is
always above his subject. Whenever bis muse happens to carry him into sunnier regions
it moves us strangely; a smile on a very earnest face has a beauty of its own never to
be resisted. The poem, " Thanks," shows how far he can reach in peaceful, heart-felt
lyric:
THANKS.
Her sorrow was each trouble
Which met me on my way;
Her happiness the spirits
Which came to me to stay.
Her home must be located
On liberty's main.
Where the verses of the poet
Their force and freedom gain.
The character and features
That silently step in
To take their seats around me,
Are her family and kin.
Her aim it is to lighten
All darkness in a glow,
To be my strength in stillness
That the world should never know.
But just because she always
Not even thanks awaits,
I sing her now and print her
A song of thanks and praise.
As the storm purifying the air, and the sun afterward calling forth life, thus do
the two Norwegian poets complete each other. To the present generation is revealed
a wider understanding of the word love.
Punishment, condemnation, temptations, are words slowly dying out of the lan-
guage of intelligent men and women. This universal love is the Alpha and Omega
of Bjornson's teachings. In him was personified the hope and strength of a new
human belief, from the moment when he in his first youth sang out:
Lift thy head, thou youthful lad;
Even if hopes are crushed, be glad;
Others greet thee in the sky.
Fraught with blessings from on high.
******
Lift thy head and look around;
Don't you hear the joyful sound —
How it with a million tongues
In the air around thee sings?
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 247
Lift thy head and sing it out;
Thou canst not kill the springtime sprout.
Where there is power to burst and grow,
Next year's spring sun will it show.
At the same time he says, in one of the poems in " Arne":
He who was longing for twenty years
Over the mountains high and steep,
He who knows that he never will reach,
Feels himself smaller year after year.
Hears a bird on the mountain singing.
As it sits on the birch-tree swinging.
Once I know that it shall go forth
'Way over the mountains high,
Perhaps thy door is opened now.
O Lord, my God, thy home is fair;
Still, for awhile leave thou it shut.
And let me strive in my longings.
It is the never-ceasing thirst of a soul craving for knowledge, for light, in which
to solve the problems of life. Before us is an ocean of wisdom, its invisible sources
are located in eternity; the life of the oldest human being will only be sufficient for
a few draughts.
Though Bjornson claims to be intently national in his works as well as in personal
inclination, he yet, without realizing it, is compelled to represent internationalism.
He intends to say, Norway first and last; but his soul reaches too far, and he could
not be a true medium for the spirit of his age, were not internationalism to leave
its traces in his work. One of the most beautiful national songs ever written in any
language is to be found in his novel, "The Fisher-girl."
I shall guard thee, my land;
I shall build up my land;
I shall love it through life in my prayer and my child;
I shall work for its good;
I shall look for its wants,
From its borders and out to the fisherman's yarn.
We have plenty of sun;
We have plenty of soil;
Only we, only we could have plenty of love.
Here is creating power
Through the work of the hour;
We could lift up this land, if we lifted as one.
******
This home-land is ours.
And we worship it for
What it was, what it is, what it will be again;
And as love shall grow forth
From the soil of our earth.
That shall grow from the seeds of our love, in it laid.
When we get this kind of national hymn instead of boasts about conquering
nations, and nonsense about being the first and the only ones, then the first step
toward internationalism is taken.
The subjective national hymn, appealing to the will and work of the single
individual, to the creating love instead of the contemplating love, is in its nature so
wide-reaching, that it, even without realizing it, will sow the seeds of internationalism,
248 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
will carry us toward those higher regions where the earth is our fatherland, all man-
kind our countrymen.
Cosmopolitanism is the feeling with which the wayward soul regards the different
nations, they are all of equal value to him, for the reason that he has home nowhere.
Internationalism is a feeling growing out of the deepest love to the spot where we
are born — through loving that, we slowly reach farther toward loving the whole earth.
In correspondence with that tendency to internationalism, which Bjornson does
not — or at least did not some years ago— acknowledge himself, Bjornson is an ardent
friend of the Pease-cause, in favor of which a great deal of his talent as orator has
been used.
In their view of that omnipotent power, love between man and woman, Bjornson
and Ibsen are true representatives of the present generation. This age, which has
understood the identity of soul and body, does not loose itself in contemplation of
outward forms, as forms alone, but seeks at every place the contents of those forms.
The objective element has ceased to be the ruling one in the analysis of love.
In Bjornson's and Ibsen's works true love is measured by the degree of strength it
gives to the self. Reasoning thus, Norah came to the conclusion that her marriage
with Helmer had on both sides been without true love.
Ibsen's bitter satire on love between man and woman, as practiced in publicly
sanctified engagements and later on in marriage, awoke such hissing wrath in his father-
land that he for ten years lived abroad.
Norwegian society was not yet ready to understand that it was not love between
man and woman which Ibsen denied and attacked, it was the social ideal of this love,
Bjornson, believing, full of hope, optimist in the most beautiful sense of that word,
as he is, attacked this established ideal by painting one completely different. His
" Flags are hoisted in city and at port," teaches the new social moral, that ignorance is
not identical with innocence. He wants mothers to teach their boys and girls about
the laws of life, that they may no more need to go to playmates or servants to get
questions answered in a way which may injure them for lifetime. We must have
mothers who bend their knees in reverence to the laws of nature, the beautiful and
sacred; mothers who realize that nature is good and pure and true in all her ways;
first then will the houses of prostitution be things unknown among us, buried with mis-
takes of the past. Some six or seven years ago Bjornson traveled in Denmark, lectur-
ing about his favorite subject, true love between man and woman. He only recognizes
that union between man and woman which rests upon a unity of soul and body; no
decree of society, neither clerical nor civil, can establish such a union, nor can it
destroy it. They who look forward to those reforms of society, needed so sorely, yet
so little acknowledged, will especially appreciate one feature common to both Ibsen
and Bjornson, We may pile up before us every book written by them, not on one page,
not in a single expression, will we find charity lauded. Those two men never bent their
proud heads to money, never changed their opinion for the sake of wealth or rank; to
them the charity of society is only a simple duty as long as it is a deplorable necessity.
They both believe in a ruling justice in life, the justice involved in the fact that certain
causes have certain effects as sure as a splash follows the stone thrown into the water.
By the power of this justice Ibsen was at last acknowledged by his countrymen; by the
same justice the heart of the Norwegian nation went out to Bjornson from the time
when his first idyls from Norwegian peasant life appeared.
Around these two representatives of the best in our own age, those prophets of
a still better future, gather all who believe in the old prophecy: " Your sons and your
daughters shall see sights, and the spirit shall descend to all mankind," The structure
of future society shall have the word " justice " written over its portals with flaming
letters; charity shall be buried deep in the ground, and the two Norwegian poets, nay,
poets of the world, shall be counted among those who wrote its funeral march.
When Ibsen's teachings about " God in one," and Bjornson s about "God in all,"
have reached their aim, then the poet, be it woman or man, shall arise among us, who
shall sing about "All in God,"
THE HOME OF THE FUTURE.
By MISS L. C. McGEE.
The significance of the fact that the high school is practically sending forth only
young women from its halls, and that the women of the world are not only seeking,
but acquiring, practical information of the varied
and complex concerns of life, points to nothing less
than a reorganization of society, and that the high
school is second to no other formative agent in this
work. These two facts have led me to formulate the
following as the most important, as well as the most
portentous, of their results, namely:
I. Women of ability are actively taking upon
themselves the greater half of the responsibility of
the future. 2. Thinking women, by the conditions
which their own activity is bringing about, are debar-
ring themselves from the fruition of their own crea-
tion and their own rightful heritage — the home. 3.
The success or failure of this whole speculation of
the public school and self-government very largely
depends on woman's ability to marshal the forces
which her magic has called into being.
To appreciate the truth of the fact that women
are assuming the greater half of the responsibility of
the future, it is only necessary to observe her in the
various walks of life that she has, of her own free
choice, chosen to enter. That she is honorable, caoa-
ble, deserving and successful is no longer denied. Thatthe majority of such women have
gone out from the home as professional women or women of affairs, earning distinction
along every line of activity and of thought, is one of the many surprises of the century.
But that she has thus gone out from the home is to be the regret of the future, not that she
has not the ability to uphold the usefulness and dignity of professional life, but that she
is, with her whole energy and might, engaging in the performance of service which lies
beyond the confines of the home. That the service is grave and true service does not nec-
essarily justify its performance by women. Do not mistake my meaning; not for a
moment do I wish to imply that the home should be a limitation upon a woman's activity,
but rather, if home service under existing conditions is her limitation, it is her privilege,
and hers alone, to reorganize the home on a basis that is true and broad enough to
offer ample and adequate activity for her varied and magnificent capacity. It is not
so much that she fails to realize her own high womanhood outside of the home, but
rather that her seeking fields of activity elsewhere is an eternal disadvantage to the
home as a social institution. That will be a sorry day when the home is entirely left
to woman without capability and without ambition, when it is left to women who do
Miss Lacy Castina McGee was borB-in MartinsbarKh, Iowa, in IH.'iO. Her parents were S. and 8. J. McGee, .\merican-
born citizens, her father being of Scotch-Irish and her mother of French origin. She wasgradaated from the Iowa Wesleyan
University (Mount Pleasant) in 1880, taking the degree M. 8. In 1890 she was graduated from the University of Michigan,
taking the degree Ph. M. She has spent four years in the Rocky Mountains. During her three years' residence in the Uni-
versity of Michigan she did special work iif philosophy, English and history. Her principal literary works are essays, philo-
sophical and literary. Miss McGee is now assistant in the Omaha high school, where she occupies the chair of senior, Eng-
lish and elocution. The Omaha high school is one of the largest in the West, having about one thousand pupils. She is a
member of the Episcopal I'hurch. Her postoffice address is No. 210 Twenty-fifth Street, Omaha, Neb.
249 '
MISS LUCY CASTINA MCGEE.
250 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
not consciously form a part of the bone and sinew and brain of national life; and yet
the high school is helping to bring about just this condition, for as things are moving at
present, the high school has too many women among its graduates — not too many for
the sake of womankind, nor for the sake of the home and the world, but too many as
compared with the number of young men among the graduates.
It must originate from some strange misconception among the mothers of the
country, that the daughters only are encouraged to look over into the promised land
from the eminence furnished by the high school.
This points, it seems to me, to a fact already in existence, namely, that women of
ability are already debarred from their own rightful heritage, and so they are uncon-
sciously making provision to further forego its privileges and its rights. Let us pre-
dict, for the sake of the welfare of posterity, that this phase of woman's development
is only ancillary to this period which is believed to be transitional in all vital respects,
. and that it is merely a passing phase And, furthermore, it is reasonably safe to
eagerly anticipate that the conditions which have been largely due to woman's activity
will be so ordered and controlled that when she does return to the home, it may be
enriched by the broadening and deepening and ennobling experience she has enjoyed
among strangers in a foreign land. You will say to all this that the university is, on
the other hand, sending only men from its halls, and that these are they who keep the
intellectual current moving, and who see to it that the world goes on to a higher and
better condition.
It is true, and I am sorry it is true, that the university is crowded with men
instead of with women. However, there is encouragement in the fact that from one-
half to one-third of the students in the state universities are women. The majority of
these women are to be teachers, who will, by their influence, principally in the high
school, cause a mighty wave of reaction when it is brought to the notice of the large
classes of girls that are graduating every year, that the high school is only the " light
from which the dome of the university is brought to view." The exodus from the
high school to the university will, in the future, principally consist of young women.
Young men must have preparation for college. As a rule, young men are clever, but
they are not clever enough to enter a university without serious preparation. The
great majority must get this preparation, if they get it at all, in the high school. They
are not now in these schools. The business world embraced in early life may enable
them to amass an abundance of wealth in the course of years, but it will not give the
necessary preparation for the university; neither will the accumulation of wealth, or
the success in business, suffice for a lack of mental grace and development. I have
no quarrel to make with the business world, for it is the commercial world that is to
carry the gospel of good-will and honest dealing into every community in Christen-
dom, and it is the mercantile ship that is preeminent in genuine missionary work. My
protest is against the sentiment that young men do not need the advantage that gen-
erous education gives to thinking human beings, and that business success is the
mantle whose elegance and richness cover a multitude of faults.
The significance of this state of affairs is altogether unsatisfactory. That women
must be educated has been settled once for all. History has shown that an abso-
lutely unequal education on the two sides of the world is altogether undesirable. I
do not, however, wish to intimate that conditions can ever again be such as they were,
or even nearly as bad, as when women were floating on a sea of blissful ignorance.
For when this movement that is now apparent among women reaches its acme, and
woman finds man in the mental degradation that results from unrealized capacity, her
remembrance of past waves and winds will make her pitiful for her belated brother,
and she will not hinder or retard his efforts to get back into the current of thought
and intellectual endeavor.
If my insight into womanhood is correct, the educated woman, the woman of
advantages, sets higher ideals for herself than does the uneducated. This ideal of the
woman who is in touch with the thought current which pulsates through the realm of
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 251
the higher activities of life, includes educated husbands, educated fathers, educated
brothers, and above all, educated lovers. Where are these to come from? The high
school of the country does not give evidence that the supply will meet the demand.
Any woman who has self-respect, to say nothing of aesthetic taste, would intuitively
refuse a partnership with one of whom she might, under many circumstances eas-
ily imagined, be ashamed. A woman who is once ashamed of her lord and master's
static intellect has already committed conjugal suicide. In this respect the conditions
were different when women were yet embryonic, for if women were coy, sweet tem-
pered and pretty, admirable traits surely, the catalogue of requirements was adequate.
That will not do any longer. The seriousness and earnestness and womanliness with
which she has taken hold of life takes woman, once for all, from the playhouse, and
puts her in the workshop.
With the educated woman on the outside, although her personal endeavor be rich
with results, the home will sustain endless disadvantages; for it is altogether a plati-
tude to say that upon the intellectual and moral character of the mother largely
depends the welfare of the home, as well as on the state and society. The edu-
cated woman in the school can only educate, cultivate what is already in the
child's mental make-up; even the vigor and conscience of a well equipped teacher
cannot create a new make-up in the child. The home, then, as an institution, meeting
the demands of an advancing civilization, must be the resultant of equally good types
of constituent elements.
It is unquestionable that men do and are to hold the places of distinction. So
let it be. They are naturally fitted for leadership in executive, legislative, judicial
and commercial activities. They have the brain and the virile character which emi-
nently qualifies them to direct the affairs and the thought of the world. But man as
man is on the precise plane with woman as woman. Man as man is not what the future
demands. Men who actively and consciously make special preparation for the per-
formance of life's duties are they only who can serve a struggling humanity. Only ,
the men who are willing to absolutely devote themselves to the principles which
underlie this complex civilization; only men who can't meet the century in its chal-
lenge not only for deep insight, but for the most outspoken convictions resulting
from that insight — only these men will be qualified to take hold vigorously of the
problems which are already crying for solution. Duties assumed, though faithfully
and expeditiously performed by the women of the world, can never elevate the race
as a race. There must be a full and rich manhood, as well as a complete womanhood,
to constitute the home of the future.
The public school system is an organic part of this stupendous American specu-
lation — the speculation of self-government. This speculation is not, however, of the
same sort as the South Sea scheme, based on the " vain imagination of the heart."
On the contrary, our speculation of the public school, of self-regulated life — one could
not exist without the other — is based on the deepest needs and the broadest sympa-
thies and the most exalted aspirations of the human soul. Such a speculation as
this means a trial at living under the highest conditions yet furnistied for man by
man. If this speculation is to be more than a South Sea scheme, the foundation of
the whole inclusive scheme of self-government must be made adequate to bear up the
whole enormous structure which we'are assisting to construct. It matters not what
one's religious, social or political views may be, every law-loving man agrees that the
home is the basal unit of our institutions, and that the man best equipped for the per-
formance of either public or private duties is the man directly from the home influ-
ence. The faithful performance of these duties means more here and now than at any
other place or time since the beginning of human history. To be a true citizen of a
nineteenth century republic is to be the center of myriad responsibilities. From the
individual extends ten thousand threads which touch at their ends the state, the school,
the home, the church, society. Each of these is a part of the individual, and the
individual is a part of each of them. Never before have there been such demands
252 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
made of womanhood and of manhood. To be a man in the democratic sense of the
term, means that he shall have intelligence enough to see the right and courage
enough to do it at all times and under all conditions; and to be a woman in the nine-
teenth-century sense of the term, is to have understanding enough to see the needs of
a people struggling with the problem of self-regulation, and to have the heart to throw
the whole force of her womanliness on the side of continual and ceaseless effort to
reach the goal that the human soul sets for its own realization — self-government
founded on law-abiding conduct and noble thinking.
This goal of self-government, which implies intelligence and right disposition, is
not alone an American speculation. Not a state in Christendom but has felt a heart-
throb in response to " be a man! " It is the one thought of the century — this thought
of a united brotherhood, living and working together in sympathy and love without
the imposition- of priestcraft or kingcraft. This kingdom of man will not, however,
be at hand, until men and women more fully appreciate the fullness and richness of
such a brotherhood. But since the American democracy is leading the way in the
solution of some of the most momentous problems now to be conceived from the
human point of view, it is all important that our wrong should be made right, that our
right be maintained. It is imperative that, first of all, men and women get into the
thought movement, get into the way of right and true thinking about our needs, and
about the meaning of our speculation, for the ills of democratic life are directly or
indirectly traceable to undeveloped heart or brain. Educate the boys and girls till
they appreciate the meaning of this complex life of ours; until they realize that they
are personally responsible for the success or failure of this idea, that to be manly, to
be womanly, is of first importance, and that all else will be added unto them; educate
them till they understand that as modern conditions grow in complexity and gravity
that there must be a rise in manhood and womanhood to meet the demand; educate
them till they feel in their deepest selfhood that the highest freedom is identical with
the law of the spirit of man; educate them to this extent and prosperity will rejoice in
blessings ten-fold better than we now enjoy. There is, however, no way to salvation
other than that it be wrought by individual effort. The rectitude of the individual
life is the salvation of the world. Then, until all men and women share alike in rational,
self-regulated life all possessing common power of self-direction, all claiming common
rights,^all recognizing common obligations — not until then is an institution that we
have erected safe. When the new generation of thinking women — the dearest chil-
dren of the public school speculation — silently concludes that: " Be not unequally
yoked with unbelievers " should be written " Be not unequally yoked with the unedu-
cated, for what communion hath light with darkness," the basal unit of the race —
the home as an institution — will for the first time become a spiritual boon to humanity,
which will, by virtue of its own essence, make for righteousness.
THE MOORS OF SPAIN.
By MRS. ELLEN M. HARRELL CANTRELL.
When Columbus, the man of destiny, standing in the vestibule of the Old World,
drew aside the mysterious curtains that veiled its threshold, and set out on his career
into unknown space, the peoples around him strained
forward their eager vision to follow his dazzling course,
while we, who stand here today in the culminated
glory of his conception, look backward, with an in-
terest scarcely less vivid, to pierce the obscurity from
whence he emerged. There we find storm and light-
ning, blackness and gloom, marking the extinction of
a nation, which, perhaps, more than any other, has
held us with its spell of romance; namely, the Moors
of Spain.
Beginning with the records of the patriarchs:
they have been the theme for mediaeval and modern
writers; have been sung by troubadours, chronicled
by historians, dramatized by poets, and may yet sup-
ply a subject, not inappropriate to this occasion, since
they form the environment of Columbia's embryo
hero, who, like the mythical Arabian bird, developed
a new nation, from the ashes of the one just extin-
guished.
Prophet, poet, and painter have, in turn, brought
before us for contemplation a certain group, which,
though draped in the mists of antiquity, still appears
in vivid outlines, appealing to our deepest emotions by its pathos, and which serves
as an exponent of the histories of successive nations, more especially that of Spain.
I refer to the dual group of fugitives, Hagar and Ishmael, the outcast wanderers
in the desert of Shur and the wilderness of Beersheba.
The prophet tells us, that of Ishmael it was foretold before his birth, by the angel
of the Lord:
" He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand
against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of his brethren;" and later, in response
to Abraham's prayer — '* O that Ishmael might live before Thee," the Almighty God
established with him this covenant — "As for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I
have blessed him and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly;
twelve princes shall be beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant
will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time next year."
When Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the bondwoman, was thirteen years of age, a
Mrs. Ellen Maria Harrell Cantrell is a native of Virginia. She was bom in 1883. Her parents were Rev. Samuel Har-
rell, native of North Carolina, member of the Methodist Conference, and Ellen C. Collins, of Cork, Ireland. She was edncated
chiefly by her mother, was gradaated from the Nashville Female Academy, Tenn., December, 1848, and has traveled only in
the Sonthern States, bnt is familiar with the known world as geographer and historian. She married William Armoar Can-
trell, M. D., in 1852, at Little Rock, Ark. She is the mother of eight children, seven of whom have reached majority and of
whom one died in infancy. Her principal literary works are stories for magazines and fugitive newspaper articles and edi-
torials as associate editor of the "Arkansas Ladies' Journal," afterward the "Southern Ladies' Journal." In the social
world Mrs. Cantrell has always held 'a prominent place as a finished musician, a polished local writer, and lady of refine,
ment. In religious faith she acknowledges the Holy Trinity and Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Savionr. Mrs. Cantrell is a
member of the Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is No. 619 Scott Street, Little Rock, Ark.
263
MRS. E, M. H. CANTRELL.
254 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
great feast was made in honor of Isaac, the babe, on the day of his weaning, and Sarah
saw Ishmael mocking.
All the tenderness, pride, jealousy and resentment of a woman's heart rose in
rebellion against this alien boy, whose ancestral Eber blood was tainted by that of
Egypt, and she cried out: " Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of the
bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac."
An English poetess, whose womanly endurance, resignation, and religious trust
made her the fitting lyrist for this pathetic incident, and whose lovely countenance
adorns these walls, gives this sympathetic lament:
" Nor was thy way forgotten.
Whose worn and weary feet
Were driven from thy homestead
Through the red sand's parching heat;
Poor Hagar, scorned and banished,
That another's son might be
Sole claimant on that father.
Who felt no more for thee.
"Ah, when thy dark eye wander'd,
Forlorn, Egyptian slave.
Across that lurid desert
And saw no fountain wave;
When thy southern heart, despairing,
In the passion of its grief,
Foresaw no ray of comfort.
No shadow of relief,
"But to cast the young child from thee
That thou mightst not see him die.
How sank thy broken spirit —
But the Lord of Hosts was nigh!
He (He too oft forgotten
In sorrow as in joy)
Had will'd they should not perish —
The outcast and her boy.
"The cool breeze swept across them,
From the angel's waving wing,
The fresh tide gushed in brightness
From the fountain's living spring;
And they stood — those two — forsaken
By all earthly love or aid,
Upheld by God's firm promise.
Serene and undismay'd."
The illustrious painters, Correggio, Vanderwerf and Lanfranco, supplemented
this word-picture with paintings which, once seen, cannot fail to linger in the memory
with a plaint as penetrating as that of the poetess. The boy and his mother were res-
cued by Divine compassion, and in the course of time, we are told, his mother " took
him a wife out of the land of Egypt," Twelve sons were born of this union, who
became the twelve princes of Arabia. Their descendants led the life of nornads or
wanderers, as predicted, for thousands of years, maintaining their freedom, their faith
and their peculiar customs against the assaults of great military empires. Neither the
Babylonian and the Assyrian, nor the Egyptian and the Persian kings could reduce
these wild sons of the desert to a state of subjugation. The Arab devoted his life to
his horse, his weapons, his women and his poets, who sang the feuds of the tribes and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 255
the praises of their heroes and their fair women. Prizes were awarded for these poems,
which were written in golden letters and suspended in their chapel of worship, the
Caaba at Mecca, which contained the black stone — the object of the religious devotion
of the Arabs from a very ancient period. This stone they believed to have been
handed down from Heaven to Abraham by the angel Gabriel.
Beneath a canopy of molten brass outstretched in eternal serenity, lay the desert
" dreary, vast and silent," which, changed in a moment by wild tornadoes to a scene of
fury, was reflected in the aspect of her children. Alternating from mysterious tran-
quillity to reckless rage, their faces showed a corresponding conflict of calm and tem-
pest. Their fine, Oriental features and melancholy eyes gave silent token of their
sense of isolation, and completed the spell of their wild and vigorous minstrelsy.
For thousands of years Arabia was a land of religious freedom. All religious
sects, Jews, Fire-worshipers and Christians were tolerated within its borders; Jewish
colonies were formed by emigrants, who found entrance after the destruction of Jeru-
salem by the Romans, and who made many proselytes. About the year 600 A. D.
Christianity had penetrated to the heart of Arabia, through Syria on the one hand and
Abyssinia on the other. Besides these two, other religious sects, remnants of more
ancient ones prevailed. It was left for Mohammed to teach a new faith, which should
dispense with idolatry on the one hand, as with Judaism and Christianity on the other.
These various sects became a unit by the acceptance of the new faith, and under the
banner of the crescent Mohammed led them to the conquest of the ancient world.
The introduction of the doctrine of Mohammed forms the grand epoch in Arabian
history, and brings it into close connection with that of Spain. The creed of
Mohammed was contained in the well-known symbol of Islam, "There is no god but
God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God;" and his express precept was "to prop-
agate by fire and sword, throughout the four quarters of the globe the new Unitarian
faith of Arabia."
Like a match dropped on oil, this appeal to mankind for spiritual and tem-
poral authority, fired the fanaticism of the Arabs, and like a mighty conflagration
they swept over the northern states of Africa, and formed a new and powerful
empire, which took the name of Saracen. This name is by mediaeval Christian authors
supposed to be derived from Sarai, the wife of Abraham, by others from the Arab
saraca (to steal), or from the Hebrew sarak (poor), but the opinion which now pre-
vails is that it came from the Greek sareknoi (eastern people), from which the
Romans derived their word Saraceni. As they spread over Morocco, then called
Mauritania, they took the name of Moors, from mauri, meaning dark. When the
Arabs or Saracen conquerors invaded Spain, they were, naturally enough, called Moors,
so that in Spanish history the terms Arabs, Saracens and Moors are synonymous.
In the short space of eighty years after the death of Mohammed, they had passed
like a fiery tornado over Northern Africa, and had extended their domains from Egypt
to India and from Lisbon to Samarcand. In the meanwhile, Christianity, falling like
drops of fertilizing rain, was making a fruitful harvest in Northern and Southern
Europe.
In Spain, the cross confronted the crescent. Visigoths or Western Goths, who
were in possession, defied the Moors for its dominion. The treachery of one man
betrayed the Gothic cause. Count Julian, a Visigothic noble of Spain, irritated by
the treatment he had received from his sovereign, the tyrant Roderic, secretly dis-
patched a messenger to Musa, the governor of Africa and invited the Moors into
Spain, Roderic, more familiarly known as "The last of the Visigoths," whose tragic
downfall has supplied the theme for poets, romancers and historians, was hated by
his people, and during the battle, which continued seven days on the banks of the
Guadalete, a portion of his forces, as had been previously arranged, deserted to the
Moors.
The Goths were finally routed with immense slaughter, but the victory of the
Moors was purchased at the expense of sixteen thousand lives. The renowned rock
256 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of Gibraltar, England's bulwark of pride since 1779, still preserves the name of the
Saracen hero who took it — Gibel-al-Taric, the Moorish substitute for the original,
classic Calpe Most of the Spanish towns submitted after this, without opposition,
and before the end of a year the whole of Spain passed under the sway of the Moors,
except a solitary corner in the northern part, Asturias, now Oviedo, where Christianity
preserved a foothold. It required nearly eight hundred years to regain it from the
Moslem sway.
Once entered on their career of conquest, the Saracen hosts had almost simulta-
neously spread over Syria, the valley of the Euphrates, Persia, and Egypt, thus fulfill-
ing their destiny in becoming a " great nation." Nor was their progress brilliant only
in the arts of war. The Arab " stood in the presence of his brethren" as a learner, for
learning was mostly in the hands of the Jews and Christians. The caravan trade first
opened channels of communication and more extended contact with the world which
they conquered, and the great cities of the East and West supplied instructors. The
ancient seats of civilization throughout the East, Northern Africa, Spain, and the
Mediterranean Isles bestowed upon them the rich legacy of letters, which they trans-
lated into their native language. Thus the mind of the Moor became loosened
from the fetters of the religion which had enthralled it, and became illuminated with
the reflected light of the word, just as Europe has been rescued from the dark supersti-
tions of Romanism by the electric spark of the Protestant Bible. In natural science,
physics, medicine; in botany, mathematics, astronomy, alchemy and the arts, they
equaled and often surpassed the Chinese, Jews, Gentiles and Christians, whose pupils
they were. Seats of learning were located, as the demand for them arose, at Samar-
cand and Bokhara beyond the Oxus, at Ispahan in Persia, at Bagdad on the Tigris, at
Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, at Fez and Morocco in Western Africa, at Cordova,
Seville, Toledo, Granada, Salamanca and Alcala in Spain, and even in Sicily. The
Moors " studied everything and wrote on everything they studied." The libraries
became phenomenal in their growth. The library at Bagdad was enriched by thou-
sands of volumes and precious manuscripts. It rapidly rose to splendor, and was the
center of enlightenment until Cordova, in her beauty, rivaled and eclipsed her.
Bagdad, on the Tigris, with its gorgeous palaces and splendid mosques, was the liter-
ary metropolis of the East, and Cordova, upon the Guadalquiver, of the West, while
Cairo, upon the Nile, divided the prestige of each as the metropolis of Egypt.
The library of El Hakem II., of Spain, was stored in his palace at Cordova, and is
said to have numbered six hundred thousand volumes. What wonder that the light
that shone from the Moorish schools should have attracted the more poorly supplied
scholars of Christian Europe, and that the fair surroundings of the Spanish university
towns, where schools were attached to every mosque, beguiled them from their coarser
northern homes! Cordova was the Delphi of the peninsula, while the sterner Goths
retired to the rugged Asturias. The Crusades aided in awakening the mind of Europe
by emphasizing this contrast of the culture and refinement of the East with that of
the barren North.
The genius of the Moors was poetic, and their songsters outnumber those of all
other peoples put together. The " Poema del Cid," the oldest as well as the finest
ballad of the Iberian muse, gave birth to the latter songs of Spanish chivalry.
In romance, the store was more meager, but where has any later achievement
eclipsed the splendor and charm of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainment?" For a
hundred years it has been a European classic, one of the few books that delights all
classes and all ages. Haroun-al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, is almost as familiar to
children as Santa Claus. Aladdin's lamp will serve to illuminate the day-dreams of
the young as long as girls covet dancing slippers and boys long for racing ponies.
In architecture the Moors have given expression to their religion. The shifting
tent of the Bedouin gave place to edifices resembling those built by Christian archi-
tects from Constantinople, who imitated those of Greece and Rome, and more ancient
predecessors, with one noticeable distinction — the fanciful ornamentation known as
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 257
the Arabesque, which differed from that of the Egyptians and others in entirely
excluding the figures of animals (the representation of which was forbidden by the
Mohammedan religion), and confining itself entirely to foliage, flowers, fruits and
tendrils of plants and trees, curiously and elaborately intertwined, which Schlegel de-
scibes as "the oldest and most original form of fancy."
The mosque at Cordova, with its thousand columns of vari-colored marble,
jasper and porphyry, forming a perfect grove, is the finest type of a Moslem temple in
Europe. The royal residence at Seville, the Al-Kasa (house of Caesar), enchants the
beholder with its colonnades, courts, halls and porches, whose delicate ornamentation
has been said " to have the effect of old point lace, and whose walls, tilings and ceilings
show the harmonious mingling of ivory, amber, turquoise-blue or v'iolet-purple, and
look like the inside of sea-shells."
The most conspicuous, the most romantic, as well as the most venerated pile of
Arabian architecture is the Alhambra of Granada. That name calls up such pictures
of beauty and such scenes of historic interest, as only the pen of Washington Irving
could depict. To him we are indebted for a faithful representation of this Oriental
palace in a Christian land — an elegant memento of a brave, intelligent, graceful peo-
ple, whose Paradise was an earthly one, and that Paradise beautiful Granada, with its
mountain crest rising gravely and grandly above the lovely plain below, where gilded
palaces, fountains, rivers and gardens, pillared avenues and arcades, galleries and
balconies, blossoms and perfume, music, moonlight and charming women, did indeed
form an Pllysium! But Moslem ambition awoke from this seductive thralldom. At
Constantinople, which they had vainly besieged for six years, the Saracens had been
sternly repulsed by the terrible liquid fire, called "Greek Fire," u.sed by the inhabit-
ants for defense. Foiled at this point, the Moors boldly scaled the Pyrenees and
cast their rapacious eyes on the fair land of France, which now promised the only
pathway to the Euxine — the object of their dreams and hopes, as the last step toward
universal empire. Can we think of it without a shudder! We, who are here today
as grateful disciples of Him who gave His presence and benediction to the marriage
feast; who rebuked the pecuHar form of idolatry practiced by the Jewish kings, that
had provoked God's wrath and precipitated their ruin; who made the religion of
Mohammed a mockery and a crime, by His awful condemnation, and who has lifted
our sex from the degradation of the harem to the exalted position we occupy here
today!
On the plain between Tours and Poitiers the contending armies met, the Moors
led by Abd-el-Rahman, the P>anks and the German tribes by Charles Martel, the illus-
trious mayor of the palace of the Frankish king. After six days' skirmishing, the
enemies engaged in that fearful battle that was to decide the fate of Christendom.
In the light skirmishing, the Moorish archers maintained the advantage, but in the
close onset of deadly strife, the German auxiliaries of Charles, grasping their ponder-
ous swords with "stout hearts and iron hands" — for they fought for faith and home —
stood the shock like walls of stone, and beat down the light-armed Moors with ter-
rific slaughter.
Was this the battle-ground of the man of flesh and the man of Spirit? Amid the
clash of the contending armies do we not hear, resounding through the ages, the echo
of Sarah's imperious cry: "Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this
bondwoman shall not be heir with my son! " Were the thirteen years of Ishmael's
ascendency in the house of his father Abraham a prototype of the thirteen centuries
of Moslem supremacy?
The Arabs " folded their tents and silently stole away" in the night, fugitives
before the wrath of Christian knights, leaving their camp rich with the plunder of
Southern Europe to reward the victorious Franks, and 375,0(X) of their slain on the
battle-field. The spell of Islam was broken, and " the most brilliant life of the most
brilliant of civilizations went down to its setting! " Long mercifully deferred, the
doom of Ishmael had sounded!
(17)
258 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Twenty-seven years elapsed before the Moors were wholly dislodged from the
Pyrenees, but in 1492 their capital, Granada, was taken by Ferdinand and Isabella, and
the great peninsula was again under Christian rule, prepared to enter on the " heritage
of the West," and to make gracious response to that eloquent appeal of Columbus:
" I ask but for a million maravedes;
Give me three caravels to find a world.
New shores, new realms, new soldiers for the Cross! "
In a picture gallery in the palace of Generaliffe hangs the portrait of Boabdil, the
last of the Moorish kings of Spain; in the tower of Comares, in the Alhambra, are the
rooms where he was imprisoned by his father, from the gallery of which his mother
lowered him with scarfs, to escape the cruelties of a parent who hated and repudiated
him; the gate through which he departed from the Alhambra, when about to surren-
der his capital to Ferdinand and Isabella, was walled up at his request. A tablet on
the walls of a small mosque relates that on this spot Boabdil surrendered the keys to
the Castilian sovereigns. From the summit of one of the Alpuxarras Mountains the
unfortunate Boabdil took his last look of Granada; there is the rock where he stood
and turned his eyes away from taking their farewell gaze, still called " el ultimo
suspiro del Moro (the last sigh of the Moor), and there it was that the reproach of
his mother embittered his heart. " You do well to weep as a woman over what you
could not defend as a man."
"Woe is me!" was the mournful cry of the dethroned monarch, as he led his for-
lorn troops through the mountain pass, over the beloved Andalusian plains, away to
the desert sands of Africa.
" Winding along at break of day,
And armed with helm and spears.
Along the martyr's rocky way,
A king comes with his peers;
Unto the eye a splendid sight.
Making the air all richly bright.
Seen flashing through the trees;
But, to the heart, a scene of blight.
Sadder than death were these.
"For brightly fall the morning rays
; Upon a conquer'd king;
The breeze that with his banner plays.
Plays with an abject thing.
• - Banner and king no more will know
Their rightful place 'mid friend and foe:
Proud clarion, cease thy blast!
Or, changing to the wail of woe.
Breathe dirges for the past.
"Along, along, by rock and tower,
That they have failed to keep,
By wood and vale, their father's dower,
\ The exiled warriors sweep.
The chevroned steed, no more elate,
As if he knew his rider's fate.
Steps languidly and slow,
As if he knew Granada's gate
Now open to the foe!
THK CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 259
"Along, along, till all is past
That once they called their own;
Till bows the pride of strength at last,
And knights, like women, moan.
Pausing upon the green hillside,
That soon their city's tower will hide,
They lean upon their spears;
And hands that late with blood were dyed
Are now wash'd white with tears,
"Another look, from brimming eyes,
Along the glorious plain;
Elsewhere may spread as lovely skies,
Elsewhere their monarch reign;
But nevermore in that bright land,
With all his chivalry at hand,
Now dead or far departed! —
And from the hillside moves the band,
The bravest broken-hearted."
,^-
mi
NATIONALISM.
By MRS. LILLIAN CANTRELL BAY.
The leading thinkers and writers on social questions seem to agree that optimism
is no longer suitable for the age, and that the laissez faire (let alone) principle will not
meet the issues of the day; and that charity in laws
may soon be a fundamental doctrine that will become
a matter of public conscience. It is even maintained
that President H arrison in his last message recommends
measure after measure, which, whether so intended
or not, are in perfect harmony with Mr. Bellamy's
plan of nationalism, as his leading recommendations
add additional strength and power to the general gov-
ernment and take away certain rights and privileges
from the states and citizens that have never been
questioned heretofore. Mr. Bellamy desires to na-
tionalize everything and everybody, and make the
powers of the general government absolute and su-
preme. He argues that large syndicates are handling
immense revenues, and hundreds of thousands of men,
with an efficiency and economy unattainable by the
individuals; hence the larger the business the simpler
the principles to be applied — that railroads, tele-
graphs, expressage and other public necessities, now
formed into corporations, should be controlled and
operated by the government for the benefit of all and
not a few; that the people will never be contented
until the government displaces all monopolies and becomes one grand co-operation,
and that this country, which has unlimited power of production under existing con-
ditions, permits its power to be broken and made inefficient by fractional efforts.
Social reforms are as varied as the flowers of the field, or, if you please, as the
resources of the evil one. We hear of societies based upon communities of wives
and upon celibacy; upon the Word of God, and upon the denial of God; upon Christian
communism, and the naturalism of Rousseau; upon the slave-based military systems of
Sparta and the modern ideal of social and industrial equality; upon the military sys-
tem and religious brotherhoods of the Middle Ages; the Jesuitism of Loyola, and the
Shakerism of Mother Ann Lee, which are diverse and varied in their forms and con-
ceptions, and yet all were suggested by either the religious or social condition of
mankind and must be called communism, which is nothing more nor less than dis-
content created by the succe'ss of the few and the misery and want of the many, brought
about by the principle and practice of competition in war, politics, finances, capitaliza-
tion and industry, which makes might the basis of right.
Against this triumph of might, against right and humanity, the Socialists in Europe
and the Nationalists in America raise their protest. Lord Lytton, in his Utopia " The
Mrs. Lillian Cantrell Bay was bom in Little Rock, Ark., and is the dansrhter of Dr. W. A. Cantrell and Ellen Harrell
Cantrell, She was educated chiefly in Little Rock, finished her course of study at St. Mary's Hall, Burlington, N. J., and
has visited the eastern and northern cities of the United States. She married Joseph Lovell Bay, and has an interesting
family of children. Mrs. Bay is a lady of unusual gifts of mind and person, is a favorite in social circles, has many devoted
friends and admirers of her virtues, and is rarely excelled as an amateur pianist. In religions faith she is Protestant Episco-
pslian. Her pontofiice address is Hot Springs, Ark.
260
MRS. LILLIAN CANTRELL BAY.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 261
Coming Race," says: "The primary condition of mortal happiness consists in the
extinction of that strife and competition between individuals which, no matter what
form of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few, and annul
the calm of existence.
The social dream of co-operation, like the clouds of sunset, has changed form and
name since the time of Plato to Bellamy, and there is some reason to believe that the
clouds are becoming the reflection of an actual future; that all the various social
reforms, nihilism in Russia and nationalism in America, must present some perma-
nent idea, some just complaint, as the rock lies beneath the torn seaweed and the
shivering foam on the beach. What, then, is the message, the soul of good, the impel-
ling spirit and inspiration in these things that seem so evil? Nihilism in Russia alone
has given to prison, to Siberia, and to the executioner genius enough, self-sacrifice
enough, and love enough to have inspired an hundred epochs in the history of the
world. It may be said. What is the use of pursuing the impossible, however bright
the dream may be; but the answer is, That we have never yet discovered what the
impossible may be in social problems, and that we cannot say, in the light of past
experience, what may or may not be true, as the history of the world is a history of
derided dreams. A large number will thrust the subject aside as disagreeable or dan-
gerous, and say: " It is no business of mine;" which may mean, " It is not to be helped,
and that it is natural for the weakest to go to the wall." These weird reformers reply
that it is not nature, but that
" Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn."
Mr. Bellamy presents a bright picture of a .social democracy, giving to all the
greatest advantages and the highest civilization, and obliterating corruption, degra-
dation and poverty, which, he says, is demanded by increasing civilization and the
laws of evolution, in order to prevent the people from being handed over to the rapac-
ity of a feudal system of capitalists, and that we must either choose nationalism or
despotism.
I must acknowledge that the personal history of Edward Bellamy is unknown to
me. It is inevitable in the world of letters that an author must be at rest in his mau-
soleum before the doors of his earthly home are thrown open and the public admitted
to the hallowed hearthstone. There are instances where authors are permitted to read
their own biographies, and to enjoy the doubtful pleasure of " seeing themselves as
others see them;" but if Mr. Bellamy occupies a place in this coterie I am not pos-
sessed of the evidence.
There is thus only one other way for me to become acquainted with him, and that is
his writings. We judge a tree by its fruit. In this instance the fruit hangs very high, by
almost like the apples of Hesperides, in the region of Allegory, and surrounded: —
the mists of a century of time in advance of us. It promises to be luscious to the
taste, having for us all the enchantment that distance is said to lend.
Mr. Bellamy has, in his most interesting book, "Looking Backward," stationed
himself on the heights of the twentieth century, and through the magical medium of
a dream has looked back on the nineteenth century with the eyes of a philanthropist
who would see us all bestowed in an earthly elysium, where fraternity and equality go
hand in hand, "the one being a flower growing on the soil of the other;" where love
enters all the doors and poverty has been relegated to parts unknown, and where plu-
tocracy has been banished to its own Plutonian shores. This is a delightful dream, a
beautiful vision of a possible better condition than existing surroundings, free from
selfishness, and where the relations of mankind are perfectly harmonious. It is really
the dream of a noble and very sympathetic type of man, guided by the hope that the
greatest good will eventually prevail.
Mr. Bellamy's " Looking Backward " has not only attracted the most marked
attention of the literary world, but has also been subjected to the most vigorous criti-
cism and condemnation.
262 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
M. Emil de Loveleye, the eminent French critic, says: "As for Mr. Bellamy's
dream, it will, I fear, always remain an Utopia, unless man's heart be entirely trans-
formed. His ideal is pure communism, and as such raises my invincible objections."
And Mr. Vinton, in his "Looking Further Backward," has drawn a gloomy picture of
the outcome of nationalism as advocated by Mr. Bellamy, However, all seem to admit
that he has instilled heart into the usually dry subject of political economy, and
has woven poetry around the dread problem of social reform, which wrecks lives
and embitters souls, and that he has offered a pleasing remedy instead of a raven
prophecy.
It has been suggested that " Looking Backward," like " Uncle Tom's Cabin," may
be one of those unexpected incidents which occasionally bring mighty causes and
forces into play, and with astonishing results.
The plan is beautifully conceived and quaintly sketched with the skill of a mas-
ter, but I very much fear that the time for the lion and the lamb to live together and
not covet each other's strength or flesh will be deferred to our millennium instead of
the twentieth century.
However it may be, public opinion says that [f. at least demands attention and is
worthy of investigation; that it may be garnished with a multiplicity of ornamental
towns, columns and entablatures, a wild mingling of the Greek, Roman, Byzantine,
Romanesque and Gothic styles of architecture, and yet suggest many needed additions
to the edifice of our government. I believe in looking at bright things, at pictures of
places that I may never hope to see, at grand mountains that I may never hope to
climb, and in hoping that the survival of the fittest will be the survival of the most
gracious spirit and the most tender heart.
Duty, assisted by anxiety, compels us to ask: "What is there in this weird propo-
sition to which generation after generation comes in such questionable shapes? " Is
it a curse, or a blessing in disguise, or some angel in the process of development?
We seem to be driven to the necessity of saying, as Hamlet said, "Thou comest in
such a questionable shape that I will speak with thee;" or as Carlylesaid of the dingy,
soiled and ragged toiler: " Thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and, fight-
ing our battles wert so marred." We know that glorious dreamers, unselfish martyrs,
untamed lovers of liberty and noble-minded women, as well as dynamite fiends and
incendiary hags, have been led to the executioner's block, or doomed to pass their
lives in the dark mines of Siberia, toiling with broken hearts under the lash of heart-
less masters. It is said that the barricades have their Christs, in whom we can detect
aspirations, emotions, instincts and ideas essentially beneficent and good, the despair-
ing anguish of nature's longing for justice and right. Oscar Wilde, with real insight,
touched a right note when he said:
"I love them not, whose hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For no right cause; beneath whose ignorant reign,
Arts, culture, reverence, honor, all things fade.
Save treason, and the dagger of her trade.
And murder, with his silent, bloody feet,
* * * And yet, and yet,
These Christs upon the barricades,
God knows, I am with them in some things."
John the Baptist, clad in his camel's hair blanket, and feeding upon locusts and
wild honey, was a most startling character, and the victim of unfortunate circum-
stances; although he was a forerunner of our Saviour, who, also, by the way, came to
be Saviour only after Calvary and the cross.
We might do worse things than remember that it was a murderer who said:
"Am I my brother's keeper?" and listen to these weird reformers why teach us the
Divine lesson of inculcating self-sacrifice; or condemn or dread them us we will, no
selfish thoughts taint the simplicity of their aims.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 263
We consider Nationalists as dreamers, for " Looking Backward " and all similar
Utopias are but dreams to our practical people; but such dreams are a mirage, which
could not appear in the sky unless as a reflection of a former reality somewhere on
earth. Mr. Bellamy would be insane, indeed, did he conclude that even the main
features of his plan will be adopted, or that the world can grow up on the basis of a
book. The growth must be natural, but the forecast of that growth can be either
hopeful or disheartening, " You will get well," says Dr. Bellamy, and the world
opens its heart to the good and gentle tidings.
LITERATURE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
By MISS CORA M. MCDONALD.
In this glorious year we are often reminded of that immortal day on which the
Pilgrim Fathers gained a foothold upon the solid rock of America.
The story of the hardships of these pioneers of
our civilization, of their comfortless homes and their
limited resources, is familiar to us all. Upon the best
table in the best room was their library, the Bible,
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Young's Night Thoughts,
Milton, Baxter's Saints' Rest, Fox's Lives of the
Martyrs, Addison's Spectator, and Watts' Improve-
ment of the Mind. And yet from these homes of pri-
vation, the mind nourished by a few choice books,
came the sublime men and women of our colonial age.
Have modern luxury and an exhaustless supply of
varied literature produced nobler manhood and
womanhood? Far be it from my purpose to argue
that the former days were better than these. Present
advantages mean enlarged opportunity and power,
but the voice of the past can teach us how to use
wisely the inheritance of this teeming age. Then, in
determining what the young ought to read, we should
consider carefully the results of past effort, to learn
the principles that govern this important factor in the
formation of character.
Let us glance at the situation of our youth in
regard to literature. In the homes of many the text-books of the children form the
larger part of the books possessed. Not repression in childhood, but skillful guidance
develops self-control, correct habits, and true morality. A forcible writer says: " The
evils of a pernicious literature are pressing hard upon us with every click of the
printing-press. Its corrupting and blighting power is felt in our schools and in society.
Its baneful effect is seen in the disrespect of our youth for parental authority, in their
treatment of the aged, in their wrong ideas of life, and in their general spirit of insub-
ordination."
What can we do to stay its power ? This work must begin in our homes with
the babe at its mother's knee, in the lullaby that cradles the child to rest. It must
continue through childhood and youth, until our children shall go forth from home
and school with fixed habits and cultivated tastes.
Noteworthy steps, indeed, have already been taken by educators to make books
more potent in bettering our American life. What we now need is masters of books,
guides to the library; those who understand the art of leading the young spirit, those
who have the ability to kindle intelligence and awaken thought.
Miss Cora Martin McDonald was born in Talmage, Ohio. Her parents were John McDonald and Fannie A. Coy
McDonald, of New England. She was educated in Salem, Ohio, Oberlin College and Wooster, Ohio. Received the degree of
A.M. from the University of Wooster. She began teaching when eighteen years of age, and soon gained first rank in her chosen
profession. She was principal of the Defiance Ohio High School for eight years, the Boone Iowa High School three years,
and the Cheyenne Wyoming High School three years. Miss McDonald now occupies a chair in the State university of
Wyoming, and also the principalship of the Academic Department. She has written many papers on educational subjects,
contributed largely to the "Wyoming School Journal," and has lectured successfully in Wyoming on educational themes. In
religions faith she is Presbyterian. Her postoffice address is Laramie, Wyo.
264
MISS CORA MARTIN MCDONALD.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 265
In this century, as never before, God is revealing to the nations woman's place
and work in the world. She will lead the children aright, she will influence them
through those institutions which are the glory and the hope of America — the home and
the public school. She will direct the physical, the intellectual, the spiritual energy
of her life toward the rising generation. In the home, in the Sunday-school, and in
the day school, she will feed the mind upon pure and noble thoughts, thus giving it a
habit, a tendency, which shall determine character and destiny. And now, in the full-
ness of time, God has given her such agencies of self-improvement for the guidance
of others as the Chautauqua Circle and University Extension. Early disadvantages
no longer form a barrier to her usefulness. Through physical culture, hygienic reform
in dress and fashion, intellectual ambition awakened by opportunity, she becomes
young at fifty; is beginning the study of foreign languages at seventy. With our
greatest American author, James Russell Lowell, she sings:
" One day, with life and heart, is more than time enough to find a world."
No longer will she entrust the education of her child to the teacher alone, but she
will co-operate with that teacher to secure the best results.
Instruction in science has awakened in the mind of many a boy and girl a train of
thought, an interest in nature, which has led to research, and has redeemed the life
from devotion to degrading literature and its attendant evils.
The educational progress of this century is in no way more manifest than in the
introduction of elementary science into the lower grades of our leading schools.
It has been stated that " childhood is the era of scientific acquisition." Every day
the child gathers facts, makes discoveries, and deduces generalizations far grander and
far richer in practical import to him than any made by Newton or Cuvier. These dis-
coveries stimulate and ennoble him, not only in the same way as the Newtons and
Cuviers were ennobled, but relatively to a far higher degree.
The instructor must first have accepted Dame Nature's invitation to Agassiz:
" Come, wander with me," she said,
" Into regions untrod.
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
Let us commune with Coleridge, Ruskin, Wordsworth and Bryant. We would
not banish Mother Goose from childhood lore, but we plead for the use of sim-
ple stories from the world's mythology and from the Bible, interesting incidents
of history, the gems of poetry and the ideals of fiction. So bright, so attract-
ive must the stories seem, that curiosity will be awakened to be gratified only by
reading. Suitable books are now prepared with a view to this instruction. The
fairy tale can cultivate the imagination, the fable illustrate and impress truth; the
carefully chosen story from mythology may become a teacher of ethics, and certainly
will develop a taste for classic and historic literature.
Let us begin this work in the simplest manner, with the little child, and continue
until he pursues, as special studies, those branches of knowledge to which he has been
so gradually and delightfully introduced.
It is now admitted that the correct use of language is to be learned through asso-
ciation with pure English, spoken and written. Is our speech in the home chaste and
accurate? So will be that of our youth. Then let them study standard English, com-
mitting to memory often " grand and ennobling thoughts, clothed in beautiful
language; thoughts that will incite them to noble aspirations; thoughts that incul-
cate virtue, patriotism, love of God, of father, of mother, kindness to dumb animals,
and that give correct rules of action."
In the child's reading aloud, too much time is often given to " mere imitative
reading, and not enough to logical analysis to ascertain the meaning of the words and
sentences." The skillful hearer will ask many questions, and the well-trained child
will question, too. Shall we avoid an answer, reply indifferently or ignorantly?
266 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Let us not permit our children, or those whom we can influence, to waste time in
committing for declamation selections of no literary value; but let the recitation,
essay, and oration exert an elevating influence. Our boys will imbibe the spirit of
patriotism while their hearts are thrilled with the fervid oratory of such men as Fox,
Chatham and Everett. The thought has been thus forcibly expressed: "The boy
who feels the greatness of Burke and of Webster is more apt to acknowledge the
power of the 'Oration on the Crown.' He who has been thrilled by the sublimity of
Milton will grow enthusiastic over the pages of Virgil and Dante; and when the vast
world of Shakespeare's thought has been opened before his vision, he will see more
clearly what is immortal in the Iliad and the Odyssey."
History should be impressed through historical and biographical literature, rather
than by memorizing dates and facts, which robs the narrative of vitality and creates a
distaste for historical works. Biography has been called the soul of history, and is a
powerful force in character culture.
Generalities are, for practical purposes, dead things, but particulars contain the
germs of life, and stimulate to action. The biographies of distinguished men record
the important history of their times, and are interesting to the young. The works of
Cooper, Parkman, Irving, Longfellow, Whittier and Choate, the "Statesmen Series,"
and Coffin's books will make United States history attractive. What better introduc-
tion to Roman history than Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome," or Shakespeare's
"Julius Caesar" and " Coriolanus? " Walter Scott's novels should be to our youth a
continual source of pleasure and profit. They have " Ivanhoe," "The Talisman" and
" Quentin Durward " for Louis XL, Charles the Bold and the Wars of the Roses;
" Kenilworth" and the " Abbott " for Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots; "Wood-
stock," " Old Mortality " and " Peveril of the Peak " for the Stuarts. Bulwer's
" Harold," his " Last of the Barons," and Thackeray's " Henry Esmond," will also
instruct and delight them. Why not have them read Kingsley's "Hypatia" for a
knowledge of the fifth century, and Victor Hugo for the battle of Waterloo? Why not
Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot for the age of Victoria?
What historian has given us a more faithful picture of New England than Haw-
thorne in the " Scarlet Letter," Holland in " Bay Path," Longfellow in " Miles
Standish," or Whittier in "Snow Bound?" "Evangeline" will impress the pathetic
story of /eligious persecution in Acadia.
There seems now to be a general awakening to the importance of Bible knowl-
edge for the young. The worthy president of John Hopkins' University deplores the
ignorance of Scripture history among college students, and urges the movement to
place the study of the Bible in the university or college curriculum.
Our American colleges are beginning to put the Bible into its " rightful place of
honor as the center of the highest culture."
If the secular world thus realizes the importance of the Bible, what a stimulus to
us, who see in it not only " the greatest of all classics and the foremost book in the
world's literature," but infinitely more, the revelation of God to men. Shall we plan
a course of reading for the young and exclude the only guide to true wisdom?
Shall they not learn that we may enjoy a communion with God which is as " real
as ever communion was with friend? " That here we find our " proof of God, of duty,
and of destiny." " We may enter in, may shut the door; let the outer darkness gather;
but all is light. The invisible becorhes visible, and we adore, treading where science
never trod, in realms, the door of which no science can unlock."
Would you impress youth with the ruin that crime brings to him who commits it?
Persuade them to read " Macbeth," Hawthorne's " Marble Faun," or Mrs. Browning's
" Drama of P^xile.' Would you inspire them with ideals of manhood and woman-
hood? Let them study the lives of David Copperfield and the gentle Agnes.
Fiction, through the presentation of beautiful character, awakens sympathy;
refines and ennobles.
" Ben Hur " and the " Mill on the Floss " are types of the novel which we cannot
commend too highly.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 267
Poetry cultivates the imagination, and fills the soul with pure, bright pictures.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare! How they outweigh kings and warriors and millionaires.
Poetry is power, truth, beauty, pathos, exaltation. The utility of the ideal! How
the glowing theme expands as we try to compass it.
In a lecture given recently at Oxford, on mediaeval universities, Gladstone said
he feared that under pressure from without they should lean, if ever so little, to that
theory of education which " would have it construct machines of so many horse-power,
rather than form characters, and rear into true excellence that marvelous creature we
call man, which gloats upon success in life, instead of studying to secure that the
man shall always be greater than his work, and never bounded by it; but that his eye
shall boldly run, in the words of Wordsworth,
" Along the line of limitless desires."
Mr. Emerson replied to his daughter, who inquired whether she should study
botany, Greek, or metaphysics, that it was of no consequence what she studied; the
question was with whom she studied.
We recall Garfield's tribute: "A university education might have been received
while sitting on the same log with Mark Hopkins."
Unconscious tuition! The old theme, you say. Yes, old as humanity; and yet
our chief source of inspiration. Let us dwell upon it until we are filled with a sense
of its real grandeur.
Foreign nations acknowledge the greatness of our land, but they deny our claim
to superiority in literary productions. They tell us that American writers are not
original; that America lacks historical associations, and that we are too hurried, too
practical a people to excel in literature. Is this true? America has had less than
three centuries of existence, and much of that time has been spent in clearing forests
and subduing enemies. Has she not already given the world a greater number of
worthy authors than any other nation in the same period of its early existence? Bry-
ant and Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Hawthorne, Bancroft, Cooper, Mrs.
Stowe, and Emerson— who can say that coming generations will not award to these
first rank?
But, grant that we have not yet produced one truly great writer, the future is
radiant with promise. When centuries have passed and time has lent enchantment,
the romantic' and thrilling incidents connected with the discovery and colonization of
our country will furnish themes as grand as any ever presented to epic poet. What
historic associations more sacred, more inspiring, than those that cluster about Plym-
outh Rock, Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Yorktown and Gettysburg?
The nations of the earth are coming to our shores and mingling with our people.
Into the blood of coming generations will be infused the best elements of every race,
giving rise to a new'nation superior in intellectual vigor to any that has existed. We
believe that the poet of the future will be an American. What may we not expect
from woman in this land of her emancipation? Now that her opportunities and priv-
ileges are enlarging, may she not give to us golden thoughts in enduring form that
will be a worthy expression of the highest civilization? What a heritage of patriotic
literature in soiig and story will this year bequeath to the youth of America! What
is this wondrous exhibition but the volume of the nineteenth century, opened on
American soil that the world may read its radiant chapters? Upon its gilded pages
are science and art, prose and poetry.
Here is indelibly inscribed an immortal tribute to woman's worth and power, and
here, engraved in letters of light, is the characteristic of the coming heroes and hero-
ines: " Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all."
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR WOMAN.
By F. M. LANKTON, M. D.
You know the story, how Eve ate the fruit of the "tree of knowledge;" not
because she was particularly fond of apples, but in the literal wording — "when woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was
pleasant for the eyes, and a tree to be desired to
make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did
eat, and gave to her husband and he did eat." We
have always had a secret satisfaction in the knowl-
edge that it required Satan himself, the strongest of
known powers for evil, to tempt Eve in the first place,
and he, in his Satanic ingenuity, could do so only
through her desire for wisdom, not curiosity, the
story says, knowledge, which is quite a different matter.
There is no thirst equal to that of inheritance, and
this desire for wisdom, for growth, could no more be
extinguished than could the covering of the seed
deep in the earth deprive it of life. It finally struggles
upward to find its proper elements of light, air and
sunshine — its world; finds, too, that the depth of cover-
ing and obstacles overcome have served as truest
friends, giving firmness of root and greater possibil-
ities of broader development. We, in the year 1893,
with its privileges of education, its progressive con-
ceptions of equality and justice, can have but a faint
idea of the struggles and martyrdom of the early
crusaders along these lines. Susan B. Anthony says: "Even little children were taught
to believe that I had hoofs and horns." We say, God bless her! To such women,
strong of purpose, strong to bear the scorn of the world, if need be, with eyes fixed
upon the future, with hearts stayed upon the God of justice, they pressed firmly on
through the forest of public opinion, and the brambles of public prejudice, over the
rocks of cruel criticism, blazing the pathway for us to follow. It was natural that
woman should choose the line of education which nature had best prepared her by
taste and natural talent to follow. But where were the schools to give her this edu-
cation? We can scarcely believe that the first school for the higher education of
women was established in 1819 and 1820, Mount Holyoke and Oberlin in 1837. There
were the same fears for the influence upon women of these schools and seminaries, as
we find later in regard to their entrance into the medical profession. There has been no
line of effort or pathway of progress more difficult to follow, than for woman to obtain
entrance into this one of the learned professions. Her natural ability as nurse, com-
panion, friend; her deftness of touch, quickness of perception, patience through long
suffering; these and many other qualifications which made her peculiarly fitted for the
position were as naught to overcome custom, that dragon to progress, and prejudice,
Dr. Freeda M. Lankton was bom in Oriskany, N. V., August 10, 1852. Her parents were Elizabeth Tremain Lodmer, of
Southampton, England, and Eber Lodmer, of Nova Scotia, a Baptist clergyman. She was educated in the public schools of
Rome, N. Y., later by private teachers, and graduated from the State University of Iowa. She married Mr. Byron F. Lankton,
of New York, in 1870. Her special work has been in the interest of fallen womanhood and the sick and suffering.
Her principal literary works are papers for medical journals and societies, "The King's Daughters," and W. C. T. U.
Conventions. Her profession is that of physician and snrgeon. Dr. Lankton is a member of the Presbyterian Church.
Her postoifice address is Omaha, Neb.
268
F. M. LANKTON, M. D.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 269
that most difficult of all foes to overcome. Said one of the prominent professors in
the medical world, now holding a chair in one of the eastern colleges: "History,
physiology, and the general judgment of society, unite in a negative of woman's fitness
for the medical office." In the "Buffalo Medical Journal," 1869, is found among its edi-
torial, the following: "If I were to plan with malicious hate the greatest curse I could
conceive for woman; if I would estrange them from the protection of women and
make them so far as possible loathsome and disgusting to men, I would favor this
so-called reform, which proposes to make doctors of them." This was in 1869, less
than twenty-five years ago. We trust this editor has taken the position of the wise
man, who always changes his mind when he finds that his conclusions have been based
upon false conceptions. We hope that he is alive today to see that his prophecy has
failed utterly of its fulfillment. The curse which he feared has proved a blessing
both to men and women. Why should the office of physician make women "loath-
some and disgusting to men?"
The modesty and sense of propriety, which, in their opinion, should forever keep
us from the halls of medical colleges where we may study with all grave and reverend
feeling the mysteries of these bodies of ours, which are truly "fearfully and wonder-
fully made," and which can only inspire us with awe, and a more firm belief in the
wisdom and love of our Creator. While this type of person is filled with consterna-
tion at the thought of woman as student and physician, there seems never to have
entered his masculine brain the possibility of woman's objection to lay bare all her
secrets and sufferings, and to receive the administrations necessary at his hands.
Custom has so long given him these privileges that he cannot easily adapt himself to
any change. It was said, too, that the result of woman's medical education would be
a lowering of her moral nature. This also has proved untrue.
It is said, also, that woman has not sufficient physical strength to endure the
demands of the life of the physician. This also is fallacy. In reply to questions sent
out to large numbers of women in the profession, the universal answer has been
" health better than before entering the profession." Many of them add: " I attribute
it to the constant tonic of fresh air." To be sure it is a laborious life, so is that of the
society woman, with far less mental compensation. Work seldom kills; to each of its
victims can be counted ten killed by discontent, born of too much time, and too little
definite aim and purpose in life. It is well known that the Blackwell sisters, Eliza-
beth and Emily, were the pioneers in medical education. This was in 1845. There
was no college willing to admit a woman, and not until 1849 did the elder sister grad-
uate. A Boston journal at that time published an article in which we find this sen-
tence: "The ceremonies of graduating Miss Blackwell at Geneva may well be called
a farce. The profession was quite too full before." Even this criticism did not put a
stop to the whole business, as evidently this cynic expected it would. Think of the
crowded condition of the profession having added to its numbers one lone woman. It
was the beginning of a new era. What had been done could be done again. It is interest-
ing to note the courage and perseverance of these women. Dr. Susan B. Edson was the
entering wedge to open the doors of the Cleveland HomcEopathic College. She grad-
uated in 1854. Says the " Woman's Tribune: " This college would not sell its scholar-
ships to women." It was owing on the construction of its new building which it could
not pay, and the creditor insisted on having a scholarship before he turned over the
keys of the building. This scholarship he sold to Miss Edson, who became thereby
entitled to enter. They had a faculty meeting over her, and decided that she could
not enter the following year, but she informed them that she should be there. "Well,"
said the president, " it will not be very pleasant for you." "That is your lookout,"
said Miss Edson; " If the men who come here to study medicine cannot treat a woman
decently here, they are not fit to treat them elsewhere. If I live I shall be here."
When the authorities found that she could not be frightened away, they admitted a
few others who applied later. Dr. Edson was for years the physician of President
Garfield and his family, and " was in constant attendance upon him during his last
270 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
illness, though he was under the surgical care of six other physicians." She also
*' introduced to the United States the first Chinese baby of rank born in this country."
There are now thirty-six medical colleges which admit mixed classes, and five med-
ical schools exclusively for women, besides a school of pharmacy for women at Louis-
ville, Ky. All this since 1849, when one woman was too great a crowd for the Boston
editor. He has probably gone long since, to the country where, if present indications
are at all reliable, he will find the majority of its inhabitants women. What are the
qualifications necessary for a woman to be successful in the profession? We can
only give a few of them.
First, energy and courage, self reliance, great perseverance, firmness, love for sci-
entific truths, dignity above and beyond all true womanliness. There was never greater
mistake made than in thinking one's influence greater, or that it is in any sense neces-
sary, to become masculine or mannish when entering upon any line of public work.
The exact reverse is true. We can neither afford to create prejudice nor offend good
taste by being ill-mannered or ill-bred. To hold the confidence and respect of both
good men and good women we must not only avoid evil in all forms, but even the
appearance of evil. Each one must prove her ability by doing better work than her
brother practitioner to receive the same credit. Does she lose a patient, nine out of
ten of the neighbors and friends will say, or think, if too courteous to express their
opinion, you should have known better than to have employed a woman. Does her
brother physician lose half a dozen in the same neighborhood, there are grateful words
of how he stood by them to the last; of how peculiar were the complications of dis-
ease, and the impossibility of understanding the dispensations of providence. Unjust,
do you say ? Yes, but it will grow less so as the years go by. For already it is becom-
ing noticeable that women do not lose their patients as frequently or in as large a per
cent as do men. This is easily accounted for when we pause to consider the facts
and reason to natural conclusions. Men too frequently drift into the profession. The
father, or brother, or uncle, is a doctor, and it is easy to read with them, and so they
drift, as we say, into the medical profession, without thought of special fitness, or
special taste, or qualification. Not so with the woman seeking this avocation. Truly
to her must there be a distinct call, an overwhelming must. There is no ease or drift-
ing to her. She must be the woman who has the pride of excelling, the pride of
standing at the head, who will have the best and do the best or nothing. Who has
the courage of her convictions, who knows no defeat. This is the type of woman who
comes into the profession because nature, which is our most imperative councilor,
has been her teacher; because she knows that suffering womanhood can be better
understood by women than it ever can be by men. Theory and experience are widely
different in practical results. The woman understands at once, from a woman's knowl-
edge and woman's standpoint, what the man fails to get from books or theory, and
cannot experience in himself. The prejudice against women among the men of the
profession is fast dying out in college and class room; at the bedside and in our med-
ical societies we are accorded every help and encouragement, every courtesy and
equality. It is only occasionally that we meet one of the ancient type, and he
impresses us with a feeling of amusement rather than one of resentment. It is said
that women are nervous and fail in emergencies. This is a libel upon the sex. No
greater acts of heroism have ever been shown to the world than those performed by
women. It is my experience and observation that sex has nothing to do whatever
with the matter of coolness in emergency. I have seen extremely nervous men in the
profession, and women who, for calrhness, might have stepped from the pedestal of
the marble statue. Knowledge is the basis of self-reliance. The man or woman who
knows what to do and does it, knows also that they have nothing to fear either from
public criticism or self-accusation, whatever the results may be.
In a medical journal we read, not long since, two articles, both upon women as
physicians and surgeons. The editor must have had a fine sense of humor, placing
them, as he did, upon consecutive pages of his journal. The first stated certain facts
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 271
regardint; some operations performed, then added words of praise and thanksgiving
that "the time had come when women coming to the hospital or clinic could there
meet women as physician and surgeon, standing side by side as equals with the men
in the profession, thus taking away much of the fear and dread which every woman
must feel in being in the hands of men only during her unconscious helplessness.
Now woman was there as operator or assistant, with deft touch, kindly encourage-
ment, gentle womanly ministration, although thoroughly scientific and strong to do
her duty." The pages following were also in regard to her position as physician.
The writer, a man, as in the former article, said that " while women had proven them-
selves capable, they had also proved to be utterly heartless, and without pity or sense
of care and gentleness;" that they were " far less cautious in inflicting pain," and
ended by a most solemn warning to all women to "avoid the sex professionally, unless
they expected and wish rough handling." Here were two men speaking from their
respective standpoints — the one of elderly years and long experience, a firm friend of
woman, and one who has done much to place her in the position which she holds
today in the profession. The other, a young man, with probably a rival whom he
wished to annihilate. Possibly he had met one who did not honor her calling. Even
among the disciples of our Lord there was one who failed utterly in his professions.
We do not take him as a type, however, of the other eleven. Women do not ask
favors, they expect criticism. They do not ask leniency, but they do ask justice and
fair dealing. Taking the same course of study — passing the same examinations,
standing, with but few exceptions, at the head of her classes, compelling by her hard-
earned success the admiration of both faculty and classmates — woman demands only
fair play, at the hands of both the men in the profession and the public at large. She
should have, too, in all state and public institutions where women and children are
confined, the first positions as physician in charge. The conditions unearthed in some
of our insane asylums, so monstrous as to defy, almost, our belief in possibilities,
would be made impossible did we have women as physicians and attendants, as we
should have. In our police stations, our jails and prisons, wherever we find women
degraded, poverty-stricken or diseased, there should we find women by their side as
physician. We are so frequently told that women do not stand by each other, do
not trust each other, and then when we ask that she may be placed in positions where
she may prove this assertion untrue, they are refused her. These congresses, meeting
as they have, day after day, and month after month, have been one great object lesson
of the fallacy of this saying.
Believing most thoroughly in womanhood and womankind, proud of my sisters
in the profession and the business world, you will accept kindly, I trust, one bit of
criticism which I have to offer, some of our business and professional women; that is,
in regard to the use of our names. Think of Susan B. Anthony as " Susie," or Harriet
Beecher Stowe as " Hattie " Beecher Stowe. Would our peerless Frances Willard
seem quite as dignified as " Fannie?" Had Abigail Adams lived in our day we hope
she would not have been "Abbie," or that Martha Washington would have been "Mat-
tie." We have grave fears, however, and feel thankful that they got safely into another
world before losing the plain but dignified names which always convey a sound of
strength and sturdy independence. Personally, we see no necessity for the women in
the profession to use the whole name unless they so wish. The initials only are suf-
ficient for men — why not for women? Let me make this plea, then, for greater appre-
ciation of the small things which go to make up the success of our business life, one
of which, by no means the smallest, is a more dignified standard for the names which
we bear, and which we all hope to hand down to posterity as honored, worthy a place
among those remembered as having done something to lessen the sum total of human
suffering, and to have made broader the pathway and brighter the light shining upon
woman's work. That work, in its many departments, has received an impetus by these
congresses, held during this never-to-be-forgotten year, which in their results can never
be measured. W^e have taken great strides in learning, in this world-wide touch with
272 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
humanity, that " all mankind is kin," learned that we have one common interest, and
that "from one blood was made all nations of the earth." To this great American
republic, founded upon principles of justice and freedom for all good, must we give
the no small honor of first placing woman with equal education, equal rights and equal
privileges in the medical profession. Here, with a purpose unfaltering, a will unchang-
ing and a faith undying, does she stand, to work for the betterment of humanity and
add what she may to the sum of human happiness.
THE LEGAL PROFESSION FOR WOMEN.
By MRS. WINONA BRANCH SAWYER.
The Constitution of the United States is to woman as an Emancipation Procla-
mation, in that it erects no barriers, imposes no limitations, sanctions no discrimina-
tions on account of sex. Tacitly implying the per-
fect equality of man and woman as citizens, alike
entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
its v^ery silence concerning the status of woman is an
eloquent pleading in her behalf.
Even in those countries where woman had been
esteemed most happy, we find her debarred by the
salic law, restrained by the canon law, coerced by the
common law, subordinated by the civil law, misrepre-
sented and robbed of freedom of will by the fictions of
the statutory law. Whether enthroned as the idol of
chivalry in one country, or bartered as chattels in
another; whether affronted by poligamy, or tormented
with a condition between indifference and contempt;
whether immured by asceticism, or given the free-
dom of social expulsion; whether crowned with a
halo of a Madonna, or dishonored with the stigma of
a Magdalen, in every land and in every age she has
been the one legislated against, the one excluded
from the benefit and deprived of the protection of
the law.
The Renaissance and Reformation, which indeed
widened existing horizons, sketched no line of demarcation between the zenith of
man's prerogative and the nadir of woman's proscription, but the great wave of Revo-
lution — a self-consciousness and self-assertion of individuality — which had been gath-
ering momentum for generations, culminated on the shores of the Western Continent.
Our country is pledged to a mission of justice to the individual. There is no forcing
back the waters of this tide, no "thus far and no farther." Those who attempt to close
the flood gates, to repairthe old-time dykes, are wasting precious time which might better
be improved in accommodating themselves to the requirements of the age. The under-
tow of this current has been undermining and sweeping away the accumulated debris
of custom and tradition. The prejudices of race and religion have gone, and the dis-
qualification of sex is disappearing by the free opening up of all professions to meri-
torious applicants.
That " custom is law," is recognized as one of the fundamental maxims in ancient
jurisprudence. For many ages advocates and judges tried to make all litigation rest
on this "Procrustean bed." The deformities and failures which resulted from their
efforts, gave rise to a new code based on principles of justice and denominated equity.
Mrs. Winona Branch Sawyer is a native of New York. She was born in 1847. Her parents were Rev. Wm. Branch and
Elizabeth Trowbridge Branch. She was educated at Mt. CarroU Seminary, 111., Class of 1871. She has traveled in all part« of
the United States. She married Mr. A. J. Sawyer in 1875. She is engaged in literary parsoits and in aiding, self-sastaining
young men and women to obtain a start in life. Over twenty-five sach yonng i)eople have been members of her family. Her
principal literary works are addresses, lectures, essays, fiction and newspaper correspondence; her profession, attorney at
law. She was admitted to the bar of the District Conrt in 1887; to the Supreme Court in 1889. She began the study of law
under her husband's instruction. While not actively in the practice she assists her husband in the preparation of his cases.
PostoflSce address, Lincoln, Neb.
(18) 273
MRS. WINONA BRANCH SAWYER.
274 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
In no department of law is the change more marked than in its application to woman.
The common law measured her with the "regulation girdle" of home-maker and
home-keeper. She was commanded and compelled to fill her prescribed limit of
obedience and servitude. She was subordinated and coerced, lest she outgrow the
standard. Thus saith the old law: "The husband hath by law power and dominion
over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her,
provided the size of the cane be no larger than his thumb." The civil law gave to the
husband the same or a greater authority over his wife.
What to do with woman has ever been one of the knottiest points of the law. At
first, jurists thought to evade the issue by attempting to reduce woman to a ghostly
nonentity; but, like Banquo's ghost, she would not "down" at the command of her
Macbeth. Next she was concealed beneath the garb of legal fictions, and under the
guise of vested rights smuggled through the departments of the blind goddess.
One link after another in the myriad chains which fettered her freedom and inde-
pendence has been broken, until she is now not only recognized in legal procedure,
but admitted into the very halls of justice, as an officer of the court, and permitted to
participate in its proceedings. She may not only advocate her own rights, but may
plead the rights of others. She has left in the rear her former colleagues — infants,
idiots and the insane — and almost overtaken her rivals of the fifteenth amendment.
Perhaps you recall some early morn after a night of storm and darkness, how the
first gleams of light struggled through scarcely perceptible rifts in the clouds, closing
and reopening as the billowy curtains of the night were swayed by the lingering
tempest. Anon a roseate hue would tinge the receding clouds, then spread and
change until the many colors were blended into clear effulgent light, and the golden
sun looked from the dazzling sky. Then the whole stretch of earth became eloquent
with voice of man and bird and the hum of industry.
* Such has been the breaking of dawn to woman, after her long civil night. The
Sapphos and Cornelias, the Esthers and Hortensias, were only fitful gleams amid the
surrounding shadows of superstitious customs. From the age of chivalry, which
tinged her career with the rosy light of sentiment and love, the changes were rapid.
Great rays of light, like Queen Elizabeth, Madame de Stael, Hannah Moore and
Florence Nightingale gleamed above the horizon. The legal fictions and the
guardians of her person and property melted away like the mist, and the present cent-
ury ushered in a day of life and activity for woman in every department of art,
science, literature and the professions.
This achievement has not been instantaneous. No " open sesame " has mirac-
ulously placed within her reach this accumulated wealth of all vocations. No
alchemy has transmuted the base elements of ignominy and degradation, to the
noblest types of respect and equality. Woman has not obtained a place in the pro-
fession by " demanding her rights," as Shylock contended for his pound of flesh, but
like Portia, by unfolding the harmony and the correllation of legal and equitable
claims.
The present century recognizes that the sphere of women is no longer a mooted
question. Merit has no sex; and the meritorious lawyer, man or woman, who deserves
success, who can both work and wait to win, is sure to achieve both recognition and
reward.
Of the three so-called "learned professions" which are necessities of civilization,
the legal profession has been perhaps the most reluctant to swing open its portals to
admit in fellow ship the former "pariahs" of legal procedure : nevertheless these majestic
gates have in hundreds of cases responded to the reiterated taps of a woman's hand.
In some states requests for admission to the bar were unheeded, and the dockets are
tarnished by the lawsuits which ensued ere the struggle for recognition was ended.
Even supreme courts and legislatures have been importuned for opinions and special
enactments, that woman might waive the custom of a proxy, and stand iii suo jure, in
the presence of the ermine. The woman lawyer has ceased to be a novelty. The
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 275
United States inaugurated her reign, and like all American inventions, no matter how
ultra and radical the innovation may appear, the indorsement of the inaugurator is a
sufficient guarantee for its propriety and legality. Since June, 1869, upward of three
hundred women have been admitted to practice law in the various state and federal
courts, and at least one-third of these are in actual practice. It is a^ impossible to give
the exact number of women lawyers ir^ the United States, as it would be to state the
actual number of practitioners among men. Twenty-two states have reported seventy-
four women lawyers in active practice. Four states, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana and
Maryland have statutory prohibitions comprised in the words " male citizens." In the
remaining eighteen states and territories there is no agitation of the subject at pres-
ent, but nothing in the laws to prevent their admission.
That the proportion of women engaged in the law is less than in the other profes-
sions is, in a measure, due to the peculiar requirements of the law. Woman may be the
weakest in this profession, but in it she lifts with the longest lever the social and legal
status of her sex. A certain sentimentality concerning sex, supplemented by her
innate dread of criticism, are the two monstrous lions that intimidate her at the
entrance to the Palace Beautiful.
Also it is no trifling education that is needed for successful competition in this
profession. The ramifications of the law are infinite, and the successful lawyer must
be versed in all subjects. The law is not a mere conglomeration of decisions and
statutes; otherwise " Pretty Poll " might pose as an able advocate. A mind unadapted
to investigation, unable to see the reasons for legal decisions, is as unreliable at the
bar as is a color-blind person in the employ of a signal corps. The woman lawyer who
demands an indemnity against failure must offer as collateral security not only the
ordinary school education, but also a knowledge of the world and an acquaintance
with that most abstruse of all philosophies — human nature. She must needs cultivate
all the common sense and tact with which nature has endowed her, that she may
adjust herself to all conditions. She must possess courage to assert her position and
maintain her place in the presence of braggadocio and aggressiveness, with patience,
firmness, order and absolute good nature; a combativeness which fears no Rubicon;
a retentiveness of memory which classifies and keeps on file minutest details; a self-
reliance which is the sine qua non of success; a tenacity of purpose and stubbornness of
perseverance which gains ground, not by leaps, but by closely contested hair breadths;
a fertility of resource which can meet the " variety and instantaneousness " of all occa-
sions; an originality and clearness of intellect like that of Portia, prompt to recognize
the value of a single drop of blood; a critical acumen to understand and discriminate
between the subtle technicalities of law and an aptness to judge rightly of the interpre-
tation of principles.
No more is required of woman than of man, for it is said: "God made her to
match the men," not rival them, but perhaps not one in ten of the men who enter the
legal profession succeeds, and not one in fifty of these attains any degree of eminence.
It is premature to attempt to judge of the effect of women lawyers on the bar, for
as a class they are yet minors. The universal verdict concerning their reception by
their brothers-in-law is that of courtesy, kindness, and cordial welcome.
P2ven if woman's achievements were placed at issue with those of the Alexanders,
the Caesars, the Hannibals and the Napoleons of the other sex, woman would not enter
a nolle pros., nor lose her case by default, for it must be remembered that there are
conquerors who do not inscribe the record of their conquests on the landscape, with
sword and spear, nor write their victories with blood. In the enlargement of her legal
privileges woman has invaded and conquered realms unknown to the Macedonian
madman; by her identification with economic and political questions she has been an
important factor in a type of civilization unimagined by the dread arbiter of Rome;
in a successful campaign against civil disabilities and the allegations of incompetency
she has executed vows more ennobling than the oath of the Carthaginian general, and
in the uplifting of her sex she follows a diviner star of ambition than that which set
276 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
at St. Helena. Contact with the world shows woman that she has not yet learned her
strength. Acquaintance with history demonstrates that even such men as Webster,
Clay and Douglas did not escape shipwreck on the troubled sea of worldly ambition.
It is particularly fitting for woman to enter the legal profession in view of her
former status under the law. Where she has been most ignored, there should she vin-
dicate her worthiness. Before that bar which at one time recognized her individual-
ism, save when a criminal, should she demonstrate the dualism of sex. She who has
suffered wrong should stand where wrongs are corrected.
In civil actions a large percentage of clients are women. In questions which
involve foreclosure of mortgages, probating and contesting wills, collecting claims,
settling estates, clearing titles, marriage and divorce laws, the custody of children,
management of public schools and many others, it is not equitable for one sex to
settle matters in which both have a vital interest.
In regard to the demand for women lawyers, it must be confessed that in the great
mart called the world, where all classes of exchangeable things are regulated by the
one universal law of " demand and supply," the " calls " for Helens and Cleopatras and
Eugenias exceed the demand for Portias and Deborahs and Hypatias. Woman her-
self must create a demand for her talents, by a broader education, by giving less atten-
tion to petty details of life and more attention to those of vital importance, by out-
growing the chrysalis of the butterfly, to enter the realm of a bold thinker. Insofar
as women prepare themselves for lives of increased usefulness, broadening in every
way, they receive recognition.
There is not encouragement for all women anxious for employment or a liveli-
hood to enter the legal profession, for, as with men, it requires peculiar ability, both
natural and acquired, to insure success.
Evidences of misfits are too frequently seen in all professions. No woman, there-
fore, who has no predilection for law should seek the profession. An eminent writer
has said: " It requires two workmen to make a lawyer, the Almighty and the man him-
self. The legal mind is the workmanship of God, and no power beneath His can create
it. Not possessing it, no one ever became a successful lawyer; with it, no one ever
failed if he earnestly tried."
Of the law it is said: "There can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is
the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth
do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempt from
her power." While America's sons sit at the feet of this divine Law, let not the
daughters be unmindful of the peculiar position which they occupy. While old cus-
toms are crumbling and hoary usages are tottering with decay, woman, emerging from
the bondage and solitude of their ruins, offers in evidence her broken chains, mute
witnesses that she has both felt the "power" and participates in the "care" of that
law; therefore, her homage is due, and her voice needed with that of man to complete
the harmony of the world.
In England there is a bird which builds its nest on the ground, but its note is never
heard except when on the wing. "The skylark to the first sunbeam gives her voice;
and, singing, soars."
So above woman is an azure waiting to be filled with the melodious rapture of a
new day. As long as she was confined by customs and laws in the obscurity of " vested
rights," her voice was never heard; but no sooner were the gates of a day of civil free-
dom unlocked than from press, pulpit, rostrum and the bar resounded her voice. If
progress is to be real, men and women must go forth hand in hand along its many
paths, and together advocate and promulgate principles of equity, while they bear aloft
the standard of a universal jurisprudence as perfect in its application as is the law in
theory.
WHAT THE WOMEN OF KANSAS ARE DOING TODAY.
By MRS. EUGENE WARE.
Owing to the fact that the state of Kansas had its birth at a time of a great crisis
in the life of our nation, and as the women of the state have been an important factor
in its growth and development, and as Kansas has
always been the battle-ground where the political and
ethical questions which have interested the people,
have been and are being fought and decided by pub-
lic opinion and by legislation; and inasmuch as these
conditions have made Kansas women, like the Israel-
ites of old, " a peculiar people," it may not seem pre-
tentious to follow the footsteps of my sisters over the
ground they have trod, reviewing the progress they
have made, and discussing the work in which they are
today engaged.
When the vast area is considered which we
acquired as a state, with its western portion almost a
Sahara (although it is gradually being transformed
into an irrigated garden); when we consider that from
185 1 to 1865 its eastern boundary was torn by con-
tending factions, and overwhelmed by civil war; when
we consider that from then until now we have been
in turn the victims of grasshoppers, drouths, floods
and cyclones, or the prey of strange politics and poli-
ticians, who, though with us, are not of us; when we
consider that the state has been infested by cranks,
"isms" and seisms; by those who thought they had bright ideals and purposes, and by
those who had purposes without ideals; when we consider all these obstacles to suc-
cess, what wonder is it that we have been called " poor, bleeding Kansas," and regarded
with successive pity, admiration and dislike?
In the midst of every calamity the Kansas women have remained undaunted.
Shoulder to shoulder, singly and together, they have fought with poverty and mis-
fortune; have fought for principle and improvement, and have kept through it all their
faith in Kansas. As one corps of workers grew weary or faint-hearted another took
up the struggle, working perhaps on an entirely different line, but all to the same pur-
pose, to make the state a grand factor in the uplifting of humanity, a power for good
which should be felt wherever the name of Kansas might reach on this broad earth —
a synonym for principle and right.
In the early days, before the war, there came out from Puritan, liberty-loving New
England, colonies of men and women who were inspired to make a home in Kansas, a
"home of the brave and the free;" men and women whose one desire was to secure
liberty of race, of action, and of opinion.
How much these early pioneers suffered for the sake of this great cause will be
known only when the Omnipotent Lover of Freedom makes up the jewels for His
Mrs. Eagene F. Ware is a native of Straftsbory, Vt. She was born June 19, 1849. Her parents were George Hantington
and Abigail Galnstra. She gradnated from Yassar College in 1870, and has traveled through the United States, Canada and
Enrope. She married Eagene F. Ware (" Ironqaill ") of Kansas, and is the mother of four children. Mrs. Ware is a woman
of rare culture and refinement; devoted to the best interests of society. In religious faith she is a Christian, and amember
of the Baptist Church. Her postofiice address isTopeka, Kan.
277
MRS, EUGENE F. WARE.
278 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
crown. The history of those early struggles was most ably written by the wife of our
first state governor, Mrs. Charles Robinson. Vivid are the pictures she presents of
the midnight ride, the attacks of the Indians, wolves, and of fell famine; the burning
of the prairies with perhaps the little shanty itself, and most of the earthly belongings
of its occupants. These things, and many greater than these, which brave women
experienced without flinching, or yielding their purpose to make Kansas free, show
the fortitude and heroic spirit of the pioneer Kansas woman. When " home they
brought her warrior dead, she nor swooned nor uttered sigh." Silently, quietly, she
took up the duty that came nearest to her, caring for the home, nursing the sick, scrap-
ing lint and making bandages, yet in the midst of all cares, at all times, she gave the
impetus which kept brave men from wavering.
Thus, when Kansas became a state, the strong sentiment which possessed each
soul was that of patriotism and freedom. These were the principles which the first
Kansas teachers, who were also women, sought to instill into the minds of their pupils.
Is it remarkable that Kansas children, born of such mothers, and instructed by
such teachers, should feel that they live for a purpose, and that their mission is to
promote in every way possible, the welfare of Kansas and mankind?
After the war the influx of immigration added great numbers to the already accli-
mated New Englander, and brought the hospitable, genial-hearted Southerner, the
energetic New Yorker, and the staunch, sturdy people from the North and West. These
additions to our population had the effect of making the state thoroughly cosmopol-
itan.
We entertain every difference of opinion and belief. We arc orthodox and hetero-
dox, suffragists and anti-suffragists, temperance and anti-temperance. Christians,
agnostics, and theosophists.
The result of all this comingling of forces is to rub down the rough edges of eccen-
tricities and pet hobbies, and to teach a wholesome respect for the opinion of other
people, and to give a capacity to perceive that they may be right and we ourselves be
wrong. This process is now going on.
The church and missionary associations are largely the work of women, and the
fact that today there are about three thousand church organizations in Kansas, and
over two hundred and fifty thousand church members, shows how zealous and devoted
has been the labor in that direction.
The number of moral and social reforms and charitable institutions which these
same women have established — non-sectarian in character — proves how little there is
of religious bigotry and intolerance, and gives the secret of the marvelous growth of
the churches in our progressive state; for the motto under which the women work is:
" In things essential, unity; things doubtful, liberty; and in all things, charity."
The temperance workers feel that their labors are nearly ended since the prohibi-
tion amendment has been added to the constitution, and prohibition has become a
law.
Women who came into all the dangers and privations of a new territory came to
help make Kansas not only a free state, but a free woman's state. These were aided
by the best talent of the East, who canvassed the territory, that when Kansas should
become a state the same privileges should be accorded to women as to men in the laws
which were to govern both. Though they were unsuccessful, their efforts have given
us the most favorable laws regarding the rights and property of women of any state
in the Union, except perhaps Wyoming.
The Woman's Club is a living, breathing, influencing institution in Kansas. Else-
where it is a great power, but with us it is an inspiration. There are reasons for this.
Kansas is yet young — only thirty-two years old — and, although making rapid strides
in many directions, she is as yet almost destitute of the fine art galleries, vast libraries
and opportunities for intellectual research which are only acquired by wealth and age.
Some years ago when the Chautauqua movement was started it was seized upon by
Kansas women as a vital opportunity which should not be lost. They became also
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 279
interested in university extension, and club extension; and clubs sprang up as if by
magic in almost every city, town hamlet and school district throughout the state, like
the "walls of corn" pn its rolling and verdant prairies. We have Mothers' Clubs,
Ethical Clubs, The Woman's Press Club, and The Authors' and Artists' Club, which
includes both sexes; also the annual Chautauqua Assembly, and last, but not least, the
Social Science Club.
Each year since this last society was formed, the circle of its influence has ex-
panded; the contact of bright minds, the interchange of ideas, the discussion of literary,
artistic and practical questions has had a broadening effect which has gone beyond the
boundaries of the state. The members of the society form a state acquaintance which
of itself is an education. Today there are on its enrolled list nearly a thousand names
which represent the culture and intellect of the women of the state, with tastes so
diverse and lines of study so varied that they can say with Browning —
"I have not chanted verse like Horner's — No
Nor swept string like Terpander, no; nor carved
And painted men like Phidias and his friend.
I am not great as they are, point by point;
But I have entered into sympathy with these four,
Running these into one soul,
Who separate, ignored each other's arts;
Say, is it nothing that I know them all?"
This year — the year 1893 — the Social Science Club took one step onward. Em-
boldened by its marked success and accumulation of membership and energy it merged
itself into a Social Science Federation, taking in all the local clubs who may wish to
join.
In isolated places where there is no club the Social Science Federation is prepar-
ing to send out delegates to help organize such a society with a plan of work adapted
to the taste and mental requirements of the persons sought. In this way the club
woman hopes to bring a mental stimulant to every careworn, tired housewife, who has
nothing to look forward to but the monotonous routine of farm life, and its lonesome
cares. To such a woman a reading club, debating circle or literary society of any kind
is a godsend. It takes her outside of herself and outside of the economy and care
with which her life is filled and leads her into the green pastures of thought and
imagination and beside the still waters of hope.
To save the intellect from stagnation, as well as to awaken lofty thoughts and
purposes in a dormant mind is a mission only less than that of saving a soul, if per-
chance it does not often save the soul.
Outside the club, however, there is an ever-increasing list of women in the state
who are making a name and fortune for themselves by original literary effort.
We who follow are still traveling in the same path as did the pioneer Kansas
woman, but with this difference, which, better than I can give, is summed up in the
words of a noble Kansas man, who is a noble friend of Kansas men and women. I refer
to Noble L. Prentis, Esq:
" But the worst is over; gone are border ruffians and drouth and privation; gone
danger and difficulty. The sunflowers are growing on the roof of the abandoned dug-
out and within the roofless walls of the old sod house. The claim is a farm with
broad green, or golden, or russet acres now. The family is sheltered in a stately man-
sion now. Having brought Kansas about where she wanted it, the Kansas woman is
devoting her attention to culture, to literature, to music, to art. She discusses all the
artists from Henry Worrall, a Kansas artist, to Praxiteles; all the musicians from
Nevada to the piper who, according to Irish tradition, played before Moses. She be-
longs to the Kansas Social Science Club, and traverses the field of human knowledge
and investigation, from the hired girl to the most abstruse problems of society and
government. In the summer she goes to Long Branch and Saratoga, and is accom-
280 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
panied by her daughter, born in Kansas, a girl who has caught in the meshes of her
hair the light of the Kansas sun, and in her eyes the violet shadow that girts the Kan-
sas sky at evening. With this beauteous companion she goes about the world, blessed
with that calm serenity which characterizes people who have an assured position; who
do not want the earth, because they already possess all of it worth having. But if you
would disturb this dignified repose; if you would see the frown of Juno, and hear some-
thing like the thunder of Jupiter, just intimate to her that Kansas is not the best country
in the world, or that it was ever anything else.
" And today in Kansas song and story stands Kansas woman. She has climbed
through difficulties to the realms of the stars. Below her lower the dark clouds, and
mutter the reverberating thunders of civil strife; below her are the mists of doubt and
difficulty; below her are the cold snows and bleak winds of adversity; above her God's
free heaven, and before her Kansas as she shall be in the shining, golden tomorrow."
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.*
By MISS ELEANOR L. LORD.
Apropos of such disturbances of the national equanimity as the New Orleans lynch-
ing affair or the Behring Sea difficulties occasioned, the subject of international rela-
tions becomes one of sudden and special interest to
the general public. Of all the multitudinous prob-
lems that confront the present generation, the war
problem has been, perhaps, the slowest to awaken
popular feeling to anything like rebellion against war-
fare and its consequences. The speculations of the-
orists have been confined in their influence to very
narrow circles; and the possibility of the abolition of
war, and of the downfall of the standing army, has
scarcely dawned upon the world at large. The expe-
riences of recent years, however, have here and there
afforded opportunities for theories of peaceful arbi-
tration to be put to the test of practice; and the time
cannot be far distant when public opinion will be
called upon to declare the final verdict of success
or failure for international arbitration as a working
system.
As it is understood today, international arbitra-
tion is limited in meaning, implying: (i) The par-
ticipation of sovereign states of acknowledged inde-
pendence and autonomy; (2) a formal agreement ::n
the part of the litigants to submit their difficulties to
the decision of an arbitrating body or individual; (3) the consent of the latter to
undertake such decision and to render an award after a thorough and impartial exam-
ination of the facts in the case; (4) an agreement on the part of the contracting parties
to accept the decision as final and conclusive.
Before passing to the application of pacific principles to international relations in
the present century, it may be well to review briefly changes which the last nineteen
hundred years have witnessed in the attitude of civilized nations toward war. The
Christian religion, as taught by its Founder and His disciples, placed especial empha-
sis on the principles of brotherly love, forbearance, forgiveness of enemies, and peace
and good will toward all men. All the records of the early church which have come
down to us of the first two centuries of its existence would seem to show that the
inconsistency of warfare with the tenets of the new religion had made a strong impres-
sion upon the sect. There is a saying current among the early fathers that Jesus, in
disarming Peter, disarmed all soldiers; and it is a remarkable fact that so large a num-
ber of Christians refused to serve in the armies of Rome. It is to be remembered,
however, that comparatively few individuals experienced anything like " conversion,"
Miss Eleanor Louisa Lord is a native of Salem, Mass. She was born Jaly 27th, 186(5. Her parents were Henry Clay
Lord and Katherine Holland Lord. She was educated at the public Krammar and high school, of Maiden, Mass., at Smith
College (Class of '87), Fellow in History Bryn Mawr College, 1888-89. She is a woman of wide culture and commanding
appearance. Her special work has been in the interest of histor}- and economics. Her profession is instructor in history in
Smith College, Massachusetts. Miss Lord is a member of the ('ongregational Church. Her poetofflce address is No. 46
Auburn Street, Maiden, Mass.
MISS ELEANOR LOUISA LORD.
*Published by permission of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
281
282 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in the sense of a readjustment of themselves to a new. standard of life and thought.
When whole armies were converted en masse, as in the days of Clovis, there seems to
have been no question of exchanging their arms for the weapons of spiritual warfare.
It was the church, as an organization, that throughout the Middle Ages uttered the
sole remonstrance against the practice of private war. When in France the atrocities
of feudal warfare became so great as to threaten the very foundations of society, it
was the church that came to the rescue with the " Peace of God," and, five years later,
the " Truce of God," by which fighting was forbidden from Thursday morning to
Monday morning of each week, on all feast days and in Lent, leaving, practically, about
eighty days in the year when war was allowable. During the eleventh and twelfth
centuries numerous associations were formed, which were the prototypes, on a small
scale, of modern peace societies. There was not as yet, however, any conception of
international peace. The word international could hardly have had any meaning.
To the Pope, the head of the church, the world looked for judgment in political
quarrels. Although the sacredness of their high position would seem to have pecu-
liarly fitted them for the position of universal arbiters, the Popes lacked one indis-
pensible qualification of an umpire — impartiality.
Mediaeval methods of grappling with the war problem ended then in practical
failure; and the cause of universal peace was forgotten in the horrors of the Inquisition
and the bloodthirsty wars of the Reformation. The conception of Henry IV. of
France, of a grand Christian Republic of fifteen states, and his scheme of international
arbitration were too far in advance of his time not to have been regarded either as
the dreams of a visionary fanatic or as a subtile attempt at the aggrandizement of
France. Here it will be observed that the character of the peace movement has
changed. It is no longer religious, but political in its aims. Efforts toward recon-
ciliation no longer originate with the church, but with monarchs and statesmen. The
opening of the nineteenth century brought with it a return to the religious point of
view, and to the primitive notion that Christianity is the basis of all international law.
Europe entered upon the century worn out with conflict, and in desperate need of
peace. Russia, Austria and Prussia accordingly in 1815 formed what is known as the
Holy Alliance, agreeing by sacred compact to respect the great principles of right
and justice, and to repress violence — promises which fell far short of fulfilment.
In 1818, at the conference held at Aix-la-Chapelle, the four nations that had con-
quered Napoleon, joined later by France, formed themselves into the Great Pentarchy,
in the interests of permanent peace. The Holy Alliance forms a link between the
peace policy of the past and that of the present. The unsatisfactory results of the
Grand Alliance dealt the death blow to the theory of the balance of power as an
efficient and practicable system. Henceforth all efforts toward amicable adjustment
of international affairs are to be based upon other principles. The work of the nine-
teenth century in view of this end takes on three forms:
I. The organization and work of peace conferences and associations for the pro-
motion of arbitration. 2. Legislation favoring arbitration. 3. The practicable
application of the principle.
Peace societies began to be established early in the century. Their object was
to unite all the advocates of peace for concerted action. Conferences have been held
from time to time at London, Brussels, Geneva, Paris and elsewhere, for the inter-
change of sympathy and the discussion of plans.
About 1873 efforts were made to bring the subject of arbitration before the
legislative bodies of the different countries. Signor Mancini presented a similar
resolution to the Italian Parliament the same year. From time to time petitions and
memorials have been presented to the various governments of Europe and America.
More attractive to the practical observer is the record of actual cases of settle-
ment by arbitration during the present century. Their number is surprising. I have
carefully examined the records of seventy- five cases, and there are half a dozen more
of which I have hitherto been unable to find more than a statement of the dates and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 283
participants. The questions which have proved susceptible of arbitration fall under
five main heads: i. Boundary disputes. 2. Unlawful seizure of vessels or other
property. 3. Claims for damage for the destruction of life or property. 4. Disputed
possession of territory. 5. The interpretation of treaties.
The most noteworthy cases of arbitration are two or three of special character,
which hardly come under the five heads named above. The first is the Luxembourg
question, which was settled in 1867. The jealousy manifested by France toward
Prussia during the peace negotiations which terminated the Austro-Prussian war,
found expression in Napoleon's demand for territorial recompense to reconcile France
to the changes in Europe effected by the peace of Prague. Prussia was now in pos-
session of military strength equal to that of France herself, and her recent exploits
and successes were looked upon by France as the precursor of efforts toward self-
aggrandizement. Napoleon's eye fell upon the grand duchy of Luxembourg, which
was under the sovereignty of the King of Holland, but a member of the German con-
federation until the dissolution of the latter in 1866. The fortress of Luxembourg
was still occupied by the Prussian troops. The negotiations begun by Napoleon with
the King of Holland for the annexation of the duchy to P"rance failed on account of
the objection of Prussia, whereupon F'rance demanded the evacuation of the fortress
by Pr-ussia. A warm dispute ensued, and, as the excitement spread through F^urope,
war seemed inevitable. The Queen of F^ngland, however, offered her services as
arbitrator, in accordance with Article VH. of the Treaty of Paris, 1856. It was finally
agreed that the question be settled by a conference of the great powers of Europe.
This conference met at London May 11, 1867, and decided that the fortress should be
dismantled and its neutrality guaranteed by the signatories of the Treaty of Paris.
The duchy became the property of the House of Orange. War was averted for three
years only; the jealousy of P>ance found its outlet in the Franco-Prussian war.
A rebellion of the Island of Crete (then under the rule of the Turks) occurring in
the same year, resulted in an uninterrupted struggle of two years. The great powers
of Europe pursued, for the most part, the policy of non-intervention. But Greece
manifested a friendly interest in her neighbor's welfare, and some sympathy with the
cause of the oppressed Cretans. Incensed at what was deemed the instigation of
Turkish subjects to revolt, the Porte launched at Greece an ultimatum charging her
with aiding and abetting the rebellion. The Greek minister replied haughtily, and
diplomatic relations were broken off. A threatened engagement between a Turkish
and a Greek vessel was prevented by the French minister in Greece, but the incident
brought matters to a crisis, and roused the attention of all Europe. The Prussian
government proposed to France to call a conference of the powers at London. After
much diplomatic correspondence the plan was adopted and the conference met Janu-
ary 9, 1869, but it barely escaped disintegration at the outset. Turkey, as a signatory
of the Treaty of Paris, was admitted, with deliberative powers. Greece claimed the
same privilege, but was refused in spite of indignant remonstrance. After several
sessions, a declaration was drawn up in favor of Turkey. This conference has been
variously judged, some blaming its members for assuming the functions of judges
when they had merely been invited to deliberate and advise; others praising with
much warmth the work of the conference in averting a war which might have involved
all the powers of Europe. Both criticisms are just in part. This much may be safely
said: Although its results were important, the conference can hardly be held up as a
type of a well-managed commission of arbitration.
The circumstances which led to the famous ''Alabama" case are too familiar to
need rehearsal here. The apathy of Great Britain toward the depredations of the
Confederate cruiser gave great offense to the United States government, which pro-
nounced t:ngland responsible for all these acts, and guilty of a breach of neutrality.
Diplomatic correspondence became more and more bitter, complicating rather than
clearing up the matter. After four years of weary, fruitless negotiation, settlement by
joint commission was suggested by Mr. Reverdy Johnson. The proposition was
284 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
accepted by the British minister, but failed to pass the United States Senate. The
conditions of the protocol were pronounced insufficient to secure just reparation to
the United States. It was probably only the strong aversion to war by both the liti-
gants that prevented an outbreak. When, in 1871, it was finally agreed to submit the
vexed question to arbitration, owing to the insufficiency and vagueness of international
laws, much time was wasted in the discussion of legal points. That the temper of two
nations so high-spirited as Great Britain and the United States stood the test of a long
and irritating negotiation until the vexed question was finally settled, is worthy of high
commendation. These three arbitrations, involving as they do questions of national
honor, are instructive precedents.
It is difficult to analyze the present situation of the world as to peace and war.
The history-making events of today will not be properly understood until they have
been looked at in perspective. In spite of the progress of arbitration during the last
half century, to venture an opinion one must carefully have studied the general trend
of social revolution. The character of warfare and ifs causes have greatly changed.
The brutal struggle for self-preservation is no more. Wars of conquest belong to the
days of Caesar and Alexander. Wars undertaken for the gratification of personal
ambition have hardly been possible since the First Napoleon. With the change from
unlimited to constitutional monarchy, the people have too strong a voice to allow a
war to be undertaken rrerely for the aggrandizement of an ambitious monarch; the
populace of today does not clamor for war unless under strong provocation. Broadly
speaking, we may infer that wars arising from trivial disputes tend to become less and
less frequent. On the other hand, the great underlying causes of strife tend to become
fewer, but far more deep-seated, reaching to the very vitals of national life. Whether
war will finally vanish from off the face of the earth, no man can tell. It seems
probable that conflicts will become fewer and more intense; but not until the deep-
lying causes of strife are removed will the evil be banished forever.
Fifteen years ago much was said about the establishment of an International
tribunal or of a court of arbitration. According to recent reports of the Peace Asso-
ciations, the present aim of the movement is to persuade the nations to sign arbitra-
tion treaties.
The most serious obstacle to the introduction of international arbitration as a
permanent institution has been the indecision of its advocates as to the method of
conducting cases. The most popular and successful plan has been the appointment
of a mixed commission, small enough to be easily managed, large enough to work
rapidly and systematically, unhampered by diplomatic " red tape." Still, such a com-
mission is temporary — unsuited to a scheme of permanent arbitration. A permanent
mixed tribunal would insure impartiality. Such a scheme would imply the abolition of
standing armies or a uniform reduction in their numbers. The question has been
raised by doubters, how will such a tribunal be able to enforce its decisions if the army
be banished? Some have suggested that each nation furnish its quota of soldiers to
form a kind of international police. Such an institution, however, would seem an
inconsistency, if a tribunal, aiming to substitute reason and justice for the sword and
bayonet, be obliged to use them in the execution of its decrees.
There is apparently some confusion in the public mind between an International
Court and a Permanent Commission of Arbitration. The former should mean a Court
of International Law, and to be effective, should be composed of the most eminent
jurists and statesmen of whom the world can boast, men who know the laws of
nations as they now exist, and who are capable of interpreting and codifying these
laws. There is urgent need of a complete and precise code of International Law. A
Court of International Law would find its authority in the majesty of the law, and the
moral support of the nations ought to be a sufficient guarantee for the acceptance of its
decrees. Any government which refused to abide by the decisions of so august a
body would suffer eternal disgrace in the eyes of the world, to say nothing of the
material loss of commercial good-will. The expense of such a court, shared by the
participating nations, would be comparatively light.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 285
When a dispute arose the plaintiff would at once carry the case to this great Court
of Appeals, which would investigate the said case on a purely legal basis. This would
take the place of special arbitration, but should any question not susceptible of legal
interpretation arise, a Commission of Arbitration could easily be formed from the
panel of the international jury.
There might still remain a few great questions incapable of pacific solution until
the moral consciousness of the nations becomes much more highly developed than it
is today. Is there no solution but the standing army? The question is largely eco-
nomic in character, and its discussion would occupy a much larger space than can be
spared here.
The peace question is only one of the many tangled problems with which this
generation has to deal. It may not be solved by the next generation or the next.
Whatever is done, the world looks to America for leadership. " Nothing impressed
the delegates sent from the United States to the late Peace Congress at Paris more
seriously," says the secretary of the American Peace Society in his annual report,
" than the sentiments of various European countries that it is the duty of the Great
Republic of the West not only to keep abreast with the world's endeavor to abolish
war, out to lead the nations in the better way of Universal Peace."
GEORGE ELIOT*
By MISS IDA M. STREET.
Thought flows over the world in waves. These thought-waves have different
manifestations in government, society, religion and literature. Indeed, literature may
be called their index, giving often a perfect reflection
of their manifestations in society and religion. Jus-
tin McCarty says that each reform or era of reform
has its accompanying wave of writers as well as states-
men, Whipple believes that every change in the
habits, opinions, manners, governments, and religions
of society calls for and creates a new epoch in litera-
ture, and Bascom has made the presence of these
literary waves the basis of his philosophical survey
of English literature. Moreover, there have been
borne on every new flood of thought that has swept
over the world, some individuals who have personified
the predominant idea of their era; men whose ante-
cedents, education and temperament have made them
typical of the mass of their cotemporaries; men whose
actions or whose words have voiced the peculiar theo-
ries of their times. They have not only been promi-
nent for their intrinsic genius but types of their era —
either in action, in philosophy, or in literature.
The present century has been what the Germans
would call a Sturm und Dra?ig period. It began in
revolutions, and at times seems likely to end in the
same turbulent fashion. The overpowering rush of new ideas has been made mani-
fest by the excitable French in bloody revolutions and the establishment of futile
republics, by the phlegmatic and dreamy Germans in new and startling philosophies,
by the conservative and practical English in peaceful political reforms and fresh and
highly imaginative literature.
At the close of the last century this dogmatic, arbitrary tenor of mind was repre-
sented in religion by a lifeless set of mere forms; in statesmanship, by the despotism
of the Bourbons in France, and the domination of the aristocracy in England; in lit-
erature, by the servile imitation of Boileau and Pope.
The movement peculiar to this century is the exaltation of man and law. This
movement might be more accurately compared to a tide than a flood, for it had its ebb
and flow, its spring and neap tide, its law of action and reaction. Starting from con-
ventionalism in the eighteenth century, there has not been one grand sweep on to a
Utopia of perfect liberty in the close of the nineteenth. Although we have not yet
Miss Ida M. Street is a native of Oskaloosa, la. Her parents were William B. and Carolina M. Street. To her mother,
who was a woman of wise judgment and untiring energy, is due her large intellectual attainments. She took an A. B. Degree
at Vassar College in 1880, and won the Western Association of Collegiate Alumniae Fellowship in 1888. This was the first fel-
lowship given by the association and was placed at Michigan University. She took an A. M. Degree in this university in 1889.
She has contributed essays and short poems to the Neio Englander and other periodicals. The more important of these are an
Essay on Coriolanus, a Study of Browning's Dramas, and the Christian Spirit in United States History. She holds high rank
as a professional teacher and is a young woman of rare culture and accomplishments. Her present postoifice address is
Omaha High School, Omaha, Neb.
MISS IDA M. STREET.
* The title of the address as delivered was: "George Eliot as a Representative of Her Time."
286
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 287
seen the close of the century we can distinctly trace the ebb and flow of the great
idea — liberty — and see that it has limitations and a law of control.
The first political wave appeared in the French revolution in 1792, when the
Bourbon dynasty, representing the tyranny of the feudal system, was overthrown.
The tide rose to a destructive height in the Reign of Terror. License was found to
be a greater tyrant than an absolute monarch. Popular feeling, especially in England,
revolted from the new movement. This high tide was followed by an ebb in the
emperorship of Napoleon I., and the new movement seemed utterly defeated and con-
servatism to be again in the ascendency after the battle of Waterloo. It was during
this period of reaction when the old dogmatism was again dominant, and the new
ideas were fermenting in secret, that George Eliot was born and attained maturity.
The new movement broke forth again in the French revolution of 1848. With minor
tides of success and defeat, political freedom has since steadily advanced in France,
and by reflex action in England also.
The American Revolution of 1776 had shaken England out of some of her old
ideas, when by the constitutional monarchy, inaugurated by William III. she had
already placed herself one step in advance of other European countries. For this
reason and because of the natural conservatism of English people, the danger of
bloody political revolutions was not great in England, but her peaceful reforms indi-
cated the growth of the liberating impulse. The labor trouble and plots that were
brewing under the arbitrary policy of Castlereagh were counteracted by the liberal
policy of Canning. In 1829, England emancipated the Catholics. In 1832 she passed
the Reform Bill which gave the large towns representatives in Parliament, and two
years later restored to them their right of self-government. This was the most import-
ant step in her political reform. In 1833 she abolished slavery, and struck a blow at
monopolies in commerce by opening the East-India trade to all merchants. In 1846
the protective corn laws were repealed and the principles of free-trade established.
In 1867 the new reform bill and national education made the last* steps to political
freedom. All these changes were permeated by that spirit of democracy and charity
toward one's fellowmen, that is the best element of the nineteenth-century movement.
Lecky says: " Men like Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, have probably done more
than any others to set the current of their age. They have formed a certain cast and
tone of mind. They have introduced peculiar habits of thought, new modes of rea-
soning, new tendencies of inquiry. The impulse they have given to higher literature
has been by that literature communicated to the more popular writers, and the impress
of these master minds is clearly visible in the writings of multitudes who are totally
unacquainted with their works."
The minds of men at any one era might be represented by a placid lake, into
which the theory of some great thinker, thrown like a pebble, creates ripples, at first
small, but gradually widening to the farthest shore. If several pebbles were thrown
about the same time, the result would be more or less confusion of ripples upon the
water. This was somewhat the condition of thought in the middle of the century.
This religion of humanity is the keynote to the most liberal thought of the cent-
ury. The ideas expressed by Comte have been, in one form or another, either par-
tially or wholly believed by almost every prominent man during the last fifty years,
and published in every popular magazine. Even the conservative element — the mys-
tics, as Hegel would call them — who still held to their belief in a Supreme Power
outside humanity, dwelt more often than formerly on Christ's second commandment
and preached more frequently from the text of " The Good Samaritan."
The bitter contest between science and religion has now settled down into an
amiable compromise in which religion has adopted science; but we are principally
interested in the Sturm und Drang period when this conflict was one of the straws of
the popular current. The great age of ihe earth, as told by geology, was an agitating
missile thrown by science, but probably the largest pebble from that source was Dar-
win's theory of evolution. This may be considered both as a result and a cause. It
288 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
was an outgrowth of the system of investigation and method of thought used by Dar-
win and his scientific contempories. It has been also a great impetus to the growth
of the materialistic, as opposed to the spiritualistic, theory of the origin of man. A
belief in the law of evolution does not now necessarily imply a disbelief in a Divine
Creator, but for a long time it did. The fallacy lay in the supposition that law was
itself a creator, and not a method of action. The scientists of the century have done
a missionary work in discovering and explaining laws of nature; but they have made
the mistake of deifying law, as the positivists have man.
A third pebble was John Henry Newman, and the Oxford movement. The
Tractarian gospel was a protest against the formalism of the Established Church. It
wished to convince churchmen that they did not belong to a mere national institution,
but to a living branch of that great Catholic Church which Christ had founded eight-
een centuries ago. They wished to make the dry bones live, to turn formal
devotions into joyous acts of faith and piety. Coleridge had partly paved the way for
this movement in calling attention to the writings of the earlier Anglican divines and
in his transcendental philosophy. Both Newman and Coleridge were as far as possi-
ble from the materialists in most points; they only agreed in opposition to the old
dogmatism, and belief in a divine element in man. They differed on the source of
this divinity — Coleridge and Newman deriving it from God, the materialists from
nature. Coleridge, being more of a philosopher, turned to Unitarianism; Newman, a
devotionist, to Roman Catholicism. The apparent result of Tractarianism was the
rise of Ritualism, and a great revival in the charities which had become a neglected
fringe upon the garment of the church. The practical outcome of Positivism and
Ritualism was the same — a greater devotion to the needs of humanity.
Another pebble in the pool of English thought was the iconoclast, Thomas
Carlyle. He was not the founder of any philosophy, but as a fearless disciple of
truth he demolished many idols of dogmatism. He might be called the grand Eng-
lish skeptic. If, like a reckless pioneer, he sometimes blazed the wrong tree, yet he
most effectively cleared out the underbrush, and gave those who came after him a
chance to see his mistakes and avoid them. He carried with him a healthful mental
breeze that has cleared the fogs from the brain of many a young student.
To this period, skeptical in religion, scientific in method, philosophical in thought,
fond of prose, drama and the novel in literature, belongs George Eliot. We now wish
to show that in antecedents, education, temperament, and in her writings, she repre-
sents the mass of her contemporaries — is a type of her era.
Her birthplace was in the Midlands, where the good, old-fashioned agricultural
and Tory element was just beginning to feel the encroachments of the manufacturing
towns, but had not yet lost the rural characteristics. Mr. Gross says of her: " Her
roots were down in the pre-railroad, pre-telegraphic period — the fine old days of
"leisure — but the fruit was found during an era of extraordinary activity in scientific
and mechanical discovery."
Her father was a Tory of the best type — conscientious in his business, thorough
in his work, and naturally conservative. She has represented him in Adam Bede and
Caleb Garth. And what she says of Caleb Garth was no doubt true of her father:
"Though he had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox Christian, and
would argue on prevenient grace, if the subject were proposed to him, I think his vir-
tual divinities were good practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful comple-
tion of undertakings; his prince of darkness was a slack workman." Her mother was
a shrewd, practical woman of much natural force, and with a dash of Mrs. Poyser's wit.
This love of old and aversion to change, link her with her countrymen. The
average Englishman of the middle of the century had his origin in such communities
as those described in Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Felix Holt and Mill on the Floss.
To fully understand the average man of the century, we must know not only the
French influences that worked upon him, but the good English soil from which he
sprung; not only the liberal thought of his later life, but the narrow conventionalism,
of his childhood. •
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 289
Her middle-class birth also makes her a representative of a numerous class of
Englishmen. The well-to-do farmer, the intelligent artisan and tradesman, form the
bulk of her characters. The very aristocratic or the very poor, enter upon her pages
but as supernumeraries. In this she is in perfect sympathy with her age. The great
struggles of the century have been to emancipate the middle class and place them,
socially, mentally, and politically, on a level with the highest. They have become in
reality the ruling power in England.
In looking at her life, we see, then, a child of middle-class parents, born and bred in
Middle England among a rural old-fashioned people, and surrounded by conservative
influences. Upon this foundation of conservatism is engrafted a capability of intense
feeling. She says of herself: "I can never live long without enthusiasm in some form
or another." This capability for feeling is the main element of a religious character,
if, as Adam Bede says, " Religion's something else besides notions and doctrines. It
isn't notions set people doing the right thing, it's feelings." With this emotion, there
was in her mind, as in Dorothea's, "a current into which all thought and feeling were
apt sooner or later to flow — the reaching forward of the whole consciousness toward
the fullest truth, the least partial good." "She yearned toward the perfect right, that
it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. The keystone of the intel-
lectual faculties is the reason, and George Eliot had a thoroughly logical mind. In
one of her letters she speaks of a book that is full of " wit " to her. " It gives me that
exquisite kind of laughter that comes from the gratification of the reasoning facul-
ties." This book — Mr. Hennel's Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity — was
the awakener of her skepticism. It expressed the reaction of reason against the arbi-
trary or miraculous system of explaining the facts in the New Testament, He attempted
to show that, leaving out of account miraculous agencies, Christ's life could be explained
in a logical way. His proof in detail is not conclusive to us, but its significance lay in
the fact that men were beginning to dare to apply reason to the fundamental facts of
Christianity. George Eliot expressed this daring when she said: " To fear the exam-
ination of any proposition appears to me an intellectual and moral palsy, that will
ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever. For my part, I wish to be
among the ranks of that glorious crusade that is seeking to set Truth's Holy Sepulchre
free from a usurped domination." Carlyle was the leader in this crusade that fear-
lessly said: "Two and two make four, in religion and society, as well as mathematics."
Her logical faculty is as strong an element in her as her emotions, and her life from
this on is a struggle between religious feelings and intellectual skepticism. Of other
writers in this era, Tennyson mirrors the same struggle in "In Memoriam," and Mat-
thew Arnold in his futile attempts to be an agnostic. It was truly the, " Strum und
Drang'' period, and these men and women of the time were tossed about between
the buffets of dogmatism and skepticism till their poor weather-beaten boats were
almost unseaworthy.
George Eliot's life in London as Mr. Chapman's assistant on the "Westminster
Review," and her union with Mr. Lewes strengthened her skepticism, and, at least out-
wardly, identified her with positivism. Let us next consider how far she agreed with the
main ideas of Comte's theory. She believed there was a law governing human society;
that nothing came by chance; that every event had its logical cause in preceding
events; that every act had its reason in the nature of the individual. Mr. Irwine
says in Adam Bede: — "A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature.
He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people
make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legit-
imate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom."
In the delineation of her principal characters, she follows a natural law and not a
false criterion of perfection. " The blessed work of helping the world forward, hap-
pily does not wait to be done by perfect men; and I should imagine that neither
Luther nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for
an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is exalted
(19)
290 * THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and does nothing but what is graceful. The real heroes of God's making are quite
different; they have their natural heritages of love and conscience, which they drew
in wath their mothers' milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual truths
which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their own sorrows;
they have earnest faith and strength so far as they have done genuine work, but the
rest is dry, barren theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay."
In her fictitious world the heroes and heroines grow by a series of misfortunes and
mistakes to know their weaknesses and conquer them. " No man is matriculated to
the art of life till he has been well tempted." Heroism consists in facing the results
of mistakes, not succumbing to them.
George Eliot's princes of darkness are not intrinsically bad, but are fallen angels
like Tito Melema, Hetty Poyser and Rosamond Vincy — fallen through a persistent
course of self-indulgence.
But, as Mr. Farebrother says, "You have not only got the old Adam within your-
self against you, but you have got all those descendants of the original Adam, who
form the society about you." How to conquer the external Adam is the problem of
social regeneration. In solving this problem the positivists have deduced from
experience the same law that the Christians have by revelation, that self-interests
must be sacrificed where they interfere with the interests of all. We are too closely
bound together to have separate interests. " So deeply inherent is it in this life of
ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins; so inevitably diffusive is human
suffering that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that
does not spread beyond its mark in pulsation of unmerited pain."
Our duty, however, is not to extol nor condemn this religion of humanity; simply
to ascertain as accurately as we can its place and value as a regenerator. The general
theory of monotheism is that there is a Divine being, a God, who created the universe
and man. Man is dual, consisting of an earthly or bodily life connecting him with the
material universe, and a spiritual or soul life connecting him with his Creator. The
generally accepted religion of the Western World — Christianity — ^has two laws, love
thy God and love thy neighbor. These two were meant to be equally binding, but
gradually, in the course of centuries, the second fell into disuse. The church imagined
it was fulfilling the first law, but it is hard to love a being of whom one has no imme-
diate knowledge. The idea of God became more and more indistinct. Theologians
created gods from their own minds, whom they set up for worship, and these became
the deities of the Christian Church. This error would have been avoided if the second
law had been rigorously obeyed; for man was originally created in his Maker's image,
and the love of one's neighbor, and the self-denial necessary thereto, would have
taught man some of the most important attributes of divinity. The spark of divinity
which God had placed in man — the soul — was smoldering for lack of fuel, and that
once out man would be forever alienated from his Creator. Man had lost faith in the
divinity within him, and was by his theology putting his God further and further
away. Since the time of Luther there had been no widespread reformation among
Christian nations, and they had reached such a state of religious torpor that one was
necessary. The reformation of the nineteenth century has been to revivify the second
commandment, " Love thy neighbor." The folly lay in ignoring the first law, love
thy God. Dogmatism said, " There is a God;" and skepticism, reacting from that,
said, " How do you know? We know nothing but what we can prove." They denied
in toto the Divine authority of both commandments, but deduced the second from
human experience.
God has two means of revelation — his material creation and the spiritual nature
of his creature, man. Communicating through the spiritual natures of the first races
of men, he had by inspiration, so-called, produced a Bible or written law, and after-
ward, through his special prophet Christ, a more advanced Gospel. This had been
accepted by the church as sole authority, and its correlative nature had been ignored.
Without this key or safeguard against misinterpretation, God's written law became a
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 291
blind guide. In the course of time man so tortured its meaning, so overlaid it with
his own misconceptions, that church Christianity became null as a means of regenera-
tion to the average man. The reformers very naturally took the other extreme, and,
ignoring God's written law, exalted his natural law. They would believe only in such
a good as they could learn from nature. As far as it goes, nature is a more accurate
expositor of God than the revealed word, but it is incomplete, since it cannot reveal
man's spiritual nature nor its own origin. The Bible and nature were meant to be
complements, and by adopting one and denying the other the reformers made them-
selves liable to error. The natural scientists were the more liable because their investi-
gations ceased at animal nature, and it was easier there to deny a Creator than for the
sociologists, who carried their studies on to man's social and higher nature. Thus
arose materialism, which would naturally become popular with a large class of people
who were ready to accept any religion that released them from obedience to a spir-
itual law.
Each new thinker in this new movement took a step in advance, and we shall now
see how George Eliot advanced upon Comte. She belonged to the class of investi-
gators who were studying the higher nature of man. She believed in its spiritual exist-
ence, and in studying and expounding its laws she drew nearer the truth that it must
have a Divine origin. She believed in a Divine element in man that had its own laws
and could live at least partly independent of material. "Justice is like the kingdom
of God — it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning."
George Eliot not only had faith in the Divine element in man to help him make
this decision: " You must have it inside you that your plan is right;" but she believed
in its partial ijidependence of material causes; in this she advanced upon Comte. She
believed, also, that this divinity grew, and by its growth became human regeneration.
The method of its growth was by sorrow and by love. " It would not be well for us
to overleap one grade of joy or suffering; our life would soon lose its completeness
and beauty."
She believed in the self-regenerating power of love, not to the recipient, but to the
lover. With Romola, Dorothea and Milly Barton, to love was a " Divine necessity;"
they had a " sublime capacity " for it. Dempster's love for his mother was the only
hope of regeneration in his degraded nature.
The love of the best we know is Carlyle's idea of hero-worship: "We needs must
love the highest when we see it." Through the best human love. Browning leads his
men up to a Divine love. And George Eliot also, in Adam Bebe, says: " Our love at
its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of Divine mys-
tery! " And: "The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty,
bringing with it a sense of added strength; we can no more wish to return to a nar-
rower sympathy than a painter or musician can wish to return to his cruder manner,
or a philosopher to his less complete formula! "
This belief in the power of human beings, to save each other from soul destruction
by leading them to a Divine love, is a great advance upon Comte, because it implies
a God and His direct communication with at least some of His creatures. There comes
a time in the life of all when the human helpers fail. Janet's last temptation came
when she was alone, and it was an impulse rather than a resolution that finally caused
her to dash the brandy bottle down. Romola, after she lost faith in Savonarola, fled
again from duty, until some unseen power floated her to the pestilence-stricken vil-
lage, and she learned God's love afresh. To what then has George Eliot's conscien-
tious study of humanity led her, and how far from the materialists and Comte? To a
belief in the divinity in man that is directly dependent on a Divine source. That she
does not altogether believe her own conclusions seems to be proven by her life. That
she had learned to depend on human love, without looking suflficiently at the Divine
love beyond, seems to be the secret of her marriage to Mr. Cross. She dreaded lone-
liness. She felt no companionship with an unseen power, though she might believe
in its existence. She had worked out her problem carefully and slowly, but in doing
292 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
so she had exhausted her strength and was not sure of her conclusions. Like Amos
Barton she could think herself strong but not feel herself so.
Thus George Eliot, living in a period of change and upheaval, represents the con-
flict. By her antecedents and early surroundings she is joined by the bonds of love to
her countrymen, by her intellectual development she is linked to the democratic,
active spirit of her mature age. Her innate love of truth, her fearless avowal of it,
and her contempt for dogmatism, are common attributes of her contemporaries. By
her capability for deep emotion, and by her lingering affection for the old, she more
truly represents her countrymen than more skeptical thinkers do. Like the mass of
the people through all the conflict she held latent in her the capability of evolving a
new religion. In her faith in the truth of feeling she foreshadows the present era, which '
would guide, not repress emotion by reason. If she had lived after the struggle of
opinions were over, and a new peace and joy were lighting the world with promise,
we know not how much more perfect her life and philosophy would have been.
FOOT FREE IN GOD'S COUNTRY.
By MRS. MARIE ANTOINETTE NATHALIE POLLARD.
As we look out on the ocean, and think of the thousand islands that gem its bosom,
we know that they are created by the gradual accretions of the minutest particles.
Far down in the deep waters the coral insect rears its
superstructure. Year after year elapses, and its labors
are visible only when the tempest tosses the foam
over the hidden reef or the waves expose in their
^^^ deep hollows its white edge. But by and by it lifts
^dHnfe itself above the waters, and catches upon its rugged
^^^^^^^ horns the wreck of some shattered vessel, the soil,
^^HP^^^^ broken branches and seeds from some far off beaten
g^^^^^^M, strand, to re-create in the wilderness of waters an
•5^ i^jf^m oasis with its fruits and flowers, a resting-place for
Iff ], ^ man on the wild bosom of the deep. So that which
once gave terror, the reef with its trembling billows
which hymned the dirge of many a gallant crew, they
now seek as they cross the trackless waters as an
asylum of hope and safety. So, too, grows up out
of the bewildering and chaotic sea of intemperance
and corruption the enduring edifice of temperance
reform.
Intemperance has in it crimes darker than mur-
der, and a deep more hopeless than despair. It is as
wide as the habitable earth, began with the birth of
man, and may not cease until his race perishes from
the globe. Strangest of all strange things in human conduct, man created it himself,
fosters, nourishes, extends and builds it up of his own eager, voluntary effort, without
which it would perish in a day. Bringing to him no semblance of good; bringing
none to anything that he loves, values or cherishes; blasting, burning and consuming
his best and proudest moments; consuming him in his form, his mind, his heart, his
hope, his health and home, in his soul and in his hope of Heaven.
If this visitant from another world should recover from his astonishment, he
might inquire further: "Why does not the government prohibit its production and
sale?" Well, it derives a profit by permitting it to be made and sold; and besides,
the government receives every year S75,ooo,OCX) for the manufacture and sale of liquors.
The states receive $25,000,000 for licenses, making Sioo,ooo,ooo. As there are one
hundred thousand men who die drunkards every year, this is equai to Si,oco to the
government for every man who dies a drunkard — a sort of partnership with the devil,
you know. Yet this does not pay one quarter the cost for caring for criminals?
Besides, the majority of our people think it would be wrong to prohibit it."
"What good comes of it?" " None at all. It never did any good." "Did it
always produce evil, as now?" "Always, everywhere; just as we see it here."
"Explain, then, why all men do not agree to prohibit it?" " I can not." " How can
Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie Pollard, lecturer, poet and authoresH, was born in Norfolk, Va. Her parents were the
Countess de Boussoumart and Col. Pierre Joseph (iranier. At Norfolk, Va., Mrs. Pollard received her traininK under the
careful guidance of a Koverness. At the age of fourteen she married James R. Doweli. After the close of the Civil war she
married Edward Albert Pollard, author of "The Lost Cause." Her postoffice address is Safe Deposit Company, East
Fourteenth Street, New York, N. Y.
293
MRS. MARIE ANTOINETTE NATHALIE POLLARD.
294 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
men be found so abandoned as to sell it? " " They are not the worst men among us.
They only supply a common want of our people, which our laws permit." "Why do
men drink it? " " Because many of them have an uncontrollable appetite for it; many
because it is a mere fashion, a common custom." " What, a fashion to drink this
dreadful liquid?" "Yes." "I do not understand that." " Nor do I." "Are men born
with this uncontrollable appetite?" "A very few inherit it." " How is it formed? "
" Simply by drinking." " Explain this." "Well, a natural appetite in a healthy nature
of this world, when it is fed, lies down like a full animal and goes to sleep until
awakened by its own voice. This appetite for drink is created by that which feeds it,
and the more it is gratified the more ravenous it becomes. It can never be allayed
or gratified, but goes forth roaring and devouring, until the unhappy wretch whom it
inhabits perishes." " Is there danger that every man who tastes this may thus create
that appetite ? " " Very great danger." "And yet, among you mortals of this wretched
world, your laws encourage the production and furnishing of this diabolical fluid, and
your fashions and customs compel its use."
Its evil lies in the passion and will of man, and away below the reach of law and
written constitutions, but within the grasp of a power that alone can control heart and
soul. The evil burns deeper, its fiery breath blasts wider. There seems no power in
man's effort to stay it.
How beautiful the work of woman comes in. God has called you my sisters.
Will you heed His voice? Will you stand up and say, as David did, " I will walk
within my house with a perfect heart; I will set no unclean thing before my eyes?"
Remember, it is line upon line and precept upon precept. Remember that intemper-
ance deprives men of their reason and fosters and encourages all kinds of immorality.
It destroys the peace and happiness of millions of families. It takes a boy of beauty
and makes him a bloated, loathsome, worthless man. It takes a young girl, lovely
and lovable, and makes her a degraded being, at whom passers-by point with the
finger of scorn. You remember these lines: " Hated and shunned, I walk the street,
hunting for what? For my prey, 'tis said. I look at it, though, in a different light.
For this mighty shame is my daily bread, my food, my shelter, the clothes that I
wear. Only for this I might starve or drown. What made me the guilty thing I am —
for I was innocent once, you know? It was drink — that horrid word says all.
What had I to gain by a moment's sin to weigh in the scales with my innocent years,
my womanly .shame, my ruined name, my father's curses, my mother's tears? The
love of drink. Was it worth it? The price was a soul paid down. Your guilt was
heavy, the world will say; and heavy, heavy your doom must be, for to pity and par-
don woman's fall is to set no value on chastity."
Oh, women, who have suffered as only a woman can suffer, who have felt as only
a woman can feel, who have hoped as only a woman can hope, come forth! Come
without law! Come without man's help! Come in defiance of both, and kneel down
on the cold, bare stones, if need be, amid hearts harder and colder than marble, and
lift your voices and souls in undoubting faith to the God of Heaven, and men will
feel their hearts thrill as if under the touch of His finger.
Stay thou, O, Lord! the tide of death!
Rebuke the demon's blasting breath,
And speed, O speed, on every shore
The day when strong drink slays no more.
The clouds and storms of life are lessened by our love of God, and the nearer we
live to Him, the lighter our burdens seem. Next to God man believes in the good-
ness and purity of woman. He believes that God does and will hear her prayer, and
when she comes to Him in his haunts of sin, in her purity and faith, and asks God to
touch his heart and change his will and power, God does touch and change him.
There is not a living man, save some abnormal or diseased wretch, who can and will
hold out against this persistent pleading and imploring. Man may be affronted and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 295
talk of his constitutional rights of property; but the constitution written by God on
the hearts of men is the paramount law. We are told that the public sense of decency
is offended by the appearance of processions of praying women on its streets. Let it
be offended. The public sense of decency always was and will be when the public
vices and crimes are rebuked by plain truths spoken according to the Scriptures.
Popular religion veils her decorous face, and pulls her skirts away, and fears that the
cause of religion will suffer from such scandalous proceedings on the part of pious
temperance men and women in the name of God, Poor thing! Let popular religion
not be alarmed, for God is quite equal to the management of His own affairs.
This temperance movement is one of the deep throbbing movements of the
human race; with unanimity and persistency, faith and prayer, on the part of the women
of this land this huge evil can be dealt with as an offense against law and private
morals.
I would ask you to sum up, if you can, the amount paid in a single day for drink
alone. Now let the mind go out, extend the vision and the sum to all the cities,
towns, villages, hamlets and waste places in the republic, and put the sum total in
figures and multiply it by the days in the year, and you have a sum greater than the
revenue of the United States Government. And paid for what? For that which is
related to no good and which is wholly and utterly bad.
Add the yearly waste for drink of all the years of human life on this continent
and, if the mind can carry it forward, estimate the cost of drink for all the years of
modern Europe, and you reach a sum which can hardly find expression in words and
figures.
Give me what is thus expended in fifty years, with wisdom to rightly use it, and
what would I not do? I would feed and clothe, nurse and house every wretched child
of wretched mortal man and woman on the broad earth. I would build up school-
houses on all hillsides, in all the pleasant valleys, on all the smiling plains known
to man. I would hire men to do good until they should fall in love with goodness.
I would banish that nameless sin, for every female child should be placed above want
and be made mistress of herself, to be approached only for her purity; and man should
come to seek and love woman for that alone.
Drunkenness should be no more, for I would buy up the art and wish to produce
that which could cause it, until the appetites and habits of men were healthy and
pure. Men should be taught the science and art of self-government, and their labors
and energies taxed alone for their self-good. Then, indeed, would fair opportunity
come to all the sons and daughters of men unwarped and unfettered by starvation
and want; uncrippled by crime and unstained by vice; with healthful, vigorous
natures, pure desires and passions; with the broad, peaceful, beautiful earth opening
its paths to their innocent feet without snares and pitfalls to go and do as they will.
This is a dream, you will say. I know it is. Such boundless wealth is not to be
placed at the disposal of any mortal born, nor will mortal ever be endowed with such
wisdom in its disposal. But could the fatal waste of these unknown millions of human
beings at once and forever be stayed, and the little streamlets and drops of this waste
turned and converted even to the ordinary means known to human advancement, my
dream would be no longer a dream, but a hope of wondrous inspiration, leading the
races of men to its happy realization, and then, and not until then, can we be foot free
in God's country, America.
THE KINDERGARTEN AS A CHARACTER BUILDER.
By MRS. SARAH B. COOPER.
Dear friends and co-workers, I bid you a hearty God-speed! This is the era of
woman It has been found not in keeping with the Divine plan to attempt to carry
on this world with half its forces. As some one aptly
puts it, the flag of humanity has been at half-mast.
The vessel has been drifting about, with half its crew
down in the hold with the hatches nailed upon them.
The laborer has been at his work with one arm bound
up very tenderly, but firmly, in a sling. This is not
God's plan. Male and female created He them for
the work of life. The way to make a noble race is
to make nobler women. The way to make nobler
women is to expand their sympathies, enlarge their
energies, and elevate their aims. Nothing can do
more to conserve -such an end than a great convoca-
tion like this, and so I bid you again a hearty God-
speed, as I betake myself to my theme, thanking you
with all my soul for the privilege of presenting a plea
in behalf of the little child. I have said, this is the
era of women. I might say. also, this is the epoch of
childhood. I am to speak on " The Kindergarten as
a Character Builder."
I believe, dear friends, there is a vast range of
" unmapped country within us, awaiting discovery; a
vast domain of unexplored territory, as yet unpre-
empted and uncultivated, toward which the eye of Frederick Froebel, that great edu-
cational Columbus, was directed with a steady and divining gaze. He saw with true
spiritual insight what eternal continents of truth, what priceless stores of hidden-
away possibilities there are in the human mind. He saw the rich loam of faculty,
needing only the clearing away of underbrush and briers, the letting in of soft sun-
light and of gentle showers, to beckon forth the sleeping germs. Frederick Froebel
saw it all in prophetic clarity of vision, and having consecrated himself to the Heaven-
inspired work while he lived, with a perfect faith in its ultimate triumph, he bade a
brave farewell to the few true friends who stood by him in his work, knowing that
what is excellent, as God lives, is permanent. And so it has proved; for to-day the
great educational principles which he discovered and laid down are going forth in
every direction, conquering and to conquer. The kindergarten is his enduring monu-
ment.
Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper is a native of Cazenovia, Madison County, N. Y. She was born in 1836. Her parents were Samuel
Clark IngersoU and Lanra Case Ingersoll, both of old Revolutionary stock ; she was educated in the Oneida Conference Sem-
inary, graduating with high honors. Sabeequently she attended Troy Female Seminary under Emma Willard. She has
traveled in nearly every state in the Union. She was married in 1855 to Halsey Fenimore Cooper, former teacher in mathe-
matics in Cazenovia Seminary. She has had four children, only one of whom is now living, Harriett Cooper, who is asso-
ciated with her mother in the kindergarten work, and who possesses rare executive ability. Mrs. Cooper originated the
Golden Gate Kindergarten Association of San Francisco, which has trained over sixteen hundred little children. Over $450,-
000 have been given her for this great work. Mrs. Cooper gave thirty-six addresses in Chicago at the World's Exposition. She
is a member of the Congregational Church and has taught a Bible-class for forty-four years, and has one of the largest Bible-
classes in the world. She is vice-president of the Pacific Coast Woman's Club, and also of the Associated Charities of San
Francisco ; is a member of the Century Club and of the Congregational Ministers' Club. Her postoffice address is 1902 Val-
lejo Street, San Francisco, Cal.
296
MRS. SARAH B. COOPER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 297
The kindergarten concerns itself more with the development of faculty than with
the mere imparting of knowledge. It recognizes the fact that all true education is
learning transformed -to faculty. It does not ask so much, "What does the child
know ? " as, " Has the child learned how to learn ? " it looks less to mere acquirements
than to the capacity to acquire. It is teaching the little child to teach himself. It is
controlling the little child that he may learn the art of self-control. The senses are
sharpened, the hands are trained, and the body is made lithe and active. The gifts
and occupations represent every kind of technical activity. The children must work
for what they get. They learn through doing. They thus develop patience, persever-
ance, skill and will power. They are encouraged by every fresh achievement. What
they know they must know thoroughly and accurately. Every element of knowledge
is transformed into an element of creation. The mind assimilates what it receives,
just as a healthy organism assimilates its food, and is nourished thereby. In his occu-
pations in the kindergarten the child is required to handle, reconstruct, combine and
create. " Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and
work of the coming man," said Aristotle. It is early training that makes the master.
This universal instinct of play in the child means something. It should be turned to
good account. It should be made constructive in its income instead of destructive. This
restless activity of the child is the foundation of the indefatigable enterprise of the
man. This habit of work must be formed early in life, if we would have it a pleasure.
Activity is the law of healthful childhood. Turn it to good account! The perceptive
faculties in a well-endowed child are far in excess of the reflective faculties. He sees
everything. He wants to know about everything. He will find out if he can. Sensi-
ble mothers understand this fact, and keep their household goods well out of the way
of the young "heir apparent." Just as old Dolly Winthrop said, in "Silas Marner":-
" If you can't bring your mind to frighten the child off touching things, you must do
what you can to keep 'em out of the way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads
are allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw — worry and gnaw they will, if it was
one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no differ-
ence, God help 'em; it's the pushing o' the teeth- as sets 'em on, that's what it is."
That's exactly, what it is with the restless child. It's the pushing of the teeth — the
intellectual molars and bicuspids, so to speak. They are getting ready to masticate
their mental food.
Bodily vigor, mental activity and moral integrity are indispensable to a perfected
life. The kindergarten is the best agency for setting in motion the physical, mental
and moral machinery of a little child, that it may do its own work in its own way. It is
the rain and dew and sun to wake the sleeping germ and bring it into self-activity
and growth. The heart as well as the head comes in for its share of training. The
kindergarten regards right action to be quite as important as rare scholarship. It
works for both, knowing that ignorance and lack of character in the masses will never
breed wisdom, so long as ignorance and lack of character in the individual breed folly.
What we need to do is to bring more happiness into childhood, and then we shall bring
more of virtue, for " virtue kindles at the touch of joy." The kindergarten is the
"Paradise of Childhood." Froebel insisted that education and happiness should be
wedded, that there should be as much pleasure in satisfying intellectual hunger as
physical hunger. And should not this be so? Is it not more or less the fault of
methods that it is not so?
Just here I wish to say that the moral and religious influences of the kindergarten
can scarcely be overestimated. The kindergarten does not attribute every mistake of
a child to total depravity. To be perpetually telling a little child, even a very
naughty child, that there is no good thing in him, that he is vile and corrupt, is one of
the very best ways of making a rascal out of him if he has any spirit in him, and of
making a little hypocrite of him, if he is mean-spirited and weak. And this holds
equally true of all children, whether they come from the palatial homes of the rich or
the wretched homes of the poor. There is more ignorance than depravity when a little
298 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
child goes wrong. He must stumble and fall many times before he learns to walk
uprightly, either physically or spiritually. He must learn to climb the stairs of moral
difficulty as he learned to climb the household stairs. As we patiently wait for the
body to unfold and do its best, wisely guiding it all the while, so should we patiently
wait for the soul's unfolding. All education is a growth, not a creation. And to all
growth belongs the element of time. We are none of us born with the "trade of con-
duct" learned. The primal ideal of all government should be to teach a child to
govern himself at the earliest possible period. And to learn how to govern himself a
child must be indulged in self-government. The true teacher will be aiming all the
time at the child's enfranchisement — not in making him an unwilling slave.
Above all, the true kindergarten aims at the cultivation of the heart and soul in
the right direction, and leads them to the Creator of all life and to personal union with
Him. The law of duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. It is the
aim of the kindergarten to lead the little ones to their Heavenly Friend. They are
taught to love Him, They are taught to love one another, to help one another, to be
kind to one another, to care for one another. No one can love God who does not love
his fellows. The child in the kindergarten is not only told to be good, but he is
actually helped to be good.
The very foundations on which true character rests are laid in the kindergarten.
Habits of virtue, truth, purity and usefulness are here inculcated; and what is charac-
ter but crystallized habit?
As to the moral effect of the kindergarten, a little three-year-old can best tell the
story. A bright little blonde lassie of three years, belonging to one of our kinder-
gartens, was holding tightly the hand of her lady guardian, as they wandered among
the marvels of the Mechanics' Institute Fair. It was high carnival with the little kin-
dergarteners. This nervous little midget was wild with delight at the wonderful things ,
to be seen on every hand. Just then she was delving into the mysteries of the chicken
incubator. Suddenly one of the regularly deputized policemen, who do duty during
the fair, passed by. He did not escape the vigilance of " little blue eyes."
"See, there's a perlice ! " she ejaculated, with resonant, ringing tone, pointing her
little finger deprecatingly as she spoke. "There he goes," she added,. with increased
fervor. " Why, he needn't be a watchin' of us, 'cos we don't nip nothin' now, seiice
we went to the kindergarten! "
The poor little dear — she had no idea that a " perlice " could have any other pos-
sible vocation than to be watching her and the other little Barbary Coasters, who had
been wont aforetime to " nip" fruit and vegetables on the sly, as a sort of filial duty
imposed by thriftless, shiftless parentage.
And now, dear friends, although I have overstepped the limits allotted me, I can-
not clos,e without a brief reference to this beneficent kindergarten work in San
Francisco.
Fifteen years ago there was not a single free kindergarten west of the Rocky
Mountains. There are now over sixty in San Francisco alone, including those in
orphanages and day homes. Branching out from San Francisco as a center, they have
extended in every direction, from the extreme northern part of Washington Territory
to Lower California and New Mexico, and they have planted themselves in Oregon,
Nevada, Colorado, and in almost every large city in California. The work in San
Francisco has been phenomenal. No city in the Union has made more rapid strides
in this work among the little children than San Francisco. This is owing very largely
to the fact that persons of large wealth have been induced to study the work for them-
selves, and have become convinced of its permanent and essential value to the state.
Foremost among those who have given largely to the support of these kindergartens
is Mrs. Leland Stanford, who has, from first to last, given $174,000 to the support of
these beneficent schools for the neglected children of San Francisco. Over eight
hundred children have been under training in the Stanford kindergartens the past
year. Mrs, Senator Hearst, and others of generous mind, also support these schools.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 299
Over $450,000 have been given me to carry on the kindergartens of the Golden Gate
Association.
The kindergarten gets hold of the little child just as early in life as possible — the
earlier the better. It believes, with Lord Broughham, that a child can and does learn
more before the age of six years than it does or can learn after that age during his
whole life, however long it may be. For this is the root-life of the human plant, and
the root-life must forever determine what the stem and blossoms shall be. In short,
the world is beginning to recognize the fact that a general education, that has not in
it some provision for a special education and training in some particular industry, is
practically a failure. Technical and industrial education for the people is no theory.
It is a question of civilization. It is a national question, and touches the very exist-
ence of the state. The kindergarten lies at the foundation of this sort of education.
All honor, then, to those who foster these blessed schools for the little children!
Governor Stanford struck the key-note when he said, that he believed the surest
foundation on which any educational structure could rest was the rock of thorough
kindergarten training, begun at the earliest possible age. At the age when moral and
industrious habits are most easily formed, the taste improved, and the finer feelings
which give fiber to the will are cultivated. On the bed-rock of such training the true
university may rest — a university such as the Stanford University is outlined to be —
a university embracing the science of human life, in its varied industries, arts, science,
literature, government, political economy, ethics, moral unfoldment, hygiene — and in
short all that goes to make up a perfected human life; a university where the school
and the workshop clasp hands, where body and mind are educated together, where
the mechanical and classical student will strike hands together, where the artist and
the artisan will eat at one common board. Democracy means equitable opportunity.
Liberty of growth and equality at the start is the law of all true democratic life.
And the primal aim of all education, from the kindergarten straight through to
the university, should be the unfolding of all that is in the human being — the equip-
ping of the young for maintaining themselves in honest independence. Some one
has said there are three ways of earning a living: by working, by begging, or by
stealing; and those who come to years of responsibility, and do not work, are doing
one of the other two things, dress it out in whatever pretty guise you please. I
believe it was Florence Nightingale who said: "If to three R's — Reading, 'Riting
and 'Rithmetic — there be not added something that will give the mind a practical
turn, we shall soon have a fourth R, which will stand for rascality." The true mission
of education is the developing of vigorous, capable, and cultivated human beings,
and launching them on their life career, well armed and equipped with facts and
principles as a propelling power on the track of an instructed industry. We have all
too many sad travesties of highly educated folks, whom old Dame Poyser describes
as being "too high learnt to have much common sense." Hence, we must go back to
the method of Providence in educating the race, and begin with labor and experience,
which are sure to lead up to science and art.
Throw open the kindergarten and the schools for industrial and art training to
every child, and with the heart pure, the head clear, the hand skillful and ready, we
shall hear no more of the vexed question: "What shall we do with our boys and
girls?" Our fair land shall take its place in the very front ranks of nations distin-
guished for their industrial achievements.
There must be more of genuine human sympathy between the top and the bottom
of society. The prosperous and the happy must clasp hands and heart with the toil-
ers and the strugglers. The living, loving self is wanted. The heart must be the
missionary. The life must be the sermon. All mankind must be brothers. The chil-
dren must be taught these great principles and aided in putting them in practice.
They must be made to feel and to know that it is what they put into life and not
what they get out of it that measures their worth to the world. "Then shall our sons
be as plants grown up in their youth, our daughters as corner-stones polished after
300 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the similitude of a palace." They shall be the fathers and mothers of a great race;
and long after you and I shall have finished our earthly work, the breath of God still
breathing upon the great sentient human soul, shall lift them higher and higher in
their purposes and work, as they press forward in their beauty and their strength
"clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners."
POETRY OF THE STARS.
By MISS MARY A. PROCTOR.
Let us go backward in imagination six thousand years, and stand beside our great
ancestor as he gazed for the first time upon the going down of the sun. What strange
sensations must have swept through his bewildered
mind as he watched the last departing rays of the
sinking sun and saw it slowly fading from sight. A
mysterious darkness creeps over the face of nature
and the beautiful scenes of earth are hidden beneath
the shades of night.
Now came still evening on; and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence was pleased; now glow'd the firmament
With livid sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light,
And over the dark her silver mantle threw.
As the solitary gazer watches the silver crescent
of light hanging in the western sky the hours glide
swiftly by and the moon is gone. One by one the
stars are rising, slowly ascending the heights of
heaven, and solemnly sweeping downward in the still-
ness of the night.
How many bright
And splendid lamps shine in heaven's temple high,
Day hath its golden sun, her moon the night,
Her fixed and wandering stars, the azure sky.
The galaxy, or" milky way," appears against the dark background of the sky like
a shining zone of brilliant light.
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear.
The first grand revelation to mortal sight is nearly completed. A faint streak of
silver light is seen in the east; it brightens; the stars fade; the planets are extinguished;
the eye is fixed in mute astonishment upon the growing splendor of the heavens till
the first rays of the returning sun pierce the gray mists of morning, and the sun
rises glorious and triumphant from its imprisonment in the dark caves of night.
Are we surprised that this mysterious daily disappearance and reappearance of
the orb of day should have inspired feelings of awe, and an eager desire to compre-
hend these wonders in the minds of those who first watched and those who have
Miss Mary A. Proctor was bom in Dublin, Ireland ; is the danghter of Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer. She was
edacated in a convent in Norwood, Surrey.England, and has traveled both in Enroi)e and the United States. She is a teacher of
astronomy, lecturer and author. Following the lectures in Chicago she arranged for a lecture course for the season of 1893-4
in Eastern states, and she expresses thanks to the Woman's Congress for favorable introduction to the public. In religious
faith she is an Episcopalian. Her present address is No, 293 Forty-sixth Street, Now York City, N. Y.
301
MISS MARY A. PROCTOR.
302 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
watched during the long lapse of six thousand years? To trace the efforts of the
human mind through the long and ardent struggle to solve these mighty problems; to
reveal the weary years of patient watching; the struggles to overcome insurmountable
obstacles; to develop the means by which the rock-built pyramid of science is slowly
rearing its stately form from age to age, until its vertex pierces the very heavens —
these are tasks of no ordinary difficulty. Music is here, but it is the deep and solemn
harmony of the spheres. Poetry is here, but traced in letters of light on the sable gar-
ments of night; architecture is here, but it is the colossal structure of sun and system,
of cluster and universe. Eloquence is here, but " there is neither speech nor language
— its voice is not heard." Yet its resistless power sweeps over us as we ponder on
the mighty periods of revolving worlds, the wonders of the infinity of space and the
hidden mysteries of the vast expanse of heaven. Let us pause and listen to the deep
and solemn music of the spheres, as heard by the first watchers of the sky; let us read
the poetry written in the stars; let us contemplate the architecture of the celestial
vault, though " its architraves, its archways, seem ghostly from infinitude." Let us
listen to the surging eloquence of these glorious suns, now swiftly rushing through
infinite space:
How distant some of these nocturnal suns!
So distant, says the sage, 'twere not absurd
To doubt, if beams set out at nature's birth
Are yet arrived at this, so foreign, world.
Though nothing half so rapid as their flight!
Let us gaze in awe and wonder !
Who can satiate sight
In such a scene — in such an ocean wide
Of deep astonishment? Where depth, height, breadth,
Are lost in their extremes; and where to count
The thick-sown glories in this field of fire,
Perhaps a seraph's computation fails.
With resistless energy the tide of time has flowed on, breaking in noiseless waves
on the far-distant shores of eternity. Science has partially lifted the dark veil which
has enshrouded in mystery the celestial scenes which greeted the vision of genera-
tions during the past thousand years, and erected temples devoted to the study of the
heavens. Look over their magnificent machinery; examine the far-reaching eye of
the telescope as it reveals the hidden mysteries of space, and then go backward in
imagination to the plains of Shinar and stand beside the shepherd astronomer as he
vainly attempts to grasp the mysteries of the structure of the heavens. The sentinel
upon the watch-tower is relieved from duty; but another takes his place and the vigil
is unbroken. He commences his investigations on the hilltops of Eden; he studies
the stars through the long centuries of antediluvian life. The Deluge sweeps from
the earth its inhabitants, their cities and their monuments; but when the storm is
hushed and the heavens shine forth in beauty from the summit of Mount Ararat the
astronomer resumes his endless vigils. In Babylon he keeps his watch, and among
the Egyptian priests he inspires a thirst for the sacred mysteries of the stars. The
plains of Shinar, the temples of India, the pyramids of Egypt are equally his watch-
ing places. When science fled to Greece, his home was in the school of the philoso-
phers, and when darkness covered the earth for a thousand years, he pursued his
never-ending tasks amid the burning deserts of Arabia. When science dawned on
Europe the astronomer was there toiling with Copernicus, watching with Tycho, suf-
fering with Galileo, triumphing with Kepler.
Six thousand years have rolled away since the grand investigation commenced.
We stand at the termination of the vast period, and looking back through the long
vista of departed years, mark with honest pride the successive triumphs of our race.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 303
Midway between the past and future we witness the first rude efforts to explain the
celestial phenomena. May we not equally look forward thousands of years? And,
although we cannot comprehend what shall be the condition of astronomical science
at the end of a period so remote, yet of one thing we are certain, and that is, the past,
the present and the future constitute but one unbroken chain of observations, con-
densing all time to the astronomer into one mighty now.
Thus far our attention has been directed to the examination of the achievements
of the human mind in the earlier stages of astronomy. Since those days the astrono-
mer has invented the telescope. With its far-seeing powers he has discovered the
laws which regulate the celestial movements, and defined the nature of the universal force
which sustains these distant worlds. Sweeping outward from the sun he has reached
Neptune, which guards the frontier limits of the solar system; gazing backward from
this planet, which is more than three billion miles distant from the sun, he has exam-
ined the worlds and systems embraced within the circumference of its mighty orbit.
An occasional comet, overleaping this boundary, and flying swiftly past us, plunges into
space, to return after its long journey of a thousand years and report to the inhabitants
of earth the influences which have swayed its movements in the invisible regions
whence it has winged its flight.
Yet the whole of this gigantic scheme is but a small portion of the universe of
God, one unit among the unnumbered millions which fill the crowded regions of space.
An infinite void peopled with suns like ours, with myriads of stars sprinkled like golden
dust over the dark canopy of night. The smallest telescopic aid suffices to increase
their number in an almost incredible degree, while with the full power of the grand
instruments now in use, the scenes presented to our gaze are truly magnificent.
What wonder if the overwrought soul should reel
With its own weight of thought, and the wild eye
See fate within yon depths of deepest glory lie?
Worlds and systems, clusters and universe, rising in sublime perspective and fad-
ing away into the infinity of space beyond, until even- thought itself fails in its efforts to
plunge across the gulf, which separates us from this eternity of glory. Where are the
limits of that boundless ocean? Whereunto doth it lead? In vain do we strive to
peer into these hidden mysteries. Were we to float on through all eternity we could
not approach any nearer to those distant shores. Camille Flammarion has conceived
the fanciful idea of an imaginary journey through space. Distant shores of worlds
likeours revealingthemselves; heavenssucceedingheavens; spheres afterspheres poised
like our own earth in space. Even when carried away with the rapidity of thought
the soul would continue its flight beyond the most inaccessible limits the imagina-
tion can conceive. Even then the infinity of an unexplored expanse would remain
ever open before us. The infinity of space would oppose itself to the infinity of time;
endless rivalry to endure through endless ages. The spirit, overcome with fatigue,
would be arrested in its flight at the very entrance of the portals of infinite space as
though it had not advanced a single step.
Let us take an imaginary journey through space and, gazing through a telescope,
travel from star to star till we reach the milky way, then pass on leaving behind us in
grand perspective a series of five hundred suns, ranged one behind the other in line,
each separated from the other by a distance equal to that which divides our own sun
from the nearest fixed star, each star a sun like ours, a fiery orb aglow with energy,
possibly the center of a system such as ours and pursuing its sidereal voyage through
space. Such is the vast scale on which the universe is built. If, in examining the
mighty orbits of the remoter planets, and in tracing the interminable career of some
of the far-sweeping comets, we feared there might not be room for them, we are now
reassured. There is no interference here; there are no perturbations of the planets of
one system for the suns of another. Each is isolated and independent, filling the
region of space assigned and moving within its own limits in perfect safety.
304 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
We have now reached the boundaries of ten millions of stars. Look to the right,
there is no limit; look to the left, there is no end. Above, below, sun rises upon sun,
system upon system, in endless and immeasurable perspective. There is a new uni-
verse as magnificent and glorious as our own, a new milky way across whose vast diam-
eter light takes a thousand years in crossing. Floating on the surface of this deep
ocean, in this far distant region, the telescope has detected a large number of mys-
terious looking objects, resembling the faintest clouds of light.
So distant are these objects that their light is hundreds of thousands of years in
reaching us; so extensive are they that the entire field of view of the telescope is
filled by them many times. Sirius, the brightest and probably the largest of all the
fixed stars, with a diameter of more than a million of miles, and a distance of only a
single unit, compared with the tens of thousands which divide us from some of the
nebulae; yet this vast globe, at this comparatively short distance, is merely a point
of light in the field of view of the telescope. What, then, must be the dimensions of
these objects, which at so vast a distance fill the entire field of view even when many
times repeated. We find ourselves lost in the contemplation of these multiplied
infinities amid which our little lives are cast. In the presence of these sublime mys-
teries the senses and imagination are alike enthralled, and the wild dream of the Ger-
man poet becomes an inspired reality.
God called up from dreams a man into the vestibule of Heaven, saying: "Come
thou hither; see the glory of my house." And to the servants who stood around His
throne, He said: "Take him and undress from him his robes of flesh, cleanse his vision,
put a new breath into his nostrils, but touch not with any change his human heart
that weeps and trembles." This was done, and, with a mighty servant for his guide,
the man stood ready for his infinite voyage, and from the terraces of Heaven, without
sound or farewell, at once they winged their flight into endless space. Sometimes with
the solemn flight of angel wing they fled through reaches of darkness, through wilder-
nesses of death that divided the worlds of life. Sometimes they swept over frontiers
that were quickening under the prophetic motions of God. Then from a distance that
is counted only in Heaven, light 'dawned for a time through a sleepy film. By unut-
terable pace the light swept to them, they by unutterable pace to the light. In a
moment the blazing of suns was around them, in a moment the rushing of planets was
upon them.
Then came eternities of twilight that revealed, yet were not revealed. On the
right hand and on the left towered mighty constellations, that by self-repetitions and
answers from afar, that by counter-positions, built up triumphal gates whose archi-
traves and archv/ays, horizontal, upright, rested, rose at altitudes by spans, that seemed
ghostly from infinitude. Without measure were the architraves, past number the arch-
ways, beyond memory the gates. Within were stairs which scaled the eternities below.
Below was above, above was below, to men stripped of gravitating body. Depth was
swallowed up in height insurmountable; height was swallowed up in depth unfath-
omable; and suddenly, as thus they journeyed from infinite to infinite, a mighty cry
arose that worlds more billowy, systems more mysterious, other heights and other
depths were coming, were nearing, were at hand.
Then the man sighed and stopped, shuddered and wept; his overburdened heart
uttered itself in tears, and he said:
" Angel, I will go no farther, for the spirit of man acheth with this infinity. Insuf-
ferable is the glory of God. Let me lie down and hide myself in the grave from the
persecution of the infinite, for end I see there is none."
Then from all the listening stars that shone around issued a choral voice, saying:
"The man speaks truly. End is there none that ever yet we heard of."
" End is there none?" the angel solemnly demanded. " Is there, indeed, no end,
and is this the sorrow that kills you?"
But there was no answer, that he might answer himself. Then the angel threw
up his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens, saying:
" End is there none to the universe of God; lo! also, there is no beginning."
^^s^
1 ^^^^'Jl^m^^
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1 Mrs. Jennie S. Mitchell, 2. Mrs. Hester A. Hauback, 3. Miss Jean W. Faulkner,
Kansas. Kansas. Kentucky.
4. Mrs. A. C. Jackson, 5. Miss Katharine L. Minor, 6. Mrs. Belle H. Perkins,
Kentucky. Louisiana. Louisiana.
7. Mrs. Edwin C. Burleigh, 8. Mrs. L. M. N. Stevens, 9. Mrs. William Reed,
Maine. Maine. Maryland.
10. Mrs. Alex. Thomson, 11. Mrs. Bnfos 8. Frost, 12. Mrs. Jonas H. French,
Maryland. Massachusetts. Masscu;husett$.
WOMAN'S LIFE IN ASIATIC TURKEY.*
By MISS MARY PAGE WRIGHT.
Life is monotonous and sad for woman, especially because: (a) They are held
to be essentially inferior to man. (d) They are ignorant, most of them being unable
even to read, in spite of the recent and much lauded
efforts of the sultan to establish schools for girls (the
standard of education in these schools may be inferred
from the recent act of the censor of the press in for-
bidding the publication of a certain text-book on
chemistry, because he interpreted the symbol of
water, H'^O, to mean " Hamid II." — the reigning sul-
tan — is naught.) (c) Because of the miseries of
polygamy, the seclusion of Moslem women in their
harems, and {e) The subjection of Armenian wives
to their mothers-in-law.
The Turks are indeed extremely urbane, and Mrs.
Gen. Wallace, as wife of the American minister to the
Sublime Porte, would naturally only see such agree-
able phases of life as appear in her beautiful pictures
• of the Orient; but neither she, nor any other diplo-
matic officer's wife, lives or travels much in the
interior of the land.
To the missionary long resident in the interior,
the prevailing feeling of the women seems to be
expressed in a phrase often upon their lips, " Blessed
are you American women; you can read, you have
souls, but we are only cattle;" or in the eager questions of a girl who said: *' Is it
true, teacher, that American girls can have money of their own?" " Yes.""
" Can American girls and women sit down and eat at the same time with their
husbands, brothers and fathers? And don't they have to stand behind their chairs
and wait on them; and when they have done, then they have a chance to eat and not
before? And, teacher, is it true that American girls have the same privileges of
appearing on the streets and of coming and going that boys have? Is it true that
American women are to have all that and Heaven too?
The Turkish music in the Midway Plaisance, with those monotonous minor strains,
well expresses the tone of life in a land where Kismet (fate) is held to be supreme.
Miss Mary Page Wright was bom at West Jersey, Stark County, 111., February 17, 1818. Her parents were Rev. Samuel
G. Wright, who was a home missionary for fifty years, and Minerva Hart Wright. She was educated at Adrian College,
Adrian, Mich., and at Rockford College (then a seminary), where she graduated in 1871. In 1874 her election as superintend-
ent of public schools for Cofifey ('ounty, Kansas, furnished the Supreme Court the test case in the decision that sex is no dis-
qualification for that oflBce. She has traveled a few weeks in Europe, and extensively in the interior states of the Union,
and in Turkey. Miss Wright is a teacher, and was for eight years missionary to Turkey in Asia, under the direction of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregational). Her only literary works are miscellaneous con-
tributions and the "Woman's Journal Advance,'' "Kansas Magazine " and missionary papers. Postoffice address, Rogers
Park, 111.
♦The above is but a synopsis of the address delivered by Miss Wright. She was assisted by Miss Gertrude E. Wiloox,
of Chicago, who api>eared in the costume of a rich Armenian bride ; her mouth concealed, as custom requires of Armenian
MISS MARY P.\GE WRIGHT-
(20)
ao5
CHANGING IDEALS IN SOUTHERN WOMANHOOD.
By MRS. SUE HUFFMAN BI^ADY.
As out of the side of the mountain issue the streams, and out of the lap of the
prairie bubble the springs whose mingled waters make the great river and the greater
sea, so from the homes of a country comes its civili-
zation; and the one will be broad, strong, progressive
and satisfying in proportion as the influences flowing
from the other are pure, patriotic and humane, born
of kindly hearts and cultured minds.
In order to attain a definite perception of the
theme upon which I address you, it will be necessary
to draw a faithful picture of the representative type
of Southern womanhood as she appears in the three
most marked epochs of her history — during the period
of the old South, during the transition period succeed-
ing the civil war, and as she stands and acts and looks
today.
A proper understanding of the first of these divis-
ions necessitates a brief reference to the status of civ-
ilization in the Southern States in ante-bellum times.
During the expansion from Colonial days to the period
thirty years distant, this section numbered among its
settlers the strongest strains of many stocks — Saxon,
Celt, Teuton, Puritan and Cavalier, supplemented and
strengthened by the blood of the heroic and pictur-
esque Huguenot. The manhood and womanhood
resulting from such a combination of racial ingredients present to the world types of
intellectual greatness, moral grandeur and domestic refinement of which all America
may feel justly proud, and which the older civilizations must regard with wonder and
respect. Not mine, but some bolder, surer pen may trace the divergent civilizations
of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, with the relative merits and defects of each, whose
better elements as intermingled today shine forth in the rounded achievements of the
most perfect expression of government the world has ever known. Nor shall I, to the
discredit of the one, make unfriendly and exaggerated pictures of the excellencies of
the other. It is only with one side of the shield that it is my pleasant task to deal on
this occasion.
I believe the highest expression of the civilization of the old South is typified in
the leading men of that period who have made their impress on the pages of the
nation's history. Men such as they must, in the very nature of things, have had home
influences that inspired them to noble efforts, gave direction to their impulses, sweet-
ened their toils, sanctified their sacrifices and illumined their successes. These influ-
MrB. Frank Brady ia a native of Richmond, Madison County, Ky. She was born May 12, 1859. Her parents were Philip
A. and Caroline Huffman. She was educated at Fort Worth High School, Galveston Female Academy, and Sam Houston Nor.
mal Institute, Huntsville, Tex. At a competitive examination for the Sam Houston Normal Institute held in 1879 she obtained
the remarkable average of one hundred throughout. She graduated from that institute in 1880, and was awarded the Pea-
body medal. She is a woman of thorough learning and rare accomplishments, to which are added many personal charms.
She has traveled all over the United States and in Canada. She married in 1882 Mr. Ed. F. Warren, who died in 1889; in 1892
she married Mr. Frank Brady. She organized and graded the public schools of Fort Worth, and also those of Decatur, Tex.,
being the first superintendent of those schools, and the first lady superintendent in Texas. Mrs. Brady is a member of the
Christian Church. Her postoffice address is Fort Worth, Tex.
306
MRS. SUE HUFFMAN BRADY.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 307
ences were exercised under the sacred guise of mother, wife or daughter, and in this
triumvirate of holy relationship let the women of the old South be portrayed. Let her
stand forth modestly, but seen of all eyes, as the rose-tree in the garden of that civili-
zation which changed conditions have swept into the past.
I am well aware of the popular misapprehension that has existed in the North in
regard to the South, and in the South in regard to the North; but I am equally as well
aware that today I speak to the best informed, the most aspiring and the most cultured
body of women in Christendom. Remembering the intelligence which makes you seek
truth in every direction; remembering the breadth and force of character which made
such an assembly as this possible; remembering the spirit of kindness which you have
generated and disseminated to every quarter of the globe, I ask you to listen to a
truthful portrayal of the characteristics of the better class of women in the old South.
Remember that there were two distinct civilizations at work in this Union ; that
the wheel of progress was constantly turning in the North, fed by new forces from the
Old World, while the conservative .South proceeded along' slower lines of develop-
ment; remember how widely separated were the two peoples — that no iron bands
linked their commercial relations; that the lightning had not been harnessed into
hourly service; that the press of the country was the principal means of communica-
tion, and that it was occupied mainly with the enumeration of exasperating political
differences. Would that I had the power of presenting, as it should be presented, the
beautiful and pathetic picture of the dutiful, painstaking wife and mother, who was
the heart and soul of the old South-land. Instead of being a kind of Oriental queen,
served and worshiped by her subjects, she was at the beck and call of everyone about
the household. She not only attended to the minutest details of plantation life, but
in time of pestilence and suffering she was the ministering angel. The limits of her
charity were only bounded by the extent of her knowledge. That distinguished son
of the South, Thomas Nelson Page, says: " She was mistress, manager, nurse, counsel-
lor, seamstress, teacher, housekeeper, slave — all at once. What she really was, was
known only to her God. Her life was one act of devotion — devotion to God, devotion
to her children, devotion to her servants, to her friends, to the poor, to all humanity."
Certainly her physical endurance, her moral responsibility, her unflagging tact, were
ever taxed to the utmost. I feel that her characteristics have never been more beauti-
fully painted than by one who came from the extreme East, and who spent twelve
years studying the South, her conditions and history. I allude to A. D. Mayo of Bos-
ton. He says, in speaking of the Southern woman: " She did so prevail in her own
sphere of usefulness that the best manhood of the South fell down and worshiped at
her shrine. She was the house-mother, the queen of society, the peace-maker of the
neighborhood, the saint of the Church."
Passing over those four years during which, owing to the collision of two separate
and distinct civilizations, the whole country was bathed in blood, let us view the environ-
ments of the Southern woman at the close of that period, and see how she met and
coped with the appalling difficulties that confronted her.
The outside world has had no conception of the complete wreck of private for-
tunes during the great struggle. History of recent date is beginning to throw some
light upon the almost incredible privations of multitudes of Southern families, but its
portrayal must necessarily have the weakness of the echo when compared with the
actual suffering and despair of that day. Strange to say, the blow fell heaviest upon
those who were the least prepared to withstand its severity. During the days of recon-
struction, as during the war, the women carried the heavy end of the burden. How
fresh in the memory of all is the magnificent struggle made by the women of New
England, on the bleak Atlantic coast, in the two centuries succeeding the landing of
the Mayflower. Their toils, their hardships, their trials and sacrifices, were almost
incredible, and the bravery and heroism with which they were encountered have never
been surpassed in the annals of history.
The difficulties that confronted the women of the South in the reconstruction
308 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
period were equally great. But how were they met? Just as bravely, just as patiently,
and with the same womanly devotion to duty that has thrown a halo of heroism and
sacredness around the memory of their Puritan sisters.
At first completely dazed, it took them some time to realize the terrible situation.
But when the awakening did come, with a marvelous rebound of energy and ambition
they shouldered the sad and hopeless burden of personal bereavement, and entered
bravely the hand-to-hand fight with poverty.
In the dawn of the great change — loss of fortunes, loss of homes, loss of loved
ones — all paled before the great problem of the hour — self-support.
This had, during the old regime, devolved wholly upon the male members of the
family. But a new era was at hand. The whole bassal structure of society was shaken
to its foundation. Many of the strongest men bent before the storm of humiliation,
suffering and despair that swept over the country. So, to the exhausting duties, and
crushing sorrows of household life of the women was added the task of comforting
and encouraging the returning soldier. No pen can ever picture the utter sacrifice of
self made by the women of this period in behalf of father, brother and son. Often
the boys were slow to be reconciled to the evil fate that robbed them of the accus-
tomed luxuries of home, and of the old glory of the fighting days. The girls not only
displayed a wonderful capacity toward adjusting themselves to circumstances, but
exhibited the marvelous power of wrenching the best things out of the most uncom-
promising surroundings. The boys were conceded all advantages, particularly those
of education. The promising son was kept at school while the whole family practiced
the most rigid economy, often denying itself the common comforts of life. The girl
who was fortunate enough to be sent away and educated must not only come home
and teach the younger sisters, but also save money to send the brother to college.
This, too, was often accomplished under the most trying circumstances. Neither the
chill and sleet of winter nor the blazing heat of a midsummer sun ever made her waver
in her noble undertaking.
It will be remembered that for nearly fifteen years the majority of academical
schools for girls were closed. Many of the colleges lost their endowments and many
of them found their buildings in ruins and their teachers scattered. The educational
pedant would open his eyes in wonderment at the circuitous routes and incomprehen-
sible ways in which the women of this period secured advantages. The history of
the efforts of some Southern girls to obtain an education would read like fiction.
But the greatest struggle is yet to be mentioned — that of breaking down the bar-
riers that had so long barred women from the fields of useful labor. I' believe the
proudest hour of my life was when I read, upon the establishment of our first normal
school, that girls would be admitted as students, that they were to be allowed to fit
themselves for at least one useful vocation. But, thanks to the spirit of the age, not
only the teaching profession, but hundreds of other occupations are opening their
portals, bidding them enter, save themselves from a life that is not only dependent,
but aimless, and therefore hopeless.
The last thirty years have been one continuous school of toil, economy and sacri-
fice, but it has sent out graduates who eat the white bread of independence, and who
carry in their hands the lantern of hard-earned experience, lighting the way to higher,
truer, broader views of life. The sorrows of the woman of this period and their
magical uprising have left their indelible impress upon the brow of the nineteenth
century. The prodigious mental and moral force and the executive ability generated
by this curriculum of hardship and responsibility, illumine and strengthen the charac-
ter of the wide-awake womanhood of today.
All honor, I say, to the women of the transition period. They have passed through
the fiery furnace of trial, have come out unsullied and strong, and now, with wings
unpinioned, they are ready for the loftiest flights of the new American civilization.
To the people of the Southern States the last thirty years have been essentially
an age of action rather than of study and of thought. No sooner had they emerged
THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN. 309
from the condition of absolute poverty in which they were plunged at the beginning
of that era, than they discovered that the material interests of the country demanded
immediate attention. Waste places must be made to bloom again, railroads had to be
built, rivers spanned, and all the wheels of agricultural, manufacturing and commer-
cial development set in motion. Little time was there for thought of any art
save the art of making money. How admirably they have succeeded in material
development is patent to all whose eyes have rested on the waving fields, the com-
fortable homes, the prosperous towns and cities that dot these states from center to
boundary line.
Eollowing in the wake of industrial progress came the great educational wave
that has swept over the entire South. Nothing ever wrought more marvelous changes
in the same length of time to any race of people than this new impetus that has been
given to the minds and thoughts of its youth. While it has been the means of elevat-
ing and rendering more useful the boys of the South, to the girls it has been a precious
beacon light, beckoning them on to an entirely new life filled with hope, ambition and
consolation.
They are the children, as it were, of two civilizations.
From the old South they inherit gentleness of manner, purity of heart, and nobility
of soul; from the transition period they bring persistence, obstinate and marked indi-
viduality making them strong and self-reliant. So, from this blending of character
colors, the Southern girls, when brought beneath the search-light of this new and
progressive civilization, which you in your wisdom and foresight have been so long
laboring to effect, are destined to give forth a brilliancy that betrays the presence of
the flawless jewel.
Yes, the new woman's day has dawned in the South-land. And though the prod-
uct of the evolution has not yet assumed the exact counterpart of the progressive
woman of the East, still it has bidden every daughter of the South throw aside the veil
of helplessness and walk forth into the sunlight of independent labor. She has
already had an opportunity to test her strength. New chances are daily offered to
her; and in every state we find her ready and willing to
Seek Dame Fortune's golden smile,
Assiduous wait upon her,
And gather gear by every wile
That's justified by. honor;
Not to hide it in a hedge,
Not for a train attendant,
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
But what has brought about this great change? The marvelous development of
the natural resources of the country and the increase of wealth have enabled the
South to turn somewhat from the practical affairs of life and give more time and
attention to intellectual culture.
Old institutions have been revived, new ones of great merit have been established,
and a complete reformation has been wrought in the educational world. A growing
interest in solid instruction is everywhere noticeable. In New Orleans, in the Sophia
Newcombe Institute and in the Converse College in North Carolina, we find as good
work as is being done in any of the colleges for men. The public high schools of the
country are accomplishing wonders, and in all of these, the girls lead in numbers and
they lead in rank.
Nor is this! demand for a higher and more thorough education the only mark of
progress. A decided effort toward purifying society by means of temperance and
other organizations, indicates that the morals of the country are not being overlooked.
A new interest is taken in the affairs of the church, and in all the various charities
which many women so willingly, tenderly and gracefully perform.
310 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The charge has been made upon all lines of industry; the defective stones in the
walls of society have been assailed; and more beautiful than all else, women are stand-
ing by one another, while the spirit of kindness beams on every face and pervades
every meeting. History presents no more striking contrast than is seen in the condi-
tions, aims and ambitions distinguishing the women of the old South and those of
the new. The former were educated principally with an eye to the beautiful, but the
intervening change has forced the latter to devote more attention to the useful. The
women of the old South no doubt possessed, in a latent state, the same energies, but
the times and conditions did not call them forth. No matter tjow active their minds,
or how willing their hands, they were not permitted to enter the field of useful labor.
In the new South the bars of all professions and industries are thrown down, and
women roam at will the pleasant fields of all forms of activity.
In the old time the young girl looked to matrimony as the only condition to save
her from a life of dependence. The girl of today basks in the rays of an age of relief
from such helplessness, and while she considers the life of the woman who is happily
married a beautiful one, at the same time she realizes that there is no wail on earth
so pitiable, no cry so hopeless, as that which arises from the wives of unhappy homes.
How I wish it were in my power to picture, as she should be pictured, the ideal
woman of tomorrow. I can only say that I would have her given the fullest develop-
ment of which she is capable. I would see her have the most complete equipment,
the broadest and best training that the strongest institutions in the country can afford.
I would have her realize that this is an age of individual achievement. I would place
in her hand a banner bearing the inscription: "Success. Eternal Vigilance. Devo-
tion to Duty." And then, not waiting for others to command, let herself give the
order to advance. Thus panoplied, let her invade the realms of learning, seize its
choicest treasures, destroy the fortifications erected by wrong, build in their place
the stronghold of the right, and fight the best fight of which she is capable for her-
self, her country and her God,
Let her be a woman who will strjve, who will persevere, who will persist and gain
strength from every lost endeavor. Let her be able to grapple hand to hand with
destiny, to laugh at defeat, to be undaunted by opposition and strong enough to brave
the darkest hours of adversity Teach her to hold fast, to hold hard, and to look upon
poverty and misfortune as ordeals sent to test the sublimity of her soul. Such are
the examples which the Nation needs — such the light that will electrify her people.
SYNOPSIS OF "THE MAKING OF CITIZENS".*
By MRS. HARRIET EARHART MONROE.
Ignorance and sin are a menace to any government, particularly to a republic.
The object of education is to make good men and women. The studies are only a means
to this end. The means have hitherto been made
more prominent than the end, and this the Patriotic
League hopes to change. There is for the individual,
the state, the republic, a great benefit within reach,
which can be best secured by the joint action of
teachers and pupils, through the sympathetic organi-
zation of the great school forces of the world.
We believe good influences prevail in this land, and
if the schools take the morals of the community more
in hand, great good will result to the state. The tem-
perance and reform societies stand at the mouth of
the great stream of sin bearing countless thousands
into eternity. They save a small percentage, but if
teachers and pupils join together at the head of this
stream to prevent youth from getting into wrong
channels, the percentage of sorrow will be much
lessened. It is therefore proposed to connect the
teachers and pupils of the schools of this country by
a strong common tie, and to organize them for thor-
ough joint work under the title of a Patriotic League.
The object of this society shall be: First. To
secure a higher order of citizenship by more carefully
looking after the moral and civil training of the young men in school.
Second. To provide in every town and country schools for the organization of the
pupils over ten years of age; for the purpose of looking up all school children of
school age out of school, and seeing that they are not prevented attending school by
reason of poverty, and, as far as possible, securing by this means the education of
every citizen.
Third. To strengthen the weak, to help raise the fallen, and to give aid and
countenance to every local or general influence which may tend to elevate the morals
or minds of citizens, each member looking first to his own morals, and then to those
of every human being who comes near him.
Fourth. To provide through a competent organization for the systematic giving
for great educational measures, or in cases of great public calamity. If, in cases like
the Johnstown disaster, or the famine in Russia, every teacher gave five cents and
every pupil one cent, they would be the almoners of the world, and the good of this
Mrs. Harriet Earhart Monroe is a native of Indiana, Indiana County, Pa. Her parents were Rev. David Earhart
and Mrs. Mary W. Earhart. She is largely self-educated. Her early school days were spent at Eldersridge and Zelianople
Academiee, Pennsylvania, and she has traveled throoghoat Europe and the United States. She married in 1865 ; was left
a widow in 1873. Her energies have been especially devoted to educational work, having been fifteen years the honored
president of the "Atchison Institute." Among her literary productions of note are: "The Art of Conversation," "Past
Thirty," and "Heroine of Mining Camp." She is now a professional lecturer. In religious faith a Lutheran. Her postofiice
address is 1706 Vine Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
MRS. HARRIET EARHART MONROE.
*The full address, of which what here appears is a synopsis, was entitled :
Pablic Schools."
311
' Best Methods of Making Citizens in the
312 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
would not be so much for those to whom the benefaction was given, as for the enlarge-
ment of mind and soul which would result to the givers.
Fifth. To Americanize every young foreigner in this country by seeing that he
learns to read and write in the English language, and that he understands common
morality, and comprehends the sacred and far-reaching influences of the ballot.
Sixth. To see that all be encouraged to strive for higher education, and that
each year at least one boy and one girl from each district or ward be encouraged to
attempt a complete collegiate course, the general object being to tone up the average
educational standard of every community.
Seventh. To introduce manual training into every school, and to give special
attention and watchful help in this line to the children of the foreigner, of the poor,
and of the vicious.
Eighth. To pledge each member to be noble in his own life, to use no intoxicating
liquors, to be active in his efforts to stop others from using them, and to shun all forms
of gambling, as gambling and the use of intoxicating liquors are among the sins which
most debase citizenship.
With these common objects in view, it is hoped that the society will be made a bond
of union between the fellow of the university and the most indigent pupil of the pri-
mary grades of the public schools. It is believed that the educators of all classes, com-
ing together for the consideration of the best means of accomplishing these results,
will do more for the improvement of the morals of the entire country than any method
that has yet been tried. It is earnestly hoped that the constitution of this society will
be found broad enough to satisfy the Jew, the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant,
and unite them in a common purpose of fitting the youth committed to their care for
nobler achievement and higher destiny.
Atlantic City, N. J., with about thirty thousand people, has two grand educators
— County Supt. S. R. Morse, and Prof. W. A. Deremer, at the head of about fifty teach-
ers in the public schools of the city. At the beginning of last school year a number of
articles were written on the subject of patriotism, for the county papers, with particular
reference to the schools of the county. The statement was repeated in many forms, that
the state pays for the public schools with the expectation that they will make good
citizens. The same statement was reiterated in the schoolroom, until each pupil was
fully imbued with the dignity of the idea that he was to be a helper in fitting himself
for intelligent citizenship, and also that he was to look after all other children who
ought to be in school. To carry out this idea the following principles were kept
steadily in view.
Principle I. Form the public opinion of the school.
Principle II, The state is not able to provide a school police, such as is found in
Germany, but we have in our midst the best police in the world in our own children,
if they are properly organized. Make them feel that they are their brother's keeper,
an thus develop a public spirit.
Principle III. Have the parents co-operate through their children at school.
Tell the parents through the pupils the conditions, and ask the children to bring
money, or a pound of some household necessity.
Principle IV. Secure the co-operation of organized charities if they exist, then
adopt personal visitations to families, and provide for careful distribution. Pupils
were requested to report to the teacher any child who was kept out of school from
poverty, or because he was obliged to work. They were earnestly requested not to
mention to others what they were doing, lest they start up an army of beggars. Pupils
were also requested to report any children of criminals, foreigners, or colored people
who were out of school on account of their condition. In Atlantic City, two hundred
children between the ages of seven and fifteen were found out of school, and seventy
destitute families were discovered.
The teachers then said to their pupils, " Please tell your parents just what we are
doing. Explain to them that we desire to Americanize every young foreigner and to
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 313
make a good citizen of every child in his town; then ask your mother to give us any
clothes which you may have outgrown, or you can spare, to clothe the destitute. Tell
her we will visit every case, and see that her bounty is judiciously used." The response
to this was that more clothing was furnished than can be used in two years, if two
hundred destitute children should be found each year.
The next duty devolved either on the principal or on his most trusted and worthy
teachers. Every indigent family was visited, and about this dialogue occurred:
" Mrs. Smith, we greatly regret that your son John is out of school; would you
be willing to have him attend, provided we clothe him? " " Indeed, Madam, I would
be glad to have John in school; he needs schooling badly enough; but I need his
wages, small as they are, to provide food for my fatherless children." " If we pro-
vide the equivalent for John's wages, will you let him attend school four months?"
The poor woman knows that if the state does not take care of John now, it may
have to do so later, and she gladly consents.
The result of this organized effort was that seventeen wagon-loads of provisions
were provided for the seventy destitute families, the two hundred children were
clothed, and nearly every child not an invalid, between seven and fifteen years of age,
was in school four months. There were some pathetic scenes for our land of plenty.
More than one boy was found who had not been the happy owner of a complete suit
at one time. When he had owned a coat, he had had no shirt or vest, and when in
summer he had worn a calico shirt, he had had no coat. More than one shed happy
tears at seeing himself or herself clothed neatly from head to foot. After all this
care to have every child in school of proper age, you may be sure the teachers made
good use of those four months to instruct in ethics and civics.
The League will insist on the principle that when the state incarcerates a criminal
who might have been a good citizen, if taken young, a gross, rankling act of injustice
has been committed.
Patriotic League, Teacher's Department— The Pledge.
I hereby promise my God and my country to keep in mind that the object of my school is to make
good men and women for society and the state. To that end I shall do what I can.
First: To lead a noble life myself and to secure the best moral development of those committed to
my care.
Second: To inspire a deep love of country in my pupils, and to instruct them in the principles of
good citizenship so as to make them incorruptible in the use of the ballot or in office.
Third: To make good citizens of the children of foreigners, of the poor and of the vicious.
Fourth: To organize my school as helpers in this work, and with the aid of my pupils, see that
poverty keeps no child in my district or ward out of school.
Fifth: To carry out the lines of work of the Patriotic League, and to make my pupils feel that
together we are responsible for the morals of our community.
I invoke the help of my Heavenly Father to carry out this work. Name
The Patriotic League, Pupils' Department — The Pledge.
I hereby promise my God and my teacher to be one of the helpers for improving the citizenship
of this country.
First: I will use no intoxicating liquors of any kind myself, and I will discourage others from
using them whenever I can. I will do what I can by my influence (and my vote when I have one) to
put down the traffic in liquors.
Second: I will not gamble and will do all I can to keep others from gambling.
Third: I will act as a Leaguer to assist any family in my ward or district that is in a suffering con-
dition and to see that no child is out of school because of poverty. I will find out and report all cases
to my teacher either of destitution, or of foreign families whose children are out of school, but I shall be
careful not to speak of them to others.
Fourth: I will be faithful in trying to understand the principles of the government of the United
States, so as to fit myself to be a good citizen, and I will look after young people who are not as fortu-
nately placed as I am, to see that they have civil and moral training.
Fifth: I will endeavor to obey the laws of the school, accepting them as a discipline in fitting me
to be a good citizen of the Republic,
Sixth: 1 shall take an active part in the literary work of this society.
Seventh: I will pay the dues and assessments which my League shall decide to be necessary to
help the purposes of this society.
I invoke the help of my Heavenly Father to carry out this great work.
314 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Patriotic League — Pupils' Department,
Whereas, The government of this state generously provides for the education of all youth within
its boundaries;
Resolved, That we, the pupils and friends of education of
do hereby organize ourselves as a Patriotic League, subject to the conditions of that order, for the pur-
pose of seeing that the design of the state, namely, the education and training for noble citizenship of
all youth within our midst, shall be faithfully carried out.
Pupils' Department — Constitution.
Article L Organization. — A Pupils' Patriotic League shall consist of any convenient number of
pupils not less than ten.
Article IL Membership. — No pupil is eligible for membership who drinks intoxicating liquors or
gambles. Any pupil, not ineligible, may become a member by signing the pupil's pledge and paying
an initiation fee of not more than five cents.
Article III. Officers. — The officers shall consist of a chancellor, vice-chancellor, scribe, corre-
sponding scribe and treasurer.
The chancellor may be a school director, trustee, teacher, or any friend of education, but all other
officers shall be students.
The officers, as above, shall constitute an executive committee for the arrangement of busmess.
Article IV. Committees. — The department committee shall be on civics, attendance, promotion of
temperance and suppression of gambling, providing for the poor, and other benevolences, and college
education. (Discuss benefit of collegiate education, also ways and means of providing for indigent
students who desire collegiate education, etc.) These committees shall consist of not less than three
persons nor more than nine, and shall be nominated by the executive committee.
Article V. Duties of Committees. — It shall be the duty of each department committee to hold a
Erivate session before each regular session of the league, to confer upon the topic of its department, to
ear reports of local and personal work, and to decide who shall represent the committee and report
for it at the general session. In case of failure on the part of any committee to fulfill the above require-
ments, such committee shall be discharged and another committee appointed.
Article VI. Meetings. — Each Pupils' League shall convene once a month on a fixed day and
hour during each month of the school year. For regular meetings members need receive no notification,
but for a called meeting, the scribe shall see that each member is notified of the proposed meeting.
Article VII. Badge. — The badge of this society shall be a small shield of such color and material
as may be agreed upon by each Local League.
Article VIII. Examinations. — Each Pupils' League shall, at its January meeting, hold a public
examination on the Constitution of the United States. After which a champion shall be selected for
the county contest as arranged for by the by-laws of this League.
Article IX. Representatives. — Each Pupils' League shall, at its last meeting before the close of
the year, elect a member to represent it at the annual meeting of the Teachers' County League, and
shall report to that body in writing all that has been accomplished by said League.
Article X. Amendments. — This constitution and the accompanying by-laws, may be amended at
any. regular meeting, provided notice of an intention to amend shall have been given at a previous
meeting.
By-Laws.
I. Duties of Officers. — The chancellor, or, in his absence, the vice-chancellor, shall preside at
every regular meeting.
II. Treasurer. — The treasurer shall have charge of all money belonging to the society, and shall
keep a record of the name and address of each member of the organization. He shall make disburse-
ments on an order from the secretary. He shall also preside at the meetings of the executive com-
mittee.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 315
III. Scribe. — The gcribe shall preserve a full and true record of all proceedings of the society,
notify members when absent of any action taken in reference to them, keep a correct list of the full
names and residences of members, and also act as secretary of the executive committee.
IV. — All officers shall serve until their successors have been elected, and have entered upon the
duties of their offices.
V. Assessments.^An assessment of a local organization will require the action of the full
executive committee. Assessments can not be made above twice a year. They must never be made
except in cases of great public need. No assessment shall exceed one penny for each pupil.
VI. Civics. — At the lirst meeting in December, the chancellor shall present to the League one
hundred printed questions on the Constitution of the United States. The first meeting in January shall
be a public one, open to all parents and friends, and a public examination shall be held, after the manner
of the old-fashioned spelling schools, choosing sides, and the said one hundred questions shall be put by
the chancellor, as a test of knowledge of the Constitution.
If more than one person is found who can answer satisfactorily every question, the League shall
proceed to elect by ballot one person, to be known as "champion."
For the February meeting shall be substituted a convention of the various champions of the
county, at the county seat (in the County Court room if it can be procured). Then the champions
shall answer before a committee of three judges (not citizens of the county) the aforesaid one hundred
questions. Each champion who shall answer every question satisfactorily shall receive a gold medal
to be provided by his own League. No person can be champion two successive years.
VII. Order of Business. — The order of business, for the first meeting after the summer vacation,
shall be as follows: 1, Secretary's Report; 2, Address — On some patriotic subject, not to exceed fifteen
minutes in length; 3, Music; 4, Nomination and Election of Officers; 5, Treasurer's Report; 6, Enroll-
ment of New Members; 7, Announcement of Department Committees, and full explanation of their
duties by the Chancellor; 8, Patriotic Quotations; 9, Music; 10, Adjournment.
For the usual meetings, the order of business shall be as follows: 1, Secretary's Report; 2, Trea-
surer's Report; 3, Enrollment; 4, Reports of Different Committees in writing, in the following order:
Civics, Discussion; Temperanceand Gambling, Discussion; Benevolences, Discussion; College Edu-
cation. Discussions are limited to ten minutes, unless time is extended by Chancellor. 5, If the time
permits, any member may tell what book he has been readmg and has round helpful and profitable,
or the different members may volunteer patriotic quotations; 6, Music; 7, Adjournment.
"What constitutes a state?
Not high raised battlements or labor'd mound.
Thick wall, or moated gate;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown'd;
Not bays and broad, arm'd ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Nor starr'd and spangled courts,
Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No; men, high minded men;
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain."
-Sir William Jones.
SWISS CUSTOMS.
By MISS CECILE GOHL.
Miss Cecile Gohl being a professional lecturer, business reasons forbid the print-
ing of her address in full. The following is but the introduction, specially adapted to
the World's Fair, and a synopsis of the subject matter.
INTRODUCTION.
Switzerland, your tiny sister republic, has long
been reputed as one of the show-places of the world,
attracting tourists of all countries to admire our pro-
fessional beauties, the Alps. This year, however, the
pendulum has been pleased to swing the other way,
and, behold! Chicago has become the show-place of
the globe — for just one season. All Europeans who
can afford it are flocking Chicagoward, and all loyal
Americans are supposed to stay at home doing the
honors of this wonderful country to the foreigners.
Considering the poor business outlook for Switz-
erland under these circumstances, she could easily
have spared a mountain or two to represent her as
loan exhibits in Chicago. She might even have been
coaxed to send the " Jungfrau," if America, with her
superior engineering skill and powerful machinery,
• had assumed charge of the transfer and given a guar-
antee to return the exhibit in good condition. My
country is very little, but it has standing exhibits so
very large as to realize even Chicago's standard of greatness.
Old as the "Jungfrau" is, she enjoys the reputation of everlasting beauty; and
besides, she would have made herself eminently useful as a refrigerator in the dog
days in Jackson Park. You could not have set her up here, for fear of dwarfing the
show; you would have had to place her in the lake.
Suppose Mount Washington or Pike's Peak had heard of, or caught a glimpse of,
the "Jungfrau" on her journey, and had asked her to stay on this side of the ocean
and become, at her option, "Mrs. Pike's Peak," or " Mrs. Mount Washington," there
would be, for once, a prospect of a well-matched, solidly-based international marriage.
SYNOPSIS.
American travelers in relation to the Swiss custom of tips. Switzerland a crazy
quilt. Diversity of races, languages and religions. The engine an enemy to old
customs. Superstition, inherited and developed. The village quack and his working
method. Quack cure vs. faith cure. Einsiedeln. Customs connected with birth,
marriage, death. Easter customs and sports. Ascension Day and ascent of mount-
ains. Swiss people like whipped cream and belieVe in whipping of children. Trav-
eling schools. Maiden Sunday. Moving to the mountains in the merry month of
May. Kuhreihen and Jodel. The magic power of a simple strain. Poetic nature
and prosy business on the Alps. The great Canadian cheese eclipsing the record of
Miss Cecile Gohl is a native of Switzerland. She was educated in Switzerland and spent ten years as a teacher in
Sweden. She has traveled in Germany, England, Sweden, Canada and the United States. Her principal literary works
are contributions to the Swedish and American press. Her profession is that of teacher, linguist, journalist and lecturer.
In religious faith she is Unitarian. Her postoflace address is No. 457 Twenty-first Street, New York City.
316
MISS CECILE GOHL.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
317
Swiss cheese. Wrestling match. The Swiss a singing, shooting, athletic people.
Cultivation of patriotism. Little Helvetia and great Columbia.
HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE HOME/
By MRS. ELIZA R. SUNDERLAND, Ph.D.
There is a widespread fear that the higher education of women will in some way
prove inimical to domestic life. This fear has been voiced to me recently from two
very different sources: First, by an intelligent Japan-
ese gentleman, a member of the nobility of Japan,
spending some time in this country for the purpose
of studying our institutions, with a view to their intro-
duction into Japan; second, by one of the lady man-
agers for the Columbian Exposition, who asked the
above question, accompanied by the request that I
answer it from this platform, as one of the living
questions now pressing for consideration.
There are two possible bases for answering the
question: one a historical study of results, the other
a theoretical study of tendencies.
The time is as yet too short for an adequate
answer to be possible from the historical standpoint.
At the beginning of this century the highest educa-
tion offered to the women of America was to be had
in Dames' Schools, and consisted chiefly in reading,
writing, and working the "Sampler," which was their
only diploma. About 1820 Boston, Mass., decided
that girls might be admitted to the boys' lower
schools for an hour in the afternoon, after the boys
were dismissed; a dangerous innovation, as it proved.
The camel's nose once within the tent, it was only a question of time when the
whole body would be within the sacred inclosure.
In 1822 or 1823 the town meeting of Northampton, Mass., decided that the public
schools should be opened to girls, but the school committee simply ignored the ordi-
nance by making no provision for a larger attendance, and, since the boys filled the space
already provided, the new law remained a dead letter till the citizens insured its exe-
cution through a lawsuit to compel the committee to provide room sufficient to
accommodate the girls as well as boys. Thus, in these movements in Boston and
Northampton, we have the entering wedge to primary education for girls in the
country generally.
The earliest hint of anything better than this primary instruction is to be found in
the once famous Troy Seminary, of Troy, N. Y., organized, I believe, somewhere in
the thirties, and the even more famous Mt. Holyoke Seminary, in Massachusetts,
Mrs. Eliza Bead Stmderlaiid was bom April 19, 1839. Her parents were Amasa Read, a Quaker, and Jane Henderson
Read, a Scotch Presbyterian. She was educated at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, Massachusetts, and at the University of Michigan,
taking from the latter a B.L. and later Ph.D. degree. She has traveled extensively through this country and in Europe. She
married in 1871 Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland, a Unitarian minister. She is at present Professor of History and Political
Economy in the Ann Arbor High School; addresses each Sunday a Bible-class of university students, frequently reaching a
hundred members, and occasionally fills her husband's pulpit, as well as other pulpits and platforms. She is a mother and
home-maker, teacher and assistant pastor. Mrs. Sunderland stands as a living proof that "Higher education does not unfit
women for domestic life." She has three children— two daughters and a son. In religious faith she is a Unitarian. Her
postoffice address is Ann Arbor, Mich.
♦The title under which this address was delivered at the Congress was, "Does the Higher Education Tend to Unfit
Women for Domestic Life."
818
MRS. ELIZA R. SUNDERLAND.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 319
founded in 1836. Yet, measured by the curriculum of Harvard or Yale, the courses of
study offered in these schools could not be designated as "higher education."
Of colleges proper open to women, Oberlin was founded in 1833, Antioch College
in 1852, Cornell University in 1862, Vassar College in 1865, and Michigan University
opened its doors to women in 1870. Here we have a few centers for the really higher
education of women.
But how are the girls to obtain the preparation for this higher education? Public
high schools were generally closed to girls till about the middle of this century.
Boston did not establish a permanent high school for girls until 1852, two hundred
years, almost, after she had established a Latin school for boys, and more than two
hundred after the founding of Harvard College. In 1891, twenty-one years after the
first women entered Michigan University, there were but 445 women enrolled to
1,975 men.
The fact is that over these first colleges and universities opened to women there
lowered a dark cloud of doubt and distrust on the part of an unsympathetic public,
which had already decided as to the legitimate sphere of women.
Ail these facts are of value as showing that the higher education of women is yet
in its early infancy, and, therefore, can not, in the nature of the case, furnish data for
a historical estimate of results.
The other possible basis for an answer to our question must be sought in a study
of tendencies. Is there anything in the nature of the higher education incompatible
with domestic life?
Domestic life means home life, life with and for the few. What are the requisites
for such a life? Briefly, "taste and training;" and since taste is largely a matter of
education, of habit, it might, perhaps, be as correct to use but one word and say train-
ing. What training? That depends upon the time and place. In the time of our
Revolutionary foremothers a training for domestic life meant a practical knowledge of
baking and brewing, of spinning and weaving, of laundrying and dyeing, of dress-
making and millinery, besides all the housewifely arts which a wide hospitality called
into constant requisition. An appalling array of requirements, these — how was it
possible ever to master them? It was easy enough in those days, when every mother
was a notable housewife and every daughter had it for her supreme ambition to equal
if not surpass her mother; when a girl's education consisted in just this, was begun
almost as soon as she could walk, and lasted right on till the wedding day, with only
the slight break, quite insignificant, of attending the Dame's School long enough to
learn to read and write and work the samplers.
At the present time how stands the case? Under our modern principle of divis-
ion of labor much of the baking and all of the brewing, spinning and weaving; much
of the laundrying, most of the dressmaking and all of the millinery, have been rele-
gated to experts outside the home; and for the demands of hospitality, the occasional
reception has taken the place of the old-time informal and frequent visiting; and
florist And caterer take the place of deft maidenly and matronly fingers, while for all
other requirements of the home hired help is expected to bear the burden of all prac-
tical execution at least.
Is there anything left for the mother and daughters to do? Yes, much; for in
the new times as in the old not a little of personal service must be given by the mother
and daughters of each .home, if the home is to be more than a boarding-house. For
them the price which must be paid for efficiency is personal knowledge of what con-
stitutes good work and practical acquaintance with details.
How are the girls of the present day to get this knowledge and training? The
especial pride of the nineteenth century of America is the free public school, its pass-
port to social position and success in life is a diploma, standing for so much of book
knowledge appropriated by ihe holder. But this diploma means — oh, how many years
of work! The little maiden of five years trudges away with her big brother of seven
to enter the primary school, and if for twelve years of her life she is able to appear
320 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
daily in classes with lessons learned, she may hope for that crowning glory of Ameri-
can youth of both sexes, the high school diploma. "If she is able to appear in classes
daily with lessons learned! " A large "if," that; an "if" which means weary hours
of lamplight study to supplement the too short daylight hours; an " if " which means
little time for play, none for home work.
And what is the relation of this school-life to the home-life — of the times of our
great-great-grandmothers — we will say? That home-life meant for girls and misses
quiet, seclusion, doing duties and sharing burdens for others. This school-life means
a crowd, gregariousness, working for public applause and public honors in the school-
room and on commencement day. That home-life meant physical activity, many
sided, manual training on many lines, developed muscular systems. This school-life
means sedentary habits, lack of muscular vigor, distaste for muscular exertion, inef-
ficiency in the practical affairs of life. That home-life meant home, the center of
thought and effort, as of daily life. This school-life means the outside world as the
center of thought and effort, home the eating and sleeping place. That old time life
meant that home duties took precedence of all other demands. In this new time life
school duties and responsibilities stand pre-eminent; duties to the home and its
inmates, and even to personal health, being ruthlessly pushed aside if they come in
collision with school requirements and class grades.
And when these school years are ended, and the maiden of sixteen, seventeen or
eighteen turns for the last time from the doors of the high school, bearing proudly
her much coveted diploma, is she then ready to take her place in the home and enter
upon as careful and thorough training for domestic life as the schools have given her
in book lore? Let the great army of young women seeking places as teachers, clerks,
bookkeepers, typewriters, dressmakers' apprentices and factory girls answer; and a
still louder answer, if we will listen for it, may be heard from the urgent and wholly
unfilled demand for intelligent help in the home.
The fact seems to be, and we may as well face it first as last, modern school-life
and training does unfit the girl for domestic life first, by monopolizing the time once
given to training for domestic life; second, by accustoming the daughters of rich and
poor alike to the excitements of a gregarious public life through all their formative
years, thus rendering distasteful to them, by its very strangeness, any work or pleasure
to be had in the privacy of the home.
But all this is primary and secondary education. The girl who has finished these
stands only on the threshold of the higher education. For the girls who take this
there follow four or six years more of study now entirely removed from home influ-
ences and surroundings, as well as freed from domestic duties and responsibilities.
How will these added years affect the problem of woman's relation to domestic life?
Can they do otherwise than emphasize and exaggerate the evils already pointed out?
and must not the A. B. or A. M. or Ph.D., after her four or five or six years given in
college halls to Latin and Greek, science and philosophy, literature and mathematics,
be even further removed still from both inclination and training for the quite unliter-
ary and the relatively lonely work of superintending and serving in the various rela-
tions of domestic life? It would seem to follow that higher education for women must
prove a public calamity, since its results must be to remove the picked young women
of each community from domestic life, thus relegating home-making — and homes are
the recognized corner-stones of society and the state — to second or third rate talent.
But suppose we close the college doors to the women of the future. Have we
then averted the evils we fear? We must not forget that the result of our study has
been to show that the higher education, at most, only emphasized evils already exist-
ing; that it is the primary and secondary education, not the higher, which lies at the
root of the trouble, that the primary and secondary schools take not a select few, but
the daughters from all our homes, rich and poor, cultured and uncultured homes alike;
take them during the most plastic and formative period of life, and, by heavy exactions
on time and strength, continued through many years, prevent the formation of tastes
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 321
and aptitudes essential to a happy and successful domestic life. And are we prepared,
therefore, to condemn our whole public school system of co-education, and to relegate
our daughters back again to the Dames' Schools of the beginning of the century? No
one could be found foolhardy enough to answer in the affirmative. Some other rem-
edy than this must be found, and that remedy when found will not consist in revolu-
tion, that is, overthrow, destruction, but in evolution, that is, adaptation.
We shall need to remind ourselves as well as the croakers that secondary educa-
tion for girls dates back only to the middle of the century, and that the higher educa-
tion of woman, as offered in any adequate form, can be measured by a quarter of a cent-
ury. It is not strange that so potent a factor introduced into woman's life should
prove a disturbing element, and should require readjustment. The new thing always,
for the time being, takes precedence of the old, if it does not supersede it. So wonder-
ful was the new world opened up to women through books and education, the world
of history and literature, science and art and philosophy, that the old world of domes-
tic life seemed by comparison meager indeed. And if sharing the boy's studies had
brought such enlargement of life, might not sharing his occupations, or, at least, his
life of public and organized activity, bring equal good? It was in the nature of things
that the experiment must be tried. We are living in the transition period, and are
interested observers of the experiment. What will be the outcome? The first result
could not have been other than an over emphasis of importance put upon the public
life in store or office or teacher's chair (for these were all new), and an under empha-
sis put upon the old life of home service. And it was well that it should be so.
Domestic work had fallen under the ban of being an occupation adapted to the capac-
ities of the uneducated and dependent classes. So that wife and daughters might
with their own brains and hands plan and execute the work of the entire household,
from cooking the food, through spinning, weaving and making the clothes, to caring
for the children and nursing the sick, and yet this wife and these daughters before the
law were supported by husband and father, and any money they might need for their
own personal expenses was regarded as a gift, not as a wage earned. Moreover, as
with all work done by uneducated and dependent classes, the value put upon it was
low if it had to be obtained from strangers. Is it strange that when the public school
had fitted a girl for earning an independent competence she should have gladly
turned her back upon the often galling dependence of the home. And this is but one
side of the movement; the other side is that the home being thus deprived of its
accustomed workers, the household machinery creaks, bringing widespread discom-
fort, and the world is awaking to the fact that housework as well as other work
demands brains and skill and that these must be paid for in the home as well as in the
shop and schoolroom. ^
Thus far the experiment has progressed. The world has begun to recognize the
supreme importance of skilled work in the home, while on the other hand it has in
efficient operation an instrumentality expressly adapted to insure that skilled work
shall not be had there. Such is the dilemma. Readjustment must be made. What is
the outlook for it? I turn, as I believe the world ere long will turn, for an efficient
agent in such readjustment to the woman made by the higher education. She alone
has reached the vantage-ground from which she is prepared to see domestic life in
its true perspective in relation to all of life. She has learned from her sociological
studies that the moral fiber which makes possible a free government must be devel-
oped in the home; and from her scientific researches that moral and intellectual as
well as muscular fiber are dependent upon pure air, cleanly surroundings, healthful
food, adequate and appropriate clothing, regular habits, and a cheerful environment
of comfort and hope, all of which it is largely the work of the house-mother and her
assistants to furnish. Moreover, these college-bred women are prepared, by years of
close logical thinking, to undertake the task of readjusting woman's life to the life of
society as a whole in the light of nineteenth-century needs and possibilities; because
they are able to recognize society as an organism of which women are organic parts,
• (21)
322 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and they well know that the good of no one organ can be found apart from the good
of the whole.
What will be the steps of readjustment? I think I see at least five. First of all
there will be a remodeling of primary and secondary school-life. The school was and
is designed as a means of education; but what is it to be educated? "To have passed
successful examinations upon a certain number of books," answers the average mem-
ber of the school board and the average teacher; " hence everything must bend to this
mental feat." " To have gained command of all one's powers, mental, moral, and
physical," answers the woman who has climbed all the rounds of the educational lad-
der and stands at the top, " and to gain such command requires brain work and hand
work, work for self and work for others, work with others in the school and work
alone in the home, theoretical work and practical work, and the two sides of the coup-
lets should go hand in hand, to attempt to separate them means a one-sided develop-
ment unworthy the name of education. Hence the curriculum of the school must be
so remodeled as to leave time for the training of the home to go side by side with it."
Second: There will be needed a remodeling of the curricula of secondary and
higher education to make them touch more closely the life and needs of men and
women. Anatomy, physiology and psychology, heat and light, air and its movements,
chemistry and germ theories, if studied first in the laboratories of the schools, should
be tested anew in the practical laboratory of the home and of society. The nation
and its history are only the family and its history writ large; political economy
domestic economy magnified.
Third: With the home and its needs thus made the practical objective point of
a large part of college study, the home will rise into new importance, and the home
keeper to a new place of honor; since only the owner of the cultured brain can aspire
to the rank of a scientific as well as practical housekeeper, and such housekeeping will
be seen to be as worthy an object of ambition as club work, reporting or teaching.
Fourth: Housekeeping alone will not fill all the time or satisfy all the aspirations
of every cultured woman, and unless the home is to lose many of its brightest lights,
it must be demonstrated that the brains of a cultured woman put into a household
may save time for other work — the club, the magazine article, the book to be written,
the profession to be followed while yet the home suffers no loss. But to make all
this possible another step must be taken in the process of readjustment; namely,
Fifth: Under the wise guidance of the woman of higher education, the woman
of secondary education will come again into the home, not as a drudge but as " help,"
and very efficient help — yes, come out of not a few stores and offices and even school-
rooms into the domestic circle, there to receive full recognition and adequate compen-
sation as trained workers, they having had, as a part of their education, the training
which will make domestic work easy and pleasant.
If, then, the higher education of woman tends at all today to unfit women for
domestic life, it seems to me to carry with it the promise and potency of a revivified
and reglorified domestic life in a not-distant future; a domestic life which shall be
recognized as not a slavery, but the broadest freedom; not a drudgery, but the
noblest service, because the once household drudge — drudge because dependent and
ignorant — is now the independent, self-poised, scientific mistress of a position of rec-
ognized importance.
THE CHILDREN OF THE OTHER HALF.
By MISS LUCY WHEELOCK.
" Oh, child! oh new-born denizen
Of life's great city! On thy head
The glory of the morn is shed
Like a celestial benison —
Here at the portal thou dost stand,
And with thy little hand
Thou openest the mysterious gate.
Into the future's undiscovered land! "
f.
MISS LUCY WHEELOCK.
Every child born, in palace or hovel, stands at
this same mysterious portal. For every one the future
waits. There is no manger so lowly, no cradle so
humble that around it the glories of the waiting world
do not shine. As to the holy Child of old, so to every
child today, the world comes with its gifts. The
W -f^ ^^^^^^^^. gentle Mary is there representing the family life. The
^ ^^S^^^^^^^^^^S^I^ humble shepherds come first, foreshadowing the lot
Mf JfJMH^^^^^^UH^ of man as destined to live among the common people,
W^iwi^^^BIHHP^^'^ to live only by using his own powers, and by con-
forming to the laws of life, that there is no receiving
without giving. And yet, the glory of Heaven had
shone upon these same shepherds, showing that the
radiance of the Divine may illuminate even the most
humble life, and the celestial music may accompany
the every-day talk. Kingly power is represented in the group around this early cradle.
The golden treasures of the world's wisdom are laid at the feet of the child standing
at life's portal. Every poet, from the time of blind Homer, has sung his songs for
him. Every work written in any tongue may be his.
The canvas of a Murillo or a Reynolds he may possess in the true sense of pos-
session. "The world belongs to those who take it." The incense of the lives of the
saints, of the good and holy men of all ages is wafted to him as a sacred gift. The
faith of a Luther, of a Savonarola, or of a Joan of Arc may be his inheritance. A long
procession of heroes and heroines, the great and mighty of the earth, may march across
the stage of his life, each bringing the inspiration of his or her deed as a magic gift to
allure to noble livi*ig. Such is the possible heritage of every child born. But alas!
how often by lack of right environment, and by a false system of training, the heir
fails to take possession of what is truly his. To defraud a man of his estate is a
grievous sin. But to defraud a human being of his Divine possession of himself and
of his powers, of his joyous inheritance in this world of blessing, is an evil with which
human law may not interfere, and of which too seldom we, any of us, take cognizance.
We have easily comforted ourselves by assigning too much importance to heredity and
too little to environment. To take a child of the slums and put him for half a day
Mies Lucy Wheelock is a native of Vermont. She was born Febraary 1, 1859. Her parents were Edwin Wheelock and
Laara Pierce. She was educated by her mother at home and in Chaunoy Hall School, Boston, Mass. She has traveled through
her own country as far west as the Mississippi River and one summer in Europe. She is an enthusiastic and successful worker
in the kindergarten. Her principal literary works are educational articles, children's stories, and lessons and translations of
German tales. Miss Wheelock is a Christian, and a member of the Congregational Church. Her postoffice address is Chauncy
Hall School, Boston, Mass.
323
324 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
into an atmosphere of peace and good-will and joy, such as the kindergarten offers, is
to make the dinginess and misery of the tenement house impossible for that child
when growth shall have come. The child of the slums becomes vicious and wicked
because effected by the false maxims of his environment. " The world owes every
man a living," is a motto of the tramp, the thief, the pickpocket. The child brought
.up with no other influence must inevitably look upon the world, not as his natural God-
given inheritance to use and enjoy, but as an estate to which others have defrauded
him of his natural rights. He must gain by craft and crime that which others have
appropriated.
Those whom we call great are so because they most fully accept the truth that
their lives belong not to themselves, but to the race. 'The child standing at the portal
of the future, wherever his feet are placed, finds himself confronted by the institu-
tional life of man, offering varied relationships.
To lead a human being to master himself and his relationships is to educate him.
The kindergarten takes hold of the family relationship and idealizes it for the child.
One of Froebel's finger-plays names the fingers for the different members of the
family. The children sing:
"This is the mother, kind and dear;
This is the father, with hearty cheer;
This is the brother, strong and tall;
This is the-sister who plays with her doll;
And this is the baby, the pet of all.
Behold the good family, great and small."
As they sing the different fingers are raised, and when the little one takes its
place the idea of a perfect whole is gained. The finger family would be incomplete
without the little one. The hand would be imperfect. Eagh is needed in its place to
make the whole. The moral is obvious. Each member of the human family is needed
in its right place to make a beautiful home. The little one, pet of all, must stand in
its turn and help as the little finger does, when its work is needed. There are many
other family songs which impress the same lesson. The mothers everywhere testify to
the influence which is felt in the home. " My Johnny is a different boy since he went
to the kindergarten," says the mother. " He talks so pretty, now, and he runs so
quick to get the coal."
The reflex influence of the plays of the kindergarten on the home is not the least
important of its effects. One mother was convicted of her own unworthiness, when
she heard her Jennie singing, "This is the mother, kind and dear," " I haven't been
a good mother," she confessed with bitter tears; "but I'd like her to sing it truly of
me." This confession was made to the kindergartner, for the heaviest doors open to,
and the kindest hearts are reached by the kindergartner, who goes into the poorest
home as the friend of the children. That is her only passport to favor and it serves.
The charity visit is rarely productive of good, but the visit of a friend is always wel-
come.
The home atmosphere is often changed, too, by the pretty colored things which
are brought into it. Jennie carries home the red and white mat she has woven. The
mother is delighted to see what " her Jennie" can make. She likes to show it to the
neighbors when they drop in. But there is not a place worthy of this bright, clean
mat. Perhaps the wall is washed to make a clean background for it, or the mantel is
dusted. " My mother dusted the mirror," one child reported, "and she put my card
in the frame." When the wall has been washed and the mirror dusted, the window
must be cleaned, so that the light may come in better, and the stronger light shows
the doubtful spots on the floor. So the floor is washed, and, at length, the dingy
room becomes clean.
The "divine discernment" is bred within children, who are taken from dinginess
and strife and surrounded for a portion of every day with an atmosphere of peace and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 325
good will. The slums will not hold them, when the power comes to forsake the life
of the tenement. The kindergarten to many children seems like a real heaven with
blooming flowers and sunshine and singing birds. The warmth and light and kindli-
ness of the place first attracts, and then the love for it all comes "The kindergarten
is the largest step forward yet taken in the race with poverty;" though the kinder-
garten plays, the fancy is so filled with shapes of joy that the poorest and hungriest
boy gains the power to create his own environment. In fancy he roams the daisy
fields, or the green forests. Or, perhaps, the heat of the summer and the squalor of
his surroundings are lost, as he personates the fish diving and darting along the clear,
rippling stream. The songs and talks and plays have made " his mind a mansion for
all lovely forms," and have given him a new environment, A new earth has been
created around him, and he looks toward a new heaven. This heaven he finds within
himself, as he is guided constantly to happy companionship, not only with the forms
and voices of Nature which are pictured and presented to him, but with his fellows.
He learns that there is a larger family than that dwelling within the attic room,
of which he is a member. In the kindergarten he is a part of an embryo community,
where all the duties and rights of citizenship are taught by daily intercourse. The law
of this community is the Golden Rule, and all actions are measured by its golden
standard.
But every community must have its industrial life, and this child society is no
exception. By making work beautiful it becomes interesting and a love of work grows
up within this circle of children, where the hum of industry is as pleasant as the hum
of the traditional bee. Idleness, which is the cause of crimes and woes manifold, finds
an arch enemy in the kindergarten, where diligence in business is the ruling principle.
The value of this training to work and to love work cannot be ignored by those who see
the need of a better industrial development in our country.
The kindergarten, too, constantly contradicts the old dictum of Plato, that the
useful arts are degrading. The work of the blacksmith, the cooper, the farmer, the
miller, the clothier are represented in the games of the children. It is a joy to be a
blacksmith and to hammer well, because we can then set a shoe for ahorse. Without
the horse the farmer could not carry his grain to the miller, and the flour could not be
ground and the children could not be fed. So the beauty and the honor of the work
are made to depend on what it gives to others, and in his representative play the four-
year-old may gain the great truth as a life possession, which we name the interde-
pendence of mankind on the solidarity of the race.
" Everybody has to have everybody," exclaimed the child on whom this great
thought had dawned through his play. Can any minister or teacher phrase it better?
Can there be any better thought for the child, standing on the portal of the future, to
carry with him into the undiscovered land? If everybody needs everybody, some-
body needs him. If he accepts this universal relationship, he has already become an
heir to his true kingdom He has come into possession of his own.
THE HIGHER WOMANHOOD.*
By MRS. CAROLINE F. CORBIN.
The women of this generation have been busy with the intellectual and econom-
ical development of the new era. In so doing they have acted under an inspiration
as true as that which fashions the rocky crust of the
earth before it clothes the crags with verdure or
brings forth the flowers which embellish the plain.
But when the birth throes of the new advent are over,
the stir and excitement of it all past, and humanity
shall settle down to the fully developed conception
of woman as no longer a slave or an inferior, but the
equal of man, a creature with her own needs, her own
prerogatives, her own destiny, not indeed identical
with man, but in every respect of equal worth and
dignity, then will it be seen that even from the begin-
ning the emotional and spiritual nature of woman has
been God's crowning gift to the race; that even as a
serf or slave, in Bedouin tent or Asian harem, fettered,
circumscribed and despised, she was still the fountain
of life, the helpmate and inspiration of man, the sybil,
the seer, the prophetess, the exponent of that divine
principle of love on which the progress and culmina-
tion of the race wholly depended. The germ of her
great destiny was there, biding its time in darkness
and obscurity. The magnetic impulse of the woman
soul was even then the promise of God to the race, of
its future development and flowering, and that without it the career of man, even in
the material and intellectual phases of life, must have been abortive, impossilDle.
I look abroad over the marvelous scenes of this Exposition, scenes never before
equaled in fairy tale or dream of the Arabian Nights, which Shakespeare's fancy but
faintly outlined in that wondrous scene of " cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces
and solemn temples," which is such a description of our beloved Exposition and its
final destiny, as no other hand but his could have written. I look, I say, upon this
wondrous scene of enchantment which men claim as their unaided achievement, and I
ask, is it in truth the work of man alone? I go back to the quiet homes, the studios
apart from the noisy scenes of life, the work shops, the forges, and seeing these indom-
itable toilers at work, these Cyclops, these peers of the ancient Hercules, I ask whence
came the inspiration which fires their imagination, which nourishes their fancy, which
expands heart and soul to these new and grand conceptions of form and life and
achievement; and I find in the inner recesses of each man's heart the energizing force
Mrs. Caroline Fairfield Corbin ie a native of Connecticut. She was born November 9, 1836. Her paternal and maternal
ancestry are well known New England families. She was graduated from the Brooklyn Female Academy, since known as
Parker Collegiate Institute of Brooklyn and Long Island. She has traveled extensively in this country and Europe. She
married, in 1861, Calvin R. Corbin, Esq. She has had six children. Her special work has been in the interest of reform in
the relations between men and women. Her principal literary works are " Rebecca, or Woman's Secret," " The Marriage
Vow," and other works. In religious faith she is a Trinitarian Christian, and a member of the New England Congregational
Church. In her early years Mrs. Corbin advocated Woman's Suffrage, but deeper study and experience convinced her that
the doctrine implied a low materialistic idea of the value and destiny of women, and she has in recent years written many
pamphlets in opposition to the political rights of women. Her postoffice address is 597 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, 111.
MRS. CAROLINE F. CORBIN.
•The article as here given includes but the conclnding portion of the address delivered in the Woman's Building.
326
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 327
of passion some gentle face of woman, some tender ministry of love which tempers
the nerves of steel to greater endurance, and exalts and warms and quickens the whole
nature. There is no worthy work of man which lifts itself to heaven over the broad
earth today which has not behind it, giving it life, force and inspiration, the fecund,
nourishing soil of womanhood. Nor, as the ages go on, and woman achieves grand
and glorious successes in the outer world, shall we ever find that they can do this
unaided by man. In every woman's work that is worthy of exalted fame, will be found
the evidence of that strong support, that steady guidance, that supreme aspiration
that man alone can minister.
In conclusion, I wish to give you the strong figure and example of what I have
tried to say in this discourse. Go with me to the Midway Plaisance and look at the
Samoan houses, the village of the South Sea Islanders, the huts of the Esquimaux and
Laplander, and then stand with me in the Court of Honor, amid all its sublime and
unearthly beauty, its gorgeous flower-encircled domes and its matchless fountains, its
colonnades and porticoes, the grandeur of its Peristyle, the airy grace and beauty of
its architecture, the stately columns, the majesty of its Statue of the Republic; meas-
ure, if you can, standing under the blue of the sky, with the blue of the lake spread
out before you, the progress, the achievement which humanity has made from the
Midway to where we stand. I tell you as one who speaks from the inmost councils
of nature and God that one undivided half of all this achievement belongs to woman.
It is immutably, indefaceably here, and it is an exhibit of woman's work beside which
every other exhibit of woman's hand-craft in this Exposition, noble and beautiful as
many of them are, is paltry and insignificant.
WE. THE WOMEN.
By MISS CARA REESE
We, the women of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, estab-
lish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do here and now, in the
glory of this great Columbian revelation of our
strength, pledge heart, soul and mind in consecrated
and contented service to our homes, our country and
our God. To illustrate the virtues of her generation,
and to set the seal of indestructibility on the works
that now do praise her throughout the land, there is
need that woman now tarry awhile, and within the
cloister of her soul reflect on that beginning which
must necessarily find its birth in this triumphal close
of the woman's century. No woman worthy of the
name regards her personal existence as the chief fac-
tor to be considered in all that tends to yield to
national life its happiness and prosperity. No aggre-
gate of women may claim the right of consideration
as the great center in the adjustment of the affairs of
the universe. There are leaders, there are followers.
Those who follow today will be the leaders of tomor-
row. Advance is general, development sure, whether
gradual or spontaneous.
In the belief that forces set in motion can never
be recalled, shackles unbound can never be replaced, and that what may apply to one
aggregate of women may apply to all — allowance made for laws, customs and beliefs,
inherited or acquired, which may hasten or retard — we, the women of the United States,
with the grip of the universe on heart and hand, pause, in this the hour of triumph, and
question with a thrill of pain, "What of the Future?" Years of effort have found
culmination in a proper and befitting display. Never in the history of nations has there
been such revelation of woman's capability and deeds as in this gala year. But com-
mencement is almost over. Work has passed examination. Carefully prepared speeches
have been delivered. The world has seen, heard, and applauded. With the end comes
a beginning.
Conservative women, and there have been quite a number who have distributed
their time to good advantage in the sessions of these various congresses, discern in
the new beginning signs of coming defeat. The desire for supremacy, the wild rush
for leadership, the greed for gain, the love of notoriety, the clamor for political recog-
nition, are straws to them that point the way to loss of womanly dignity and refine-
ment, the collapse of domestic tranquillity, and the moral weakening of the home.
Miss Cara Reese was born, raised, and is working out a successful career in Pittsburgh, Pa. She is the only daughter of
Abram and Mary Godwin Reese, both natives of Pennsylvania. Miss Reese has been educated in the public and private
schools of Pittsburgh, and graduated from the Institute Department of Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa. Higher education
was continued under special teachers, not forgetting the accomplishments of music and art. Her chosen profession is active
newspaper work. For over six years Miss Reese has been identified with the interests of the Pittsburgh Commercial
Gazette. Miss Reese is particularly happy in public addresses. She is a member of the Shady Avenue Baptist Church, Pitts-
burgh. Is kind-hearted and womanly in disposition, and happy and contented in her chosen sphere. Her postolfice address
is Commercial Oazette, Pittsburgh, Pa.
o2o
MISS CARA REESE.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 329
The enthusiasts "pressed down, shaken together and running over" with things
seen and heard from their seventh heaven, predict another end. " We are living in
the dawn of the millennium," they say. " What need of further conquest." "Behold
the dawn of a magnificent future," cries .the suffragist; "save Kansas, and we, the
women live to rule, henceforth and forever."
With some hesitation, a representative of the wage-earning women of the day
ventures to define a pathway through the chaos resultant from the general upheaval
that is everywhere bringing women up to light and civilization, thankful, bewildered,
dizzy or inflated with pride as the case may be, and, but for a growing conviction that
a proper and rational settling of the condition of affairs would be a long and tedious
process without laborers in the field, both tongue and pen would have maintained
silence.
The new era is at hand, but not that of the perfection that bringeth into the king-
dom, nor that, it is hoped, that means the reversal of the positions of men and women,
nor that which may herald destruction or defeat. But an era, God grant, of equal rights,
woman with woman, the home with the world, domestic tranquillity with the public wel-
fare, God with the minds he has created. The day has gone by for the expression of
that sentiment which surrounds the business woman with the halo of a glorified inde-
pendence, and places her on a pedestal in the market-place, the envy and admiration
of the stay-at-homes, a spectacle to beget jealousy, covetousness, heavy-heartedness
and despair in her purseless sisters, and in the end the lever, perhaps, that overturns
some happy home. The day has gone by for the expression of that sentiment that
ignores the practical side of the life of wife and mother, and pleads only for that Divine
calling, which, with its ceaseless panorama of pots and pans, cradles and tubs, butch-
ers, bakers and mantua-makers, supposably heralds an estate but little lower than the
angels.
The new era finds women divided into two great classes, wage-earners and home-
makers. Upon the proper adjustment of these depends future serenity. The limit of
tension is now at hand. Relations have been strained to the utmost. Surface indica-
tions prove the wage-earning class the stronger. The flaunted dollar is proving the
magnet to draw the wife from the husband, the mother from her children, and fair
young girls from the safe shelter of the home. Nay, more. The signs of the times
prove that husbands, fathers, sons and brothers are not averse. The husband makes
room for the desk of his wife, the father finds place for his daughter's typewriter,
brothers skirmish for positions for their sisters, the small boy greedily fingers the
pennies that mother has earned, and the home goes to destruction. What need of
detail? Thousands of roomers in the large cities, cramped housekeeping in apart-
ment flats, bear silent testimony. The dusty parlor, the cluttered kitchen, the half
made beds, the hurried meals are familiar objects today in the homes where the
women have gone over to the hustling world, while for her pains, the thrifty stay-at-
home, who has planned and worked and ordered affairs in true gospel fashion, must
smother a sigh as within her own household she hears the commendation bestowed
on the money-making women on the other side of the wall, and her home-loving
daughter creeps to her room disheartened and discouraged at the thinly veiled hint
of father or brother — go thou and do likewise.
The unappreciated home-makers of today, and, oh men and brothers, how many
there are! watch the career of the wage-earning woman with hungry eyes. The wage-
earning woman sighs for the comforts of home, but views home-life with distrust.
Both are discontented, and in that discontent lies the leaven that will work future
destruction. This discontent, so universal and so widely recognized as the one evil
that threatens the success of the women of the future, owes its strength to the sharply
defined line that exists between the earner and the home-maker. Not the dividing
line of caste, as formerly. Everywhere the working woman is compelling the atten-
tion and respect of the women of so-called leisure. She finds cordial recognition in
the homes of wealth. She is an honored guest at public functions. Her opinion is
^
330 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
asked on affairs of moment. Her name graces committees and boards. She is sought
after, consulted and socially accepted. But the still sharper division, all the more
distinct in that it is largely imaginary, with pocketbook and independence on one
hand and unappreciated home work on the other.
All honor to the woman, who, when necessity compels, will bravely take up the
burden of business. All honor to that consecration that will force woman from the
home in order to better protect that home. All honor to her who feels that she could
not give a satisfactory account of her stewardship in the great day if her talent be not
put to usury. But there are other things to be taken into consideration before such
a line of action becomes universal. On entrance into the business world woman
becomes conversant with much that was to her a sealed book before. Knowledge at
first startling soon becomes commonplace, womanly reserve wears away, feminine
graces vanish, the cold practical atmosphere in time dulls the sensitive nature, and
the woman worker becomes a money-making, fame-seeking machine; an ingrate, often
forgetful of friends and favors; a cold, selfish, calculating automatum, and above all a
chronic discontent.
On two things the woman-heart thrives. Love and ambition. The first the nat-
ural woman prefers. The second is an educated preference, against whose craving
the first becomes flat, stale and unprofitable. The first means limited homage; the sec-
ond the plaudits of the world. Into the circumstances that have led up to the edu-
cated preference it may be best not to inquire. Years of suffering and sacrifice, of
oppression and suppression, had driven the woman of the past to the wall.y In her
desperation she turned and fled to the world, her one eager thought to secure com-
fort for those nearer and dearer to her than life itself. Now the aim is largely selfish,
and as she views the passiveness with which her labors are accepted by those who
should be her protectors, and notes the tendency to effeminacy in those who should
be the strong ones of earth, discontent is keeping pace with her every stride, and play-
ing havoc with homes and happiness. Satan finds mischief for idle women to do is
applicable no longer. The women are being educated to death, organized to death
and worked to death, and the stronger the pressure in any one the greater the discon-
tent and dissatisfaction.
To no class of women, perhaps, is this state o^ affairs more apparent than to those
connected with the daily press. Brought into intimate relationship with all classes
and conditions of women; those in all stations of business, from the shop-girl to the
head and brains of some mammoth establishment; from mistresses in homes of hum-
ble degree to those of princely scope; and standing as they do on the outside, view-
ing with unbiased mind the movements in all departments of life, noting now the
advance and now the backward step, impartially they weigh the condition of affairs
and sum it all up in the words, "social unrest."
Social unrest! Oh, women of America, aim for suffrage if that will bring con-
tentment. Pray for the millennium if that will bring a reign of peace. Educate,
organize, but ever hand in hand and heart to heart for home, country, and God.
Home for the wage-earning woman as well as for the wife and mother. Home for
her who, out in the busy world, is so fast losing those graces which, like fragrant
blossoms, should twine about the woman's soul. ,. Home for the young girls with their
pure hearts and innocent minds. Join hands. The business woman needs the sym-
pathy and counsel of the home-maker, not her wail of discontent The home-maker
needs the broadening glimpse into the sunlight and shadow of life which the business
woman can give, not the aggravating taunt of independence or boast of fame and for-
tune. Each is responsible for domestic tranquillityj and domestic tranquillity generally
assured, the public welfare will take care of itself. In this growing discontent woman
is fast losing that happy, sunny disposition, once her greatest charm. The " sweet "
woman of today is the artificial one. The " lovable woman " is the one with the stereo-
typed smile and caress; and while now and then a thoroughly happy and contented
woman is found who may be placed in the category of "motherly," she comes like
angel visits, few and far between, and does not belong to the younger class.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 33X
Seek contentment. Crave not worldly rush. Better the pinch of occasional sac-
rifice than the loss of womanly dignity and reserve. Be natural. Be what James
Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, in his " Neighborly Poems," beautifully accords
to his friend, Erasmus Wilson:
Jest natchurl, and the more hurraws
You git, the less you know the cause —
Like as ef God Hisself stood by,
Where best on earth hain't half-knee high,
And seein' like, an' knowin' He
'S the Only Great Man really.
You're jest content to size your height
With any feller-man's in sight.
Courage, women of America. You have fought great battles, you have won great
victories. Now look to the homes and firesides. The present is yours, the future
belongs to God.
HOME SIDE OF PROGRESS.
By MRS. CLARA HOLBROOK SMITH.
It is granted that we have eclipsed all other national efforts in the mammoth
placing of our exhibits side by side with those from the Old World; I long to know if
it will be the world's verdict that America leads in
all that is largest and latest. Some phases of these
evidences of progress call out many questions as we
compare our national life with the life of advanced
cultured nations which have preceded us, but whose
glory now has departed. The statement on the cover
of Dr. Strong's oft-quoted book, says our country is
God's last opportunity for the human race. If this is
true, are we to progress far beyond any of the nations
that have preceded us, or is it in the Divine plan for
all natural life that it is " thus far and no farther?"
Is the new Jerusalem to come from the sky, or is
it to be an earth renovated? Professor Drummond
seems to banish the sky idea, and says: " It means a
new London, a new Chicago, a new Jerusalem, all of
the cities lifted by spiritual thought and effort to the
plane of a heavenly city. In the light of the history
of past nations, are we nearing the age of ripeness
that precedes decay, or are we nearing the renovation
period?
„»c ^T.„. „^xT.„^„^ e,„^„ In this White City have we delineated the highest
MRS. CLARA HOLBROOK SMITH. i i ■ • i r i i •
that has preceded us m art, or is the art or the classic
days of Greece the limit of human ability in that direction.
Historical research proves conclusively we have not equaled that period in liter-
ature, and it leaves us with the mortifying certainty that there have been but five men
produced in the past two thousand years that could equal the twenty-eight men pro-
duced in the two centuries between 500 B.C. and 300 B.C. — only five. Neither can we
boast of our orators, when Rufus Choate asserted that if Demosthenes were here today
the only ones who would be able to follow and comprehend him would be the lawyers
and judges of the supreme bench. In your thought can you place one of our states-
men by the side of Pericles? If we then are still on the lower rounds of the mental
ladder, is it not time the homes of the land were questioned and challenged? No cult-
ure can go beyond the capacity of the one to be cultured. We are generally beating
all around the bush. We study very carefully the condition of the house in which the
home is to be located. We talk glibly of sanitation, of hygiene of foods chemi-
cally considered. The wise home-makers have placed on exhibition all the latest
implements— the model nursery, the kindergarten, the kitchen-garden, the gymnasium,
Clara Holbrook Smith is a native of Illinois. Her parents were Col. J. C. Holbrook and Eliza McDill Holbrook, who
was a daughter of Rev. Dr. D. McDill, minister, editor and writer of many books. She was educated at Monmouth College,
Monmouth, III. She has traveled in Canada, Mexico, and over the whole of the United States. She married Henry C. Smith.
Her husband being an invalid, and she herself a sufferer, she was led to investigate physical laws. These studies revealed to her
that her four children had the birthright of invalidism. After years of research through the works of such scientists us Dar-
■win, Lionel Ribot, Maudesley, Galtin, Balfour, Brooks, and others, she recognized the law that thwarts heredity, and has spent
much time in securing departments in all institutions of learning for the teaching of scientific home making and parentage.
Mrs. Smith is a Christian and Congregationalist. Her postoffice address is Lordsburg, Cal.
332
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 333
and the methods of the various organizations that are endeavoring to remove evil
from the pathway of the child.
All grand, all helpful, all necessary, but it often all looks to me like " locking the
barn-door after the horse is stolen." Yes, we are beating around the bush; but the
enemy lies coiled in the very center. The child is stung with evil before it reaches
the outer circle where these implements for culture of body and soul stand ready for
the using. We must probe deep, to the very heart of things, and commence at the
very foundation, before we can hope for any special advance physically, mentally or
morally, beyond the present showing of our nation. We have made provision for
the training in every profession save the profession of home-makers and parentage.
This is all left to chance. The fate of the nation is left to blind chance. The seed
of this nation was sown by the church. We had a right to expect wonderful things
from such a sowing, but the enemy from the first has been sowing tares from the
poisoned weeds of Europe's humanity. Our country must now look very carefully to
the quality of her sowing, or expect to reap the fate of the cultured nations of the
past ages. The home was God's first plant for a nation. Male and female created
He — man in His own image — and gave them the high privilege of entering into His
last creative act with Him. He gave of all seeds to man, and said, " plant." Man
has learned to plant with care, according to the last laws given by science, to insure
the largest growth, the most perfect specimen, the choicest varieties. He has also
learned in the last days that human development the most precious, the one upon
which all happiness and progress depends, is governed by the very same scientific
laws. There is no progress for any nation beyond the home-line of possibility. I
want to give you my thought from two standpoints:
First. The two laws governing development.
Second. Outside aid to development.
I start from the very foundation of the human race — the fathers and the mothers.
Could they expect fine results to come by chance?
In the light of today's revealments a person is criminal who does not look after
the purity of the blood that he imparts to another human being. Every institution of
learning that fails to provide this instruction for its students, male and female, in dif-
ferent departments, fails to provide a foundation for a higher mental capacity in the
coming generations. Higher education is a theme much harped upon at present, but
every effort, save in a few exceptional cases, will prove futile for lack of capacities
upon which to expend their knowledge. We are far behind the oft-quoted classic
Greece in this respect. We have only advanced to Solon's time. That wise old law-
giver exclaimed: "We can not legislate against luxury, but we can establish athletic
schools that will develop physique and give a martial character to the amusements of
our young." We have in this decade of years advanced this far. When will we attain
to the wisdom of Lycurgus?
He prohibited parents from giving theic daughters in marriage until they had
attained a certain degree of proficiency in certain exercises. He went furtherthanthis in
his wise recognition of the future needs of the nation. He prohibited marriages among
any who were not matured, any who were diseased, or who were deformed, and they
looked upon the throwing of a sickly or deformed new-born babe into a ravine to
perish as an act of mercy. Exercises for development were compulsory. The pure
blood thus engendered fed the nervous tissue, fed the white and gray matter of the
brain. The brain thus richly nourished, and in its turn its muscles exercised by ques-
tioning, developed the twenty-eight men of the two centuries named whom we cannot
equal or surpass today. Lycurgus did well for what we are pleased to term an igno-
rant past, but his laws after all produced but one Socrates.
I claim that an intelligent present, through the use of two laws, could soon pro-
duce one who could answer the questions of Socrates. We have grown quite familiar
with one of these two laws through the pens and voices of many, the prenatal law.
Rightly understood and used it has the power to modify the effect of poisonous blood.
334 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
But the other lawi so powerful, I alone am presenting. Probably because others have
not dug so deep and waded through so many pages of scientific volumes, small of
print and large of terms. This law has the power to eliminate all the poisoned matter,
vicious tendencies that come down from the ancestral spaces.
Frederick the Great understood human cultivation. The emperor's body-guard
was composed of colossal, stalwart men that had been gathered from their own and
kidnapped from other nations. He bid them seek wives that could match them in
physique, and establish homes for the rearing of future guards. If homes can be
established that will insure splendid physique, why not homes to insure splendid
mentalities and splendid morals? With this thought in view, I will give you the cor-
ner-stone on which every home must be built. That I may not be accused of senti-
ment, please note the fact that this corner-stone is the result of a life-time of study, of
the labor of scientific men investigating natural law. Let me quote from one of them:
" Marriage is scientifically unnatural when not based upon a supreme affection."
There is no substitute for a supreme affection. There can be no home without it.
There may be a place where two persons dwell together, but no home.
We will go to the laboratory of the "why." We must have a scientific analysis or
we will again be accused of sentiment. We have advanced as far as the Laws of
Lycurgus in our consideration of these truths.
Their following means perfect health, and perfect health insures pure blood. But
the microscope reveals to us the fact that our blood changes with our emotions. Thus
the blood that becomes vitalized under the great happiness of the emotion of love,
becomes an absolute poison under the emotions of dislike, fear or hate. This poison
under the extreme emotion of fear or hate is strong enough to throw a child that may
imbibe it into convulsions, and has been known in some instances to kill instantly.
A home started on scientific principles, based upon a supreme affection, as shown
by chemical analysis of the blood to be absolutely necessary, built on conditions of
superb health, as shown by the results of following the Laws of Lycurgus, with obedi-
ence to the law of prenatal influence, offers opportunity for the highest earthly possi-
bilities. But here let us stop a moment. This is the horror of it all.
In one fatal moment, a disobedience to the initial law may cancel all the splendid
preparation that has been the work of years. This law, the strongest law of all, that
has the power to counteract all that comes from the ancestral spaces, that has power
to annul the grand conditions, the resultant of preparation of previous years, is com-
pletely ignored in almost every home. So strong is the law, that a spiritualized con-
dition would overcome even unfavorable tendencies, and make favorable conditions.
It is a new supply of life from the Creator of life.
So much has been spoken and written on the weeding and watering and removal
of stones from the pathway of these human sprouts after they have come to light, I
will leave these points for the present, also all comment on hygiene and sanitary laws,
upon which so much of the happiness and usefulness of the members depend, and
will pass on to the outside aids to the home culture. If we were governed by wise
statesmen, they would from national policy go as far as the government of ancient
Greece.
In the interest of good citizenship they should decide who should make a home.
With our understanding of the necessary mental condition to produce the best results,
government should present to every young married couple a house in which to com-
mence their home-life. Then their thoughts could enter upon the wise administra-
tion of the laws governing a well-regulated home, and not be wasted in a struggle
for finances with which to build a house, in addition to the finances necessary for the
bread and butter of their daily living. Every child should be looked upon as a ward
of the nation. If accident or incapacity prevents parents from furnishing the mental
and manual training necessary to develop the child into a good citizen, government
should come to their aid.
If from lust, avarice, or appetite parents are incapable of performing their duty
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 335
to their children in this respect, these wards of the nation should be transplanted to
governmental homes of training. Vienna, Austria, presents us a fine object lesson in
its care for its destitute orphans. The mayor of the city appoints the child a father,
if it is a boy, among the good citizens of good standing, or a mother if it is a girl.
These little ones are then boarded out at the expense of the city. But it is the duty
of this appointed father or mother to look after the child's welfare during its growing
years, and see to its proper placing in life when it is old enough to become self-sup-
porting. This is an expense to the city, but is it so great an expense as it will be if
the child grows into a criminal? If you are unscientific, you will condemn my next
statement. The " Destroyer " of a home, whether it is a home that now exists or a
home that could have existed, should be put to death. The law of Leviticus, when
interpreted by science, is none too severe. It is a law given by a God of love and
God of mercy. Through the investigations of the blood it is shown that the Bible
statement of they twain are one flesh is not figuratively, but literally, true. The law
is written in our members. One Adam and two or more Eves, one Eve and two or
more Adams should be put to death.
The law of creation is a jealous law. Break the Divine plan, male and female, by
a separation of interests, and the deterioration of both commences. There is an invis-
ible current now unnamed between minds masculine and feminme that makes a com-
plete, rounded world. A study of the mental action of each apart and then together
makes this very apparent. Sever the current by a manner of life that does not con-
tinuously touch the best in life of the other, and physical force predominates; it is
then that deterioration of all faculties commences. The rounded mental world cut in
twain by a separation of thoughts and interest shrinks back and uplifts into the
ungainly capital letters I-I; stiff, angular, unbending, ungainly, repulsive, decided,
imperative, narrow I, I.
How much sweeter the word "we." We have to round our mouth to pronounce
it. Two letters, w-e; two in one. How much better when blended — two persons into
one.
The patrician's home in Greece furnished the gifted ones whom the nation
delighted to honor; but the record of the twenty centuries between, show the com-
moner as the leader of all the advanced work and thought of the world. The home
of wealth offers every advantage that could insure sharpened instruments in the battle
of human progress, but the lack of necessities which spur to action, renders the instru-
ment useless. Whatever point the child of wealth may have had from good trainers,
soon becomes rusted and dulled in the luxurious atmosphere. The world had but
one Marcus Aurelius. This emperor, sleeping on the soldier's hard cot in the open
halls of the palace in preference to the enervating influence of the luxurious palace
chambers, his plain living and high thinking, offers an object lesson that would be well
for the patrician to study. He used his position and wealth as stepping-stones to
higher statesmanship and purer philosophy.
Following the expression of Plato, he made his "body and soul draw together like
two horses harnessed to a carriage." His body, not tied to luxury, could match the
speed of the noblest impulses of the soul. If government could take the boy today,
as in the days of old, from the home of wealth, place him in barracks for daily drill
and upon the ground with only the canopy of heaven over-head at night; or the girls
at the same tender age of seventeen years, and place them with nurses who would fol-
low the same vigorous training, then would our thoughts turn again to the patrician
home for leaders along the line of all advance. But it is to the homes of the middle
class that the nation turns on an expectant look. Here is where our thoughts must
center to estimate progress. It is while viewing these homes that the heart throbs and
bounds with its limitless expectations.
Here is where we can boast. What other nations can show such an aggregation of
intelligent homes as can America? And for them, what is the promise? The educa-
tors have commenced to instill into the minds of the students the relative value of the
336 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
body, and are providing to culture it into an abundant reservoir of brain food. There
is a wise sifting process among them that is separating students according to the bent
of inherent qualities, thus culturing natural tendencies. They are laying great stress
upon the development of faculties by which we apprehend the unseen. This invisible
force that they can draw to themselves and harness to their work to speed it forward,
as the electrician seizes the electricity and harnesses to his invention, is made a plain,
practical fact to the youth of today. They are teaching the students that from the
effects of electricity, from the effects of the spirit that when we work as industriously
as Edison to secure his power, we can obtain this power of the spirit
Dr. Doremus, of the chemical department of Columbus College, claims it will be
but a question of time when we will be gathering our food supply first-hand from the
air instead of second-hand through the vegetables, or third-hand through the animals.
It was after he had gathered the invisible gases from the air and demonstrated to the
large audience their uses. We saw the effects, but we did not see the gases. It was
after he had made them visible in vapor, more visible in the liquid, and then so solid
they could be pounded with an iron bar. It was after he had gathered from the unseen
on a hot summer evening a bushel of snow with which he pelted his audience. These
evidences of the invisible things which we can grasp and use for our progress are going
to illuminate the doubtful minds and show the reasonableness of our claims for the
power of the Spirit invisible of the Holy One of God.
These thoughts are brought to the home-makers with a plea that they study
natural laws and follow them. With a plea also that they in numbers petition the
directors of our institutions of learning until they secure departments for the teaching
of these truths to students. With a plea that the faculties by which we apprehend
the unseen forces be constantly cultivated that more and more the Spirit may domi-
nate our emotions which regulate the blood of our veins. This paradise of thought
will be a home garden that will grow a race like gods. The Court of Honor, now
unsurpassed in beautiful effects, with all its uplifting forces, will be as the daily envi-
ronment of all these coming statesmen, poets, classicists: that will work the era on the
new Chicago, the new London, the new Jerusalem; those heavenly cities that are to be
in the coming millennium. Sin eliminated, flesh renovated, spiritualized. Thus saith
science; thus saith God.
EDUCATION OF GIRLS AND WOMEN IN GLASGOW.
By MISS JANET A. GALLOWAY.
As may be known to my audience, Glasgow is the commercial and industrial cap-
ital of Scotland, as Edinburgh is the historical and official capital. In some respects
there is a resemblance between Chicago and Glasgow,
though the latter is so much the smaller of the two cities,
for it is a place of only about eight hundred thousand
inhabitants. Like Chicago, one source of Glasgow's
strength lies in its commerce and manufactures, and
its position as a great center of trade, of export and
import; and, like Chicago, it is also rapidly develop-
ing into a nucleus of intellectual activity and educa-.
tion, with its university and public schools and free
education. The University of Glasgow has been in
existence for several centuries, and has done good
work. It has an average attendance of two thousand
students. It has numbered many men of renown
among its professors. In the present staff the name
of Lord Kelvin, formerly Sir William Thomson, pro-
fessor of natural history, is of world-wide reputation
for his discoveries and his inventions, especially in
connection with electricity and scientific instruments
for marine purposes; and those of Principal John
Caird, and his brother-professor Edward Caird, are
well known in the domain of philosophical thought
and research; and those of professors Gardner. Mac-
Eweln and McKendrick for eminence in medical, surgical and physiological science.
But it is only quite recently that free education has been established, and it is still but
a short way beyond what might be called the experimental .stage.
The education of girls in Glasgow can be given on three different lines — those of
the board school, the endowed school and the private or proprietary school. Of
course some girls are educated at home by private governesses, but the number of
these is so small as scarcely to require separate mention.
For board or public school purposes, Glasgow is divided into two districts, one
being Glasgow proper, with a population of about one hundred thousand children
(97,108) of school age, the other being Govan, with about twenty thousand children
These public schools work under the act of parliament passed August, 1872, by the
name of the Scottish Education Act, the chief object of which was to exchange the
denominational system, which existed until then, for a really national system of educa-
tion. It established in every parish and borough in Scotland a popularly elected school
board, the principal duties devolving on which are the provision of sufficient school
accommodations, the imposition and levying of tax payable by householders under
the name of school rate, and the management of all schools supported by that rate
Miss Janet A. Galloway was born in Stirlingshire, Scotland. Her parents were Mr. Alexander Galloway and Mrs. Anne
Bald Galloway. She was educated partly in Scotland, but chiefly in England, Brussels and Dresden. She has traveled over
Great Britain and Ireland, and France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Denmark, Sweden and
part of the United States of America, including the Eastern States, Pennsylvania, Illinois and North Carolina. Her special
work has been in the interest of the higher education of women. Her profession is that of Honorary (i. e., unpaid) Secretary of
Queen Margaret College University at Glasgow. In religious faith Miss Galloway is a member of the English Church, the
Episcopalian. Her postoffice address is Queen Margaret College, Glasgow, Scotland.
(22) 337
MISS JANET A. GALLOWAY.
338 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
within the respective school board districts. School boards must also see that all
children of school age residing within their districts receive at least elementary educa-
tion, even if it be necessary to use compulsion to secure their attendance at school.
The number of ordinary public schools under the Glasgow Board is sixty-seven
(67), with a staff of 780 teachers fully qualified (342 masters and 438 mistresses), and
595 assistants, besides pupil teachers and monitors. Under the Govan Board there
are nineteen (19) schools. A child beginning her education enters first the infant
department, receiving kindergarten instruction and lessons in elementary reading
and spelling, class singing, arithmetic and drawing; efforts are made to train the senses
and the memory, to form in the child habits of attention, and to cultivate her intelli-
gence and physical powers, besides preparing her for more advanced work. She then
passes on through the six successive "standards" or grades of work, which constitute the
primary school, and at the end .of this course she is expected to be proficient in read-
ing and writing, in composition, and in arithmetic as far as compound proportion, vul-
gar and decimal fractions, and simple interest. In the upper standards special sub-
jects are added, such as geography, history, needlework, drawing and elementary
science. After the fifth standard is passed the choice of specific subjects is enlarged,
and a girl can receive instruction in domestic economy, including cookery; French
and Latin and Greek and German; mathematics, physical geography, physiology, etc.,
taking such of them as her teacher may consider advisable. Some, but not all, of the
schools under the board (Glasgow) give secondary education, and at the end of a
course given there, a pupil may be examined for the Leaving Certificate, either in the
lower or the higher grade, or in honors. The subjects included in this examination
are English, with modern history; geography, French, German, Latin, Greek, mathe-
matics and bookkeeping with commercial arithmetic, from which the pupil can
choose. The examinations are general and not on prescribed books. The Leaving
Certificate has been hitherto accepted by some universities (including Oxford, Cam-
bridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews), and also by the general Medical Council
and some other bodies, in lieu of such preliminary examinations as are held under
their directions.
Should a girl attending the public schools not be able to take the full course of
instruction in the usual classes on account of being obliged to discontinue her
attendance during the day in order to engage in business pursuits, she can take even-
ing classes after she has passed the sixth standard. These are held in twenty-four of
the Glasgow Board schools, and include ordinary commercial art and science subjects.
In these the courses are arranged to extend over four years, but the scholars may
spread their classes over a longer period, if they find it necessary to do so. The school
board awards special certificates to the students who complete these courses. For
evening instruction, as well as for the special subjects taught in day schools after the
sixth standard, a small fee is payable; but so very ample provision of bursaries is made
by the Educational Endowment Board that no child of average intelligence need
have any difficulty in obtaining such a bursary as will practically assure for her a free
education.
If a girl requires to be trained as a teacher under the school board, the usual
course is to begin as a pupil teacher or monitor. There are employed in the schools
of the Glasgow Board three hundred and eighty-eight pupil teachers. They have to
be apprenticed as pupil teachers, and to take a course of instruction lasting over four
years (or it may be less, if they have taken the Leaving Certificate) in the Pupil
Teachers' Institute, receiving at least twelve hours' instruction per week during the
first three years. The subjects taught are most of those taken up in the higher
school classes, but given with a view to teaching purposes; also instruction in school
management. At the same time they serve as teachers in the board schools, giving
instruction to the younger children, for, on an average, of about twenty-two hours per
week during their four years' apprenticeship, receiving payment for their services at
the rate of from forty to one hundred dollars for from the first to the fourth year.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 339
Yearly examinations are held during these four years. At the end of their apprentice-
ship they are examined by the government inspector for admission to the Normal
schools. If successful in passing, the candidates receive a further course of instruction
in the schools named, continuing over two years, which includes school management
and other subjects, and after their final examination they are available for a situation
as assistant teachers in board or other schools.
Of endowed schools there were a considerable number in Glasgow previous to
1882. But as these had chiefly been founded by private benefactors in order to pro-
vide for the education of poor children, under various conditions specified by the
founders, and as the institution of the school board had made the existence of these
unnecessary, an act of parliament was passed in 1882, entitled the Educational Endow-
ments (Scotland) Act, appointing commissioners to review all these foundations, and
to make arrangements for the alteration or abolition of many of the schools, and the
application of most of the money bequeathed to them to the purposes of education in
the shape of bursaries and scholarships. One large bequest, however, remained, that
under the Hutchesons' " Trust," which was too large to be abolished, and for it the
commissioners formulated a new scheme, appointing a board of governesses, to be
elected by various public bodies, and making regulations for the continued existence
of two schools, one for boys and one for girls. They also fixed the amount of the
fees to be charged, and the subjects to be taught, and made provision for the remission
of the very moderate fees in the case of two hundred "foundationers," and for the
maintenance and the clothing of a few of them, besides offering a number of free
scholarships and bursaries for secondary and higher education to be held in the schools;
also for some bursaries for university and higher education in other institutions. The
staff of the girls' school consists of a head master and twelve men and fifteen women
teachers, and the organization comprises a preparatory school and a higher school.
A girl can enter the preparatory school at the age of seven, and can continue her edu-
cation after passing from it to the higher school until the age of eighteen or nineteen.
The course of instruction begins at the stage that corresponds with the school board's
"standard two," extends over nine years, and is divided into two parts of almost equal
duration, the plan of study for the first five years being divided with a view to laying
a solid basis for the higher work which the school makes its special province. Besides
the usual branches of an English education a special study is made of modern lan-
guages, a three years' course of oral instruction in French, and a two years' course in
German, given in the preparatory school, followed up by further continuous study of
both in the higher school, and mathematics, drawing and science also receive special
attention. The pupils of the higher classes are prepared for the government Leaving
Certificate, and those who intend to adopt teaching as their profession have, if they so
desire, opportunities of becoming acquainted with the organization of the whole school,
and of handling various classes under the criticism and guidance of the head master.
The yearly fees range from twelve dollars and fifty cents in the lowest class of the pre-
paratory school to forty dollars in the first or students' class of the higher school; but
after the bursary system was established fee-payers in the higher class became grad-
ually fewer, until now the two highest classes contain none but scholars and bursars.
Private or proprietary schools are numerous in Glasgow and of considerable vari-
ety as to grades of instruction and fees, some being for kindergarten work and young
children only, others carrying their pupils up to preparation for university classes.
These are much more expensive than the public schools, and much smaller, but they
are preferred by some parents as giving more attention to manners and individual
training than it is possible to expect in a large public school. Some of them have a
master at the head of the school, others a mistress; there is generally a staff of visit-
ing teachers, chiefly masters, and a staff of governesses, who remain during the whole
of the school day. There is, however, especially one exception in Glasgow to this
general rule, viz., a girls' school worked by a company of shareholders, many of whom
are parents of the pupils being educated there. This school is taught entirely by
ladies.
340 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
As regards higher education, a girl on leaving school can continue her work along
various lines. For higher instruction in art provision is made in several institutions,
the principal of which is the Government School of Design. There she can either
prepare herself for work as an artist, or learn designing of patterns for textile fabrics,
or architectural, mechanical, engineering or other drawing, ceramic painting, modeling,
etc. Domestic arts can be learned in the School of Cookery, which includes also a
school for laundry and other household work; and there are a variety of classes for
dressmaking and millinery on different systems. The West of Scotland Technical
College provides instruction for women as for men in many scientific and practical
subjects.
University education for women is given by the University of Glasgow in its de-
partment for women. Queen Margaret College and the various university degrees
are open to women as to men, the same subjects of instruction and examination being
given to both sexes, and the same degrees conferred. This, however, is a concession
which was made by parliament in the summer of 1892. Previous to that time no degree
of any Scottish university would be conferred on a woman, nor could the universities
provide for her instruction.
To meet the desire of women for higher education, while waiting for the often
asked for, but not then granted, opening of the universities, associations for the higher
education of women were formed in the different university towns. In Glasgow one
was founded in 1877. Before that date some of the professors of the universities had
from time to time given short courses of lectures to women in public halls, etc., but
in that year a full organization was formed and classes were held in connection with
it on university subjects, taught by university professors and graduates, some of the
courses of lectures being given in the university and others in rooms rented for the
purpose outside. After six years of existence this association was incorporated as
Queen Margaret College, the name being taken from Queen Margaret of Scotland, the
first patroness in Scotland of literature and art. A suitable building with extensive
grounds was presented to the college by Mrs. Elder, widow of John Elder, a well-
known engineer and shipbuilder, on condition that Sioo,ooo should be raised as an
endowment. These buildings have since been considerably increased by the addition
of science laboratories, etc., and are situated about ten minutes' walk from the uni-
versity. And by donations from various residenters in Glasgow and its neighborhood,
with the addition of a bazaar which brought in about $55,000, the cost of these new
buildings v/as met, and an endowment fund of upward of 1^125,000 was collected.
From its incorporation in 1883 the college went on gradually building up on uni-
versity lines. By degrees a full curriculum in arts, including modern languages, was-
established, with courses of lectures of the same scope and length (one hundred lect-
ures each) as those of the university for the master of arts degree; then several classes
were instituted; and in 1890 a school of medicine for women was'added to the college,
which is now complete as to classes, hospital and dispensary work, the same as those
provided for men at the university. The lecturers were university professors or gradu-
ates, the dean of the medical school being a university professor (Prof. Young, M.D.),.
and the fees and regulations were the same as those of the university. When, there-
fore, in 1889, the act of parliament was passed, called the Universities (Scotland) Act^
which appointed commissioners to revise and altar where necessary the constitution
and regulations of the Scottish universities, and when the ordinance of those commis-
sioners was published, in 1892, which permitted the universities to provide for the
education of women and to admit them to the degrees, Queen Margaret College was
in a position both as to nature and completeness of the courses it offered to its stu-
dents, and as to the state of the buildings and endowment fund, to offer itself to the
university to become university property, to be taken under the government of the
university and to be especially recognized as giving preparation for the degrees. On
this offer being made by the council of the college it was accepted by the university^
which accordingly adopted Queen Margaret College as its department for women.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 341
The college is now governed entirely by the university court and senate, and all its
lecturers are appointed by the court. The average number of students in the college
is about two hundred, of whom about fifty are in the medical school. They receive
full preparation for the university degrees in arts, science and medicine.
The course of work for the master of arts degtee, after the preliminary examina-
tion (preparation for which usually occupies one or two additional years) has been
passed, takes three years, and duration of study is the same for the degree of bachelor
of science; the degree of doctor of science can only be taken five years after that of
bachelor of science, after further study and examination. The course of study after
the preliminary examination for bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery is of
five years' duration, and the degree of doctor of medicine and master of surgery can
only be taken after two years' further study, after the bachelor degree has been
obtained.
The women students of the University of Glasgow do not study with the men
students, having their classes in their own college, but they are examined together.
A woman can thus now in Glasgow obtain a full university education, and has
every facility for preparing herself for her life-work, whether for a professional career
as a teacher, a literary woman, a scientist or a doctor, or for home life — to which she
will bring the culture and the large and practical views derived from a university edu-
cation. The progress made in Scotland in general, and in Glasgow in particular, in
educational matters during the last few years has been great, and still goes on. And
although in the old country we do not move so rapidly as in the new, the movement
continues, if slowly yet surely — the New World and the Old advancing hand in hand
and working together in the great field of intellectual progress and culture.
INFLUENCE OF GREAT WOMEN.*
By MRS. MARY NEWBURY ADAMS.
In our subject, " Influence of the Great Women of Yesterday on the Civilization
of Today," we admit that greatness in womanhood is an ancient quality. We cannot
look upon the recently unearthed statuary without
this faith. She had a strength that was big with the
future of mankind. She ventured, she dared, she had
courage to begin things. She had faith in her work
because she knew she worked for the good of her kind
and from inborn instincts.
Let us know definitely what we mean by the word
great. In primitive times they represented greatness
by size. Their images of gods and goddesses were
large, to indicate power and influence. The Egyptians
in their art represented the women as of equal size with
men to indicate the equality of influence and position
in government and religion, and when thousands of
years ago Egyptians wanted to leave an enduring rec-
ord of their belief of the supremacy of man and
woman over all material things, over the earth, they
built the statues of Memnon on the Nile. Human,
beings mountain high, great, and big. Another
method to express greatness and power was for God
to speak from Mt. Zion or Mt. Sinai, a high place.
Then, greatness was for a patriarch with many wives
and much cattle, a terror to other tribes, whose one
supreme will must be a law to the many. But this was not the matriarchal idea of the
great person. Womanhood called a mind great that could think, one that could reason,
one that could invent, one that could have foresight, save the grain today to plant
next season, plant the clover to keep the bees and the cows close at hand; one was
great who built the hut before the winter and storm came, or who carried the stone
hatchet in case the wild beast is met. The mind that could collect experience and
plan a better future, this mind could command respect for its strength in judgment,
and was called great by women. One with energy and courage to make successful an
idea, be it for a basket, a canoe, or a treaty between enemies, or a migration to inau-
gurate new habits with the selected best, these were the great women who had an idea
and could carry it out. Disciples of Minerva and Juno, people from Ephesus and
Athens, women from Asia Minor, from the Isles of the Sea, from the' halls where
taught the white-robed Hypatia; when these spoke of great women it was quality of
mind and tastes they referred to. Among the worshipers of Ceres, the goddess of
Mrs. Mary Newbary Adams is a native of Pera, Ind. She was bom October 17, 1837. Her parents were Eev. Samuel
Newbury and Mrs. Mary Ann Sergeant Newbury. She received her early education at home private schools; graduated from
Cleveland public schools later, and from Troy, Tenn., Seminary in 1857. She married Austin Adams, Esq., who was after-
ward twelve years judge of the Supreme Court of Iowa. She takes great interest in the history and study of humanity, par-
ticularly woman's work in civilization. Her principal literary works are numerous essays, lectures, sermons, and news-
paper articles. Her profession is housekeeper and home-keeper. In religious faith she is a Cosmopolitan Unitarian. Mrs.
Adams is a member of the National Woman's Suffrage Association and many archaeological and historical societies. In per-
sonal appearance she is stately, dignified and commanding. Mrs. Adams' parents and ancestors were ministers, judges, phy-
eicians, and seven of her grandmothers daughters of professional men. Her line of thought and work has been inherited^
and is not military nor business. Her postoifice address is Dubuque, Iowa.
MRS. MARY NEWBURY ADAMS.
*The original title of the address as delivered before the Congress was, "Influence of the Great Women of Yesterday
on the Great Women of Today."
342
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 343
Agriculture and Commerce, greatness was shown in the discovery of new lands, fruits
palatable, grains nutritious, and in the power of the will to direct energy to useful
ends, to plow and plant, to save and sell, to make fruitful Earth serve the will and
wish of the human mind; with them the great woman was one who had found a new
grain that could be utilized for food of people that they might not be compelled to be
marauding tribes, stealing cattle from other tribes for food. The mothers in council
learned how to feed with grain their people quietly, peacefully, and gradually to work
into the nerve of children and youth strength and reason, and thus check the raven-
ous dispositions and the roving, stealthy habits that always go with those who herd
cattle, and are eaters of blood and sinew, the habits of patriarchs, and the people they
herd and were shepherds of. The great women, mothers of commerce, of agriculture,
of trade and ingenious workmanship, compared good with evil, and aspired to become
self-directing, co-working with Creation and its laws. The same idea animates the
highest civilization to-day, and it is our duty to find who the women were who helped
to bring it about.
The methods for our enlightened life today were those of the great mothers in
council, who were drawn by sympathy to help one another in distress, in sickness, at
harvest, and in journeys for trade, not to slay or steal from other tribes, but to learn to
exchange baskets for pots, minerals, shells and fiber to make into raiment. The great
women of antiquity are those who aided the human mind to distinguish good from
evil, and through habits of industry curb the powers of passion, and tame force and
strength to serve the tribe under the direction of reason. She was great who could
think some thought, do some deed to add to the experience of the world, to aid the
next generation of women so they could be sure of a permanent home, sure of food
and raiment and ability to make something to sell. The great souls were not the
strong forces that destroyed enemies or beasts, but the inventive souls, the intuitive
minds that circumvented evils, that brought positive good to a people. How? Not by
conquering a neighbor and securing booty in land and cattle, but those who trained
families to supply their own wants by work, to have an aim in life, to so order their
ways that they could be imitated with advantage to the whole tribe; thus mankind
could become by habit civilized, that is, to work together by free choice, that the work
of each should be good for all. It is women who have brought these ideals into
human life. Women have not been visionary but practical, unless the having a high
ideal and working for a future better than the present can appreciate is visionary.
There is an irrepressible conflict between the patriarchal idea of greatness and the
matriarchal. Since the re-discovery of the Western continent by Western Europeans
four hundred years ago, and the discovery that the sphere was balanced by its own
motion, and this motion intimately connected with life thereon, then began changes
in governments and in religions, from the patriarchal to the matriarchal methods, and
the laws of earth and woman have been honored. Woman began to be recognized
as a sphere in society, gaining equilibrium, too, by her own reason and her motion of
mind, and that intimately connected with her movement of mind was the equilibrium
of society. The literature of Greece was revived because the methods, the principles,
the ideals of goddesses, the matriarchal ideals, were to come forth in power to shape
and direct the New World era And this republic is the result of matriarchal not patri-
archal methods of life and in ideals. This is the influence we inherit. Have we
knowledge to understand it?
Histories heretofore have been written by men; Scriptures preserved by the high
priests, the Druids, the patriarchs; reprinted and upheld by empires, religious and
political. The true history of human progress from savagehood to enlightened civil
life is yet to be written. Not till the spirit of archaeology, philology and folk-lore was
awakened did we have the material facts to reason from. Now, here, in the center of
the oldest continent, we find Scripture fulfilled, and the last continent is found to be
the first, and the rejected stones of the early Americans are to become the corner-
stones of human history.
344 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The influence of the great women of the past is felt today, not by knowledge of
their names and their individual work, or the time they lived, but by the things they
started, the methods of activity they began; what they inaugurated by following their
natural instinct to change the present, to secure the greater future, which we enjoy
today.
\Ve have heard only of the women of gayety at the courts; we need the lives of
the great women who changed the history of their time by finding new fords, opening
new fields for commerce.
Matilda of Scottish lineage was called Maude. She was the mother of Henry H.
of England, and Hume says her son was the greatest prince of his time for wisdom,
virtue and ability. She introduced the culture of broom corn. She built the first
arch bridge in England, Bowbridge, made new roads, repaired the Roman roads. She
was prudent, and encouraged those things which educated and benefited the people.
She was political, and to her we trace the constitutional blessing England enjoyed.
The arrangements for peace and progress, the law that the people could depend
upon, based on principles of justice and reciprocation, she had written out into char-
ters, and so established a precedent for the rulers that followed. She made history.
Through her influence her son, called Henry Beauclerc, granted the important char-
ter which was the model and precedent of the great Magna Charta.
English history is full of the greatness o*f the reign of Edward HI., yet when
Philippa died he brought forth only evil deeds, and what was good in his reign is owing
almost wholly to the queen. Through her the shipbuilding and commerce began, the
navy was established. With her own pin money she brought to England Froissart, to
travel at her expense, so the French and English by knowing one another better
might have less wars, and that he might meet her charming young relative, Chaucer.
With her own money she established the Flemish weavers and cotton and flax indus-
tries in Norfolk, built houses for these people she brought from her girlhood home.
She began the great commerce of England. It would take volumes to tell all that
Philippa did for England to civilize and enlighten it, and cause it to revolve about its
own industrial life, instead of seeking to conquer its neighbors.
Margaret, born in 1353, in Denmark, daughter of Waldemar HI., was married in
1373 to Haquin, King of Norway, in 1376 regent, too, of Denmark. The year Cath-
erine of Sienna died, 1380, she became Queen of Norway. Her son dying, she was
acknowledged also sovereign of Denmark. At an assembly of the three countries of
Norway, Sweden and Denmark she held at Calmar in 1397 the famous treaty of peace
between these contending countries, and formed the " Calmar Union." Her nephew
appointed her successor.
The Woman's Peace at Cambrai, which held the domination of Venice in check and
awakened and helped Western Europe, shows the moderate policy of women, their
foresight, judgment and perseverance, higher qualities of mind than aggressive con-
quering wars.
Margaret, daughter of Ernest of Austria, born in 1416, died in i486; married
Frederick the Wise, of Saxony, and had eight children. She was a wise counselor
in state affairs. Her husband accorded her the right, which she exercised, of coining
money and to assist in governing the state. She contributed much by wise counsel
in putting an end to wars. In 1467 her husband died. She reigned and proved herself
a mother to her subjects. She died in i486, seventy years old. She was the first
sovereign to provide public rooms where the poor could have opportunity to warm
themselves during severe winters. Learning and public education by meetings and
discourse were inaugurated by her. Poems were recited, the rude dramas and public
fairs encouraged.
Ann of Denmark, wife of James I., demanded that the crown be put on her head
as well as the king's. Her descendants were the powers to form the best civil life in
Germany and England, and Elizabeth, the friend of Des Cartes, furthered the highest
philosophic thought and practical education.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 345
"Mother Anna" of Saxony, born in 1531, daughter of Christian III. of Denmark, a
protestant, humane and wise king. She was educated by her mother, Dorothea, and
the chaplain. In 1548, when seventeen years old, married August of Saxony, a wise
ruler. She had fifteen children. She devoted herself to the moral and mental
improvement of her people; she had faith in them and patience with the evil. She is
called " the mother of her country." She multiplied schools for the people. The rich
had tutors in their castles, but she raised the standard of education, making it prac-
tical. Under her direction waste land was cultivated, and new foods introduced suited
to the soil. On one occasion she headed the pioneers with a spade, carrying it in the
procession in order to patronize agriculture, which she did much to improve. She
devoted much time to chemistry, natural philosophy, botany, and studied for knowl-
edge that her people needed; on all occasions tried to make her knowledge contribute
to the happiness, comfort and wealth of her people. She did much not only to
improve lands, but the houses of the poor. She aided her husband in welcoming and
supporting the Dutch exiles and the cloth and cotton weavers who were driven from
their homes by Christian persecution from Holland and France. She accompanied
her husband on his travels to learn of the condition of her people and other nations.
She distributed the best seed to the people, and taught them how to save and preserve
it. She induced her husband to pass a law that every newly married couple must
plant and graft two fruit trees during the first year of their marriage. A wise mother
of her large family, and a loving, devoted wife, "mother of her country, too," she is
an example of the matriarchal ideal.
These women did
" Mutually leaven
Strength of earth with grace of heaven."
The great women active from 1450 to 1600 will tell you why the eighteenth cent-
ury was so vital with progress, knowledge, and demand for human rights. It was the
renaissance of the matriarchal ideal — knowledge with opportunity to work unhindered
by supreme authority.
That the matriarchal spirit arose in the last century is seen by the awakened
curiosity for knowledge: the Encyclopaedias began to collect; the British Museum was
established 1753, and interest in Oriental languages began. Rollin's ancient history
told us of past nations. Excavations began, and the statues of the great Egyptian
women came into view, telling us of a civilization that taught Greeks, Hebrews
and Romans.
Women have risen in influence with the rise of these matriarchal methods, and
this wider knowledge of higher civilizations than Europe had ever had under patri-
archal rule. A republic is but a political order of a matriarchal home, as an empire
is a patriarchal ideal. The evolution of our republic, as a political organization with
matriarchal rather than patriarchal ideals, is a most fruitful study of human activity.
The states are a family of children, each have rights and are free to develop individuality,
but all must be true to the home, the union of all, the central head; and mark, this is not
to obey a patriarchal will, but to adjust their way to order as in a home. It was thus
that the uniting in ancient times, of many with one purpose created a greater force
than even one mighty man over many slaves obeying his will.
This was the first great step in civilization, when individual passion had to curb itself
to obey the law of the whole tribe. That was the work of early women in matriarchal
times, and today it has to be repeated in every household by the mother teaching the
child's will that it must obey the law of the family, its rules and regulations. Each
family repeats the history of the world. Thus the influence and light from the great,
courageous mothers of the past help women of today. We should realize that we are
a part of the history of the world. Those early women were great because with no
example, only their own instincts — they first taught and trained children and men in
industry, economy and foresight— those traits which make us different from the brute.
346 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Civil life in a wide continent has to adopt the methods of the matriarchal system,
though they are despised by patriarchs. They are based on conference, councils,
arbitration, and not commands from one. A patriarch did not confer with his people.
He ruled and directed by his sovereign will and his wish. He claimed to be directed
by his god, or his angel, or his high priest. Women were directed by their collected
reason as to what was right. Their instincts were their authority; so they established
the council as authority. Because they were not strong when isolated, they invented
habitations that protected them from wild beasts and from lawless persons of their own
and other tribes. Their method was the motto of one of the states of our republic:
" United we stand, divided we fall." It was this uniting of the mothers to secure ben-
efit to their families that began the method of councils and that introduced treaties
for peace. Women, not being as strong in body as men, and with the care of their
young, could not take risks of starvation or fight with enemies single-handed; so, from
their disability in physical strength and animal courage, they developed the defense
that comes from thought and invention. For this reason the matriarchal power is
older than the patriarchal. The mothers united in council and acted together. When
they, from their grain fields, controlled the food supply and the sale of their baskets,
trinkets and religious vestments, then they were a power; for that one is master who
supplies the food and raiment. Walled cities, large armies broke the matriarchal
reign and established empires.
Let us turn back four hundred years: Constantinople was taken in 1453 by Moham-
medans. In 1480 Columbus was starting for Portugal. Ferdinand and Isabella were
in their prime, thirty years of age. Sir Thomas More, Margaret (daughter of Maxi-
milian), and the great Mary of Burgundy, were born this year. Sister Hadewych, a nun
of Brabant, was collecting songs for the people in their own tongue, thus establishing
a unity of the Dutch language. Anna Bljins, the first to write with grace and elegance
that language, was writing for the good of people who could not read Latin.
From this time the matriarchal stream of thought and ideas have gradually eroded
the walls and pillars of patriarchal power.
In 1480 the Continent of America was at peace, not yet found by the covetous,
wrangling, fighting, stealing, persecuting Europeans. The women here on this conti-
nent had their harvest festivals, gathering their corn and potatoes, weaving baskets
and making pottery, worshiping what helped them in life in their temples with rev-
erence to sun moon and stars: their help and yet their mystery. They had learned
that they were connected in some way in guiding and blessing their every-day life
with light and growth. It was from their religious island that a woman held high the
sacred torch of their worship that greeted Columbus in that dark night of despair
with his frail boats on the unknown ocean. The incident is preserved by art in the
woman's seal of the World's Columbian Exposition It was the intuitive apprecia-
tion and generosity of women that gave Columbus the ability to do his work. The
accumulated charts and geographical knowledge, and the fortune and estate of his
wife in Porto Santo, and wisdom of her mother, were his opportunity and inspiration.
The granddaughter of the great Queen Philippa of England was the mother and
inspirer of Henry II. of Portugal, who gave Perestrello, the father of Columbus' wife,
his knowledge and his estate. The great women of that time are a study of them-
selves. I leave them and go back a century before, to 1380, when closed the lives of
two great women whose history remains to teach and inspire us today — Philippa of
Hainault and St. Catherine of Sienna.
Marcus Aurelius commends the precept of Themistocles to have before the mind
some of the many men of antiquity who illustrated by their lives the greatness possi-
ble to men. It is equally a benefit for women. Too long we have been kept on his-
tory written and illustrated by men's lives; now we want to know the spinners of the
fiber of individual character; the knitters who have formed the social life; the weav-
ers who have held together by principles and laws the passions of people, so that the
strength of each should be the salvation of the whole. The lives of the women in
each age will reveal the evolution of the growth of civil life, though men's lives may
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 347
illustrate the revolutions against enemies and usurpers." Plutarch's lives of the great
Greeks were powerful in inspiration to the eighteenth century. They were a renais-
sance in themselves. This century needs the history of womanhood in civilization.
The study of the womanhood of women in high position, in governments, the
queens and princesses of Europe, will exert a beneficial influence on all women, for
they will learn that the state is but the larger household; and if the study of society,
of industries, commerce, religious and educational methods, or the study of govern-
ment, is elevating and ennobling for queens; if the study of how to adjust difficulties,
develop and rule people is suited for royal families, then it is suited for all fami-
lies in a republic where people are sovereigns. It will be a study equally elevating
for American women and her family in a republic. The women who, against the
prejudice of patriarchal ideals, have tried to bring into this republic recognition of
womanhood and matriarchal methods, have been working on the Divine plan of Prov-
idence and in the true history of mankind.
When the Spaniards came to Peru, South America, they found a learned woman —
Capillano. She was born 1 500-1 541. Her manuscripts and paintings are in the
Dominicans' Library there now. They represent ancient Peruvian monuments, with
historical explanations. There are representations of their plants and the curious
dissertations on their properties. The lives of such women are a part of the history
of America; but more, they are part of the history of womanhood, as well as of the
world. Humanity is not bound by geographical lines. We are interested in what
woman has wanted to do and how she has done it. We need to study not only women
like ourselves, but those placed in all the various phases of life. The means they
may have employed may have been different from our ancestors, but what was their
womanhood? That we need to know. There have been elect women in all days who
have felt impelled to do and dare, and to bring a higher state of affairs on earth — to
work out their ideals of what ought to be into a reality. Have they not always aimed
for what they thought was good for mankind?
Woman has made her love " the ladder for her faith, and climbs above on the
rounds of her best instincts."
We know that there were great and good women here in America in prehistoric
times. Their works prove it. The fanatical discoverers were too barbaric to appreciate
them. They judged a people by their ability to kill and fight and to resist an enemy.
Their temples they tried to utterly destroy, and stripped from them gold and
silver adornments and sacred offerings and buried the stones, defacing them. We lose
the true record of the life lived here; but the work of their hands comes forth from
their hidden tombs. There is much to bear witness that there were great women who
labored for beauty, for peace, comfort, and an orderly life. We want now a sacred,
safe place to gather and preserve, as fast as found the record, the work of these early
great women on this oldest continent. We must prove we value knowledge, that we
want opportunity to compare what has been evil with what has been good. Then
women in the future can write a true history.
What will the Exposition do for us? It will carry us forward to new convictions
for duty and elevate the rule 01 life.
Here we have met companions who were truly such, who enjoy what we enjoy,,
and are inspiration as well as fellowship to us.
Our horizon has broadened, and the little we know is put into comparison with
the infinite we do not know. This collection from all lands, from all races, with
exhibition of their endeavors to civilize and attain enlightened humanity, would be
a childish, summer play of the nations if it were not a profound examination of civil-
ization, its causes, and its growth.
"The soul of man is widening toward the past,
More largely conscious of the life that was."
" Here is the pulse of all mankind
Feeding an embryo future."
THE FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN.
By MRS. ELLEN M. HENROTIN.
In accepting Mrs. Eagle's kind invitation to address this Congress I suggested that
a few words on the financial position of women might not be uninteresting.
The entrance of women into the labor markets of
the world marks a distinctly new era in her financial
status, and the economic condition of woman is still
a sad one. It is undeniable that the exhibits at the
Columbian Exposition testify to the tremendous
advance which she has made during the last half cent
ury in the industrial world, but it also testifies to the
fact that in this world she occupies a very subordi-
nate position: not numerically, but as a skilled arti-
san. In the modern world her position is relatively
but little better than it was in ancient days, when she
was the hewer of wood and bearer of water; and that
she does not now hew wood and carry water is due to
the fact that mechanical appliances perform for
humanity the tasks in which primitive woman was
engaged.
Little by little, woman has emerged from the home
and its industries into the modern competitive labor
market. It is estimated that there are six thousand
women in this country who act as postmistresses;
treasury department, one thousand four hundred
women. New York City has over one hundred thou-
sand women who earn their own living and are supporting families. The average
weekly wages of working women in American cities is S5.24, the highest being at San
Francisco, S6.91, and the lowest at Atlanta, Ga., S4.05. Over three million women are
earning independent incomes in the United States. It is impossible to estimate the
number of women who have independent incomes by inheritance.
Miss Grace Dodge says that there are two thousand four hundred and eighteen
members of the clubs forming the New York Association. The average earnings are
five dollars a week; thus, members of the New York Association earn ;S654,68o a year.
These figures give no idea of women in the insurance business; teachers, most of whom
save something and make small investments; librarians, stenographers, whose wages
range from six dollars to eighteen dollars per week; but from the meager statement
it is easy to judge of the truly enormous sums of money made and invested each year
by women.
Why in the nineteenth century, in this land of plenty, flowing with milk and honey,
she and her little children should be pushing into this struggle for existence, in which
the survival of the fittest seems to be lost sight of, for bread to put in their mouths, is
a sociological question which must be left for society, the church and the state to
Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin. was bom in Portland, Me. Her parents were Edward Bryan Martin, Camden, Me., and Sarah
Norrie Martin, of that city. She was educated in New Haven, Conn.; Shankland, Isle of Wight, England ; two years in Paris,
and two years in Dresden. She has traveled all over Em-ope and America. She married Mr. Charles Henrotin, banker and
broker, Chicago, in 1869. Her special work has been in the interest of women and social and economic institutions. Mrs.
Henrotin was vice president and acting president of the Woman's Branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary, which arranged
various congresses during the Exposition in Chicago in 1898. She filled that position with great credit to herself and profit
to women in general. Her postoffice address is Chicago, 111.
348
MRS. ELLEN M, HENROTIN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. U9
answer. That she is in the labor market today as a permanent factor is apparent
even to the most superficial observer, and the next question is, How to improve her
economic and financial condition so that life may be made at least worth the living.
This may seem but a poor ambition, but it is, after all, the highest possessed by the
great majority: that their life may be fairly comfortable, and passed under such con-
ditions that the next generation may be a little better and a little wiser.
There is no more patent sign of the times than the fact that woman is attracting
the attention of the financial world, and that her large property interests are being
recognized as*an integral part of the so-called " Woman Question." She has always
been recognized as a worker, but as a worker along the lines in which her financial
rewards did not render her an object of special consideration in the moneyed world.
Now, however, all this is changed, the money or the savings which she accumulates
are invested in moneyed institutions, as building and loan associations, real estate,
and mortgages on real estate. The amount thus invested is in the hundred millions.
Mr. Ethelbert Stewart, of the Department of Labor at Washington, sends me the
following report:
" The relative numerical position of men and women as investors in building and
loan associations is as one to four. That is to say, twenty-five per cent of the build-
ing and loan shares of stock in the eastern and middle western states are owned by
women. In New Jersey every fourth shareholder is a woman, as is seen from the
figures: Total, 78,725 shareholders; 58,496 males, 19,341 females; nine hundred and
eighty-eight corporations and firms: percentages, seventy-four per cent., twenty-five
per cent, and one per cent, respectively. The " present value " of the shares held
by women in New Jersey is 56,401,593. By present value is meant dues paid in,
together with accrued profits. Of the borrowers, or those who are securing homes for
themselves by means of building and loan associations: In New York State 32,699
women hold 126,874 shares of stock, having a present value of ^^5,935,554, and a
maturity value of approximately twenty-five million dollars.
The total membership of these societies in New York is composed of twenty-four
per cent, women, though only about twenty per cent, of the stock is held by women.
In the city of Philadelphia 34,4000 women hold stock valued at $10,059,861, while
the stock matured and withdrawn, either in money or in canceled mortgages, equals
515,000,000 more, within the past "maturing period" of eight years.
In the State of Pennsylvania $22,200,000 worth of building and loan stock is held
by 92,000 women. Of the ^960,000,000, representing the net assets of building and
loan associations in the United States, $192,000,000 worth is held by 2,400,000 women.
The law of Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and probably many
other states, makes building and loan stock taken out by women, and when the dues
upon said stock is paid by them, to be theirs in every particular, and not subject to
attachment or execution for their husbands' debts.
The question of the source from whence the dues come which are paid on shares
held by women, is one that can not be answered in a very comprehensive way. One
association, in New York City, visited by the writer, had sixty-three chambermaids
among its membership, each earning by her own labor the money invested.
In a teachers' building and loan association in New York City ninety per cent, of
the members were women earning their own money, and many of them having built
several houses for rent through the association. In Buffalo, N. Y., I asked twenty-
seven women who came in to pay their dues how they got the money. Twelve
replied their husbands gave it to them.
One said her husband supported the family and she swept a large house for a
wealthy lady twice each week and invested the earnings in building and loan stock.
Another baked bread for three different families, and thus earned the money invested
in dues. Five others earned the money themselves by various extra domestic jobs,
such as sewing or washing for a neighbor. In all, seven married women earned their
own funds; twelve did not. The remaining eight were unmarried and worked for
their living.
350 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
I have attended the meetings of scores of building and loan associations and
asked the female members as they came in to pay dues what their source of income
was, and I believe that less than fifty per cent, of them derive their mofiey from their
husbands. That is to say, one million three hundred and fifty thousand women are
investing in building and loan stock the money they earn themselves, and this self-
earned money, as distinguished from the total held by women is, at a low estimate,
^86,000,000. Women investors in building and loan associations are usually working
women or the wives of working men. A great many clerks and school teachers
invest in this manner, as building associations hold out the prospect of obtaining a
home, which is the goal of woman's endeavor; for almost every woman has some one
for whom she desires to create a home; if not her own children, then parents or a
sister or a brother; in fact, this is the strong motive among working women, and to
attain this end they walk many a weary mile and deprive themselves of many a
pleasure.
Women should exercise great care and do their best to ascertain from a reliable
source the financial status of the association in which they desire to invest.
The tremendous financial power which women might become in this country they
have never as yet realized. At my request, Mr. Hepburn, the late comptroller of the
currency, sent out to the national banks a request to furnish him with a list of women
holding bank stock, and the statistics which he collected were sent to me by Mr.
Eckels.
It is an interesting point that the large amount of stock in banks owned by women
does not come to them as a reward of their own labor, but is usually given by some
relative. The tendency of men to put their money in the hands of women is becom-
ing a very pronounced one; also most husbands and fathers consider bank stock a safe
investment to leave to women. It is easily managed, the income is usually an assured
one, and in the present status of women's information on financial matters, it does not
require very much ability to draw little slips of paper against a definite sum; conse-
quently that is regarded as an easy way of disposing of their future, and this is the
point of view to be combated. Were the women of this country once to realize their
power, the sense of ethical responsibility born of power would rise within them. They
would no longer content themselves with giving their proxy when asked for it, and
never voting themselves or attending a stockholders' meeting.
There is also another side. The men are constantly.saying they are overworked:
this is made the excuse for the bad management of many corporations. There are a
large number of intelligent women in this country, owning great financial interests;
these women would make excellent directors, they are conservative; with a little exer-
tion they could acquire the requisite knowledge of finance and then relieve the men
of some of the tremendous burdens from which they now suffer.
Before continuing further I will give the figures of the comptroller of the currency.
It must be borne in mind that these figures represent only the national banks, and not
all of them. In some states the private banks do not report.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
351
STATEMENT SHOWING BY STATES AND TERRITORIES THE NUMBER OF SHARES OF NATIONAL BANK
STOCK OWNED BY WOMEN APRIL 15, 1893, AND PAR VALUE OF SAME. ALSO THE NUMBER OF
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN NATIONAL BANKS ON SAME DATE, AND AMOUNT OF SALARIES PAID TO
SAME.
Statb and Terbitoeies.
Maine
New Hampshire.
Vermont
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Connecticut
New York
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Delaware
Maryland
District ot Columbia
Virginia
West Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina.
Georgia
I^lorida
Alabama
Mississippi
Louisiana
Texas
Arkansas
Kentucky
Tennessee
Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Michigan
Wisconsin
Iowa
Minnesota
Missouri
Kansas
Nebraska
Colorado
Nevada
California
Oregon
Arizona
North Dakota
South Dakota
Idaho
Montana
New Mexico
Oklahoma
Indian Territory....
Utah
Wyoming
Washington
Total
No. of Shares
Par Vtdae of Sharee
No. of Women
Salaries of Women
Owned by Women-
Owned by Women.
Employed.
Employed.
27,.343
$ 2,540,905
6
$ 2,296
13,635
1,;350,493
11
4,541
25,6:33
1,719,666
6
2,550
214,169
21,738,195
32
15,394
126,931
6,593.770
2
1,000
68,774
4,922,786
5
1,526
264,053
18,317,471
44
18,952
56,894
3,604,290
3
1,106
267,779
17,267,184
26
10,723
12,768
755,075
1
360
119,886
3,739,205
1
416
3,349
3;M,900
1
60
7,174
717,400
4,316
422,366
7,351
549,250
3,799
379.910
5,932
589,'380
2
1,200
988
98,850
1
60
31,962
698,700
1,560
156,000
4,174
417,475
2
1,560
213,261
2,326,570
3
1,700
1,477
147,700
1
600
32,331
3,085;580
6
2,680
15,404
1,496,400
4
3,920
100,547
10,381,631
23
9,399
30,255
3,025,558
24
11,510
58,927
5,892,780
27
14.859
24,a50
2,464,091
11
5,780
11,849
108,675
12
5,116
16.306
1,620,488
21
9,593
29,563
3,032.177
13
5,640
30,775
3,110,650
15
9.520
10,008
1,061,088
21
8,820
8,927
903,318
19
10,090
5,187
• 518,700
4
2,520
5,000
12.805
"e"
1,310,.375
5,280
2,093
224.800
4
2,450
30
3,000
2,102
210,200
4
1,930
2.988
302,820
9
4,329
393
39.300
1
600
2,427
242,700
3
2.900
1,112
111,200
79
7,900
330
33,000
3,229
322,900
2,192
219,200
1
500
5,098
590,213
8
4,376
1,703.759
$130,681,485
383
$185,797
The statistics of women as bank employes show that but a small number have
entered banking offices, though women are admirably fitted for such employment. The
work is well systematized; the hours fixed; there is no night work, comparatively speak-
ing; and they are very expert in the handling of money. The well-known bank exam-
852 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
iner, Mr. Sturges, has written a paper on this subject, which will be found in the records
of the Congress.
I have written to every woman bank cashier in this country, and I have received
many interesting letters, among others one from Mrs. Annie Moores, President of the
First National Bank of Mount Crescent, Texas. She says that she had never had her
attention drawn to this point before, but that she immediately made it a subject of
investigation and was perfectly amazed at the result. She happened at the time she
received my letter to be in Virginia, and her investigation was in the County of Suffolk.
She found eight stockholders in the bank of Monsmont were women, possessing by
inheritance one-third of the stock, which they all voted by proxy. Further investiga-
tion has proved that two-thirds of the National bank stock of this entire county of
Suffolk is owned by women, Mrs. Simpson, who is President of the Simpson Bank
of Columbus, Texas, gives very much the same figures; and adds that woman to be
capable of investing funds wisely and judiciously must be possessed of three essential
qualifications — to wit: A knowledge of matters of finance, self-confidence, and firm-
ness.
The keynote of the relation of the sexes is really a financial one; this may appear
a very materialistic view to take of the situation, but the readjustment now in progress
between the relative position of the sexes is largely of that character. Life was com-
paratively a simple thing when the law recognized but one responsible head to the
family, of arbitrary power over its goods and chattels. The position of a married
woman or an unmarried woman in the household was that of a dependent. She was
expected to marry; failing that the family had a right to her services without remuner-
ation. Under this primitive system protected by the English common law , the family
was really presided over by the father. No one acquainted with the social life of this
country forty years ago can deny this fact. The wife, in many cases the active partner
of the concern, had absolutely no financial independence. Most of the young women
of that day employed themselves in household work; some few taught school; some
few went out as seamstresses and dressmakers, and their wages were largely appro-
priated by the younger members of the family to help the boys through college or for
current expenses. Only a widow, and she in a very limited sense, ever thought of com-
merce, and no consideration was given to women as investors, their "nearest of kin"
among men doing the investing for them. But within the last thirty years, public
opinion, and the laggard that always follows it, the law, have revolutionized the
financial standing of woman.
The Code Napoleon was the forerunner of the financial emancipation of woman,
recognizing as it did her financial status as a partner in marriage; consequently French
women are financiers, and are more largely engaged in commerce than the women of
any other nation, and not as employes but as employers and partners; because the
Code conferred on them, early in the development of the women question, a financial
.standing; and, far from being a source of danger to the family, it has proved in France
to be the surest foundation on which the family can be established.
The baneful influence of the English common law in regard to marriage can
never be overestimated, creating, as it has, between husband and wife, the feeling that
the finances are exclusively in the hands of the husband; so that money is an unfor-
tunate subject to discuss after marriage, and one to be scrupulously avoided before
marriage. Many a girl marries a man ignorant of his financial resources, and most
men in this country marry a woman without any discussion as to her financial pros-
pects from her family or herself. The constant tendency of modern legislation is to
rehabilitate the family as a partnership; and while the laws relating to the property of
married women are modified and liberalized until her position is approximately one
founded on justice, these laws are of so recent enactment that the feeling of ethical
responsibility as to the making, managing and spending of money is not yet developed.
Bank stocks are also largely in the hands of widows, or women who are not convers-
ant with the needs of the younger generation, and consequently carry out old-fash-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 353
ioned methods of giving their proxy to any one who desires to vote it. If once the
feeling of moral responsibility toward the financial interests of the country could be
aroused in women it would be greatly to the advantage of the country. In her heart
of hearts she dearly loves a plain statement, especially about financial matters. She
hates to be in debt, and extended lines of credit present no charms to her. She would
be a tremendous conservative factor could she once undertake the management of her
own financial affairs.
. The French woman of today is conservative. Her constant participation in the
commerce of the nation is creating of that country the financial stronghold of the
world, prosperous, wealthy, and economical. I am not one to clamor for laws favor-
ing the financial independence of women, and which are virtually aimed at her further
enslavement. Too much protection is often dangerous. Her estate should be equally
liable with that of her husband for the living expenses of the family, but not for his
personal debts; where her money is being employed in business she should have the
rights of an acting partner, and sufficient time allowed her at his death to wind up
the affairs of the partnership, or create a new partnership if she so desires. There
is no reason why a woman should not go into business with her husband, and it is a
mistaken idea that business should not be discussed at home, and a far greater mis-
take for a woman not to have the right of entrance at her husband's ofifice. A woman
is a thousand times a better companion who is informed as to the finances of the
country, who knows the whys and wherefores of the market, and standing a little out-
side, with full knowledge of the inside, make her an invaluable counselor. There is
something, too, in the added security of a man at his death feeling that he leaves
behind him a woman able to direct her own business affairs, and with the knowledge
requisite to put to its best use either the large or small amount of property which he
leaves to his family.
(23)
THE CHOLERA IN HAMBURG.
By MISS ANNESLEY KENEALY.
To some of my hearers it may seem as if the subject of my paper is rather grue-
some, but upon reflection it would appear to be a matter not only of public interest,
but of national welfare, that every possible ray of
light should be cast on the mysteries and develop-
ment of that dreaded cholera which worked so much
destruction in Hamburg during the autumn of 1892,
and which appeared to threaten the whole continent
of Europe. An account of the rise, the progress and
the decline of the epidemic in that city may be instruct-
ive and suggestive.
Cholera is a disease of which little more is known
now than was known when Eugene Sue described it
so graphically in the pages of "The Wandering Jew"
— a description which is thrillingly realistic to anyone
who has stood face to face with it. It arises silently
and stealthil)', doing its dreaded work surely and
without pity. Atmosphere and climatic conditions
affect the development of the germ, for cholera is
essentially a germ disease, and impure water and bad
sanitation complete the growth. These conditions
combined in September, 1892, in Hamburg, and adjoin-
ing cities were startled to find the disease so close
upon them. As we drove through the streets of the
city after a hurried journey from England to the seat
of war, if one may so express it, we caught glimpses of the so-called " cholera streets"
where the disease arose. The architecture in its antiquity and picturesqueness filled
us with admiration; the canals of Stygian blackness, flowing on a level with the lower
floors of the houses, reminded us of bits of old Venice, and wanted only the gondo-
liers to complete the illusion. But while one's artistic senses were satisfied, one's sani-
tary knowledge rose in revolt against the neglect of all the laws of health as typified in
these charming " slums." It would appear that in the towns of Europe it is almost
impossible for Art and Hygiene to walk hand in hand. The beautiful " White City "
has shown us that they may do so in America. The condemnation of the " cholera
streets " is a gain to sanitation, but a terrible sacrifice of art on the altars of the pub-
lic weal.
The gloomy station at which we alighted was typical of the deserted condition of
the city, five Sisters of Mercy and ourselves being the only travelers. To our minds
the lapse of duty on the part of the railway employes in forgetting to take our tickets
Miss Annesley Kenealy is a native of Sassex, England. Her parents were the late Edward Kenealy, Q. C, LL. D., and
M. P., andElizabeth Kenealy. She waseducated by private tutorsinLatin, Greek, science, mathematics, etc., andstudiedatthe
London College of Medicine for women. She has traveled, studying the hospital systems in'the- United States, Norway, Holland,
Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Her special work has been in the interest of the social and political
advancement of women, also in the interests of philanthropy. She was a volunteer nurse during the cholera epidemic in
Hamburg in 1892. She was appointed by the Royal Commission of England a judge in the Hygienic and Sanitary Section of the
World's Fair, Chicago, 1893, and was invited to prepare the official report of the Department for presentation to U. S. Congress.
Her principal literary works are contributions to the "British Medical Journal," many leading English periodicals, pam-
phlets and books. Her profession is that of a lecturer on health to national health societies and the British County Councils.
Her postoffice address is Watford, Herts, England.
354
MISS ANNESLEY KENE.^LY.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 355
-was the strongest possible proof of public demoralization that we saw. That German
officialdom could be caught napping was indeed one of the wonders of the cholera
epidemic. The city and its streets looked as if under the shadow of a great destiny.
Funerals and funeral wreaths, mourners and signs of mourning met us at every corner.
The absence of women and children was very conspicuous. It was as if some Pied
Piper had passed along and robbed the city of its ornaments. But we learned that
forty thousand of the residents had fled on the first mention of cholera, a large pro-
portion of these being women and children.
A picturesque procession, known as the Volunteer Company of Health of Hohen-
felde, met us on our route. It consisted of some two dozen men and boys with pails
and carboys of chemicals, whose self-imposed duty it was to go to the places where
the disease had been, and thoroughly disinfect and cleanse the rooms and houses. In
the early days of the epidemic undoubtedly great confusion reigned; but military dis-
cipline soon asserted itself, and out of chaos came order of a most admirable type. I
venture to think that few cities of the world would have shown such resource and
strength to meet the invasion of so formidable a foe as did Hamburg. The only weak
point about the siege was that in the beginning of the epidemic the authorities refused
to acknowledge that the enemy was within their gates. Thus the germ was able to
take possession of many strongholds which could have been rendered impregnable if
proper measures of safety had been adopted sufficiently early. When the fact that
cholera had taken possession of the city could no longer be concealed, military cor-
dons were drawn around the infected quarters, ingress and egress being limited to
physicians and attendants. But as the proportions of the disease increased, it vvas
found necessary to clear the hospitals of their ordinary patients to make room for the
cholera-stricken. In the Eppendorf Hospital, where my sister and I spent some three
weeks, there was found accommodation for nearly two thousand patients. This hos-
pital, which is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful in the world, and which closely
resembles the Johns Hopkins Hospital of Baltimore, reminded us in its proportions
and appearance of a friendly fortress strong to save, and offering a safe refuge to those
taking shelter within its walls. The grounds and gardens, full of beautiful flowers and
shrubs, the beautiful creepers covering the building, looked, especially at night, when
lighted up by electricity, a veritable scene in fairyland. But this likeness was limited
to the externals. In the wards there was only the grim realism of suffering and
death. In addition to the large wards and partitions, further accommodation was fur-
nished by hospital tents similar to. those used in the Franco-Prussian war, which stood
picturesquely dotted about in a large waste field adjoining the grounds. These tents
grew up almost like the beanstalk of the fairy story — in a single night — and bore testi-
mony to the excellency of the arrangements made by those in authority. Rows of
beds stood ready for occupancy, electricity lighted up the interiors as well as the out-
side, and the tents flying the Red Cross, the emblem of charity and pity, gave one the
sense of being in the midst of some military encampment. From a theoretical stand-
point, treatment in the open air under canvas would seem a desirable method of treat-
ing cholera, and it would appear that thus there would be less danger of the spread of
the disease; but, practically, it has been shown that in the cold collapsed condition of
the patient, the open air is too depressing. An admirable system of police notifica-
tion of fresh cases was established, prompt removal being effected by a service of two-
horsed cabs, which were kept busy night and day. Each vehicle vvas accompanied by an
official, whose duty it was to take the name and address of the stricken patients and
furnish this to the hospital, thus affording a ready means of identification in case of
death In the early days of the epidemic, patients were picked up in the streets,
unconscious, dying and dead, and were carried to the various hospitals without any
means of tracing their families and friends.
The disease originated in the shipping quarter, having been brought to Hamburg
from the Black Sea by a vessel which successfully concealed the fact that its crew had
been stricken by cholera some two months previously. It was natural, therefore, that
356 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the sailors and those who go down to the sea in ships should be first attacked. Many-
foreigners fell victims, whose names never will be known, and whose friends will vainly
wait for tidings from and of the lost ones. Curiously enough, my sister was recently
asked by a German woman, whom she met in an English country town, whether she
could give her any news of a sister who had been lost sight of during the Hamburg
epidemic, and who, it was feared, must have shared the common fate. It was by no
means unusual for whole families to be taken to the same hospital and distributed in
the various wards according to sex and accommodation. Spacious and roomy as these
wards were, their capacity was tried to the utmost, the beds, of necessity, being so close
that the patients might almost have joined hands round the circumference of the ward.
Had not the ventilating and sanitary arrangements been almost perfect, a very serious
condition of things would have arisen. The stone floors admirably lent themselves to
assidious deluging and mopping with suitable disinfectants. Thus the career of the
germ was early cut off.
The appearance of the cholera patient is typical and unlike that of one suffering
from any other disease. He is collapsed, with a dusky blackness of skin in many-
cases, giving the suggestion that his body has been thickly powdered with coal-dust.
The normal lines are blackened and deepened, the expression haggard and wan. List-
lessness and apathy are expressed in every attitude, and the mental condition, unless
the case be complicated with delirium, is distinctly one of lethargy. The rapid emacia-
tion of the body through the draining of the tissue fluids is characteristic only of chol-
era, and is noticeable in all severe cases. It gives an aged, withered look to the patient,
and even the dimpled, rounded limbs of the young child will lose contour, and become
wrinkled and shrunk in the space of a few hours. A consuming thirst is so great as to
almost absorb all other sensations, and results in the enormous consumption of liquids
and in part restores the loss of the fluid components of the body through the disease.
This thirst is constant and unrelievable, and was one of the difficulties of the situation.
Hard pressed as we were to supply the bare needs of our patients, it was most pathetic
to be frequently obliged to ignore for a space their entreaties for drink of any and every
kind, and to note the wistful, thirsty eyes of the occupants as we passed their beds to
supply some one whose needs were greater. The tight clutch of baby hands on mugs
and glasses told us how real was the desire for liquid. Often in the midst of our duties
we would hear a small thud on the ground, followed by patter of little feet that scarcely
knew how to walk, setting out on a small voyage of discovery and investigation into
the contents of bottles and jugs that stood in the wards. It has been said that a large
proportion of cholera patients die of fear, but I believe this conclusion to have been
reached from observations made in India. Doubtless the nervous, highly-strung Hin-
doo would see in the invasion of cholera the finger of fate, against which he would
believe medical skill to be quite powerless, but the phlegmatic Teuton gave no evi-
dence of a belief in an unassailable Kismet. It frequently occurred to us that the
choleraic condition killed all natural emotion. Little sisters side by side in bed, one
would die, and the other would take no notice and feel no fear. Older children would
see their mothers carried dead from the wards, and would watch the procession as of
something afar off that had no relation to them. The rapid succession of patients was
most bewildering — not, unfortunately, because of recovery, but because of deaths.
Almost before we had time to know the faces of our patients they were removed to the
mortuary, and others were ready to take the vacant beds. Cholera spares neither sex
nor age. Our patients ranged from the baby at the breast to those who had fulfilled
their three-score years and ten. The fight was by no means always to the strong, and
victory not at all necessarily to those of robust nature. Treatment consisted chiefly of
venous injections of warm salt and water, combined with hot, stimulating baths and
packs, but the general consensus of medical opinion at Hamburg was that no remedy
could in any sense be relied on. Our ov»n experience bears out that which has been
aptly said regarding the disease, that " if the patient be strong enough, or can in any
way be assisted to survive the attack, it might be said he was cured of cholera, but it
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 357
was the man who lived, and not that the cholera was killed." Prevention is the only
cure. Epidemics are nature's health officers, and they do their work efficiently if they
are sufficientl}' serious to impress themselves upon the public mind. Slowly and by
degrees, as malarial and deadly spots in India are drained and sanitated, the outbreaks
of cholera are fewer and less serious. Pisease is a foe that recedes as the missionaries
of health advance. Gradually, as more light is thrown on the science of hygiene, the
legions of microbes ever lurking in darkness and dirt are stifled in their growth and
become weaker and weaker. The insanitation of India, the starvation and misery of
Russia, are a standing menace to the peoples of Europe, and so long as these exist,
each year we will have to gird up our strength to meet the foe, and shall have to
grapple hard to keep him to his own quarters — the quarters of dirt and uncivilization.
In these days of express speed we have many adv^antages. The railroad and
steamboat bring us into relation with the uttermost ends of the earth and the peoples
thereof, but we must not lose sight of the fact that at the same time we are brought
into contact with the moral and physical diseases of all these different peoples.
The "sins of Hamburg" were great, and eventually found her out. Nature had
dealt very gently with her breaches of the eternal laws of health. Thirteen compara-
tively mild epidemics had failed to suggest to the city authorities the necessity of
putting their house in order. The Elbe water was still supplied in all its native and
imported impurity, and then came the fourteenth warning, sadder, sharper and effect-
ual, and Hamburg has risen to the occasion. From her commercial position and har-
bor accommodations Hamburg is peculiarly open to the importation of foreign diseases,
and it is only by keeping her hearths well garnished and the city household in health
that she can afford to admit suspicious visitors. It is a matter of menace and regret
that she did not enforce compulsory cremation during the cholera epidemic. A beau-
tiful crematorium, hitherto practically unused, stood all through the epidemic as a
silent but eloquent monument to the prejudices of the people. In certain conditions
of the soil a cholera body is more dangerous to the community when below than when
above the ground, and it is much to be feared that a heavy day of reckoning must
come when it is remembered that countless thousands of cholera corpses are giving
their noxious emanations to the atmosphere of Hamburg.
A physician, recently writing in a professional paper, makes use of the following
astonishing statement that "cholera gives a new lease of life to the sufferer." This
may be so if he means us to understand some transcendental lease in another sphere,
but if he alludes to a lease here below, I cannot but think that the most of us should
object to the terms of the agreement. There is no question but that, in the marvelous
cleaning up ot Europe that has followed the cholera scare, there will be found new
leases of life to whole nations consequent to improved health conditions. Let me
commend the system to Chicago. In my stay here during the World's Fair I have
noted whole rows of " cholera streets," which have not even the excuse of being
artistic.
Tracts were distributed broadcast among the patients in the German hospitals
persuading them in solemn language that the cholera epidemic was a merciful dis-
pensation on the part of a wise Providence, and that the gentle chastisement had
been sent as a reminder that their ways of life were evil. But not a word was said of
the evil ways of the authorities of the city, who allowed the water supply to become
so polluted that " death in the cup" might be taken more as a statement of fact than
as a poetical exaggeration.
In conclusion let me offer a deserved tribute to the energy, the self-denial and
•devotion of Hamburg and her sons and daughters during the period of suffering.
Nurses, physicians and attendants worked with a singleness of purpose and forgetful-
ness of self. Much illness arose and many deaths occurred in the ranks, but all stood
by their guns with a courage that was one of the most hopeful beacons at a time when
encouraging signals were much needed.
Truly " unhappy Hamburg" has been the scapegoat for sanitary sins. She was
358 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
far in advance of most continental cities in sanitation, notwithstanding she was
singled out and other much worse offenders were passed by unharmed. But the
warning has been to all to gird up their loins and prepare their strongholds to meet
attacks from an enemy so mighty and subtle and mysterious that his coming is always
stealthy, and, as it were, in the dead of night.
THE GLORY OF WOMANHOOD.
By MADAME HANNA K. KORANY.
It is a fact that a seeker for truth will walk by its direction, guided by its, rays and
fight, if need be, for its victory; for truth is like a noonday sun, shedding his illumin-
ating rays and clearing from the face of nature the
veil of darkness, that it may appear to the naked eye
in its wealth of beauty and majestic excellence.
^r'; .."*^ - . r- Knowledge is but a curse, devoid of truth, the staff
with which wisdom guards her steps. Humanity
could not be elevated, except by following the dicca-
tion of truth, which leads man to be patriotic, philan-
thropic; inventor and orator; making him a laborer in
the fields of noblest action.
Rousseau, the famous French writer, when speak-
ing of woman said, " Her glory is in being unknown."
He betrayed his doubt of her capabilities and her
large intelligence, exhibiting as well his great selfish
ambition in confining power and glory to men alone.
Fortunately for woman, the storm of mental progress
blew away this theory; for many women stand before
the world in triumphant glory, victorious over all
obstacles; striving they write in large letters of light
on the margin of truth, *' There is glory for woman
that no shadow can eclipse," The great-souled, noble
woman has won and is crowned with laurel in spite of
all the powers that have worked to keep her unknown.
There is a glory in store for every woman, let her but labor for its possession.
But what is this glory? What are the ways and means to it, and how can she
gain it? Is it by taking arms and waging war against her fellows, murdering as many
as she is able, and returning from the tumult of war in a crimson suit colored with the
blood of men, or by exploring unknown regions, searching for gold and treasures,
returning with beasts. laden with wealth? Oh, no! for such deeds and their glory
belong to man.
What then? Does woman gain glory by sitting on the throne of royalty with the
scepter of power, or by dwelling in palaces of luxury where all that money could buy
is to be found? Never. Many who sat on thrones of dominion and power are only
famous for cruelty, injustice, and even degradation; and many passed their lives in
bondage to selfishness; departing, leaving none to sing their praises. Piety or purity
is the garb of woman's glory. Without it, all her wisdom, knowledge, intelligence and
patience amount to nothing; for piety alone purifies the heart and mind, elevates the
morals and uplifts womanhood. A woman should be wise if she would be glorious.
Mailame Hanna K. Korany is a native of Beyroiit, Syria. She was born in a little village on Mt. Lebanon in the year 1871.
Her parents were natives of Syria and belonged to good old families. She was educated in the American seminary for girls
at Beyront, where she stndied science, art and the languages, and was graduated 1885. She has traveled in parts of her own
country, in Malta, France, England and America. She married Amin Efifendi Korany in 1887. Her special work has been in
the interest of her own country women. She was the first.of them to appear ae a public writer. Her principal literary
works are a book on "Manners and Habits," several essays and fonr translations. Madame Korany came to the C'olnmbian
Exposition in the double capacity of an exhibitor and a delegate to the World's Congress. She tliinks of spending some time
here tolectare upon the Orient and its women. In religious faith she is a Christian, and a member of the Presbyterian
Church. Her postofBce address is Beyrout, Syria.
359
MADAME HANNA KORANY.
360 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
Carrying with her the safeguard of knowledge, she avoids failure and is qualified to
fight the battle of life and win the victory. Wisdom is the crown of glory and scepter
of power for woman.
Most of the misery and wretchedness of humanity arethebitter fruits of ignorance
and stupidity. It is impossible for any woman to fill her place as a mother, wife and
mistress of home, unless she is possessed of sense and wisdom to meet the vicissitudes
of life. To improv^e the race, we want healthy, cultivated women. Really, it does seem
strange that an impression should have taken hold of the world, especially in the East,
that woman's duties in life should require less education and preparation than man's.
Yet it is so. 1 used frequently to hear our people say, " Oh it does not matter about
the girl, but I am anxious about the boy. " Man's duties in this world may be noble
enough; I would be the last to ignore their grandeur. But woman's office is a very
sacred one; for the world is what woman makes it. As the mother of men, she stamps
indelibly upon them her own weakness or talent, health or disease. Hence, I believe
that woman should have a liberal education to fit her for the responsibilities of wife,
mother and general educator. Woman should be thankful and happy in her place in
creation. It is noble and glorious. She is the ruling queen and may be the leader in
progress.
It is her own fault if she does not labor to be dressed with purity, crowned with
wisdom, and adorned with the jewels of patience and peseverance. I cannot under-
stand why women should not be satisfied, why she seeks to push man to do his work.
It would never do to have them labor in the same field of action. This is against the
law of nature which provides a sphere for everything. Equality between the sexes is
not in the equal portion of the same work, but the equality of their whole contribution
to the welfare of the race. Woman should glory in womanhood, in being the mother
of men, the doctor of moral and mental diseases, in offering to mankind the fruit
of her labors and experience, so they might grow together strong in understanding,
rounded in intellect, prepared for pure and glorious lives.
ARE WOMEN CITIZENS AND PEOPLE?
By MRS. EMILY BURTON KETCHAM.
At the time of the Republican National Convention, in June, 1892, hundreds of
women, as well as men, were waiting eagerly to see what issues that party would adopt
in their platform as the issues for which they would
carry on their campaign.
Carefully we read their declaration of principles
as telegraph and press brought them to our homes.
With surprise and joy we read the following: "We
demand that every citizen of the United States shall
be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot in
all public elections. That a free ballot and a fair
count shall be guaranteed to every citizen and all of
the people." That surely meant women as well as
men, for, by the Supreme Court of the United States,
we are citizens, and certainly we are people; but to
make certainty doubly sure, I wrote to Hon. J. B.
Foraker, chairman of Committee on Resolutions,
quoting the words, and asking if by " every citizen,"
and " all of the people," his committee considered
women a part of all the people, " whose free and
honest ballot, the just and equal representation as
well as their just and equal protection under the
laws," to whom the Republican party gave their guar-
anty " to protect in every state," to which the honor-
able gentleman replied, briefly and frankly, thus: "I
can only say, speaking for myself, that I did not understand the words you quoted to
be intended to include women, and, therefore, to amount to a declaration in favor of
female suffrage."
Webster defines a citizen as one who enjoys the freedom and priviliges of a city.
The freeman of a city as distinguished from a foreigner, or one not entitled to its fran-
chises, a person, native or naturalized, who has the privilege of voting for public
officers, and who is qualified to fill offices in the gift of the people; also, any native-
born or naturalized person of either sex who is entitled to full protection in the exer-
cise and enjoyment of the so-called private rights, which latter definition is in har-
mony with the United States Supreme Court decisions.
Article IV, section 2, in the Constitution of the United States, says: "The
citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens
in the several states."
Article IX says: "The enumeration of certain rights shall not be considered to
deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Article XIV says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the state
Mrs. Emily Burton Ketcham is a native of Grand Kapi<ls, Mich. .She wan bom July It), 1*}m. Her parents were Josiah
Barton and Elizabeth Freeman Burton. She was educated in the public schools and St. Mark's College, of Grand Rapids,
Mich., Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen's school for girls, at Rochester, N. Y. She lias travele<l consider-
ably in the United States. She married Smith G. Ketcham, of Farmingtoo, N. Y. Her special work has been in the interest
of the jjolitical enfranchisement of women Her principal literary works are newspaper and magazine articles and addresses
on acme phase of the question of political equality for men and women. Mrs. Ketcham is a woman of strong character and
of marked executive ability, and is a zealoas, earnest and successful worker. Her postoffice address is Grand Rapids, Mich.
361
MRS. EMILY BURTON KETCHAM.
362 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
Article XV says: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color or
previous condition of servitude."
In the Constitution of the United States the word female or she does not occui
once. By man is meant an individual of the human race, a human being, a person,
the human race, mankind, the totality of men. And God said: "Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion."
Let whom have dominion? The male and female man.
In the constitution of Michigan the word she does not occur, and the word female
is used once in connection with special property rights.
Now, if all this declaration and preamble concerning the rights and privileges of
" citizens," " people " and " persons " do not include women, then it follows that any
duties, requirements, obligations or penalties which the law lays on citizens, people
and persons do not include women. It cannot mean women to be taxed as a citizen
or person, but not represented as the same. Our martyred Abraham Lincoln said, " I
believe in all who bear the burdens of the government sharing in its privileges, by no
means excluding the women."
" We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, promote the general welfare and secure
the blessings of liberty, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States."
If by " we, the people," women are not meant, then, as a logical sequence, women are
relieved from all responsibility and all allegiance to a government whose powers are
not derived from the consent of the governed What a farce is a government with
such a preamble and declaration of principles, excluding one-half of the people from
the right of self-protection, excluding one-half of the people from the right of self-
government, and holding them amenable to laws made by others, taking by force
their property to uphold the government and maintain the law, to pay the salaries of
representatives whom they did not elect; to fine, arrest, imprison or hang them for
not obeying laws made without their consent.
"A government by the people, of the people and for the people," which holds
women as people and citizens, to bear its burdens, to be punished by its laws, but
excluded from its privileges and immunities, is a government of robbery and usur-
pation.
In the settlement of new countries, while the railroads are being built; while the
mountains are being tunneled and the mines developed; while the community is
largely composed of men and that vanguard of civilization, the saloon, is the only pub-
lic school, the depravity of men is appalling, the spirit of recklessness runs riot;
gradually the wives and mothers come; the home is established, the little church is
built, the primitive school springs up in lonely places, and slowly and surely a change
of thought, habit and higher aims permeates that community; but that half of the
people who maintain the church, who are self-supporting, law-abiding and aspire to
noble deeds, are excluded from the citizen's right to the ballot, that instrument which
makes and shapes the conditions and environments of home.
The one who aims to be self-supporting; who holds inviolate the rights of his
neighbor; who succors the friendless, encourages and sustains the weak; who seeks
to promote industry, economy, thrift; who cherishes a spirit of charity and forbear-
ance: who stimulates a desire for high thinking, pure living and broad culture; who
would suppress and eliminate the depraving influences of obscene literature, the base
in art, the demoralization of gambling, the body and soul destroying cancer of prosti-
tution, that poisons the blood and perpetuates its pestilential life by bringing into
being helpless children, cursed from their conception and birth by vitiated blood and
inherited tendencies to evil; who would wipe out that prolific breeder of poverty,
pauperism and misery — the saloon, with all its glitter, greed and groveling, is the
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 363
one with the spirit to buildup a community, to fortify a state, and insure the perpetU'
ity of a republic. Such are the women of our country; these are the citizens and peo-
ple who " form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing
of liberty to themselves and their posterity." These are the citizens and people who
furnish less than ten per cent, of all the criminals in jails and prisons; who furnish a
small per cent, of the paupers in the poor-houses; who supply but few recruits to the
great army of tramps, burglars and train robbers; who supply but a small per cent, of
the patrons of the saloon; who pay an equal per cent, of tax on every dollar invested;
who have won the highest honors in institutions of learning; who constitute about
three-fourths of the graduates of the high school; who constitute nine-tenths of the
teachers of the young; who do at least two-thirds of the church work; who do a large
proportion of the charitable work; who made up the home reserves, to conduct the
business interests when the fathers and brothers had answered their country's call to
save it from rebellion; who sent train-loads of money, food and clothing to the
wounded and sick on the battlefield and in the hospital ; who left the shelter of home to
comfort the dying and nurse the sick; and who leave the old home, ease, and civiliza-
tion to endure the hardships and privation of pioneer life; bravely, cheerfully help
husband, father and brother to build up the wilderness with homes and schools, its
great grain fields and young cities filled with the whirr and hum of factory and shop.
The pioneer mothers! Who shall tell of their patience, bravery, courage and helpful-
ness, without honor, or offices, or salaries?
For more than a century, in a land of boasted freedom and self-protection, the
men, because of superior physical strength, have arrogated to themselves mental and
political supremacy.
For more than a century the women have accepted and acquiesced, scarcely lift-
ing a voice in protest, and I grieve to say that there are those who, in the high noon light
of the last half of this nineteenth century, feel no degradation, no humiliation; who,
like the black men of slavery days, do not want to be free. Sad, indeed, have been
the conditions and environments of an individual or people who do not prize freedom
and long for all the liberty that belongs to any soul. It is a stain on the fair name of
republican government, when part of that government have usurped rights and
abridged the privileges of the other part until those defrauded are incapable of smart-
ing under a sense of humiliation at having set upon them, in the words of the "Grand
Old Man," "the stamp of inequality, which is the brand of degradation."
The petty thief, the disorderly, the visitor of houses of ill-fame, the drunkard,
may serve his time for having broken the law, and leaving the jail today go to the
ballot-box tomorrow to vote into office the man who, he knows, will be lenient to
criminals. The man who has committed forgery, or theft, or criminal assault, may
serve his time or be pardoned and go to the polls and vote into office the prosecuting
attorney, or judge, whom, he believes, will shield the guilty and cater to the criminal
class. But how cautiously the way is hedged about for the wives and mothers.
After appealing to and petitioning legislatures, pleading their cause and asking for
simple justice from legislators, humiliating themselves to beg and plead for rights of
which they have been defrauded; slowly and cautiously the small measure of school
suffrage has been granted in many states, but always with restrictions. After a long
struggle municipal suffrage was granted to the women of Kansas; and let me here
speak in honor of the just men of Wyoming who have recognized that their wives and
mothers are citizens and people, fully and freely with no discrimination.
We women in various states have been hammering away at that wellnigh invul-
nerable old wall, prejudice, until the men of one more state have dared to trust their
wives and mothers with a carefully-restricted ballot. Ignorance in men is not a
dangerous qualification; it is not subversive of good government and the safety of the
people. Every male, native or foreign born, white or black, ignorant or otherwise,
driink or sober, self-supporting or a pauper, any male but a duellist in Michigan, a
364 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
traitor in the United States, can be trusted with that patent of sovereignty, the ballot,
without fear of danger. Even the anarchist is not disfranchised. In Michigan, my
own state, after years of bombarding our legislature with hearings, petitions, letters and
arguments, the women, denying themselves the pleasure and advantages of society and
study, giving time, strength and money to secure the right of the franchise, which
means protection, respect, power, that right from which no male, except him whose
fratricidal hand is lifted to betray his country, is excluded, at least the half measure
of municipal suffrage has been conceded by the legislature of Michigan and become a
law. But the women are such dangerous creatures, they must be guarded; and female
ignorance is most dangerous, so they are required to read the state constitution in the
English language.* Was it that the women might be able to read the ballots for the
illiterate male voters of their families?
Though this recognition be but in half measures, the women of Michigan have
risen to the occasion, and a carefully-outlined plan of study has been prepared, and a
constitution and by-laws to meet the requirements of all, that a uniform system may
be adopted. Thousands of copies have been printed, as also a circular letter, with
earnest appeal from the state president and careful instruction from the organizers,
and sent to every incorporated city and village in the state. Two organizers have
been sent into the field, the expenses to be paid, largely, by contributions and pledges
from these dangerous women. The printed plan is so plain that any ordinary woman
who knows anything of committee or club work can call a meeting at her home and
organize a Municipal Franchise League. By this method, every city and village is to
be organized into a central committee and ward leagues to study municipal govern-
ment and parliamentary law. When in the near future full suffrage shall be extended
to the women, which, as our own Thomas W. Palmer says, "is sure to be," they will
be the best equipped for intelligent self-government of any class that ever exercised
the right of franchise.
For the passage of the municipal suffrage bill, we owe a debt of gratitude to
Senator Hopkins and Representative Newkirk, who undertook, with manly sincerity
and determination, to champion our bill, and they made it a stud}' to win. The pity
of thus defrauding the women of political rights and power, is not alone to those
excluded, but the great loss of moral and uplifting conditions from which the state
and government have suffered.
Material prosperity cannot save a nation whose heart and life are eaten out by
cancerous physical and spiritual conditions, that consume manhood, deprave child-
hood and destroy the nation.
♦Bill referred to, after being passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, was finally lost by a decision of the
courts.
THE ART OF LIVING.
By MRS. ELLEN M. RICH.
Whoever can produce happiness has mastered the rudiments of the art of living.
To live rightly is to make a constant study of self. The acquisition of the art con-
sists in learning to adapt inclination and desire to
natural requirements and real conditions; to discrim-
inate with reference to the expenditure of vitality and
to so conserve natural forces that, after the ordinary
routine work is accomplished, the mind is still left buoy-
ant and happy. The real art of living is based upon
the possession of that knowledge which enables us to
hope, not despair; to rejoice, not mourn; to look for-
ward, not backward.
Mere trifles suffice to make some happy. Others
require the transforming influence that comes from
daily contact with sunny natures. The characters we
develop and the kinds of lives we live depend largely
upon the choice made between yielding to adversity
and seeking to live above it. •
Some believe in fate, around which are grouped
many superstitions, and they are content to drift with
the current. Happily for America and American
institutions, this subservience to destiny is not a dom-
inating influence. If it is wise to recognize fixed laws
for the physical and spiritual being, then it is wise to
deliberately study such laws and from them learn the
causes of individuality. It is only in this way that we may be able to discern our char-
acters, and, from the study of them, learn how to make the best of life; learn to main-
tain an existence which shall bring happiness to ourselves and others. It is the life we
really live, not the life we appear to live, that is to be considered.
History is replete with biography, but the truth is, that a well-written life is as rare
as a well-spent life. Everyone is at liberty to pass verdict upon a great man after
his death. No sooner does one's character become public property than a crowd rushes
to catch glimpses of it; and since each can reflect only a small portion of it in his nature,
so he holds up to the world his little mirror and exclaims, " Behold the life of a great
man." And perhaps the great man, could he return to life, would feel like taking the
life of his biographer in retaliation for his impertinence.
In seeking for the proper development of our own characters, the study of biog-
raphy helps us very little, because through this medium the real elements of great
lives are not properly presented. The order of study and labor and the influences
which led to greatness are not mentioned. The aim which the great man had in view
Mrs. Ellen M. Rich is a native of Newfane, Windham Coanty, Vt. She was born May 6, 1843. Her parents were Dex-
ter Moore and Abigail Knowlton Moore. She was educated at Glenwood Seminary, Brattleboro, Vt. and at the Iowa State
University. At the Iowa University she received the degrees of B. 8., B. A., and A. M., the last degree in 1863. She married
September l(t, 1868, J. W. Rich, editor and proprietor of the Vinton Eagle, at Vinton, Iowa. Mrs. Rich edited a household
department in the Vinton Eagle, and in the Farmer's Stock Journal of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for many years. For several years
she taught mathematics in the Iowa State University. In 1882 she was appointed a member of the Iowa State Board of Educa-
tional Examiners, the first woman ever appointed on such a board. Mrs. Rich is a member of the Presbyterian Church. Was
for three years vice president for Iowa of the National Association for the Advancement of Women. Her postoifice address
is Iowa City, Iowa.
365
MRS. ELLEN M. RICH.
366 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
is merely guessed at. The elements which led to and constituted his superiority are
supposed to be so many touches of the fairy's wand, and we are left to the belief that
there could be but one Caesar, one Alexander, one Napoleon; whereas, the world is
full of heroes and heroines today, but the occasion which places them on a pedestal
is wanting, that is all.
The same misguiding influence pervades all classic literature. It matters not
what myth or what poem we read, we still find that the heroes and heroines are
represented as being allied to the gods who watch over them and direct their actions;
and so we are led to think that a modern hero must have a peculiar and particular
genius for his god-mother. But is heroism anything more than doing the best under
existing circumstances? Does it require any rare gift to stand firmly by a task until
it is finished? to see our duty and adopt the best means of doing it? Heroes are
common mortals, subject to the laws of environment. What more can they be? Com-
mon fishermen became the disciples of Christ. Joseph was a carpenter. Grant was a
tanner. Lincoln was a wood-chopper. The Pilgrim Fathers were only simple peasants
who counted freedom of conscience more than life, and who, by adhering to this
principle, made the American Revolution possible. Winkelried's patriotism made
Switzerland free. And now, after the lapse of four hundred years, the world has
placed an immortal crown upon the brow of a Genoese navigator, simply because he
persistently kept the prows of his caravels turned westward. Has not each year of
our lives brought to our notice examples of as high courage and as determined per-
severance as Columbus displayed? Point to all the great men of history and then
show us, if possible, a greater hero than the little Dutch boy who stood all night
long with his tiny hand pressed against a hole in the dyke, that he might thereby keep
out the sea and thus save the village. It is only an occasional hero who becomes
historic, but there are brave, noble hearts all about us, and our own hearts beat to
the rhyme of their courage and sense of right. A few we immortalize, but the memory
of the masses we allow to die. Much depends upon the genial biographer.
It is interesting to note how we cherish every bit of narrative concerning Grace
Darling, Florence Nightingale, or the Maid of Orleans. Single acts of daring made
them illustrious. What of the thousands unsung and unknown, who have braved
greater dangers and greater trials than the foaming sea and the bloody field? What
will we say of the mother who, unaided, rears her children with the labor of her
hands, provides them food and home and schooling? Who guides their steps aright
so that to the working force of the world she adds brave, intelligent sons and
daughters? When we want a great theme for true heroism, commend us to the
mothers who, battling against adverse circumstances, nourish, educate, and disci-
pline the youth of the nation. Do we recognize these brave spirits as we meet
them? Are. we not in daily contact with them and yet pass them unnoticed?
The rhythm of a beautiful soul may not, and need not, always be crystallized into
forms of speech in order to be recognized and appreciated! This soul-radiance creates
happiness within its sphere and, though no words are embodied in type, the sphere
widens and widens nevertheless. The poetry of the human soul, which finds expres-
sion in deeds not words, is the leaven which lightens and makes buoyant all humanity.
That the world is giving more attention to conduct as the expression of thought
and feeling is shown by the novel of today as compared with the novel of a century
ago. Novels are now the records of real life, and as such we study them.
Do we not observe that the desire to do some great thing often prevents the doing
of those little things which, rightly considered, indicate true greatness? It was per-
haps a little thing for Sir Philip Sidney to withdraw the cooling cup from his own
parched lips and give it to another dying soldier. But, little in itself, it was the act of
a true knight, and it touched a chord in the heart of humanity which will go on vibrat-
ing forever. That simple act rendered the name of Sidney immortal.
There may be people toward whom nature is not prodigal of brain. At least
some seem to find it impossible to be both agreeable and learned. AH scholars are
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 367
not like Sidney and Addison, both learned and polite. In fact, some seem to think
rudeness a necessary part of their outfit. But this austerity may be organic. They
may affect to be very good companions, when really their world is only large enough
for one person. Occasionally we find a man so exquisitely made that he can and must
live alone. But the majorities can not live in solitude. It is by constant contact with
the world and its work that we are made happy. When we live with people and under-
stand them; when we can adapt ourselves to circumstances; when we can fall in with
the spirit of the times, without allowing our sympathies to degrade us, or our better
natures to be overcome, then we place ourselves upon vantage-ground for doing good,
and, if well disposed, can accomplish much.
Intelligent Americans realize that the true test of civilization is not in the extent
of the public domain, the area of the crops, the returns of the census, or the wealth
and grandeur of cities. It is rat-her in the kind of men and women that our systems
of education and government produce.
People with much work before them must learn to discriminate with reference to
the distribution of time and energy. They have no time to waste in discourtesies. It
requires more time and effort to undo a wrong than to do the right thing at first. How
the feminine soul is sometimes vexed with taking to pieces and making over ill-fitting
garments! What diplomacy is sometimes necessary to correct some social error. It is
a great part of the art of living to be able to do the right thing at the right time.
Each should map out some line of work and pursue it. If the choice is domestic duties,
then let those duties be well and faithfully done. If teaching, then let us magnify our
calling. If ministering, let us wait on our ministry. Every line of work has some
drudgery connected with it, but it need not be degrading. AH honest and necessary
work is ennobling.
Heretofore women have not tried to see what they can do along certain lines of
work. So, today, they are surprised by their wonderful achievements, and are saying
that it has been given to the nineteenth century to discover woman! Many achieve-
ments are possible. If some fail for lack of scholarship, or rhetoric, or eloquence, they
may still be loyal, patriotic, and public spirited. They may thrill by their personality,
although they may not sway by their oratory.
It was Sir Philip Sidney who advised his brother, saying, " When you hear of a
good war go to it." There are good wars to which we should go, though not with
sanguinary intentions. Our influence and effort should be on the side of patriotism,
of temperance, of chastity, of equality before the law, of Christianity. When we hear
of a conflict along these lines we should go to it. But the most highly-favored per-
sons are not always the most successful. Most of the great men and women of his-
tory come from the middle classes, and this fact makes one believe that it is worth
much to have some difficulty to struggle against; to have some obstacle in life to
overcome; to have some hardship to endure. Often the great trials of life are the
great purifiers of human nature. Do we not sometimes covet the privileges of royalty,
and yet fail to perceive that royalty must suffer all the physical ills which are the lot
of common mortals? Even the queen mother must bear the pangs of maternity. But
greater than the privilege of royalty is that profound blessing which comes to the
person born with a bias for some particular pursuit or definite calling, in which both
employment and happiness may be found.
When, from any cause, a swarm of bees has lost its queen, it proceeds at once, in
a most curious fashion, to provide the conditions by which the loss may be made good.
It is purely a matter of environment and food, when, lo! as by miracle, the common
worker bee becomes a queen. If the mere matter of space and food have such influ-
ence on insect life, changing form and function, how much more may these influences
change the life and character of human beings! In our examination of self let us
inquire whether we have sufficient space for growth and development. Is not our
world too angular and too narrow? With greater opportunities would we not make
greater advancement? There is a stimulating power in mutual sympathy, and when
368 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
this aid comes to a life which earnestly desires improvement, it may make of that life
a royal province. But when the goal is finally reached it must be by innate strength
that we stand or fall. The power by which one conquers will ever be a profound
secret to the world. The drop which the Divine Alchemist added to the blood, in
order to impart individuality to each being, is a secret known only to the Great Life-
giver. It is this personal element which we ought to prize as the one thing that dis-
tinguishes each from every other being. We owe a sacred debt to every heart which
has rightly influenced our lives — a debt which can only be repaid by imparting the
vigor of our genius to our successors. It is right culture which determines right devel-
opment. As soil, air, water and sunshine all have their effect upon plant growth, so
in the development of human characters there are certain environments which must
be secured and controlled. But do not for a moment suppose that all desirable
things are also necessary elements of culture. Travei does not change one; scholastic
training does not produce contentment; neither is there bliss in ignorance. The
advantage of travel lies in the fact that it teaches us in various ways how to know and
estimate ourselves — the acme of all true knowledge. Travel and study combined
develop the sense of beauty, and aid in the cultivation of the element in us which
may be called the sense of appreciating the beautiful. They show us in what manner
we differ from others, and that we are not alike because we are incapable of being so.
The personality which leads us to differ need not be deplored. Each one has
his own world, which is to him his castle. If, unnaturally, the fern and the violet
seek to grow in the burning sun; if the rose and , the sunflower choose the shade; if
the golden-rod and the lily seek the arid plain, how dwarfed will become their devel-
opment! Let us recognize and accept this personality, and cultivate it as a most pre-
cious thing. Let us recognize the likeness to, and the difference from, our ideal of
perfect humanity. But let us not be so anxious for the development of the higher
faculties that we neglect the happiness which comes to all from pure sense of enjoy-
ment. It is good for the most learned mortals to come back from the straining
abstractions of speculative thought and to indulge in the common emotions and innate
sensibilities of life.
People of one idea are, no doubt, very interesting when expressing themselves con-
cerning that idea, but upon any other topic they may be exceedingly uninteresting.
A musician believes that music lies at the base of everything, and that all happiness is
developed through harmony of sound. The painter casts his enthusiasm along the
line of color, while the electrician believes that electricity is the all-in-all.
Is it not because much of our training fails of effect, because success surprises us
and seems like a venture, that we need to broaden our views of life in order to gain
some standards of excellence, and obtain correct ideas of our own merits and demerits?
Have we not placed for ourselves some ideals, and are we not unhappy because we
cannot attain them?
And as to forms and faces — well, some of us must forgive Mother Nature for her
mistakes, and solace ourselves with the fact that no two faces are alike, and that, con-
sequently, there can be no common standard of beauty. We are not dolls and do not
live in dolls' houses. If this were our condition, there would arise another Ibsen who
would so dramatize our social errors and our weaknesses that they would appear
odious.
A few well-established tenets of faith each one must have for himself, and when
he has reasoned them out and relies upon them, what more does he require? Some
one has aptly said that a few strong instincts and a few plain rules are sufficient. Why
not keep our intellectual lives clean and healthful, and allow our lives to be easier,
simpler, and happier than they are? Nature teaches us many things, if we would only
observe them; for the simplicity of the universe is infinite. Let us consider what daily
takes place around us, and we will learn that painful labor is unnecessary. That which
can be done readily and spontaneously usually evinces most strength. There are
many people who, moved by sudden impulses, thoughtlessly attempt first one thing
. THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 369
then another, only to find themselves exhausted without accomplishing any real good.
There are others who, in the majesty of well laid plans, accomplish much without
seeming to put forth great effort.
Of course we love impulsive people, but impulsiveness need not dethrone reason.
On the contrary, it may lend vivacity and piquancy to life, thus removing the humdrum
of existence. There are things which we can neither change nor control — things which
are in the keeping and under the care of that Soul which is the center of the universe;
which infuses enchantment into all nature; which brings prosperity, pleasure, and love-
liness into the life of all.
When we seriously aim at right thinking and right living, we always discover that
there is a class of writers and lecturers whose minds, moving in the same plane, aid in
lifting the masses to our level, and we are thereby blessed with the sympathy and
co-operation of those whom we are wont to class as our superiors. It is this inspiration
that gives us pleasure and relieves us of regrets concerning personal imperfections.
Did you ever think that if the morning of this century could look down upon the
evening of the same it would recognize few characteristics of a hundred years ago?
Has all this progress been material? Have the liberal arts progressed beyond the
power of the common mind to comprehend? Has there not also been a marked
development in learning?
The crowning glory of the ninteenth century will ever be the intelligence which,
within the past fifty years, has seized upon the subtle forces of nature and applied
them to the industries of the world. This age of steam and electricity is the triumph
of labor. Let this advancement of labor, this material prosperity, this triumphal
interpretation of nature constitute a plea for correct living — a plea for plain and
simple modes of doing the common and necessary tasks of life. Let us abandon
conceits, fads and superstitions, and let us pursue the careful and conscientious study
of nature which the century has begun. By so doing we may hope for an era of great
happiness. Let us make our lives consistent with the plan of nature, modeled
according to the harmony of universal law. The model has been given us — a model
without a flaw. It is a life full of beauty, of grace, of tenderness. It is of this
perfect type of humanity that one of the most cultured of American women thus
sings:
" In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom
• Which transfigures you and me."
Bishop Wilson's definition of culture is " to make the reason and the will of God
prevail." Matthew Arnold says: " Culture needs faith and ardor to flourish in." Since
faith and ardor depend so much upon health and bodily vigor, in order to obtain the
highest results in life, is it not necessary that we bestow more care on bodily perfec-
tion? The true art of living is to aim at perfection; to seek a correct and perfect
development of both mind and body, insofar as development is possible.
The best things we possess are our thoughts. Our best utterances and our best
work are the embodiment and expression of thought. We can not always frame our
words and deeds to utter all we desire to express. Our impulses are more charitable
than they appear. There is more love in our hearts than is manifest in our lives.
There is more of the Christ in our natures than we are ready to express. It is this
element in human nature that renders character lovely. The more of this element
we have, the more capable we are of being happy and of shedding all about us the
gracious influences of a happy life.
To solve the great question of Christian charity by Victor Hugo's method may
require more courage than is usually vouchsafed. He says: " Love thy neighbor by
teaching him how to live." Can we furnish our neighbor with the example of " how
to live? " Can we live simply, not sumptuously? Can we live happily, live honestly?
(24)
370 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. .
Can we daily exercise enough courtesy to lubricate the wheels of existence and keep
the tone of society sweet and pure? Can we cultivate self-reliance and couple with it
good manners? Can we study nature and learn her laws? Can we respect our own
individuality? Can we respect others as possessing in equal if not in higher degree
as noble qualities as our own? Can we cultivate powers of physical endurance? Can
we control the emotions? Can we cause reason to prevail over the will? Can we
summon courage to endure great trials? Can we become stout-hearted without
becoming hard-hearted? Can we grow old so gracefully that our advancing years
shall be the full fruition of a beautiful flower? If we can do these things, we can fight
a good warfare and teach our neighbor " how to live."
In striving to progress we need not perplex ourselves with speculations foreign
to us. We can never reach a solution of great theological problems by neglecting all
the sweet and sacred duties of home and brooding over the mysteries of eternity.
Such problems need not trouble us if we do not invite them.
When we learn to move among people, to live in their society, to transact our
business affairs, to practice our economies, to perform our labors, to carry on our
social and commercial interests, and not only keep ourselves free from any stumbling,
but preserve and hold in view a high ideal of human existence, then we shall have
learned the majesty of true manhood and true womanhood. We will not only have
exemplified in our lives the real art of living, but will embody in them some of that
glory which transfigures humanity.
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
2. Mrs. Sarah S. C. Angell,
Michigan.
4. Mrs. H. F. Brown,
Minnesota.
1, Mrs. Eliza J. Pendry Howes,
Michigan.
5. Mrs. James W. Lee,
Mississippi.
7, Miss Lillian Mason Brown. 8. Mrs. Eliza Rickards,
Missouri. Montana.
3. Mrs. Francis B. Clarke,
Minnesota,
6. Mrs. John M. Stone,
Mississippi.
9. Mrs. Clara L. McAdow,
Montana..
10. Mrs. John S. Briggs,
Nebraska.
11. Mrs. E. C. Langworthy,
Nebraska.
COLUMBIA'S WOMEN.
By MRS. AMANDA KERR LEWIS.
[Copyrighted 1893.]
There are three little words which are often heard,
Yesterday, today and tomorrow;
They fall from our lips as mere idle words,
Yet are fraught with joy or sorrow.
We grasp not their import, nor meaning so grand,
'Mid our hurry, and bustle, and strife,
Yet they reach far backward, and forward, too.
And cover the whole of our life.
We speak of a day as a trivial thing.
And squander its hours away,
Forgetting its passing so surely records
Time, precious, gone, gone for aye.
Time infinite differs most widely from ours,
For the sacred writers portray
That "a day with the Lord's as a thousand years.
And a thousand years as a day."
From this view of a yesterday passed
Let us gather some memories sublime;
Not from out the weird past of a thousand years,
But from four hundred years of time.
Our continent then with its mountains, and plains,
Spread from eastern to western sea;
And tossed its bright leaves o'er its silver lakes,
On its winds so wild and free.
The lords of the soil in that far-away time.
Ere Columbus sailed over the sea.
Were a savage, crude and ignoble race.
Far-off sons of the ancient Chinee.
Then from sunny Spain came Columbus brave,
With a hope in his anxious mind
To traverse the seas and learn their bounds,
And the east coast of India to find.
Mrs. Amanda Kerr Lewis is a native of Washington County, Pennsylvania. She was bom Februarys, 1839. Her par-
ents were James Mason Kerr and Rebecca Dinsmore Kerr, both lovely Christian characters. She was educated at Washing-
ton Seminary and graduated in the famoas Calico Class of 18.55. She has traveled quite extensively throughout the United
States. She was married during the dark period of the Civil War to John Henry Lewis, of Bloomington, 111. Her special
work for much of her life has been in the interest of the Presbyterian Church and her missions; but for ten years, feeling
the need for the higher education for mothers, she has given herself to the study and teaching of history and literature
Her principal literary works are: "Half-Hours with American Authors," for the Social Literary Circle of which she was the
fopnder. Her poems, " Columbia's Women," "Ships in American Bays," and "The Weavers," have been much admired.
She is now in the lecture and " entertainment field," under the title conferred upon her in her city, "The Poet Lecturer of the
Rockies." ^ .
371
MRS. AMANDA KERR LEWIS.
372 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Eighteen long years he had plead and had prayed
For aid from proud Europe's laws,
Kings sneered, boys jeered, but a brave woman cried —
" My jewels I'll pledge for your cause."
She was ready to give every necklace and brooch,
From her arm every bracelet and chain,
Columbia — flash the name with electric flame
Of your patron, Isabella of Spain.
'Twas not Asia's shore Columbus trod.
By the grand Spanish queen's behest;
But he found here, across the wide billowy foam,
The India isles of the west.
These children of nature had never then heard
Of a Calvin's peculiar creed;
Nor from a John Knox, or a Wesley,
Had learned of a sinner's need.
But living so close to dear nature's heart,
Even midst all their wild forest strife,
They reverent looked up to the Spirit
Of the sun, which gave nature her life.
So here, as in all of the ages past.
When strangers on newer lands trod.
The older historical people
Called them always the sons of their God.
Four hundred years of time — is it true?
America, the home of the free.
Since your hero, for whom you should have been named,
On your soil dropped his reverent knee?
Oh hero! rewarded with chains and with scorn,
It is time that the world should now know,
That America, free, here at last exalts,
The wise Christofal Columbo.
Four hundred years of history and fame!
Stained with blood here and there; yet we see
Here the largest, the happiest, the grandest land —
Columbia. America, the free!
SECOND PERIOD.
One hundred years more of the time passed by,
In this wonderful, newly-found West,
While England's kings were sowing some seeds,
Which grew there without their behest.
'Till again from across the wide, watery deep
Came a fairer and nobler stock.
To seek for new homes, for liberty's sake,
By the side of our Plymouth Rock.
Of the Puritan Fathers so often we've heard,
Since our childhood's sweet, happy dream.
In spite of their creeds, and their bigotry dark,
Held up in such high esteem.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 373
But of Pilgrim Mothers — how little we know!
They were patient, and true, and so brave,
*Mid the direst want, and hardships of war,
They walked from cradle to grave.
For this century now, on the roll of old Time,
Was a darkened and bloody page;
For the pale-face oft fell 'neath the tomahawk
Of the red-man's violent rage.
We censure him not, for such cruel greed,
And treachery dark, was oft made
The means that were used to drive him far back
From his own forest home, and his glade.
Had the British invaders but practiced the rule
Laid down in their Gospel, I ween
That this land would not have been stained with their blood,
Nor massacres ever been seen.
THIRD PERIOD.
The colonies soon formed, a little brave group.
All told there were only thirteen;
They cast aside all their swaddling bands.
And entered a wild, untried scene.
Brave fathers and sons then entered that strife,
Caring nothing for what it might cost.
Gave their money, their homes, their treasures — themselves
That their liberties might not be lost.
While patriots breathe, and country remains,
This thought in our memory fix —
No grander souls have ever lived
Than the women of '76.
But this strife passed away, peace spread her bright wing,
Washington sat with his kingly brow
At the close of the year of his crucial test,
A century ago, just now.
Fathers and husbands, brothers and sons,
Were counted as gold then, we know;
But what of the women who lived and who loved
One hundred long years ago?
The mothers and wives toiled early and late.
At the cradle, the wheel, and the loom,
But for books, for study, for culture of mind,
In their lives there was little room.
The brothers and sons must go off to school,
Must learn figures to the " Rule of Three;'
Enter college — university — read Latin and Greek,
Pluck rich fruit from the knowledge tree.
But the girls were too weak, of too little account,
Had not brains then to learn any rule;
They could spin, and could weave, could nurse, cook and sweep.
But were too feeble-minded for school.
374 ' THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
'Twas one hundred years ago and three
That the doors of the common schools
Were set, by some wise men, just a little ajar,
To see if the girls were all fools.
They let them slip in — just an hour or two, •
To fill up a cold, vacant seat,
When a boy was kept out, in the early spring.
To help raise something to eat.
But by and by, these wiseacres said:
"Why, the girls are clever, 'tis true,
For they've held their place by the side of the boys.
And sometimes have passed them, too."
For 'twas found in these years that woman had brains
Near akin to the stronger sex.
So they've let us in the universities, too.
Even stately old Harvard-Annex.
John Hopkins, well known of the Southern land,
Long held woman back as of old.
But now it is said even that has been bought,
Or at least the story is told
That a woman stood late at her portals and knocked,
Saying, " Please let us into your fold.
And I will give you what you very much need,
A hundred thousand of gold."
FOURTH PERIOD,
A memory dark, of a sorrowful time.
Comes rushing along as the tide.
When a brother in blue, and another in gray.
Fought, struggled and died, side by side.
Through that terrible war, when its balls and its shells
Went whizzing all over the land,
While the men kept the field the women at home
Scraped the lint, and tore hospital band.
Women, noble in heart and unselfish in thought.
Thinking nothing of profit or gain.
Went forth from their homes, to the hospital tent.
To care for the wounded and slain.
When that fell pistol-shot rang out on the night.
And the nation's brave chief was laid low.
The Stars and the Stripes of America drooped
In her grief-stricken hour of woe.
When the future looked dark, and the country seemed wrecked,
And the land was with terror alive.
Brave men with sad hearts were aided and cheered
By the women of '65.
The North and the South, both deemed their cause just,
And together bore sorrow and pain;
But now from the Lakes to the Mexico Gulf
We are brothers and sisters again.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 375
And the spirit of '76 still lived,
And rose PhcEnix-like from the fray,
And the glorious crown of Liberty,
Wears Columbia still today.
FIFTH PERIOD. •
And what of Today, watchman? What of Today?
Help me now its import to unfold;
How read we the symbols, the signs of the times?
What's Today's record to be unrolled.
Not the men alone are giving their thoughts,
So earnest, so wise, so great,
Columbia's women keep pace by their side
All over each sun-kissed state.
A national work of meaning so grand
Is felt in our land today.
The echoing voice of a far-off state,
A sound to be heard for aye.
A few little seeds by some earnest minds
A few years ago were sown,
By " Chautauqua's shores," in the " Empire State,
From which rich harvests have grown.
'Twas a great, grand thought to give to the world.
This plan by a few outlined,
To raise the world to a betterment,
To lift up and ennoble mankind.
The clear Bryant bell, by Chautauqua's lake,
Has rung its sweet peals in our ears,
Carried music and joy to thousands of homes
In these later passings of years.
Other circles for culture and study and growth
Are springing up, side by side,
In city and village, and hamlet and town,
From Atlantic to the sun-down tide.
They traverse the fields of science and art.
Of language and poetry rare;
They seek for the wisdom of Grecian sage,
Read old Egypt's sculptures fair.
The old circle for sewing, and the gossipy tea,
On the roll of Today have no part;
When women convene now, in language choice
They converse on " Ethics " and "Art."
SIXTH PERIOD.
Yesterday is gone to the tomb of the past,
Today let us not trouble borrow.
For here we find gladness and peace and hope,
Bui, watchman, what of Tomorrow?
376 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Its promise is bright and most hopeful, we deem,
For brothers and sisters together.
Now, side by side, drink from wisdom's deep fount,
In cloudy and sunshiny weather.
The parents and children together now search
For the treasures of all ancient lore;
The mothers need never again be styled,
" The old servant who waits on the door."
Some think that the race, in the coming years,
For position, for culture, for health.
Between man and woman, and boy and girl.
For honors, for fame, for wealth.
Will settle some questions of present dark need,
Which hope to some sad hearts may carry,
When woman can live by her own honest work
She'll not be in haste to marry.
When she'll give her hand in the marriage bond
To the lawyer she'll ne'er be a debtor;
'Twill be for pure love, and not for a home,
There'll be fewer ties, but better.
The tomorrow of woman stands not alone.
With the sunrise light in her face,
But also for man waits a blessing sure.
If he's found in a true man's place.
We are nearing the end of another page
In the history's roll of the world,
A century's close is a turning time.
New truths will then be unfurled.
Since the Puritan Fathers first came to these shores,
And their homes of liberty sought.
The dawning time of each hundred years
Has given to the world its new thought.
Both the church and the state, in the passing of years.
Have rolled many clouds far away,
And the gloom and the fear of the Puritan creeds
Are truly not with us today.
Our nation has left in the depths of the past
Its childhood and infantile sleep.
And with noontide strength must wrestle now
With problems both dark and deep.
Her money, her trusts, and her laborers' cries.
Her tariffs, her capital schemes.
Are the subjects demanding the wisest of laws —
'Tis no time for mere idle dreams.
Our nation's too free, if the truth we'll confess,
'Tis high time her laws were made firm
To keep out the paupers, and Old World serfs.
With their death-spreading cholera germ.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 377
She is much too free, in her precincts and polls,
For safety to Liberty's cause,
When foreigners all are granted a vote
Before they know aught of her laws.
Not faiths, nor creeds, are our greatest needs,
Which ofttimes engender a strife;
But the reaching out of the helping hand
To the Jean Valjeans of life.
Earth's pitiful, sad and dejected ones
Call daily to us for our care,
The lowly and fallen need lifting up,
True charity's deed is so rare.
SEVENTH PERIOD.
Today is a time to be proud of, my friends.
For 'tis filled with promises rare.
In it are glimpses of coming joys.
In them may we all have a share.
Grand women are found now in high honored seats,
In the home, in the pulpit, the bar,
In the doctor's gig — what a magical change
Since that school-door went slightly ajar?
Columbia's women are found at the front,
Where the youth of our nation are taught,
In the church, on the press, in the temperance cause.
Or with Charity's blessings fraught.
As America honors her natal time,
Of her four hundred years today,
Her women stand side by side with her men
In her nationalistic display.
As Columbia's women we've stretched out kindly hands
To our sisters from over the main; »
We have welcomed them all, from court or from cot,
Or from ancient Palace of Spain.
And we've room for still more on our prairies so broad,
Come from South land, and North Sea so cold!
From mountain and plain and island, to greet
Miss Columbia! four hundred years old.
Many names are enrolled this Columbian time
In our national record book.
But three stand forth with electric light, —
Mesdamcs Palmer, Henrotin and Cooke.
They stood at the helm, amid all the storms,
'Till "our ship" at its anchorage lay —
Let Columbia's women give them homage due
In this" Woman's Building" today.
And others stand in a golden rank;
We would take you all by the hand,
But to number in name — 'twere as easy to count
The grains of the sea-beach strand.
378 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Many Christian names flash along into line
On Columbia's Liberty Tree —
A Julia, a May, Elizabeth, too,
Frances, Lucy, and Susan B.
Women always have wanted the equal right
To rule as queens in the heart;
To make husbands, children and friends good and true,
And thus act their noblest part.
Some are asking you brothers, for the equal rights
To be found in the ballot box —
Not to linger in halls, or about the polls,
Nor to seek all the world's rough knocks;
But the equal right to stand in the line.
As we're taxed just the same as you.
And to cast our votes, with a hearty good-will,
For laws that are loyal and true.
We may not now know all the principles deep
In our nation's political creed.
Yet you surely will say we're full equals today
To the masses — whose votes you all need.
We must dig and must delve in the mold of the past.
For the lessons of wisdom made plain, —
How nations have risen and prospered, or sunk
Back, back to oblivion again. .
The specters of ignorance, prejudice, doubt.
Must beat a quiet retreat;
And the mandates of selfishness, fashion and pride,
Must be trampled benccrth our feet.
When woman has proved to the lordlier race
She has broken these chains of the past,
• He will reach out his scepter, and graciously say,
'• Here's the half of my kingdom at last."
The tomorrow of woman we thus clearly define.
We aim not, dear brothers, above you;
True woman is happiest enthroned by your side,
Go halvers! and see how we'll love you!
The true men and women must stand side by side,
And with zeal and strength for the fight
Must together march on, and lend helping hand
For Truth, for Freedom, for Right.
When woman for her worth can thus be enthroned,
And of Life be the Polar Star,
Our land will be purer and better than now.
And man will be nobler by far.
Each day filled with duty and kindly thought.
Kindly word, kindly deed without strife.
Will make a tomorrow of beautiful cloth
For our wonderful web of life.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 379
When this web is complete, and its warp and its woof
And its flowers of beauty been scanned,
Our "Yesterdays" gone and "Todays" shall be lost
In Tomorrow's bright summer land.
Columbia's women, press on your bright way.
Rise higher in wisdom and art;
But scatter about you wherever you go
Sweet blossoms from kindliest heart.
May the century next inscribe on its roll,
On Time's pillar still bright and free
By the side of the men, the glorious work
Of the women of '93.
CERTAIN METHODS OF STUDYING DRAWING.*
By MISS AIMEE K. OSBORNE MOORE.
It is for a talk on the philographic, or self-correcting method, as a practical means
of learning drawing, that we are come together. It is, therefore, needless to go into
the question of the use of learning to draw, or to try
to decide between the many opposite theories on
which well-known drawing methods are founded, or
seriously to discuss the question so frequently raised
by art teachers of the admissibility, in studying draw-
ing, of any outside helps, whatever, such as are gener-
ally used in every other branch of study, sculpture,
music, etc. To say that a method is new, is seem-
ingly to say at the same time that its promoters have
to fight against a great deal of prejudice (on the part
^^ _^_ at least of the teachers). In the present case the pedi-
#'<«Hk gree of our method is so ancient, and the modern
■ ^^T- writers who can be shown to be its sponsors are so
highly respectable, that it is not very difificultto prove
the prejudice against it chiefly caused by people not
understanding its drift. Still, it must be admitted,
the name "self-correcting" sounds terribly independ-
ent, and to mention anything like "mechanical aids" is
to call up a formidable bugbear, for it is the fashion
among teachers to talk a great deal about art and the
ideal, and very beautiful and enthusiastic things are
said in this connection, so much so that to speak of
"mere drawing," as it was frequently called during the recent Congresses, would seem
almost like taking up a very small, unpretentious subject.
Among the world's teachers, assembled lately in a solemn conclave, you may have
noticed there were such vast differences of opinion as to what drawing is, that it
becomes necessary to begin by asking each person what he or she means by the term
before discussing ways and means of studying the subject. So doing, you would receive
more answers, and more varied ones, than we have time to listen to now. The Old
Masters are simpler and at the same time broader in what they say; let us be modest,
and try to content ourselves with what guidance we can get from them; first, as to
what drawing is or should be; secondly, as to what kind of help is admissible in learn-
ing to draw; and let us get, if possible, some practical suggestions with regard to such
help. If we seek far enough we shall probably find that the artists of those times
agree through their work, in countless points, with scientific and otherwise remarkable
men of our own day, that, whether knowingly or unknowingly, they worked on such truly
scientific lines as should cause infinite pain to those modern art teachers for whom
science, when we approach the region of art, is a word of ill omen, and mechanical
helps of any kind or degree an insuperable stumbling-block.
Miss Aimee K. Osborne Moore is a native of England. Her parents were James Moore, late Deputy Inspector-General
of Hospitals in H. M. Service, and Anna Marion Osborne Moore. She was educated at Lawrance, Switzerland, and later
studied in Paris and England. Has traveled in Europ)e, Italy, France and 'America. Miss Moore is an artist and teacher. She
is a member of the Anglican Episcopal Church. HerpostoSice address is No. 41 Cathcart Road, London, S. W. England.
MISS AIMEE K. OSBORNE MOORE.
Ing."
♦The title under which this address was delivered was : "Philographic or Self-Correcting Methods of Studying Draw,
380
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 381
" The science of drawing or of outline is the essence of painting and of all the
fine arts, and the root of all the sciences. He who can raise himself to the point of
mastering it possesses a great treasure. Drawing embraces everything; it is used for
machines, for plans, for building, for the ordering of battles, etc., so that in looking
at all varieties of human work you will find each to consist wholly or in part of
drawing."
Let us then establish at once that by drawing we mean the graphic represen-
tation on a plane (flat or smooth surface) of all kinds of solid forms, with the varying
aspects they present, according to the point from which we look at them, their dis-
tance from us and from each other, and their own actual position, etc. " All drawing is
founded on a right knowledge of perspective," says Leonardo da Vinci. The word per-
spective, dictionaries tell us, comes from roots meaning to see through, or to see
thoroughly. This definition can not, however, be considered altogether satisfactory,
because thorough seeing implies quite different things according to the end we have
in view when looking. A paper-hanger or a shop assistant, whose eye is well trained
and who sees thoroughly, will, when looking at a large roll of paper or wire or woolen
goods, be able to say within a little how many yards go to make up the piece, or
how many rolls are required to paper a room. A modeler, or a sculptor, who is going
to copy in wax or in clay a certain vase, a head or a whole figure, must rightly see and
imitate the shape and the literal or proportional bulk of each part.
Drawing, then, deals with appearances, and whether we are going to make a draw-
ing of a single object or a landscape, to do a portrait from life or to sketch an interior,
our first aim must be to rightly see, and our second, to rightly record the actual
appearance of the subject from our chosen point of view. The better we see and the
more accurately we record it, the truer will our drawing be. Leonardo did not con-
tent himself with telling his pupils to learn perspective — he gave them a great many
practical hints on the subject, and the first thing he advised them to study, until they
understood it properly, was their own eye, and its working.
The first thing Leonardo da Vinci suggests as a help in the translation of the
appearance of solid forms on to a plane surface (Treatise on Painting) is the use of a
piece of glass fixed upright at a convenient distance from the eye. " To make sure
your perspective is right," says he, " fix a sheet of glass before your eye, between it
and the thing you intend to make a portrait of; fix your head so that you can not move
it at all; close and cover one eye, and with pen or pencil trace on the glass what you
see before you. You can afterward take it off on thin tracing paper; and transfer it to
another surface for painting pay great attention then to the aerial perspective." This
passage, as well as man/ others in the remarkable work, goes far to prove how well dis-
posed was Leonardo, at least toward the use of everything capable of helping the
student to use to the utmost his own individual powers of judgment and criticism.
With him all means are good and admissible be they scientific, common-sense, or
distinctively mechanical and commonplace, provided they tend toward the true seeing
and the intelligent rendering of those appearances of forms in space which it is the
sole province of drawing to deal with. Starting with the use of Leonardo's glass plane,
or rather the practical realization of his vague suggestion, we found that all the ele-
mentary facts of perspective can be clearly demonstrated, and more, made absolutely
tangible by the intelligent use of the apparatus we had made, and which we call a
philograph, so that the beginner, instead of hearing of mathematical theories, and given
a number of tiresome diagrams to work out, could learn the groundwork of perspec-
tive directly from nature, and with proper guidance find out, so to say for himself, the
first facts of the science on which the whole of linear perspective is built up, and with
this advantage, that he only learns theoretically what he learns practically, and the
theory after and in proof of the practice.
Next we made quite clear to ourselves that a much more important point has
been attained; namely, we can do the same for the perspective of irregular forms, or
organic or living bodies and figures, as for the lines and planes of linear perspective.
382 THE CONGRESS OF" WOMEN.
However slow or tiresome, or, to many minds difficult they may be, methods for the
study of linear perspective do exist, and can be learned by almost every one who goes
to work properly to learn it; but with organic form this is not the case. Let me give
a practical illustration by comparing drawing with sculpture. Say a sculptor is going
to copy exactly a plaster head. Long before he thinks of giving it a laughing or a
serene expression, the delicate modeling of each feature, or the smooth or the hairy
surface, he must realize and put down in the clay the accurate dimensions of the whole
mass of the head, the proper relative position and size, height or depth of each part or
feature. He does this by help of his eye, and his already acquired knowledge (you
will say). Yes, but that is not all; he uses a simple enough help, though one he would
be sorry to be forced to do without, at least until he has had a great deal of experi-
ence. This instrument, called "calipers," or compass of thickness, is not only toler-
ated, but you will find that the very best French sculptors recommend and insist upon
its constant use by students for the sake of cultivating their eye and judgment of
form. But how is it with drawing? How do we expect to gain certainty here? You
make an accurate drawing of this head* from one position, but if you move one inch
to the right or to the left and look at it from that altered point of view, your drawing
will be no longer accurate, all the relative spaces and distances will appear different
and must be drawn so. The sculptor can walk around what he does, can measure it
from front to back, from side to side, or diagonally, but you can do nothing of the
sort, and according to what many people say, if you know a way of measuring you
ought not to use it; you ought to depend solely upon your eye, even though it means,
as it so frequently does, building up a complete work on an incorrect or uncertain
foundation.
By means of these helps every ordinarily intelligent person can do in a measure
for his own eye what photography does for the glass eye of the camera; not, indeed,
produce a complete, effortless picture of all he sees, but accurately record the facts of
proportion and form, of perspective alterations, etc., as seen by the eye. Granted that
what I say be true, and we make it a first condition with all growing students that they
start with learning how and why the instruments maybe relied on so far, it is easy to
see that quite a new element of certainty is introduced into the study of drawing. We
are enabled to judge of the work of our own eyes and of our neighbor's by applying
the inexorable test of optical and geometrical facts to what hitherto had depended
entirely on our own and on our fellow-man's right seeing and judging.
A few words as to the actual use of the philographic helps in studying according
to the method. We act on the belief that just as sounding a note in music covertly
repeated, even though you be at first guided to the true sound by some instrument, will
soon lead to your being able to sound it correctly without helps ; so correctly and repeat-
edly reproducing graphically the appearance of a given form, even though you are
helped to see it, is the shortest and best way of learning to see it without helps. It does
not in any way encourage carelessness or scamping, but on the contrary cultivates
to the full intelligent judgment and self-criticism on the part of the student, based on
the understanding of the chief instrument he must employ, namely, his own eye, and
on the laws according to which it works, to enable him to see the difficulties and
to cope with them, one by one. By so much simplification, and the practical turning
of small means to good account, to render it feasible for all sorts of people, and even
solitary students, to master the elements of drawing thoroughly. I leave it to you
whether this suggested strengthening of the foundations should imply any harm or
any lessening of beauty and completeness in the superstructure. Should it not rather,
as we strongly incline to think, have the contrary effect, by making it much harder to
pass off bad drawing for good, and much more possible to correct the bad work and
do away with bad workmanship.
'Displaying a Marble Bust.
THE ISHMAELITE OF OKLAHOMA.
By MRS. SELWYN DOUGLAS.
Oklahoma is a compound Choctaw word, okla or «^/d;=^people; homma=^x&d'.
red people. It was suggested by Rev. Allen Wright, governor of the Choctaw Nation,
and one of the delegates from the Choctaw Nation to
Washington City, and accepted by the United States
commissioner when the treaties were renevi^ed at the
close of the war in 1866. Oklahoma was originally a
part of the Louisiana purchase. It was given to the
Muskogee and Seminole Indians for a home in 1835.
Since that time until 1889, when it became through
treaties a part of the public domain, a period of fifty-
four years, Oklahoma has been the home of this
Ishmaelitish people — a race resembling in many
respects the ancient Israelites.
Four hundred years ago the race to which this
Ishmaelite of Oklahoma belongs was an independent,
self-governing nation — citizens of a sylvan republic,
with laws respected throughout their wide domain —
a nation crude, but child-like in its working, but
capable of high-development, courageous, virtuous,
heroic in endurance. A nation, which had the most
primitive forms of religious worship to be sure; but
without the degrading features of the religion of old
Greece or Rome, or of modern India. A nation
which had its rude manufactures, its agricultural
industries, its strenuous occupations, its hardihood of fearless hunting — for these were
no ease-loving, luxurious, tropical dreamers, these North American Indians. Up to
this time theft and dissimulation were little known among them, and cold water was
their sole drink. " The introduction of fire water," says Mr. Turner in his "History of
Indian Treaties," "cost them their native independence of character."
This explains in part how this self-governing people, after four centuries, has
degenerated into a savage, wandering race, these Ishmaelites of the American plain,
with their hands always turned against their white neighbors. For the ruin of his race
the red man has a fearful account against his white brother.
Our " sister in red" — the woman in this Ishma-elitish race — thanks the Great Spirit
for the gift of motherhood. She watches eagerly for the dawning of intelligence in
the copper-colored features and black eyes of her baby; she is very fond of him and he is
rarely allowed out of her sight. To be sure he is strapped to a board, and kept straight.
In this way the future warrior takes his first lesson in endurance, and the patience and
quiet of this baby in his confinement is wonderful. His mother spends little time in
preparing his toilet, and if he cries, what harm? It only develops his lungs.
The Indian mother names her boy from the first object she sees after his birth;
but as he grows up, if any special characteristic is developed, he is named from that,
and his baby name is dropped. Sometimes that " Reaper, whose name is Death," cuts
Mra. Selwjii Douglas is a native of Ellicottville, N. Y. Her parents were Joseph Colman and Julia Blair Colman.
She was educated at Vassar and at Ypeilanti, Mich. She married Mr. Selwyn Douglas. Her special work has been in the inter,
est of education. Her profession is that of a teacher of high schools. In religious faith she is a Presbyterian, and is a
member of the Presbyterian Church. Her postoffice address is Oklahoma City, I. T.
383
MRS. SELWYN DOUGLAS
384 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
down this Indian boy, and the mother watches, with a heart full of anguish, his little
limbs stiffen and grow cold and life go out. When the little body is put into a coffin,
she brings his little moccasins, his beads, his small buckskin garments, and puts them
into the coffin with him, that he may wear them in the land where he is gone. He is
buried on the hillside. His little coffin is not put down in the ground, but is set on
the sod, a wooden frame is built around it, and this is filled and covered with the red
soil of Oklahoma:
" And soon the grassy coverlet of God
Spreads equal green above its ashes pale."
Then the oldest woman of his tribe goes to the top of the hill, and with clasped
hands, and face turned to the sun, she prays to the Great Spirit for the soul of this
little boy till the last ray of sunlight has disappeared.
The Indian woman bears all the physical burdens of her race. She lifts the heavy
loads, she cares for the ponies and the cattle, she loads and unloads the wagons. She
is in every sense the home-maker, for she fashions the tepee out of poles and canvas,
gets up in the morning and builds the fire, and permits her liege-lord to sleep the
sleep of the righteous. For let me assure you, this liege-lord of hers is no believer in
"Woman's Rights." To compensate her for this she is stronger physically than her
husband; she has few of the ills of her white sister. The Indian wife takes charge of
all the money that comes into the family, and doles it out to the husband in proper
amounts. And I hope she makes special inquiries of how much he wants, what he is
going to buy, what he did with the last she gave him, and winds up with a lecture on
economy and hard times. I say I hope she does.
The Indian mother has entire control of her children until they have reached
womanhood and manhood. She says what they shall and shall not do, and if the father
interferes unwisely, he is told to go about his business in terms he usually understands.
The Indian woman in the ignorance of guileless and uncultured nature values the love
and fidelity of her husband more than anything else in the world. To be a deserted
wife is a sorrow and disgrace hard to be borne.
Both men and women are fond of athletic games. The Shawnee ball-game is quite
amusing. The men are pitted against the women. Everyone bets on one side or the
other. The women win quite as many games as the men. With their loose, flowing
garments, well developed muscles, and superior strength, they are well matched with
the men. The Ghost Dance is purely a religious ceremony. The scene, as I witnessed
it, was weird in the extreme. The place chosen was a secluded spot, shut off from
the surrounding country by a large wood of oaks. Three hundred and fifty or four
hundred Indian men and women sat in a circle on the ground. Their dusky forms,
wrapped in their blankets, were plainly visible in the waning moonlight. White
Horse, a tall, stately Indian — one of Nature's noblemen — dressed in a blanket and
with a headdress of feathers paced around the outside of the circle, talking as he
walked. The rhythm and cadences of the Indian tongue, when the voice is moved by
the passion of the soul, are very musical. The whole talk seemed to be addressed to
their emotional nature alone. He spoke of their hopes, griefs and fears. Suddenly,
and without any signal that myself or the interpreter could detect, the whole circle rose
at the same instant, and the song and ghost dance began. Each commenced a slow
and measured but ungainly step, until the whole were circling in a sort of magic dance.
The movements were timed in some degree by the words of their songs, as were the
gestures by the ideas. At intervals someone, overcome by his emotions, would break
the line, and rushing toward the center, fall in a swoon. By midnight at least fifty
were lying inside the circle in this hypnotic sleep.
This dance continues for days, weeks and months, and the overwrought condition
of their emotional natures furnishes a fitting time for dangerous conspiracies and out-
breaks.
The religion of the Indian, like that of other primitive races, has neither temple
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 885
nor ritual. He was originally a sun-worshiper; but now he mingles with his religious
ceremonies many of the rites of the Christian. He worships the Great Spirit, and
believes almost universally in a future life. The Indian who becomes converted to
Christianity is usually characterized by his moral, upright life.
Since 1889 twenty-three million acres have been taken from the Indian reserva-
tions and added to the public domain. When Oklahoma was first thrown open to set-
tlement the great cry, " Land fiir der landloss und Heimath fiir det Heimathloss," went
out through all our broad land. The old chief, Queenoshamno, when he knew that
the lands where his warrior father had lived and died, where his sons and daughters
had grown to manhood and womanhood, were to be given to the white man, said:
" Old Queenoshamno will never see the white man in his home," and his sightless eyes,
made so by his own hands, are a proof of his heroism, born of his patriotism and des-
peration.
The sun rose on the 22d day of April, 1889, in a clear sky. A sunrise in Okla-
homa is a beautiful sight. The east gives a rosy promise of the morning, justthe first soft
glimmer from the gates ajar of that Heavenly chamber whence the sun will by-and-
by come rejoicing. A doubtful, slowly-growing light spreads, encroaching on the
shadows in the east. The sky beds itself on the bright green of the prairie with a
deep foundation of rosy red, and builds upward with gradations of softest pink and
gold and colors no one can name. Infinite changes gently succeed. The stars fade
slowly, blinking at the increasing light like old religions dying before the Gos-
pel. Graceful, airy clouds hover around. Shortly they put on glorious robes, and
their faces are bright, as if, like Moses, in some lofty place they had seen God face to
face. You wait but a moment for the grand uprise of the sun. Then narrow flashes
of brilliant, dazzling light shoot up into the dusky immensity above it. Another
moment and the west sees it. Another, the whole heavens feel it, and the day is full
blown. The mist settles into the valleys, and you look into the face of the sun through
a clear atmosphere. The air is laden with the fragrance of a thousand awakening
flowers.
The day had now fairly opened on this seemingly interminable waste of prairie.
The landscape was wrapped in a mantle of stillness, undisturbed save by the morning
anthem of the mocking-bird and meadow lark. For the meadow lark of Oklahoma,
unlike his northern brother, is a singing bird. The prairies were covered with green,
for spring comes early in this warm climate. Thousands of flowers raised their little
heads fearlessly. For a hundred years they had grown, budded, blossomed and died,
kissed by the sun, wet by the dew, and swayed by the balmy breezes of the south.
The purple mallows, the rose-tinted gentian of the South, the white poppy of the
West, and the spring beauty of the North, are all here, for Oklahoma combines the
flora of these three sections to make her own.
The prairie dog sat contentedly at the door of his village, and the rabbit confi-
dently took his usual morning stroll. The quail and plover cared for their little ones
in happy ignorance that, before the sun set, their homes would be crushed under the
tread of men and horses, and their little broods scattered and dead.
The hours go by. The sun climbs to the zenith. Twelve hundred mounted sol-
diers guard the line of the territory. It is high noon. The signal for the start is
given, and with one mighty shout the whole line breaks into a wild race for the new
lands. Such a sight was never seen in the history of this country. There are thou-
sands of people in all kinds of conveyances, thousands mounted on all sorts of steeds,
from the little burro of Mexico and the wiry Texas pony to the powerful thorough-
bred of Kentucky. When the sun went down that night sixty thousand white men
slept in the land of the uglo homma.
The desire for a home, a piece of God's green earth that he can call his own, is
the absorbing passion in the breast of many a man and woman. The sacrifices made by
many to obtain homes for themselves and children in this new, strange land required
the greatest degree of heroism. But the farmer of Oklahoma today, as he looks
(25)
386 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
across his broad acres and sees his shocks of golden wheat, his fields of waving corn,
his cotton with its bursting bolls; when he gathers peaches from his orchard and grapes
from his vineyard, forgets the labor and privations of his past four years.
The white man had again told the Ishmaelite of Oklahoma to " move on," and
as, like Dickens' little Joe, he had been moving on and moving on ever since he was
born, he obeyed.
When the Almighty pronounced these words: "Cursed be the ground for thy
sake. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. In the sweat of thy brow shalt
thou eat thy bread," he spoke to the red man as well as to the white man. In work,
in the digging up the thorns and the thistles that the ground may yield his daily bread,
for " difficulties are God's errands," in meeting obstacles and overcoming them, has
the white man alone grown strong, and able to rise as an individual and as a race.
The red man has been deprived of the great blessing of work. Lands and money
have been given him. His bread and clothes have come to him without any effort on
his part. He has been left in idleness and plenty to follow the wayward impulses of his
own crude, savage nature, and in this consists his great degradation. Wherever the
Indian has become poor and obliged to work to gain a livelihood he has risen accord-
ingly. The time will come when the United States Government will have given him
all his lands and money, and the white man will have stolen or cheated him out of it,
and by the sweat of his brow he will earn his daily bread. Then, and not before, will
the Indian again take his place among the self-governing nations of the world.
It is a common impression that the Indians are a vanishing race, and that in
another century they will be known only in history. Recent statistics show that there
has been no serious diminution in the number of Indians on this continent since the
discovery of America. So we may conclude that the Indian is here to stay for at least
another century, a people destined ere long to become citizens of this country in a
common, national home.
How we may best give them a Christian education then becomes a problem of
great importance to us. I am told that in the Indian schools of the territory the
teachers are able to tell from the youngest child whether its mother has ever received
any education, or, as they express it, whether " it has a school-mother."
The Indian girl who is educated at Haskell or Carlisle, when her school life is
over returns to her people, and in nearly every instance puts on her blanket and
becomes the wife of a blanket Indian, to whom she is usually sold by her parents for
a few ponies.
At the first glance, with this fact in view, the educating of the Indian girl is dis-
heartening in the extreme. The adult Indian habits have been formed. All remedies
for them must be palliative. But in the children there is hope, through the mother to
the child, each generation growing better and wiser than the one preceding it. In
this line of endeavor lies, it seem to me, the surest solution of this problem.
Through the sufferings of the mother has the human family ever received its bap-
tism of regeneration. Through the suffering of the Mary Mother a Christ came to
dying humanity.
The chapter in our national history which tells of our dealings with the Indian
tribes from Plymouth to San Francisco, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico,
will be one of the darkest and most disgraceful in our annals. No race will lift up at
the Judgment such accusing hands against this nation as the Indian. We have cheated
him out of one hunting-ground by compelling him to accept another, and have robbed
him of the last by driving him to frenzy, and then punishing resistance with confisca-
tion. The voices of their scattered dead will find an echo in the ages to come, and
the crime of the white man against his red brother will be called at last for judgment.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 387
"Patient stands the great Avenger:
History's pages show, forsooth,
One death-grapple in the struggle
Twixt old systems and the truth;
Truth forever on the scaffold.
Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God, within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own."
WHO ARE THE BUILDERS?
By MRS. JONNIE ALLEN GEORGE.
In trying to solve the vexed questions of today as to tiie place or sphere or capa-
bilities of women, we really deal with the problems which will involve the good or evil
of the future of the human race. The interests of man
and woman are so completely united, so indissolubly
one, since God " made them twain one flesh," that
it is impossible to separate them. " Every nation
belongs as much to its women as to its men." What-
ever then concerns its women concerns the welfare of
the entire nation, for it is a long-established truth,
that nature has endowed woman with those attributes
which aid most in the highest possible development
and fullest salvation of the race.
Woman's work and woman's worth have already
been discussed in this Congress by some of the most
gifted women of the world.
They have brought with them their new and
original ideas from England, Norway and Sweden;
Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Bohemia, Australia;
and the North, East, South and West of our own
country. Surely from these meetings all political
lines and national prejudices must pale into nothing-
ness, and every woman carry home with her a new
strength to be devoted to private and public weal. It
is not of the questions of today, however, that I would
speak; I leave that to wiser heads and stronger pens. I only would tell something of
the women who live '"way down yonder in Dixie Land."
That land, " popularly supposed to be the Nazareth of America " — the South, with
its balmy airs and blue and sunny skies, where the creamy orange blossoms, stately
magnolias, and clinging jessamines waft their blended perfume from darkest lagoon to
furthest pine-clad hilltops, and day and night are made musical by the mocking-
bird's wild lay.
It is one of the most useful and grateful tasks of historians to bring forward to
the eye of each succeeding generation the characters of those who have laid the foun-
dations of society and state; and it is now my pleasure to tell you something of what
the women of the South have done for the building of their country's strength.
The Revolution furnished many glorious instances of womanhood in the South,
when such women as Lady Washington, Annie Carter, the wife of Light-horse Harry
Lee, and the mother of the South's illustrious Robert E. Lee, together with Mrs. Madi-
son, and later on Mrs. James K. Polk, influenced their husbands to grand achievements
and inspired in their countrywomen a desire for higher things. Yet, notwith-
Mrs. Jonnie Allen George is a native of Alabama. Her parents were Rev. M. E. Butt and Henrietta Allen Butt, of two
of the oldest and most influential families of Georgia and among the largest slaveholders of the South, She was graduated
from Tuskegee, Ala., with high honors, and later she received the degree of M. A. from Logan College, Ky. She has traveled
extensively in the United States and Canada. She married Dr. Albert George, who lived but a few years, leaving Mrs. George
with two daughters. She is a devoted mother, giving special attention to the training of her children in every department.
Her literary works are short stories, which have appeared in Southern journals, and sketches of Shakespeare's characters. She
is a most satisfactory and successfal teacher. In religious faith she is a Methodist. Her postoffice address is Little
EUKsk, Ark.
388
■.•«A»%V
MRS. JONNIE ALLEN GEORGE.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 389
standing all this, the social and political condition of women, not only of the South,
but of all the world, at that time was not fully committed to the highest development
of that sentiment which is woven in the warp and woof of every woman's nature. The
sentiment which induces her to wish for that higher education and self-culture that
would enable her to become her husband's intellectual companion, his friend and help-
mate in the truest sense of the word, and to occupy that place in the world — not man's
world but God's world — the place not above her husband, nor below him, but by his
side.
Because of the difficulties of travel, and imperfect communication with the out-
side world, she knew little of the turmoil and strife for self-advancement that moved
and swayed the restless heart of a dissatisfied world. Content to dwell at home
among her own people, her mind and heart were not busy about the world's affairs.
She asked nothing better for herself than that she might become the wife and mother
of great men. And true to the traditions of her grandmothers, it would still be, perhaps,
an impossible task to convince a Southern woman that there could be any higher
mission for her.
With sometimes a hundred trained slaves to attend the immediate household,
with better facilities for travel, with new books and imported musical instruments, and
foreign magazines and home journals, the minds and hearts of the women of the land
were fully attuned to " catch the living manners as they rise." Is it any wonder, then,
that the sentiment in favor of the higher education of women first took root in the
South and grew and blossomed forth into the building of the first college in the world
for women at Macon, Ga?
It was not until the tocsin of civil war had been sounded that the womanliness of
the women of the South shone out in all its brightest light; and our men, who had ever
been foremost in true chivalry toward women, learned more fully the half-accepted
truth, that woman had not been created man's slave, his toy, his household drudge,
nor yet, for that higher mission alone, of being his gentle nurse, his faithful companion,
his prudent housewife, and the fond mother of his children; but to be also "his dis-
interested friend, his equal in resources of character and understanding, and his
superior in the virtues of heart and soul.
The heroes of the South, who fought those dreadful battles at Gettysburg and
Manassas, and enriched the earth with the crimson stream of their life's blood " by
the Potomac, and the Cumberland, and in the valley of the Shenandoah," had no
cowardly mothers or vain and heartless wives. Their women were as heroic in every
fiber as themselves. What a comparison exists between the heroic women of the
American Revolution and the women of the Southern confederacy; the story of the
one seems in many instances but a repetition of the other, except that women of the
South were by far the greatest sufferers. Because of the peculiar circumstances which
surrounded them, they passed through " the more fiery ordeal, the one most terrible
in its character, inasmuch as no triumph awaited their sacrifices, no glad conclusions
wiped out the bitter memory of their griefs."
The women of the South had ever been a peace party in thems^elves. They loved
the Union and honored the Flag. In their hearts they prayed that the cords of love
which bound the different sections of the land together might not be snapped asunder;
but when one state after another thought it best to withdraw from the Union, and Old
Virginia finally threw herself into the breach, the women of the entire land cast in
their lot with the Confederacy, and gave as hearty allegiance to the new Government
as had been so lavishly bestowed upon the other.
The sudden transition of the land, smiling with peace and plenty, to the awful tur-
moil of war was swift and appalling, but its women kept pace with the times. After
the first burst of the storm the restless misery of the preceding suspense, was fol-
lowed by the most faithful efforts of men and women alike. " Every village green
became a camping ground, and its courthouse or public halls a rendezvous for busy
women." The Confederacy — a new government which had sprung into being in an
390 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
hour — had no means with which to meet the exigencies of war. There were no trained
soldiers, but few surgeons and tailors, no hospitals and trained nurses, no war ships,
no arms and ammunition, and no factories of any kind in the land. Where every able-
bodied white man so gallantly laid down his plow and plane, closed up his law ofifice,
the minister left his pulpit with his Bible in his hand, and went to battle for the cause
which he earnestly and honestly believed to be right; the mothers, wives, daughters
and sweethearts of these men determined that the army should not want, so long as
they had hearts to feel, heads to plan, and hands to labor. Women, old and young,
worked together in the construction of soldiers' garments. With a firm faith that suc-
cess must crown every such honest endeavor, to them an ultimate and complete vic-
tory was a foregone conclusion; and though
" Never a morning wore to evening
But some heart did break,"
these women faltered not in the tasks before them. They unhesitatingly spent their
days and nights in nursing the sick in camp or wounded in hospitals established and
maintained by themselves. They ministered to the dying in the rear of battlefields,
and in many instances took in their own hands the spade and shovel in the midst of
the night, and lifting their voices to Heaven, gave Christian burial to foe and friend
alike.
Soon there came a time when the supplies in hand were utterly exhausted. Then
it was that the latent business talent and executive ability of the Southern women began
to appear. They renounced all desire for imported luxuries, and pledged themselves
to card, spin and weave the clothing, tan the leather and make the shoes for their
families and for the army. They had no factories; this had all to be done by hand.
They directed the negroes on those immense plantations in the work of tilling the
field, planting the crops, gathering the harvest and converting it into food and cloth-
ing for the country.
They gave their own personal property for the purchase of arms and ammunition for
their beloved army; they melted into money their silverware and jewels, in which many
a Southern household was rich. They almost starved themselves and their children
at home, that they might purchase a little coffee and sugar and other luxuries for the
soldiers. For coffee they often paid as high as five hundred dollars per pound, and
for black pepper and sugar three hundred. They sat late into the winter nights over a
fire of corn-cobs while they ripped up their carpets of softest pile, took down their
richest damask draperies, and made them into blankets; cut their finest upholstery
into mittens for the soldiers, and tore up their window curtains and table linen into
bandages, to be used in dressing the wounded. They went through the darkened and
silent streets of captured cities at midnight, to carry letters which they had smuggled
through the lines from soldiers in distant camps to friends at hom.e. They even faced
the dangers of death itself in the charge of the bayonets, the tramp of cavalry, and the
roar of cannons, as in ''La Bataille des Mouchoirs" in New Orleans, that they might catch
a glimpse of, and whisper a word of cheer to, loved ones on their way to distant North-
ern prisons. In eVery way these women, for the first time in the world's history,
" gilded the terrors of war with a heavenly beauty."
England has had her Florence Nightingale; Italy her countess, who, dressed in
richest silks and brightest diamonds, visited the charity hospitals that the poor
and suffering there might be gladdened by the sight of so much beauty; Germany had
her princess who fed the hungry populace — the Revolution drew from every colony
brave and heroic women, such as Mrs. Mott, of South Carolina. The North fur-
nished many beautiful instances of individual bravery and self-sacrifice among its
women during the war; but nowhere except in the South has the world ever witnessed
the sublime spectacle of every woman of the land devoting herself entirely — her time,
her strength, her talents — to the cause that needed such assistance.
It really seems invidious to mention a few of these noble women, when all worked.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 391
suffered, endured and lost alike. It was the women of the South who made it possi-
ble for the Confederacy to last so long. General Grant, while he was in Mississippi,
said to " a rebel woman: " " The work of you women surpasses anything in history. It
is astonishing. Why, with my overwhelming numbers of trained soldiers I could whip
this handful of raw recruits in a little time if it were not for you Southern women.''
Finally, however, time and circumstances brought to an end this unequal struggle.
The sun of the Confederacy had set never to rise again — set in a halo of glory which
will forever far outshine the gaudy triumphs of victory. And the men and women
who had suffered every vicissitude of fortune during these four years, though they
had been reared as delicately as European princes, turned from the duties and dangers
of war times to private life and hard labor. Though the bowl had been broken at the
fountain, there was no time for vain regrets. In many instances the mother, or the
eldest daughter, or perhaps a maiden sister, because of the ruthless hand of war, was
all that was left on distant plantations, or in splendid but totally dismantled city
homes, to battle with the world and keep the wolf from the door. When these
women, so tenderly reared and delicately nourished, went forth as bread-winners from
the very best families, daughter's of the South's proudest aristocracy, a new order of
things for the Southern women was begun. Though her father, her brother, her hus-
band and sweetheart were gone, her plantations devastated, left without stock, provis-
ions or hands, her city home in smoldering ruins, the world has yet to hear one word
of complaint or murmuring from her lips.
Ah! the influence of those women was and is being felt by the younger Southern
women of today. During the storm that followed the first cloud-burst in the throes of
silent agony, a new creature was born who came into the world possessed of a price-
less heritage. The mothers of the Old South have laid a foundation upon which the
Southern woman of today may build a personality for herself that will be a force in
any undertaking. With no desire for public renown, no hungering for shout and stare
and clapping of hands, and empty plaudits, those mothers and daughters mold society
into lofty ideals of manhood and womanhood, yet still clinging with loving touch to
the traditions of the past.
Underlying all her social conditions, touching life in all its relations, she has
always held a place peculiarly her own; but with a new need of self-defense with a
more keenly awakened desire and a thousandfold better facilities for obtaining an
education, with more of physical culture, despite the languidness of our clime, and a
general coming out into the glorious sunshine of a broader world, she has come to
the front as never before. Scorning each carping tongue that says —
" My hand a needle better fits."
She has grasped the pen, the painter's brush, the physician's science, the surgeon's
instruments, the accountant's desk, and a number of other things to be used as tools
with which she has builded an independence for herself.
In the beautiful verse of Margaret J. Preston, whose powers were never fully
evoked until the ardent patriotism kindled in her bosom, by the afflictions of her
country, found vent in truly inspired lines, we find a splendid specimen of a Southern
woman's poetical genius. Surely harp never echoed to sweeter music than hers, and
following in her wake many Southern women have cheered and gladdened the hearts
of thousands of readers and built national reputations for themselves. Notably
among them are Mrs. Nicholson, editor of the New Orleans "Picayune," the fore-
most women in letters in the South, the gifted "Catherine Cole," Mrs. Mary E. Bryan,
of Atlanta, Ga., Miss Virginia Wild, the foremost of Southern painters, and indeed
one of the most gifted in the world, Miss Julia Tutwiler, a world-renowned teacher,
together with a host of others, who have by their own fair hands rebuilt and adorned
the South. And while they have builded so nobly for themselves they have not for-
gotten others. Soon after the war all over the wrecked and desolated South the women
again took matters into their own hands, and began to agitate the question of raising
392 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
suitable monuments to commemorate the dust of our heroes which they had gathered
into hallowed spots. The women in every city, town and country village were organ-
ized, this time into Confederate Historical Societies, Ladies' Memorial Associations
and so forth, and early in the seventies in Richmond and Montgomery and many
other Southern cities, splendid monuments began to tower aloft "In memory of the
Confederate dead." What the noble women of Memphis, Tenn., have done in this
respect, is but an example of what the women everywhere have done, or are doing. In
that city within one inclosure nine hundred and fifty-nine graves have been inclosed
with a coping, a neat stone tablet marks the head of each grave, and a splendid gray
granite shaft rises to heaven bearing the significant inscription on its face "Illis Vic-
toriam non Immortalitatem, Prater, negaverunt," and the simple dedication " To our
Confederate dead." This granite shaft cost the sum of ;^90,000. All this work was
accomplished and paid for through the ardent patriotism, business enterprise, and
executive ability of the women of that city. Among the women who have builded the
monument we cannot refrain from mentioning the names of Mrs. C. W. Frazer, the
first president of the Memphis Memorial Society, and Mrs. Luke E. Wright, the
charming daughter of Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes, and Mrs. Keller Anderson.
It is the women of the South who —
"Accepting with unmurmuring lips
War's stern decree, its grief, its losses,
And nobler through that blood eclipse
And stronger for its burdening crosses —
She folds no hands in languid pause
Child of her father — true to duty,
She weeps at heart the dear lost cause!
And fills the busy hours with beauty."
At the same time she instills into the Hearts of her young sons and daughters of
today an honest pride in the memony of our immortal Jefferson Davis and our host of
fallen braves; she teaches them to rejoice in the preservation of, and to stand firm for
the Union.
These same women who have already builded so much of their Southland's strength
and fame, today unfurl to the breezes of the South the star spangled banner, with as
much pride and grace as ever they flung to the same winds the silken folds of their
own handiwork, the bonny blue flag of the confederacy.
It was her women who have largely made it possible for the South to be repre-
sented here today. And in this Columbian year while Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Davis are
sharing the hospitality of the same roof in New York, the Southern woman of today
extends her hand in cordial invitation to her sisters of every clime to unite with her
in building up
"A perfect woman(hood) nobly planned
To warn, to comfort and command."
An altar at which men and angels may love and worship forever.
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION.
By REV. AUGUSTA J. CHAPIN, D. D.
If we look for the distinguishing characteristics of this age, we shall find them in
the present diffusion of knowledge and the tendency to the increase of popular educa-
tion. The spirit of democracy, which has so stirred
society during the last century, has inspired universal
interest in this work, and given it a mighty impetus.
In all former ages thearistocracy of learning was
even more limited and select than that of rank and
wealth. Knowledge was not for the many. It is true
that the ancients reached intellectual heights never
surpassed, but it must be remembered that the wise
and learned among them were few in number, while
the masses of the people remained in utter ignorance.
The wealth of the people was also in the hands of a
few. There was industrial activity, often of marvel-
ous extent, but it was carried on by slaves who were
powerless under the control of their masters. With
growing freedom there came a gradual mental awak-
ening; and then a demand for instruction. Our com-
mon schools are of recent origin. They have every-
where come into being in answer to the demand that
all the children should be taught. Public interest
and sentiment once awakened have advanced along
this line, until the demand is that every child shall
be taught at the public expense. The misfortunes
of the parents no longer deprive the children of opportunity for the acquirement of
knowledge, nor does the ignorance, greed, bigotry, or negligence of parents deprive
the child of this privilege and right to the rudiments of education. We are now pro-
viding for even the higher education at the public expense, and there is every reason
to believe that the period of attendance required will be increased, until all doors,
even those of institutions of highest training, will be thrown open without price.
The importance of educating girls, as well as boys, formerly not recognized at all,
has been fully conceded, although there still is in some quarters a practical hesitancy
about extending all the privileges of higher education to women
In recent years much thought and labor has been given by the wisest educators
and foremost philanthropists of the civilized world to the subject of extending the
highest opportunities to all people. Among the plans devised to reach those who, for
any reason, cannot come to the schools, are the correspondence methods of study. Of
the value of this correspondence work as carried on by one of our great universities,
and by some other organizations, no one who has personal knowledge will speak in
other than in terms of highest praise. Languages are taught in this manner no less
Rev. Augusta J. Chapin was born in Lakeville, N. Y. Her parents were Americans, her ancestors having settled in
Springfield, Maes., in the seventeenth century. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan with the degree of Master of
Arts. She received the degree of Doctor of Divinity in June, 1893; has traveled extensively in the United States and British
America, and has twice visited Europe. Her special work has been in the interest of religious, charitable and educational
enterprises. Her principal literary works are lectures on literature, art, and philosophy. Her profession is that of minister
of the Gospel, to which she was ordained in 1863. In religious faith she is a Universalist. Miss Chapin is a member of the
Chicago Woman's Clnb, the Association for the Advancement of Woman, the W. C. T. U., and many other organizations.
Her postotfice address is 3848 Lake Avenue, Chicago, HI. ^
393
REV. AUGUSTA J. CHAPIN.
394 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
thoroughly and systematically than by the present aid of the instructor. Bible studies
are carried on in this manner under the supervision of the university. Much has also
been done by the " society to encourage study at home," which has its central office
in Boston. Through these and kindred organizations, many who otherwise would
have made little or no progress, have been assisted in their studies, encouraged and
guided in systematic work.
Greatest of all organizations for this purpose is that known as " University Exten-
sion." The idea is not altogether a new one. It has for years been growing in the
minds of scholars who have earnestly desired to bring the advantages of liberal cul-
ture within the reach of people of all ages and of both sexes who cannot go to the
university. Its purpose is to bring the university to the people where they are, and
while engaged in their usual avocations, and thus make up to them in some measure,
at least, the loss they have suffered. There is extant a letter from Dr. Channing to
Josiah Quincy, in which he suggests the organization of scholars for "the spreading of
their own intelligence and shedding a light around among the people." At Oxford
University the subject was considered nearly thirty years ago, or as early as 1835.
In early life, as society now exists, the majority are cut off from the higher educa-
tional privileges. Thousands upon thousands feel their deprivation keenly, but have
had heretofore no adequate means of satisfying this intellectual hunger and thirst.
University Extension is a new phase, and in its present form a new work. But the
idea of University Extension is as old as the idea of the universal right of man to
learning.
Charlemagne was in the true spirit of this movement when he summoned Eng-
land's grandest scholar to Paris, and set him to establishing schools for the people
throughout the dominions over which he ruled, and when he and his courtiers sat at
the feet of this scholar to be instructed in philosophy, mathematics and other
branches, he manifested his eager earnestness in the intellectual welfare of the people.
He had become convinced that the learning which made the church so powerful would
be good for the state, if possessed by king and people. Alcuin, working under the
great monarch in the eighth century, was the real founder of the universities of Paris,
Tour, and other places. Those of which he was not the actual founder were immensely
benefited by his preliminary work, if not directly inspired by it. By him and Abe-
lard, who came two centuries later, and who moved his lectureship from place to
place, learning was brought out of the monasteries and given in France to schools
which were open to the people. Much the same work was done in course of time for
other countries.
Everything that tended to popularize knowledge, particularly the invention of
printing and the plentiful distribution of books, helped on this movement, and brought
learning more and more within reach of the people. All the great universities founded
in the Middle Ages were pre-eminently for the people. Students of all ages and of
all classes of society attended the lectures in great numbers. The industrial classes
came and gave what time they could from their regular occupations. The very poor
came, and thought it no disgrace to beg the bread that sustained them while they
remained at the seat of learning. The rich and the noble came, not too proud to
drink at the common fountain. In those days it was only necessary to establish great
educational centers, and the people came in throngs from all parts of Europe to study
and to listen, many thousands being at one great schooi. Students came to the Uni-
versity of Paris in such numbers from all parts of Europe that separate colleges were
erected for the reception of the different nationalities. Sometimes they followed a
great teacher from place to place, as when Abelard in his sorrow and discouragement
fled to the wilderness, the whole region around was covered with the tents of the stu-
dents who followed him to his retreat to profit by his instructions.
Many of the universities were originally founded for the benefit of the poor. This
was the origin of the University of Naples, established by Frederick II. in 1225. He
desired that his subjects might be instructed at home in every branch of learning, and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 395
not be compelled in pursuit of learning to have recourse to foreign orations or to
beg in other lands. Boniface VIII. established the University of Rome for the special
benefit of poor foreign students, sojourning at the capital.
In the course of centuries, however, social changes, not necessary to trace here,
gradually eliminated this principle of democracy, and the throngs of students of all
grades, ages and nationalities ceased to gather, and the universities no longer reached
the people. The old conditions have never been restored. Learning is again impris-
oned, this time not in the monasteries, but in the universities themselves. There are
now barriers at their gates which exclude all but a favored few. To the masses these
barriers are impassable. One of these barriers is the long and exhaustive preparation
that must be made, and which only the few can undertake. Another barrier is that
of age, only the young being now thought eligible as students. The continuity of
work required is another barrier, for only the few can give sucji attendance; while still
another insuperable obstacle is the lack of money to defray the large expense that
residence at the university in our time involves. These are among the chief causes
which have so diminished the number of students, and which have practically excluded
the masses from the pursuit of knowledge under any competent guidance.
History is repeating itself. The popular need which anciently demanded that
learning be brought out of the cloister, now requires that it be brought out of the
university. The people can no longer go in crowds to the universities; therefore, we
must bring the university instruction to the people.
Out of this need, which has now for many reasons become imperative, has grown
the work which we call University Extension. It is nothing less than a revolution
which will be as fruitful in intellectual results, as religious and political revolutions
have been in their respective fields. We have today religious and political freedom,
but both are practically useless without the trained and enlightened intellect. Uni-
versity Extension, the emancipation of. the popular mind, becomes therefore the com-
plement of the liberties already won. The universities are now called to minister, as
in early times, not to a class, but to all the people. And since the people, on account
of the social and economic conditions of the times, can no longer go to the university,
we must take the university to the people. That the people are intellectually hungry
is manifest from the great number of study classes and clubs, for the most part under
inefficient leadership, which have in recent years sprung into existence everywhere.
And that the people are ready for the University Extension movement is abundantly
shown by the large number who hasten to avail themselves of its aid.
The first lectures were given by professors of Cambridge University, England, in
1873, in response to the request of a company of women, that they might have the privi-
lege of listening to lectures by the university instructors. Other courses followed,
and the work has increased in extent and popularity up to the present time. Oxford
University entered upon the active work in 1878. The annual reports show a steady
growth of interest and attendance. There are now more than one hundred and
fifty lecture centers, at each of which several courses of lectures are annually delivered.
These courses are upon any and every subject upon which the university gives instruc-
tion. The topic is in all cases determined by vote of the class desiring to attend and
study. At first courses in history and literature were most popular, but recently the
choice of subjects has taken a very wide range. At a recent summer school of Uni-
versity Extension students at Oxford, there were classes in the Constitutional History
of England, in practical chemistry and geology, in geographical mapping, in Homer's
Odyssey, in Herodotus, in Dante, in Gothic architecture with illustrative excursions,
in instrumental astronomy, and many other subjects. A center composed of working
men in one of the manufacturing districts has been engaged in the study of the
classical novel. They were studying George Eliot's " Romola " when the report was
made. A course of six lectures on the Bible was given at Newcastle-upon-Tyne to
immense audiences of iron workers. Courses upon electricity, agriculture, mining,
social science and art, are also among the subjects commonly chosen.
396 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The representative of the American Society, sent recently to study the develop-
ment of the University Extension in England, reports that the work done in some of
the established centers is such that the extension students are admitted to the univer-
sities as second-year students, showing that it is possible by this method to reach the
same results as are attained by residence at the universities. He also reports interest
among English farmers, who are availing themselves of courses of lectures upon topics
pertaining to their occupation. The principle upon which the centers have been
organized has been strictly democratic, persons of various ages, stations and degrees
of culture, of both sexes, being frequently associated in the same classes. As an
example of this, a lecturer reports that in a certain course the best examination was
passed by a coal miner, and the second best by the daughter of a wealthy banker. The
working men and miners have taken up the work in large numbers, and the results are
already discernible in the general improvement of the condition of many. The
dramshop gets less attention, while books and magazines appear in homes where they
were before unknown. The women of England have from the first taken the deepest
interest in this movement, and women of birth and education have been among the
first to avail themselves of the advantages offered thereby. Women became every-
where, not only the eager recipients of the instruction offered, but active in the
organization of centers. University Extension work has also been inaugurated and
organized in Canada, Austria, Denmark and other countries.
In America the organization is quite recent. Four or five years ago it was prac-
tically unknown. The work once inaugurated, however, our colleges and universities
have promptly taken it up, and it has already assumed large proportions. Such is the
favor with which the plan is received by the people, that to explain clearly the aims
and methods of University Extension is almost certain to organize a center.
The Philadelphia Society was formed in June, 1890. In December of the same
year the American Society was established. In July following, the "Journal of Uni-
versity Extension" was issued. National conferences have been held each succeeding
year, with delegates present from the leading universities of England and Canada. As
a result of all these activities, taken in connection with the enthusiastic work of many
established centers, the whole country is becoming awakened to the keenest interest
in all that concerns the movement. Our leading universities and colleges have fully
launched themselves into the work. The Johns Hopkins and Michigan universities,
Bryn Mawr, Cornell, most of the state universities, all the magnificent educational
institutions that center about Chicago, are committed to this greatest educational
movement our world has ever seen. It is already apparent that the eager acceptance
of this aid to systematize study will tax the universities to the utmost, and the question
is asked: "What will they do with the material that University Extension is bringing
to their very doors?" The University of Chicago has already answered the question
by making University Extension one of its regular departments, with officers, professors
and lecturers set apart for this special work. Other great universities must soon move
in this direction, for the already overworked professors cannot leave their class-rooms
to lecture outside to any great extent.
The plan adopted in our country has contemplated in all cases courses of six lect-
ures each, which may be supplemented by other courses on the same subject, if desired.
All the advantages offered are optional with the student. He may simply attend the
lectures, and he may in addition attend the classes held, before or after lectures, when
he may question the professors on points not understood. He may read recommended
articles or books; he may pursue independent investigation on the subject, and prepare
papers to be examined by the professor in charge. If he does all this work, and does
it satisfactorily to the committee on examination, he receives a certificate or credit for
the amount of work accomplished, which will be accepted if presented to the univer-
sity or college to which that center belongs.
University Extension is not intended to take the place of college training. It must
always lack much that the university can supply; but it is intended that the work under-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 397
taken shall be, as far as it goes, strictly first-class, and the student who cannot go to
the university will be aided at home to the utmost of his desire or capacity to receive.
The privilege and possibilities of University Extension must appeal to American
women even more strongly than to those of England. In view of all the opportunities
which are here open to women, and in view of the constantly increasing responsibili-
ties which rest upon them, the need of the most liberal training is imperative. Here
is an opportunity to make up deficiencies and to pursue studies in any direction, with-
out interfering with the duties of home or society. It is safe to say that the majority
of the Extension students in our country are women. Thus far, however, few women
have offered themselves as instructors or lecturers in this inviting field. College women
should be especially interested and active. They can make themselves especially use-
ful in establishing centers and in promoting the work in their immediate neighborhoods.
Many of them are especially qualified to lecture upon their favorite studies. There is
to be in the immediate future an immense demand for the best lecturers. The pro-
fessors in the colleges already have their hands more than full. They cannot go out
to any great extent without neglecting work in the university itself. If competent
women offer their services they will be gladly accepted.
University Extension should commend itself to liberally educated women because
of its value to the people in general, and because of its adaptation to the present needs
of women.
It is not yet twenty-five years since the first great university opened its doors to
women students, and it is much less time since anything like adequate advantages have
been at the command of women who seek thorough training. Women now in mature
life, surrounded by many cares, have not forgotten how sadly they realized that their
school-days were over when they had advanced just far enough to know that they had
made a beginning. They vividly remember how, as they saw their brothers prepare
for college, they silently brushed away the unseen tears and bravely turned to face a
life of intellectual privation. These women have not lost their intellectual hunger,
though many of them do wear gray hairs. They are turning with avidity to gather the
intellectual food now so freely offered. Educated women who appreciate their own
happier lot will be earnest and quick in their endeavor to bring whatever is best within
reach of these defrauded sisters.
It is not my purpose at this time to make practical suggestions. These will readily
occur to all who give thought to this important subject. But I cannot refrain from
expressing the earnest hope that college bred women everywhere may put themselves
in line with this great work for the elevation of humanity — a work worthy of the best
efforts of heart and hand and brain.
WONDERS OF NATURE AND ART IN SPAIN.
By SENORITA CATALINA DE ALCALA.
In comparison to the amount that has been spoken and written concerning the
attractions of other countries, almost nothing has been said about the beauties and
grandeur of the old Castilian Empire.
While crossing the Atlantic for the.United States, one of the lady passengers stated
that she had been over the ocean six times to view the wonders of the Old World.
" Now I am through," she said; " There is nothing left worth looking at."
When asked if she had visited Spain, she replied: "Mercy, no; do you think I
would venture into that barbarous land to have my heart pierced with a stiletto or
my jugular vein severed by a robber's steel?" "Banditti are the only curiosities I
ever heard of in that country."
I am sorry to say that as a people we have been too sullenly proud and carelessly
indolent to rise up in dignity and earnestness and correct such false impression The
political and religious cloud which has enveloped us for centuries has obscured the vision
of the poet, novelist, and even historian. The physical aspect of Spain has been com-
pared to a truncated pyramid, the summit of which is formed by the plateau of Castle
and La Manche, furrowed by chains of Sierras towering from six to twelve thousand feet
above the level of the sea. The Mediterranean base of the pyramid is a paradise — a
land of exquisite fruitfulness, through olive groves to the orange-embowered hamlets
of Catalonia on to the garden of Valencia, where African vegetation abounds. At
Elche stately palms in tens of thousands group themselves in true oriental style
around low Moorish homes. Valencia is a Sicilian landscape. Andalusia with its
cacti, bananas, cotton, sugar cane, its tropical atmosphere, pure and brilliant, is truly
African. The mountain chains begin with the lofty Pyrenees, whose snow-capped
peaks meet the eye on entering Spain from the north. It is the most regular mount-
ain chain in the world, giving off its principal valleys at right angles.
The scenery on the Spanish slope far surpasses that of the French side. The
innumerable mountain torrents form lofty cascades more magnificent than any other
waterfalls in Europe. On a single high station in the Central Pyrenees grows the
diascorea, the only European species of the yam. A distinct specimen of the ibex is
found here and also the water-mole known in no other streams except the rivers of
Southern Russia. The blind insects which abound in the caverns are another wonder
of the Pyrenees. Kings, races, governments, have come and gone; wars have fiercely
raged on either side and enemies sworn vengeance through thy passes. But thou, O
Pyrenees, stand forever firm, immovable, unbroken by the hand of time!
The Iberian chain twines through the heart of the country eastward and south-
ward to the Sierra Morena, and is filled with enormous masses of fossil bones; it forms
Senorita Catalina de Alcala is a pure Castilian, the daughter of the late Duke Louis de Alcala, who fell upon the field of
battle— a Carlist. Her mother, Marie de Molina, is a direct descendant of the early Castilian queen of the same name. The
name De Alcala ia a familiar one in Madrid. The family, consisting of one young son and danght?r, were exiled upon the
accession of Alphonzo XII. to the throne, and their estate declared confiscate. Their guardian, a grandee and an exile, wan-
dered with his young charges through many lands. He gave the strictest attention to their education, particularly in the
languages. Catalina de Alcala is master of five living languages ; is a good Latin and Greek scholar, besides having a fair
knowledge of Russian, Flemish and Italian. Her brother was assassinated in the streets of Madrid, where he had gone to
make a personal appeal at the foot of the throne for the return of his estates. Senorita de Alcala was for some time linguist
in the palace of the Emperor of Germany. She was in the royal family of Hawaii when the news of the revolution reached
them. She accompanied the family of Don Fernando— Minister to the United States— to Washington, and acted as secretary
during the Pan-American Congress. Her knowledge of languages and diplomatic details rendered her services invaluable.
Only thirty years of age, this young woman has traveled twice around the world, and has seen every phase of life, from the
Imperial Courts to the humblest home. She is at present Professor in the Minnesota State University.
398
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 399
the starting point of the Tagus on one side, and the Gabriel Guadalajara and Xucar
on the other.
The Carpetanian group runs northeast and southwest with the Escurial and La
Granja clinging to its granite declivities. The Sierra Morena is a plateau on one side
and a mountain on the other, clothed in rosemary, thyme, cystus, lentise, arbutus, date,
palms, aloes and vines. It is a sight to see the lentil and morning-glory with other
wild flowers growing side by side out of the crevices in the bare rocks, with scarcely
any leaves, but perfect in blossom and fruit. The peasant children, with their brown
faces and bright garbs, make a pretty picture in their bare heads and feet leaping
from cliff to cliff like the gazelle, caroling their native airs and gathering the nutri-
tious legume to be shipped to all parts of the world with the large yellow garbanzo,
which grows only on Spanish soil. If a traveler approaches and addresses them, they
will detect at once if he is a foreigner, and come forward offering handfuls of wild
flowers, and saying, with their expressive glances, " We pity you because you are a
stranger and far from home," the worst of all calamities, in the minds of these little ones.
No matter what is offered them in return for their courtesy and favor they will
never accept, and feel wounded because you have mistaken their motive. This is one
of the curios of Spain; you can turn around without crossing the hand with silver.
The whole surface of Spain is noted for its striking contrasts; mountains rising in
grandeur above the snow line, sheltering rich and magnificent valleys at their base,
defying the sun of summer, by not yielding one drop from their icy peaks to water
the enchanting land below. Naked walls of white limestone tower above dark woods
of cork, oak and olive. Extensive tracts of undulating forest-clad hills lie between
apparently boundless plains or tracts of level table lands, some almost uninhabitable,
and others intersected with canals and richly cultivated, like the Rekuena of Valencia.
The climate is as great a wonder as the geography. Four zones are recognized.
In the north and northwest maritime provinces, the temperature is mild and equable.
Monthly roses bloom in the garden at Christmas. The table lands and the larger part
of the Ebro basin form the zone of the greatest extremes. Even in summer the nights
are decidedly cool, and on the high levels hoar frost is frequent. In spring cold
mists envelop the land for days, while in summer the sky may be perfectly clear for
weeks. The air is dry and constantly in motion. At Madrid skating is the pastime in
December and January. The third zone includes the Mediterranean provinces. The
extremes of temperature are not so marked, although the summers are very warm and
the winters decidedly cold.
The fourth or African zone, as it is called, embraces the whole of Andalusia as
far as the Sierra Morena, the southern half of Murcia and the province of Alicante.
The winter is the season of the brightest vegetation. As a consequence of such a
varied climate the vegetation is peculiar. No other country in Europe of equal extent
has so great a wealth of species. The number is over five thousand. Important med-
ical and dye plants grow wild on all the mountains and in the night season load the
air with aroma.
Spain surpasses all other countries in Europe in the production of kitchen vege-
tables and pod fruits; its sherry wine is famous throughout the world. Who has not
heard ot the great olive forests which embrace hundreds of square miles furnishing an
annual production of millions of gallons of oil. Oranges, almonds, figs, pomegranates,
carobs, bananas, cherimogas and apples are abundant and excel in flavor the fruits of
all other countries. It is also the land of the mulberry and hence of the silk worm.
The annual production of raw silk in Catalonia, Valencia and Murcia is four million,
two hundred thousand pounds
The fauna of Spain also corresponds to the climate. Even wild animals abound,
bears, wolves, hares and rabbits. The horses of Spain have been famous in all ages.
The Romans used to say they were engenders of the wind. They are supposed to be
of Arabian origin, as the Arabs, when in possession of the peninsula, stocked it with
their finest breeds. Especially in Andalusia are they noted for swiftness and beauty.
One of Spain's greatest resources lies in its immense flocks and herds. They are
400 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
distributed in bands of tens of thousands under shepherds and dogs running through
millions of acres that are abandoned to their use. It is also a fact that Spain contains
the one specimen of the Barbary ape still found wild in Europe, and the four hundred
species of butterflies found in the province of Madrid alone are like the gayety and
grace displayed in the Spanish ballroom. Spain has ever been a camping ground for
innumerable tribes of feathered songsters. The peninsula lies directly in their route
to and from frigid and temperate Europe to tropical Africa. While some adorn the
foliage with their brilliant plumage, others delight the ear with enchanting melodies.
Spain leads all other European countries in the variety and amount of its minerals.
In the production of silver, copper, mercury and lead even Austria and Hungary are
excelled. The Greek and Latin authors who have described the Spanish peninsula,
state the quantity of gold and silver found there was very great, and that hence the
district became an important center of commercial activity of the Phoenicians and
Carthaginians.
Marble of many colors and great beauty, iron, silver, copper, loadstone, gold,
pearls and rubies make of Spain, what it always has been, an inexhaustible storehouse
of wealth.
As the brilliant panorama of nature's wonders recedes from view we find ourselves
in royal Madrid amid towering domes and stately palaces. The Castilian capitol is
truly an eden of architectural beauty and splendor, and forms the center of an art cir-
cle unsurpassed in any other land. The royal palace is acknowledged to be the finest
structure of art in all Europe. It is a hollow square, four hundred and seventy feet
on the outside and one "hundred and forty feet within. A colonnade and a gallery runs
entirely around the inside of the square, and without are windows, cornices and col-
umns, adorned with heavy ornaments, except in the balustrade which crowns the whole
and hides the leaden roof from view. It is constructed of a kind of granite which has
the appearance of white marble; the only wood used in it is the frame of the roof, doors
and windows. The foundation stands entirely upon a system of subterranean arches.
A magnificent staircase of marble, on which the architect, sculptor and painter have
exhausted their arts, leads to the second floor, which is likewise supported by arches.
Here is a second colonnade and a gallery which looks upon the court and is paved
with marble. This gallery opens upon the apartments of the diffent members of the
royal family, the chapel and audience chamber. On the ceilings are the work of such
men as Mengs, Bayeux, Velasquez and Graedona, while the walls are adorned with the
best productions of Rubens, Titian, Murillo, Velasquez and Spagnoletto. The picture
gallery is a marvel of art, and contains the paintings of both ancient and modern mas-
ters, Claude, Van Dyke, Guido, Murillo, Poussin Raphael, Rubens, Teniers Titian,
Tintoretto, Velasquez, Paul Veronese and Wonvermans. It is only here that one can
study our Velasquez to advantage.
The small oratory of the king is the most beautiful apartment of the palace. It
is adorned with the richest and most finely variegated marbles found in the peninsula.
The furniture, tapestry, mirrors and clocks are of the highest style of magnificence.
The garden of the retiro is of great extent, with its Chinese temple, fountains, artificial
lake, gilded barge and royal menagerie. The most prominent object is the bronze
statue of Philip IV. Though the figures are four times as large as life, and the enor-
mous mass weighing nine tons is supported on the horse's two hind legs, yet there is
such harmony in all the parts as to prevent its appearing cumbrous or unwieldly.
The Fountain of the Swan is another fine piece nestled among the spreading trees.
The center is formed of cherubs riding on the back of a snow-white swan and holding
in their hands a torch, through which the water flows. In the garden of the Casino
stands the bronze statute of Phillip III., weighing twelve thousand pounds.
The Museum of Statuary and Painting is a wonder of elegance and ability in art
and design, a monument of Spain's days of prosperity, the beginning of its construc-
tion dating back to the time of Charles III. Here all the different schools of art are
represented, and, notwithstanding the wholesale plunder made upon it by other
nations, it still remains the finest of its kind in the world.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 401
The Spanish school is noted for its perfection of perspective and design and its
vivid and natural coloring. Our Morales followed Raphael, and his inimitable paint-
ings of Christ have gained for him the surname of Divine. Juan de Juanes is the
father of the Valencian school, which Spagnoletto afterward brought to the highest
state of perfection. Spagnoletto excelled in Bible scenes, especially those pictures
which represent sorrow and suffering. Velasquez was his cotemporary and possessed
something of his style. In portrait painting he surpassed even Titian and VanDyke.
Who that loves art does not know the sublime Murillo? He studied in Madrid
and never traveled out of Spain. He brought the Spanish school to the height of its
glory. Though Raphael is considered the most perfect of all artists, to Murillo must
be granted the honor of the highest excellence in representing nature; not as it ought
to be, but as it is. Indeed, the whole city of Madrid is a wonderful work of art. It
is laid out from a magnificent design. The " Puerta del Sol " is the heart of Madrid,
the middle of the spider web from which radiate all the principal streets.
We now turn from Madrid thirty miles away to the southeastern declivity of the
Guadarrama chain, and there, midway up the barren mountain-side, stands the Monas-
tery of St. Lawrence, or the " Escurial," the wonder of wonders, the eighth wonder of
the world. It was built by Phillip II. in memory of St. Lawrence, upon whose day he
won the Battle of Saint Quentin. No structure in the world, except the pyramids of
Egypt, gives so high an idea of human power. It cost originally ^50,000,000 and was
twenty-four years in building. It has two thousand rooms and five thousand windows.
This is the home of the famous pantheon, built in the ground directly under the altar
of the church, where lie in state the Kings and Queens since Charles V. To give any
kind of a description of the Escurial would require more time than you would be
willing to grant me.
I will pass it over by repeating to you what Harrison says of this stupendous
combination of wonderful magnificence: "A mausoleum, a monastery, a palace, a
church, a museum, a marvelous reliquary where the limbs and bones of hundreds of
saints were devoutly accumulated; a city of corridors, doors, windows and apartments;
a great library, a gigantic picture gallery, a network of tanks and towers, a confession
stool for princely humiliation, a village of monks; a town clinging to the sides of the
mountain wilderness, a swarming cloister, an austere hermitage, a fortress!"
Delicate marbles of many hues, damasks and velvets of Granada, bronze and iron
of Toledo, exquisite work in steel, gold and precious stones from Milan, gorgeous
tapestries from Flanders, rare embroideries from the thronging monasteries of Spain,
cedar, ebony, marvelously-tinted woods from beyond the seas — all that money, con-
summate taste and boundless dominion could summon — hung or glistened or blazed
with magical brilliancy within these walls. It is filled with inestimable treasures,
gems, oriental manuscripts, shrines, painting and sculptures.
The leaning tower of Saragossa is another wonder. Its antiquity enhances its
interest, having done duty as a clock tower for the church of San Felipe for many
centuries. It leans ten feet from the perpendicular, and is a solid structure of dia-
pered stone, handsomely filigreed. I have but touched at the center of the circle of
art in Spain. As it widens it also deepens, until we are lost more and more in amaze-
ment at the countless treasures contained in the long-despised Iberian peninsula.
The Cathedral of Toledo, the galleries of Seville, the arches and gardens of Cor-
dova, the Alhambra of Granada, the port of Malga, the many palaces of great note,
all embody grandeur and interest beyond the conception of any one mind.
Oh Sunny Spain, my native land!
My feet have trod the wide world o'er.
But nothing can I find so grand
As thy rich hills from shore to shore.
Thy azure skies and crystal streams,
Thy lovely valleys by the sea.
Thy stately palms and verdufe green,
The dearest of a!l earth to me.
f26)
NEED OF A GREAT COLLEGE IN THE SOUTH.*
By MISS CLARA CONWAY.
The women of the Jamestown Colony and the women of Plymouth Colony
were in large part children of the same race-ancestors. We are sisters. My
Celtic blood has assimilated the elements that make
our kinship doubly sure and doubly strong, and it
is with no alien tongue or manner that I come to
plead my people's cause on the eve of the anniversary
of the Nation's birthday morn, and on the spot made
sacred by the conseciation of American womanhood
to the cause of universal righteousness.
The awakening to sin and sorrow is as wan and
haggard in the golden morning of today as in the dim
daybreak of history. The great currents of human
passion ebb and flow to the same pulsations, and in
the flux of human destiny we are brought to a reali-
zation of the fact that we are closer to our women-
ancestors in feeling, in sympathy, in sisterhood than
in the bonds of historic kinship. Life had its zest for
them as for us, and the circling hours brought them
honor or dishonor, even as they bring us joy or sor-
row. Childish impulsiveness, self-indulgent paganism,
the restlessness of anew growth, were as strongly typ-
ical of their life as are the heart-strains of the Colum-
bian hearth-stones in the morning and evening of this
full day. Thebondoflove and duty is eternal. The call
to righteousness, feeble as ababy's cry in Teutonic days, is today a martial tone, resound-
ing along the line of the ages and awakening the world's hosts of women to liberty
and action. It would be sad, indeed, to think that the rude, unlettered woman, even
in her crudest thinking, had no glimpse into a richer, fuller life. It is more comfort-
able to hope that the woman of today is a realized ideal, beautiful and perfect in her
way, but not final. She shares the incompleteness of human life. The true reality is in
the mind of God, awaiting its slow evolution through the processes of time and destiny.
Between the silence and the stir the woman of today stands with a consciousness of
power, emphasized by this Columbian year as never before. The two worlds of the
past and future stand on each side, one illumined by the other. Turning away from
the silence, she hears the stir of action. Under the windows of her world she sees the
tumult of strife, and, looking out into the far-off boundless vista, she realizes that the
future has new interpretations and illuminations read in the light of the past. Her
life opens on both sides, and she stands, as Phillips Brooks would say, between a world
of beautiful ideals and the hard world of matter. Quick-leaping intuition, poetic
MiBs Clara Conway is a native of New Orleans, La. She was born August 14, 1844. Her parents were Margaret Riordan
Conway and Thomas Conway. She was educated at St. Agnes Academy, Memphis, apparently, but mainly by her own study
at home. She has traveled extensively in the United States and in Europe. . Her special work is preparing girls for colleges
principally Vassar and Wellesley. Miss Conway is founder and organizer of the Clara Conway Institute, Memphis, Tenn.,
whose enrollment in sixteen years has been about thirty-five hundred. It is now believed by many that Miss Conway, as a
leader, will succeed in having established a university for women in the South. Miss Conway advocates strongly prohibition
and equality. Her postoffice address is Memphis, Tenn.
MISS CLARA CONWAY.
* What appears is but the closing portion of an address entitled in full, "The Need of a Great College in the South for
American Girls."
402
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 403
thought, faith and love combine to stir up activity, and she answers: " Behold, I am
here to serve! " It is this woman to whom I speak today, asking that American
women recognize a common motherhood and a common sisterhood, that what is claimed
as justice for one may be justice for all; that in the distribution of love, and the gifts
of love, the Southern girl has equal recognition with her sister. She is of large brain,
of pure soul, of clean hands and of your own blood; flesh of your flesh and bone of your
bone. Trebly bereft by the desolations of war, she has yet actively and consci-
ously recognized the force of tioblesse oblige. Leisure and wealth gave to her grand-
mother an exquisite culture. Planter princes lavished fortunes upon the women
who were to be the dispensers of royal hospitality that " neither condescended nor
cringed."
The heritage of their daughters has been- poverty, but not humiliation, nor even
defeat, except the defeat of which success is born. From the ashes of the wreck they
came into their kingdom of strength and holiness. All over that beautiful land they
are nurse, teacher, home-tender, mother — sweet, wise and gracious. They are strong,
self-reliant, independent. They ask nothing for themselves, and if I ask in their
behalf, it is of those upon whom they have the claim of sisterhood. Schools are on
the hillsides and on the plains, good as the best of their kind, for white and colored
alike. Do not heed him or her who tells you that we do not provide for the educa-
tion of our colored people. The fund is a common one, and provision is made in the
public school for every boy and girl, white or black. The burden is heavy, but the
people have borne it without a murmur. Along the line of primary, secondary, high
school and academic instruction, all is well and growing daily better, but we have no
Smith, no Yassar, no Wellesley, no Holyoke, no Bryn Mawr. This means that private
endowment does not reach us. Our own people are not rich in material things, and
others are unmindful or forgetful. This is the claim I present today, not as a demand,
but with a strong, earnest appeal to the spirit of a large-hearted sisterhood, which has
planted the College Beautiful on so many Northern hillsides. Our girls must go far
from home for a broad and generous college culture, or they must do without.
Unfortunately, by far the larger majority cannot leave home by reason of limitations
that are apparent, and yet these noble-minded girls are the ones to whom this train-
ing is an absolute essential. This is not in accordance with the American spirit. Our
Mother Columbia does not mean to say to her large family of beautiful daughters:
" One-half may have all the joys and blessings of the higher education; the other half
must take the lower, or nothing."
It requires no prophetic vision to see the meaning of this waste to the higher
American life of the future; not to read the story of limitation to the universal cause
of womanhood, if we are not at once active in removing hindrances. There are more
pathetic tragedies than those of Teutonic battlefields, and first among them, surely,
is the disappointment of young hopes. " Today the morning is noisy with birds,"
tomorrow they may be old and silent. Let us look for effective rather than final
causes; and in seeking to find God everywhere, let us not be afraid to acknowledge the
value of national agencies, or to set forces to work that will help God redeem the
world. Let one of these be a college at the South for our girls, so magnificently
endowed with such bountiful provision for student aid that no good girl in search of
an education will be turned away. It should combine all the requirements of the best
discipline and instruction. Its foundation should be laid in the thorough training of
English according to the most approved methods. There should be a department of
domestic economy, so well equipped that every graduate of the college might be pre-
pared, not only for housekeeping, but for home-keeping. Thus shall we express our
faith, not only in an overruling Providence, but, as Charles Kingsley says, in an under-
ruling, around-ruling, and an in-ruling Providence, from whose inspiration comes all true
thought, all true feeling. Every hope is the beginning of its own fulfillment, saysourdear
Emerson; and as we walk out into the grounds today, let the out-door air sweep in the
vision I have sketched. Columbia, thou hast battlements of mountain treasure, caves
404 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of gold and silver, fields and pastures wide and warm, silent cities where two armies
sleep, and, more than all, hosts of imperial living men and women, sons and daughters
of the King. Above the tumult of the tempest, the storm of battle, the noisy clamor
of creeds, we hear them today pleading, not so much " to tunnel the mountain or ride
the sea," but to fill this fair earth with benedictions.
The Neibelungen hoard, the source of Teutonic woes, lies drowned in the deep
Rhine until the Judgment Day. It was a curse. Our gold, obedient to the heavenly
vision, builds a world of grand proportion, filled with richer music than that of cathe-
dral psalm. So, as we listen, the electric flash reveals a vision, and we look out to see
outlined against the Exposition sky the gracious figure of Columbia, equally enthroned
on her right her eldest daughter Jamestown, robed in pensive gray, the light of hope
on her brow, the sweet serenity of faith in her eye. On the left the second sister,
Plymouth, robed in tender blue, high-born resolve on her fine face and in her eye
the courage that meets death with a smile for love or duty's sake. Blue and gray!
forever one as in the sunset sky. The voice we hear is strong and tender. What does
she say, this fair Columbian maiden to her New England sister? Listen !
" Unfashioned was the earth,
The stars unset,
Ungiven was the air,
The sea not yet,
When in God's purposes
One small decree
Fastened eternally
My soul to thee."
MISS ALICE A. MITCHELL.
"THE NEW LIBERTY BELL."*
By MISS ALICE A. MITCHELL
It rings! the mighty bell of God;
It thrills the hearts beneath the sod,
And spirits of our Patriot Sires
Kindle again the sacred fires.
Hallelujah!!
It rings! and from its tongue of truth,
Bursts the victorious shout of youth;
The martyr's smile, the warrior's cheer
The star of women's frozen tear:
Hallelujah!!
It rings! and angels from the heights .
Salute the flag of Human Rights ;
As upward soars that radiant wing
Seraphs and men unite and sing.
Hallelujah!!
It rings! and with its tongue of flame
It writes upon the sky a name,
The name of freedom! — kneel O Earth,
God struck the hour that gave it birth.
Hallelujah!! Hallelujah!!!
Miss Alice A. Mitchell was born in Monmoath, Warren Coanty, 111., and is a sister of the late Lieut.-Commander Archie
N. Mitchell, U. S. Navy. Her parents were John Hull Mitchell, a lawyer, and Sasan Alice Smith Mitchell. She was edu-
cated in New York, Chicago, and at Monmouth College, 111. She has traveled extensively in her own country, has a wide
acquaintance among people in the social, literary and musical world. Her special work has been in the interest of litera-
ture, music and humanity. Miss Mitchell was the first woman in the United States to lift a baton as director, when her suc-
cess was instantaneous. Those who saw her lead at the Suffrage Congress will recognize that she possesses that strange
"mystery of commanding," which is a gift from Heaven. Her principal literary work is " Poems of Patriotism."
*This song was composed in honor of "The New Liberty Bell." It was first sung by Miss Mitchell at the Congresses in
the Woman's Building, and afterward at the first ringing of the bell at the West-front of the Administration Building-
Columbian EziKJsition.
405
MEXICO.
By MISS VIRGINIA VILLAFUERTE.
Ladies, I wish to manifest to you the honor I feel at your request to have me
address you. I am authorized by no ofificial authority to do so.
First: If I am a Mexican, I have not the orders
from Mexico to address you in the name of my coun-
try.
Secondly: Because this day, named " Mexican
Day," is not the Day of the Independence of Mexico,
but has been assigned Mexican Day by the order of
the general manager of this Fair and the United
States when they assigned a day to each nation.
The 15th of September, 1810, is the day in
every part of my country we honor as the day of
Liberty. A great and noble man by the name of
Miguel Hidalgoy Costilla gave us liberty. This hero
was to Mexico the father of that country as your
George Washington was of yours. In Mexico on the
15th and i6th of September all hearts honor him in
city and country alike. In walls and fields, on our
plains and mountain-tops, re-echoes " El guto!" — the
cry of liberty.
May I say a few words of my country, its cus-
toms and its public education for womanhood. In
the words of Mrs. Carmen Romero Rubio Diaz, our
president's noble wife, whose mental qualities are
known to both republics as the leader in ours, of education for woman, the "Angel of
the Home " should be placed upon the very pinnacle of educational facilities, every
opportunity given to her flights of fancy and imagination until she really occupies the
position she should do; and the time will come when the Mexican woman shall occupy
throughout the world in art and literature as noble a one as she does today, as the
"Angel of the Home" in Mexico
In the City of Mexico today schools for women exist, whose laurel crowned gradu-
ates go forth annually to elevate and civilize the nation in all its parts, and I can but
admire the nobility and long suffering of American men who so gallantly overlook
the failings of their sister women, place them in offices of all kinds, overlooking their
faults, and setting so noble an example to our Mexican Cabelleros.
In the Capitol we have a woman's home, the name of which is "The Protector."
This home was founded by Mrs. Diaz (the president's wife) and is maintained by her.
It is for the protection of the daughters of the working class. They have their daily
food, clothing and education while the parents are at work. This, which at first sight
might be looked upon with indifference, to those who have not money has been a bless-
ing, and to the founder a lasting benediction, which comes each day from those who
bless her for those favors her hands bestow so bountifully on them. If you have in
Senorita Virginia Villafaerte is a native of Toluca, State of Mexico, Mexico. She was born January 6, 1871. Her par-
ents were Jesus J. Villafuerte, of Victoria, Garmica. She was educated in the private college of Mrs. Guadalupe Gonsaller
del Pino in elocution, and has traveled over part of Mexico and in the United States. Her special work has been in painting
and embroidery. Her profession is that of a teacher in primary classes. Senorita Villafaerte is of the Catholic faith. Her
postoffice address is No. 24 Calle del Aguila, Mexico City.
406
MISS VIRGINIA VILLAFUERTE.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 407
this country such a hope in each of your very large cities, I am pleased to know of it, for
in all densely populated places are the fingers of charities most wanted.
In giving you my thanks for your kind invitation this day, I will promise to speak
to my patriotic sisters of the American women, of their life and their enjoyment of all
freedom and liberty of their work and how they are respected for it, each holding in
society the place sought, in accordance with her capacity.
THE VIRGINIA WOMAN OF TODAY.
MRS. MARY STUART SMITH.
By MRS. MARY STUART SMITH.
Whatever virtues or faults the daughters of Virginia now possess they are exceed-
ingly apt to be inherited qualities, for from infancy the little girl's imagination is
filled with the fair images of the women whom her
mamma and grandmamma admiredin their childhood,
and as she grows older her highest delight is to have
pictured for her the life in which these lovely, revered
beings moved. As she hears their virtues extolled,
her eye kindles and her bosom dilates with the desire
to be just such an one as they were, and to equal them
would be to attain to the acme of her ambition.
When the darkness that enshrouded with gloom
the Jamestown settlement, is illumined by the
radiance of such womanly virtue and self-sacrifice as
shines forth in the girlish form of Pocahontas, when
later the old Virginians had before their eyes such
■ models of womanhood as Mary and Martha Washing-
ton, Dolly Madison and Mrs. Jefferson, can they be
blamed for both admiring them and seeking to
emulate their example?
It is believed that at the period when these
ladies flourished, Virginia was full of women of the
same type, who, in the quietness of private life, prac-
ticed the same virtues as did they with equal stead-
fastness and simplicity, although 'not brought before
the public gaze by the accident of occupying a conspicuous station.
We think that it can also be proved that the Virginia women of today are not
degenerate, but have stood well that hardest of tests — adversity. The gentlewoman
who has known better days yet lives, not to bewail the past, but to make the best of
the present, is happily a genus of which the Old Dominion is full. The exceeding
rarity of moping, complaining women, or supinely indolent ones within her borders,
has been and is the theme of praise upon the tongues of all observers. Cheerfulness
and industry are the spirits that have exorcised the demons of misery and unrest, that
naturally swooped down upon Virginia's home circles after the war was over, and
would have preyed upon them disastrously, but for the sturdy exercise of these two
Christian attributes.
Twenty-eight years have passed since those dark days, and it would be hard to
name any branch of human industry in which Virginia women have not been found
toiling. They are represented in the Woman's Exchanges of every city where they
exist; we have teachers, clerks, artists, authors, editors, type-writers, elocutionists,
postmistresses, book agents and what not? Leesburgh, in the northern part of Vir-
Mrs. Mary Stuart Smith was born at the University of Virginia, February 10, 1834. Her parents were Gessner Harrison.
M. D., Professor of Ancient Languages at the University of Virginia, and Eliza Lewis Carter Tucker. She was educated at
home by her father and tutors, but was sent to Philadelphia to study music. Her travels have been in our own country and
Germany and England. She married Francis N. Smith, of Virginia, now Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University
of Virginia. Her literary works are scattered through many periodicals, and besides numerous translations she has
published, " Heirs of the Kingdom," " Lang Syne, or the Words of Mt. Vernon," " The Art of Housekeeping" and " Virginia
Cookery Book." She is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, president of several missionary societies, and
is at present regent of the Albemarle Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her permanent postoifice address
is University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
408
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 409
ginia, is famed for its embroidery. We hope it will not be deemed unbecoming to
advert to the fact that wherever a Virginia woman is at work, her personality is
marked. There is an indefinable charm about her gentle voice, cordial manners and
frankness that is better felt than described. Untrue she is to her rearing, if the love-
light is not in her eye, and if "the law of kindness is not the law of her lips."
Virginia hospitality has become proverbial, and it goes without saying, that this
quality, in its practical bearings, emanates mainly from the housekeeping branch of the
family. The increased burden entailed upon a family by the presence of guests must
be borne by the female members, and, therefore, where strangers are cordially wel-
comed to a seat at the family board, depend upon it, it is the mistress who deserves
the praise. Her large heart and loving sympathy with her fellow-creatures makes
every burden borne on their behalf seem light, and sweetens even domestic drudgery.
Thank God Virginia women still delight to honor the precept: " Be not forgetful to
entertain strangers," although this can not be done nowadays without personal exer-
tion. All New York recently laughed over the characteristic simplicity of a typical
old Virginian, whom at the great naval review chance threw near enough to Sir John
Hopkins, commander of the British fleet, to admit of speech. Impressed by the
admiral's appearance, and full of the enthusiasm of the hour, he rushed up to him,
saying: "Sir, are you a foreigner?" "I am an Englishman," was the cold reply.
"Well," exclaimed the stranger, "I live in Fauquier County, Virginia, and if you ever
come there, come to my house and I shall be delighted to see you." .
We may be sure that would-be entertainer of the Nation's guest had a helpmate
at home upon whom he could rely, should the stranger appear at her husband's
behest, to be ready to greet him with smiling face and open for him the best guest-
chamber, with its high post bedstead, dimity curtains, and lavender-scented linen.
Conservatism everybody admits to be an attribute peculiarly cherished in Vir-
ginia, yet more if possible by the women than by the men. The reason for any change
must be well proved before being adopted by a Virginian of either sex. Local attach-
ments are very strong in them, and doubtless this is one of the elements that enters into
the glowing patriotism that is apt to inspire the breast of everyone reared within that
widely diversified but homogeneous district, ycleped Virginia. And yet, what bundles
of contradiction we are. The same being at whose knee her sons drink in large
draughts the love of country has been bred in the belief that it is a shame for a
woman to intermeddle with politics, and to feel as if it were presumptuous in her to
talk of public affairs. The domestic circle has ever been believed in Virginia to be
pre-eminently woman's province. In the jealousy with which the people there guard
its privacy and sacredness they prove their English lineage.
The sanctity of the marriage relation is regarded with a primeval simplicity. It
is a land of happy marriages, large families, and loving bands of brothers and sisters.
Women smile when they are asked if they favor women's rights, so live they to bless
and be blessed in the sunshine of domestic happiness, that if there be a yoke upon
them they are perfectly unconscious of its existence; or, can it be that the yoke is
so softly lined with the velvet of courtesy and mutual respect, devotion and self-
sacrifice, that its pressure can never gall. Let Virginia women long rest in their
happy contentment, blind to any wrongs to be righted in the nature of their own lot.
To the generation now extant has not fallen the stimulus of the heroic epoch that
just preceded this. Upon them has blown the cold, biting winds of poverty, a
reduction in circumstances and narrowing of the horizon that is all the harder to
struggle against because its trials are of a petty, every-day sort, and if overcome and
transmuted into blessings, the victory is of that quiet, unobtrusive kind, which elicits
no praise and awakens no enthusiasm.
Here again we notice an apparent inconsistency. These same conservative, con-
tented, and domestic women are indomitable in their enterprise. They imbibe, by
intuition, it seems, the ideas of the age in which they live, and ten to one they are in
the van of every movement for the advancement of their sex, holding back, though
at all times they seem yet in the car of progress, driven by the spirit of the period.
410 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
For instance, at the very same time that Miss Elizabeth Blackwell was patiently and
persistently pressing her claim to be allowed to pursue the study of medicine in one
of Philadelphia's famous medical schools, meeting with ridicule and violent opposition,
in a lonely farmhouse in Virginia a young girl was seized with the same unquench-
able thirst after a knowledge of medical science, and triumphing over similar prejudices
and opposition, became a thoroughly educated physician, for she did not fail to
attend the first medical school that opened its doors to women. She traveled widely,
especially in the East, returned home to act the part of an angel of mercy during the
war, founded a hospital in the town nearest her own home, and died full of honors
while yet young. She did not depart, though, until she had demonstrated to the satis-
faction of all cognizant of her career, that what had been deemed a young girl's freak
had been rather a call from on high to enter a peculiar field of usefulness and benefi-
cence. Oriana Moon's name should be honored as one of the pioneers who opened
to woman the career of medical practitioner, which has given the missionary in the
East a lever of immense power for effecting the conversion of women, and through
them, the rising generation of Asia's myriads. Inspired by her example, two of her
sisters became students of Oriental languages, and ardent, successful missionaries to
China.
The standard of excellence in the study of English literature at one of Virginia's
best-known schools for young women — HoUins' Institute — is well illustrated by the
fact that for eight consecutive years, under the training of Prof. Wm. Tayloe Thom,
the prize offered to American schools of either sex by the New Shakespeare Society of
England, was won by members of his senior class in literature. This prize was given
for proficiency in a competitive examination prepared by the Shakespeare scholar, Mr.
H. H. Furness, and adjudged in England. The answers were printed and sent to
England, and upon one occasion complimented in an autograph letter received by one
of the successful competitors from no less a person than the then poet laureate, Lord
Tennyson.
In education Virginia women are determined not to be behind their fellows.
They have many flourishing seminaries which are thronged with pupils from their own
and other states.
In the one town of Staunton, with about ten thousand inhabitants, there are six well
equipped academies for girls, with an attendance of about a thousand pupils, repre-
senting many states. Even at our national capital no seminary for young ladies
maintains a higher standard than Norwood, presided over by honored Virginians.
Recently in Lynchburgh, the enthusiastic president of Randolph Macon College, at
Ashland, determined to found an institution for the higher education of women; and
such was the response obtained from the people, impoverished as they are, that in the
short space of eight weeks he obtained ^200,000, a sufficient sum to warrant him in
pushing forward the work. And now, after the interval of one brief year, the build-
ings have been reared on the most approved plans and next September will go into
operation — not a boarding school, but a veritable college for women.
The primary branches of education are not neglected in Virginia, and are largely
committed to the hands of women. The new mode of learning to read by sight rather
than sound, through power of observation rather than memory, has been quietly and
unobtrusively practiced in Virginia for the past fifty years. The writer was thus
taught in her mother's nursery at home.
It would seem, then, that Virginia women are prone to do, rather than boast of
their doings, and quietly pursuing the even tenor of their way, are largely oblivious of
comments made flattering or otherwise. The awakening, during the last two decades,
both as to literature and art, in this state has been amazing. Woman workers in both
these delightful branches of human industry may be reckoned by the legion, and
worth is by no means confined to those whose names are already public property. A
pleasant little incident indicates the possibilities of female achievement in the latter
direction, viz., that of art. Mr. Ginter, one of Richmond's wealthiest citizens, sent an
order to New York for two handsome water-color drawings, to ornament a particular
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 411
style of room, and the art dealer sent him two that were executed by a Miss Williams
of Mr. Ginter's own city. But, you observe, the New York seal was required to be
set upon Southern vvork before its value was acknowledged at home. The failure to
recognize and cherish the genius of her own artists and literary workers is one of the
few blots on Virginia's escutcheon. May it be the happy portion of the present gen-
eration to wipe out this reproach.
The fact that there has been literally no market at home for literary production
has widely scattered the forces, and sent to the ends of creation that which would
have been so much more gladly dispensed at home. The number of Virginia women
who are contributors to literature in some form or other is far larger than is generally
known, and the generosity with which their labor has been encouraged and recom-
pensed by Northern and Western editors is noteworthy, and deserves the warmest grat-
itude. If Virginia women are not broad-minded and do not include in feelings of
friendly affinity their sisters of all states, it is a strange thing; for, verily, they have
ties of kinship to bind them with every state and territory from the borders of Mexico
to those of British Columbia, and from the shores of the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Virginian is almost as ubiquitous as the Jew throughout all parts of the United
States, and while he seems everywhere at home and a favorite, he rather resembles the
Chinese in the fondness with which he reverts to his native place, keeping it before him
as a load-star of hope. " I shall go back and settle at home when success is won, for
my body must rest nowhere but in old Virginia."
When the question of representation at this great World's Fair came up, the heart
of our people beat in sympathy. But the means required were not at hand. Our leg-
islature concluded that, being in debt, they could vote but an inadequate appropria-
tion for the fit appearance of such a venerable state. But a board was appointed, and
when with general approval they selected an exact copy of Mount Vernon, the home
of Washington, as a receptacle for our exhibit, the fountain of feeling was stirred, and
many a poor and hard-worked woman resolved that she would make pilgrimage to
this sacred spot, and from it as a starting-point participate in the delight of social inter-
course with her fellows from all parts of the country, be thrilled with patriotism at such
a sublime display of the wealth, glory and greatness to which that republic has attained,
of which our own Washington was the first President, and love for whose memory
does more than any other one circumstance to weld our commonwealths, together as
a united people.
Individual exertion was needed to equip even so plain a state building as we
have, and the lady who was appointed to do the honors of Mount Vernon was one,
whom we all agreed, filled every condition of the representation; we were all will-
ing, nay proud, to have Mrs. Beale personate the Virginia matron. Her name
must go down to posterity as that of one who did more than any other of her
sex in Virginia to enable Virginia to take her place in Chicago, side by side with
her sister states. She was untiring in her labors, working from a lofty, patriotic
standpoint, and wherever she appeared interest was awakened, co-operation secured,
and lovely and efficient coadjutors stood by her side. Mrs. Paul, one of our national
lady managers, has also achieved a task for which is due her the thanks of all Virgin-
ians, viz., the collecting and having catalogued a list of Virginia authors and their
works. Such a work will in itself be a monument to the intelligence and efficiency
of a Virginia woman.
Sisters of other states! Few experiences has the writer found more thrilling than
the opportunity afforded at this grand Congress to converse with women of other
lands and different training. But more especially sweet is it to hold loving commun-
ion with the residents of other states. If this Exposition has no other effect, it will
wonderfully promote friendliness between the different sections of our country, and
doing this, its results can be none other than blessed.
Let the last word now spoken concerning Virginia women be a greeting on their
part of warm good-will to those who preside over these Congresses, and to the genial,
liberal women assembled here from all parts of the world.
SYNOPSIS OF "PEACE."
MRS. MARY ELIZABETH LEASE.
By MRS. MARY ELIZABETH LEASE.
In the shadowy morning of the world's childhood, when man dwelt in caves clad
in skins of animals, and feasted upon blood-reeking flesh, might made right, brute
force prevailed, and he whose sinewy arm could best
direct the murderous aim of spear or arrow, he who
from the chase bore the greatest number of bleeding
trophies as evidence of his barbarous prowess was
acclaimed a mighty warrior. And as the world grew
the struggle for supremacy was transferred from butch-
ery of beasts to the butchery of men. And he who
participated in the bloodiest wars, who bore the brunt
of battle while slaughtering his fellow-men, he whose
soldier's wreath was deepest dyed and darkest stained
with human blood, had attained the standard of human
greatness and was made ruler or crowned king by an
applauding people.
Under the benign influence" of the teachings.of
the Nazarene, the " Man of Peace," the standard of
the world's greatness no longer accords to blood-
stained men the greatest laurels, but to him who seeks
to uplift and rescue suffering humanity, to him who
practices as well as preaches that new command, the
life and soul of every religion, " Love ye one another,"
the benediction falls.
Two great forces have for centuries contested for
supremacy; Caesarism, the doctrine of hate, and the religion of Jesus Christ, the doc-
trine of love. We have professed Christianity, filled God's blue sky full of church
spires and preached the doctrine of love while practicing the doctrine of hate. Te
Deums are chanted in our churches and thanks returned to a God of peace for bat-
tles won and murderous men triumphant. The horrible inconsistency between relig-
ious belief and action is dawning upon the hearts of the race, and they declare that
the real sin against the Holy Ghost is to strike at God through His image, man; that
we have been living a gigantic lie, and that unless we practice what we profess to
believe we had best stop building churches and supporting ministers, and take down
our signs of Christianity and go out of the business. An honest Pagan is exemplary
compared with a lying, hypocritical Christian.
The hatred implanted in the minds of unborn children by the mothers of the
North and South thirty years ago is today struggling to give expression in force.
The world is ready for another baptism of blood. The " dragon's teeth " sown in that
fratricidal war are springing up "armed men." A dark cloud, surcharged with the
electricity of the coming storm, is suspended above the nation. The rumblings of
discontent and mutterings of war are heard coming up from every side. The women
of this nation can alone avert the conflict. Let them come into their kingdom, claim
Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lease is a native of Pennsylvania. She was born September 11, 1853. Her parents were Joseph P.
Clyens and Mary Elizabeth Murray Clyens. She was educated in the Allegany (convent^ School, N. Y., and in the Young
Ladies' Seminary, Ceres, N. Y., and has traveled in Great Britain, in the United States and in Canada. She married Charles
L. Lease June 30, 1873. Her special work has been in the interest of women and the laboring classes. Her principal literary
works are essays and lectures on economic subjects, and a volume of poems not yet published. Her profession is that of
attorney at law. In religious faith she is a Christian, or Campbellite. Her postoffice address is Wichita, Kan.
412
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 413
their own, assert their power and bid the murderous passions of men cease, as Christ
stilled the stormy waves of Galilee. Peace! be still.
The mothers of this nation, the mothers of the world, shall no longer rear their
sons to be slain, or give their loved ones to be butchered. If men can not get along
without the shedding of blood and putting the knife to the throat of brother, let them
no longer set themselves up as guides and rulers, but confess their self-evident ineffi-
ciency and turn the management of affairs over to the mothers, who will temper their
justice with love and enthrone mercy on the highways. Then shall that peace that
surpasseth human understanding, the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, abide among
men and redeem the world. Theirs the mission to bring about that time when the
Golden Rule shall be incarnated in human affairs and govern the world; theirs the
mission to usher in that time of which Isaiah sang and the prophets have so long
foretold — that time, the hope of which has lingered in the hearts of men, and mingled
with their hopes and yearnings, since the "morning stars first sang together when the
earth was young."
" Oh Christ! Thou friend of men,
When thou shalt come again
In truth's new birth.
May all the fruits of peace
Be found in rich increase
Upon the earth."
We are nearing the dawn of the Sabbatical period — the dawn of the glorious
twentieth century — of which that inspired champion of human rights, Victor Hugo,
makes prophecy.
"In the twentieth century war will be dead, famine will be dead, royalty will be
dead, but the people will live." A fuller and holier comprehension of the Lord's
prayer is filling the hearts of the people. " Our Father, Thy will be done on earth as
it is in Heaven," will usher in that era when "the swords shall be beat into plow-
shares, the spears into pruning hooks; when nations shall not go to war against
nations, neither shall they learn war any more."
yCSTHETIC CULTURE.
MRS. PRISCILLA BAIRD.
By MRS. PRISCILLA BAIRD.
The progressive spirit of the age is certainly emphasized by the increasing and
almost imperious demand for higher culture of the race. The rights of the individual
and the claim of society are, that the greatest attain-
ments within the possibilities of the human soul shall
be realized fully and speedily. The highest possible
culture can be compassed by nothing less than the
most comprehensive, yet truly scientific, view of life
as to its subjective and objective capabilities. The
human organism is a miniature representation of the
economy of the material universe. Diversity in
unity, and harmony evolved from conflict. The
glory of our world is the beautiful blending into
harmonious co-operative forces that seem diverse and
at times warlike. Nature without her sublime kaleido-
scope would be disrobed of her matchless and End-
less charms, snowy peaks and flowery vales, sunshine
and shadow, moaning ocean and rippling rivulet,
monarch oak and tender floweret, the raging storm and
the whispering breeze — all enter into the full com-
pleteness of this abode of man, this theater of life's
progressive drama. Even so is life itself. Life is not
an automatic monatone, it is the triple voicing of
three in one organism, an organic union of mind,
soul and body. These distinct yet not separate
factors of a unit combine to make the complete whole. There is no higher culture
where aims and methods are lower than the capabilites and susceptibilities of the sub-
ject. That is not true culture that exalts one factor of man's complex nature to the
abasement of another factor, the exaltation of the intellectual at the expense of the
ethical, or the display of superficial accomplishments at the sacrifice of the intellectual,
or the excess of external blandishments to the neglect of the aesthetic spirit, tends
to the unsymmetrical and the gross. Education, the handmaid of Christianity, must
gird up her loins, and arrayed in her beautiful garments penetrate the regions beyond
the traditional education that limps upon the crutches of conventional and arbitrary
technique of the schools. The emancipated spirit of the age cries out for compre-
hensiveness of scope, and harmony of methods with man's vast powers and God-like
gifts; not only is enlargement of mental capabilities demanded, but a corresponding
development of all the powers of a triune-nature.
The ethical element of our nature is as much a constitutional force as the intel-
lectual, and functionally it ranks higher, its office is more influential in character, mak-
ing its contributions to progress more munificent. Theories that ignore the wise and
beneficent laws of our natures are downright cruelties. That is a malculture that sacri-
fices the beauty, strength and grace of the human form divine to the exactions of intel-
Mrs. Priscilla Baird -was born in Shelby Connty, Kentucky. Her" parents were Virginians, Samuel E. Davis and
Harriet Milton Bell Davis. She -was educated by private tutors and at Mrs. Julia A. Tivis' school " Science HiU," in Shelby-
ville, Ky. Mrs. Baird first married Jesse K. Baird, of Louisville, Ky. Her second husband is Mr. H. T. Baird, of Louisiana,
Mo. For thirty years she has been interested in higher education, having been connected with various schools of the Baptist
Church, and with public high schools. In religious faith she is a Christian, and is a member of the Baptist Church. Her
ancestors were with Roger Williams. Her postotfice address is Clinton, Mo.
414
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 415
lectual ambition. The body is the temple and agent of the mind; without it the soul
has no earthly mission. But the more than incidental factor of higher culture is the
aesthetic; it is by this that refinement distinguishes itself from the crudities of uncult-
ivated nature, even as the loveliness and fragrance of the rose asserts its difference to
the wild brier bloom; it is this that hangs the diamond-bestudded drapery about
the portals and columns and corridors of the temple of humanity. If there were no
love in man for the beautiful in nature and in human life, the uplifting of humanity
above its conditions of savagery were a hopeless prospect. What makes life more than
a struggle for existence? What dignifies labor above the demands of animal nature?
What inspires human enterprise to more than a conflict with hunger and cold? Is it not
a response of the spirit of man to the language of the beautiful ? What has made homes
more than the hovel, the wigwam and the hut? Have we not in ornate architecture,
in decorated drawing-rooms, in cultured music and bower-bedecked lawns a symbol of
the Divine impress upon the soul? Does not all nature voice God's love of the beau-
tiful? We shadow the Divine image in man when his aesthetic culture is neglected. It
is, indeed, next to impossible to intelligently think of a pure life and high social con-
ditions where there is no development of the latent aestheticism of the soul. If man's
material surroundings awakened in him no thought but that of sensual gratifications,
and inspired no effort but for aggrandizement, what were he but a savage did he see
no beauty in the sparkling worlds above? If to him there were no music of the spheres,
no mountain grandeur, no awe in the fathomless deep, whence could come aspirations
for soul-uplifting, and what could inspire heroic contests for the freedom of thought
from the bondage of animalism? In every human soul there are germs of the beauti-
ful; they may be hidden and suppressed by unpropitious conditions. The Divine mis-
sion of culture is to evolve from lowest to highest forms all that is excellent.
Forms nearly angelic have been evolved from crude and rude originals. Sym-
phonies as sweet as Apollo's lute have been tempted from rustic lips. The spirit and
genius of a Mendelssohn or a Wagner may linger pent up in some breast waiting the
touch of generous circumstances, that it may break forth in harmonies divine. Some-
where in obscurity lives today one "who sees in stately trees, in frowning cliffs, in rolling
clouds and in majestic rivers the symbols of that personal greatness, purity and lofti-
ness of thought, splendor of diction, that is to enthuse multitudes, enchain senates and
indelibly write his name upon his country's heart. If the aesthetic is a real force, can
it be intelligently denied that the ethical element of our nature is quickened and refined
by aesthetic culture? May I not the better express my thought by re-shaping my ques-
tion? Can there be, is there any true culture where the aesthetic is ignored, or even
neglected? He who sees no beauty in an autumnal sky as the luminous king slips
behind the gilded curtains of the Occident, no charms in the morning beauty of the
diamond-decked grass and flower, is he who sees no beauty in virtue, no charm in
pure love, no merit in right, and no loveliness in sympathy; such a one, be he an astute
logician or an accomplished linguist, an expert mathematician, a skillful chemist, a
learned jurist, a Napoleon of finance, or a prince of politicians, yet void of sympathy
with life as it is, has not met the demands of his nature. For true culture is the modi-
fication of intellect under the force of ethical principles, developed and refined by cult-
ured love of the beautiful in nature and in life. My plea is for the rounded, symmet-
rical development of humankind into the highest forms of culture, that man may be a
full expression of power and beauty.
WOMAN IN SACRED SONG.
By MRS. EVA MUNSON SMITH.
Without doubt Eve sang in that garden of gardens, at first for very joy, to express
her love and gratitude to the Creator for the boon of life. Some of the most gifted
and imaginative of our woman poets have put songs
in her mouth depicting her sorrow after the edict of
banishment had been pronounced. " Must I leave
thee, paradise?" is the saddest of songs, bringing out
in the harmonic minor passages which form the most
mournful of all intervals, the deep pathos and bitter
anguish experienced by our first parents.
I am not before you today to affirm that the gift
of song is particularly feminine, but simply to do jus-
tice to woman, in setting forth, to some extent, the
part she has taken in sacred song.
There is no sex in the gift of song writing; for
years I doubt not that many of us here today sung
" Nearer my God to Thee," and "Just as I Am With-
out One Plea," before we knew that Sarah Flower
Adams, in 1841, and Charlotte Elliott, in 1833, were,
respectively, the authors.
Let us go backr to the earliest sacred songs on
record by women. About three or four thousand
years B. C. we have the triumphal song of Miriam as
she marched forth, accompanied by her maidens, with
timbrel and dance after the safe passage of the chil-
dren of Israel through the Red Sea, chanting: "Sing ye to the Lord! for He hath
triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea!"
Then there is the song of Deborah and Barak, which seem somewhat in responsive
measure. Intense joy or sorrow calls for a song. No cause, or reform, or form of
oppression takes deep hold upon the heart of a community until the service of song
is enlisted. Hence, in Russia, as in other lands that have been prosperous at times
and oppressed at others, we find both the joyful and the sad; but the minor strains of
sadness prevail in the so-called sacred or religious songs of that country. The Gregor-
ian chant was the simplest, as it was the most primitive, and was weird and mournful.
Prominent among the names of the song writers among women of that country is
Anna Brenin, born in 1774, who, under great difficulties, wrote much that was meritor-
ious, and so won the heart of the Empress Elizabeth that she had a pension bestowed
upon her. Very few of their hymns have been translated into English, though a con-
siderable number are found translated into the French. The Countess Tolstoi is one
of the leading composers of Russia today.
Among the hymnologists pre-eminent among women during the years of 1700
Mrs. Eva Munson Smith was born in Monkton, Vt., in 1843. Her parents were of stanch New England stock, and her
father was one of the most eminent educators and patriots of his day. She was educated at Mary Sharp College, Winchester,
Tenn., and at Rockford College, 111. From the latter she was graduated in 1864. She has traveled extensively in the United
States and has seen life in many phases. She married Mr. George Clinton Smith in 1869, in Nebraska. They have resided in
Illinois for twenty years. Mrs. Smith is a temperance worker and philanthropist. At present she is president of the Suffrage
Association of Springfield. For five consecutive years she was president of the North Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Her principal literary works aie " Woman in Sacred Song," " The Field is the World," and a great number of sketches. Mrs.
Smith is a member of the Presbyterian Church. Her postoffice address is 511 North Grand Avenue, Springfield, 111.
416
MRS. EVA MUNSON SMITH.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 417
maybe mentioned Lady Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, 1707, who wrote, "When
Thou, my righteous Judge, shall come," and " Fading, Still Fading, the Last Beam
is Shining;" also Madame Guyon, who wrote while in prison,
"A little bird am I,
Shut from the fields of air.'
Of her numerous hymns, the best known in the churches of the present day are: — "If
life in sorrow must be spent; " " Oh Thou, by long experience tried; " and " Oh Lord,
how full of sweet content ! "
But it was Anne Steele (born in England in 1716, and died in 1778) who is the
author of more hymns than ariy other woman of her time, which have been generally
accepted and are still sung by the churches of all denominations, one hundred and
forty-four of which were printed just after her death, the profits of sales going to aid
benevolent objects, and gradually finding their way into all hymn-books in all Chris-
tian climes.
Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, whose name until recently was simply given as
Barbauld by compilers, was of the same nationality as Miss Steele, and was con-
temporaneous with her. All of us have sung hundreds of times her " Come, said
Jesus' sacred voice; " "When as returns this solemn day;" " Again the Lord of life
and light awakes the kindling ray;" "How blest the sacred tie that binds!" " Praise
to God! immortal praise!"
But it is when we have reached the year 1800 that a perfect flood of sacred song
bursts forth.
In 1850 Caroline Southey, wife of the poet, wrote "Calvary," and near that date
the well-known, " Oh, fear not thou to die;" and the celebrated, " Launch thy boat,
mariner."
Of Mrs. Heman's sacred songs, so full of tenderness, pathos, beauty, and at the
same time vigor and intensity, more is known.
When her name is mentioned, that of Mrs. Sigourney is at once suggested. The
former, born in England in 1793, dying in 1835; the latter, born in Norwich, Conn.,
in 1 791, dying in her later home, Hartford, Conn., in 1865, were, as is seen, contempo-
raneous; and though they never met, as far as known, or became acquainted each
with the literary works of the other, there is thought to be a similarity in their pro-
ductions.
Mrs. Sigourney's hymns, "The Lord is on His Holy Throne; He sits in kingly
state;" "Go to thy rest, fair child;" "Onward, onward, men of Heaven!" "When
adverse winds and waves arise;" and especially the very familiar and greatly-
beloved hymn, "Lab'rers of Christ, arise!" will endure as long as the world has need
of such songs.
Of Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning what need be said? She whom even the
most eminent among the brotherhood of poets acknowledge as their peer. Vigorous
and strong in her utterances, she is yet tender and appealing. Her " Cry of the chil-
dren " is known and quoted the world over wherever wrong and oppression exist
toward any of earth's little ones. All of her poems seem sacred.
In her poem entitled "Work" occurs the oft-repeated words —
"God did anoint thee with His odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign."
and —
"The last flower with a brimming cup may stand
And share its dewdrops with another near."
Her "De Profundis" and "He Giveth His Beloved Sleep" are known everywhere.
How many of us, while singing: —
" 'Tis religion that can give
Sweetest pleasure while we live;"
(27)
418 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ever thought of the words being by a woman — Mary Masters? I am glad to know a
woman wrote it, and hundreds of others we sang so long with the supposition that
they emanated from^ the heart and brain of the brotherhood. Not that they are any
better for belonging to the sisterhood of authors, but because I believe in " Honor to
whom honor is due."
If women have written hymns so good and acceptable that all Christendom is sing-
ing them, let them have the credit.
" Work for the night is coming," was written by Annie L. Walker, of Canada?
For years after its first appearance in i860, it was over the signature, Rev. Sidney
Dyer; and in some of our standard and comparatively recent revisions and late com-
pilations his name is still appended to it. But gradually the name of the true author
is given with the song. Dr. Dyer did write a song of that name, but he does not claim
this one that we all sing.
Even in a hasty, running review like this, in which only a comparative few can
be mentioned, it would not do to omit the names of Mrs. Prentiss, author of " More
love to Thee, O Christ;" Harriet B. Buell, in" I'm the child of a King;" Mrs. Dana, in
" Flee as a bird to your mountain;" " Pass under the rod," and that famous old tem-
perance song —
" Sparkling and bright,
In its liquid light;"
Mrs. Mackay's " Asleep in Jesus;" Mrs. Dr. Herrick Johnson's " The whole wide world
for Jesus."
"The Ninety and Nine," by Mrs. Clephane, has been pronounced by some of our
devout men and evangelists " the sacred song of the century," despite some lame or
imperfect feet which unfits it somewhat for congregational singing, but does well for
solo use. It is the sentiment so beautifully and touchingly expressed that goes home
to the sinner's heart and wins him or her to Christ.
Let us beware of prescribing too narrow limits to what may be considered hymns
of a high order.
Do not those who accomplish the most good deserve to be ranked very high?
Are not the grandest of all those who set forth the doctrines of grace, the compassion
of Jehovah, the condescension of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit? The " Ninety
and Nine," and " Nearer, my God, to Thee," may be called the great world hymns,
alike acceptable, as they are, to Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, the world over.
Mrs, Joseph F. Knapp, of Brooklyn, a lady of wealth, culture and position, and
her sainted mother, Mrs. Phoebe Palmer, of " holiness" fame, gone years ago to her
reward, have done much to enrich sacred song. Mrs. Knapp composes from very love
of it — an inspiration that moves her to give expression to the well of joy and grati-
tude that continually springs up within her consecrated being. Some of her best
music is the setting she has given to the hymns of the blind hymnologist, Fanny
Crosby (Mrs. Van Alstyne), of New York.
And this brings us to this wonderful blind singer. It used to be said, a woman may
be found now and then who has written one or two acceptable hymns, but it requires
a man to write many that are meritorious. Fanny Crosby, seven years ago, was
reported by Dr. Herbert P. Main as having written nineteen hundred for Bigelow &
Bain's publications alone. She had also written for many other firms, and has been
writing continuously ever since. She is certainly entitled to the crown, as the most
prolific hymnologist of the day, regardless of sex, so far as diligent inquiry and
research can determine, she having written, without doubt, over three thousand that
have been accepted.
To mention all the musical productions of the lamented Frances Ridley Haver-
gal, of England, would require several pages, and the incidents connected with them
an entire day. Though she may not have written any greater number of hymns that
are sung everywhere than has Fanny Crosby, she has composed much music of a high
order; for instance, her setting of "Tramp, tramp, tramp, on the downward way,"
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 419
" Resting," and her verse, so comforting to mourning hearts, or those going through
the furnace of any affliction, fill numerous volumes; to say nothing of her booklets,
and poems in illuminated and illustrated souvenir style. Among her best known and
cherished songs, sung everywhere, are: " I gave My life for Thee;" " Take my life, and
let it be consecrated. Lord, to Thee;" "Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord
is King! "
Among the song collections for use in temperance meetings, and they are numerous,
with two-thirds of the contents by women, Anna Gordon's " White Ribbon Hymnal,"
and " Marching Songs for Young Crusaders," deserve mention, as does " White Ribbon
Vibrations," by Mrs. Flora H. Cassell, of Nebraska.
Frances E. Willard, chieftain of the temperance hosts, and Mary B. Willard, her
sister-in-law, though making no pretentions as poets, have written some rare verse
that will live.
The cluster of Easter and Resurrection carols, by Mary Lowe Dickinson, cannot
be excelled. One might dare challenge the world to produce a better set than those by
this graceful and forceful, consecrated daughter of the King. There is a ripple of
love and devotion in them throughout.
It was in 1841 that the Electress of Brandenburg wrote, "Jesus Lives," which was
translated from the German into English by Frances Elizabeth Cox, the author of " In
some way or other the Lord will provide."
Jane Taylor's " Far from mortal cares retreating;" " Come to the hour of prayer;"
Ellen M. Gates' " I will sing for Jesus," set to music and first sung by Philip Phillips;
" The Home of the Soul;" " Your Mission " (the great favorite of President Lincoln;"
" If we knew;" "Beautiful Hands;" "The Prodigal's Return;" Anna L.Warner's "In
heavenly love abiding," are among those that cannot be passed by.
Clara H. Scott is the only woman in the world, so far as known, to compile and
publish an anthem book. Her " Royal Anthem Book," of some three hundred pages,
has met with great favor among church choirs, and her "Oh, when shall I be free?"
and " Te Deums," are sung all over the United States.
May Riley Smith's " Tired Mothers" and "If" have brought comfort to many.
Who does not know them, and that they belong to her, though often seen anonymously
in the papers? Her "Sometimes" was once credited to Helen Hunt, whose verse all
admit to be of a very high order. When asked if she was the author, she replied in
the affirmative. " One day," she went on to say, " I was on the cars, going from Chi-
cago to Springfield" (which latter was then her home), "and I noticed a lady and
gentleman in front of me, the former of whom held in her hand the portrait of a lovely
child. As she talked of the original, gone to her heavenly home, tears fell fast, and
ofttimes she kissed the picture of the beautiful child. I grew sober, and then sad.
Taking a pencil and crumpled bit of paper from my pocket, I composed that poem."
Or, rather, it seemed to compose itself; she simply wrote it down as it rapidly came
to her.
Just a few lines of one of her gems:
"If we knew the baby fingers.
Pressed against the window pane,
Would be cold and stiff tomorrow.
Never trouble us again:
Would the bright eyes of our darling
Catch the frown upon our brow?
Would the print of rosy fingers
Vex us then, as they do now?"
Next to Fanny Crosby, perhaps Miss M. E. Servoss, of Chicago, has furnished as
many acceptable hymns as any one woman in this country. They are found in thirty-
nine or forty different collections, accompanied by the name, M. E. Servoss, and for
years the author was supposed to be a man. She interprets a high plane of religious
420 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
emotion, associating it with a sentiment and imagery which Christian hearts will ever
love and cherish, and in which they will find refuge and comfort. Such hymns strike
light across the consciousness of Christians everywhere.
Other names not yet mentioned, associated with other lines of thought and action,
who have written creditable sacred verse, are: Julia C. Dorr, Margaret J. Preston, Mar-
garet E. Sangster, the latter of whom we associate with journalism, as we also do Alice
M. Guernsey, Laura M. Rittenhouse, Mary H. Krout, author of " Little Brown Hands;"
Hester M. Pool, Mrs. Nicholson, so long editor of the New Orleans Picayune ; Marie
L. Eve, of Georgia; Lide Merriwether, of Tennessee; Emily Huntington Miller, Dinah
Muloch Craig, who wrote, "Where is the unknown country to which my soul must
go?" Adelaide Proctor, in "The Lost Chord," "Will He Come?" who also wrote the
words of "Cleansing Fires," which Virginia Gabriel set so charmingly to music;
Annie Wittenmeyer in, "I have entered the valley of blessing so sweet; " Ellen
Oliver in, "The Prayer of the Wanderer," and Lucy Larcom, whose productions are
noted for their brightness and sunshine, and who not long since passed from earth to
Heaven, taking some of earth's brightness with her. It is always a genuine pleasure
to quote any of her lines; for instance, the simple couplet:
"Thank God for the work He lets us do!
I am glad that I live in the world with you."
Lucy Larcom was in love with toil, and sung it as a lover sings to hJ3 adored one.
And the triplet, claiming all the children as her very own:
" Too many for one house you see,
And so I have to let them be
In care of other mothers."
She had the true mother instinct.
Mary Clemmer Ames-Hudson was one whom we associate with journalism who
has written choice verse.
What shall be said of Jean Ingelow, with her matchless " Songs of Seven " and
myriad other gems; of Charlotte Bronte and others who deserve mention in this con-
nection? What need be said? They are known and their works speak for them.
Of the deaf mute sisterhood whose names are among those taking the lead, may
be mentioned Angle Fuller Fischer and Laura Redden Searing {nom.de plume, "How-
ard Glyndon"). The latter's "Sweet bells jangled out of tune" is extensively known
and largely quoted, while Mrs. Fischer's volume of poems entitled, "The Venture,"
was extolled by Whittier and other people of eminence.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox has written on a multiplicity of topics. Her patriotic verse
and that on temperance may be classed as sacred, and her poem entitled "The
Engine," is among the most forcible of all her word-paintings, and ranks with the best
of that style among men.
All are familiar with Mrs. Elizabeth Aker's "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother," and
many know the sweet sacred songs of Susan P. Bartlett, Susie V. Aldrich, and many
of whom time and space forbid mention in a limited paper.
WOMAN AS A COMPOSER.
Does anyone assert we have no high order of music or song composers among
women? What can be finer than Mrs. Gen. W. S. Hancock's " Magnificat," and her
"TeDeums?" Her " Song Service Book," for the Episcopal Church, has won high
encomiums. The "Ave Maria," in six flats, of Helen Douglas, now wife of Lieut.
John F. French, of the Regular Army, is unique, decidedly original and very difficult,
being most pleasing to the higher grade of cultured singers. The instrumental " St.
Agnes Eve" — a song without words, by Madam Careno — is exquisite, and is placed
among the classical music of the century. Mme. Clara Schumann took up the
thread of harmony divine dropped by her lamented husband, and is still carrying it
on with marvelous success.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 421
Despite all discouragement, woman as a composer is getting to be a known quan-
tity. Mme. Marie Bird de Marion is a publisher of music in Chicago, and among
her own meritorious compositions is a lullaby recently issued, which is meeting much
praise.
All nationalities have had their singers. Nilsson and Jenny Lind were the pride
of the Swedish people. Of the latter an eminent divine of New York said recently in
a sermon: " I once paid six dollars to hear Jenny Lind warble. I have never paid a
cent to hear anyone groan." As lyric artists women have commanded the largest
pay ever accorded the sex for anything. Thousands of dollars for a single even-
ing's performance has been given Nilsson, Patti, and others. # * #
Even the African race has had its "Black Swans;" and of our own American song-
sters the names of Emma Abbott, Clara Louise Kellogg, Emma Thursby, Minnie
Hauk, Jessie Bartlett Davis, our own Illinois contralto, but begin the list of those
who have attained distinction. Among those who have already shown what women
can do in composition are: Liza Schumann, of London, who writes for the piano and
voice, and sings beautifully herself; Miss EUicott, daughter of the bishop of Glou-
cester, in England, who has written some fine cantatas; Miss Smith, the protege of
the Empress Eugenie; Maud Valeri Whilt, who composes religious works; Augusta
Holmes, an Irish girl living in Paris, who composes ballads and symphonic poems
with great success; the Countess Tolstoi, of Russia, who has written some excellent
songs; Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, of Boston, who writes great dramatic arias for the voice
and orchestra; Mme. Bandman, of Vienna, whose church music is very popular; Miss
Helen Hood, of Boston, who wrote those beautiful songs, " Disappointment" and "The
Violet;" Miss Margaret Ruthven Lang, of Boston, whose compositions are quite pre-
tentious; Miss Clara Kathleen Rogers, of Boston, who wrote "The Clover Blossom,"
besides many other songs and sonatas for piano and violin; Mile. Chaminade, Miss
Gertrude Griswold, Helen Hopekirk, and Eleanor Smith." To these let us add the
names of Caroline Richings Bernard, the celebrated singer and composer of many
gems, prominent among which is "Oh Word of God Incarnate;" Isadore De Laro,
who is the author of "The Garden of Sleep" — a rare bit of melody; Mrs. E. R. John-
son, Mrs. Le Moncrieff and Edith Cooke. As regards the lyric songsters, their voices
live after them in memory only. They instinctively feel the incentive to work now;
to be heard and known now. The future is not theirs.
Composers and poets are content to wait. They are not in such haste for recogni-
tion. Their works do follow them. Their tuneful children will speak for them, if
worthy of perpetuation, long after they are gone from earth.
We have omitted to mention the name of Lady Carew, wife of Sir Henry Carew,
whose setting to music of "The Bridge," by Longfellow, is regarded as the most fit-
ting melody of the eight or ten by other composers. She also wrote much sacred
verse, in addition to her musical compositions, " Revenge of Injuries " being one of
the best known.
Miss Anna Sneed (now Mrs. Cairn), of St. Louis, has the honor of being regarded
the most successful person in placing appropriate music to Tennyson's "Break, Break
O Sea!" The very sobbing of the winds and beating of the waves upon the beach
can be heard. Mrs. Julia B. Metcalf, of Nebraska City, evinces decided musical
taste and talent as a composer, her melody and accompaniment to Poe's "Annabel
Lee" being especially fine and original.
Missionaries in heathen lands sent sweet, tender hymns, written by converts to
Christ. What can be dearer to the Christian heart than "In the secret of His pres-
ence, how my soul delights to hide;" "Who will go for us?" and " Harken! hear
an Indian sister's plea," when it is known they are by Ellen L. Goreh, a Brahman of
the highest caste, whose people were not accessible to missionary teaching until
woman crossed the blue main as a teacher and messenger? This heathen convert is
the adopted daughter of Rev. W. T. Strers.
Mrs. Voke has written more hymns bearing upon foreign missionary work than
422 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
any other person of either sex, so far as known, that have had an acceptance with all
denominations. " Soon may the last glad song arise! Hasten, O Lord, that happy
day!" " Behold th' accepted time draws near;" "Sovereign of worlds, display Thy
power;" "Ye Messengers of Christ! " are familiar to all.
Whenever the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe is mentioned one is reminded of
" Uncle Tom's Cabin." Why may we not also associate her name with that appealing
hymn: "Knocking! Knocking! who is there?" and some of her other sacred verse?
When the name of Mary T. Lathrop is heard we at once remember that she is one of
the most able and effective lecturers on the temperance platform, which today means
prohibition. In future years her name will also be more familiarly associated with her
sacred verse; for she is a true poet. Never was more touching or perfectly metrical
dirge than her's on the death of John B. Gough. But she surpasses that, if possible,
in some regards, in her poem, "What Means this Stone ? " inspired by and for the cere-
monies of laying the corner-stone of the Temperance Temple in Chicago, in Novem-
ber, 1890.
The songs of Christian women are immortal, because they speak the. language of
the heart in its love for their Saviour, which changes not, and is the same in all ages.
These heart songs teach a language unsurpassed by all the Greek and Roman litera-
ture, or the classics, of this or any other period of time.
STUDY OF GREEK ART.*
By SARAH AMELIA SCULL.
In the western part of Greece rises the once sacred " Hill of Cronus," At its
base lies the Valley of Olympia, for centuries the center of the worship of Zeus
and Hera. In 1874 the German government obtained
a contract for excavating the monuments of this
renowned worship, and though these excavations were
conducted at vast expenditure, and with the express
understanding that only casts of the treasures
uncovered should be taken to Germany, for five years
the noble work went on, and the ruins of Olympia
were given to the world. •
Recently the French government successfully
competed with Americans for the privilege of exca-
vating Delphi.
Greece has passed stringent laws against the
removal of the least fragment of any classic antiquity.
What are these treasures that were buried in fair
Hellas? What value have they in this age of financial
estimates and enterprises? Treasures! Only bits of
inscriptions, ruins of buildings, fragments of statues
or of reliefs. Values! They are such as are not
recorded in business marts, for these ruins and mutil-
ated monuments mark epochs and phases in the his-
tory of that country that has enriched the world. To
determine these values, symposia of truth-seekers
and beauty-lovers hold perpetual session.
The order of classical investigation follows the development of Greek thought,
art and worship. The world opened by Homer is ever sought' by entranced pilgrims,
and from its battlefields they find paths leading Olympusward.
We go to Hesiod to learn of that mighty conflict of beliefs known as the "Titanic
Wars." Cronus, the conscrver of and the maintainer of old conditions, is overthrown
by Zeus, the champion of change and progress. From Hesiod we have the noble
legend of the " Partition of the Universe;" Zeus, the Lord of Light, Life and Develop-
ment, assuming supremacy over gods and men; Hera, sharing his supremacy, but
having special protection over lawful marriage and legitimate birth; Hestia, goddess
of purity and spiritual influence; Posideon, having dominion over the sea; Demeter,
holding a vice-regency over fields of grain, and Hades, ruling in the world of shades.
We cannot afford to ignore these noble myths, or beliefs, as we should call them;
for through the expansion of the conception of the character and offices of Greek
gods and goddesses, through their manifestations in the sphere of human action,
mythology not only established ideals for human imitation, but it determined the
Sarah Amelia Scull was bom in Bushnell's Baein, N. Y., in 1833. Her parents were Paul E. Scnll and Rhoda Tyler
SculL She was educated at the Academy of Smethport, Pa., and Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, Lima, N. Y. Has traTeled in
Greece, Italy, France and England. Miss Scnll is a student of Greek Mj-thology and Greek Art. Her principal literary works
are "Greek Mythology Systematized," and "Photographs Illustrating Greek Mj-thology and Art." Her profession, educator
of young women. She is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is Washington, D. C.
* This paper was illustrated by original photographs, and the nambers used throoghout are the numbers in the catal>
ogue of the collection.
423
SARAH AMELIA SCLLL.
424 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
forms of art that clustered about the centers of worship. Since temples and their
structures, temple statues and their votive offerings demanded the supreme creations
of the art of Greece, that art should be studied in the illumination of the inspiring
mythology.
ARCHAIC PERIOD OF GREEK ART, 7OO-5OO B. C.
By the time of the Persian Wars, 500 B. C, many states had been formed, but we
need have in mind only Phocis, the early home of the Dorians, and Attica, the center
of the later lonians. The Dorians were an intellectual people, heroic in conquest and
heroic in self-restraint, so that their motto " Measure is best," fitly formulated the
spirit of the race.
GREEK ARCHITECTURE.
Through the Dorians, Greek architectural genius began its manifestations, and by
the time of the Persian wars they had given to Greece the " Peripteral Temple." In
other countries columns had been employed in building, but such adjustment of cella-
walls, columns and entablatures as resulted in the "Peripteral Temple" is just as truly
an original creation of the Greek brain as were their philosophic systems or their
dramas.
The lonians of Attica were impulsive, restive under restraint, susceptible to exter-
nal conditions and influences, and through these very characteristics furnishing ground
for a spontaneity and elasticity in art forms, that in time promoted compromises with
higher graces of form that would not have been possible to the Dorians.
GREEK SCULPTURE.
It was an epoch in the history of sculpture when the Greeks established theirs
upon a wood model, as against the stone and metal work of Egypt and Assyria. Ma-
terial that could be easily manipulated could easily be made to embogly and express
the sculptor's conception, and thus make it possible for each subject to have a person-
ality, an individuality that placed it far above the tiresome sameness in the figures of
an Egyptian or an Assyrian procession.
On following the development of Greek sculpture, we find that attempts at inde-
pendent work commenced in many centers, both in Greece and in her island colonies,
and work was continued in these centers with different degrees of progress and excel-
lence.
In general, the early statues were of deities, and such reverence did they inspire
that it was deemed sacrilege to make the slightest change in the sacred forms; as a
consequence of this "hieratic influence," images of deities retained their archaic style
long after considerable progress had been made in general sculpture.
Even in the early period that we are considering, influences were at work which
tended toward the development of what we call "original Greek sculpture." Looking
at the early statues other than those of deities, though they were almost comical in
their crudeness, yet they evince on the part of the sculptor honesty in search of
nature's forms, and a fixed purpose to portray only what he saw, knew or believed.
Truth-seeking and sincerity in interpretation marked the spirit of these early artists,
and their reward was sure.
TRANSITION PERIOD OF GREEK ART. 5OO-460 B. C.
At the beginning of the Persian wars, the chief religious centers were Delphi,
where the Dorians had established the worship of Apollo and Artemis; Olympia,
where Pan, Hellenic Zeus, was honored in the Olympian games; Athens, where was
established a splendid worship of Pallas Athena. In all these places the general
elements were the same. Through the erection of temples and other sacred struct-
ures, themselves adorned with statues, also through the accumulation of votive works
of art, they became treasuries of the finest productions of the advancing art. Further,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 425
the athletic games, which invariably accompanied the national festivals, promoted
physical strength and beauty, and thus became a potent factor in the new sculpture.
We are familiar with the story of the Persian wars. We know of the gathering of
spoils from the Barbarians, which spoils permitted and enabled victorious Greece to
lay the foundations of the fair culture of Europe. At the close there was a quicken-
ing of activities in every department of art. Sculpture felt the new impulse, and
manifested new powers of achievement.
In Bceotia there was an independent development of naturalness in the male form.
(See Col. Nos. 7377, 7379, 7400.) In Magna Graicia, Pythagoras of Rhegium recog-
nized the result of the athletic games, and gave to the forms of his athletes a rare
combination of strength, symmetry and rhythm, and more than this, they seemed to
will, to act, to contend. Dr. Waldstern thinks that many statues that have been called
Apollo statues represent athletes, notably Nos. 7380 and 7381.
Peloponnesan sculpture was under Dorian restraint, but it presented varying
phases in Corinth, Sparta, Argos, Megara and Epidaurus. See Nos. 7427 to 7441.
In Attica sculpture was hastening on toward perfection. See Nos. 7461-62,
7467, 7501, 2, 3, 7533, 4, 7S4I-2 and 7559.
First Epoch, 46o-4(X) B. C.
ARGOLIS.
On Dorian Argos Polycletus wrought such masterpieces that his " Canon " gave
to sculpture its " law of proportion " for the human figure. So sublime was his temple
statue of Hera, the revered goddess of Argos, that the world never produced but one
artist that could surpass it. It has been thought that some of the noblest features of
the works of Polycletus are preserved in Nos. 7433-4, 7358-9.
ATTICA.
The period of the highest art in Attica is the period of her supremacy in wealth,
in political influence, in philosophy, in literature and in worship. In this golden time
she placed upon the Athenian Acropolis the jewels of her supremacy in art. In this
marvelous art was displayed a unique eclecticism in selection of materials and in
choice of relative locations, and in it was manifested an hitherto unknown genius for
harmonizing excellences and perfections, so it gave to the world's admiration the
Attic Doric and the Attic Ionic architectures. In this golden time the sculpture was
worthy of its noble placing, for the artists had held to their high purpose of rendering
only what they saw, what they knew and what they believed, and their reward had
come. Again we must note the potent spell that the art of mythology had on the
Acropolis, which had been created in honor of the tutelar goddess, Pallas Athena.
Entering the leveled top of the Acropolis through the magnificent Propylea, one saw
on the north the Erechtheum, enshrining the most sacred object in all Attica, the
olive wood statue of Athena Polias, believed to have fallen from Heaven. See No.
7481. To the southwest towered the bronze statue of Athena Proma, the Athenian
goddess of war. Here and there were shrines and votive offerings to the deities asso-
ciated with Athena. But there arose the Parthenon, a temple erected to Athena Par-
thenon. It can not be described; it can not be pictured; it can not be seen by the
eye alone. One should seek it and lift the eyes toward it only after much prepara-
tion. The sculpture of the Parthenon was worthy of the temple — one can say no more.
The frieze that represented the Panathenaic procession was one of the marvels of all
sculpture. One never ceases to be touched by the solemn sweetness of the maidens
that take part in the ceremony, or to be thrilled at the spirit and movement of the
mounted horsemen, or to be stilled into awe in the presence of the seated deities that
are at rest in the eternal verities, the eternal blessedness. Nos. 7577, 7577b, 7506, 7513.
The sculpture in the west pediment commemorates the contest between Athena
and Posideon for tutelar possession of Attica. Of Posideon only a mutilated chest
426 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
remains, but one can believe that such a god could make the earth tremble. No.
7507.
In the east pediment was represented the highest of themes — Zeus presenting to
the Olympian deities his daughter, Pallas Athena, as the goddess of all that was
exalted. The scope of the treatment of that theme has never been measured. It may
be that to have adequate conception, one must have followed the shining history of
the message of the celestial messenger, Iris; and if it be Demeter and Persephone to
whom she heralds the new day of light and splendor that " Helios ushered in " to
know the full purport of her announcement, one must have followed Demeter from
the fields of grain to the " stone of sorrows," where she sat mourning the loss of her
daughter, Persephone, must have rejoiced in the reunion of mother and child in the
Elysian Fields — then one could believe that the message of Iris would close this sym-
phony of life and death with a pean of resurrection to a life and union immortal.
No. 7576.
So must we compass the cycle of the worship associated with the dominant orfe,
if we would measurably conceive how much of the majesty of Zeus was represented
in the new-born goddess Athena, as she shone in full splendor in the presence of the
Olympian deities. At that time of lofty ideals, art was bestowing her rewards. There
were sculptors who had striven to embody their highest conceptions, so when the
master of masters, Phidias, began his work he was not alone in worthiness to place in
temples statues that seemed instinct with a Divine presence. They were found to be
worthy to be co-laborers with Phidias. Nos. 7510, 7515, 7516, 7517 and 7518. See
also 7580.
It can not be determined who made the two central statues of the west pediment
of the Parthenon — Zeus and Athena — but it is known that the temple statue of Athena
Parthenqs was made by Phidias. It is also known that sublime as was the statue, it
was transcended by the colossal statue made by Phidias for the temple at Olympia —
the world renowned Jupiter Olympus, No. 7347. What was Phidias' conception of
Zeus? Such conception as was vouchsafed to any soul that, spurning all things that
are earthly, walking in the light of what he believes to be the highest truth, seeks Him
whom he believes to be the highest god. When asked how it was possible for him to
produce that mighty work, Phidias replied that Homer had for him his ideal. I shall
never believe that Homer's conception of Zeus approached in moral purity and power
that which Phidias' lofty character enabled him to conceive.
In seeking the ways of the highest truth, Phidias found possibilities that enriched
the domain of art forever. His standards were truths that are universal, immortal,
divine; hence the benediction on his work was celestial beauty, moral grandeur, divine
majesty. Not a fragment of his almost divine statue has ever been found. The burial
place of this immortal artist is unknown, but he has found God, for he sought only
truth, and all truth leads Godward.
Second Epoch. B. C. 370-330.
highest period of art continued. attica.
Changes had come to Attica. Beliefs had changed. The deities were now thought
of as drawing near to men in pity and in sympathy. But ungrateful men, absorbed in
pursuits of wealth or of pleasure, had lost the old fear and reverence for the gods.
Beliefs having changed, ideals changed, art changed. It was a time of beauty, but of
a beauty that lay in the way of pleasant going. The beliefs were not those of Phidias.
The art was the art of Scopas and Praxiteles. We rejoice that this time of beauty
came, for beauty in art, as in all things, "has its own excuse for being" and has its
own reward. Nos. 7547 to 7550.
In this imperfect outlining of the development of Greek art, we have endeavored
to note the race influences that have helped to determine art creations. We have been
obliged to dwell too lightly upon the historic events that necessarily modified all
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 427
national interests, but we have purposed bringing into clear light the intricate, almost
vital relations between the mythology and the art of ancient Hellas.
CLASSIC ART AND AMERICAN ART.
Today there is before the American people a question of national interest. In
the new American art that is becoming definite and promising, shall we make promi-
nent the study of classic art? We answer " Yes, " a thousand times " Yes."
Because this age is one of financial estimates and enterprises, so much the more
is there imperative need that we cultivate in every direction, and by every method,
power to apprehend and appreciate the precious values of spirit, truth-seeking and
beauty-loving.
Because Greek art, more than any other art on earth, holds today and will hold
forever these values, we need the standards of those who wrought it, those standards
of truths that were universal, unchanging, beauty-giving and immortal. We need the
noble methods by which Greek sculptors gave mind the mastery over matter, and
religion the mastery over the mind. In our outlining of Greek art, we found that the
chief art centers were the centers of worship, also that the very character of the art
was determined by the character and associated legends of the principal deities;
therefore, as preparatory to, and as accompaniment of, a fine apprehension of classic
art, we plead for the study of classic mythology.
THE STUDY OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY.
The classic legends lie at the basis of much of the finest culture, but they may be
taught to children, to little children, as a mother said, as soon as you can get a child
to listen. Let them be taught in the homes, in the primary classes at school. Do
you fear to teach myths? The children will "know intuitively that the legends are
but curious husks that enwrap kernels of facts. They will not confuse fiction and
truth. In soul matters with very young children, ideals readily become reals, and
they will soon learn that while there is truth in all the myths, there is never myth in
truth. There will be in their minds ready recognition that only in the paths of
truth-seeking the rainbow of beauty arches heavenward, so those mothers and teachers
who give to children the myths and legends largely enrich their inheritances. Chil-
dren should early enter upon their inheritance in art. Show them first the perfect
creations of human genius, and thus they will learn to shrink from the crude and to
admire only the lovely.
We plead for the study of classic mythology, not only in public schools and insti-
tutions of higher learning, but in all schools of art. Let all students, whether of
sculpture or of painting, learn the fascinating stories of the characters which they
reproduce, also the history of those worships which gave the ideals that called out
such noble art efforts and success. Let art teachers of today, as did those of classic
times, kindle in their students ambition and enthusiasm for more and more noble
embodiments of more and more lofty ideals. Then while homes and art galleries
may be filled with the beauty that delights but entices not, then will have come a
greater good, for everywhere the art standards will become mind over matter, religion
over mind, and God over all. Then will the beauty of the Lord our God be upon the
spirit of teacher and student, and upon the work of their hands.
LIFE OF ARTISTS.
By MISS KATHERINE M. COHEN.
Having been an art student for some years, and with the sincere hope of continu-
ing- to be one all my life, perhaps a few words about them and the life they lead may
be of interest to you.
We know they are generally considered as " Bohe-
mian, "and their changeableness and apparent evasion
of what are called " the real responsibilities of life"
must certainly be very trying to orthodox minds who
are bewildered at the sixteen different moods they
may be found in in the course of the day; but if you
will think for a moment of the pictures you admire
most, you will find that they are those which show the
most thorough sympathy between the artist and the
work he is doing. A work of art is best defined as
" a corner of creation as seen through a temperament,"
and it will readily be seen that the more sensitive and
easily impressed the temperament, the finer the work
it will be able to do. In Paris, to be an art student
is to have but one aim and one purpose — to do good
work and use your time to the best advantage; to
have even your washerwoman and concierge or door-
keeper take the profoundest interest in the fate of
your salon picture or statue; to have no hesitation in
MISS KATHERINE M. COHEN. wcaring your clothes of the year before last until
there is not a shred of them left, so that you may have
money to pay your model for posing or buy old brasses and draperies for "still life"
studies; to go to concerts where you are inspired by the finest of music, in seats which
would here be known as the " peanut gallery" and which cost a mere song, and yet
to be judged and received among people according to the value of the work you are
doing, even if your shoe-buttons are pinned on (as I have known them to be). Each
artist in Paris has, as a rule, a day to receive his or her friends, but, except in rare cases,
this is done in the most informal manner; your acquaintances dropping in after their
day's work and taking their cup of Russian tea with a real satisfaction often left'out of
more elaborate entertainments. I have been at feasts where ice-cream was partaken of
in modeling tools, in lieu of spoons, the members of which feasts are now making a
name and fame for themselves in the world. You may have to walk long distances to
save expense and live by the light of one candle, but you will be pretty sure to have a
piano upon which you and your musical friends will have weekly feasts, and to which
you will often find a flute, guitar, violin or beautiful voice added, and where future
prima-donnas and soloists will give you of their best in the grateful certainty of having
their efforts understood and appreciated.
Miss Katherine M. Cohen was born March 18, 1859, in Philadelphia, Pa., of English ancestry. Henry Cohen of London
and Matilda Samuel Cohen of Liverpool, were her parents. She was educated by Ann Dickson of Scotland, at Chestnut
Street Seminary; her art education was received at " Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts," Philadelphia, and "New York Art
Students League," and in Paris. She has traveled through Europe. Her special work includes sculpture and painting in
water-colors, her principal productions being bas-relief portraits, water-color busts, landscapes and figures. By profession
she is an artist, and her productions have been exhibited at art displays in New York, Philadelphia, the studios and salons of
Paris, in the " Fine Arts Building" of Chicago, and at the World's Fair. In religious faith Miss Cohen is a Jewess. Her
postoffice address is No. 2103 Chestnut Street. Philadelphia, Pa.
428
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 429
You will rise at half-past six on Monday morning, and breakfast at seven, so that
you may be at the great school belonging to Julian or Colarossi or Delacluse before
eight, and so get your choice of a seat for the week, late comers having to take what
is left. At twelve, having worked four hours from the living model, you will go to a
queer little restaurant, the outside of which gives you a shudder, but which serves you
a fairly good meal, and where you meet the other students. You will spend the after-
noon either in painting or modeling in your own studio or in going to the Louvre or
Luxembourg galleries; or, if it is spring, at the salons, and you can either take your
work to a great artist and get his criticism upon it, or, if it is sculpture, he will come
to your little studio, and glorify it with his presence, and say enough in ten minutes
to make you wish you had ten pairs of hands and five heads, as one set is not nearly
enough for you. In the summer you will go with other students into Brittany or Hol-
land, or where you will, and study outdoors — by the sea or in the country — and have
wonderful adventures. You will return to the city in the fall, full of new enthusiasm, and
feeling more than ever the value of continual study from the fine living models, who
pose so much better than the peasants and country people, who do not see why you
can not take their pictures in three seconds, as if you were a Kodac. Let us go into
some of the studios of last winter and see some of their workings. You are all familiar
with the MacMonnies Fountain in front of the Administration Building,* and as I had
the pleasure of watching its progress during several stages of the work, a few words
in regard to it may not be amiss.
The sculptor, though still a young man, has worked very hard for years. When
he received the commission of this fountain, he expressed his first idea with regard to
its general arrangement by making a tiny sketch model in clay. This was followed
by clay figures made carefully from life, and sometimes under difficulties; for instance,
the model who was posing swayed constantly out of the proper position, being too
indolent or careless to remain in it. The sculptor calmly went to work and made a
wonderful trapeze arrangement of ropes, so that arms and legs were held in position,
and where that was not sufficient, added a sharp point or two near the knee and elbow,
to give a warning prick, and remind the sitter of his or her duty to keep still.
You doubtless all know that the fine decorations on the north end of the interior
of this Woman's Building that we are in was made by Mrs. MacMonnies, the wife of
the sculptor. I also saw this when its author was working upon it from a scaffold so
high over my head that I did not at first know she was in the great studio.
Their studios are a constant resort of artists and students of all sorts, as they are
young and sympathetic and remember their own student days and the immense bene-
fit that such meeting-grounds are to artistic natures. A little way off is a street called
"the street of the mill of butter," and through a little iron grating we enter a court and
ring a bell. The answer to it is a door opening and a figure appearing with hands
covered with clay. It is that of Douglas Tilden, the deaf and dumb sculptor from Cal-
ifornia, an excellent artist as you may easily see by his works: "The Base-Ball Man "
and "Indian Bear Hunt " in the Fine Arts Building. We conversed with him in writ-
ing and we look with interest on his statue at which he is now working. It is called
"A Wounded Foot-Ball Player," and is a group of three figures full of life and expres-
sion. His little den upstairs, furnished as a sitting-room, is strewn with manuscript,
and we learned that it is a magazine story. Another sculptor that I met in Paris is
Miss Matthews, who has only one arm, and yet, who has managed to do better work
than some of the fraternity who have all their members. I think such instances should
convince all Philistines that artists, if they be truly such, may be bereft of almost any-
thing except their heads and yet succeed in their work, for the spirit of a true artist
can never be wholly suppressed.
For many years, the only way by which artists met each other was at their own stu-
dios, but now there are two clubs of American students, one for men and one for women,
the latter growing out of the work of Mr. and Mrs. Newell who established it. It has
♦Columbian Exposition.
430 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
been greatly helped by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, who is still continuing her interest in it.
There is a reading-room and a piano, French classes and afternoon tea, a good light
and fire, all immensely appreciated by many students who cheerfully do without
such luxuries in their own rooms that they may have money to pay for their instruc-
tion.
The men's club gives a reception to its membersand their lady friends once a month,
and the walls are hung with their latest and best studies and ^ketches. There is music,
and often dancing, and once there was a most interesting fancy dress ball, where the
costumes were very artistic and where a picture frame was filled in turn by different
sets of characters, making them long to produce them instantly in color. All through
the spring, the one idea of the many thousand art students of Paris is the " Salon "
— what they shall send and whether it will be accepted. The excitement begins
toward the end of March, when all the painting in oil, water-color, enamels, porcelains
and miniatures must be sent in to the great palace in the Champs d' Elysee, each artist
being allowed to send two works only. The sculptors are allowed until April 3, as
their work takes longer than the painting. From that time your soul knows no peace
until one of the two things happen — either you receive an envelope containing a
slip of green paper which causes your heart to stand still and your spirit to descend
into your boots, or else you hear nothing at all for weeks, and are in a condition of
nervous excitement, and at last, perhaps two days before the varnishing day. May i,
there comes a knock at your studio door and an angel, in the form of a boy in uniform,
appears with a square white envelope and a white slip of paper, saying that you are
accepted, upon which you tip the boy magnificently to the amount of three cents (a
larger tip would cause him to tell everyone that you had suddenly lost your senses),
and can settle to nothing for the rest of the day because you are too happy and you
know that the friends at home will be so proud and glad to hear of it.
On varnishingday you have the privilege, as an exhibitor, of taking in two friends
— one before 12 o'clock, the other after. The average attendance, if the day is fine, is
about forty thousand.
You see all the great artists and the originals of the portraits on the walls, very
often walking about together; the costumes are often very beautiful, and the artist
who has painted a fine picture is the hero 6f the hour.
When we arrive at the point that American art is better than anything we can get
in Europe, then we shall stay at home to study, just as the French have done. They
used to think that an artist's education could only be completed in Rome. When
their own great masters arose they were only too glad to stay at home and study with
them. We can all of us help the quick realization of this, if we encourage our boys
and girls to cultivate their artistic tastes instead of scofifing at them as impractical and
never likely to make them rich.
It is time that the rich man should cease to look upon the artist as a " poor devil"
who can not earn an honest living, and bewail the fact, as I heard a man bewail it,
that when he wanted a fine picture of his pet cow, that " the picture cost as much as the
cow." It is well to think of the answer of Meissonier, the great French painter, in
answer to a rich man who said: "But you want a large sum for the little album
sketch, and it only took you five minutes." " True," said Meissonier, " but it took me
forty years to learn how to do it in five minutes."
An artist's chief grief is that life is too short for him to accomplish what he wants
to do even in his own special line of work, and this is equally true of woman, for talent
knows no sex. There is another important consideration, and that is the lack here of
studios with living rooms attached, at moderate rents. An artist comes back here
from Paris with very little ready money, for he has his way still to make. He has had
there a studio with a fine light and all necessary fittings, which he has been able to
hire for three months at a time, at a very moderate rent, say fifty dollars for the three
months; for six months, then, at an expense of one hundred dollars, he has kept his
studio in town, with his sleeping and living room adjoining, as he wanted to work out-
doors in the country the other six months.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 431
What does he find when he comes here, say in New York or Boston, or Philadel-
phia or San Francisco, or Chicago? He must take his studio by the year, and it costs
a small fortune at that, and there are scarcely any living rooms, except in a very few
instances.
We hope that some one will recognize this need of the coming artists, and put up
studio buildings with small apartments or living rooms attached, and let them at a
moderate rent.
IS WOMAN THE WEAKER VESSEL?
By MRS. SARAH EDDY PALMER.
Now, in this ripeness of time, it is interesting to listen to sounds that have ceased
and lend an ear to voices that are but echoes, and to the tread of centuries of passing
feet, and wonder, as the steady march merges into the
hurry and fever of today — when will have done this
strain upon the wheels of time with groan and threat
of doom.
As will be the end, so was the beginning, with
woman; since Eve took her place as wife and mother
she has found her mission to help, her necessity to
suffer. In her beauty lies great power, and in her
weakness, strength. Did the first woman, fresh from
the hands of her Maker — who stood upon the thresh-
old of time bewildered and in awe — see with prophecy
beyond the gauzy portieres of daybreak? Did she
see the stretch of years before her in awful grandeur
when the pulse of creation would be beating in fever
and pain? Did she hear in the stillness of morning
the tramp of hosts over the plain? Did she hear the
wailing of women, or "the sea moan for its slain?"
Perhaps she saw in the distance wise men from
the east, who came, led by a star, to the manger
where Mary and the Babe had lain. God in His
wisdom and mercy may even have let her see the
glorious plan of redemption and blessed immortality.
In that day dawn of time, when the spheres were tuned to sweet sounds and the
morning stars sang together. Eve raised her voice in thanksgiving and praise for the
great gift of motherhood. Her first tears were shed at the bier of her first-born.
That funeral train has kept unbroken its weary march, a black band winding down the
centuries whose road is paved with broken hearts, and fording rivers of tears. You
can look from any window and there the procession is, moving with nodding plumes
and trappings of woe, bound for Oak Lawn or for Calvary. Miriam, the priestess,
both wept with her oppressed people and sang with timbrel of Jehovah's triumph; and,
rejoicing, led them to freedom.
Esther, with the courage of blind faith and strong of purpose, entered and stood
unbidden in the presence of her dread King. His heart warmed to her courage, grace
and beauty, and a people were saved.
In the year 600, before the Christian era, Whan-onng, the goddess of compas-
sion, who is universally pictured by the sacred arts — Japonica — as sitting by the sacred
River of Life absorbed in contemplation, represents the feminine attributes of Deity. I
will not pause to give her sad, sweet story, as gleaned from their religious traditions,
save that she came from the bosom of God to be an earth-born maiden of Japan, a
princess of their royal house. She was good and sweet, compassionate and beautiful,
Mrs. Sarah Eddy Palmer is a native of New York. Her parents were the late Dr. John and Mary Rociter Eddy. She
was granddaughter of the eminent Judge Charles Dixon Wylee, oi Rome, Oneida County, New York. She married Maj,
Josiah L. Palmer, and they came to make their home in Arkaneas in 1861, where Major Palmer was for years actively
connected with temperance and humane work, in which she sympathized. Mrs. Palmer is a member of the Presbyterian
Charch. Her poetoffice address is No. 1515 Bock Street, Little Rock, x\rk.
432
MRS. SARAH EDDY PALMER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 433
and sowed the seed of many good works by the shining light of her example, never
breaking a law of earth until it conflicted with a law of Heaven; then accepting her
punishment, she welcomed her early death, and went to the abode of lost spirits.
Borne up by her beauty of soul and noble resolves, unmindful of her own sufferings,
she cheered and soothed the wretched creatures about her with such tenderpitifulness
that the arch fiend banished her from his realm, justly complaining that were she per-
mitted to remain hell itself would become a heaven. Thus thrust forth she returned
to the source of all compassion.
The Kajica, or sacred writings of Japan, after being destroyed in a disastrous con-
flagration in 712 B, C, were restored to them verbatim by a peasant woman, who pro-
claimed to the priest that she remembered all things that ever she heard.
Tradition, or history, if you prefer, tells of two daughters of Logair, a king of Ire-
land. These ladies are chronicled as *' fair to look upon." While on the way to their
bath they saw St. Patrick sitting on a wall. He expounded to them his mission with its
Divine wonders. They eagerly accepted the great truths, put white caps upon their
heads, proclaimed themselves dead to the world and brides of Christ, thus founding
the Holy Order of Sisterhood in Ireland.
There is living today in England an old woman, whose years exceed three-score
and ten. She is small of stature, and her face bears furrows of care; her eyes dimmed
and cheeks seamed with widow's tears; her heart lacerated with wounds that time
can not heal. This dear, little old lady is prudent to a degree, can make a pudding, is
a judge of kine, has the nicest butter on the market, and stands firmly for the best
price. Her vegetable garden shows the finest fruits, which are gathered and marketed
with admirable frugality. She has as many children as the traditional old lady who
lived in her shoe. She is grandmother — three deep. She is kind to the poor, gracious
to those about her; a loving mother, faithful in small duties and humble before God.
She paints good pictures, writes good books and sings sweetly. Her virtues and
example will stand like the pyramids. She wears a royal diadem upon her brow, and
as Queen of England and Empress of India she commands the proud homage of the
world. The period of her years will be known as the Victorian Age.
Woman has always had her defenders and oppressors. The divine attributes of
womanhood, like the divinity that is said to hedge around a king, have been through
all time her shield and buckler. I read somewhere of a young and beautiful virgin
being thrown into an arena of wild beasts for the entertainment of some Nero, when
the brutes slunk away abashed.
Most of you remember in our nation's civil strife when " the dusk seemed wait-
ing for the night" and all nature was "tuned in a minor key," 'twas woman all over
the broad land who seamed the stripes and studded the stars of our nation's flag; she
gave her jewels like that other queen, wives yielded husbands and fathers, and when
she placed her beloved son upon the altar of sacrifice no angel stayed the sword.
Maidens sent their best beloved to die for a cause they held most holy. Were our brave
men the only heroes of that bloody time?
You may remember the picture of the Arkansas traveler, with the cabin that
couldn't be repaired in the rain and didn't need it when the day was dry. In the door-
way stood that disheveled woman with a snuff stick in her mouth and her unwashed
skillet in her hand. She is not there today, she roused herself at her country's call
and sent her indolent husband and sluggish boys to the front, and she helped to change
the tune.
But last month the women of Siam, arousing to the conditions that would probably
involve their beloved country in war with France anticipated necessity, and with spon-
taneous action raised an immense sum of money to be ready when the need came.
All men are not great men, nor is it given to all women to do great things, but
feeble hands have done their mighty work, little hands have swayed a scepter.
There are thousands of nameless women in our land who know nothing of women's
movements — women in rural homes beyond the sound of the rushing engine or the
(28)
434 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
search-lights of electricity, who spin the threads and weave the web that shapes
tomorrow. These humble toilers whose names are not blazoned, " whose faces are
covered with care like a tattered veil " are, while they toil all the day, living lives of
simple Christian faith, mother love untiring and abiding; the poor loving souls are
buildmg better than they know, and when the tired hands lie at rest their children
will emulate their virtues and rise up and call them blessed.
Woman sees her opportunity and comes, true Amazons, to the call of duty. John
L. Woolley says, " Woman is coming right regally to the fore; step aside, crawl under
something, climb a tree, you puny men, the women are coming." They are here, Mr.
Woolley! From the East and the West the women come at duty's call, from the North
come earnest champions for the right, and from the fair South we hear the stir of
eagle's wings. Organization is the feature of the age and the imperious future
beckons us on.
Having turned my feeble rush-light back into the almost forgotten yesterday,
with a glance at holy writ, mythology and tradition, down to this almost apex of the
twentieth century, my tongue must yield to better wit, my pen to greater power, if it
must be proven that woman is the weaker vessel.
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Miss Eliza M. Russell,
Nevada.
4. Mrs. Daniel Hall,
New Hampshire,
7. Mrs, George Wilson Kiaaer,
North, Carolina.
10. Mrs. W. B. McConnell,
North Dakota.
2. Mrs. M. D. Foley,
Nevada.
5. MissMaryE. Basse! le,
New Jersey.
8. Mrs. Charles Price,
North Carolina.
11. Mrs. Mary P. Hart.
Ohio,
3. Mrs. Mira B. F. Ladd,
New Hampshire,.
6. Mrs. Ralph Trautmann,
New York.
9. Mrs. S. W. McLaughlin,
• North Dahota*^
12. Mrs. Walter Hartpence,
Ohio.
WOMAN IN JOURNALISM.
By MRS. MARY TEMPLE BAYARD.
That it should have been left for me to discuss women in journalism, after all the
weeks of speech-making from this platform, is surprising; and that I should so readily
have committed myself to the subject has since been
to me a matter of regret. I don't like the petticoat or
trouser differentiation which my subject seems to
imply. Women in journalism today in no way differ
from men in journalism. Sex is neither a disqualifi-
cation nor a recommendation. Much discussion of
women in any particular line of usefulness, in these
free and equal days, when they can hem ruffles or
engineer locomotives equally without comment, is too
much like discussing them as a species instead of a
sex. There is no sex in brains, all difference in
weight of the brains of the sexes to the contrary not-
withstanding, and brains and journalism are synony-
mous terms. Neither is there a royal road especially
prepared or made smooth for either sex. A fair field
and no favor must sufifice for women in journalism.
There is no claim to be set forward on the basis of sex.
Women who have succeeded in journalism have suc-
ceeded as journalists and not as women, and this
along the same lines on which men have succeeded.
We learn early in the work to expect nothing by
virtue of the accident of our personality. Because
we are women we must not imagine we therefore have a right to an engagement
simply for the asking. Especially would this deprive us of a niche in journalism. We
must not presume upon an editor's chivalry and courtesy to judge our work more
leniently than he would were it the work of a man. I regret to say these are weaknesses
often charged to beginners, but which all who get on in journalism sooner or later out-
grow. We must be proud that our work is received upon its merits alone, since any
other plan would lower the standard of our efficiency, impair our earning capacity and
spoil us both as women and as journalists. Women who come into journalism expect-
ing to be excused any fault by reason of their sex lower by extent of that excuse the
reputation and worth of women in the profession. We learn to trample under foot
that most dishonoring conception of our work as mere woman's work, and to know
that such kindness on the part of editors as the indulgence of these weaknesses would
in the end prove most unkind. However, if there ever was a time when women in
journalism were so favored to their undoing, that day has gone by. Editors may be
compared to builders; they build daily and their contract with the public is to build
Mrs. Mary Temple Bayard is a native of Waynesburg, Greene c<>anty. Pa., and is the daughter of General and Mrs. J.
F. Temple. She was educated at Waynesbnrg College. At the age of sixteen she married William J. Bayard, but, left a wid<;w
at twenty-four, returned to the same school and finished her education with her son, her last session in college being his first.
She has traveled extensively both in her own country and Europe. Her literary work has been for magazines in the interest
of Woman's Social reform and philanthropic movements. Her reputation as a writer was made under the nom de plume of
"Meg." The first line written for publication was accepted, and after publishing her letters for one month the Pittsburg
Dispatch advertised for " Meg " to make her real name known, and the result was a permanent engagement. She is at pres-
ent on the staff of the Philadelphia Times. She is a Camberland Presbyterian. Her permanent postoffice address is
No. 8 Sherman Avenae, Alleghany, Pa.
435
MRS. MARY TEMPLE BAYARD.
436 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
only of the best material. They care not so much which sex furnishes the timber, so
it is of the best. If women supply material as good and suitable as that furnished
by men they stand the same chance of making a sale as men do, and will receive the
same price for it. Journalism is at least the profession where the sexes receive the
same remuneration for the same work equally well done. Surely the whole duty to
our sex has been discharged when this is true. We cannot expect editors, out of chiv-
alry, or because their mothers were women, and we are women, to build their papers
out of inferior timber simply because we furnish it. If we are so immature as to
expect such indulgence, we are doomed to disappointment.
It is the common experience of women in journalism that there is less sentiment
about a newspaper ofifice than anywhere else of which they have personal knowledge.
It is not putting it too strongly to say that though a contributor or reporter were upon
the verge of starvation, such confession would hinder rather than help her to space or
assignment. The editor would at once suspect money to be her inspiration and of her
having nothing to say that would either entertain or benefit the reading public. Writ-
ing only for the money there is in it is one of the unpardonable sins in journalism.
I have heard women in journalism refer to the stern reprimands, often unjust, with
much the same pride men sometimes refer to jacketings received during apprentice
days, and, like the men, attribute their ultimate success to such stern discipline, on
the assumption that sparing the ijietaphorical rod would have the same effect upon
the woman as upon the child.
But once a woman always a woman, and it is a matter of doubt whether any of us
ever overcome the natural weakness, if weakness it be, of love of the approving pat,
I can even see how mistaken kindness and undue consideration might encourage the
timid woman to do her best, when being "treated exactly like a man," which would
be license to swear at her, might frighten her out of the wits she would stand most in
need of.
The story is told of one of our pioneer women in journalism that she was first
refused a place on the staff because it would not do to swear at her. " What!" said
the editor, "petticoats on this staff? Never while I am in control. Why, you could
not swear at a woman!" That, in his opinion, settled the matter. Anyone that could
not be sworn at when they deserved it had no business around a newspaper ofifice.
This same editor subsequently found out there were other ways to admonish women
and develop genius besides swearing at them, for he lived to have several women on
his staff.
It may be that the sharp edge of the employer's reproof does keep the apprentice
up to the work, but there are reproofs and reproofs, and while an editor need not over-
praise or give space to woman's work simply because it is the work of a woman, neither
need he condemn it with words that cause her to have a "good cry" over the brutality
of men in general and her editor in particular. Tears are not a factor in journalism.
While we may believe it possible to cry and cry and be a journalist still, yet let us
rejoice that tears have so nearly gone out of fashion. It is noticeable that even hero-
ines in novels do not cry as much as they used to, and perhaps the reason for this may
be found in the fact that the heroine in present day fiction, like the heroine in real
life, is so commonly a bread-winner.
The great rough work-a-day world is a place to dry up the tear glands, and that
part of the world occupied by journalism may be as rough as any other. Especially
will it be rough for the conventional woman. It is said among editors that the giant
foe with which women have to contend in journalistic work is their own convention-
ality, and we find this quite true.
Particularly is it true of that conventionality which causes us to rebel against dis-
agreeable assignments for no better reason than because we are women, or, to make
our case stronger, because we are ladies; that such and such a duty is not the thing to
ask of a "lady" — sending her to the police court, or about late at night, for instance,
or that she must not be told of it if she has done her work unsatisfactorily. It is not
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 437
likely she would be sent out late or to the police court if there were a man available
who could be relied upon to do the work equally well, therefore the assignment is in
the nature of a compliment. But for whatever motive sent she should go, and the old
adage about women carrying chips on their shoulders is applicable here.
It would be a good deal more humiliating to the aspiring woman to be kept in
the office cutting out fashion pictures for the woman's page than to be given a man's
assignment. Human prejudice nowhere counts for more than in journalism, and
there are editors still to be found, who, other things being equal, will give a journal-
istic commission to a man rather than to a woman. That good friend to all deserving
woman, Mr. W. T. Stead, of the " Review of Reviews," is the only editor I have ever
heard plead guilty to the opposite prejudice. He declares it his policy to never
employ a man when he can employ a woman to do the work as well.
The most successful writer is the one who is never caught napping concerning any
topic of immediate public interest. As women in journalism we must not be behind
the times in current matters of art, religion and politics unless we would be ranked
veritable stupids, and though we have all the great authors and poets at our pen's
end, such culture will not insure success in journalism. Likewise the natural gifts of
sympathy, tact and originality of expression, while they all tend to stamp the writer
with characteristics peculiarly her own and add to the charm of her work, yet natural
gifts alone will not make a good journalist.
Knowledge precise and sound may be said to be the grand fundamental principle
of journalistic work. First to know something to write, and then to know how to write
it, is the never-failing advice from editors. We are enjoined to be original, and this
according to Carlyle meant simply to be sincere.
The most cruel, as it seemed to me then in my " salad days," the most senseless
advice I ever received from an editor was this: "After you have finished your copy
take a blue pencil and go over it from beginning to end, killing off every adverb and
adjective and quotation there is in it. Read it over twice without them and you will
probably never put them in again."
I wondered then why he should have recommended a blue pencil in preference to
any other for the killing off process. Alas! I have since learned that of all weapons
used in journalistic warfare, the blue pencil is the most deadly. And I have learned
the method in the madness of killing off adjectives and adverbs was to break up all
tendency to the " composition style of writing, which we unconsciously bring. from
school with us and which is such " bad form" in journalism.
But after all cut-and-dried rules and regulations have been observed, still will the
manuscript sometimes be returned, as often without thanks as with, or, worse yet,
basketed. But this need discourage no one. It may mean anything rather than that
the writer can not write. It may only mean that the subject was a week too late or
too early for the paper to which it was sent. It may be just in time for some other
paper. What one editor refuses another will accept. This return of manuscript as
unavailable is one of the trials of women in journalism, and if the truth be told, only
one of many.
But in the end, those who have weathered the discouragements readily declare
the game to be well worth the candle. The newspaper is the educator of the pub-
lic, and men and women who write in newspapers have the best ooportunities for cre-
ating public opinion. Earnest workers among women journalists realize they are
always on trial before the public, and that they have the honor of their sex, which
means the regulation of one-half the human race, more in their keeping than any
other women of equal numbers. They have asked the public to take them at their
own higher appraisement, and to judge of their work as work, and not merely as the
work of women. They know their colleagues of the other sex watch them with an
attention naturally critical, but not always sympathetic; therefore, for the sake of all
they hold dear, they are endeavoring to give the enemy no occasion to blaspheme by
pointing to either their work or their behavior as conclusive reasons why there should
be no women in journalism.
HARMONIOUS CULTURE.
By MISS IDA K. HINDS.
I hold that woman, including man, is the supreme being on this earth. For a long
time the human race was spoken of only as man. Woman was not considered; later,
as man, sometimes including woman; and still later,
women were usually included as an important part of
the human race; but now, when the wave of woman's
advancement has grown large enough to wear a white
^ cap of its own, I think we can, in many cases, say
woman, particularly when we refer to the higher
development of the race. I believe, then, that the
human race, the last and best creation of God, is the
supreme race, and should at least be composed of the
most perfect physical beings; but it is not. A race
made in the likeness of God, capable of being " gods
in the germ," and yet in many cases sinking so low that
we insult the animal kingdom by calling them brutes.
Furthermore, we have not only this physical nature to
perfect, but we have in our being two other distinct
and higher parts. Browning says, " What is, what
knows, what does, three souls, one man." I say one
soul, one mind, one body, and when each of these
parts are developed to their full capacity, we have a
highly developed and perfected man or woman. The
person whom I consider has the most perfect culture
can use to advantage the greatest number of faculties;
that is, the education which makes a man or woman better and more useful to him-
self and to the world.
The first part of our being that is manifested, is the physical or animal. The
young child moves and cries, it is a young animal; then the soul nature begins to
show itself, expressed through the body, and the child laughs, smiles, puts out its
hands, puckers up its lip in fear; the cry is changed to Ah-g-goo, and last the mind
awakes, the child thinks, speaks, and from that time the mind is taken in charge, and
the child's education begins, but this education is usually directed to the one part of
the being, the mind, to the neglect of the other parts, and these other parts have been
so long neglected, that all those who are interested in the welfare of the human race
are becoming alarmed at this degradation and deformity of the physical, and are real-
izing that the accumulation of a lot of facts in the mind, witlvno knowledge of how
to use them, is not education.
I also hold that a man or woman, taking his or her own being and working out
each part to its full perfection, or taking the pliable material of childhood and mold-
ing this material into a perfect being — perfect body, perfect mind and perfect soul —
is a greater artist, and has done a greater artistic work, and should have as immor-
tal fame as one who chisels from marble the most beautiful form, or paints on
Miss Ida K. Hinds is a native of New York City. Her early school-life was spent in Brooklyn. She was graduated
from Pacher Collegiate Institute, and has traveled all over the United States and Canada. Her profession, reading, lectur-
ing and teaching, all piertaining to harmonious culture, particularly voice and physical culture. Miss Hinds has given
lectures in courses, " Harmonious Culture," " Trinity of Color " and " The Art of Decorating." She is preparing a course
of readings from Lew Wallace, " The Prince of India." Her postoffice address is No. 55 Franklin St., New York City.
438
MISS IDA K. HINDS.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 439
canvas the most beautiful conception of an inspired, artistic imagination. I have
been led to consider this subject, because, while traveling through the length and
breadth of the country, I have not only been pained by the undeveloped and
deformed boys and girls, but I have heard the cry everywhere for more physi-
cal strength to do the work that has to be done. The pressure in all directions
is a hundred-fold greater than it was fifty years ago. but the strength to meet it is not
as great. So I am striving to awaken an interest in this work — the salvation of bodies
— and, through the bodies, of the soul. We know that those things that degrade the
body — intemperance, immorality, etc., likewise degrade the soul, and, as truly those
things that elevate, strengthen and purify the body, must have a like influence on the
soul. By the soul I do not mean the spiritual part of the being, but that part that we
elevate and build in this world — the seat of order, affection, character and all the vir-
tues, the part into which was breathed the breath of life, and out of which must grow
the immortal; but the seed here planted, unless nourished by sunshine and proper
food, can not grow, and must perish. As the body is the soil in which the brain and
soul live, and which could exist without either, but neither of these can exist with-
out the body. Therefore I say the body should receive the first attention. It is
the foundation on which we must build. What would you think of an architect who
built a beautiful palace, and before he had finished the interior decorations he found
it was settling, because he had paid no attention to the foundation, and when it should
have stood completed in its beauty it was only a heap of ruins?
When the cathedrals of Europe were built the greatest artists and architects in
the world were sought, first to design and build them strong enough to last through
the ages, and then to decorate them; and when they were then built as strong and as
beautiful as human skill could make them, they were consecrated. They did not
consecrate a heap of stones. So should we build, and decorate with soul and mind,
our temple.
A friend of mine who was getting up a class in painting in one of the New Eng-
land villages, visited almost every house, and she told me she had not visited a house
where the woman or her daughters were not "ailing." Think of that in New Eng-
land, where there is the purest water, and where the people should be as healthy and
rugged as the peasants of Europe. I visited a friend, a handsome and well-developed
woman, and was introduced to her two daughters — girls twelve and fourteen years old —
and when they came into the room I should not have been any more shocked if they
had come in dressed in rags and dirty; they would not have shown any more neglect.
They were thin, sallow, round-shouldered, had bad teeth and weak eyes, and were
very nervous. When I saw the way they lived I did not wonder, for no attention was
paid to diet, exercise or rest. I believe the time will come, as it has in some of our
cities, when any mother will be as much ashamed to present such children as she now
is to present them in rags. If the same time and care could be given to the bodies
as is given to the clothing of the bodies, I think the result would be more satisfactory.
It is just as easy to predict what will be the future of hundreds of half-starved, deli-
cate children in well-to-do families as it would be to predict what must be the future
of a crop of wheat sown in the sand along our ocean or lake shore; and if you saw a
man sowing a crop there you would think he was crazy or a fool if he expected it to
grow and mature there, or be worth gathering if it did come up. Almost every one
would be able to tell him the reason why. You understand these things in regard to
the vegetable or animal kingdom, but fail to understand them in the human being,
and there is no excuse for such ignorance and indifference in these days of cheap
books and intelligent magazine articles.
What would you think of a guardian who had the keeping of the fortune of a
child, the money to be handed over when the child is of age, but who spends the
money for himself, and thus defrauds the child? You would call him a criminal, and
punish him by law; but I say his neglect is not as criminal as the neglect that
defrauds the child of health, and starts him off in life with no moral or physical capi-
440 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
tal. The first loss can be made up, but the last, never! Boys and girls are put into an
open boat and pushed out to sea; their chart, a basket full of facts that they have
never assorted or applied; their arms too weak to use the oars, and if their boat is not
swamped, they will drift on to an unknown shore, and must make their way as best
they can. But give a boy a pair of strong arms, and the simplest chart of the waters
he has to navigate, and he will make his way to some objective point and make a suc-
cess of his life. In reading the lives of our great self-made men, merchants, minis-
ters, professional men, I find this statement in every case: they had only a common-
school education, but a vigorous, healthy constitution and uprightness of character;
and usually this added: they had good mothers; and I would say to ^11 mothers who
regret their inability to send their sons to college, give the boys a healthy, vigorous
body and good moral training and their chances of success in life will be greater than
with a college education, lacking these. Goethe's mother said she knew her son
would be a great man, because she gave him so much of her young life, which she fol-
lowed up with careful training, and her predictions were fulfilled. Her son was one of
the greatest men of Germany. With all our improvements in science, in agriculture,
and in many arts, we have left the human race to nature. But all persons who think
know that we can leave nothing to nature, when we desire improvement. She shows
us many examples of what can be done, but does not do the work for us. Everything
that has life, or mind, or soul, left to nature, runs to weeds. We must work out our
salvation, physically, mentally and morally. If you walk up the boulevards and
through the parks of this city, you will see beautiful velvety lawns and bright flowers,
and a street beyond you will see vacant lots filled with weeds; one is nature cultivated,
the other nature uncultivated. Way up in New England you will find in the gardens,
in autumn, a little, yellow blossom, prized because it is a late bloomer, and bright when
everything else is going to decay; and last winter in New York I saw this same little
chrysanthemum, developed into a hundred varieties of color and form, marvelously
beautiful; one was nature cultivated, and the other nature uncultivated.
Last year we had a dog show in New York, and there were dogs there valued at
;$iO,ooo, each one having an attendant who understood dog culture; they were not left
to nature; if they had been they would not have been worth ten thousand cents. When
you look around you and see the possibilities of development in the animal and veg-
etable kingdom, do you ever think of the wonderful possibilities of human develop-
ment? I believe artists only have conceived this possibility of the body. Some few
persons have attained to this possibility in mind and soul, but how very few have
reached the harmonious development of the whole being, and these few have been
our greatest men and women. But painters and poets and novelists have been trying
to do for us physically what others have been trying to do for us spiritually, revealing
to us the beauties of perfection, until we all aspire to it, but are only now beginning to
find out the way. We now have systems of exercise that will develop a healthy and
graceful body. We are beginning to understand that to produce a healthy body we
must give it fresh air, exercise, wholesome and well cooked food, and I particularly
emphasize the last, for it is one of the rare things in life. I would like to work and
travel hand in hand with the cooking teacher, and I think if I could, and form a sort
of crusade, there would be fewer doctors, fewer prisons, and fewer missionaries
needed.
There seems to be a general idea that city children are more feeble than country
children, but I have not found this to be true among the same class of people. The
idea that the children of society ladies are neglected is incorrect; there is no class of
children so well brought up physically; their diet, rest and exercise are prescribed,
and they follow a perfect system of development, and are as thoroughbred as the
horses in their father's stable. The girls will be brought out into society, and their
mothers would be ashamed to introduce sallow, misshapen young ladies, and therefore
everything is done to make them as perfect, physically, as possible. The boys of many
of the leading families will have the responsibility of large fortunes and large business
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. " 441
on their hands when they become of age, and so they must be trained and educated to
bear these responsibilities. When I walked up Fifth avenue last Easter, after church,
and met the crowd of fashionable people coming from their churches, I thought I had
never seen so many bright, healthy looking, handsome women and girls as I saw in
half-an-hour there, showing what can be done by proper culture, even amid all the
unhealthy influences of city life; and, if such is the case, what might the boys and
girls on the farms and in country homes do for themselves? While we are educating
the physical, we must not forget the moral.
We have been told that the greatest virtues of the soul are hope, faith and char-
ity. These are the higher virtues, but there are lower or more homely virtues, we may
say, and we must commence with these, and the greatest of these, I think, are order
and cleanliness. All reformers, all workers for the uplifting of the lower classes, have
found this the first lesson to be taught. Ruskin says that " the essence of all vulgarity
lies in the want of sensation;" and when we commence to cultivate the senses, refine-
ment begins, and refinement is one of the attributes of soul culture, and out of soul
culture and soul refinement grows spiritual culture and the Christian graces. So I say
that order and neatness should be taught to every child. It should be a part of their
school education, as, in many cases, it is not taught at home. I think it is even more
necessary to teach it to the boys than to the girls, for, if boys were taught to keep their
persons and surroundings clean, we should not have so much filth in public places,
waiting-rooms, railroad cars, etc. If boys were taught to take a pail of water to their
rooms and bathe themselves before going to bed, after working all day in the field or
other dirty work, they would learn to look upon their bodies as something to be kept
clean and pure; they would soon desire to have their surroundings cleaner; this would
again have its influence upon them, and they would grow morally better and healthier,
for, as I have said before, what elevates the body must elevate the soul. You know
and I know of boys who have been ruined because the family have thought that any-
thing and any place was good enough for the boys, until they thus grew away from
refinement of the family circle, where they felt awkward and out of place, and sought
more congenial companionship. Did you ever sit down to a breakfast-table where the
linen was spotless, the coffee fragrant, the dishes nicely arranged, and other things in
keeping? If you have, it has been in a refined family, for where artistic virtue has
been cultivated you may be sure that others have been, for they are seldom found
singly, and, moreover, I think we can usually tell, when we see the head of a house,
even for a few minutes, what kind of a housekeeper she is, and what kind of a table
she sets.
No one who has cultivated the virtues of cleanliness, the senses to admire music
and other arts, the mind to refined and beautiful thoughts, would ever put before her-
self, or anyone else, a disorderly table and ill-cooked food. In a very weak, and I
think incorrect, article, which appeared in one of our leading magazines, the writer said :
"We can get along without learned women, but we can not get along without wives and
mothers." Now, I want to know if there is any vocation that calls for more learning
than that of wives and mothers, particularly mothers What we want is more learned
women among the mothers; for much of the neglect of which I have spoken is
due to ignorance, and ignorance on most vital subjects. What we want are clubs, as
widespread as the Chautauqua reading-clubs, devoted to subjects of physical and
moral interest. There are some such clubs, called the "Young Mother's Clubs." I
hope they may become numerous, more numerous than the ladies' whist clubs. There
has been a great deal said about higher education unfitting a woman for her home
duties. This is a mistake, for I tell you it is a positive fact that the best hou.sekeep-
ers and the best cooks are educated women; the poorest cooks and poorest house-
keepers I have met have been women that knew nothing else; brought nothing from
outside; and, having nothing else to do, it was a marvel that they did not learn how to
do the one thing well. There is no broader sphere or higher sphere than woman's
sphere, for its center is the hearthstone, its circumference eternity; but in some cases
442 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
it IS a very empty sphere. There is much to do to fill this vastness, and women are
beginning to realize how much they are the great soul-educators, and that is what they
are doing with their flower missions, their fruit missions, working girls' clubs, open-
air funds, and all those things that are educating and refining the senses, and through
them the soul, trying to open the eyes of the people to see some of the beauties of the
world. What could you tell a child of the beauties of Paradise who has never seen a
flower? But take the children from the slums of our cities out into a daisy field, and
they will think they are surely in Heaven.
I have no sympathy with those who sing, " Earth is a desert drear. Heaven is my
home." Earth is not a desert drear, unless you have pitched your tents in vacant lots ; and
if you have, plant some flowers around it; cultivate your surroundings, and when flowers
bloom take them to those who have no flowers and teach them to cultivate them, and thus
bring some beauty into their lives. If you live in a desert drear all your lives, do not
imagine you will blossom out in the gardens of Paradise and feel at home there. Your
soul would be so dried up that it would take all eternity to get it into condition to
enjoy, or appreciate, even the beauties of Paradise. When you have cultivated your
soul-nature so that it can look out and enjoy the beauties around us, and realize the
possibilities of an earthly paradise, and also realize how much there is to do to help
others toward this earthly perfection, then there will not be much time for complain-
ing, nor will any dare to be idle. Woman must be the torch-bearer, and there are
many dark places to be lighted, and I hope many that hear me will take up the work
with new zeal, and that there may be more and more who will take up this work for
the salvation of bodies and the elevating, purifying, and beautifying of the human
race.
V0
THE NEXT STEP IN THE EDUCATION OF THE DEAF.
By MISS MARY S. GARRETT.
In past ages the deaf were the victims of deliberate as well as ignorant cruelty.
In the present age they are no longer deliberately drowned, as in ancient Rome, nor
exposed to die, as under the laws of Lycurgus, but
they are still largely sufferers from a modified form
of the ignorance which formerly ranked them witli
imbeciles, and now fails to realize that they are able
to learn, be or do anything and everything the hear-
ing can, if they are given precisely the same advan-
tages and opportunities.
When a hearing baby is learningto talk the mother
does not use motions to it, because it has not yet com-
menced to understand the language; but she repeats
over and over again to it the pet names she calls it, tells
it again and again to say " papa " and " mamma," etc.,
until it learns to understand and then copy her words.
She is keen to discover, encourage and correct its
first attempts at articulation.
It has been provedby experience that if the atten-
tion of the deaf child be directed to the mouth with
the same persistency, and it be talked to just the
same by every one who is with it, that it will learn the
._ speech and language through the eye which the hear-
ing child learns through the ear. Like the hearing
MISS MARY s. GARRETT. ^,j^jj j^ -^ j^^g ^^ hcrcdltary tendency to talk, and only
needs the same opportunity to learn. No more motions should be used with it than
with a hearing child; its attention should always be guided to the mouth of the
speaker and concentrated there. Little by little it will begin to attach meaning to
the words and sentences it " sees," just as the hearing child, little by little, begins to
attach meaning to the words and sentences that it hears. People almost universally,
when they wish to take an infant from its mother, hold out their arms and say " come,"
watching the little one for an indication in its face that it desires to be taken, or to
see if it will hold out its arms to come. Thus the little child learns the meaning of
the word " come," but as it grows older the parents or others simply call it to come,
without holding out the arms, dropping the motion as soon as the child understands
the meaning of the word. No more motions should be used with a deaf child than
this, which amounts simply to employing the action representing the word. The
words should be indefinitely repeated, that the child may become familiar with the
looks of the mouth, while the representation of a word by action or motion should
be dropped as soon as possible, and should never be used without at the same time
showing the child the word represented. The names of objects may be taught with
the objects, which is really the way hearing children learn them in their homes. We
Miss Mar>' 8. (Jarrett is a native of Philadelphia, Pn. She was born Jane 20, 18.S9. Her imrentH were Henrj- Garrett and
Carolina Rush Garrett. She was edncated in Philadelphia, and has traveled considerably in Earope and the United States.
Her special work has been in the interest of restorinj? the deaf to society by teaching them articnlate speech and speech read,
ing through the eye. Her literary papers are " Directions to Parents of Deaf Children for their Treatment from Infancy in
order that they may Learn Speech and Lip Reading ; " " What Yon can Do to Help Children to Speak and Read the Lipa,''
and other writings on kindred topics. In religioas faith she is a liberal Quaker. Her postoffice address is Belmont and
Honnment Avenues, Philadelphia, Pa.
443
444 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
must always remember that when a hearing child is learning to talk, its hearing gives
it the advantage of every word spoken in its presence, while the deaf child has only
the advantage of seeing the mouth of the person it happens to be looking at, or who is
talking with it, and this difference must be made up to the deaf child by a greater
amount of repetition of the words we are teaching it.
Everyone with whom a deaf child comes in contact should talk to it and encour-
age it and aid it to articulate. A deaf baby begins to say " ma, ma, ma," just as hearing
babies do, but as a rule it is not encouraged; if it were, and the child perfectly guided
to further articulation, it would talk. The ordinary practice, however, when an infant
is discovered to be deaf, is to make no further effort to teach it to talk or read the
lips, but to immediately begin to use motions with it. Just here begins the cruel sys-
tem of training the deaf differently from the hearing, and thus making them feel from
the very outset of life that they are peculiarly unlike those around them. The truth
is, that it is this faulty system of training that makes them different by depriving them
of the free and constant communication with other minds which the hearing have.
No wonder they have come to have the reputation of being naturally jealous, suspicious
and unhappy — an unjust reputation.
There is also a popular delusion that the vocal chords of deaf children are defect-
ive; the fact is, that such cases are the exception, and that the vocal chords of deaf
children generally are normal. The articulation of certain consonant sounds depends
on certain positions of the lips, tongue and teeth and palate. The quality of vowel
sounds depends on certain positions of the tongue. Any deaf child who can cry and
scream, and who has tongue, teeth, lips and palate, has the necessary vocal organs.
I know of three mothers who were fortunate enough to realize what they could
accomplish for their deaf infants, and who, following the stated plan, have taught
them to read the lips so well, and also to talk, that now that these children are grown
up, no one would take them to be stone deaf. They are all women; two of them have
married hearing men, and the third is a bright, happy girl of twenty-one, who is study-
ing art in Chicago, on exactly the same footing with the hearing, having previously
graduated at the High School in Chicago.
Although the deaf have been taught to talk in the schools of Germany for more
than a century, and in the schools of Italy, Holland and Switzerland for more than a
generation, and England, France and America are slowly adopting the oral method
in the schools, the pupil can never make up the loss of the years before the school
age, any more than hearing children could if they were deprived of all knowledge of
speech and language until they are sent to school.
- The next step in the education of the deaf, then, is to give every deaf child the
same opportunities for learning speech and language at the natural age as the success-
ful mothers already referred to gave their children. Not only the mothers, but the
public, have a share in this work; as every one who has anything to do with the chil-
dren should adopt the same policy with all the deaf. Until society learns that, by thus
doing its whole duty to the deaf, they will become like normal people, we shall need
efficiently and intelligently conducted " homes " for the training in speech of deaf
children. At present there are only two or three private homes and home schools
where the work is being done, and Pennsylvania leads the world in a government
appropriation to this end. From June i, 1893, it gives state aid to the " Home for
Training in Speech of Deaf Children before School Age," established at Belmont and
Monument Avenues, Philadelphia, by my sister. Miss Emma Garrett, on February i,
1892, and maintained from that time to June i, 1893, by funds raised privately by our-
selves.
Children are admitted between the ages of two and eight, and are given a six-
years' course from time of entrance, uninterrupted by vacations, although parents are
allowed to visit them when they please. The reason for giving them no vacation is
that when hearing children are learning to talk there is no interruption to the process,
and there should be none in the cases of deaf children. During the courses they are
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 445
taught the speech and language which will fit them in most cases to attend schools
for the hearing, and in all cases bring them into communication with others more
freely than is possible in any other way. The home is on the cottage plan, and the
children live a perfectly natural home life in every respect. It is amazing to notice
how soon they realize that they are being made like other people, and their faces grow
happier and brighter all the while as they advance. Similar homes should be estab-
lished everywhere where there are deaf children who need them.
N. B. — I have quoted in above address somewhat from my paper, " Directions to Parents of Deaf
Children for their Treatment from Infancy, in Order that They may Learn Speech and Lip-Reading,"
read before the Medical Society of France in 1886, and published in the " Medical and Surgical
Reporter " of June 12. 1886.
HIGHER LESSONS OF THE WORLD'S FAIR.
By MRS. LUCINDA H. STONE.
"Because the soul is progressive," says Emerson, "it never quite repeats itself,
but in every act attempts the production of a fairer whole."
We have here the. very essence of Darwinian
evolution, and yet these words are older by far than
Darwin's enunciation of his discoveries, through
which he dethroned the old gods of the six days'
creation out of nothing. We have within the enclos-
ure of Jackson park, the results of discoveries in
science, made mostly since Darwin's time even, as
much greater than the discoveries of Columbus which
has created this wonderful fair, as the thoughts of
men are wider than the field which those walls encom-
pass. The unlimited possibilities of man, then, and
the wonderful rapidity of his successive discoveries
of these possibilities, is the first great lesson I read
on entering its gates. Above them one might like to
find an inscription befitting our times, similar to those
apophthegms formerly inscribed above the doors of
entrance to the old astrological towers of the days of
Columbus.
Over one such tower, erected by Catherine de'
Medici in the old city of Blois, in France, there still
remains the inscription "Sacred to Urania," or wis-
dom which Urania (or the stars) could communicate.
In a communication here made, as this queen interpreted it, the stars counseled the
massacre of St. Bartholomew with all its horrors. Above our gates, marking the
difference between that age and this, we would inscribe today: "Sacred to the
highest truth, that man, by his own God-aided search, has discovered and made con-
secrate to the higher, broader education of every man and woman who may enter
therein." This, I believe is the divine purpose, of this world's university, opened in
this year 1893, and such in effect, I believe, it will prove. Significant and prophetic
of this is the inscription over the peristyle, leading into the court from which all this
architectural grandeur and beauty seem to radiate, as from the heart of the whole
park: " And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Freedom through truth is, then, the purpose, the pulse, the heart-beat of this
World's Fair. When I, for the first time, looked up, and almost under the shadowing
arms of that magnificent figure, that wondrous creation of grace, beauty and majesty,
the symbol of our republic, holding aloft the emblems of liberty and seeming to wel-
come the nations to her noble peace banquet, my heart responded to the inscription
Mrs. Lacinda H. Stone is a native of Hinesburgh, Vt. She was born September 30, 1814. Her parents were Aaron
Hinsdale and Lucinda Mitchell Hinsdale. She was educated at Hinesburgh Academy and in the Female Seminaries of
Middlebury and Burlington, Vt. She has traveled extensively in Europe and in Egypt and some parts of Asia. She married
Rev. James A. B. Stone, for twenty years president of Kalamazoo College. Mrs. Stone has been for twenty years principal
of the ladies department of Kalamazoo College, and she is also a journalist of note. Has published many letters from
Enrope and Egypt and Palestine. She was the first American woman to take young ladies abroad for educational travel, and
was one of the pioneer organizers of literary clubs. Her postoffice address is Kalamazoo, Mich.
♦The article here appearing consists of extracts from an address under the title " Some of the Lessons of the World's
MRS. LUCINDA H. STONE.
Fair;
446
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 447
and I could but voice what I felt: "Oh sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath
triumphed gloriously." And these are the triumphs of peace, not war; and when that
magnificent band under the flooding radiance of the great search light, struck up the
music to which is set that glorious hymn, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," written
by a woman, my heart and soul sang as never before:
"Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of the coming of the Lord.
Our God is marching on."
"How far that little candle casts its beams!" Shakespeare makes Portia exclaim,
when she sees the light of a candle, the only light for the palaces of kings in her day,
gleam from the window of her home, which she is approaching. And, quick as thought
and apt as it is beautiful is the suggestion that comes to her woman's soul, of the
higher, the spiritual, reach of the same law, eliciting the instant exclamation: "So
is a good deed in a naughty world."
What diviner sermon was ever preached than is preached from this text
furnished by the poet, in those great searchlights mounted on the four corners
of yonder Manufactures Building, in which, they tell us, that one little candle's light
is, through the aid of discoveries, made in science and invention, increased in power
to the light of two hundred million candles such as called forth the enthusiastic
exclamation of Portia; and when we remember that this wonderful invention origi-
nated in the old city of Nuremburg, where the deepest dungeons, the darkest and
foulest prisons, and the most terrible engines for human torture that man ever
invented, yet remain to bear witness to what was yet called Christian in that age, is all
the more striking and should raise our jubilee in this Fair to its fullest chorus, in
which every voice should join. And a future, a future of which this invention and
this whole Exposition is a suggestion — more, a promise — dazes the most advanced ideal-
ist. Truly, " what we shall be, doth not yet appear." But, thanks to another kind of
searchlight that is illuminating the world — that indicated in the motto chosen by the
women of this board of managers for their auxiliary congresses: " Not matter, but
mind" — thanks to this spirit in the world which has created a World's Fair, this
illuminator for a new era.
In the olden time men could have seen in the face of every stranger whom we
welcome to our Midway Plaisance, an enemy to be met with an armed defense against
himself, his customs, his thought, and above all against his religion. Now, thanks to
the new spirit of our times, we see in him a human brother from whom, though we
may differ, with whom we may yet agree in broad human sympathies, and who has
the same claim to the fatherhood of God as we have. The noblest art of this Expo-
sition even, and its mission to our age, will be better understood by men and women
yet to come. This exposition is to be, I believe, the educator of a broader man than
has yet been. Fair as is the infinitude of these parts, a fairer whole in a higher moral
and spiritual sphere is to grow out of them.
I am reminded of Byron's first visit to St. Peter's church in Rome, and his famed
apostrophe to it, which, mighty structure as it is, could yet be put in a corner, or form
a bay window to our great Liberal Arts Building. " Enter," exclaims the poet.
" Its grandeur overwhelms thee not. And why? It is not lessened;
But thy mind, expanded by the genius of the spot, has grown colossal."
In this one word, expanded, or expansion, is best expressed the education which
this World's Fair is destined to give the world. It is to be the starting point of new
ideas.
It is a new revelation of man to himself that most astonishes. Who thought out
this combination of such an infinitude of parts touching, especially in its auxiliary
congresses, not only material things, but the mental and moral spheres of life? Those
searchlights are not mounted to penetrate every nook and cranny of the fair grounds
only, not every dark alley of the city of Chicago even, but they hint an illuminated
448 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
search into the dark alleys of the moral, ethical and religious world; into all the varied
slums of human thought; they hint, in short, at a new civilization, a new man.
Great art is moral and religious in its teachings and has ever been. Beethoven
said: "All genuine invention is a moral progress." What we acquire through art is
from God, a divine suggestion that sets up a goal for human capacities which the
spirit attains. He said also: " We do not know what grants us our knowledge. The
firmly enclosed seed needs the moist, warm, electric soil to grow, think, express
itself." Why, my friends, it is an education to walk through these grounds, among these
columns, to pass under these domes, an education which we cannot estimate. It imposes
a quietude, a courtesy, a gentle awe of which we do not know the meaning. We feel
it, that is all. We bear away a new sense of humanity, of the brotherhood of man, that
we never felt before. These grounds are the birthplace of a new democracy, of a
deeper, more spiritual understanding of the first principles of our declaration of inde-
pendence, I believe, than anything that has gone before has given us. The " self evident
truth that all men are created free and equal, with the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" here takes on a new meaning, assumes a farther reach. Caste,
cannot live here.
My friends, in looking over this wondrous Exposition, the marvelous achieve-
ments of the arts and inventiveness of man, a new light has seemed to come upon this
lesson of the old Sphinx, as good for our day as it was for the pre-Adamites; as good
in science as in art, and the same in both as in morals and religion. There is but one
law.
Was there ever such a paean, such a divine symphony of art and science, intoning
through ten thousand times ten thousand voices, this inspired psalm of the old Sphinx
as this World's Fair? " There shall never be one lost good or one lost truth." Never
have I felt such exultation as here — that a new heaven and a new earth await us, when
the knowledge that has been grasped by science shall be realized as a whole, related to
that which is within us as to that which is external to us — that there is but one law. Surely
the philosopher's stone is found here ? The lesson comes to us like the sound of many
waters in the buzz and hum and roar from Machinery Hall, the Electrical and Manu-
factures Building, revealing to us that human possibilities undreamed of, until within
the last quarter, or the last decade of our century, are in us all, and forces of nature,
hitherto undreamed of, are subject to man's knowledge and in his control, impressing
upon us as nothing else ever did, that, "verily the Highest dwells in us "and "that we
are gods but in the germ." As I read the lessons of this Fair which has brought all
nations together as never before; there has never in the world's history been taken a
more important step toward effecting this, or bringing about this time, than was taken
in the organization of this World's Fair with its Auxiliary Congresses Truly in this,
men have builded better than they knew.
Again, what a lesson of the universality of law, written as on a Bible page before
us, in all these facts of applied science. Law, sacred, inviolable but with incalculable
harm to the violator, be it man or thing — law governing everything, from the infinitesi-
mal atoms, millions of which are massed in a single dewdrop, to the invisible electric
bolt that glides harmless and noiseless along its law-abiding path to its destined end,
but transcending its limitations by the millionth part of one of the scintillating atoms
in the dewdrop, it might in the thousandth part of a second, shatter to atoms the
fairest structure in this city of the sciences and art.
These Auxiliary Congresses, taking for their motto " Not matter but mind, " sug-
gest that there are suitable forces analagous to those already discovered, but greater
than those of which we yet know, which will be sought out through suggestions
here made to the great discoverers of our age in realms of mind, morals, spirit, beyond
those yet explored. Says the greatest seer of our age: " We do not yet half possess
ourselves." But he also adds; " By every throe of growth the man expands there
where he works." This is the key to growth. If we had learned nothing else than
this, that through work is growth, this World's Fair would have been a rewardful out-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 449
lay. We have taken for our motto " Not matter but mind;" avowed ourselves as no
longer limited by the restrictions of matter. Who shall prescribe limitations to the soul ?
This to me, is what all this wonderful Exposition with its crowning congresses, is sub-
limely, religiously teaching. It is the turning of swords into plowshares, of spears
into pruning hooks, until the Eden of past story shall lie before us in the attainable,
not a lost good. Has the beautiful, odorous white lily, and the gentain of cerulean
blue, in our horticultural show, blossoming over fetid mud, no lessons of evolution that
have been seized upon and applied in art, in the creation of some of the wonders of
this Fair? Has this Fair no suggestions that shall reappear in higher spheres of life and
thought like the light of Portia's little candle, suggesting "good deeds in a naughty
world? "
There is one more lesson which has greatly impressed me, and which I can not for-
bear to note. It is the spirit of oneness through which ten thousand men and women have
wrought, as to one end, in creating the wonders of this Fair. I do not believe we begin
to comprehend the miracles here displayed, which have been wrought by this new
gospel of oneness; and yet, altruism, the spirit of which is beginning to pervade the
world as never before — it is by this divine instrumentality that these miracles have
been wrought. Artisan working together with artist, the so-called working men with
both, different nationalities commingling, men and women working together without
jealously or selfish competition, all have been working together with God in a sense
never before realized in the world's history, and the result is a miracle of harmonious
achievement, such as has been frequently observed, but was never before attained.
"There is no stoppage," says a great poet recently departed, "and never can be
stoppages. If you and I and all the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run;
we should surely bring up again to where we now are, and as surely go on as much
farther, and then farther and farther."
Eternity has no limits, and we are in it; the infinite has no bounds, and we are a.
part of it.
(29)
LIFE AND TIMES OF ISABELLA OF CASTILE.
By MISS LORAINE PEARCE BUCKLIN.
In the fifteenth century humanity emerged from the darkness of the middle ages
and saw the commencement of modern times. It was one of those rare episodes in
the history of the world in which all men seemed
possessed with a thirst for new truths and for dis-
covery in every realm of thought. It was the age of
Columbus, of Sebastian Cabot, Vasco da Gama, and
of the discovery of printing. A new life of intelligent
thought, bold hopes and rash illusions penetrated all
ranks, and in the next century the reformation of
Luther preceded reform in state policy that found its
perfect development many years later in a country
that became the refuge of all opinions and all beliefs.
The first link in this complicated series of human
events was the thought and energetic will of the
Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus; the sec-
ond was forged by the delicate hand of a woman, who
recognized and accepted the word of genius as proph-
etic truth.
It was Isabella of Castile who listened when all
beside were deaf, who gave intelligent sympathy when
all were cold or incredulous, and, aroused to generous
enthusiasm when reminded of her empty treasury,
cried: " For this enterprise I will pledge my jewels
and my crown."
Isabella of Castile was born in the little city of Madrigal on the 27th of April,
145 1 . Her father was John II. of Castile, and her mother was his second wife, Isabella,
a princess of Portugal. Her father died when she was scarcely four years old leaving
his kingdom to his eldest son, Henry, the child of his first wife.
The widowed queen retired with her children, Isabella and the infant prince
Alphonso, to the castle of Arevallo, near Segovia and devoted herself to their educa-
tion. She had ample means, was a woman of sound mind and a pure heart, and she
directed her daughter's life with rare judgment and ability.
In the solitude of the country the young girl led a serious but busy existence.
She was taught all the learning and accomplishments possible to the age in which
she lived.
Isabella showed in all she undertook the perseverance and the energy which after-
ward became her most marked characteristics,
In the Castilian chronicles of the time her beauty is portrayed in glowing words.
They praise her figure, straight as a palm; her complexion pale, but flushed by the
slightest emotion like jasmine mingled with the wild rose; her eyes blue as sapphires;
her hair a reddish chestnut and her serene expression typical of her pure and gentle
spirit.
Miss Loraine Pearce Bucklin is a native of Rhode Island, U. S. A. She was bom October, 1836. Her parents were
James C Backlin, architect of many public boildings in Providence, notably of the Arcade, a unique building, and Lucy Daily
Bncklin, prominent in patriotic and charitable work in her state. She was educated in the private and public schools of
Providence, R. I. Miss Bucklin's literary works are articles for magazines and newspapers and lectures on art and history.
In religions faith she is a Unitarian. Her postoffice address is Providence, B. I.
450
MISS LORAINE PEARCE BUCKLIN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 451
In the years passed so peacefully by Isabella, Henry IV. had proved himself
incapable of ruling the kingdom left him by his father. Dissolute, proud and frivo-
lous, he found the cares of state so distasteful that he left them to unworthy favorites,
who robbed the treasury and oppressed the people. The country was in a state bor-
dering on ruin, public faith was a jest, the treasury bankrupt, private morals too loose
and audacious to seek even the veil of hypocrisy. The troubles culminated in civil
war, and Henry, despairing of being able to conquer his rebellious subjects, sought a
compromise by proposing to marry his sister Isabella to the brother of the rebel
leader. Isabella was sixteen years old at this time, and her horror of the thought of
this marriage was so great as to almost deprive her of her reason. She fasted and
prayed for twenty-four hours, beseeching God to spare her the disgrace by taking her
life. Among her youthful companions at Arevallo was one named Beatrix de Bova-
dilla. Beatrix, to console Isabella, said: " God will never permit this to be, and I
swear to you by all that is sacred before it happens I will myself plunge a poignard into
his breast." Her courage and fidelity were not put to the test, for the sudden death
of the bridegroom put an end to the king's plans for his sister's marriage.
One year after these events the archbishop of Toledo, as the representative of the
dissatisfied subjects of Henry, offered Isabella the throne of Castile. He assured her
that her strong and elevated character was so well known that her sex offered no
objection, and that God Himself had destined her to save the honor of Castile. Isa-
bella, with wonderful judgment for so young a woman, refused to accept the crown.
She gave her reasons in the following words: "The work of rebellion is only to excite
passions and sow discord, to light the blaze of civil war and to put all in danger; to
prevent such evils is it not better to tolerate in the state some abuses of which the con-
sequences are not so fatal? A fruit which ripens before its time can never last. Ambi-
tion to reign has no place in my heart, and I desire that the crown of Castile shall not
be mine until death shall have ended the reign of my brother. Make the evils to cease
which have for so long a time cursed Castile, and I shall look upon your submission
as the most signal service you can give to me, and the best mark of your affection."
This advice was followed and in the terms made by the rebels with Henry, Isa-
bella was recognized as the sole heir to the Castilian throne, but she could not marry
without the consent of her brother.
Three suitors now appeared for her hand. The Duke of Gloucester, afterward
Richard HI. of England, the Duke of Guienne, brother of Louis IX. of France, and
Ferdinand, Prince of Aragon and heir to its throne. A marriage with Ferdinand
would best advance the political and national interests of Castile. It would unite
the two kingdoms and make one nation of their peoples, who were of the same race,
spoke the same language and had similar customs, religions and laws. United, their
strength would equal that of any European power, while, separated, they must remain
inferior. A favorable answer was sent to the Court of Aragon, and was received with
joy by the king and the Prince Ferdinand.
In a letter remarkable for the sense it displayed Isabella asked the consent of her
brother to her marriage with Ferdinand. Henry did not even answer the letter. Isa-
bella asked the help of the bishop of Toledo, who had always been her friend and dis-
liked the king. Protected by him she defied her brother and signed the articles of
agreement for her marriage with Ferdinand on January 4, 1469. By this contract her
rights to the crown of Castile were absolutely secured to her and Ferdinand promised
to continue the war against the infidels. A few days before the wedding, which
occurred on the i8th of October, Ferdinand went secretly to the palace to see Isabella.
. In this interview, which lasted two hours, the beauty and spirit of the Princess delighted
Ferdinand, and Isabella admired equally well the manly bearing and affable manners
of the Prince who, although but seventeen years old had already acquired a soldierly
reputation.
Henry IV. died in December, 1474, and two days afterward Isabella proclaimed
herself Queen of Castile. She was then in Segovia, and it was in the cathedral of that
452 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
city that she took the oath to serve her country faithfully and well. The first severr
years of her reign were disturbed by a war in which she was made to defend her rights
against the followers of Jane, the natural daughter of the Queen whose dissolute life
had disgraced the Court of Henry IV. In these years of warfare, Isabella displayed
the devotion to her country and to the duties of her position which was distinctive of
her life. She was constantly in the saddle, devoted her nights to official business,
risked her health, and, when her friends begged her not to expose herself to such
dangers, answered their entreaties by saying: " It is not for me to calculate perils or
fatigues in my own cause, or by unreasonable timidity to dishearten those who share
these dangers and fatigues."
When the war was ended Isabella walked with naked feet through the streets of
Tordesillas, to the church where she offered thanks for the victory and praises for the
valor that had won it. In 1479 the death of Ferdinand's father united the crowns of
Castile and Aragon and the escutcheon of Spain now carried the lions of Castile and
the towers of Aragon on one shield. Ferdinand was occupied with the cares of his
kingdom, for he ruled Aragon with undivided authority, as Isabella governed Castile,
and to her alone were confided the reforms in government and the condition of her
people. She found the royal authority overshadowed and weakened by the power of
the clergy and the nobles.
The nobles lived in magnificence on their vast estates like petty sovereigns, and
their privileges equaled their wealth. The people, instead of being subjects of the
crown, had become vassals of their lords and were subject to his tyranny and caprice;
and Isabella was convinced that force, united with stern and unyielding justice, could
alone restore order and security, and to aid her in this task she employed the league
known as the Santa Hermanadad, This brotherhood had been organized by the mid-
dle class in the larger cities of Castile for self-protection; but, accustomed to the
authority of the feudal lord, they had often answered his call and had helped him in
acts of rebellion against the crown. Isabella convened them at Madrigal and changed
their office and their work. She gave them royal authority to preserve public order, and
remained the central power which supported the association. In this way she taught
the peasant and the citizen to take arms in the name of the queen instead of obeying
the call of his feudal chief, convinced them at the same time that the noble was a sub-
ject like himself, and must be made to yield to royal authority. In a few years the
Santa Hermanadad became a strong support to the throne, and cost the treasury
nothing, being maintained by a tax levied in each district upon those who had prop-
erty to protect. Isabella also restored estates to the crown, and annulled pensions
that had been granted by her brother to his favorites, and immediately distributed
one-half the sum thus obtained among the widows and orphans of those who had died
in the war since her accession.
The nobles, who saw with dismay their powers and privileges gradually lessened,
addressed a remonstrance and threatened to retire to their estates and rise in rebel-
lion if these measures and the authority of the Hermanadad were not changed. They
also demanded that they alone should be chosen as members of the privy council.
Isabella answered their threats by saying, "You can do as you choose, but as long as
God permits us to keep the rank to which He has called us we will never become a
plaything in the hands of the nobility, who, when made powerful, seek to destroy the
throne. We are accountable to God alone for the measures we take for the peace and
happiness of our people." Surprised by her spirit and stern resolution, the nobles
submitted.
The Marquis of Villena, one of the most powerful and defiant, when told reproach-
fully by a vassal that his father would never have yielded to a king of Castile, replied:
" King Henry no longer reigns in Castile."
By convincing the Pope that it was imperative for the safety of her kingdom that
she should appoint the bishops of the church in Spain, Isabella restored to the crown
power over the church benefices. When a bishop died the Queen took care that his
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 453
chair should be filled by a priest who was obedient to lawful authority and devoted to
his religious duties, with no ambition for worldly honors. She thus made it impossi-
ble for any dignitary of the church to threaten her, as the Bishop of Toledo did when
angered, that " he would replace the distaff in the hands to which he had given the
sceptre."
Isabella also reorganized the legal code of Spain. Among the best reforms she
introduced were a change in the government of prisons, the right given to every one
to appeal for justice to the royal council, and the appointment of an officer called the
advocate of the poor, who was paid from the public funds to plead the cause of those
unable to pay for their own defense.
The Queen's interest in all intellectual pursuits was very great, and her plans for
the education of the young nobles of her kingdom showed a spirit far in advance of
her age. She asked Peter Martyr, a learned Italian, to open-a school in Toledo for
the young men of her court, and paid him from her private purse a liberal salary for
his services. To make his lectures fashionable she sent her son to attend them, and
in six months the success of the school was assured. Another Italian scholar, Marineo,
was encouraged to give lectures on classical learning, and the Queen saw with pleas-
ure crowds of students filling the halls where the professors spoke. She carefully
■watched the young girls of noble families who lived in the palace, and, with her own
daughters, gave them equal advantages of education with the young men. Loyal to her
own sex, she helped women to larger opportunity whenever she saw them possess ability
and ambition. She chose for her own teacher in Latin a lady who was called from her
attainments " La Latina," and through her influence two women were appointed to
professorships in Spanish universities; one filled the chair of rhetoric at Alcala, and
the other taught the Latin classics at Salamanca.
Isabella encouraged the art of printing in Spain, granting to a German printer
who came to Castile to pursue his calling freedom from taxation, and gave him sev-
eral orders for books for herself. She also allowed foreign books of every descrip-
tion to enter Spain free of duty. By her own example she made purity of manners
and morality the rule of conduct in her court, and her conversation was generally on
serious subjects. She had no local prejudices, and could adapt herself with ease to
the customs and habits of the people in whose province she might be, for Spain, even
in her reign, was more like a union of provinces than a nation.
The three great events of Isabella's reign were the establishment of the Inquisi-
tion in Spain, the conquest of Granada, and the protection of Christopher Columbus,
which led to the discovery of America. The Inquisition had existed in Spain since
the thirteenth century, but, with Ferdinand and Isabella's consent, its power was
increased until it became a terrible agent in the hands of men whose avarice or fan-
aticism made them merciless.
It is only just to the religion which permitted the atrocities of the Inquisition, to
recall the brighter pages of its history, illumined by the deeds of men devoted to
their church and humanity. One of the noblest among them was Talavera, whose
charity, when bishop of Granada, was so universal and benignant that the Moors
called him the holy priest of the Christians and declared that a halo surrounded his
head when he spoke to them of eternal and spiritual truths. With all his humility
Talavera had a profound sense of the dignity of his office. Appointed confessor to
the Queen, he heard her first confession seated; when reminded. by her that it was
customary for her confessor to kneel with her, he replied: "This is God's tribunal; I
act as his minister, and it is right that I should remain seated while your majesty
kneels before me." And we must add to Isabella's honor her reply: "This proves
you to be the right confessor for me."
We must also recall Aimenes, the great cardinal, whose life of purity and charity
gave him the name of Saint Augustine in devotion, a .Saint Jerome in austerity and a
Saint Ambrose in zeal and generosity. His great intellect made him supreme in coun-
cil and in government, but he lived in his palace the simple, austere life of a monk,
454 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and in the midst of power could find time and opportunity for acts of kindness to all
who needed charity and help.
In the conquest of Granada Isabella finished a work begun by her ancestors.
From the foot of the mountains that separate it from Castile, the valleys and plains of
Granada extended to the Mediterranean. It bristled with fortresses, some built to
guard the frontiers, on mountain peaks far above the flight of birds or drift of clouds;
others near the cities, to protect the homes and industries of the citizens. The Moors,
loving Granada with patriotic passion, believed that the paradise of Mahomet was
placed in the heavens that overhung it. The delicious climate, the beautiful scenery,
the limpid rivers and the fields that, flooded with almost constant sunshine, bloomed
with flowers or bore golden harvests, made it worthy of their love and pride. The
splendor of an oriental civilization was developed in Granada by the Moors. The
wealth they gained in commerce they spent in lavish profusion on palace and garden,
city and suburb. The suburbs of Baza were under such perfect cultivation that they
were called "the garden." Here, surrounded by trees, were the homes of rich mer-
chants. During the war of the conquest of Granada each house became a fortress,
every thicket was an ambush, every arbor hid a Moorish knight, defending his home
with desperate valor. It took seven weeks and the labor of four thousand prisoners to
clear this tract of four miles of its trees and mansions and convert it into a desert that
offered no obstable in the path of the victorious Spaniard. The province of Granada
and its capital city bore the same name.
Built on the slopes of two hills whose summits were crowned with the fortresses
Albaycin and Alhambra, divided by the rivers Genii and Darro, the city of Granada
enclosed within its walls a population of two hundred thousand souls. This did not
include those who dwelt in the fortresses, at least forty thousand more of soldiers and
members of the sultan's royal household. Granada stood first among the principal
Moorish cities for her wealth and the learning, industry and bravery of her citizens.
Seventy public libraries affirmed their intelligence, and the palace of the Alhambra, even
in decay, still proves their taste in architecture and suggests the luxury of their lives.
The Moors sought to reproduce in their palaces the delights of the Mohammedan
paradise.
In spite of their voluptuous lives, they were brave in war, skilled in manufactures
and accomplished in science and literature. The reigning sultan in 1478 was Muley
Abdul Hassan, the eldest son of Ismail, who, by a treaty made with Isabella's brother,
Henry IV., had agreed to pay tribute to the king of Castile. When a child, he had
seen this tax paid to the Spanish ambassador sent to receive it and had resented with
a boy's impotent rage the scoffs and taunts of the guards who escorted the embassy.
When he came to the throne he received the officers sent by Ferdinand and Isabella
to demand the tribute with marked courtesy and splendid gifts, but returned the "fol-
lowing haughty answer to the sovereigns: " Tell your masters that those who paid
tribute are dead, and Granada has only for the Christian iron for spears and steel for
swords." From that moment Isabella decided to drive the Moor from Spain. She
spent three years in preparation, for she fully realized the magnitude of the task she
had undertaken. She reorganized her army, sent for skillful armores from France
and Italy to build cannon, imported gunpowder from Sicily and Portugal, and heard
in the first battles of this long war the artillery mingle with the cries of knightly con-
flict.
Isabella gave especial attention to measures for the care of the sick and wounded
of her army. Large movable tents supplied with every comfort for the injured were
made for transportation in the rear of the troops and were named the "queen's
hospital." They contained everything that could relieve suffering, and each tent
had its number of surgeons to dress the wounds, and priests to soothe the last
moments of those who were beyond mortal help. This was the first recorded attempt
of the organization of camp hospitals. Ten years of incessant fighting were ended at
last by the fall of the city of Granada and the close of over seven hundred years of
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 455
Moorish domain in Spain. Throughout the long contest Isabella conducted the cam-
paign with unceasing energy. She re-made roads, bridged rivers, cut passes through
mountain defiles, raised money in every way: begged of the Pope because it was a
religious war, begged from her nobles, appealing to their patriotism, and proved her
own sincerity by selling some of the royal domains and pledging some of the crown
jewels to the merchants of Barcelona. Ferdinand fought by her side, and won his
right to command by his wisdom in council and his reckless daring in battle.
The city of Granada was surrendered to Isabella on the second of January, 1492.
For ten years the Moor had fought for his country with matchless heroism. Boabdil,
the reigning Sultan then of Granada, gave the keys of the city to Ferdinand with the
words, " I firmly believe you will use your victory with justice and moderation. " In
his address to the Moorish chiefs he said, " Courage has never been wanting among the
faithful; it has been the strength of their defense. Fatality has paralyzed our arms;
men escaped from terrible peril fear new dangers when there is no hope for better
fortune. What resource; the tempest has destroyed all!" The gate by which the royal
household left Granada was walled up by the Sultan's request, and the peak of Talmud,
where he saw for the last time his beloved city, has since borne the name of " The Last
Sigh of the Moor. " As the Moorish Sultan went on his way to exile he shed bitter
tears of grief.
In Rome the success of this Spanish crusade against the infidel in Spain was cele-
brated by solemn religious services and public festivals. Isabella and Ferdinand
received from the Pope the title of " Catholic kings" and ever afterward Isabella signed
all official papers as " Isabella the Catholic. " In London the final news of the victory
at Granada was read to the citizens in Saint Paul's cathedral by command of Henry
VII. who went with his court to hear the recital and afterward attended the service of
praise held in commemoration of the event.
After eighteen years of sovereignty Isabella saw for the first time her kingdom
united and at peace. While she awaited the fall of Granada in Santa Fe, Christopher
presented to her a memorial he had written to explain his theories in regard to a new
world yet to be discovered and which he believed himself divinely commissioned to
find. With all the resources of her treasury taxed to the utmost to sustain the war
against the Moor, Isabella could not do anything but receive the Genoese sailor with
sympathy and give him hope of future aid. She recognized his intellect, his ardent
temperament and his piety, and was fascinated by the hope of spreading the Christian
faith and planting the cross in new worlds.
Ferdinand, who was less enthusiastic and more cynical than his wife, called Colum-
bus an Italian adventurer with impossible plans, and opposed any idea of aiding him.
Isabella met his objections by saying that Castile would be able when at peace to
furnish the means for the expedition without any help from Aragon, and she gave
Columbus her protection and a sufficient income for his support until the state of her
kingdom should justify her in more active measures in his behalf. After once plight-
ing her faith to Columbus, Isabella was his firm friend and gave him her most gener-
ous confidence. His commission signed by Ferdinand and Isabella on the 17th of
April, 1492, named him admiral of the little fleet which accompanied him on the first
expedition, and gave him ample resources for his voyage. Isabella's faith in him was
rewarded. When he returned from his first expedition she saw those who derided his
plans as impossible, the idle dreams of a visionary, hail him as a god, crowding the
streets of every city he visited to do him honor, ringing the bells and singing hymns
as if a great conqueror had returned.
Isabella proved herself as energetic in the work of increasing the temporal power
of her kingdom as she had been in driving her enemies from its soil. After a few
years of tranquillity, .Spain stood among the first nations of Europe in commercial
importance and wealth.
The mercantile navy of Spain numbered more than a thousand ships; they carried
her work to all the ports of the world and returned laden with gold, to still further
456 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
enrich her. Loyalty, piety and love of adventure were the most striking traits of
Spanish character.
After the fall of Granada, until her death, Isabella's life as a Queen was brilliant
with-success; the glory and prosperity of Spain satisfied her patriotism and her ambi-
tion, but she carried hidden from the world a burden of domestic grief and anxiety,
that clouded the splendor of her royalty and at last caused her health, always good
until now, to fail. Her mother, the loved companion of her life, became insane a few
years before her death, in 1496. Isabella's sorrow was intensified by the fear of the
inheritance that might fall on her children, a fear so sadly realized in the fate of her
daughter Jane.
Isabella was the mother of four children, one son and three daughters. The eldest
daughter, Isabella, married the King of Portugal. In this marriage the Spanish
sovereigns hoped to see Spain and Portugal united under one government. This hope
was never realized, the young Queen dying in 1498, leaving an infant son who survived
his mother only one year. The second daughter, Katherine, married an English prince,
the son of Henry VII. ;he lived only a few months after the wedding, and the King to
keep her rich dowery in England married the young widow to his second son afterward
Henry VIII. of England. She is known in history as Katherine of Aragon, the mother
of the English Queen who by her severity gained the name of Bloody Mary. The
only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, Prince John, was a boy of great promise. His
education had been carefully directed to develop his naturally brilliant mind in the
qualities most to be desired in the heir to a glorious kingdom like Spain. He fulfilled
the brightest hopes of his parents by an early manhood, graced by every accomplish-
ment, and dignified by a trained intellect and serious mind. He was married, when he
was twenty years old, to Margaret daughter of the Emperor of Germany. The
marriage was celebrated in October, 1497, with splendor befitting the rank and expecta-
tions of the young couple, but the bridegroom took cold at one of the fetes and died
after a few days of terrible suffering. He met death with serene courage, and prayed
in his last moments that his parents might feel his own sincere resignation to the Divine
will. His death was a great misfortune for Spain, and the whole nation mourned
with the bereaved parents. When Isabella was told that her son was dead, she bowed
in submission saying, " The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the
name of the Lord;" but her life from this time dwelt in the shadow of this great
affliction.
The death of Prince John made Jane, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella, heiress to the throne of Spain. She was married to Philippe le Bel of Austria,
and lived at Brussels, but payed a visit to her parents, with her husband, after the death
of her brother, in obedience to their wish that the future King and Queen of Spain
should become acquainted with the country and its people. Philippe had such remark-
able personal beauty, that the Spaniards declared on seeing him " that Spain had
been ruled by men, but now it was to be ruled by an angel."
Jane was the least attractive of Isabella's children. She was plain in person, and
her moody and irritable disposition indicated the insanity that afterward developed
itself and gave her the name of Jane the Foolish, by which she is known in history.
The only child of Philippe and Jane the Foolish was born at Alcala in 1503, and after-
ward ruled Spain as Charles V. The deepest natures have the greatest capacity for
suffering, and the agony caused by repeated bereavements seriously affected Isabella's
health. In the autumn of 1504 she was attacked by a fever. Enfeebled by years of
grief and anxiety Isabella sank rapidly under it and died on the twenty-sixth of
November. Death had no terrors for her; after a life so full of action and responsi-
bility the thought of rest must have been sweet. During her illness she was serene
and cheerful, and said to those who wept beside her bed a few hours before her death,
" Do not weep for me; pray for the safety of my soul."
Escorted by a guard of honor Isabella's body was carried from Medina del Campo
to Granada, The peasants thronged the roads to see the royal procession, and sank
' THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 457
on their knees as it passed, praying for the soul of the good queen. At night, when
the escort rested with their sacred charge, in the fields or in some village church, the
bier was watched by the villagers who, in devout attitudes, listened to masses for the
dead.
Ximenes, when told of her death, said: " Spain has lost a queen she can not suffi-
ciently mourn. We have known the superiority of her intellect, the goodness of her
heart, the purity of her conscience, the sincerity of her piety, her justice toward all
the world, her desire to give abundance and tranquillity to her people." This estimate
of her character can be accepted as just. Her errors were those of her education and
her century; her virtues were those of a great queen and a great woman. She taught
her nobles that they were born to serve not to oppress, and recalled to mind the old
law of Castile, " that a cavalier of noble blood should treat his vassals with love and
gentleness." She taught the world that obedience to law is as necessary for the moral
sphere as for the physical, and that liberty is the fruit of a wise government. In her
administration she foreshadowed the modern tendency to seek redress for wrong by
legal means, and order by perfect social institutions, and by this course she gave an
unexpected movement to the march of civilization.
She sleeps beside her husband in a magnificent chapel in the center of Granada.
Every year on the anniversary of her burial the bells of twenty-eight churches, which
she built in that city on the ruins of Moorish mosques, toll in her memory and recall
the work in which she most gloried — the planting of the cross over the crescent of the
infidel.
ADDRESS ON EFFECTIVE VOTING.
By MISS CATHERINE HELEN SPENCE.
Among the many congresses held in Chicago this year, there has been one which
has led to definite action, and focused into one point the discontent of the many and
the aspirations of the few. A league has been formed
for active propagandism by the advocates of propor-
tional representation — what I call effective voting.
It is not with me a thing of today or of last year.
For thirty-two years I have written on this subject^
and if any man had come forward to do that I am
doing now I would have loyally helped him; I should
have rejoiced in his successes and sympathized in his
disappointments.
It is said that many of us women spend our lives in
waiting for the coming man, who often does not come
at all, and sometimes when he does come she might
have done better without him. I have waited long
enough for the coming man, and I as a single woman
have had to take up lecturing myself, and, in point of
fact, I have done fairly well, both with life and with
lecturing. When I have been asked if I do not wish
that I were a man, I have replied no, not much. I
feel like the Jewesses who, when the men publicly
thanked God because He had made them men and
not women, thanked the Eternal Father because He
had made them according to His pleasure. When I
have been further pressed and asked if I did not wish I were a man for the sake of the
cause of proportional representation, I have replied that I am stronger in and for that
cause as a woman than I would be as a man, because I have no political ax to grind.
I have not even a vote. So I can occupy the platform of absolute disinterestedness
when I plead that the men who are supposed or presumed to represent me should be
equitably represented themselves. This can only be done in your America by escap-
ing from the district lines for congressional and state elections, and from the ward sys-
tem in municipalities.
Truth is greater than falsehood, and wisdom stronger than folly; and if we do not
by our political machinery exclude the intelligent and the wise from our federal, state
and municipal councils, these would leaven society, and make themselves felt in every
department, especially in the political. But if from defective machinery or other
causes, the representation is not really equal, and intelligent and conscientious min-
Mis3 Catherine Helen Spence was born in Melrose, Scotland, in 1825, and went at the age of thirteen to Adelaide, Sonth
Australia, with her parents. Her official title is Member of the State Children's Council of South Australia, and she carries a
government commission from the Earl of Kintore, governor of that province. She published in London four novels, "Clara
Morison," " Tender and True," "Mr. Hogarth's Will " and "The Author's Daughter," and has written a great deal for Austra-
lian newspapers and magazines. In 1860 she began to write on electoral reform, adopting the views of Thomas Hare and
John Stuart Mill with regard to proportional representation. In 1893 she began to lecture on the subject with ballots, show-,
ing that the method made all votes effective, and her main object in visiting America was to advocate the breaking down of
the ward and district lines and electing representatives by the single transferable vote. She aided Miss Emily Clark in the
work of boarding out dependent children in South Australia, which has been so satisfactory that it has been imitated all
over Australia and New Zealand. The industrial schools for paaper children have been emptied, and the children are kept
in proper homes till fit for work. She has also been fourteen years on a school board, and is on the Woman's Suffrage League-
Committee in her province. Her poetoffice address is Adelaide, South Australia.
468
MISS CATHERINE HELEN SPENCE,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 459
orities are shut out, the whole balance is overthrown, and party exercises a mischiev-
ous influence.
Now some minorities believe that their particular reform will cure all evils. The
woman suffragists fancy that if they have votes and use them they will moralize poli-
tics. Will they? As soon as it is seen that the earnest, conscientious women have
votes and use them, will not the party politicians, who are so eager to get ignorant
aliens put on the rolls that they may use their votes for party victory, will not these
induce all the women whom they could command, cajole or corrupt, to register as
voters, and the result is that the votes for these interested men will be swelled by the
votes of these women, and the adverse majority would be only the larger. Therefore,
I have said all along that the woman's suffrage and proportional representation should
go together, or the first will be a mere delusion.
The prohibition party believes and declares that universal ab.stinence from alco-
hol in every shape will put an end to poverty. Will it do so ? It is a question whether
the whisky power would not be greater if the workmen could live on less and waste
less. If he became a vegetarian and could maintain his family and himself for less
money, unless economic conditions are altered, the result would be that wages would
fall below their present level, and that the profits of capital and monopoly would be
greater. It is partly because the English workman considers beer a necessary of life
that his wages are at a higher level than on the Continent of Europe, and the temper-
ate and vegetarian peoples of India and China are the worst paid laborers in the world.
I heard a lady at the Suffrage Congress say to and exhort all good men to come to the
polls and vote, and she asserted that it was on account of their criminal abstention
that politics were so corrupt. But if all the good men in America were to exercise
the suffrage privilege, unless we get rid of the present party system, that is built on
the duel between two parties, and two parties only in your separated districts, they
might benefit themselves by doing the duty of citizens, but they would not moralize
f)olitics, for this reason, that if one hundred Democrats voted, and one hundred Repub-
icans voted also, they would not change the situation. A few wavering and corrupti-
ble voters could turn the scale, and thus virtually carry the district.
I believe I should have a vote, and expect in time to have it, but it would be little
pleasure to me unless I can make it effective for the return of one man of whom I
approve, without neutralizing the vote of any man who differs from me, or wasting the
vote of anyone who agrees with me. It is by the exchange of the competitive for the
co-operative spirit in politics that they can be sweetened, elevated and moralized, and
by the method of voting which I shall show you as an object lesson, you will see that
each vote has equal weight, and that all are effective. It is so simple that a child of
eight years of age by merely reading the " Instructions to Voters " printed on the back
of the ticket or ballot can tell the result. As you see by the ticket or ballot, all you
have to do is to put " i " to the name of the candidate you prefer over all others, " 2 "
to the name of the one next in preference, " 3" to the next, and so on. So then if the
candidate you prefer has too many votes or too few votes, your vote is passed on
accordingly to the next, and is used and not wasted. Thus is the simple vote of
Thomas Hare and John Stuart Mill apprehended by a child. The quota needed by
anyone candidate for his return is found by dividing the whole number of votes polled
in the electoral district by the number of representatives needed. In the election for
six poets to fill six vacant seats on Parnassus beside Apollo and the muses, the sixth
part of this assembly who vote are entitled to carry in one, and not that half plus one
should carry in all six, leaving the half minus one without any. This last is stupid
injustice, but effective voting is justice, common sense and arithmetic.
All reformers should turn their eyes toward such methods of representation as
would be just to the many and just to the few. At present outside parties are either
lamentably weak or mischievously strong. They are powerless when they try to carry
in an honest representation of their own opinions; they are strong when they sit on
the fence and offer their votes to that one who offers the most advantageous terms.
460 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
To give them their fair share of power, no more and no less, is the aim of effective
voting.
The old parties of Republicans and Democrats have each a noble record and some
grand traditions; but in this breathing, suffering world, we can not live on a record or
grow by mere tradition. Why shall the large, earnest minority of the Prohibitionists
not have real representation? and if the Populists have a sixth part of the votes in a
six-member district, or an eighth part in an eight-member electorate, why should they
not carry in their preferred disciple as an apostle into the representative body? It is
the same with the Socialists and with the Single Taxers. So long as all these are
struggling for platform and their platform alone, the ticket is prepared by the caucus
leaders, and the red-eyed corporations smile; but if all of these combined to demand
equitable representation for all — including the Republican and the Democratic parties
themselves — their strength would be irresistible, because the honest and conscientious
Republican and Democrat, who submit to machine politics as a necessity, would be
glad of a method which assures to the real majority a real ascendency, and to all
minorities equitable representation.
Everywhere since I came to Chicago I have met with earnest reformers who
desire to improve existing administrations of public matters, especially along the lines
of poor laws and child saving. I find, that in Australia we have secured benefits which
are not now in America. This is not because the Australians are more wise and more
just than the Americans, but because you are thwarted and hampered by what you call
" politics," which in that sense does not exist in Australia at all.
The taking of " the children of the state," as we call them, the dependent and
destitute children, out of institutions, and placing them in foster homes to lead a
natural life, both for the advantage of the child and the saving of public money, is
opposed here by the politicians who want the patronage of institutions and who
would turn out a good administrator, like the superintendent of your great Illinois
Deaf and Dumb School, who really founded the institution, to put a Democrat in his
place. In our changes of ministry, the only people who go out and who come in are
the six responsible cabinet ministers themselves. The civil service has such security
that even occasional vacancies must be filled up according to regulation, and the
*' outs " can not promise places to their adherents if they get in, nor are the present
office-holders tempted to become active electioneering agents in order to retain the
ministry, which alone can keep them in their places.
As for our municipal elections we only vote for mayor, councilors and auditors,
and the political question does not interfere with these. It is character and business
ability that are needed. Now, by your ward politics, by which the intelligent minori-
ties are prevented from combining, your great cities are taxed heavily for work badly
done or not done at all. Last week, within a stone's throw of the Windsor Park Rail-
way Station, surrounded by great hotels having thousands of inmates, a dead horse
lay for six days under an August sun, seen and smelled by every one Vain were
repeated remonstrances to the police; and I was told that the most effective means in
England and in Australia, writing to the newspapers, would be useless here.
Verily, you Americans are the most much-enduring people in the world. Professor
Bryce says the difficulty of getting enfranchised from " machine politics " is caused
by the essential conservatism of the American people. Social freedom you have, and
the whole atmosphere is sweet with it; but this seems to blind you to the slavery of
the party machine in politics, and to the neglect of your city governments to do the
work you are heavily taxed for. No city in Europe or in Australia would endure what
citizens in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia submit to with noth-
ing but private and ineffectual grumbling And let no one say that it is on account
of the foreign element in these great cities that municipal administration is so cor-
rupt. Who uses this foreign element? Who pays the money and who profits by the
bargain? Who is eager to put the ignorant alien on the roll? Americans, to be sure.
Americans who prefer the triumph of party to the good of state. Who employ these
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 4ftl
ignorant voters and votes as a means by which to win the stakes? When 1 heard in
the Congress on Civil Government tlie comparison of the parties to gamblers playing
for high stakes, I felt tempted to interpolate, " and these stakes arc not their own, but
the money paid by the citizens for honest work, and not for dishonest gambling."
Thus all that is faulty and mischievous in your American institutions depends on
your majority or plurality system of representation, which has been inherited from
your English forefathers.
I do not know if you in America suffer as much from merely local interests in
political matters as we do in Australia and in Canada. The large electoral district
will retain much that is good in local representation, and will do away with much that
is belittling and mischievous.
You may say that this is a large reform, that it demands besides a change in the
method of voting, a reconstruction of districts so as to allow quota representation
room to play. I never said that it is a small reform. I have not given my life to tin-
kering at old methods, old and imperfect, but for the sake of radically changing them;
and I believe that if the collective conscience of America is fairly aroused, it will be
strong enough to affect this indispensable reform. The Proportional Representation
League is intensely interested and in earnest, and means to arouse this collective con-
science, not merely to protect, but to act and to conquer.
Your parties are Republican and Democrat. Our parties in Australia have
advanced beyond yours and are actually the parties of capitalists and laborers. It
was when I first saw these parties organized for offensive and defensive war that I
abandoned the part of an occasional writer for that of public lecturer on any platform
open to me. I traveled all over my own province of South Australia, and addressed
between fifty and sixty public meetings with ballot papers with the names of well-
known political men as candidates.
The problem of our day is to devise some means of reconciling the claims of cap-
ital and labor, and I felt assured that if these were pitted against each other in every
electoral district in Australia as enemies, they would be embittered against each other,
and it would become more and more difficult to harmonize their actions. It is by the
admission of the best men of both parties, and also of representatives of outside parties
into our legislature, that some ?nodns vivetidi may be found.
And there is an object lesson for America to be read and studied in Australia now.
We are passing through a severe financial crisis, brought on by two main causes; fii'st,
the collapse of the land boom, which was always and everywhere a most mischievous
thing, and, second, the steady fall in the price of our products. Not to the deprecia-
tion of silver; silver has not depreciated. It buys as much of everything as we want
to buy now as it ever did. But it is owing to the appreciation of gold, which makes
our public and private* indebtedness so much heavier. All the Australian colonies
have this financial difficulty, but in the two colonies. New Zealand and South Austra-
lia, which have had the courage to impose direct taxation, and, above all, which have
taxed land values, excluding improvements, we see a wonderful difference for the bet-
ter as compared with New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, which will not adopt
such methods, but which seek to balance the revenue to the expenditures by increase
of customs duties. New Zealand is prosperous and has a surplus revenue. South
Australia has been deeply implicated in the misfortunes of the adjacent colonies, and
she depends so much on the large silver mines which are close to her border and
largely owned by her people, though they are actually situated in New South Wales.
So the silver question is trying her greatly. But still she stands, and is increasing her
direct taxation and decreasing her indirect. This plainly proves that a change in
economic methods differentiates between peoples otherwise equally circumstanced.
I am sometimes accused of having only one idea, that of proportional representa-
tion; but I have really so many ideas that it is hard for me to keep to my text, as at
present. The reason why I insist so much on a change in electoral methods is that I
believe a real representation of the whole people, and not of a mere segment of the
people, is the key to unlock the doors for all other reforms. First secure that the
462 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
people are equitably represented, and then see what earnest, conscientious men can do.
Better men will come forward, and more citizens will exercise their right of suffrage,
under better circumstances.
I could give whole columns of figures to show how the present method leaves half
the citizens unrepresented, and how a great many vote for the successful candidate
because he is the only offered. But I do not consider the figures necessary, as the fact
is tacitly acknowledged. I shall proceed to give a practical lesson. The first objec-
tion brought forward is that the new method is too difficult for the average voter, and
the second that it is too difficult for the average poll clerk. I shall first make you vote,
and then make you count. Imagine you are a subscriber to a circulating library, and
you have a right to one book. You send your list, your book ballot, by a messenger,
of six books you would prefer, named in the order of your preference. But you do not
expect him to bring you more than one book, and that one to be the nearest your first
choice that can be obtained. It is the same way in an election. You mark your pref-
erence, and your vote will be effective in the return of the first man on your list who
needs your vote and can use it.
(Ballot papers are then handed around among the audience, and eighty-two ballot
papers are filled up.)
Now, in order to ascertain the quota, the number of eighty-two was divided by six,
the number of seats to be filled by the poets previously mentioned, the names of the
candidates being given further on. This division gives a quota of thirteen, with a
remainder of four. There was one void vote, six names having been marked with
a cross, which indicated no preference, and this reduced the remainder to three. The
names of the candidates were as follows: Browning, Bryant, Burns, Byron. Longfel-
low, Lowell, Moore, Scott, Shelly, Tennyson, Whitman, Whittier, Wordsworth.
(After the ballot papers were received, thirteen members of the audience stepped
forward to take the votes, according to the figure " i " denoting first choice on each
ballot. Longfellow was the most popular candidate, and has received thirteen votes,
his full quota, before the count has been more than two-thirds taken. All subsequent
^'i" votes for Longfellow were then transferred to the man marked "2" on each
voter's paper, which varied according to the voter's choice. There were sufficient of
such for Tennyson to make up his quota of thirteen, and he also was returned, and all
subsequent 2's were given to the one marked " 3." At this stage of the proceedings
all the votes had been counted once, and only two out of the six were returned by full
quota. We, therefore, had to go to the less popular poets, who had no chance of mak-
ing up thirteen votes. One poet had a single vote that was given to " 2 " on the ballot
paper; another had three dealt out in the same way, unless, as often happened, the
second or third vote had been given to Tennyson or to Longfellow, who did not need
it at all, or to the candidate eliminated or out of the contest.)
Thus we worked up all the votes of the unsuccessful candidates until we made up
six full quotas of thirteen, and had three ballots over. This was given as a specimen
of effective voting. Those who took the votes and those who looked on and listened
could see that no vote was wasted. The same principle will apply to 820, to 8,200,or
to 82,000 votes, and it would be impossible for any party to obtain a greater share of
the representatives than their proportion of the votes entitled them to have. Here
you will notice, too, that nobody voted against anybody, but simply indicated what he
wanted done with his vote in every possible contingency.
Where party spirit is strong the partisan will vote the party ticket, as he will select
from the list of candidates those of his own views. But in a wider field, and in a larger
list than is used at present, character, ability and integrity will receive both first and
contingent votes. Even though " outsiders " can not carry in a candidate of their own,
still they can, by their contingent votes, greatly modify the representation. By the
present method many votes are simply lost, and often, by this means, the most objec-
tional (to the voter) of the parties is returned.
In political matters, as in all other things, let us seek righteousness and justice,
and many other good things will be added unto us.
MOORISH WOMEN AS I FOUND THEM.
By MRS. A. L. HOWARD.
The traveler who goes to Tangiers in Morocco comes from Cadiz or Gibraltar.
While it is a trip of but a few hours, yet it seems like stepping backward, like closing
a modern history to pick up a romance, like passing
from Gibbon or Macaulay to the Arabian Nights.
Tangiers at one time belonged to Portugal and
formed a part of the dower given to Catharine of
Braganza when she married Charles II., King of Eng-
land. The English built a long stone pier, at the end of
which vessels could anchor in safety. In after years
they found the possession an expensive one, without
any great advantages, so Tangiers was ceded to the
Emperor of Morocco, and the first step of the Mo-
rocco potentate was to destroy the pier, and so com-
pel all ships to anchor in the offing, about a mile from
the shore. Before leaving the steamer the Arabian
Nights Entertainment begins. Boats manned by native
boatmen in picturesque costumes swarm around and
fight for passengers, knock each other down with their
oars, toss each other overboard, screech, yell, gesticu-
late, in fact, carry on as if demented; it is pande-
monium let loose. The travelers finally make terms
and are stowed in the boats with their luggage. The
transit is made in a few minutes, and the boat reaches
a stone landing. Here the free fight begins anew with
fresh vigor and different combatants. One is very sure that it is a mistaken idea that
Morgiana scalded the forty thieves to death; they are all here, forty times forty in
number, and as much alive as in the days of Ali Baba. They wade out into the water
to their waists, they snatch satchels and valises in spite of all efforts to retain them,
gesticulating and talking and demanding " backsheesh." The boatmen beat them off
with their oars, and after a struggle and much shouting, the passengers are landed, the
luggage is recovered under a shower of abuse in Arabic, with a droll intermingling of
English oaths (learned from British sailors), is passed through the custom house with
little difficulty, and we find ourselves within the gates of Tangiers, walking toward
the hotel — walking, for there is but one carriage, and that belongs to the Cheriff, who
is married to an English woman. How he can use it with any comfort or safety on
the roughly paved, steep, stony streets of Tangiers I can not imagine. The Cheriff's
wife came out from England as a governess and married her husband with the promise
that she was to be the only wife. She bore him two sons. When the boys were eight
and ten years old the father proposed to take another wife. The English wife imme-
Mrs. Amelia Louisa Howard is a native of New Orleans, La. Her parents were James Waters Zacharie and Caroline
Elizabeth Zacharie. She comes of a French family, her grandfather, a native of Lyons, France, coming to this country with
Lafayette or Rochambeaa. Though offered a high position under the government of Napole<jn, he refused to return to France,
saying he was an American citiz^. He was manager of the first bank west of the Alleghaniee. Mrs. Howard was educated
in New Orleans schools, then at the Ursnline Convent, finishing at Miss Marcelly's Academy, Natchez, Miss. She has traveled
over the United States, a great part of Europe and the north coast of Africa. She married first B. D. Howard, a lawyer of
New Orleans, and after his death became the wife of his brother, Richard Austin Howard, of San Antonio, Tex. Her prin-
cipal literary works are lectures on English and French literature and newspaper work. Her profession is teaching. Her
postoliice address is New Orleans, La., No. 248 Eighth Street.
463
MRS. AMELIA L. HOWARD.
464 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
diately made arrangements for a separation, and took charge of the education of her
children. She is bringing them up as Mohammedans, as their lot is cast in Tangiers,
and is giving them every advantage of an European education, joined with the learn-
ing of the Arabs. She is to be seen very often on horseback in and about Tangiers.
The first good look one has at the women is in the market place. There is a
market for vegetables and one for grain, and outside of these a wide plain, where, amid
horses, donkeys, camels, snake charmers, etc., crowds of natives wander about or
squat down in groups. Of course the women met here are of the lower classes,
those of the higher rarely walking abroad, save to go to the bath, and then are mufifled
from head to feet. The general costume of the multitude is made of coarse cotton
cloth, white or unbleached being most common. Yellow is sometimes seen, but I do
not remember seeing any vivid colors; the men reserve the bright colors for their
own use. The dress consists of drawers, loose, but not flowing, scarcely perceptible
beneath the long, cloak-like garment, lapped in front and bound with a girdle of folds
of the same material, the girdle being used as a pocket. Over the whole is a mantle,
sheet-like in form, that is wrapped about until the person is completely disguised.
One edge comes down over the forehead to the eyes, and the other is brought across
the lower part of the face up to the bridge of the nose, leaving only the eyes exposed.
The lowest as well as the highest drapes herself thus, of course in finer or coarser
material, according to the rank and wealth, but even the most abandoned affect the
disguise. A favorite material for the drapery among the lower classes is the soft bath-
ing sheet we use. The little girls use large bathing towels, and gravely imitate their
elders in concealing their faces and form. The women seemed to be buying and sell-
ing and gossiping in the market, just as our own women do. Sometimes they forget
themselves and let the drapery drop from their faces, but as soon as they notice a man
looking their way, they draw it up around them again. The young women are quite
pretty, some light brunettes and others as dark as negroes. The old women are hide-
ous — veritable hags. There is much disease among them, and so little medical care
that they are great sufferers. Male physicians are not allowed to attend them, and
skilled female physicians are not yet sufficiently numerous to do much good. There
is an American Presbyterian mission established in Tangiers. The American women
missionaries are generally doctors. They learn Arabic quickly, and give their medical
services to introduce Christianity.
Near the Kaaba, or pasha's palace, is another palace, where the pasha's ladies
reside. I thought at first that this was the pasha's harem, but found it was a palace
where relatives of the pasha, " his sisters, his cousins and his aunts" reside, the young
ones until husbands were found for them, the old ones until their death. The pasha
(governor of the town under the emperor), quite a young man, who had succeeded his
father, had but one wife, to whom he was devotedly attached. His home was a beau-
tiful country seat near the town where his wife and children resided, he himself com-
ing into the Kaaba for the transaction of business, remaining one or several days at a
time.
The pasha's ladies I saw were three or four quite pretty young ones and one very old
one, the widow of a former pasha. Of course in the: house they wore no drapery. They
seemed gay and amiable girls, delighted to see strangers and to show their house.
The rooms were built around a marble paved court and contained no furniture but a
brass bed and cushions around the wall or scattered on the floor. Some had no beds,
but little round tables about six inches high, to hold work or a cup of tea or coffee,
as the occupants sat upon the floor. All the floors were covered with rugs. Here and
there around the court were light tables, bearing sweets, which they offered us. They
showed us their costumes, consisting of three or more long coat-like garments over sev-
eral skirts. These skirts and coats, all nearly of the same length, were of thin, soft mate-
rial, a kind of muslin, of different delicate colors with gold and silver interwoven, and
were worn one over the other until all blended and formed an airy drapery. They
were lapped in front and bound at the waist with a wide sash of soft silk, the folds of
TH?: CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 465
which were used as pockets for handkerchiefs, flat pincushions, scissors and sewing
materials. They wore no corset and their drawers did not show beneath the dress,
and their bare feet were thrust into babouches of leather embroidered in gold and sil-
ver. Babouches are slippers, the fore part only used; the back part is mashed flat to
the sole by the heel. Their hair was twisted up carelessly and bound with bands of
tinsel and beads, with fresh flowers stuck here and there. They are very fond of fresh
flowers, and have them about in quantities. One was seated on the floor, sorting out
a large bunch which had just been brought in, and she seemed to be in an ecstacy of
delight over the roses. Tangiers is a paradise of flowers. We met at the palace two
young American ladies, doctors or medical students, from the Presbyterian mission,
and through them we carried on our conversation. They told us of the great suffering
among the women from the utter neglect of good medical attendance. They came to
the palace to see particularly the widow of the old pasha, who was a very great suf-
ferer. She was always glad to receive them, and hearing from them that our party was
in the palace, she sent for us to pay her a visit. They told us she was a very good
woman, and had been a beauty, but we could see no vestige remaining. She was a
perfect wreck.
The house was a two-story one, as are most of the houses in Tangiers. Some of
the second stories had windows on the street, and the women seemed as free to look
from them as we were at the gentlemen of our party, who were awaiting us in the street
below, but they did not appear to care to look. I suppose they would have felt
obliged to muffle their faces, as this is apparently a matter of self-respect with them.
There, then, within four walls these women passed their lives, sewing, embroidering,
or idling their days away amid sweets and flowers. I saw not a sign of a book. I was very
anxious to see the inside of an ordinary Moorish house, and through the American
consul I was enabled to do so. We were taken by a Moorish employe of the consulate to
see several interiors. They were all alike in a general way, made of stone and stucco,
with horse-shoe arches, two stories, the rooms around a court open to the sky, the
lower story without windows, very little wood used about them, no doors but the
heavy one at the entrance, and portieres everywhere. All were furnished alike, but
more or less richly, the bed of brass or iron at one end of the room, the walls covered
with hangings of silk or cloth, the floor with marble or earthen tiles, no chairs, ward-
robes or tables, only divans or cushions against the wall, where ladies sat doing noth-
ing but fanning themselves. They received us politely everywhere, bidding us wel-
come, and smiling as if gratified at our visit. At last we came to the house of a Moor-
ish merchant, who had been warned of our coming, as our guide was a friend of his.
We were in the midst of the Ramadan week or feast, corresponding to the Christian
Easter, coming at the end of forty days' rigorous fast, like the Christian Lent.
Everybody was in holiday attire. We had been astonished to notice that our male
guide was allowed to enter everywhere, to see the ladies face to face without veils. I
judge by this that the veil or drapery stands in the same light as our bonnets or hats.
At the merchant's house we were received at the door by the host and led to a
room (our guide with us), where we found his young wife, seated on alow divan running
around the room. He was about fifty years of age and very dark. She was young
and fair, and his only wife. I found that although Mohammedans, at least the Moors,
are permitted several wives, they usually have but one, and make good and careful
husbands. The lady was a lovely woman, a light brunette, with magnificent eyes and
rounded limbs. She was dressed most elaborately in splendid material, and received
us courteously and gracefully — indeed, her whole bearing bore the stamp of highest
breeding. No grand duchess, reared amid the ceremonials of a court, could have been
a grander, statelier lady. Ilcr style of dress was the same as that of the pasha's
ladies, but of thinner muslins and silks, gold embroidered and woven. She wore
large jeweled ear-rings, and necklaces reaching from the throat to the waist, formed
of string after string of gold beads, jewel set, and pearls. On the bare arms, coming
from wide flowing sleeves, were several bracelets. On her head she wore a circlet of
(30)
466 . THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
gold and muslin tissue, twisted with gold beads and fastened in place with jeweled
pins. She had four children, the youngest a pretty little girl about two years old.
Among the Moors girl children are not much valued, but as her three elder children
were fine boys, the little girl seemed a pet of both father and mother.
The boys were dressed in long robes of embroidered muslin over colored silks,
with sashes of silk about their waists. They told me with a great deal of pride that
the material of their dress was French. They looked not unlike altar boys in a Catho-
lic Church. At their side, hung by silver chains, were antique wrought silver boxes,
supposed to carry prayers or bits of the Koran, but the boys had nothing as yet in
theirs. They were admirably behaved children, neither shy nor forward, trying to
talk to us and make us understand the use of the different parts of their dress.
They wore a red fez with a long blue tassel on their heads, and plain red or yellow
babouches. When we came in, my two companions, younger women than I, were
invited to a seat upon the divan, the host gave me a chair and took one himself, and
also gave one to our guide. There seemed nothing unusual in the lady meeting her
husband's friends unveiled. She conversed with the guide just as we would with a
male friend. The nurse brought in the baby girl, who cried at the sight of strangers,
and stretched out her arms crying, " Mamma, mamma." The mother took her for a
moment, when the father relieved her, coaxing the child, cooing to it, telling it to
come to " Baba" and be a good girl." She nestled down in his arms and soon became
quiet, when the nurse carried her away.
Our conversation was carried on through the guide by means of the little Spanish
he understood, and also by signs. I made him compliment the lady on having done
her duty to her husband in bearing him three fine boys. She and her husband both
smiled and nodded pleasantly. There was, as usual, no furniture in the room save a
very handsome brass bed at one end, draped with embroidered muslin curtains; the
walls were hung with gold embroidered satin panel hangings. After a short visit
we made a motion to leave, but our host insisted on our staying longer. A very hand-
somely hand-wrought brass vase or bottle was brought, with a corresponding saucer or
basin. Our host directed me by signs to hold out my hands, and he poured over them
orange-flower perfumed water, giving me a fine damask napkin to dry them; then he
passed on to my companions, doing the same for them. A servant relieved him of
the vase and basin and handed him a pierced brass vase standing in a brazier saucer.
These pieces were marvels of delicate workmanship in brass. From the holes in the
vase came forth a cloud of odoriferous smoke. I was in deep mourning at the time,
and wore, thrown back over my bonnet, a long black veil. He gathered the veil
around the vase so as if to confine the smoke, and bade me bend low over it; after thor-
oughly fumigating me he passed on to the others.
This ceremony over, a very handsome tea-service of beaten silver was brought in
with a silver boxof lump sugar. The spirit lamp was lighted under the silver tea-kettle,
and while the water boiled the lady proceeded to put some tea and sugar in to the tea-pot
then she poured on the boiling water and tasted the mixture. It was all done quietly
and naturally, without a shade of embarrassment or self-consciousness. Here was a
woman brought up her whole life within the four walls of her own house, rarely seeing
an outsider, with all the self-possession, all the grace and dignity of the proudest
duchess of Mayfair or Belgravia. I was invited to take a seat beside her on the
cushion, where a space had been left for me by the boys. They were four, six and
eight years old, and had taken complete charge of my younger friends, entertaining
them to the best of their ability. The seat afforded me was evidently the seat of
honor, and though I had my doubts about my being able to rise without great difificulty
from so low a seat, I accepted it as a matter of course. Two immense round brass
trays were brought in and deposited on the floor before us. One contained fine little
baccarat glass tumblers and a set of royal Worcester cups and saucers, and the other
a pile of cakes, a kind of thick cookey about the size of our after-dinner coffee saucer,
in the center of which different kinds of fruits had been baked. The tea was served
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 467
in the cups and glasses without milk or spoons. It was very sweet and thick fronv the
quantity of sugar in it. We drank a glass or two and nibbled at the cake for polite-
ness, for we did not find any of it good. The little boys behaved like gentlemen,
handing the tea to the ladies. The eldest asked for nothing, but the little four-year-
old evidently wanted a cake, and in spite of his elder brother's reasoning and expos-
tulation, insisted on asking for it, but did it in a manly way, without whining or cry-
ing or worrying his mother. She gave it to him with a word or two of reproof, and
he ate it silently, as if ashamed of his behavior. How different from many American
children we all have seen. Soon after our 5 o'clock tea we bade our hosts adieu,
delighted with our visit. They insisted on our taking away with us a number of the
cakes.
I had read a great deal about the women of the east meeting at the baths as at
a club room, and I was very anxious to see them, indeed, to take a bath with them.
I was told I would not be allowed to enter a bath in Tangiers, so I had to wait until I
reached Algiers. The dress of the Algerine differs somewhat from that of the Tan-
gerine, the conspicuous difference being in the drawers or trousers, those in Algiers
being very large, loose and baggy. A woman walks or rather waddles about with a
balloon of spme thick white material on each leg. Her upper dress comes just below
the knee, and is a slip of white embroidered muslin or lace over colored silk, bound at
the waist with a sash. As ornaments are used ear-rings, necklaces, bracelets and a
curious pin, which I can scarcely describe, used to fasten the draperies. The pin is of
Kabyle origin, generally silver, with a flat head in shape of a triangle, a crescent or
disk or the prophet's hand. It is either cut out in lace work or is of filagree. Fastened
to the pin is an open ring, and through this incomplete ring, with a ball at each
side of the open part, the material is caught, so that it is as secure as if fastened
with one of our safety pins. The French occupation of Algiers has done away with
many old customs and has rendered the people less bigoted. Any stranger taking off
his or her shoes can go all over the mosques, while in Tangiers strangers have been
nearly killed for attempting this.
In Algiers the women of the upper classes walk or drive abroad, wrapped in the
sheet-like drapery. They do not seem to aim at concealing their faces, and the dra-
pery is often semi-transparent. I saw them at the tomb or shrine of one of their
saints, where barren women go to pray for children, lounging about on the cushions or
floor without mantles or drapery, and men coming and going all the time. We were
directed to a bath, and at the door all our romantic illusions about the beauty of them
were dispelled. The old hag in charge exacted a fee of twenty cents for allowing us
to enter and look on. We went down two or three steps to a room below the level of
the street, dark, dirty, ill-smelling. Around the wall ran a divan, and on it were heaps
of clothes left in charge of the old woman and her assistants, two almost nude, repul-
sively ugly negresses. The old woman led us to a door which opened into a steam
room. The marble floor of it was several inches deep in water, and two completely
naked negresses kept it at the same height by continually dashing on it pails of water
from a fountain high on the wall, an outlet carrying off the water. The steam filled the
room as with a cloud, and the most strong and offensive odor of perspiration filled every
nook and corner. On the floor were over fifty nude women and little girls, some scrub-
bing themselves or each other, others washing their heads and combing out their long
hair, others again were stretched out at full length, resting after their exercises, not a
shred of clothing to be seen unless wash rags and towels could be so called. We stood
gazing a few minutes and then beat a hasty retreat, glad to get away from the heat and
the stench. The women did not seem to mind our looking at them; they only called
out to shut the door behind us, as the draft was cold, I could not help thinking what
a golden opportunity such a visit would be for a painter or sculptor, with such models
scattered around in so many different positions, and nearly all young and handsome.
I was, however, cured of all desire to participate in an eastern bath. •
A few days later we left the shores of Africa, and, steaming across the Mediterra-
468 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
nean to France, I had these Moorish women constantly in mind. They seemed happy
and cheerful; I had not seen an unhappy or cross looking woman from Tangiers to
Algiers, save those who were actually suffering. All, from the dirty, bathing-sheet
draped women of the market place, to their more fortunate and daintier sisters of
the palace, seemed blessed with even tempers. They evidently had no idea of the
higher education, of the fads, isms and ologies that make part of our lives. Their
children, their embroideries, their clothes and jewels, their flowers and trifles seemed
to fill their lives full of interest, and I asked myself this question: "Are we women of
another race, striving upward and onward feverishly toward a higher goal — are we any
happier, any better women than these simple-minded creatures with no interests out-
side of their homes?" I have not yet answered the question to my own satisfaction,
and so I leave it to you.
WOMAN AS A FINANCIER.
By MRS. MARY A. LIPSCOMB.
By simple illustration and a feV well-established facts I hope to show that woman
is not only capable of managing money, but that she is even a safer custodian of funds
than man. It is, therefore, an exploded theory that
women who have property to manage must, like chil-
ren and imbeciles, be provided with guardians. Under-
stand me, I do not mean to say that she is a more
honest or a wiser financier than man, but simply that
she is a more careful one. Woman is not naturally
speculativ^e while man is. It is said, and I think the
court records and lawyers throughout the country
corroborate the statement, that a widow left in charge
of her own estate will invariably manage it judiciously
and, if she does not augment it to any very great extent,
she will live within her income and never allow her
property to be squandered. On the contrary, when
woman's financial ability is distrusted and a guardian
is appointed from the stronger sex, in very many
cases he becomes enriched and the widow, sad to
relate, finds her earthly possessions "growing small by
degrees and beautifully less" each day. It behooves
us then, as mothers of the present generation and
directors of the education of the young, to see to it
MRS. M. A. LIPSCOMB, ^^'^^ culturc iTi thls partlcular is not neglected. Girls
should be taught early the care of money. They
should be encouraged to open a bank account. They should be taught to draw checks
and give receipts, balance books, and all else that is necessary to make them intelli-
gent managers of small sums of money. Later on they should know something of
the nature of contracts and deeds; of stocks and bonds; of securities and interest;
so if they have property of their own to manage there will be no danger of their los-
ing it by mismanagement or ignorance. Walter Besant thinks it a very dangerous
experiment for woman to assume any part of man's work and gives this friendly
advice to them: "Take care, ladies, man is a useful creature when wisely trained, but
there is no work so difficult or so dirty that the average erring man will not leave to
his wife to do if she shows the ability to do it and the conviction that it is her duty."
Our author is right so far as certain branches of man's work is concerned, but I hold
that in matters of finance and domestic economy woman is man's safest and truest
guide.
Someone has pertinently remarked that, " Washington might as well have decreed
by legislation how high a brown thrasher should fly, or how deep a trout should
plunge, as to try to seek out the height or depth of woman's duty. The capacity will
finally settle the whole question." As to her capacity to manage finances, she has
Mrs. M. A. Lipscomb was born in Athens, Ga. Her parents were Laura Cobb Ratherford and Williams Rutherford.
She was educated at the Lucy Cobb Institute, Athens, (ia., and has traveled throughout the United States and Europe. She
married Francis Adgate Lipscomb, Professor of Belles-lettres at the University of Georgia. Her special work has been in
the interest of elocution, science and general education. Her principal literary works are essays, plays, iioems, newspaper
articles, etc. Her profession is that of a teacher. She sams up her life as follows : " Half my years are spent and I am bat
on the threshold of knowledge. ' This only I know that I know nothing.'" In religions faith she is a Baptist. Her post-
olfice address is Athens, Ga.
469
470 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
settled that question for herself so far as she has been tested. In the state of Georgia^
where I live, there are several banks with women presidents and directors, and in these
perilous times of embarrassment and failure not one of these banks has been seriously-
threatened. Out West there are women cashiers and, so far as my knowledge goes,
not one has ever become a defaulter, nor has by unwise management involved the
stockholders. In Georgia, too, not far from my native town, is a little village of sev-
eral hundred inhabitants under the government of a woman mayor. It i^s a new place,
but there is an air of prosperity and thrift about it that is very remarkable. Even the
stronger sex stop to admire and commend the hand that holds and guides the reins of
government. It is said that this little town of Demorest is the best conditioned town
in our state. Out in Kansas there is still another town that, I am told, is entirely
ofificered by women, and it is affirmed that the finances of that place are more prosper-
ous than those of any other place in the Union. Said Frank Leslie to his wife when
he was dying: "Go to my office, sit in my place, and do my work until my debts are
paid." He recognized in her the ability to do this work, and the result proves that
his judgment was not mistaken. At the time his business was hopelessly insolvent,
his debts being estimated at three hundred thousand dollars. With a brave heart she
begged time of her creditors to rescue her husband's name from the shame of bank-
ruptcy. It was with distrust that they granted her request, but in an incredibly short
time every debt was paid and the entire business placed on a firm basis. Today there
is a no more flourishing business than that of which Mrs. Leslie is the sole proprietor.
Perhaps the strictest financier today and the richest woman in America is Mrs.
Hetty Green, of New York. She is known to all by the little green satchel that she
carries on her arm, in which are stored stocks and securities. She is the only woman
who has ever dared to venture a deal with Wall Street brokers, and in no investment
has she ever been known to lose. It took the skillful financiering of a woman to
restore prosperity to a people whose ruin had nearly been effected by the errors of
the two preceding kings. Might not the wisdom displayed by the Virgin Queen be
helpful in these later times to a people now beset by similar difficulties?
Mrs. Smythe, of North Dakota, is a woman whose farming interests cover many
square miles, and she grows annually thousands of bushels of golden grain. She has
her overseers and superintendents subject to her orders, but she is the supreme director
of all her interests. She invests her money in real estate, and from the yearly rentals
she is enabled to carry on her large farming interests without borrowing or going in
debt. Are there many gentlemen farmers who can boast as much? These few illus-
trations called from here and there are cited, not for the purpose of advocating-
woman's rights, but simply in proof of her ability as a financier; an ability which is
among the God given rights with which she is endowed, and which man in full justice
to her is bound to recognize, I am not an advocate of woman's rights in the oppro-
brious sense of that expression. I do not care to see — hope never to see the women
of America leave the quiet sanctity of their homes and thrust themselves out into the
political world. I could not be so untrue to that mother who taught me that modesty
was the cloak of protection to be worn by woman. I could not be so untrue to my
religion, the religion of my father, which has taught me that the good woman " openeth
her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness, " that "she looketh
well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. " Nay, I could
never advocate any right that would place woman where the blush of shame would
never mantle her cheek, or where the chivalry of man would refuse to accord her that
honor which is every true woman's due.
In closing this little paper which I only offer as containing some suggestive
thoughts, I know of no more beautiful and encouraging example to women in the
financial world than the work that has been accomplished by her at this P2xposition
now in progress. These walls and all that they contain are grand monuments to her
energy, patience and financial skill.
All honor then to the noble daughters of America who have conceived the plan
of all this work and have successfully carried it into execution!
A FEW NOTED WRITERS OF THE SOUTH.
.'J^
By MRS. J. W. DRURY.
Among the writers of the South, we include the names of men who wrote their
works in deeds, as well as in words. It seems fitting in this " Columbian Year," while the
peoples of all lands are with us, pleased to share in
our rejoicings, that we should mingle with our thanks-
: givings praises of the men who planted firmly the
"^^< standard of freedom, in this, the fairest portion of the
New World. In love of country we recognize no
dividing lines; but the brief time at command will
permit only the mention of a few brilliant names — in
the departments of state, science and letters — from
one section: Omitting living writers, Virginia occu-
pies the place of honor in the federation of states, as
the " Mother of Presidents," from the fact, that of the
first five chief, executives four were natives of Vir-
ginia, and were re-elected. Later there were natives
of the same state similarly honored. Her colonial
history will ever present peculiar attractions to the
English-speaking races, as Virginia was the first of
the American colonies settled by the English.
The first book written on the American soil came
from the " Old Dominion," entitled "Good News
from Virginia." Its author, Dr. Alexander VVhitaker,
came to America, impelled by the desire to do mis-
sionary work in the new land. It was he who baptized
the gentle Pocahontas, and gave her hand in marriage to one of the race, hated by her
savage father.
A review of colonial rule is potent, to render us content with the social and polit-
ical conditions of self-government — moreover vividly illustrates the rapid strides of
progress in the preceding two centuries. The following is a concise picture of the
colony of Virginia under the rule of Sir William Berkley, Governor — given in his own
words as quoted — "The population is forty thousand. There are forty-eight parishes,
and the ministers are well paid. But" adds the governor, " I thank God there are no free
schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning
has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has
divulged them, and libels, against the best government. God keeps us from both."
The testy governor's wish was fulfilled in part — one hundred years succeeded filled
with struggles for larger liberty, which in the end of the century, culminated in the
Revolutionary period. It is grateful and fitting to commence this literary survey, with
the most prominent actor of this epoch. A learned critic says that George Washing-
ton was so immeasurably great in other respects that it seems almost profanation to
speak of him as the writer. Yet his writings fill twelve octavo volumes, and are a val-
Mre. John Wilson Drnry was born at Biitternntts, OtspRo County, N. Y. Her parent* were Rev. Isaac Garvin
and Lucy Bostwick Garvin. Mrs. Dmry was educated at Aurora Seminary, New York, but her most valued lessons were
from her father, a graduate of Dartmouth College, who was a man of wide and varied learning. She has traveled extensively
in her own country and in foreign lands. She married, in 1881, Judge John Wilson Drury, of Chicago, 111. Her princi-
pal literary work has been as a newspaper correspondent, daring her travels. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian, and
is a communicant of the church, fler postoUice address is Milan, 111.
471
MRS. J. \V. DRURY.
472 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
uable part of the political history of the time. He had formed for himself a style, the
unconscious outgrowth of his character, which is as distinctly marked as his hand-
writing. Even his "farewell address" — in which he invited the co-operation of Madison,
Hamilton and Jay — gave unmistakable evidence of the molding hand of its original
author.
Thomas Jefferson's imperishable fame owes its existence not to the fact that he
was third President of the American Republic. He won the laurel of immortality by
writing the " Declaration of Independence," a document whose exalted sentiment is
conveyed in diction worthy the most famous of classic writers. His public life
embraced forty-two years. Yet amid all the exciting rivalries of political life, he
found time to retreat to the Shades of Monticello, and devoted thought to letters, and
perfected his plans for founding the University of Virginia, a monument alone suffi-
cient to perpetuate his name and memory.
Of the famed orators who thrilled the statesmen and the country before the War
of the Revolution we lament that there is no record which embalms their eloquence
for all coming time. Even the Divine gift of Patrick Henry — ever indescribable, ever
unapproachable — is only a tradition. Had his pen been gifted as his tongue, we should
today have need of no other theme. Richard Henry Lee was only second to Patrick
Henry in fervid eloquence. He was proficient in Latin and Greek; also was a deep
student and lover of the classics, by which his oratory was greatly enriched.
In the councils of the United Colonies, an assemblage of intellectual giants, Lee
introduced the memorable resolution which kindled a fiery debate, and led to the
motion that a committee be appointed to draft a declaration of independence. Of
this committee Lee, according to usage, should have been chairman. Illness in his
family unexpectedly called him away. On the following day the committee was
appointed, with Jefferson as chairman. By this simple incident or accident, Richard
Henry Lee lost the crown of glory which will ever rest upon the brow of Thomas
Jefferson. We must believe it wisely ordered that Lee's eminent compatriot was
called to pen the immortal page which entitles him to the high rank — first of South-
ern writers.
Of the statesmen of the first three decades of this century, none were more prom-
inent than William Wirt. In 1807 he won wide distinction in the famous trial of Aaron
Burr for high treason. In the War of 181 2 he was an ardent patriot, engaging in active
military duty. In the forum he displayed the same enthusiasm with undaunted mein,
breaking a lance with Pinkney and Webster; plumed knights, before whom the stout-
est heart might quail. Despite the pressing duties of public life he found time for
purely literary work. His writings were varied. He left upon record that a literary
career, above all others, would have been most congenial to his tastes. The average
reader will remember him as author of the biography of Patrick Henry.
With the war in which William Wirt acted a subordinate part is associated another
name, which will be remembered so long as heaven's spangled azure proclaims upon
every sea, and to all nations, the Divine origin of the American Republic. Francis
Scott Key was born in Frederick County, Maryland, and educated at St. John's College,
Annapolis.
Like Hopkinson, he is indebted for literary celebrity to the composition of a
single patriotic song, "The Star Spangled Banner." It was composed in 1814 on the
occasion of the bombardment of Fort McHenry, when the author was a prisoner in
the hands of the attacking British.
The same period, from 1780 to 185 1, is adorned by the name of John James Audu-
bon. Louisiana proudly claims him as an honored son. He was of French descent.
He engaged first in commercial pursuits, but finding himself strongly drawn toward
the study of birds he decided to follow the bent of his mind. After nearly half a life-
time spent in this pursuit Audubon visited Europe to obtain subscribers for his great
work, " The Birds of America." He was everywhere received with applause. The
most distinguished men of the time, Humboldt, Herschel, Sir Walter Scott, Jeffreys
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 473
and Wilson, warmly commended him and his work. Wilson, of " Blackwood's maga-
zine," said of him: " He is the greatest artist in his own walk that ever lived."
Matthew Fontaine Maury is a name as familiar to the civilized world as that of
Aububon. "Wind," " Current Charts," and " Physical Geography of the Sea," would
be sufficient to render the author famous. Yet these are but a small part of the works
which have proven of incalculable benefit to science and navigation. His fame rests
upon his services in behalf of science.
The first half of the century presents a sharp contrast to the last in the scope and
character of woman's sphere. Southern skies and perpetual sunshine had imparted a
luster to the eye, a glow to the cheek, and an enthusiasm and vivacity which distin-
guished peculiarly the daughters of the South.
The famous beauties of " Lady Washington's Court," as the official circle of the
first administration was termed, live in history. Their pictures so faithfully painted,
that we are familiar with their traits and features as though they were of our world
today.
In this early period the most rarely gifted women, pre-eminent in grace of speech
and manner, matchless in physical endowments, were content to shine as queens in
home and society. We can only afford time to present the representative from each
sphere.
Dolly Madison, wife of the fourth President, is ever described as the brilliant
leader of the official circle, not by the strong hand of power, as " First Lady of the
Land," but by the magic qualities of beauty and worth combined, she captured all
hearts, and today it is deemed a distinguished compliment to her successor to liken
her popularity to that of Mrs. Madison.
A perfect example of home-life is witnessed in the mother of George Washing-
ton. If the grand life of the son truly interpreted the lessons graven upon his heart
by his mother, then we may pronounce Mary Washington " best writer of the South,"
and one whose work representing motherhood in other myriad homes atones the
absence of literary celebrities among her Southern countrywomen. It is interesting
to note that the women of the entire country in this eventful year of woman's progress,
have signified their appreciation of Mary Washington's greatness by joining in the
successful effort to erect a monument to her memory.
Time will suffice only to present one other name so world-renowned that the fame
is American as well as Southern. A sculptured bust, dark with the shadow of the sable
raven, is a familiar picture in all lands. In every home where classic Pallas fills an
ideal niche, is the name of Edgar Allan Poe as familiar as household words. Un-
known to society or fame, upon the publication of the "Raven," the author suddenly
became a lion, and his writings were eagerly sought after by publishers.
The American poet, from beneath the black shadow of the " Raven," echoes the
despairing cry, " Mv soul from out that shadow shall be lifted never more." We fain
would believe that in the distant "Aiden " there is a " balm " for soaring souls allied
to hearts of sin and sorrow. Yet the knell of hope, " My soul is dark," is wafted from
the new to the old, and in that shadow the memory of America's greatest poet ever
rests.
PIANO PLAYING WITHOUT PIANO PRACTICING.
By MISS MARY VENETTE HAYES.
In this age of advanced ideas, when the entire system of educating children is
being so happily re-constructed, I have noticed with surprise that one evil has appar-
ently escaped the attention of the broad-minded
men and women to whose efforts the change of senti-
ment is largely due, and that is, the injury done to
little children by long continued hours of piano prac-
ticing.
From my own observation and experience I con-
clude that our common system of musical training,
. employed in many music schools and colleges, robs
children of more mental and physical strength than
can be restored in a lifetime.
A child is placed in a room by itself to master
insurmountable difificulties, to play scales and exer-
cises in endless repetition, and to lift its little hands
up and down hundreds of times, like an automatic
machine, to " strengthen the wrist," as it is called in
professional parlance. What wonder, then, that both
body and mind suffer under the inaction, the nerves
are overstrained by the tiresome and wearying task,
and more than all, the wonderful music spirit flies
away unnoticed and unsought. The essence of music
is not a part of notes, books or instruments; but this
is seldom appreciated by the pupil or mentioned by
the teacher until in later years, when the struggle to cultivate the musical intelligence
becomes exceedingly dif^cult because of its having been dulled by the repetition of
tones without any idea of their power of expression or their value in relation to each
other.
The blending of color is most essential to the artistic beauty of apicture. A pink
tree in a landscape would immediately excite comment, as also the omission of a fea-
ture of the face in a portrait, yet such monstrosities in the interpretation of music
scarcely attract attention.
Can not young children be taught to be tone painters? It should be as interesting
to a child to study a melody which wholly absorbs its mind as to read a fairy tale.
Not only would the musical imagination be stimulated, but because of the melody
being all-absorbing, the child would unconsciously learn notes, rhythms and phrasing,
just as it should learn to read a book without giving the reading a thought, being so
absorbed in the story.
.But nowadays children are overwhelmed with difificulties which cramp their men-
tal powers and crush their enthusiasm.
It is not meant that all children should study music — the rose and the wildflower
each have their climate and their soil.
If every child who studies music were destined to become an artist, possibly there
might be more merit in modern methods, but since only a very small proportion ever
Miss Mary Venette Hayes was born in Chicago, III. Her parents were Americans. She was educated In Chicago. Miss
Hayes is engaged in the development of the musical intelligence of children. Her work in this line is meeting with great
eaccess and attracting wide attention. Her postoffice address is No. 189 Cass Street, Chicago, 111.
474
MISS MARY VENETTE HAYES.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 475
reach this consummation, the sacrifice required to secure a technical training which is
cifterward entirely lost, must be considered comparatively useless.
If instead of the long hours of practicing the child's attention was directed to the
importance of listening to music and studying its history, as well as the various
works of the great masters, and the interpretation of their ideas, its musical intel-
ligence would develop as a flower unfolds, and the child though unable to execute
on any instrument, would nevertheless be an artist and a musician.
It is a mistaken idea to believe classical music may not be appreciated by a child.
I was convinced of this when taking a little girl seven years of age to a rehearsal of
the Apollo Club, it being the first chorus or music of the kind she had ever heard.
She was greatly interested throughout the entire performance, and that same evening
at home sung several measures of the chorus perfectly. She, of course, had an
exceptional memory, but as we all know, it is " the exception that proves the rule."
Even in the hope of becoming a virtuoso more rapid and intelligent progress
would undoubtedly be made by devoting more time during the first years of study to
musical analysis.
Having been greatly interested in the latent musical ability of children, believing
the inadequacy of present methods responsible for its slow development, I determined
to prove the truth of my theories by putting them into practical execution, and so chose
a class where my ideas would not be restricted to methods which I did not approve.
As many others in emergency, I turned to Miss Jane Addams, of the Hull House, who
found the class for me at once, and has since been its chief friend, providing a room
in which to meet and doing all in her power to contribute to its success.
When hearing the children had no pianos in their homes, I greatly doubted the
success of the experiment, but the thirty eager faces that appeared in response to Miss
Addams' call reassured me, as I realized that this was the opportunity for discovering
what could be accomplished without practicing. Their ignorance was perfect for my
purpose, the majority never having touched a piano, and not having the least idea how
to move the fingers from one key to another. Having but one piano at our dis-
posal, we were obliged to substitute something else with which to accomplish our
work, and began by playing simple technical exercises on a table, or anything that
would support the hand, sometimes singing the tones and sometimes accompanied
with the piano, in order to learn rhythm and melody simultaneously. In this way an
excellent idea of pitch was soon acquired, which will be illustrated later.
Two little girls in the class said they committed their first piece of music while
they were putting the house in order, Anna singing the treble and Regnia the alto
until they knew it, and afterward were able to play it quite intelligently, thus proving
the value of technical work in memorizing is greatly overestimated. Some of the
pupils have committed an entire piece of music to memory before playing it upon the
piano, showing that even hearing the tone is unnecessary to an intelligent understand-
ing of a composition.
When we first began the class was so large and the time so limited in which to
teach it, that on each lesson day not more than half of the children were able to reach
the piano; consequently it became necessary to have them all come together in order
that each might have the opportunity of receiving at least some benefit by hearing
the instruction given to the others. This subsequently developed into one of the
most valuable features of the class. The strict attention given by the children
was all that could be desired, and each unconsciously became capable of criticis-
ing intelligently. Sometimes when the younger children were playing, the older girls
would read the life of a composer in an adjoining room, telling it to the class in their
own language on their return. They are now drawing the likenesses of various com-
posers and also making busts of them in clay.
Wishing to avoid the usual relations of teacher and pupil, I encouraged the chil-
dren to form a club. They made their own rules (which, by the way, had nothing
whatever to do with music — prohibiting whispering, the chewing of gum, etc.) and
chose their own name, the Paderewski Club.
476 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
During the week the children collect from the newspapers any clippings in
regard to music that interest them and these are pasted by the secretary in a scrap-
book.
The spirit shown by the children toward each other has always been most gener-
ous and friendly, and I have often trembled for fear that their simple unconsciousness
might be disturbed. For this reason we continue with our work, whatever ^it may be,
no matter how many visitors enter the room. In pursuance of this idea, I did not tell
the children of my plan to bring them to the Woman's Building, but in their search for
clippings they discovered the announcement and brought it with mingled surprise and
delight to the scrap-book when they met, as they supposed, for a lesson. I have dis-
covered accidentally that several of them are teaching pupils in their own neighbor-
hood, an excellent illustration that their studies are not irksome; a proof of the point
they care but little for light music is the fact that they have exhausted the entire stock
of classical music of a music dealer near the Hull House; thirty-three pieces of six-cent
music being the first music the club has been able to buy itself. It has heretofore had
no choice of music whatever, having been obliged to use any that could be secured for
merely a song, because of its being soiled or otherwise unsalable. However, in spite
of every obstacle, at the end of six months they were playing as well as many children
supposedly practicing two hours a day.
As one of our musical papers said not long ago: " Many of the mistakes of the
pupil are directly attributable to the teacher's inability to see things from the pupil's
standpoint." This is one reason so many of the world's distinguished men were con-
sidered failures at school. The eminent teacher, Albrechtberg, said of Beethoven:
" He will never come to anything," simply because Beethoven could not study music
from his standpoint.
Rubinstein expressed a belief not long ago that music is passing through a crisis
of deterioration in composition, though he admitted at the same time that technic
has taken gigantic strides; and that technical training is in the ascendency is to be
deplored, as many composers and otherwise talented musicians are driven from their
field of labor through failure to appreciate that virtuosity is not the most essential ele-
ment in the development of musicianship. Miss Caruthers illustrated this point in a
most interesting manner at the Woman's Musical Congress of the World's Congress
Auxiliary, which convened recently at the Art Palace.
It is the musical intelligence that makes expression and guides technical ability,
and music is not found through weary hours of struggling with technic. As one of
our greatest American poets has said:
" The infinite always is silent,
It is only the finite speaks;
Our words are the idle wavecaps
On a deep that never breaks.
We question with wand of Science,
Explain, decide and discuss;
But only in meditation.
Doth music speak to us."
EXTRACTS FROM VOCAL ART.
By M. AUGUSTA BROWN, M. D.
Vocal art, like all fine art, has its mechanical-practical as well as its ethical side.
The sculptor may chisel away many a weary year before he can bring out the emotions
that live in stone. The painter's hand must be prac-
ticed to the finest cunning before he can transmit to
canvas the imageries that live in his brain. He who
would transmit the soul through the singing voice
must be painter, poet, orator and sculptor.
The voice may be very justly compared to the
diamond in passing to a state of perfection, and as
the brilliancy of the diamond may be impaired or
ruined by one false stroke, so may the voice be im*
paired or ruined by imprudence, by false or mistaken
method.
In practicing softly the voice is never in danger
of being strained, and it is easy to add power after
sweetness and brilliancy are acquired. There should be
no more break in the voice, in passing from the lowest
to the highest tone, than there is in passing on the
key-board of the piano; and there is none, unless we
make the tone with the effort of the throat muscles,
instead of letting the air make the tone by playing
upon the muscles. The break that occurs is always
caused by holding the throat muscles more or less
rigid (when they should be held perfectly loose, pas-
sive and free). If we hold the muscles at all rigid, we can go only so far when we
must let go of them and take up the next higher. If we hold these we are obliged to
change again for higher tones, and this change is the cause of the break, when, if we
simply let the air play upon the muscles without effort, there will be no break from
the lowest to the highest tone. Bernotzzie's theme was inflation of the lungs to their
fullest capacity, a good practice in moderate degree, but disastrous if carried to excess.
Professor Bears of Paris, on the contrary, taught his pupils to use the smallest
amount of breath for the greatest vocal feats, such as making a trill for thirty seconds
with one breath, at the same time holding in the mouth a lighted match without caus-
ing the flame to flicker.
Signor Polini of Naples makes the study of vocal music a pleasure; so simple is
his method, and having so little responsibility or anxiety, the pupil retains the repose
so necessary at all times to the singer and especially to the beginner.
Signor Emanuel Potentini of Rome goes to the other extreme, exacting in every
Dr. M. Aagosta Brown is a native of Albany, N. Y. She was bom March 14, 1896. Her parents were William Gage, Jr.,
and Martha Carey Gage. She was educated at the Albany Female Academy and at the Salem Academy of Mosic, Connecticut.
She studied in Italy with Lamperti and Sangiovanni, of the Royal Academy of Masio of Milan. In Paris she studied with
Charlotte Patti, Karl Formes, Caughman, Bears and others. She has traveled extensively in Europe and in America. She
married, in 18i57, Augustus L. Brown, a native of Georgia. Her special work has been in the interest of health education of
woman. Her principal literary works are: "The Benefit of Horticnltnre." " Contagions Disease* ; Their Cause and Cure,"
" Cholera a Preventable Disease," and " Voice Production from a Physiological Standpoint.'' Her profession is that of
physician and surgeon. She has worked out a method which quickly demonstrates that " vocal music" is an exact science.
Its laws are as fixed as the laws of mathematics, and these laws involve the whole organism. Dr. Brown is an Episcopalian.
Her postottice address is No. 4225 Michigan Avenoe, Cbicago, III.
477
DR. M. AUGUSTA BROWN.
478 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
particular. Professor Bernardi of Milan makes execution a study, especially the trill
and shake; even bird tones he considers legitimate practice, as well as all vocal feats
and movements used by the orator, reader or impersonator.
Madam Fabric's principal theme was legato, a smooth, flowing style Professor
Morley agreed with Delsarte that every note should be sung at first staccato, making a
clear, decisive touch. The attack of a note was his care, so that each tone should
represent a distinct pearl example. You will ask why I went from one grand master
to another. I was in search of information and I found that each master had some-
thing to impart that I had not gained from the other. There was Sangiovanni s mas-
terly and beautiful phrasing, Lamperti's method of voice building and Bernardi's
execution and trill. Each master has brought out fine voices through opposing meth-
ods, and many fine voices have developed in spite of method. But we hear little of the
thousands of voices which have failed, even thpugh endowed by nature with talent and
early promise of a brilliant career. Many such failures have come from attempts to
make the voice fit a certain method, instead of making a method applicable to each
individual voice. Beautiful voices are mourned as lost when there is often only some
simple obstruction to the operation of the natural law governing song which might be
easily removed or restored.
This has been the object of my study — to know the causes of voice failure, its
restoration, preservation and building, and it is astonishing how a small and seemingly
insignificant thing may temporarily unbalance a voice. Let us look for some of the
causes of impairment. "One of the most simple (common), is dryness of the throat
and nasal cavities, caused by inaction or paresis of the glands. They fail to secrete
enough moisture to lubricate the parts. This may be temporarily overcome by intro-
ducing into the nostrils, pharynx, and throat a very little glycerine just before
using the voice Glycerine and cream, equal parts, is still better. There may be an
excessive secretion, from inordinate activity of the glands, producing weakness or
catarrh, or there may be swollen tonsils." Elongated uvula, nasal polypus, inflamed,
congested, relaxed or closed eustachian tubes, hoarseness, congestion of the vocal
cords, or they may have become thickened from chronic congestion or covered with
mucus, or partially paralyzed from over-taxation or weakness, or one may have lost
the full vigorous action of the muscles or nerves. The diaphragmic muscle may have
lost its tone from illness, weakness or over-exertion. The chest and all the organs of
the viscera may have fallen somewhat out of their normal position from weakness, long
continued indigestion, constipation, insomnia; other causes may be anxiety, mental
strain, mental depression, sedentary habits, low state of the circulation of the blood
and vital fluids, excitability of the nerves, anything that exhausts or depletes the vital
forces, nerve prostration, debility or lack of nervous energy, may, in many instances,
prevent the free, forcible use of the muscles upon which the voice depends The power
of the voice organs depends upon the tone and vigor of the whole system, and any
mode of life that promotes health and strength is favorable to voice production; and
upon the contrary, anything that fatigues or exhausts is detrimental to the voice. The
decline of the beautiful voice of Gerster was caused by over-taxation, unbalanced
nervous condition. Notwithstanding singers know the baneful effects of singing
directly after eating, when nature's efforts are engaged in the digestion and assimila-
tion of food and should not be distracted, how many go directly from the table to the
piano and sing for hours? One should never sing when he is tired, or use stimulants
to urge the voice to action.
From illness, weakness, or from imitating others, one may form habits entirely
foreign, not only in childhood but in any stage of life, even after years of correct prac-
tice. If the organs become weakened or relaxed the same effort will not produce the
same result; all pure tone depends upon certain conditions. If the conditions are
changed we must change the effort. If the organs are relaxed we must reinforce by
controlling and supporting the breath by the diaphragm and at the throne of the
pharynx. If these two points have lost their firmness the support may "be equally
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 479
divided between the lungs, which are in themselves expansive and contractile muscles,
the trachea, the pharynx, the nasal cavities and strong muscles of the head. But
remove all pressure from the throat, larynx and vocal cord. Many a naturally fine
singer's career is blighted by this habit of pressure or rigidity of the throat muscles.
The remedy is in studying appropriate exercises until the correct habit is formed,
which is not difficult if given individual attention. It is like resetting a dislocated
bone; the moment it finds its place nature recognizes its own. The greater part of the
labor is done when you have found the right adjustment of the whole organism. If
the weakness is caused by indigestion, insomnia, or from whatever cause, it must be
removed. In many cases the restoration of health is the most necessary part in voice
production, and with our teaching is the first branch to receive attention. It is often
more diflficult to induce the singer to practice health exercises than to overcome the
trouble after the effort is made. We have so long depended so much more upon pro-
miscuous practice than upon condition and adjustment, and yet it is astonishing how
rapidly one may advance with little practice when rightly directed.
Singing, more than anything else, requires concentrated attention. If we would
express thought, feeling and emotion, we must think and feel. If we have a definite
idea of what we want to do and how we want to do it, if we know what position of the
mouth, throat and vocal organs produces a certain effect, we have only to call them into
action.
To produce a good voice the whole organism needs as much attention, and I may
say practice, as do the vocal organs. The whole body is a part of the musical instru-
ment, and must be considered. The ability and activity of the immediate vocal appa-
ratus depends upon the general strength and condition of the body as a whole, as well
as upon the proper adjustment of the vocal organs with reference to acoustic law.
The first and most important fact to fix in the mind of one who would rise to his
highest possibilities as a singer is that there are two important, principal points of sup-
port for the voice which must never be lost sight of — the diaphragmic muscle and the
throne of the pharynx.
The propelling power of the lungs is the diaphragmic muscle, which has its pos-
terior attachment at the lumbar vertebrae. " It is a thin, muscular, fibrous septum,
placed obliquely at the junction of the upper third of the trunk, forming the floor of
the lungs and the roof of the abdomen."
If you acquire perfect control here, and at the same time at the throne of the
pharynx, you will sing as free and as easy as a bird, in the way designed by a wise
Creator.
In singing a good position is most essential. Stand upon the balls of the feet,
hold the knees firm, abdomen and shouders back, the chest raised and prominent,
the head bent slightly forward in a persuasive, tranquil manner, as repose, tranquillity
of mind and body is absolutely necessary for the singer; make repose your first study.
The first organ involved "in singing is the nose. Close the lips; take a breath
through the nose. Where do you feel it first? At the bridge of the anterior and
posterior nares. Back of the bridge, and back of and above the palate, is the
throne of the pharynx, and this is another strong point for the singer; one of the two
first important points to be considered (never to be lost sight of; never to be let go
of). It is first, last and always (not only in making the head tones, but all the tones,
from the highest to the lowest, must be supported here). Feel that this is the abiding
place of tone. We will call it the throne of the singer, for as long as he has control
here he has control of his voice, but when he has lost control of this point he has lost
his kingdom as a singer. He may lose it by simply letting go of it and taking up the
throat muscles instead, when they should always be left perfectly free and passive.
Many a singer mourns his voice as lost, when he has merely let. go of this point of
support. It does not require any pressure or contraction, but simply the feeling that
you direct, hold and support the tone from this point, the whole upper part of the
pharynx to the very nostrils. .
480 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The next step is to take a deep, full, slow, inspiration, filling the lungs from the very
bottom. In escaping, the air passes through the top, so the top is always supplied. (We
must form the habit of filling the bottom of the lungs at first effort.) This is called
abdominal breathing, or, more appropriately, diaphragmatic breathing. As the bottom
of the lungs is filled with air, there is a feeling of enlargement all over the abdominal
region, caused by the pressure of the well-filled lung in all directions. The downward
pressure of the lungs against the diaphragmic muscle distends slightly the abdominal
cavity; hence, abdominal breathing, a very misleading name.
The diaphragm guards and follows the lungs like a guardian angel. To breathe a
deep, natural breath is proper, but we must follow nature somewhat. When we make
breathing altogether a voluntary action, we take the natural work from the involuntary
muscles, which are thereby weakened by inaction.
For different modes of breathing, we have what is called " abdominal or diaphragm-
atic, " lateral or costal, lumbar and the clavicular. A good diaphragmatic respiration
includes them all except the clavicular, which is of no importance to us, only
to be avoided and which we need not consider, taking only the diaphragmatic;
that is filling, the bottom of the lungs at the first effort. Learn to accomplish vocal
feats with the smallest amount of breath; that is, let no breath escape unutilized.
EXAMPLE,
The first and most important step in singing is to control the emission of the
breath.
Practice breathing at first slowly, then quickly. Now, see how nearly you can
approach the yawn without yawning. This position of the mouth and throat is favor-
able to good tone by opening the throat in all directions.
When we have acquired control of the breath, the next step is to open the back
part of the mouth. Think of the singer's throne at the top of the pharynx and raise
the soft palate and head muscles without effort, widen the whole pharynx. The very
thought will do it. You will observe at once the change even in the speaking voice,
always support the tone in the pharynx.
This exercise will not only make a musical singing, speaking and reading voice,
but it will banish clergyman's sore throat and many other forms of throat trouble,
which come from wrong placing. If we open the back part of the mouth, the front
will take care of itself. Take the Italian la broad, or the word loud, and be sure that
you open the throat, for you may say la without opening the throat.
Open the throat as much as possible without fatigue or strain, and you will be
astonished at the volume of voice developed at once, without effort.
We are supposed now to be building or restoring a voice, but the best voices will
be improved by correct practice. If nature has given you a fine voice, well placed,
then the right practice will give it expansion, and bring possibilities before you of
which, perhaps, you have never dreamed. If your voice is small and thin, you can
comfort yourself with the knowledge that all things are brought about by condition
and practice, and if you understand the laws of acoustics and the adjustment of the
vocal apparatus, a small voice may be increased greatly in power and extent, and
what it lacks in power it may make up in intensity, for the softest tones, when con-
trolled rightly, may be heard as distinctly as the loudest, and with far more pleasing
effect. Intensity comes through control at the throne of the pharynx,
EXAMPLE.
For a soft, intense tone, take the word He in the top of the pharynx — He-e-e-e.
The Bell tone is also a good exercise. For intensity make the last part soft, but
distinct, as it dies away.
The immediate vocal instrument is made up of the nasal cavities, the pharynx,
the larynx, the trachea and the lungs. But these depend upon the nervous and mus-
cular system of the whole organism.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 481
In exercising the voice, each note should be given softly, with exactly the same
quality and volume, unless otherwise marked. A few notes will require more practice
and attention than all the rest combined. Take these refractory notes and master
them before going another step, and you will be astonished at your rapid advance-
ment.
This must include a proper healthful condition; proper vocal exercise is con-
ducive to health.
Delsarte said: "Voices may be manufactured. Put your heart in the place of the
larynx and there will always be enough voice for attentive listeners." The heart in
the larynx and the tone in the pharynx.
THE SINGING LESSON.
Before beginning to exercise the voice, one should always go through some pre-
liminary movements to circulate the blood and animate the nerves, and bring the
whole body into a state of vibration. It is well to have a little system of exercise,
beginning with the feet: posing on the toes, moving from side to side, bending the
knees, the waist, raising the arms, raising and broadening the chest. A very excel-
lent and exhilarating exercise is the Spanish waltz with its various movements.
If from any cause you find it an effort to sing, do not try to sing, but exercise the
body until you are comfortably tired; study the music with the mind. Then rest —
take a nap. There is nothing like sleep to giv^e freshness and vigor to the voice, and
it is a mistake to give more attention to the immediate vocal organs than the whole
system, for the latter has much to do with the production of tone, especially in the
color, quality, sweetness, freshness and fullness, which is also influenced by the action
of the pharynx, nasal cavities, mouth, hard and soft palate, teeth, and the strong
muscles of the head.
The slightest change in either of these affects the quality of tone. No two per-
sons are formed or organized exactly alike. The formation of the mouth differs in
each individual, and a difference of a hair's breadth changes the quality of the tone.
The slightest change in thought, feeling, change of the muscles of the head, face,
throat or chest, wrinkling the brow, holding the eyes fixed, lifting the arms, tight
shoes, corsets, a corn on the toe, in fact, any change in position, feeling or condition,
changes the tone. Now, as the formation of the mouth, throat, pharynx and nasal
cavities differs in each individual, we must study the acoustic properties of each, and
adopt the position accordingly. If one has a wide mouth, a low, flat roof, he must
drop the chin and raise the muscles of the face and head toward the throne of the
pharynx, and choose a vowel sound adapted to his case. With a narrow mouth and
high roof, he must open his mouth and throat laterally in a smiling position, say the
word la broad, distending the cheeks, and keeping in his mind the word width.
One with a well-shaped but small mouth needs both breadth and height. He
must practice the broad la, or the word loud, with the back part of the mouth open as
much as possible without strain. If one is the possessor of a large mouth and throat
he should be content.
For this reason it is well to take the syllable la broad, which is favorable to
good tone by opening the throat. Then make all the other vowel sounds as near
like it as possible, without changing the position of the mouth, and when you are able
to make the same quality of tone on each vowel sound without changing the position,
and without any stiffness or contraction of the muscles, you will have accomplished a
great and difficult feat, and you will be able to sing in any language with as much ease
as Italian, Forget that you have a throat, larynx, or vocal cords; think of them as a
passage for breath only. Remember that the two important points are the posterior
attachment of the diaphragm and the throne of the pharynx. These should be held
in mind without effort. To broaden the pharynx at the top, take the syllable ^tf,
and widen all the upper space, even the nostrils without effort. Now, learn to attack
a note at once perfectly, without reaching for it — accomplish this before taking another
(31)
482 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
step. It is one thing to know how to do a thing and another thing to do it There
is nothing more distressing than to hear one strike a note below the pitch and then
push the tone up to it. To overcome this habit and to avoid rasping the throat, give
a syllable to each note with a short, quick modulating staccato touch (Example: do
do do do do do do do do), without changing the position of the mouth or chest, but
be careful not to mistake the glottis stroke for the staccato touch. Example: There
is no movement more fatiguing than the glottis stroke, and it is ruinous to the head
tones, while a moderately staccato touch is favorable to the tones of both the head
and the chest.
The next step is to place the tone well forward in the mouth; locate the tone at
the throne of the pharynx, and practice lightly the scale on the syllable do-po-no.
To find the tone of the pharynx, say the word " on " with the lips open, or " om" with
with the lips closed.
For a smooth, legato, flowing style, make the tone like that of the violin. Glide
from one tone to another in one continuous wave on the word law.
It is not a question of how much you practice, but how correctly. If you practice
wrong you have harmed the voice without gaining any benefit, when, if you know just
what to do and how to do it, you may advance with every practice.
To give agility and flexibility to the vocal organs, speak rapidly the ele-
1234 12 12 123
mentary and vowel sounds a a a a e e it o o ip it ic. Open tone is made by
supporting the tone at the back part of the throat, while the closed tone is supported
at the throne of the pharynx.
EXAMPLE.
We must hold in the mind an ideal musical tone and express it.
To give volume to the voice I have found no better word than the word loud. It
opens the throat in all directions.
For softness, sweetness and tenderness of tone, take a sentence that expresses
such sentiments. Think of appropriate expressions and words as soft, sweet, mellow,
brilliant, liquid, joyous, simple, childish, compassion, love, disdain. A soft, sweet,
tone differs from a brilliant tone. Familiarity with words and expressions, and their
natural application in singing, will aid in making you master of song and speech.
Write on every page of your book: self-confidence, determination, perseverance
and practice.
It is necessary to have the tongue, lips and lower jaw under perfect control.
For flexibility of the lower jaw, take the word ya (rapidly) ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya.
For the lips tdikc po-po-po-po.
For the tip of the tongue take no-7io-ne-ta-ta-ta-la-la-la.
Many singers find it hard to keep the back part of the tongue in its place, but to
practice properly the broad la on the back part of the tongue will soon subdue that
unruly member, as also will the practice of the pleasing, rippling laugh of a child,
ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
This exercise is also a specific for indigestion. There is real healing power in a
g9od, hearty laugh. If two or three dyspeptics should meet daily and laugh and
laugh, their indigestion would soon disappear. If any of you are troubled in this way,
you can experiment.
For continuity of tone, chant very distinctly a sentence on each note of the scale.
Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you. If you never trouble trouble, it
will never trouble you.
One short exercise intelligently practiced and mastered is better than a book full
half learned.
To gain purity and distinctness in every tone, chant the alphabet on every note
of the scale, speaking distinctly every letter — a b c d e f g h ij k I mn o p q r s t u v
w X y z and ah, aa, e. Also all the elementary sounds. These elementary exercises
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 483
are not in themselves interesting except to the intelligent student, but with right use
will develop a beautiful singing and speaking voice, saving years of time and practice,
EXAMPLE.
do de ra re fa fe sol sel la le si do.
It has always been considered that the crowning glory of the voice is a perfect
trill. To make a perfect trill in the shortest space of time, make the upper note as a
^race note until you have the movement fixed, then locate it at the throne of the
pharynx on the letter m, close to the lips; hold the whole throat perfectly loose, and
by oscillation of the soft palate make it without effort.
The trill is made of two notes, but the shake is a tremulo or a tremor of the soft
palate. We sometimes hear singers with good voices make the shake instead of the
trill, because they think they can not make the trill. But the trill is much the easier
and far less fatiguing and wearing to the voice; excessive practice of the shake or
tremulo will soon destroy a beautiful voice. Anyone who can make a shake can make
a trill as soon as he gets movement and location. The nightingale makes the trill.
The canary bird makes the shake, introducing a few notes of the trill. The bird-tones
which are so much admired just at the present time are made mostly with shake
movement on the different vowel sounds.
We have been taught to believe that the trill is a gift of nature to a favored few,
but we know from long experience that anyone with a little perseverance, who can
sing four tones correctly, can make a beautiful trill with a little persevering practice.
Formerly the student was taught that the trill was made with the oscillation of the
vocal cords. As I failed to make it in that way after long practice, I concluded
nature had not favored me. But in listening to Madam Diormis' delightful trill I felt
that she made it with the oscillation of the soft palate, instead of the vocal cords, and
I caught the movement at once, and when I went to Italy the first thing the master
said was, you have a " natural trill." Nature gives us all the elements, but we must
adjust them appropriately. If we would master all our vocal possibilities we might
have a prima-donna in many a home that we little dream of.
FROM "THE ZUNI SCALP CEREMONIAL."
By MRS. MATILDA COXE STEVENSON.
The Zuni Indians have thirteen secret cult societies, and one of these is the
Society of the Bow or Warriors. It is the common belief among many of the North
American Indians, that before coming to this world
they lived in under worlds, and that their point of
advent is in the Northwest.
Zufii legends recount many conflicts with strange
peoples as they migrated from the Northwest to find
the middle of the world; but their goal was destined
to be reached at all hazards.
Watsutsi and Kowwitumi, sons and warriors of the
Sun, who had, at the command of the Sun-father,
sought the Zufli in the under world and brought them
to his presence, afterward accompanying them on
their journey, had grown weary with fighting and
requested their father to send two others to work in
their stead. In answer to their desire the Sun-father
had rain fall until the cascade of the mountain-side
no longer glided placidly over the rocks to the basin
below, but went dashing and dancing in merriment,
and in her joy she was caught in the Sun's embrace
and bore twin children of the froth of her delight.
Watsutsi and Kowwitumi, looking toward the cas-
cade, discovered two little fellows upon the waters in
the basin whom they at once recognized to be of
divine origin. Kowwitumi inquired of these wee ones, "Who is your father?"
Ahaiuta, the firstborn, replied, "The Sun is our father." " Who is your mother?"
and he answered, "Laughing Water is our mother." "It is well; thanks, it is good.
I am very tired from fighting and I wish you to work for me." " All right," said the
elder, "we will fight for you." Then Watsutsi spoke: "We have fought two days, but
we can not vanquish the enemy." The new-born gods of the Laughing Water replied,
" We will join you; perhaps we can destroy the enemy, perhaps not."
After many fruitless attempts to overthrow the leader of the opposing forces
Ahaiuta sent his younger brother to solicit aid. from the Sun-father and to learn how
the Chaquena's heart could be destroyed. The Sun gave two turkis rabbit-sticks to
Maasewe, telling him that in striking the Chaquena's rattle, he would strike her heart
which she carried in the rattle. On his return he gave one rabbit-stick to his brother
who threw it, but missed the rattle; then Maasewe threw his, striking the rattle, when
the Chaquena fell dead, and her army fled. The Chaquena's scalp was divided and
held by a man who stood inside the circle, Kowwitumi, Watsutsi, AhaiQta and
Maasewe accompanying them.
The brothers then went to the home of the ants at Shipapolima — all ants lived here.
Mrs. Matilda Coxe (Evans) Stevenson was bom at San Augustine, Tex., May 12, 1849. Her parents were Alexander H.
Evans and Maria Matilda (Coxe), of Washington, D. C. She was educated at Miss Anable's Academy in Philadelphia, and
has traveled extensively over the Western United States and in Mexico. She married Col. James Stevenson, explorer and
ethnologist, in 1872. Her profession is that of ethnologist of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C. The
intrepidity and zeal which she had manifested in her researches among barbarous tribes are noteworthy, and her investigations
have been rewarded with gratifying results, for they have increased in a substantial degree our knowledge of tribal life and
society. Her postoffice address is Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C.
484
MRS. MATILDA COXE STEVENSON.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 485
The war gods repeated their story in the ceremonial chamber of the ants, and the director
of the society said: " It is well; sit down, my fathers and my children." The voice of
the dead Navajo woman was soon heard calling, "Where are my husbands?" The
director of the society replied, " They are sitting here." The ghost-voice said: " I wish
them to come out." " You come in," said the director. Four times these words passed
between them, then the being entered Shipapolima. Ahaiota and Maasewe again
struck her with their war clubs, and carrying her out threw her off.
The mere killing of an enemy does not entitle the victor to become a member of
the Society of the Bow; he must bear as trophies the scalp, and at least a portion of
the buckskin apparel as actual proof of his prowess. Thus the Zuni, like other primi-
tive peoples, make trophy-bearing a necessity for distinction as warriors.
There are at the present time but fifteen members of the Society of the Bow, two
of these being the priest and his vicar, or younger brother, who follow in succession
after Ahaiata and Maasewe, and are supposed to carry the sacred traditions of their
divine predecessors. The offices of priest and vicar are for life, but either one is sub-
ject, for sufificient reason, to impeachment. Now that inter-tribal wars have virtually
ceased there is no further opportunity to initiate new members into the Society of the
Bow, and as the scalp ceremonial is necessary in order to please the gods that they
will send much rain, it occurs in every detail once in three or four years by command
of the priest of the bow. The scalps used at these times are taken from the scalp
vase, in which such trophies have rested since the establishment of Zuni, or, perhaps,
earlier.
The priest of the bow, having decided on a time for the ceremonial, notifies the
scalp custodian, who in turn requests the priest to designate two men to act as victor
and elder brother. This accomplished the priest chooses two members of the society
and two other men to personate the warriors returning from battle; subsequently the
scalp washers and their fellows are appointed. The evening of the day on which the
actors in this drama are selected, the four representatives of the returning warriors
leave the village on horseback and, fully equipped, spend the night a distance north
of the Pueblo. At sunrise they start on their return, and on discovering the first ant-
hill they dismount. The two members of the Society of the Bow stand a short distance
off while the others stoop before the ant-hill. One of these men maintains silence
while the other addresses the ants in a low prayer. Plume-offerings and shells are
deposited on the ant-hill.
A large number of people congregate to receive the party. The scalp custodian
faces the four men while the spokesman addresses the people: "We have been to the
land of the enemy. The enemy no more will see the light of day." The scalp cus-
todian expectorates on a bit of cedar bark, waves it to the cardinal points, zenith
and nadir, for purification, and throws it upon the ground. The four men then retire
to their homes. The following morning the two warriors who act as victor and elder
brother each hand a tiny vase, filled with rainwater, and a diminutive gourd dipper,
which were given to them by the arch-ruler, to the scalp custodian; and about 3
o'clock two scalps (every vestige of hair having long since disappeared) are taken
from the great pottery vase which stands permanently in the scalp house. With these
articles the custodian proceeds to a sequestered spot surrounded by hillocks and ravines
and deposits the scalps on the ground, placing a vase of water and a gourd beside
each. The scalp custodian then lights a fire between the scalps and runs a circle of
meal around on the ridge. The circle is symbolic of the border of the enemy's land; the
burning fagots represent the campfire; the scalps denote the enemy in camp; the
water is symbolic of rain.
The custodian then returns to the village, and the chosen victor and elder brother
hasten to the spot, traveling on foot. P.ach collects a cedar twig from the top of a
tree, four equilateral triangular cuts are made with an archaic stone knife, and the
twig is snapped off. Discovering the campfire, one exclaims: "I think there is an
enemy." One then passes around the circle of meal to the right, the other to the left;
486 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
meeting on the opposite side, they hold the cedar twig in the left hand and shoot at
the enemy, each arrow piercing a scalp. The arrows are not removed, the scalp being
placed under the toga over the region of the heart, the feathered end of the shaft
touching the chin. The tiny vases of water and gourds are transported in the blanket,
where it is held around the waist.
In the meantime the warriors and officers of the Ant Society gather in a circle
near the victor, each warrior depositing a plume offering at some ant-hill before join-
ing the group. They enjoy a social smoke and chat until the arrival of the sun priest,
priest of the west, and priest of the bow, when all join in a ceremonial smoke. The
priest of the bow now selects two youths to stand on the mounds and clasp one
another's left hands over the excavation. The victor and elder brother, stepping on
the crossed yucca fronds, pass up the line of meal and under the clasped hands, each
carrying a scalp. As soon as they pass under the scalps are received by the custo-
dian and vice, who lay them on the ground a short distance southwest of the mounds.
The priest of the fetich clasps the victor to his breast, while the priest of the north
embraces the elder brother. The two then reverse places and are embraced, long
prayers being repeated each time by the two priests; they are then embraced by the
other five rain priests. The two scalp kickers then place their left arms through the
right arms of the victor and elder brother and proceed a short distance north of the
group, each couple going to an ant-hill, where they deposit plume wands; the men
offer prayers, but the women do not speak, as no woman not past child-bearing period
may speak at the house of the ants.
When all the warriors have passed under the hands the populace follow, the
equestrians dismounting for the purpose. " They step over the sacred road of meal to
the home of the ants that they may keep their lives when passing about the country
or contending with the enemy."
The rain priests and priest of the fetich are exempt from this feature of the cere-
monial, as their place is at home and not amid the danger of travel and war. The
scalp kickers start the scalps with the left foot and so keep them in front, the right
foot never being used for the purpose; they may not look to the right or to the left,
but only straight ahead. The victor and elder brother are next the two kickers, then
follow the priest of the bow, the Ant Society, the scalp custodian and his vice, the
pamosontka (female aid to the scalp custodian), and then the populace, some on
foot, others mounted, making the air ring with rifle and pistol shots and the war-
whoop. If this imaginary scalping can produce such frenzy, what must have been
the scene when they in reality came back victorious from battle with the hated
Navajo!
The procession passes around the village from left to right, coil-fashion, and on
reaching the plaza they form concentric circles. The scalp custodian and vice hold
the scalps, which are still attached to the cedar twigs, and stand in the center of the
circle. The priest of the bow approaches the custodian, who picks off a bit of scalp
attaching it to an arrow of the priest, who then passes around the inner circle four
times from left to right. The first time he runs his arrow over the ankles of the men
and women whom he passes, the second time he draws it above their knees, the third
time by the waist, the fourth over the head that their hearts may be pure and know
no fear. Each time as he reaches the starting point all present expectorate on cedar
bark and carry it around the head four times from left to right, the priest of the bow,
instead, waving his arrow held in the right hand. After the fourth time all males give
the warwhoop, and the priest shoots the arrow containing the bit of scalp toward the
north — the home of the hated Navajo.
By this time the moon has risen and the scene grows more picturesque. The sun
priest, who stands on the south, calls to the populace to " join in the dance." It must
be appreciated that an enemy destroyed becomes a friend; therefore, the destruction
of the enemy so pleases the gods that a reward of rain is made, the scalp ceremonial
being a rain festival. The custodian and vicar now attach the scalps to a pole and
plant the pole in an excavation previously made for it in the center of the plaza.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 487
After the pole is hoisted all hands gather about it for a time; then the crowd dis-
perses to take the evening meal. Later, the populace again encircle the pole and
dance throughout the night. This dance is repeated twelve nights, under the very
shadow of the old church erected by the Spanish invaders nearly three hundred years
since, with the hope of bringing these people to the Christian faith. None are too
aged and few too young to participate in this dance of rejoicing and song for the
destruction of the enemy.
The members of the Society of the Bow and the two scalp kickers adjourn to the
ceremonial chamber of the bow where a feast is served. The first four nights are
spent by the two scalp kickers, the victor and elder brother in the ceremonial house
of the warriors, when the men sit apart from the women and do not speak to them.
On the fifth day the scalp custodian removes the scalps from the pole and they are
carried by the scalp washers to a secluded spot on the river bank and washed. A bit
of the scalp is eaten by each man for courage in destroying the enemy.
At midnight on the twelfth night, idols of the war gods, Ahaoita and Maasewe,
and objects to be deposited with them are carried by their makers to the ceremonial
chamber of warriors. An all-night ceremonial is held, and at sunrise the custodian
removes the scalps from the pole and attaches them to a pole some six feet high,
planting it in the northwestern corner of the plaza. By 9 o'clock the six rain priests
and all the warriors have collected in the ceremonial chamber. After entering the
ceremonial chamber, each has a large white buckskin doubled and tied at the throat,
hanging over the shoulders and caught at the waist by an embroidered Tusayan sash.
The priest of the bow applies to their faces an ointment made of the fat of the animals
of the cardinal points, and the water-sprinklers rub on the faces of the warriors a red
f)igment and afterward galena. The victor takes his seat, extending his legs and
eaning back in his chair with an air of making himself as comfortable as possible. The
priest of the bow places a cloth around him, barber fashion, and stands behind the
chair pressing both hands on the victor's forehead, while the sun priest prepares to
paint the face. He has a small black and highly polished archaic pottery vase and an
old medicine bag; the vase is supposed to contain a black paint brought from the
under-world, and the bag contains corn pollen. The sun priest dips a stick of yucca
into the paint and proceeds to paint the lower portion of the face. He then applies
corn pollen to the upper portion by stippling with a mop of raw cotton, a corn husk
being laid over the black during this process to protect if from the pollen. The war-
rior of the Ant Society covers the chin, upper lip, end of nose and forehead with eagle
down, and a wreath of the same is fashioned around the crown of the head, the down
being held in place by a paste of kaolin. The sun priest then places an arrow point
in the mouth of the victor and elder brother with a prayer. The arrows are not
removed from the mouth until sunset. The warclub, pouch, quiver and bow .complete
the toilet.
The priest of the bow whirls the buzzer which calls for the rains to come. This
instrument is commonly called a bull-roarer, and is extensively known among savage
peoples. It is said by writers to be used to work savage warriors into frenzy, though
such is not the case with the Pueblo tribes by whom the instrument is used to create
enthusiasm among the rain-makers.
If the nightly dancing around the scalp pole arouses these people, the dances on
the closing day of the ceremonial fires them to the extreme.
The epic songs of the Society of the Bow during this prolonged ceremonial are
histrionic. They are inspiring and are devoid of any exhibition which could stir a
single brute clement within the breast of man. These warriors honor the gods with
the song and dance that they may have rain in plenty, for in this arid land the highest
gift of the gods is from the clouds.
FROM "SIGNS OF THE TIMES."
By MISS ALISAN WILSON.
Taking a look backward to the Centennial Exposition, making some comparisons
with this, giving a few of its benefits. At the time of the exhibit of 1876, the country
was in an unusual financial depression. Congress
did not feel rich enough to give Philadelphia the
money to assist in forwarding the enterprise, but
loaned the money, which was returned afterward and
received by them.
The time found us a nation abnormally developed
in labor-saving machinery, an outgrowth of the neces-
sities of war, the product of clever brains, and proof
of the aptness of the American people to meet the
demands of peculiar circumstances or conditions.
In the manufacture of, and taste for, the fine
arts we were almost entirely deficient. A young
nation that had wrestled with the vital question of
existence, laboring for the necessities of life, had
little time to bestow on the luxuries.
Many foreign visitors presented the government
with valuable exhibits rather than carry them home.
They now form one of the most interesting and
instructive departments connected with the govern-
ment. The result is an organized pursuit of geology,
archaeology, anthropology, fostering the arts and
sciences. And when combined with the Smithsonian
Institute, we have the advantage of rich collections gathered from all over the world,
either loaned or donated, and so placed that they may be studied or admired by the
public.
I call your attention to the difference of the attitude of Congress toward this
World's Fair, and also to the era of financial success intervening.
We can recall several industries, the result of that great show; and, following it,
a stimulation of old trades and the introduction of new ones have given us prosperity
through to the present time.
The industry of ceramics — a few insignificant potteries were all that we had; two
of the oldest were Liverpool, Ohio, and Trenton, N. J., with utility the sole object.
Look at the handsome displays made today in the Manufactures Building. Since
then long strides have been made toward perfection. Establishments of more or less
merit have sprung up all over the country.
Until of late years the manufacture of carpets in this country was confined to the
coarsest qualities, while now are made at Yonkers and Hilton, on the Hudson, the
finest grades, very little being imported. The silk industry has reached much greater
Miss Alisan Wilson is the daughter of James and Lydia Wilson, and is a native of Columbian County, Ohio. She was edu-
cated in the public school of New Brighton, Pa., and at the Curry Normal Institute. In 1875 her father had the misfortune to
lose his eyesight; hermother was an invalid, and it was thought best to move to Washington, D. C. Miss Wilson never married,
but has spent her time largely in loving care for her parents. Her father gave her a substantial business training. Invest-
ments in real estate have brought her prosperity, and she has traveled almost all over the United States and took a trip to
Europe, where she wrote for publication " Letters of Travel." She is a member of the Presbyterian Church. Has done some
charity work in connection with the Industrial Home School in Massachusetts. Her postoffice address is No. 1218 Connect-
icut Avenue, Washington , D. C.
488
MISS ALISAN WILSON.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 489
proportion than is generally supposed. Our India silks are largely made in Connecticut.
Most beautiful brocades are made in Patterson, N. J. What a trade has grown out of
our intercourse with China; the beautiful wood carving, the bronzes and lacquered
ware from Japan, how they have delighted us. Let anyone recall the progress of these
few industries. We have felt the stimulation of the Centennial from the broad
Atlantic to the shores of the peaceful Pacific. We awoke from our slumber, and with
our awakening came the desire to see the countries that sent us their treasures. And
the result is the most traveled people in the world.
The wonderful, the curious, the unique find a ready market with Americans
abroad, and are chosen with that same keenness of wits that characterizes the amass-
ing of great fortunes, and brings to our attention a trait, truly American, that the
best is none too good for us, our homes or our museums. So that from the year 1876
may be counted the birth of the fine arts in the United States. The development of
architecture has made this Columbian Exposition possible; a surprise to ourselves,
the wonder and admiration of the world.
No accident has brought about this dream of beauty, this perfection of harmony;
but practical education, whether pursued in the Old World or in the New. Culling
out the gems of ancient architecture and adapting them to the modern has not been
done by the hand of ignorance. All agree to the magnificence of conception, and
behold! how well it has been carried out.
It has been said that the buildings found in the Paris Exposition would have been
expected in Chicago, and the buildings found in Chicago would have been expected
in Paris.
In that first exposition the world lent us their treasures. This year they have
brought them. All countries have come to us, and the Islands of the Sea have con-
tributed their curiosities, and, more than all, themselves. Think you, that having
touched our civilization they can return to the same rut, and fill the same small
place as before? The hope and belief that the world will be the gainer for this coming
together, is that the women have come, and woman takes no backward step in this age.
Will they take a lesson from us? A new idea? Can we do them any good? When
woman feels a prompting from within to a better living, higher aims, there is hope for
her future. Will prejudice, custom, environment be too much for these? We have
only to study the crowd as it passes by to hear snatches of conversations, the acci-
dents and incidents of a week at the fair, to read the signs of the times.
One of the women which we would like to help gives her opinion of us in the fol-
lowing language: " The women of this country interfere with everything." I am
afraid her criticism was merited. One said: "Your people are very inquisitive, must
see and examine everything."
Styles for men are changing, swearing has gone out of fashion, chewing tobacco
is only indulged in on the sly, or by the uncultivated. While within the month I
heard some fashionable young men discussing smoking with the remark that " it is no
longer good form to smoke on the fashionable promenade."
There has been such a warfare waged upon intemperance, that public opinion
would not tolerate a man upon these grounds who gave evidence of intoxication.
Women are largely instrumental in bringing about this change in sentiment; and
wisely, too, for here she may roam from morning until night in perfect safety, with-
out a thought of molestation.
The United States have; received the poor, the unfortunate, the degraded of all
countries for years, and now we are glad to welcome the refined and cultivated class
of foreigners who have been the nation's guest since this Exposition has been opened.
Having clasped hands with all the world, that a friendship may flow from it both true
and lasting, let us hope that many reciprocity treaties will follow with the smaller
nations who have been our guests, and that the markets of the world may open to our
productions. That to us, and through this channel, will come back like " Bread cast
upon the waters, return after many days." That the expenditure of $50,000,000 will
be an eventual gain to the nation.
490 THE CONGRESS OF WQMEN.
We classify woman and electricity as the two forces making the greatest progress
of the age. Woman has been largely emancipated from old prejudices. The broad-
shouldered, cleSr-headed woman has taken her place. Active, hard working, informing
herself, developing herself, studying the ethical questions of the times, giving her
substance and herself to helping the poor and elevating the race, compare her posi-
tion in any df the great public movements to the important one she occupies in the
Columbian Exposition. It is our share of the legacy from Queen Isabella. It was a
progressive woman who sacrificed her jewels for the hope of finding a new world.
And I hope her new honors may be borne with moderation and dignity. It is not
enough to accomplish, but to do it well.
It is said that at the Centennial the electrical exhibit occupied one corner of
a room, and that at Paris a whole room was given, while here a whole building is all too
small.
What shall we say of a marvelous agent that controls light, heat, power.
The many, many uses of electricity multiply endlessly. And still there are those
who prophesy that the knowledge and uses of electricity is in its infancy. From the
earliest ages, without education, man valued gold, silver and copper, the precious
metals; but it took the keys of science to unlock the hidden mysteries of nature's
storehouse.
Nature seems to hold hidden riches within her grasp, and makes us wonder what
forces are yet undiscovered, and who will be the discoverer.
The real question of the hour is one of finance. When we see large fortunes
melting away as snow under a summer sun, we may well stop and ask the reason.
Men say politics and finance are too much for the women. Well, and too much for
many men. There are many issues, all of which operate as factors in this experience,
which seems to be a consequence rather than a cause. National unity is necessary to
national preservation, a patriotic duty; and sectional interests must be subservient to
the best interests of the whole.
Now is the time for statesmen to show their superior ability in grasping the vexed
questions bringing order out of disorder and harmony to all sections.
Have we thought of the effect upon Chicago when the White City shall have been
swept away? When the magic wands that have turned Jackson Park into fairyland
shall wave the wand and this vision of loveliness disappear; when the scene shall
become as the memory of a beautiful dream, a sentiment; will the lagoon return to
the swampy marsh? Will the waves of Lake Michigan lave a forgotten shore? Will
the sands ever blow in unfettered freedom? Will the prairie flowers bloom again
unseen? No; the vision goes with us. Could Columbus take a glance at fair Col-
umbia, the peerless, the " gem of the ocean," he, at least, would pronounce it a fitting
memorial.
WOMEN AS POLITICAL ECONOMISTS.
By MRS. BRAINERD FULLER.
Those of you who have come from homes within sound of the Pacific's surf,
or from within hearing of the Atlantic's angrier waves, from the North or from the
South, must have been impressed all along the route
with the evidences of our present civilization. You
saw cities lying here and there with their spires, their
stately buildings and their warehouses of every kind
and description; you observed railroads winding in
and out in all directions; you noticed the surface of
great artificial water-ways and mighty rivers alive with
commerce.
Seeing the marvels, standing as we do this morn-
ing in the midst of this accumulated mass of witnesses
to a civilization which we know has progressed slowly
and by stages from out the haze enveloping the primi-
tive life of man into the full blaze and meridian glory
of to-day, I am asked, as I frequently am, why I, a
woman, have selected for the subject of my talk so
broad and difficult a subject as political economy, you
can readily understand why I reply in the good old
Yankee fashion of answering one question by propos-
ing another:
"What is political economy, and why should I
not study it?"
And then, as it often happens, when I am obliged,
as the Irishman said, to sustain the dialogue alone, I go on to remark that political
economy is nothing more nor less than the " art of getting the nation's living." It is
the science that inquires how these conditions that we find here have been developed,
how all these enjoyable things that surround us have been produced? In other words,
it is the study of the economic forces that maintain the life of the social organism.
There are certain phrases in use which very often appear to suggest that great
perplexity of mind must be experienced in order to fully master their meaning. Unfor-
tunately, political economy is such an expression. And " women as political econo-
mists " sounds to some more appalling still. In the limitations of language I know of
no better phrases to convey the desired meaning than these which I have mentioned.
All they need is simplifying, and this we have just done with " Political Economy.'^
Let us now see what we can make out of " women as political economists." Let us
find out why they are pushing their way into the realms of science.
Writers, in their treatises on general economics, usually divide their books into four
parts, and these divisions are, as you remember, " Production," under which head we
ascertain how wealth is created; " Exchange," or the transferring of goods from one
to another; "Distribution," and I think this part particularly interesting, because it
discusses the share each one receives of what is produced — it treats of what you get,
Mrs. Brainerd Fuller is a native of Middletown, Conn. Her parents were Norman L. Brainerd and Leora Campbell
Brainerd. She was educated at Miss Payne's Young Ladies' Seminary, Middletown, Conn., and has traveled in Great Britain,
Continental Europe, Canada, and to some extent in the United States. She married Samuel R. Fuller. Mrs. Fuller is a
delightful and charming lecturer and contributes many articles to the press. She is a member of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. Her postoffice address is No. 960 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, N. Y.
491
MRS. BRAINERD PULLER.
492 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of what I get, and of what each of us ought to get. The fourth division is " Consump-
tion," which has been wisely defined as " the end of all production."
Now, I argue that, inasmuch as it has always been conceded that women shall
look after the distribution and consumption of the private economy, why may she not
at least look into the national economy? She only broadens and extends her inter-
ests in doing so. Having served a long term in the administration of family econom-
ics, I take that fact to be presumptive evidence that women are natural born polit-
ical economists. The very least they can do is not to push the subject away from
them as too difficult, too dry to be annoyed with. On the contrary, it includes topics
of vital importance to every woman in the land. The social and economic life
of a nation very materially affects women. Social laws, customs and conditions
decidedly influence the home life of every girl and woman; they control all things a
woman holds most dear. Hence a study of, and an interest in, the civilization in which
she lives should be neglected by none.
In this comparatively new field of work I have found that certain ideas invariably
pop up on all sides for argument and discussion. People naturally enough look about
them with searching gaze when women undertake anything unusual. Women them-
selves often say to me that they have never heard of any women political economists
in history. It is true that they have not read of any such, that is, as we understand
the term political economist. In regard to the economic life of the past, the annals
of history are, indeed, wellnigh vacant. The pages of history are heroic with the
deeds of warriors, heavy with the smoke of battle, brilliant with marching and coun-
ter-marching armies, glittering with the rise and tarnished with the fall of many
dynasties.
This department of sociology certainly does have more to do with ourselves than
many other branches of knowledge. Therefore, we feel there must have been causes
that account for the small role which political economy has played in the drama of
history. There were such causes, as we shall see, if we take the trouble to seek them.
At the outset we discover that one influence felt by the historians has been " the
knowledge that dramatic incidents make more impressions on the minds of readers
than dissertations upon the more hidden forces that operate just as effectively in the
national organism. Dramatic incidents make more impression on the minds of the
historians themselves." " Certain epochs excite and certain lives impress the dramatic
sense. Both furnish a wide scope in which the genius of the author can exhibit itself.
Yet there are causes more potent still which have confined the historic muse ever
within sight of the nodding plumes of knights and within the hearing of the ' clash of
resounding arms.' "
These more influential reasons lie in the fact that two conditions must be fulfilled
before historians can to any extent write of the economics of their days. The first
requisition, says one author, certainly is that social phenomena must be exhibited on
a sufficiently extended scale to supply adequate matter for observation; consequently
for the recording of such observations, and after social phenomena are provided, his-
torians or writers must be trained for their tasks. Dr. Ingram believes, as he says,
" Sociology requires to use for its purpose theorems which belong to the domain of
physics and biology, and which sociology must borrow from its professors. On the
logical side the methods which sociology has to employ — deductional, observational,
comparative — must have been previously shaped in the cultivation of mathematics,
m the study of the inorganic world, or of organisms less complex than the social
organism."
We must never forget that scientists base their theories on the fact that society is
an organic whole, and each individual is a member of the same. Hence it is plain
that, although some laws or tendencies were undoubtedly forced on men's attention
in every age, yet it is also ^lain that really scientific sociology, including political
economy, must be the product of a very advanced stage of intellectual development.
Accepting these reasons for the silence of historians in regard to economics, we
are not so much inclined to blame them for their seeming shortcomings.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 493
Today all is changed. The exigencies of our times demand that the social and
economic conditions receive more and more attention. Today philosophers are rising
to the emergencies of their environment.
The environments of the past did not develop political economists, and it is true
that in bygone civilization we discover no women distinguished for their theories of
wealth or their speculations upon the production, distribution and consumption of
wealth. But have we no records of women who left the impress of their influence upon
the times in which they lived? None who were interested and versed in the social
conditions of their country, and in kindred topics? Were there none who exhibited
ability to grapple even with the affairs of state? Who will say that that beautiful
Egyptian queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty was not a successful ruler? Was not her
kingdom, in spite of her grievous faults, prosperous during her reign? Were not the
politics of Athens once shaped and guided by Aspasia? Did not the giant intellect
of Socrates bow to her? Coming nearer and more clearly into the light of our own
times, we behold Elizabeth Tudor, a sovereign, reigning as sovereigns have rarely
reigned — by the sovereignty of her own intellect and nature; and Maria Theresa,
mother of emperors! Did these have no thought for, no comprehension of, the prob-
lems of their day?
Lacking scarce three months of being one hundred years ago this very time, the
tall, elegant figure of a white-robed woman was passing from out the gray, grim gates
of the Conciergerie. The preparations at the guillotine were speedy. The breezes of
distracted France played but briefly with the dark, beautiful hair. The figure in white
murmured, " O Liberta, comme on t'a jouee! " and the bloodthirsty fishwomen from
the San Antoine, who, like harpies, sat" knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads."
Tell me, was not the lovely Roland in her day a power, a factor in that civilization for
which she lost her life? I am well aware that it may be argued that these women,
celebrated in history, have reigned and influenced through their personal attractions.
To an extent this is true, but they maintained their distinctive power through their
intelligence. A woman may attain her ascendency through personal charms, beauty,
and that wonderful, subtle thing, called fascination; but she must maintain her sway
through her mentality, her intelligence. None can depreciate the potency of physical
beauty; few can resist its seductive spell. All lament its ephemerality. But add to
beauty of person, to fascination, strength of intellect, and then you discover the secret
of the deep and lasting influence of these " Beacon Lights of History." These women
I have just mentioned were not political economists, but they were women who, had
they lived today, would of necessity have become such.
So much for the past. What of the present?
The spirit of progress is abroad. It is advancing with rapid strides. We who are
living in the twilight of the dear, old nineteenth century, see — we must see, whether
we wish or not — that women are being pushed by the trend of the times out into a
broader sea of life and responsibility. Great responsibilities are hurrying toward us.
They will soon be ours, and I would have American girls add to their world-acknowl-
edged beauty, their charms and fascination, an intelligent ability to meet these new
responsibilities. This can only be done through a familiarity with political economy.
If we are, as has been recently asserted, " on the verge of a decisive conflict between
the conservative and destructive forces"; if the "safety and the perpetuity of our civ-
ilization is menaced"; if mighty problems, greater than any that have shaken our
beloved country since the days of slavery, are crying for solution; if amid scenes of
aesthetic splendor the shadow of an impending danger falls, if the drums beat, if your
city is encircled with the gleam of bayonets, as my Buffalo during the great railroad
strike within a year has been, if a conflict of ideas and principle is waged at your
door, then I ask have women no desire to inquire into the whys and wherefores of
such occurrences?
Sometimes the social problems are less noticeable than at others. I do not con-
tend that a knowledge of the theories of political economy will settle such troubles.
494 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
But I do say that an observance of and study of the economic forces that have been
developed, especially in the last one hundred years, give a clearer comprehension
of present phenomena and their causes.
To trace the feeble beginnings of the economic life of man through the period
of barter and exchange shows us how money came into use. To follow money into
our own intricate financial and credit system will give us some idea of the difHculties
that beset our nation and Congress today. It is by the study of the simpler and ear-
lier national organisms that we come to better understand ourselves. To inculcate in
her sons the noble passion of patriotism by means of her own knowledge of national
conditions is a work for the American mother more glorious than that accomplished
by the women of Sparta. If there are any present who fear that in developing our
girls and women into political economists, or in the broader education which teaches
them somewhat of national conditions, that we are in danger of having the devoted
wives and mothers swept away, I beg such to remember that human nature is not
going to change simply because women have some knowledge of " the art of getting
the nation's living." Whatever woman's occupation is, whatever she thinks about, she
will always be a woman at heart. Believe me, in the coming days of the twentieth
century, if w^e should see political economists among our girls and matrons, we will
find the song of love still the same, " old, and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful
always." The stalwart American youths will fall in love, and gentle American maid-
ens will reciprocate the passion none the less fervently than in the older days when
political economy was unheard of, and when " Priscilla rode out through the heat and
the dust of noonday to the home of John Alden, her husband." Then as now, the
highest responsibility, the noblest function of woman, the most potent feeling that
dominates her being will be motherhood. This is not going to change in the heart
of a single woman political economist. No, though she will become a deeper thinker,
a more potent factor in national life than either Madame Roland or Elizabeth Tudor.
In the coming time, as now, woman will retain her old place at the side of man, but a
better companion, a better counselor, and as true a friend and wife. You may rest
assured that the stars will shine upon our fair and prosperous land, and Liberty, not
only glorified as she is today in the figure of woman, but proclaiming to the world the
increased patriotism of the American woman, will still stand guard in that beautiful
harbor of the " Empire State," while gentle Motherhood will rock the cradle then as
now of the children of the Nation sleeping at her feet.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OF THE LAST CENTURY.
By MRS. ELIZA STOWE TWITCHELL.
It is estimated by those who have studied the subject, that the advance which
the world has made industrially within the last one hundred and fifty years, is greater
than that of the previous two thousand. And when
we remember how many very important scientific
discoveries and labor-saving inventions have been
given to the world since 1870, it is perhaps not too
much to say that the industrial advance which the
world has made within the last twenty or thirty years
is equal to the previous one hundred and fifty.
It is always difficult to understand our own times.
We live too near to view them broadly. We scarcely
appreciate our friends, until the grave has hidden
them from us; and our men and women of genius
must be dead fifty years, before the world attains to
their clear breadth of vision, even by the aid of the
desperate, thankless struggle they make to show the
world "the things that belong to its peace." To take
a glance of the past and (then) compare it with the
present, is often helpful in gaining a broader view
of our own times.
The year 1776 is a very easy one to remember,
in that it witnessed two great events: Our Declara-
tion of Independence, and also the publication of
Adam Smith's great book, " The Wealth of Nations."
This book is illumined on almost every page with two great thoughts: First. As
our declaration affirms, each man's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
/. e., civil liberty; and second. Each man's right to exchange the result of his own
labor in any market where he pleases, i. e., free trade, or industrial liberty. Within ten
years from the publication of the book, four great inventions were given to the world:
James Watt invented the steam engine, Hargreaves the spinning jenny, Arkwright
the water frame, and Cartwright the power loom. These four inventions, together
with the fact that about that time coal was used in place of wood in smelting iron
ore, making iron both cheap and abundant, revolutionized all industry, and made,
in less than a century. Great Britain the work-shop of the world. In order to
clearly understand the effects which these inventions produced, it will be necessary
to form a picture of the condition of society before this time. The aristocracy then
constituted the most important class; they obtained their revenue from the rent of
their large estates, which centuries before had possessed but little or no value, and
were given in most cases to their ancestors for bravery in battle. There were two
advantages which they possessed over the others: First, as chief owners of the soil,
Mrs. Eliza Stowe Twitchell was born at Jamestown, N. ¥., Janaary, 1845. Her parents were natives of Worcester, Maes.
In addition to a common-school education she spent three years at Waterford Academy and three at Lake Erie Seminary,
graduating from the latter in 1867. In 1874 she married Edward Twitchell, of Boston, residing in Boston until 1891, then located
at Wollaston Heights, one of its suburbs. In society, for its social features merely, she was never especially intorested;
church, benevolent societies, flower missions and day-nurseries received her thought and attention. Books were her
delight; the public library to her a continual feast, which aided by Miss Ticknor's " Society for Home Study," established
mental discipline of a superior order. Two tracts, "Justice not Charity," and " Wealth and its Factors," are among her
beet writings. Her postoffice address is Wollaston Heights, Mass.
495
MRS. ELIZA STOWE TWITCHELL.
496 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
which was now constantly growing in value; and second, as makers of the laws.
These two advantages gave them leisure for study and improvement; wealth, for
charity, for refinement and luxuries. The condition of those who tilled the soil had
formerly been that of mere serfs, who had neither civil, religious, nor industrial
liberty. Everything the serf produced belonged to his lord. One hundred and fifty
years ago, then, most of the land of England was divided into small holdings, and
titled by lease or copy-holders, i. e., those who obtained their lands of the lords upon
long leases; or free-holders, those who purchased their lands, yet continued to pay
annually a small rent. The chief difference between the copy-holder and the free-
holder was, the free-holder's rent could not be raised as the land rose in value. These,
with the farm laborers, who lived in the family, ate at the same table, and shared the
same coarse fare and rude society, constituted the sturdy yeomanry of England. Then,
dotted over all England, in lanes and byways, were cottages surrounded by an acre of
land each. In the cottage was the hand-loom, at which sat the master- workman (then
called the manufacturer), who, assisted by his apprentices, wove the woolen, silk,
linen and cotton cloth of England.
Then as the population was sparse, and there was land enough for all, the poorer
or common lands were allotted annuall)^ to a still poorer class of farmers. Each man
had three strips, one for barley, one for wheat and one for grass, besides a right to
pasture a cow or a pig and obtain fuel from the common fields. The philosopher's
stone, so long in vain sought, was at length found m the huge beds of coal and iron
ore that lay side by side just under the surface of English soil, and that " labor" was
soon to place England at the head of industrial Europe. This was only one hundred
and fifty years ago. The intolerance and bigotry of those times is well illustrated by
the manner in which the great inventions of Watt, Hargreaves and Crompton were
received and requited.
Rioters burst into their houses and broke in pieces their machines, with the cry,
"Men, not machines!" They believed they could regulate the price of wages by break-
ing labor-saving machines, just as it is now imagined that by restricting the number of
laborers wages will rise. Both methods only reduce the amount of wealth produced,
and in the end works injury to all. When cloth began to be woven by machinery,
moved by the forces of nature, the first effect upon the master-workmen and their
apprentices was to gradually destroy both their industry and their capital, for their
looms became so much useless lumber. Henceforth if they would weave cloth they
must go to the machines, and become a part of them.
The second effect was to tear the people up by the roots and carry them away
from the soil to the town, with lives reduced to the one monstrous purpose — that of
tending a machine. Many did leave their homes to find employment; but many were
left to eke out a miserable existence as best they could. Now what was the effect of
all this upon the manufacturer? This word has now a new meaning.
The gulf has widened between him and his apprentices or day laborers.
Obtainmg his labor cheap (the price of wages being fixed by law), his profits were
large, and he soon amassed an enormous fortune. Others, seeing his large profits,
engaged in the same business, and then the competition between one manufacturer
and another gradually reduced the price of cloth, until the profits of the business
amounted to only a fair rate of interest on the capital invested, and the effect of this
was to so cheapen production that the goods were within the reach of nearly all, and
this so stimulated trade and foreign commerce that it opened up new avenues to labor,
and capital sprang up as if by magic. Where before one yard of cloth was produced,
now there were many greater comforts, and a higher standard of living was the result,
until these machines were a blessing to all, except those whose toil they were intended
to lighten. They lived a hard, monotonous life, slaves both to the machines and to
the firms or corporations that employed them. Since that time population in England
has increased tenfold, and wealth far more. So that had there been a just (not equal,
but a just) distribution of the wealth produced, all classes would have been benefited.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN 497
Not one of these machines could turn out a yard of woolen cloth except fed by
wool from the backs of sheep that fed upon the lands. In the same way the cotton,
silk and linen came from the land. Also, the increasing population in these rapidly
growing cities must all be fed from products that grew upon the land, and even if
people dwelt in five-story tenement-houses, or pursued their business in an office on
the tenth floor, its foundation must rest upon the land.
The first effect, then, upon the farmer, was of great prosperity, since everything
that he raised was in great demand. So well off did he soon become, that he refused
to board the day-laborer in his family, since now he was as good as gentle folk; thus
the gulf again widened between the classes. But the second effect was, that land
being in such demand, its value rose enormously, and when the long leases expired, the
landlords refused to rent again upon the old terms; so that all this increase in prosper-
ity, though it went for a time to capital, for a time to the farmer, ended in raising the
value of land, making it yearly harder either to buy land or to rent it, and those who
owned the land reaped the cream of a,ll this prosperity. A proof of this is seen in the
fact that both wages and interest on capital are not nearly as high today as one hun-
dred and fifty years ago, when compared with the amount of wealth they produced;
yet the price of land is vastly higher; farming lands, some fifty times their former price;
manufacturing sites, seventy times; mineral lands and city lots, many thousand times.
So the final effect upon the farmer was, that since his extra profits must now go to pay
the increased rent, the small farmer was crushed out, and became a day-laborer or
small trader, again drawing more away from the country to the city, and gradually
concentrating the land in the hands of a few. Slowly the sturdy yeomanry of Eng-
land disappeared — that class which made England invincible in war and prosperous
in peace. As this class has disappeared in England, the wealthy and retired merchant
or manufacturer now coveted a title, but as this could not be granted except to the
possessor of broad lands, a bill was passed through parliament called the ''Law of
Inclosures," inclosing the land held in common by the poor people.
By this some seven millions of acres of the common lands were "inclosed," i.e.
taken away from the poor and given to the rich to found (?) families, who did not
pay the poor for their land, but who paid the government for their titles of nobility.
At length, so great was the distress and suffering in England, that riots were com-
mon; houses and factories were burned; the sky was lurid with the approach of a com-
ing revolution. The law of settlement was repealed in time to save coming disas-
ter. Since then some twelve millions have found their way to the cheap or free
lands of Canada and the United States, and have been able to protect themselves.
But there is still poverty in England. They still give them scorn, pity, and charity;
and if anyone will know the cause of the present submerged tenth, let him reflect
upon this fact.
One-half the land of Great Britain — land upon which thirty-seven millions of
people must live, is owned by some twenty-seven hundred landlords. The many must
pay the few — their brothers, for a right to live upon England's soil — pay for the right
to live upon the land where God has placed them. Why if such were the condition in
Heaven there would be distress and suffering. Now how do those times and events com-
pare with the present? Against the steam-engine, the spinning jenny, the power loom,
water frame and cheap iron, we have cheap steel, the electric motor, the reaping
machine, ocean cable, telephone, photography, the modern printing-press, capable of
printing a book of 288 pages in one revolution, or 5,000 books an hour! In short, so
multitudinous are now the inventions that today only one-third of the labor of the
world is performed by muscle.
Every new invention, in proportion to its importance, produces like economic
results as have been detailed at length. First, it destroys somebody's industry and
makes some capital, for a time, useless; next, it changes the location of the social
units of society. Then it increases the profits of those who possess exclusive control
of the invention; but as soon as exclusive control ceases, competition steps in and
(32)
498 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
reduces both the price and the profits, until the invested capital usually receives only
a fair rate of interest, and the effect of this is to so stimulate all industry that it opens
up new avenues to commerce, subdivides labor, and lifts the standard of living, until
this increasing demand for more and more wealth finally increases the demand for
land — the original source of all wealth.
This increasing demand for land has led to great improvements in rapid and cheap
transportation, in order to bring rich but distant land into use; so today railroads, built
mostly of cheap steel, light and strong, trains can move with great swiftness and com-
parative safety. Our. railroads are the greatest labor-saving machines we have, and as
instruments of traffic they are a blessing inestimable to all. It is only in their franchise
that they are monopolies, and in the power of land held out of use that they are able
to grind the lives of their employes. Our best roads can, and do, carry at a profit a ton
of freight a mile for less than one cent. Neither is it in doing things on a large scale
that constitutes a monopoly. By means of modern inventions, by manufacturing in
large quantities, sugar is produced at a profit of only one-sixteenth of a cent a pound.
By recent improvements in agricultural implements, steam-plows, reaping, sowing and
threshing machines, three men can in a year produce grain enough to feed one thou-
sand. In short, there is hardly an industry that can not, in six months' time, supply
the market for a year, so that the great cry today is over-production. There was too
much wheat raised last year, too much cotton, too many shoes made; our iron, cooper
and coal mines all have to shut down because there is an over-supply. Why, then, do
not these men, toiling in mine and mill, stop and rest awhile, if they are producing too
much? Why do not the thirty thousand women and seventy-five hundred children in
the cotton factories of Massachusetts take a vacation? Who is it that turns pale at a
talk of a shut-down for six weeks? Why is it that men consider it a privilege to work
long and hard, often where life is in danger, and yet they cling to their places as a
drowning man clings to a floating spar in mid-ocean, if it be not that the land has been
pulled out from under them, while the machines are doing their labor?
We have already reached a time when the small farms are rapidly disappearing
and land is being concentrated into the hands of a few. In the West, farms of thirty
thousand acres are quite common. Foreign noblemen already own land enough to
give one hundred and fifty thousand families one hundred and sixty acres apiece.
There is much said, lately, about America for Americans. What we ought to claim is
American soil for American citizens. In this way we shall soon be paying to English
landlords a greater tax than that we refused to pay to King George III. 'Tis said
that four millionaires own land enough to form for each a state the size of Massachu-
setts. This concentration of land in the hands of a few produces a seeming scarcity;
yet, if the inhabitants of the globe were placed in the United States alone, the popula-
tion to the square mile would not be nearly as great as today in Belgium. Notwith-
standing the vast extent of land now owned by private individuals or large
monopolies, the injury to the masses is not felt in inclosing from them vast tracts of
land so much as from shutting them out from the mpre bountiful portions of nature —
such as rich oil or mineral lands, or giving them no share in the valuable trading sites
in every large city which their presence has helped to create. No one expects to
divide the land equally, or to prevent it from being bought and sold as now, or to take
it away from anybody. Yet affairs must be so adjusted that the veriest little sickly
girl baby, born in a five-story teneinent house next month, shall have her right to an
equal share with all others in the value of the land where God has placed her. To
deny her this is to deny her right to the wealth which her Heavenly Father has cre-
ated for her. Here is a steamboat plying between New York and Liverpool. Its
owner recently died, and left this property to his sons and daughters. If they divide
it into equal parts they will destroy it; but if they allow it to sail back and forth, and
divide its annual earnings equally they will each share alike. So we are sailing upon
a boat through space, rushing at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour. Our
boat is loaded down with the materials of untold and inexhaustible wealth. This
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 499
wealth, it may be said (commonly speaking), is of two forms. First, that which is
produced by skill and labor, which, as we have seen, grows cheaper and cheaper as
civilization advances; and, second, that which is produced by the growth of society —
i. e. the value that attaches to land by reason of population or ground rents, which
grow dearer and dearer as civilization advances. Men need wealth individually.
This each one produces by his individual labor, and his right to it is inviolate.
We also have need of a social fund to defray the common expenses of government,
such as schools, public bridges, roads, care of the sick and aged, the unfortunate who
are now left to the humiliations of charity, or worse still, the mortification of alms.
Ground rents are produced socially. To use this social fund to defray the expenses
of society would, in reality, consist in all sharing equally in the value of the land, or
in other words, would restore the land of the world to the people of the world. We
would collect these ground rents by means of a single tax, placed not upon land, for
all land does not rent for the same price, but upon land according to its value.
Hon. Wm. P. Saunders, of London, says: "This would in reality be no tax at all,
but a pension for everybody." Let this simple yet radical change be adopted, and
how soon would our present unjust standard of social equality disappear. Then
respect for the aged, pity, tenderness and love for the blind, crippled and unfortunate
would be accorded, whatever their social rank. Then hearts would count as high as
heads, and heads as high as gold. Hear the words of one, who dwelt so long in the
thought upon the misery and injustice in the world, and this remedy, until in prophetic
vision he at length caught a glimpse of the future —
" Far as human eye could see;
Saw the vision of the world and all the wonders that would be."
And as he gazed he wrote this picture for our comfort and hope. So earnest and
intense was his soul, so inspired his thought, that between the lines, for ages, will be
heard the very sound of his heart-throbs. The fiat has gone forth. With steam and
electricity, and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered the world that
will either compel us to a higher plane or overwhelm us as nation after nation, as
civilization after civilization have been overwhelmed before. Even now, in old bot-
tles, the new wine begins to ferment, and elemental forces gather for the strife. But
if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey her, if we trust Liberty and
follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace
will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the infinite
fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous
inventions of this century give us but a hint. With want destroyed; with greed
changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality, taking the place
of the jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power
loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure, and who shall
measure the heights to which our civilization. may soar? Words fail the thought!
It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high raised seers have told in
metaphor. It is the glorious vision which has always haunted man with gleams of
fitful splendor. It is what he saw, whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It
is the culmination of Christianity — the city of God on earth, with its walls of jasper
and its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!
VOICE CULTURE.
By MME. LOUISA CAPPIANL
The correct emission is produced by bringing the vocal chords to phonation on
the principle of the yEolian harp. This tone production, without using muscular power
in the throat, preserves the voice through lifetime.
First, it must be understood what an ^olian harp is.
Nothing more than well-tuned strings, stretched in
the middle of a frame (window) exposed to the air,
where the friction of the wind develops the tone of
those strings, in such a soft, elastic way, that heavenly
sounds of wonderful effect are heard. What is the
human voice? A living ^olian harp. The vocal
chords are situated in the upper part of the windpipe
(larynx), where the air of the lungs, called breath,
passes, through and brings to phonation the tones
conceived in the brain. By this soft and elastic emis-
sion every voice is beautified, never strained or injured,
and flexibility acquired without difficulty. Here I
must quote my analysis of the voice of another essay
of mine: *' What is the voice? Reply: Tone colored
breath." An ^olian harp.
The epiglottis stroke, on the contrary, hardens
the voice, by forcibly closing the vocal chords and
causing an explosive tone. This proceeding makes a
clicking noise before the tone is heard. In violin
playing a sudden stroke of the bow on the strmgs
produces a similar harsh tone. Why are Paderewski and Joseffy so superior to other
virtuosi? Because of their elastic touch. One can not hear the percussion of the
hammer upon the piano strings, as too often happens in piano-forte playing. Why
should vocalists hammer upon their poor vocal chords by this epiglottis stroke? The
voice certainly can not improve, but must suffer by this explosive treatment, which
is injurious to the whole vocal apparatus. A soft and elastic tone production of the
iColian harp, as above explained, beautifies the voice, renders it capable of flexibility,
and of expressing every sentiment, besides extending its range and increasing its
power. But, above all these advantages, "phonation of the human voice, upon the
principle of the yEolian harp, preserves it in its prime through life."
Placing of the Voice. — The guidance of the elastic tone is the next capital atten-
tion. As you know, every instrument has a sounding-board. In the human voice this,
sounding-board is formed by the bony part of the face (flesh is not acoustic), the nasal
bridge being the central arch or acoustic chamber connecting the frontal bone, all the
Mme. Louisa Cappiani (Kapp- Young) is a native of Austria. She was bom in 1835; educated in Vienna, Austria. Her
maiden name was Young, Her father was a dramatic tenor and her mother a gifted German, with both literary and musical
culture. At the age of six Madame Cappiani was a musical prodigy. She was given thorough musical training. At the age of
seventeen she married Mr. Kapp, an Austrian counselor. He lived but three years, leaving her with two children. She
began a musical career to provide for her family, under the combined name of Kapp- Young, Later, to satisfy popular preju-
dices, she fused her name into Cappiani. She is now known all over the country, as well as in Europe, as the great voice
builder and teacher of perfect singing, she is so successful with her principle of the jEolian harp emission of tone, which,
excludes all effort in the throat and preserves the voice. She has many pupils. Her postoffice address is The Mystic, No.
123 West Thirty-ninth Street, New York.
♦The address was delivered under the title of " Voice Culture as a Means of Independence to Women."
500
MME. LOUISA CAPPIANI.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 501
■nasal bones and molar bones and by these with the teeth. When the tone conceived
in the brain is correctly emitted from the throat and guided into the nasal bridge, it
makes all these bones resound and gives to the original tone by its over and under
tones forming a kind of accord, warmth, mellowness, fullness and strength. It must
be well comprehended that I am speaking of the nasal bones and not of the nostrils.
The tones coming through these would give them a horrible nasal sound, which under
all circumstances must be avoided. Finally, to quote Noah Webster in regard to the
turbinated bones under the nasal bridge, you will find in his dictionary that he calls
" turbinated or scroll bones the expression bones of speech." With this you readily
understand that they must be also the expression bones for singing, as singing is talk-
ing with harmonious tones. The clearness of pronunciation is most essential for a
good singer, and the more distinct the syllables are heard, the better appears the voice.
For Breathing. — I must warn singers not to take exaggerated breaths, as harm
may be done and nothing gained by this spasmodic breathing. You can not hold an
over-amount of air which by its own pressure will leave you with the first note you
sing. The so-called abdominal breathing is an erroneous expression, as one can only
breathe through the larynx. The sensation by lowering the diaphragm gave rise to
this error. The function in breathing on natural principles is this: You expand by a
muscular effort the lowest (floating) ribs, in consequence of which the chest-board
(sternum) rises also — not the shoulders — at the same time you lower the diaphragm
in the abdomen, giving to your lung cells ample space to inflate with the air, rushing
through your larynx, thus, according to physical law, " every vacuum is filled with air."
This air, or breath, will be retained the longest if you don't let sink in the chest board
(sternum) but keep it up until your phrase is through. Specialist physicians call this
singing with fixed sternum, which is the right way for good artistic breathing, because
it keeps the floating ribs out when the diaphragm can go upward to give assistance to
the lungs. When arriving from Europe about fourteen years ago, the late Oliver Ditson
asked me to write an article on breathing, which was published in the Boston Record
— I remember havin'g given as illustrations two extremes: A lion and a new-born baby.
There in a menagerie I saw this big majestic animal sleeping; no motion whatever;
one could have believed him dead, or sculptured, or stuffed, if his abdomen did not
betray, moving slowly with every respiration, there is life. The same with the new-
born baby. In his peaceful sleep it seemed a departed angel, and only the movement
of its abdomen betrayed — it belonged still to us. So it came that I called this natural
breathing abdominal breathing. It was concise, to the point, and I don't think I was
wrong either. Though once a pupil — from some territory — came to me for lessons.
After a while with an anxious face she asked me: " Madame, will you teach me the dia-
phragmatic or abdominal breathing?" " Yes, certainly!" " But — you will give me —
chloroform?" " What for?" " When you are making that hole in my diaphragm for
abdominal breathing." To avoid such misunderstanding I would like to propose to
exchange the expression " abdominal breathing" to " breathing by the guidance of the
abdomen," It is concise, to the point. With this phonation of the vocal chords on the
principle of the .^olian harp, the correct placing of the voice, and breathing on natural
principles as above explained, the question, " When should children begin to sing," is
easily answered. At eight or ten years, or as soon as they can learn the notes. Par-
ents and teachers should give their attention to time, rhythm, to the executive .skill of
singing (technic) runs, trills, sustained phrasing, articulation, pronunciation, etc.;
and also of first sight singing, in childhood so easily acquired. After this they can
join a chorus choir, in order to learn and appreciate good music, though not" to make
their voices heard above the other voices; let them sing softly, carefully.
The idea that a powerful voice is not capable of flexibility is also an error. The
biggest voice can acquire it, and is, by this elastic tone-production, growing in beauty
and power. When entering puberty the boy has to stop singing entirely ; the girl may
stop too, but this is not always necessary when strong and healthy, though care must
be taken not to sing too loud so as not to strain the vocal chords and injure the voice.
502 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Singing should be treated like a course of medical studies, where the student is not
allowed to practice until he has his diploma. So with singers. They should not be
allowed to sing in public before they have acquired a diploma, certifying that they
have overcome all the difficulties in the art of singing and pronunciation. This ability
makes them self-reliant, banishing stage fright, and all the music they sing will then
be rendered artistically. In this way a young woman at the age of eighteen or
twenty years becomes a first-class artist, and as a singer or teacher she has won her
independence. She. carries her capital in her head and throat, to draw upon with
singing or teaching wherever she goes, and nobody can steal it from her. In case she
would wish to be an opera singer, thus prepared she would require only two years
repertoire study, with acting, to become a brilliant star in art, and at the same time
remain a model of a virtuous woman, as her career is based upon earnest learnings and
not held up by momentary favors.
This is the right independence of woman.
Music in General: — "Music is not an invention," says Ritter in his history of
music; " its seed lay dormant in the breast of primeval man. Music is in many respects
a reliable guide of progress and development, and no art is more closely connected
with the inner life of men than music, where its magic power steps in at precisely the
point where the positive expression of language fails, and participates in man's strug-
gles, triumphs, reverses, and in all his feelings. Music, the deeper expressions of man's
joys and emotions, will find always a fructifying field to take root in, because it reveals
to man's senses the great mystery, the beautiful. Music is the language of the soul,
its influence upon men's minds is thus ennobling, strengthening, elevating."
Further on Ritter quotes Martin Luther, and it is not out of place to repeat it
here. The great reformer calls music one of the greatest gifts of the Creator, and
assigns it the first place next to Divinity; for " like this," he says, " it sets the soul at
rest and places it in the most happy mood, a clear proof that the demon who creates
such sad sorrows and ceaseless torments retires as fast before music and its sounds
as before Divinity. There is no doubt the seed of many virtues exists in the minds of
those who love music, but those who are not moved by it resemble sticks and stones."
As a means of education Martin Luther attached great importance to the influence of
music. " It is beneficial " he says, "to keep youth in continual practice in this art, for
it renders people intellectual; therefore it is necessary to introduce the practice of
music in the schools; and the schoolmaster must know how to sing, otherwise I do
not respect him."
Before closing this brief essay I will touch on social position. There can be no
doubt in your minds, as there is none in mine, how much higher social position comes
to man when, besides his business or profession, he is educated in music. Everybody
looks at him as superior to others; why should not a woman in private life strive for
this great accomplishment which adorns her with inexpressible charm, thus remaining
the attraction for husband and friends? Such homes, in which women dedicate their
leisure hours to music, and especially to good artistic singing, become temples of a
higher sphere, and the influence of this gentle art will be felt in the refined inclina-
tions of their children, as intelligent mothers make intelligent nations. In this way
music becomes hereditary, and its difficulties are easily overcome by the love for it.
I have above explained the advantages of music for women as a profession; " prima-
donna," church and concert singer, "and teacher." The musically well-educated
woman in private life though becomes an anchor of hope and safety in case the hus-
band is overtaken by sickness or other reverses. In such cases — and only in such —
the wife will be the bread-winner, and the children will imitate the mother's noble
example. Welfare and independence will then soon re-enter the threatened house-
hold; and all this by the acquired charm of music
mnr^'
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
2. Mrs. Mary Pay ton.
Oregon.
4. Mrs. Matilda Shelton,
Peimsylvania.
7. Miss Floride CanninKham, 8. Mrs. Ellery M. Brayton, 9. Mrs. John R. Wilson, 10. Mrs. Helen Morton Barker,
South Carolina. South Carolina, South Dakota. South Dakota.
1. Mrs. E.W.Allen,
Oregon.
5. Mrs. Amey M. Starkweather,
Rhode Island.
8. Miss Mary £. McCandless,
Pennsylvania.
6. Miss Charlotte Field Dailey,
Rhode Island.
11. Mrs. Lanra Gillespie,
Tennessee,
12. Mrs. Susan Gale Cooke.
Tennessee.
13. Mrs. Ida Loving Turner,
Texas.
SOME ENGLISH WOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.*
By MRS. CAROLINE FULLER FAIRBANKS.
There is nothing especially to be said of the women of the eighteenth century,
except to emphasize what they have done for us. We are heirs of all the ages, but
the inheritance bequeathed to us by the women of the
eighteenth century is vastly richer then that of any
preceding age.
What the women of the eighteenth century did
for the emancipation and education of women is like
what the anti-slavery agitation in the early part of the
century did for the emancipation of the slave. They
created possibilities for us. They give us strength
and courage where these elements are wanting. They
pushed their way gently through opposition and diffi-
culties, until the women of today have nothing to do
but to enter in and possess the land.
We boast that this is the " woman's century," and
well we may; but let us do honor to the women who
gave the impetus to the great movement which has
opened to us every avenue of work and study.
It seems strange, indeed, that in a world where
there was so much learning only a few could pos-
sess it. Up to the eighteenth century it was only
for the upper and more polished classes, and even
among the upper classes women were not expected,
yea, were not permitted, to obtain an education.
We have a good illustration of this in the career of Lady Mary Wortly Montague,
one of the most notable and brilliant women of the early part of the eighteenth cent-
ury. She tells us that she was obliged to study by herself and work very hard that
she might obtain a little masculine knowledge, as it was called. Education for girls
was most unpopular. Her father, the Duke of Kingston, had apparently no desire to
give his daughter an education beyond what was thought proper in that day for the
daughter of a nobleman. She was taught to read and to write; beyond that her edu-
cation was self-acquired. She could read books from the well furnished library in
her father' house, works of fiction and entertainment, and the old courtly romances
fashionable "^t that time. But she desired graver subjects, and by the help of an
uncommon memory and indefatigable labor, she taught herself the Latin language and
in time became known among her friends for her acquirements and her attachment to
learning.
Education for girls was discouraged then for the same reason existing in our own
country half a century ago. A learned lady was unfitted for the duties of a house-
hold, it was thought. Yet Lady Mary was not neglectful of such duties. After the death
of her mother, Mary being the eldest daughter, the honors of the table devolved upon
her. This was no small task, for she had not only to urge her guests to eat more than
they could well swallow, but she had to carve every dish with her own hands. Every
Mrs. Caroline Fuller Fairbanks is a native of Maine. Her parents were Benjamin and Theodate Fuller of Puritan
New England stock. She received her education at Worcester, Mass., and at Bridgewater, Mass., State Normal School
She htiB devoted much time to elocution and vocal culture. She married J. E. Fairbanks, of Dubuque, Iowa. Mrs. Fair-
banks is a Protestant, and is a member of the Congregational Charch. Her postoffice address is Dubaqae, Iowa.
MRS. CAROLINE FULLER FAIRBANKS.
♦The full title of the address as delivered before the Congress was, " A Few Notable English Women of the Eighteenth
Century."
503
504 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
joint was carried up to her in turn to be operated upon by her alone. No peer or
knight could offer his assistance, and the master of the house had to husband his
strength that he might push the bottle after dinner. Though she could not have a
teacher in Latin, she was provided with a professional master in carving. She took
lessons three times a week that she might be perfect on her father's great days. No
doubt her carving master found her a more docile pupil because of her self-acquired
Latin.
If Lady Montague excelled her master in the manipulation of a joint, she also
excelled Walpole, Cowper and Pope, and other men who stood highest in literary
circles. She excelled them in vivacity, ease, sarcasm, elegance and other traits that
distinguished letters from essays. While Lady Montague's writings make a valuable
addition to English literature, what she did toward making the medical profession
possible for women of the nineteenth century is of greatest value to us. While in the
East she discovered the Turkish method of inoculation for small-pox. She studied
the method carefully, and on her return to England introduced it to her countrymen.
What a furore this created! Statesmen forgot for the time the graver matter of legis-
lation to criticise and censure a woman for usurping the rights of men. Lawyers
doubted the wisdom of such an innovation. Doctors shook their wise heads and gave
warning against such a heathenish practice. Ministers preached against Lady Mon-
tague and her method of warding off disease, her boldness and wickedness in taking
such matters from the hand of God. But she persevered, though she declared she
could never have undertaken it could she have foreseen the vexation, the oppression,
the obliquy even, that it brought upon her. She opened the way into the medical
profession for women, and made it possible for her to practice therein without moles-
tation. We cherish her memory, and place her name high among the notable women
of the eighteenth century.
Before the eighteenth century, as has been said, education was for the titled
classes. Jane Austen was fortunate in being born at the right time. She did not come
of a noble family, but she was w^ell born and well connected. She was accustomed
from youth to meeting people of distinction and eminence, and she had reason always
to feel that her kindred played a real part in the world. She was well educated
according to the requirements of that time, though she could not have passed an
examination to enter any lady's college, or had the remotest chance with the Harvard
Annex or the University of Chicago. But she is a fine example of the cultivation and
refinement attainable before women's colleges were thought of. She grew to woman-
hood in gentle obscurity, her individual existence lost in the noisy claims of her
brothers. But the germ of great thought was in her, and she gave expression to her
thoughts in story as beautiful as was ever written or told. She was a girl that never
had a love story to tell in which she was the heroine. As free from sentimentality as
anyone could be, yet she was a born novelist, and a remarkably sweet and loving and
lovable woman. She was not a story-teller merely — she was an artist. She painted
pictures as wonderful in unity and completeness as many of the great masters. What
real pleasure and satisfaction we have in her books today. And yet she did her work
so quietly. Her books steal into notice. They brought her but little money, and a
modicum of praise while she lived, but today they have become classic, and it is the
duty of every student of English literature to be more or less acquainted with her
works. With all her brilliant parts as a writer, she was false to no instinct of woman-
hood. She was an accomplished needle-woman, great in satin stitch, giving her
friends pretty presents of her own handiwork, and she could carry on the merriest and
most interesting conversation over her embroidery or dressmaking. How often is her
portrait reproduced in the remarkable women of our day. The possibility of womanly
work going hand in hand with genius obtains today, though it is no new thing. Genius
and work! How well they harmonized in Jane Austen, and how well in scores of
women who are carrying forward this great Exposition. Jane Austen has been an
inspiration to many a woman of the nineteenth century. Her spirit is with us.
thp: congress of women. 505
What is true of Jane Austen is also true of Mary Mitford, Both were notable
women; both have helped in the education and the emancipation of the women of the
nineteenth century. Let us add luster to what they have given us, and pass it on to
the twentieth century.
What has the Quakeress of the eighteenth century done for the women of the
nineteenth? Not even the great founder of the society could have reached so many
needy women,
Elizabeth Fry had a special vocation for the office she undertook, and she is
worthily called the mother of the philanthropic work of the nineteenth century. She
had extreme opinions against capital punishment, yet it was these very extreme opin-
ions that contributed largely to the change in the general tone of thought and feeling
which resulted in a very marked abatement in our criminal code. How unspeakably
wretched was the condition of women prisoners before the day of Elizabeth Fry!
Surely, if the complete abandonment of self to the well-being of a class, and that
class the lowest and the most wicked, could render one worthy a crown, Elizabeth
Fry wears a crown radiant with numberless stars. Yet she was bitterly opposed by
men of learning and influence, simply because she turned aside from the common
custom of women to do a great work for her sex.
Maria Edgeworth was another notable woman of the eighteenth century. She
won the praise of great men in her own day, even of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Jeffries.
The former admired her rich humor and her admirable tact in the delineation of her
Irish characters, so much so that he was led to do the same work for his own people,
and so came into existence the "Waverly Novels," wholly suggested, as the author him-
self asserts and insists, by Maria Edgeworth. Lord Jeffries bestows upon her the high-
est praise when he speaks of her tales as works of more serious importance than much
of the true history and solemn philosophy that comes daily under our inspection These
notable women write with a high purpose in view, that of making all mankind better.
Many of them were novelists, and it would seem that they outstripped the men in this
department.
I can not pause to more than mention Mrs. Annie Radcliffe, whose works were
translated into French and were very popular in France, as well as in England and in
America, And Sarah Siddons, who transformed herself into the great creations of
Shakespeare, and introduced "Lady Macbeth" to the world. She made the dramatic
profession worthy the best of women. Or Caroline Herschel, who brought great light
into the world by the seven comets she discovered, without the aid of her brother, and
won the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, She opened for women the
way to scientific study. Or Mary Somerville, who shows us the mechanism of the
heav^ens, and makes the most abstruse subjects interesting to the most unscientific
reader. Her life was an inspiration to our own Maria Mitchell, and to many another,
no doubt, who never would have dreamed of the possibility of reaching such heights
as have been gained but for the example of the women of the eighteenth century.
There is one other woman, it seems to me, whose history has never been fully
written, who stands high above the rest in greatness, I speak of Hannah More.
Indeed, if the appellation "notable" can be applied to any human being, history can
furnish no name more truly deserving than hers. The greatness of the eighteenth
century women culminates in Hannah More. The possibilities of the human soul and
intellect are more strikingly manifested in her than in any other character that has
appeared to us in centuries. She was the daughter of an humble schoolmaster, and
yet by her own industry and merit she elevated herself to be the favored and caressed
associate of all the distinguished in contemporary rank and literature. Her ambition
to be of benefit to her generation was unbounded. Her benefactions were limited to
no class and to no country. The influence of her writings will be felt for generations
to come. During her own lifetime they effected a moral revolution, not only on the
surface, but upon aristocrats and middle life. They were extensively influential in
calming the passions and correcting the delusions of a misguided populace in times
506 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of turbulence and discontent. They were read in almost every language of the globe,
from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Indian Ocean, and from the Mississippi
to the Ganges. Her personal exertions changed the moral conduct of the laboring
classes within their influence, and almost annihilated the popular prejudice of the
times against the religious education of the poor. Hannah More sacrificed every
variety of personal gratification to the object she continually kept in view. She was
persecuted in early life because she dared put forth an effort to secure for women a
better education. She overcome this, and was soon recognized as one of the foremost
women of the age; and received, and deserved to receive, as great a share of admira-
tion as was ever accorded to any woman. She created for herself a most delightful
atmosphere, and she was not indifferent to the praise of those whose names are
immortal. Yet when she saw a great work to be done for and among people from
whom she could expect nothing but opposition and persecution, she did not hesitate
in her decision. She endured personal labor, exhaustion and indignity, and all this
in pursuance of the welfare of mankind. Her aims were universal and eternal.
Although she was a woman, she surrendered admiration, resigned the endearments of
friendship and relinquished the pleasures of literature. Such qualifications constitute
greatness of the most exalted type. Her father, as has been said, was a schoolmaster.
He desired to give his five daughters, all bright girls, an education. Hannah very
early showed marked talent. At eight years of age she began to study Latin, and her
father was so alarmed at the way she outstripped the boys of his school that he feared
the reputation of " learned lady " might be a disadvantage to her. Mr. More was not
without his horror of " learned ladies," but his good sense and paternal pride controlled
him, and when Hannah's great talents became manifest, he did on the sly combine
some elementary instruction in mathematics with that of Latin.
Hannah, in conjunction with her sisters, established a boarding school vastly
superior in every respect to any before established. Indeed, this was the bold begin-
ning of a broader education for women. The great moral and educational revolution
which we find going on from this time was due largely to this school, combined, of
course, with the influential writings of its founders.
At seventeen years of age Hannah More composed her first drama, "The Search
after Happiness," the literary merits of which are astonishing for a girl of her age, even
to this day. Her school became the most celebrated in the kingdom; its fame reached
Land's End and the Highlands of Scotland, Her writings had gotten abroad, and she
was becoming famous. She wrote several sacred dramas, as they were called. Garrick
took delight in Miss More's dramas and poems, and used to read them aloud to select
audiences with all the effect of perfect elocution.
Her book, "The Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society,"
created a moral revolution. She saw that reformation and purification of national
morals must begin with this class Their example was in England a hundred years
ago similar to that of the higher classes in America today, the fountain whence the
more ignorant draw their habits, actions and character. This book had an immense
influence. Seven large editions were sold in a few months. She was the admired and
beloved friend of all the great men and women of that most brilliant period of English
history, and yet she was willing to abandon this society and make her home among
the most lawless and savage people. She applied her great powers to the educating
and the uplifting of this class. Though she was persecuted in her most unselfish, her
wonderfully benevolent attempts; though she endured the worst abuse and insult, she
persevered until she gained the concurrence of those people, and at length established
schools for great numbers. Girls and boys alike received just that education which
would be the most useful to them, and at length the mothers were brought in in the
evening, and the fathers on Sunday. Her theory of education proved suitable for each
and Christian for all. Miss More's personal labors in this direction seem incredible.
She organized women's clubs and held annual show-days and festivities, which had a
great, good influence on all. The effect was marvelous
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 507
With all this she carried on her literary work, and some of her writings were tre-
mendously popular, especially "Village Politics, by Will Chip;" and who has not read
"The Shepherd of Saulsbury Plain?" Wilberforce said he would rather present him-
self before Heaven with that book than with " Peveril of the Peak." Scores of the most
scholarly men and women of the time read and admired these works. She wrote a book
of advice on the education of the little Princess Charlotte of Wales, by request of the
queen. Bishop Foster, who was employed as tutor to the young princess, says that he
gained more information on the subject of his duties from this book than from all his
other reading. She wrote novels which to the mere novel reader would, no doubt, seem
like a dialogue of Plato. I can not speak at any length of her " Practical Piety," her
*' Christian Morals," or of her wonderful essay on the character and writings of St. Paul.
How well she used her ten talents intrusted to her!
Hannah More's influence was almost world-wide. It was felt in America, in Ger-
many and in F"rance, in Persia, in Iceland and in far off Ceylon. I can not help but
think we are indebted to Hannah More in some degree for what we have in this Expo-
sition from these distant countries and from the islands of the East. Who can tell?
It is a rich legacy that she has bequeathed to us of what one woman could be and do.
She raised the standard of womanhood for all time. The great and expansive principle
of love was the soul of all she did and wrote. It was from this that she reaped the
reward of a celebrity commensurate with all future time.
Let us raise a monument of praise to her greatness.
IS LABOR DIGNIFIED?^'
By MRS. O. R. LAKE.
Writers of ancient and modern times, whether in poetry or prose, in refer-
ing to labor, have always quoted it as being " noble, holy and dignified." These
sentiments are undoubtedly due to the fact that the
Master when on earth occupied Himself with manual
labor. Labor is noble, when the laborer fully realizes
the grandeur of the Creation and the wonderful power
which placed within human reach all those possibil-
ities and resources which, when manipulated by the
skill and industry of man, supply all the comforts and
necessaries of life. Labor is holy; first, because to
labor is a part of the Divine command, and when ful-
filling this or any other command of God one must of
a necessity feel more closely in touch with holiness.
Labor is holy also when the individual is engaged in
that particular phase of human activity for which he
has natural aptitude or inherent love. For instance,
how often do we hear it said of a person, he or she,
as the case may be, is a born musician, or is a genius
in music, or art, or sculpture. Yes, and to deal with
the more prosaic things of life, I have seen those who
were born housekeepers, because they had an inher-
ent fondness for that particular kind of work, and
MRS. LEONORA MARIE LAKE. "i^dc of it a plcasurc rathcr than a drudgery which
the great majority consider it.
Labor is dignified only when the laborer is self-respecting and respected; self-
respecting because of his good character, honorable principles and fidelity to the
trust placed in him by his employer and the community, and because he feels the
dignity of his ability to so apply his skill, intellect and strength to the God-given
resources that he may supply himself and those dependent on him with the neces-
saries and comforts of life. Respected by his fellow-men because of his moral worth,
considered as a partner in commercial enterprises, and his abilities regarded with more
consideration than that which those abilities enable him to produce. These are the
theoretical views of labor.
Alas, how different do we find the practice! The nobility and dignity of labor
are lost sight of because those who employ look upon it as only a means whereby they
may reach the object of their ambition. It is considered but a commodity to be bought
and sold, and like any other article for which we bargain, bought at the greatest possi-
ble profit to the purchaser, while the natural necessities pressing the laborer compel
him to sell, though he knows he is selling under actual value. And as all men's neces-
sities are not equal, we find them in the labor market underbidding each other, with a
Mrs. Leonora Marie Lake is a native of Cork, Ireland. Her parents were John and Honor Kearney, both of Ireland.
She was educated in the public school of Pierrepont, St. Lawrence County, N. Y. She has traveled through the United
States and parts of Great Britain and the Continent. She married Mr. O. R. Lake, of St. Louis, Mo., in April, 1890. Hor
special work has been in the interest of working women and children; also. Total Abstinence. Her literary efforts are news-
paper articles on her work. Her profession is that of housewife. In religious faith she is a Roman Catholic, and is a mem-
ber of St. John's Church, of St. Louis, Mo. Her postoffice address is 1234 Second Carondelet Avenue, St. Louis, Mo.
* The above is but a synopsis of an address delivered by Mrs. Lake under the title : " The Dignity of Labor in Theory
and Practice."
508
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 509
view to supplying those necessities rather than considering the value of their labor.
Again, labor can not be either noble or dignified when the demand upon the physical
and mental energies is so severe that the laborer becomes a drudge, as we find in many
cases, where long hours and arduous toil deprive human beings of the necessary time
for recreation and recuperation. We expect a pleasant smile and cheerful compli-
ance to our wishes and commands from our household servants or domestics whom we
keep dancing about from basement to attic and from kitchen to parlor, obeying our
slightest wish, from 4 o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock in the evening,
though if we stopped to think of ourselves in the same position we would realize that
for us the cheerful smile would be an utter impossibility. Oh, if we would only learn
to love humanity more and money less, if our hearts would only respond with love
and sympathy for our fellow-beings. If one of the results of this great Columbian
Exposition would be to make us more thoroughly understand the " Fatherhood of
God and the Brotherhood of Man." If it would make women more considerate of
their sisters who are struggling under the burdens of life, cause them to remember
that, no matter what station in life women held, the Creator did not design such wide-
spread separation nor yet different organisms for women. If we would all try to
develop that beautiful, gentle, charitable womanliness that is ours by Divine inherit-
ance, and put to shame that feline characteristic which we frequently find cropping out
in some women, which gives them a cat-like delight when they are scratching and
wounding the heart of some sister, then indeed would Columbus* perilous journey
have brought out something grander and more beautiful than any exhibit in this Dream
City, and would the sacrifice of Isabella's jewels have brought forth a prolific harvest
of "love which is the fulfillment of the law!"
INDUSTRIAL WOMEN. '
By MRS. ELECTA BULLOCK.
Not the least among the things that the nineteenth century has developed is a
comparative appreciation of the industrial women of society, and the results of their
quiet, earnest and effectual efforts. We view the mar-
velous industrial institutions of the civilized world as
they exist today with wonder, and when we pause for
a few moments to trace the history of their gradual
development back to their infancy, we invariably find
that their creation, nourishment and first strength was
the loving and patient work of the industrial mothers
of the land. While we point with justifiable pride to
the proud position the manufactories occupy today,
we do know that they are the outgrowth of the hand-
card, the old and revered spinning-wheel, and the
family hand-loom, the knitting and sewing needles.
I well remember that at the age of ten years I
commenced to spin the yarn to make my own dresses.
My father was obliged to shorten the legs of the
spinning-wheel so I would be able to reach the spin-
dle. Four ten-knotted skeins was considered a full
day's work. There were forty threads in each knot,
and when we would reel we would have to count one,
two, three, four, five, until we had our forty threads,
then we would tie it in order to separate the knot.
But we were made very happy one day by my father
bringing in a clock reel, which done away with the old system of counting. When I
would get very tired of walking back and forth at the wheel all day my mother would
say: " Dear child, sit down and rest you; there is your knitting-work; you must not
be idle. You must always remember what I have taught you, that industry is the
source of wealth." I have mentioned these habits of industry in former times more
especially for the young ladies who may be present. Girls in those days, between the
ages of ten and twenty years, were found at the spinning-wheel, while the girls of today
are to be found in our colleges and universities, where they have the privilege of learn-
ing not only of the arts and sciences, but of the various industrial pursuits of life. Go
through the educational, commercial and manufacturing centers of this land of ours, we
see the handiwork of woman standing side by side with the proudest achievements of
man; and upon all the stupendous monuments of the century's advancement will be
found the refining touch and gilded finish of woman's work, inspiring society to higher
and nobler efforts and still grander achievements.
The governmental statistics showing the percentage of female labor employed* in
the various industries of the land, if but understood by all our people, would cause the
progressive element o£ society to bow in reverence to her achievements and the part
she is daily playing in the advancement of all that is good and great.
We afifirm that with woman's influence withdrawn from governmental affairs,
Mrs. Electa Ballock was bom in Huron County, Ohio. Her parents were Gideon Murphy and Hannah Daley Wood
Murphy. She has traveled over the United States in the interest of the woman's sufiFrage and relief societies which she repre-
Bents. In 1891 she was a delegate from Utah to the International Convention in Washington, D. C. She is a member of the
Latter Day Saints, or so-called " Mormon " Church. She was in charge of the Woman's Department of the Utah Building in
the World's Columbian Exposition, which position she filled acceptably. She now resides at Provo City, Utah County, Utah.
510
MRS. ELECTA BULLOCK.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 511
anarchy would prevail; withdraw her labor from the manufacturing establishments of
the land and its wheels would become stilled; dispense with her in our schools and the
grand educational systems of today would degenerate to the darkness of the long past;
banish her from the arts and they would lose their very divinity; take her from the
industrial walks and avocations of life and confine her exclusively to the narrow sphere
of house-wife and maid-servant, and the wheels of progress would turn backward and
the retrogression of society would be the inevitable result. On the contrary, support
her in her proud position of wife and mother, sustain her in every advance movement,
and the women of America will lead society onward and upward, from civilization to
civilization, through endless stages of progress.
THE FAITH OF ISLAM.
By MRS. LAURA H. CLARK.
I hope that my brief talk today on the " Faith of Islam" or " Mohammedism '
may not be devoid of interest and profit. I shall purposely refrain from much allusion to
Mohammed biographically. I prefer to speak of him
as a reformer, coming into the world at a date pecul-
iarly ripe for instituting and successfully prosecuting
such radical and blessed reforms as his. I will sketch,
superficially of course, the prominent doctrines of the
sacred book of Islam, the Koran, referring to the
debt the world owes the mighty power of the desert
reformer. Another word, Islam or Mohammedism is
greatly changed from its early days; it is sadly degen-
erated. We must charge the condition of countries
under its sway not to their religion but to its abuse,
and to evils inherent in the Tartar and other races.
We might recall also that Christianity itself was once
so corrupt as to need a great purification — the Refor-
mation.
Within the memory of many, Mohammed has only
been regarded as a monster, a sort of diabolic warrior
whose precepts are written in blood and whose fol-
lowers must needs be the very incarnation of cruelty.
To this I reply that conquerors have ever been cruel,
v.uc T*,-uAi. .T^,,,. arid religious wars the most bitterly relentless the
MRS. LAbRA H. CLARK. 111 1 11 t 1 i-
world has ever known. Witness the expulsion of,
the inhabitants of Canaan by the Jews, as well as the wars in Africa, Asia and Europe,
following the establishment of Christianity down almost to our own century.
(At first those opposed to Islam in war were indiscriminately slain, afterward
three offers were made: First, to embrace Islam and enjoy equal privileges with
their conquerors; second, to submit to tribute and retain their own religion should it
not be exceedingly idolatrous or immoral; third, to decide the contest by the sword.
See Joshua's conditions to the Canaanites — "Let him fly who will, let him surrender
who will, let him fight who will. ")
But the world moves, and in this year of the World's Columbian Exposition, and
just preceding the Parliament of Religions, Mohammed is recognized as a mighty leader
for good, a benefactor for the race, perhaps the most remarkable human character the
world has ever known.
At the time of Mohammed's birth incessant warfare had raged for many years
between the great empires of Rome and Persia. Arabia, lying between them, was held
by one, then by the other. The wild Arab tribes had drawn religious ideas from Pagan,
Rome, and the fire-worshiping Persian. They knew something, too, of the Jewish faith,
for after the destruction of Jerusalem, Jewish colonies had settled throughout Arabia.
The Old Testament Scriptures had been translated into Arabic, so that the purer ideas
of Monotheism and Christianity were not unknown to them. It can occasion no sur-
Mrs. Laura H. Clark is descended from French-Huguenot stock which emigrated to South Carolina in the earliest years
of our country. She was educated at Cincinnati and has been a considerable traveler in our own country and Europe. She
has always been a student of religions, and is also much interested in art, literature and ethnology. In religious training
and profession Mrs. Clark is a Presbyterian. She has resided in Chicago for twenty-two years. Her postoffice address is
No. 318 Belden Avenue, Chicago, 111.
512
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. * 513
prise that the religion of the Arabs was a mongrel one, sadly straying from the pre-
cepts of Abraham, their great ancestor. They worshiped in their sacred city, Mecca,
surrounded by scores of revolting idols, a holy black stone called the " Kaaba, "
believed to be a relic of a temple built by Abraham; this was a shrine for devout pil-
grims. But the hour was ripe for beneficent change. A mighty spirit appeared who
could unite these warring tribes into a powerful nation; his teachings should inspire
them into purer life; his daring enthusiasm should endue them with courage to over-
turn the nations of the earth.
In Mecca, 570 A. D., was born a posthumous child, who was reared in the desert
until five years old, when the frequent occurrence of epileptic attacks (always regarded
with superstitious fears among the Arabs) determined his return to his mother. I
mention this fact because many have ascribed to this nervous disease the religious
exaltations and so-called visions of Mohammed.
His youth and early manhood passed uneventfully. For forty years he was a
faithful worshiper of the gods of his fathers, yet growing yearly more abstracted,
dejected, frequently retiring to pass months in solitary fasting and prayer. Whilst in
wretched suspense, meditating self-murder, the Divine call was heard. Through Gabriel,
dazzling with supreme glory, the heavenly message came. " Oh, Mohammed, of a truth
thou art the prophet of God; arise, preach, and magnify the Lord." This is the
real starting-point of Islam. It was the call of the supreme God to forsake idolatry
and assume the ofifice of prophet.
I must pass over the long years of weary effort to win disciples. Four years draw
but forty around him. During the yearly pilgrimage season he preached constantly;
his theme — " There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." He exorted to
prayer, almsgiving and fasting, and declared of future judgments to come. When
seventy disciples had been won persecutions began with the usual results. Converts
multiplied rapidly, and the " Hegira," or flight from Mecca, followed.
Mohammed's penetrating mind realized well human weakness. To keep his follow-
ers firm in their purer religious faith he formulated a creed and gave positive precepts
for the actions of every day. So was Moses instructed of God to train the Jews.
Through minute practical details they were transformed from a rabble of superstitious
slaves into brave, God-fearing, free men. So likewise the founders of great orders in
the Christian church, Ignatius Loyala, Dominic, Francis of Assisi, etc., each instituted
a minute code of rules for the practical life of their followers.
The principles of Islam's faith are essentially orthodox — " Faith and Works,"
Faith is defined as " confession with the mouth and belief in the heart." " There is no
God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." Their creed was brief: "I believe in
God, angels, books, prophets, the day of judgment, the predestination of evil and the
resurrection of the dead."
The devotion of the Mohammedan to the Koran is intense, its authority is absolute
in science, ethics and religion. Lest by chance they shall touch its sacred pages
unwashed they inscribe upon its cover: " Let none touch it, but they who are clean."
They guard it with care and such respect, never holding it below their girdles. They
carry the precious book with them to war, inscribe its precepts upon their floating
banners, on the walls of their homes and tombs of their loved ones, in gold and precious
jewels.
Let me quote this little gem, from the Koran, often called the " Lord's prayer of
the Moslem."
" In the name of God the compassionate compassioner. Praise is to God, the Lord
of the worlds, the compassionate compassioner, the Sovereign of the day of judgment.
Thee we do worship, and of Thee we do beg assistance. Direct us in the right way, in
the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, on whom there is no wrath who
go not astray."
The moral motive of Islam is a solemn sense of implicit obedience and submis-
sion to the Divine Ruler — the very name Islam expresses " resigned to the will of
(33)
514 ■ THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
God." The ethics of the Koran are essentially those of the New Testament. Our
Saviour was held in highest reverence as an inspired prophet, His benign precepts are
incorporated therein, thus: " He is righteous who believeth in God and who for love of
God shares his wealth with the needy, who observeth prayer, is faithful to promises,
patient under hardships and quiet in seasons of distress." " Deal not unjustly with
others and ye shall suffer no injustice." " Scorn not thy fellow-man, neither walk the
earth with pride, for God loveth not the arrogant and boastful." (Sir William Muir
asserts that to this day devout Mussulmen never mention the Saviour's name without
adding " on whom be peace." " Say unto the Christians, their God and my God is
one." The Koran.)
Mohammed fully realized the inherent evils in polygamy and slavery, and though
their practices are recognized in the Koran, he greatly alleviated the wrongs of both.
The impositions he placed upon polygamy were a great advance upon the unrestrained
licentiousness before prevalent. The legal number of a man's wives was reduced to
four. These limitations Mohammed relaxed in his own case, not, however it is believed,
through grossness, but because of intense desire for male heirs. The transmission of
wives as chattels was forbidden, and the rights of a woman to share in her father's or
husband's estate declared.
Slavery had always existed in a mild form in Arabia. Mohammed did much to
ameliorate its evils. Slavery and polygamy should not be associated with Islam any more
than with Christianity. Both Moses and Mohammed took the institutions of their peo-
ple as they found them and sought to mitigate their severest features. (Have not
Christians tried to justify human slavery in this century, in our own land?) The vices
most prevalent in Arabia were sternly denounced and absolutely forbidden. Drunk-
enness, female infanticide, incestuous marriages, gambling, art of divination and
magic entirely disappeared. (What efforts is nineteenth-century Christendom mak-
ing against the alarming growth of gambling?) Mohammed solved the "temperance
question " for his people. Neither " high license " nor " low license " vexed his soul;
he was a strict Prohibitionist. All pictures or representatives of living objects were
wisely prohibited, being considered a violation of the second commandment. (Mo-
hammed recognized the authority of the Pentateuch, psalms, etc.)
The four acts or duties of faith are " prayer, fasting, alms-giving and the pilgrim-
age." " Cleanliness," says the prophet, " is the key to prayer." Minute rules for
ablutions before prayer were given. The entire body was to be washed daily, parts of
it oftener — all the while appropriate prayers were repeated. Thus " I am going to
purify my bodily uncleanliness, preparatory to commencing prayer, that holy act of
duty which draws my soul near to God. In the name of God, great and mighty,
praise be to Him who has given me grace to be a Moslem. Islam is a truth, infidelity
a falsehood." When cleansing the teeth: "Vouchsafe, O Lord, as I cleanse my
teeth, to purify me from all fault and accept my homage. May the purity of my teeth
be a pledge of the whiteness of my soul at the day of judgment," and so on through-
out the entire body.
The third duty was that of fasting. The Koran prescribes the month " Ramadan "
as a very strict fast. (This fast is so strictly enjoined that it is broken if they but
smell a perfume, take a bath or injection, or purposely swallow spittle, kiss or touch
a woman. Some devout Moslems will not open their mouths to speak lest they
breathe the air too freely.) The command is, " from sunrise to sunset neither food nor
drink might pass the lips. " In the course of time, the Mohammedan year being lunar,
" Ramadan " falls in the midst of summer, and necessitates real suffering in the hot
countries of Arabia and the East.
Almsgiving, the third duty, is obligatory. One-tenth of a man's income was
devoted to the poor.
The last duty was the pilgrimage to Mecca. This was enjoined at least once in a
lifetime. Those dying on the way were considered as martyrs. Each step toward
Mecca blotted out a sin.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 515
What does the worlcf not owe to Islam during the dark ages? For full five hun-
dred years Islam bravely bore up the torch of learning to the world. Let us glance
at Spain where, under a fortunate succession of Caliph's literature, arts and sciences
blossomed into a perfection before unknown. The Arabs collected, translated, and
preserved for us the masterpieces of Greek thought, who advanced upon the gener-
osity of Euclid, who developed agriculture and astronomy into sciences. They were
noted too for their philosophical lore. Universities existed in all their large cities,
Cordova, Granada, Seville, with immense libraries attached, where lectures on classics,
rhetoric, mathematics, and other sciences were constantly given. Encyclopaedias and
lexicons in Hebrew, Greek and Latin were written. Jews and Christians alike pre-
sided with Moslems, a degree of toleration unknown in Continental Europe today. So
favorable were all their conditions that all Christendom desiring learning and refined
surroundings sought to enter there. The Arabs were the introducers of rhyme, their
poetry crossed the Pyrenees and reappeared in the Troubadors of Provence which is
today recognized as the first impulse of European literature. All mathematical com-
putations were revolutionized by their invention of the nine digits and cipher. While
all Christendom was declaring the world was flat, the Arabs were teaching geography
by the use of globes. Every mosque was a public school where the poor were gratuit-
ously taught the Koran and elements of education.
In the practical arts our benefits are as great. They gave us the use of gunpowder,
artillery and mariner's compass. They introduced rice, sugar and many of our fine
garden and orchard fruits and our medicinal herbs. To them Spain owes the culture
of silk and the celebrity of its wines. Irrigation was brought by them with the manu-
facture of all sorts of fabrics, rugs, cambrics, silks and cottons for wearing apparel,
earthenware, iron, steel and all metal work of every description. (Professor Draper
may be consulted for further facts upon this subject.)
Such was the record of Mohammedanism in Western Europe, such its luxury,
splendor and knowledge, such are a few only of Christendom's debts to it and which
with strange injustice Christendom is loth to acknowledge.
Finally, Islam is essentially a spiritual religion. As instituted by Mohammed it
needed no priests and had no sacrifices, it offers no theories of Apostolic succession,
gives no powers of absolution. Absolutely nothing intervenes between each human
soul and God. Forbidding alike the representation of all living things as objects of
admiration, veneration or worship, Islam is more opposed to idolatry than Christianity
itself. The interior of every mosque bears witness to this.
Shall the world longer deny Mahomet his true place in history? He exalted and
purified his own nation and the age in which he lived. His precepts have brought
comfort and benefactions to unnumbered millions. Surely his name should be forever
enrolled not as one worthy only of " hero-worship," but as a benefactor deserving the
immeasurable gratitude of mankind
A GLIMPSE OF MODERN SPAIN.
By MISS LAURA BELL.
So much has been said and written during the last few months about the history
of Spain at the close of the fifteenth century, the time when we as a country first came
into historical contact with the civilized world, that I think we are all more familiar
with the customs of the Spain of that period than we are with the Spain of today.
Entering Spain from France and crossing the Pyrenees, the first interesting place
at which to stop is San Sebastian, the noted fashionable Spanish watering place.
The Court removes there in the summer, and in fine weather the little King can
be seen daily driving to and from the new chateau, which has been built for him, at the
extreme end of the town, and which commands a beautiful view of La Concha, the
shell-shaped harbor lying below, and the beetling crags opposite, with houses cling-
ing to the steep hillsides. The bath-houses are ranged along the beach, and being on
wheels, can easily be run into the water, thus avoiding the disagreeable walk across
the sand. The King's bath-house is larger than the others, more like a little summer
pavilion with a piazza around it; the windows are hung with pretty curtains, the roof
and sides are painted yellow and red, the Spanish colors, and surmounted with a
crown. A railroad has been constructed down into the water for his bath-house to
run over, making a still more agreeable way of reaching the surf. Poor little King!
May his path thro' life be smooth and pleasant.
On the way to Madrid, everyone spends a few hours in Burgos, so as to visit the
ancient cathedral and to gaze respectfully on the receptacle of the bones of the Cid,
that venerable personage about whom there is so comparatively little known, but whose
memory is held in such high repute by his countrymen. I think, however, the " beg-
gars " of Burgos made as much of an impression upon me as did these two recognized
sights of the town. A little squad of ragged and forlorn humanity, varying in num-
ber, by actual count, from half a dozen to twenty-three, followed in our wake, display-
ing mutilated limbs and sores of every description, too distressing to look upon, and
yet so difficult to escape from doing so, for in Spain beggary is a profession, requiring
a license, and parents often maim their children in infancy so as to be certain of pro-
curing a livelihood for them in the future. Such crippled objects as are always seen
in the streets would not, in our own country, be tolerated out of a hospital or an asy-
lum, and yet they drag themselves about, presenting a tray for alms to every passer-by.
They even besiege the open street cars, where they pass around their little waiter,
collecting nearly as many coins thereon as does the conductor himself. The first time
I saw this done I really thought it was a new way of collecting fare! I was told a
story about a valued servant girl leaving her mistress to be married. The lady was
naturally interested in the welfare of the girl, and on inquiring what her future hus-
band's prospects were, was told with great pride that he had been apoor workman, but
now was very well off, indeed, as he had a profession; in fact, he was a beggar with a
license. So we see that professional beggars occupy a very different status in differ-
ent countries.
Proceeding to Madrid, one finds there many things of interest, though here, as
elsewhere, the capital has more cosmopolitan than distinctively national features. In
the one instance of wearing mantillas, fewer are seen in Madrid than farther south, as
Miss Laara Bell is a resident of Philadelphia, where she wasborn and educated, and although much of her time has been
spent in traveling throughout her own country, Mexico, Europe and Asia, yet she maintains a deep interest in her native city,
and is a member of several of its clubs and institutions. From time to time she has written papers on various subjects and
has published one volume of verses called "In Verse Proportion." Her postoflBce address is 1428 Spencer Street, Philadel-
phia, Pa.
516
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 517
the ladies here copy Parisian toilets, and wear hats and bonnets, which do not seem
to accord so well with the languorous air of the Spanish beauties as the clinging,
graceful fall of lace. Among the commoner people, however, and by elderly ladies,
the mantilla is still worn and never loses its charm, softening the features and adding
a coquettish touch to any dress. It seems a great pity that the younger element
should be gradually discarding it. Nowhere else in Spain can be found so magnifi-
cent a collection of the works of Spanish artists as in the world-famous gallery of
Madrid, and one can spend hours before the masterpieces of Velasquez and Murillo,
as well as in studying the pictures of other painters, such as Goya and Ribera. The
former, by-the-by, was so wedded to bull-fights, as well as to his art, that when in
later life his home was in Bordeaux, he would take a long journey back to his own
country every week or two to witness one of these bloody conflicts. A journey in
Spain, I would say, is no small undertaking, for the trains invariably start at an
unearthly hour in the morning, the express trains run but three times a week; and as
the average rate of speed is from fifteen to eighteen miles per hour, ten hours would
easily be consumed in going the short distance of a hundred and fifty miles — a marked
contrast to our rapid way of spinning across the continent, where the very fastest
trains, with every luxury of modern skill and appliance, is all too slow for the active
American. Everyone travels with a lunch basket in Spain, and on opening it its con-
tents are displayed and offered to all the occupants of the car. Of course one merely
bows and thanks and declines the proffered courtesy, but this ceremony has to be
performed every time a fresh piece of bread is eaten, another wing of a chicken
devoured, or another pull is taken at the bottle of red wine which always accompanies
the repast. This wine has a very acrid taste, produced by being kept in skins which
have the hair left on the inside; and one can easily imagine the unpleasant and bitter
taste, the indescribable flavor imparted to the liquid within. Goat's milk is used
almost everywhere, and the butter is consequently very athletic. I fear that joke is
but a feeble one, not nearly so strong as the butter itself! Cows are not often seen,
but occasionally two or three are found cooped up in a wooden stall, and a sign with
*' Cow's Milk " advertised is a rarity. The cow is milked before you if you wish, so as to
show you that you are getting the genuine article. Perhaps last season was a remarka-
bly dry one in Spain, but some of the rivers which were marked on the map, and care-
fully bridged over, did not appear to the naked eye, as in some places the bed of the
river was quite dry, with patches of grass growing here and there, and goats grazing
about; white clothes, which had been washed in some shallow pools, were left on the
shore on one side, and were spread out to dry on what would ordinarily have been
mid-stream. As Charles Dudley Warner happily remarks, in regard to the slippery
river called the Eel, in Nova Scotia, " I never knew how much water had to do with a
river until I saw one without!" However, in the spring these rivers can become tur-
bulent and dangerous streams, and in the narrow streets of Seville tiles are inserted
in the walls of the houses to mark the height to which the water has attained in the
freshets of different years when the Guadalquiver has overleaped its natural bounds.
Tiles are also placed higher up the walls bearing the names of the streets, one letter
on each tile, so that the names can be distinctly seen.
The Spaniards are naturally not an energetic race, but are inclined to leave every-
thing to be done tomorrow which could so easily be done today, and manana, tomor-
row, is the accepted rule of action. They trust greatly in the help of nature, and what
the sun does not accomplish for them in the way of cultivating their land remains for
the most part undone. Immense olive farms, however, flourish in the south, and the
grapes are delicious beyond expression, being meat and drink and perfume all in one.
The poorer people in summer live on bread and grapes to a great extent, occasionally
indulging in meat bought cheap from the carcases of the bulls killed in the weekly
bull-fights. It is as natural for the Spaniard to smoke as it is for him to take his cup
of aromatic chocolate on arising, and his siesta of three or four hours after his sub-
stantial breakfast at noon. He is wider awake from midnight until 3 or 4 o'clock
518 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in the morning than at any other time of the day, and then the chief streets and
plazas are thronged with gay crowds, who walk about, sing and drink at the out-door
cafes until the morning dawns.
In Madrid and Seville are large tobacco factories at each of which three or four
thousand women are employed making cigarettes. These women are usually very
fond of flowers, especially of the heavily perfumed tube-rose, possibly on account of
the scent counteracting the odor of tobacco, and they have a pretty custom of wearing
one or two with a sprig of geranium in their hair. These flowers are sold in the
streets, stuck on small wooden sticks, ready prepared to put in the hair like a hair-pin.
In looking around the various rooms of these factories one is not impressed with the
beauty of the women, for in Andalusia especially, where the dark-haired, dark-eyed
type prevails, and where one naturally thinks that every woman living beneath these
sunny skies should be a beauty, the face is often dull and heavy, the upper lip is some-
times shaded with a slight mustache, and many imperfections in the eyes are notice-
able. Whether this is attributable to the tobacco surroundings I do not know, but
the close air which is breathed by so many all day long is so strongly impregnated
with tobacco that it makes one's eyes sting, and until accustomed to the atmosphere
one can scarcely breathe without sneezing every few minutes.
The handsome senoras and seiloritas are not to be forgotten when once seen, and
a good time to see them in Seville, for instance, is about 6 o'clock in the evening,,
when they drive up and down the beautiful avenue facing the river. It is an odd
sight to see carefully groomed mules attached to their stylish drags and carts, for it
is at present a " fad" to own and drive the heavy-footed, plebeian mule instead of the
dainty stepping and more aristocratic horse. Even in the royal stables at Madrid,
with over three hundred fine horses, mules have the place of honor. On the princi-
pal drive of Seville, to which I have alluded, fronts the palace of the Due de Mont-
pensier, and it is there that the Infanta Eulalia, who has so recently been the guest of
our country, sometimes makes her home; and a charming spot it is, with the large park
surrounding it, filled with flowering plants and tropical trees.
A curious scene, which witnessing makes one feel as if living in the Middle Ages,
is every day enacted on the Rambla, the main thoroughfare of Barcelona: scribes are
seated at tables along the street, ready to write letters for passers-by, seem so out
of date, when here typewriters have almost superseded pens. It is surprising to watch
the people who employ the writing-masters' services, not only sailors from the vessels,
but well dressed and seemingly educated people, who thus betray the lamentable fact
that they are either unable to write, which is generally the case, or else too averse to
the exertion. Even men in business, what they call active business, too, carry on their
affairs without correspondence, waiting in a leisurely manner until agents from France,
Germany, Italy, etc., visit them, which occurs two or three times a year, to get orders
for foreign goods; and if anything should be needed in the meantime, it is done with-
out rather than to write a letter, so I imagine the proportion of stamps sold in Spain
is much less than in other countries of its size and wealth. It is a fine country, and
could be one of the wealthiest if only the warm skies and soothing air did not make
one more indolent than in a more bracing climate. The people know how to accom-
modate themselves to their climate, and take life easily; when the noon-day sun beats
down pitilessly on the pale-colored houses, the occupants protect themselves from the
glare and heat by having awnings spread above the open patios or courtyards around
which their houses are built, and also stretched across the narrow streets from house
to house, so that it is possible to walk around a town like Seville, for instance, in mid-
day, without suffering from the direct rays of the sun.
One of the every-day sights in all the principal cities on all the streets is the sell-
ing of lottery tickets, and I think it safe to say that every man, woman and child invests
in these tissue-paper slips, and as the lottery is sanctioned by the government, it is
presumably lucrative for it, if not for the people. The drawing takes place at the mint
in Madrid at intervals of ten days or two weeks, or sometimes longer, keeping the pos-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 519
sessors of tickets in uneasy restlessness all that time. Crowds assemble at the mint at
the hour appointed, standing in every available spot, even clinging to the windows out-
side, and about twenty small boys dressed in linen suits are taken in, two by two, to
call out the number of the winner and the amount won as the wheel whirls around.
Everyone smokes in stolid silence, straining their ears to hear their own number called,
and sullen despair takes the place of the look of expectancy on the majority of faces
when the drawing closes. Once the crowd parted to let a flushed, disheveled workman
in a blue blouse rush excitedly out of the building seeking the open air in which to
enjoy his triumph, as he had won a portion of the grand prize, a sum amounting to
about a thousand dollars. This love for the lottery is only equaled by the passion for
bull-fights, which is inborn in every Spaniard, and so deep a hold has this barbarous
amusement attained on the national temperament that it would doubtless cause a revo-
lution if an attempt were made to abolish it.
Sunday is the gala day. Then the bull-ring is filled with thousands of people, and
the avenues approaching the buildings are thronged with carriages and horsemen, all
wending their way toward the central point. Opening from the ring are the stables for
the horses, the inclosures, fenced in with iron, for the bulls, and the chapel in which
the toreadors or bull-fighters go to confession before entering the arena. The band
strikes up, the procession of those who are to take part in the performance marches in
front of the boxes of the royal and judges, saluting the dignitaries seated within; the
gate leading to the bulls' inclosure is thrown open, and a bull dashes forward. If he
is considered not sufficiently fierce, a rosette is fastened to a sharp-pointed prong
which is thrust in his back as he enters, which causes him to lash his tail and to try to
escape from this irritating pricking; but every movement makes the sharp instrument
sink deeper into the flesh, the blood begins to trickle down, and, still further excited
by the flaunting of the red capas, or cloaks, on every side, he dashes at the first horse
he sees, and usually comes off victorious by goring the animal and often throwing the
rider. The horses are so heavily caparisoned and half-blinded that escape is wellnigh
impossible, although the rider with his long spear tries to save the steed by planting
his lance in the neck of the bull as he advances. Sometimes he succeeds, but the poor
animal is doomed to appear before three different bulls, so that it would be charity to
have him killed outright at the first encounter rather than to be sponged off and brought
in again and again, lamed and crippled, and finally disemboweled. The horses used on
these occasions are poor, thin, worn-out animals, to be sure; but to have them thus
slaughtered is a most cruel and degrading practice, the constant repetition of which
makes men callous to the sight of suffering and dulls their higher nature. The bodies
of the brutes are left strewn around the ring where they have fallen until the signal is
given that this part of the performance is over, and the next act begins.
The horses are dragged off the scene, another bull is let loose, and a man on foot
holding in each hand a long stick, decked with ribbons and tipped with steel points,
stands ready to place the darts on each side of the neck as the bull charges. This is
done until six or eight of these bandetillas, as these sticks are called, are waving from
the animal's neck, and the crowd applauds as the man thrusts them in two by two,
and jumps lightly aside from between the horns of the bull. If he should fail in the
attempt the crowd does not fail in signifying disappointment and disapprobation, and
to be disgraced in the bull arena is the disgrace of a lifetime, especially in the next
and crowning act, when the cspada, the principal performer in the drama, with sword
in hand, is to give the final lunge which ends the bull's existence. Three are allowed
him, and generally so accurate is his aim that at the first trial the bull, after bellowing
noisily from the pain mflicted by the banderillas, falls silently and remains motionless
when the sword concealed behind the red cloak pierces his heart instantaneously.
These bull-fights begin at 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon and last about three
hours, or until the six or eight bulls and as many horses are slain, and on special feast
days a great many mor€ horses fall to celebrate, the occasion. At the close of the
fight a young bull with his horns covered so that he cannot injure anyone is let into
520 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the ring, and the spectators are all allowed to try their skill in the various methods of
meeting his attacks. Sometimes the younger boys are thrown or are nearly stamped
upon, but hundreds rush to their rescue, brush them off, and pat them encouragingly
on the shoulder for so early evincing their bravery
Olives and bull-fights are indigenous to Spanish soil, and it is said that a taste can
be cultivated for them by eating three of the former and witnessing three of the latter
For my own part I prefer to remain uncultivated in the matter of bull-fights, and should
a desire to see a ferocious and sanguinary conflict ever overcome me, the sight of a
foot-ball match, our national game, would probably amply satisfy any such craving,
and make the national amusement of the Spaniards an unnecessary institution in
America.
Spanish children are taken to the Plaza de Toros, or bull-ring, before they can
walk, and are so accustomed to the scene within that they imitate it from their youth
up, playing bull-fights at an age when other children would be flying kites or spinning
tops. One day, in a narrow street in Toledo, I remember seeing a small boy, not five
years old, come out of an open doorway, and flourishing two dinner-knives, evidently
just snatched from the dinner-table, he went through all the springs and evolutions of
the practiced toreador, and with eyes intent on the imaginary foe, gracefully plunged the
knives, the supposed banderillas, into what should have been the animal's neck, but
what was in reality nothing but the air. Satisfied with the manner of achieving that
feat, he threw down the knives, and, springing aside, tore off his little white shirt,
which he used in imitation of the red cloaks flaunted in the face of the bulls, and again
picking up one of the knives, which this time was to represent the sword, dexterously
concealed it behind the capa, and with equal agility dispatched the animal. Such a
look of conscious pride was on the little fellow's face as he turned to bow to the spec-
tral judge— when just then a voice from within calling, " Manuelito, Manuelito," caused
the " conquering hero's" look to vanish, to be replaced with the "I don't want to
come" expression of reluctant obedience, and the pretty little man, entirely unaware
of the interested spectator at the other end of the street, tugged away at his shirt,
trying to slip it over his head, and as his bright blue dress disappeared through the
doorway the future winner of honors in the bull-arena forever vanished from my sight.
I have merely tried to give a brief sketch of impression received during a brief
pleasure trip, and would say in conclusion that so long as the cigarette-maker, with
her deft fingers, continues to roll fourteen cigarettes a minute, to shatter the nerves
and enfeeble the constitution of the male population of Spain, so long as the lottery
reigns supreme under the authorization of the government, and this unhallowed,
unwholesome gambling takes the place of steady, healthful labor, so long as the child
of four years is trained to imitate the acts and poses of the toreador, to incite in him
the low ambition of becoming a bull-fighter himself when he is a man, just so long
will Spain continue to occupy the position she does at present, that of a once glorious
nation not living up to her splendid capabilities.
A SKETCH OF "HOME-LIFE IN ICELAND."
By MADAME SIGRID E. MAGNUSSON.
1 hope you will not think it out of place to tell you, in few words, about the first
jttlement of Iceland, as I have had many and various questions asked here about
that far off little island.
Before 872 Norway was divided between a large
number of petty sovereigns. Harald Fair-hair, who
was one of them, realized how dangerous for the
safety of the country its being held by a number of
independent and disunited petty sovereigns, who, as
soon as danger was abroad, would take the opportu-
nity of an alliance, which brought them the surest
hope of increased power and extended dominions.
Harald revolted against his own class, put an end to
one petty king after the other, and, at last, brought
on by the victory of Hafrsfjord, in 872, a total col-
lapse of their power, whereupon he set himself up as
a sole ruler of the country. He introduced the ma-
chinery of the feudal system, which virtually reduced
every free man in the country to king's tenant, " in
capite."
The oldest aristocratic families in Norway could
not endure this, and rather than sign their own degra-
dation by a willing submission, or to become depend-
ent on Harald's royal grace, they preferred to commit
themselves, with their relatives, and the holy things
from their temples and homes, to the treacherous Atlantic.
By this proud-hearted aristocracy Iceland was first peopled. The people still
speak, with primitive purity, the language they brought out with them, so in Iceland
lives the mother-tongue of the Scandinavians. Iceland is about forty thousand square
miles, and the population at present is about seventy thousand. I will now try to give
you a brief, and necessarily a broken, sketch of the social conditions of Iceland, a
country almost devoid of all the means by w^hich sunnier countries have been built up.
The land yields no grain of any kind; no fruit, except a few blueberries; no tim-
ber but what, soaked in brine, is thrown upon the coast, and no coals. It has no roads
in the civilized sense of the word. Bridges are few and far between, though danger-
ous rivers in hundreds tumble headlong in furious rush to the sea from the stupendous
masses of inland glaciers. Wheeled vehicles are unknown, save at the townships,
where peat and merchandise only have the advantage of wheeled conveyance. All
inland communication is effected, in summer, by means of the enduring, sure-footed
little ponies, and in winter mostly on foot.
Now, to continue my sketch of " Home-life in Iceland," I fear you will find it
Madame Sigrid E. Magnusson is a native of Reykjavik, Iceland-, she was bom in 1831, Her parents were Einar Somundason
and Gudrun Olafsdottir. She was educated at Reykjavik, Iceland; has traveled in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
Scotland, England, France, Germany and America, and she speaks the langaages of each. She married Eivikr Magnnsson,
M. A., who is now Sab-librarian of the University Library, Cambridge, England; a member of Trinity College; was knighted
by the King of Denmark, Ridde of Damrebroge, and honorary member of the "Academic Parisienne des Inventears," and
holds the gold medal of that society. Her special work is trying to better the condition of women in Iceland. She made a
translation from English of a small book, "The Basket of Flowers," given to the clergy widows' fond in Iceland. In relig-
ions faith she is a Lutheran. Her trastoHice address is Cambridge, England.
521
MADAME SIGRID E. MAGNUSSON.
522 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
uninterestingly monotonous, for the subject is not made up of many items of variety.
The country is very poor, and poverty is the great source of the simplicity of the
manners and of the monotonousness of the life of the people. Want of communica-
tion also leads to repetition day after day of the same domestic occupations, only
varied in detail, according to the rotating change of the seasons.
As spring comes round the sedentary life of winter dissolves itself into agricult-
ural activity, in which worpen and men take almost an equal share. At this most
changeful season great care is bestowed on the lambs and ewes, of which the former
fall victims in hundreds almost every spring, to the inclemency of the temperature.
Sheep-shearing at this time is also attended to by almost everybody. It is not correct,
however, to call it shearing, as no shears are used, the fleece being secured by tak-
ing it off the sheep while they are shedding their coat, and the new wool is growing
underneath thick enough to give the animal sufficient cover against the cold winds
and chilling rains. This mode of securing the wool is not only less cruel but it yields
infinitely superior wool.
A more romantic occupation at spring-time is the ingathering of the eggs and
down of the eider-down from the many islands thatsurround the coast of Iceland. Merry
expeditions by men and women and children are undertaken, in boats, to the islands, and
the lovely ducks are deprived of a certain number of their eggs, and a small part of the
down, which, from the motherly breast, they pluck for the protection of the forth-
coming brood, while it is becoming accustomed to the hard life in store for it. It is a
most beautiful sight to see the eider-duck, sitting by the thousands on these islands,
and so tame are they, that one can go among them, stroking their backs, without their
showing any fear; the reason is that they are never molested, or shot at any time.
A very heavy punishment is imposed on any one killing an eider-duck, so few would
run the risk, even if so disposed. The reason that the Icelandic eider-down is so
infinitely superior to any other down is, that it is the down which the duck herself
plucks from her breast to line the nest with, so it is living down, not plucked cruelly
by human hands, or rather inhuman, but by herself when " ripe." When the duck
leaves the nest altogether, with her young ones, the down is gathered from the nests,
and after going through a slow and difficult process of cleaning, it is an item of export,
which adds a considerable income to the owners of the islands.
The last out-of-door occupation of spring is the journey to the trading stations,
called lestir, when the country-folks bring on the back of their small ponies, in long
cavalcades, the proceeds of their farms, such as wool, tallow, down, skins, butter, etc.,
to be exchanged for bread-stuff, and other necessaries of life. Returning home from
this expedition, active preparations for the hay-making begin. During the time of
hay-making, I think very few people in the world enjoy less sleep than the Icelandic
mowers. They go at it before sunrise, or about i o'clock in the morning, continu-
ing until about 12 at night, with only a break of about one or two hours in the
middle of the day. This is the main business of the summer, going on without
interruption day after day, until about the middle of September. While the mowers
only busy themselves with cutting the grass, women of the household divide
their activity between the buverk, or household work; that is, house cleaning,
cooking, milking and other dairy work, and the raking up of the thinly spread
hay as it falls before the mowers' scythe, into what is called flecks, or patches, spread
about to a certain thickness to dry. When the fine grass of the " tun," or home-fields,
has been secured, especially if the season is fine, a treat is given to the household,
called todugjold and the day is observed as a holiday, the only one allowed (week-
day) through the surnmer.
Toward the end of September, autumn or fall begins to make its appearance.
The birds of passage, which are mostly treated as long-looked-for friends, and allowed
to enjoy their summer visit in peace, now take their departure. The wildernesses of
the country are cleared, and the sheep, which have roamed about them at large
during the summer, are driven down by systematically arranged gangs of men, com-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN 523
manded by the so-called " Mountain-Kings." The sheep are driven into large folds,
kept up at public expense, and by the mark cut in their ears are sorted by their
respective owners. These sheep-gathering days, called Rcttir may be said to be
the last outdoor dissipation of the year, and everybody who can manage it tries to
join at the large common sheep-folds, where they meet friends riot seen for months,
and not likely to see for many more, months.
After this sets in the long, and in many places dreary, winter. All life in the
country seems to crouch despondingly under roof and thatch. The animals are now
attended to in their stalls, or huts, by the men, and the women set to work in earnest
at what may be properly called the domestic industry of the country. During the day
various acts of routine work disturb, to a certain degree, the industry proper of some
of the women; but toward dusk everybody has settled down, and this is the appear-
ance of an Icelandic household generally during the long winter evenings: At the
upper end of a long room, the so-called badstofa, the sitting-room of the family,
which in most cases also serves as a dormitory for the women, sits the mistress of the
house at her spinning-wheel, surrounded by her children, the master often also by her
side, carding the wool for her, or perhaps making some utensils required for the house.
Next, in a row down the room on either side sit the hand-maidens, all at their spin-
ning-wheels. Then the men are seated next, at the lower end of the room, carding the
wool for the women, or some may be exercising their skill at wood-carving, making
ornamental horn spoons or other things required for the house. For the most part,
the whole company sits in silence, because one of the party, generally a youth, or one
of the better readers among the men, is sitting in a central position in the room read-
ing an Icelandic Saga to the company, an act that no one disturbs for a moment
until the end of a chapter gives the reader an opportunity for a pause. Then there is
a lively interchange of opinion between both sexes as to the merits and demerits of
the actors of the Saga (drama), and it is striking to hear how intensely the girls
realize, and how intelligently they rush with a freshman's boldness into a discussion
of the subject. This kind of life accounts for our language being kept pure, and prac-
tically unaltered, for over a thousand years — the whole of the people working together,
indoors and out of doors.
The weaver, however, is, as a rule, separated from the rest of the household, the
hand-loom being generally down-stairs, in the men's dormitory. The whole winter
is spent in the way described, with a very few variations. Every garment of woolen
fabric used in the household is spun, woven and knitted by hand by the inmates. They
all work it and share it; each servant gets a certain number of garments as part of his
wages. They all get as much skin as they require for shoes. Women make the
shoes; not only their own, but the men's shoes, too. They often have to sit up at night,
after the men have gone to bed, and make their shoes or mend them. The mistress
generally makes her husband's shoes, and the children's till they are old enough to do
it themselves. That is in addition to her many other duties, too numerous to count.
In spring, when all the vadmal, or cloth, is finished, ready to make up, the mistress
generally cuts out all the garments and then teaches the servant girls, as well as her
daughters (if she has any), to make them up. I think you will agree with me that the
work must be good when I tell you that Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, has been wear-
ing the Icelandic gloves for years, the only "woolen" gloves she wears, I am told;
also that the work got the highest possible award at the International Health Exhi-
bition in London, 1884, namely, "The Diploma of Honor," and the gold medal in the
Anglo-Danish Exhibition in 1887.
Among many other questions about Iceland which I have been asked here at the
World's Fair is, how many policemen we have in the country; the people seem much
amused when I tell them that we have only two, and that both, of course, are in Reyk-
javik, the capital. They were still more amused when I told them how little, really,
they were needed, except in summer, when foreign sailors are there. Tl\e senior
policeman, Jon Borgfjord, is quite a literary character, self-taught, and the one before
524 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
him, Arni Gislason, wrote beautiful poetry, and was the most beautiful writer and
engraver on metal — a real artist in that line — also self-taught. We have no work-
houses or poorhouses in Iceland. When aged people, orphans or others, unable to
earn their living, fall on the parish, or have to be provided for by parish aid they are
put out as boarders to any family willing to receive them into the household; so they
really never loose the feeling of a " home."
I should like to say a few words about women's education in Iceland, or rather,
the want of it. The question of providing education for girls has of late years
engrossed much attention; but slight progress has as yet, been achieved, mostly owing
to the poverty of the people, and the miserable means of communication in the
country. A few private attempts have been made to establish schools for girls over
fourteen years of age, but these schools are small in scope, and otherwise fall short of
what is needed nowadays. Hitherto, it may be said, that the mother has been the
universal schoolmistress, as far as girls are concerned anyhow. Instruction in read-
ing and religion is compulsory, and this, as a rule, has fallen to the mother's lot.
In the autumn or fall the clergyman visits every house in his parish, for the pur-
pose of examining the children in reading and the catechism, and if he is satisfied
with their progress, he invites the parents or guardians to send children of twelve or
fourteen years of age, during Lent, to him for further instruction, that is, preparing for
confirmation. Confirmation is compulsory at the age of fourteen to sixteen, and by
law the priest is forbidden to confirm a child until it has made such progress in the art
of reading as to be able to perform, with decency, the family service, and knows the
catechism by heart from beginning to end, as well as the " Lardomskver," — a small
book containing the essence of the Bible. Now here ends, as a rule, a girl's education
in the country; in some cases a little writing is added to the list.
For men a very different provision has been made. A splendid Latin-school or
college is provided for them, at Reykjavik, where they have six to seven years' good
training by eminent masters, many of whom have even made their fame in Europe
for their great scholarship. Then there is a medical and theological college for men,
for the continuation of their studies when leaving the Latin-college. Those who
are better off, and wish to take a higher degree in theology or medicine, as well as
students of philology, law, etc., go to the University of Copenhagen on leaving the
Latin-college. All these institutions in Reykjavik for men are endowed, so that most
of the scolars receive a stipend; anyway, all who are in need of help, and who show
themselves worthy of assistance, and often even those who are in no need, and there-
fore ought not to have it. The Icelandic students who goto the University of Copen-
hagen also receive a stipend for three years, an old provision made for them in olden
times.
Now, what about the women? I have frequently been told since I came abroad,
both in England and Scandinavia, even here in this country, that women in Iceland
were so well educated that they could speak Latin; that they were, indeed, favored
with a "vote" — suffrage — and they were blessed with liberty even beyond their sis-
ters in Denmark; that they were at liberty to study at the university with the men,
and so forth. Let me begin by explaining the first statement, namely, their Latin
knowledge. There is not a woman in Iceland who can speak Latin, or who knows it.
This is really built on Lord Dufferin's " Letters from High Latitudes," one of the
most interesting books of travels ever written. Iceland is justly proud of that book,
and the honor of a visit from so great and distinguished a man. I had the great priv-
ilege to meet Lord Dufferin two years ago in Cambridge (England), at the time of
his receiving an " Honorary Degree " conferred by the university. Speaking about
his travels in Iceland, I told him how everybody would stand up and tell me that all
the women in Iceland spoke Latin, etc., just when I was deploring their want of edu-
cation, and they all said Lord Dufferin was their authority. "Well," he said, with his
usual well-known great humor, "I did not understand what they said, so I supposed
it was Latin." Women have not suffrage in Iceland, but municipal vote. This, how-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 525
ever, is never used or hardly (only two women have voted in Reykjavik); they have
not the necessary training or education for making use of it, and old prejudice and
fear of being laughed at by the men and other women certainly will prevent them
exercising this right at present.
And now we will analyze their privilege as regards university studies. A few
years ago a bill was brought into our " Althing," or parliament, urging the necessity
of better education of women. When it came before consideration of the Danish Gov-
ernment it was well received; so far that a law was passed permitting women in Ice-
land to study at the Theological and Medical College with the men, but that they
would not receive any appointments, either in the church or as medical practitioners
(medical men in Iceland are appointed by the Danish Government at a fixed salary).
The value of this law, I think you will agree with me, is none whatever. How can a
woman go and study theology or medicine with men who have had at least seven or
eight years' preliminary college education, and she has had none at all? For the law
did not provide any preliminary education for women. Then comes the appendage,
that their studies will have no reward, or recognition, which will secure them a future,
which men naturally get. What possible inducement would it be for women, suppose
they had the means, which they have not, to try and study under such circumstances?
In fact, they can not do it; they must have the same education as men before they
can enter on university studies; and the question is, how they are to get that most
important part.
For people living in Reykjavik, education is, comparatively speaking, very easy,
as students from the colleges can always be engaged to give lessons, both private and
in the schools. But in the country, where distances from house to house are so great
that day-schools are impossible, is where the great difficulty comes in. I have known
many instances when girls from the country, of good families, have gone as servants
to the better families in Reykjavik, simply with the object of getting some instruction,
their parents being too poor to pay for them there, but may perhaps have sons at the
college, as education of sons is even within the reach of a poor man.
For some years I have been trying to set up a school in Reykjavik for the
"higher education of women in the country," and by the assistance of kind friends in
England I have succeeded so far as to build a house, and even to start a school two years
ago, with fifteen girls; but, as only few could pay the full fee — one krone a day for
everything, board and lodging, etc.; that is, about twenty-seven cents — and the others
not even half of that sum, my small funds were exhausted at the end of the first year,
and, to my great grief, I had to refuse quite a number of girls who were most anxious
to avail themselves of this opportunity of education.
I came to this country expressly with the hope of raising some money, for the
benefit of this school, by the sale of a collection of antique Icelandic silver and silver-
gilt ornaments, spoons, etc., the only thing of value which I possess. But, as yet I
have not found a purchaser, though I feel perfectly sure that, coming to this country
with all its wealth, philanthropists and love of education, my most sanguine hopes
will be realized. The World's Fair has awarded the Icelandic exhibit two medals,
one for the "woolen goods," the home industries; the second for the "silver and
metal work," the collection.
THE ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF WOMEN.
By MRS. LYDIA A. PRESCOTT.
Olive Schreiner in that prophetic vision of coming womanhood, "Three Dreams
in a Desert," makes Reason say to the woman who has come out of the desert in
search of the Land of Freedom but finds her progress
obstructed by a dark, deep river with banks steep
and high: "There is one way, and one only, to the
Land of Freedom; down the banks of Labor; through
the waters of Suffering." In answer to her questions,
the woman learns that there is no bridge;. thai the
water is deep; that the floor is worn so that her foot
may slip at any moment and she be lost; that none
have crossed before though some have tried and
their bodies were swept away; that even a track to
the water's edge is not yet made. Reason tells her
she must not go into the water with the garments she
wore in the desert, as she would be dragged down by
them and lost. Then the woman gladly throws from
her the mantle of ancient-received-opinion worn full
of holes, though handed down to her as a priceless
inheritance, and with it the girdle from her waist
which had been in use so long that "the moths flew
out in a cloud."
Then said Reason^that old man — " take the
shoes of Dependence off thy feet." And she stood
there clad in one white garment on the breast of which
was written Truth. And the writergoes on to say that the sun had not often shone on
it; the other clothes had covered it up. Then follows that fearful struggle between
love and duty that is the experience of almost every good woman sometime in her life .
and her final submission to the voice of Reason. When the pitiful moan goes up —
" For what do I now go to this far off land which no one has ever reached?" "Oh! I
am alone! I am utterly alone!" And Reason said to her — "Silence! What do you
hear?" And she listened intently and said, " I hear a sound of feet — a thousand times
ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat this way." He said:" They
are the feet of those who shall follow you. Lead on! Make a track to the water's
edge. Where you stand now, the ground will be beaten flat by ten thousand times ten
thousand feet, and over a bridge made of the bodies of those who shall follow you,
and will not be washed away in the stream — shall pass away — the entire Human Race."
What is the lesson which this wonderful allegorical picture would teach ? Woman-
kind lost in the Desert of Economic Dependence, groping her way back to the Land of
Freedom and Equality, down the banks of Labor, through the waters of Suffering. There
is no other way. Her woman's girdle — that emblem of femininity, and for long ages
a badge of physical, mental and moral inferiority — must be relegated to the shades of
Mrs. Lydia A. Prescott is a native of Michigan. She was born August 5, 1842. Her parents were Die and Lydia Hess
She was educated in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Denmark Academy, Iowa. She has traveled in Canada, the United States
and Mexico. She married Maj. B. W. Prescott in January, 1867. Her literary works have been confined chiefly to that of cor-
respondent on moral questions. Mrs. Prescott is a professional teacher. In religious faith she is a Congregationalist. Her
postoffice address is Oakland, Cal.
♦The fall title of the address was " The Economic Independence of Women and Its Relation to Morals."
526
MRS. LYDIA
PRESCOTT.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 527
eternal night, says the voice of an enlightened Conscience, along with that venerable
mantle of ancient-received-opinion worn full of holes. Yet these are but adjuncts
of the great underlying cause that has put the burden of subjection upon woman's back,
tying it there, as this author has expressed it — with the broad band of inevitable
necessity — until she is the creature you find her, the natural product of her condition,
the fruit of an environment forages — the ages of dominion of muscular force, from
which she is now, in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, being slowly emanci-
pated; her bonds have been cut asunder by the knife of mechanical invention and " she
knows she might now rise."
" Take the shoes of Dependence off thy feet," says the voice of Reason, of Nature,
of Revelation, and of God. Then, and then only, may woman rightly distinguish
between truth and error, love and passion, duty and selfishness, right and wrong, and
step by step grow into a realizing sense and wider knowledge of her possibilities for
usefulness and her sacred obligations to the race.
That in the annals of time woman once stood noble and free, the recognized equal
of man intellectually and economically, ample testimony is to be found in ancient
customs, in the early languages, in history and revelation. That 'twas not man's prov-
ince in the primitive ages of civilization to assign woman a position inferior to his
own, is evidenced by a universal goddess — worship — from time immemorial. Says a
writer in the Atlantic Monthly, a few years since: "The mysteries of this goddess, the
worship of this great nature mother, is not more wonderful for its antiquity than for
its prevalence as regards space. She was the Isis of Egypt, the Demeter of Greece,
the Ceres of Rome, the Cybele of Phrygia, the Disa of the Norse, and was worshiped
by the Suevi, the Muscovite and the Celt. She swayed the ancient world from the
southeast corner of Egypt and India to Cornwall and Scandinavia on the west, every-
where the Mater Dolorosa. And still she reigns, the ideal type of suffering and
purity, in the Madonna, the mother of Jesus. If all ancient rulers believed in the ine-
quality of the sexes, what led that great king of Egypt, who brought his fabulous land
into the comity of nations, to name as his successor neither of his brilliant sons, who
had rendered such marked service in his Asiatic conquests, but his one daughter Hatasu,
his counselor in affairs of state, his chief advisor in the work of adorning his great
capitol — Thebes — the "City of Monuments? " 'Twas this woman's brain that evolved
the present system of foreign commerce in all of its essential details, and caused to be
built a fleet of ships for that purpose which, laden with gifts for other nations, sailed
away, as much the w'onder of that early age as was the celebrated barge of Egypt's
latest queen when obeying the mandate of Rome's triumvir.
Or what means the story of Deborah, divinely called to take the leadership in her
country's emergency? She was a wife; why should she order an army to the front
and plan a great campaign? Said Barak, at the head of his army, " If thou wilt go
with me then I will go, but if thou wilt not go with me then I will not go." "She
arose and went." A nation was redeemed and delivered, and, says the inspired writer,
" Under the beneficent rule of this female judge, the land had rest for forty years."
To such as believe in the inherent inferiority of woman, what a picture is this! The
great Israelitish general reverently bowing before a female judge and commander,
listening to words of wisdom that would guide a nation to victory.
And again, if 'tis woman's sphere to be a clinging dependent, and that by Divine
decree, why that careful record about Solomon's virtuous woman, to be found in the
last chapter of Proverbs, from which a text for this address may well be chosen?
This perfect woman, a model for all time, so strong, so self-reliant, that husband
and children could safely depend upon her in every emergency, was far from the
ideal type of a clinging vine^ — a dependent housewife. Though 'tis plain that her
domestic duties were none the less faithfully performed because she went out into the
world of trade and commerce as a producer — a live factor in this great organic, busy,
human world. "She considereth a field and buyeth it," "With the fruit of her hands
she planteth a vineyard." No mention is made of her asking her husband's advice or
528 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
permission as regards this purchase, or that she was in the habit of consulting this
Jewish elder and statesman about business affairs with which he was practically unac-
quainted. " She perceiveth that her merchandise is good" — again pointing out that
this woman relied not upon the opinions of her husband or of any other man or
woman, but upon her own judgment. Not at all vine-like, you see; and if we are hunt-
ing for clinging types, we shall be quite shocked at the next quotation: " She girdeth
her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms," which strength of body as well
as of mind, instead of being denounced as unfeminine, was most earnestly commended.
And as if the inspired writer could not enough exult over this important fact, he adds:
" Strength and honor are her clothing and she shall rejoice in time to come." Then
as if to show the full significance of this economic freedom combined with a perfect
physical development, he goes on to give, first, a record of her charities: "She
stretcheth out her hand to the poor and the needy." Of her discretion: "Sheopeneth
her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness." Of her maternal
foresight and wifely devotion: " Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband
also; and he praiseth her." Of the public regard for this loyal wife and mother, whose
home horizon was not bounded by walls of timber and stone, but by the needs of
humanity, and this brings us to our text, " Give her of the fruit of her hands and let
her own works praise her within the gates." Which praise within the gates, be it
remembered was, prior to the days of a public press, the greatest publicity known.
Nor do I wish it to be overlooked for one moment that this noble woman, with a rec-
ord worthy of being handed down from the early history of the race as a model wife
and mother, won this renown, not through her husband's virtues, influence or position,
albeit he was a great man, and sat with the elders; nor for any riches or honors that
was in his power to bestow on his wife; not for the wealth she had herself acquired;
but because this woman had a definite industrial position of her own, an occupation
separate and apart from her husband's, over which he had neither jurisdiction nor
control; a purpose in life of her own seeking, that promised to make the world a little
better for her having lived in it, an industrial occupation which in no manner inter-
fered with the obligations and responsibilities of wife and mother, the sanctity of
home, or the claims of humanity.
Dependence begets an inforced submission to the power that feeds. And by a
law as unvarying as that water finds its level, this submission has restricted woman's
energies to a circle of private interests, warped her moral sense and so weakened her
individual will as to render it partially or wholly incapable of carrying out what even
the warped moral sense can see.
"The ethics of human life," says Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson, " require a gov-
erning personal force standing between cause and effect; a storage of energy to keep
action steady when immediate pressure is removed; a power of judgment to decide
between acting causes and move or refuse to move from ultimate rather that imme-
diate reason. This is called the moral nature."
Unquestionably, then, the advance of humanity depends directly upon the ratio
in which this moral nature is developed. And because it is now generally admitted
that the development of human characteristics and of other forms of life are modified
by conditions — by the environment — it behooves the student of ethics to find out what
conditions tend most to develop the moral nature; to ascertain under what circum-
stances men have manifested the most rapid growth in moral power and insight, pri-
marily and essentially, under conditions of freedom.
That slavery begets vice and freedom virtue is a fact that rests upon the wisest
laws of nature. No one expects that virtue and slavery can co-exist. " What is free-
dom?" Mrs. Stetson tells us again, "The capacity to see what is right; the ability
and will to do it; the courage to bear the consequences." That the kind of character
which sees right and does it at all costs is only matured in an atmosphere of freedom
is one of the most valuable lessons to be drawn from liberty. When governments
require submission and dependence civic virtues are wanting. Where economic systems
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 529
require submission and dependence, economic virtues are wanting. What, then, may be
said of the moral growth resulting from a lifelong and complete dependence of one-
half of the civilized world upon the other half — and the case aggravated through count-
less generations of inheritance? For it is not alone that the economic pressure upon
woman compels submission, it is that because of her inheritance of class dependence
she can not rightly judge or strongly act independently of others. Her moral nature
is stunted by her environment — her slavery.
I understand how inconsistent is this statement compared with the immoderate
estimate of moral superiority granted to women within the last century or so; but her
claim does not bear analysis, nor does it appearthat in general cases women are cred-
ited with superior moral sense. She is superior only in those virtues enforced upon
her by her position — who is not?
Is the moral sense strong when almost every woman bears upon her hips, even
while admitting the injury to her health, a dangerous weight of skirts, too often lying
inches deep on floors and pavements, that sweep up and carry into homes and nurseries
germs of stealthy pestilence?
Is the moral sense strong that leads women to spend millions of dollars annually
in laces, jewels and idle ornaments, in cities where one-fourth of the population are
paupers — where thousands of our own sex annually sell their souls for the necessaries
of life; where multitudes of children are brought to an untimely grave from hunger
and cold? Says Ruskin: "So long as there is nakedness and cold in the land around
you, so long will there be no question but that splendor of dress will be a crime."
Is the moral sense strong when ninety-nine women out of a hundred scorn true
standards of beauty in the human form and voluntarily so deform and weaken their
own bodies as to increase the rate of infant mortality and otherwise lower health
standards as to threaten the physical degeneracy of the race through this gigantic folly
alone?
Is the moral sense strong when women, to whom society has a right to look for
examples in matters of propriety, enter public gatherings so immodestly clad as to
compel good men to turn their gaze away, and unprincipled ones to believe that wom-
anly virtue exists but in name? And this, too, in defiance of a law of the land that
requires, as an essential to modesty, that the body be covered ? Such intelligent, high-
minded women too often encouraging their daughters to attract the opposite sex by dis-
plays of personal beauty and physical charms, rather than intellectuality and moral
worth.
Can it be claimed that the moral sense is strong when women condemn the same
sin a thousand-fold more severely in woman than in man; and for the sake of wealth
or position, give an innocent daughter to a man of notoriously unclean life. Aye, 'tis
claimed that the greatest stumbling-block men find to leading purer lives, is that
women do not care.
If the moral sense of mothers is what it is painted, do you think she would ignore
the sacred duty of teaching her sons that to take a wife who is to come to him in the
beauty of purity, when he has shameful secrets to hide, is perfidy in the last degree?
That to dishonor the poorest, giddiest, weakest girl will bring disgrace upon his kin-
dred, his manhood, his unborn sons and daughters?
It is the economic pressure upon woman that has made her what she is. And it
is by seeing herself apaVt from the ideal virtues ascribed to her, that she may ever
hope to realize the glorious possibilities now opening to her, and properly estimate
her value as a source of strength to others through the power and influence of a noble
life.
The woman who enters the married relation for any pecuniary consideration what-
ever, is either making a wicked sacrifice of herself or is lacking in moral sense or
courage. And but for the economic pressure brought to bear upon her, would be
regarded as little less fortunate than the woman who enters into a similar relation from
similar motives without the sanction of the law. And the woman who marries to live in
(84)
530 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ease and idleness can hardly be expected to see as clearly that her husband has no right
to dictate her actions or opinions as the woman who supports herself. The woman
with a definite industrial position of her own is not likely to marry for mercenary rea-
sons, she may therefore be expected to see the rights, duties and obligations of wife and
mother from quite a different standpoint from one who marries for her support.
As another has expressed it, this nineteenth century is sweeping grandly on to its
close, " carrying with it mighty movements that can no more be staid by the hand of
man than the rushing waters of Niagara or the tides of the ocean," Of woman's mis-
sion in this field of human progress we would repeat the Divine command, " Give her
of the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her within the gates." And she
who is to be the product of these future conditions of absolute freedom for woman —
she who is to come? Will be —
"A woman in so far as she beholdeth
Her one Beloved's face;
A mother — with a great heart that enfoldeth
The children of her race.
A body free and strong, with that high beauty
That comes of perfect use, is built thereof;
A mind where reason ruleth over duty,
And justice reigns with love;
A self-poised royal soul, brave, wise and tender,
No longer blind and dumb;
A human being of an unknown splendor,
Is she who is to come! "
AVOCATIONS OF ENGLISH WOMEN.
By MRS. THERESA ELIZABETH COPE.
Modern enthusiasm for the enlightenment of the masses is at all events beginning
to show some good results, whatever grumblers may say to the contrary. If properly
conducted, general education does encourage a good
deal of invigorating brain gymnastics, favorable to
the subsequent development of interests that are
wholesome relaxations from the specialty we call
" our work." More than that, a slight insight into the
infinite breadth and depth of possible learning is, and
always has been, to anyone inclined to reflect at all,
a source of constant humility and tolerance. So vast
a vista of what we do not know stretches out before
us, as we plant our feet firmly on our small square of
conquered knowledge, that consciousness of the tol-
erance our ignorance must plead for may well make
us forbearing with those who, we may fancy, know
a little less. We will feel, too, that our "Special"
work offers sufficient possibilities of action and im-
provement for a lifetime, and realize fully why "Jack
of all trades was master of none, " and never could
be. Sympathy with those who, like ourselves, are
serving life's apprenticeship, and interest in their
efforts, however different from our own, ought surely
to be the result of a good education; by which I mean,
one that has engrafted into its disciples the conviction
that honest individual effort is beset with difficulties, and that no field of action use-
ful to the community is contemptible or incapable of improvement. Petty cantanker-
ous fault finding should perish among those who have sufficient "general education"
to grasp the fact that the limits of man's mind are narrow, and that failure is possible
in every branch of human effort, in our own case as in those of our fellow-men. Since
the possibility, nay the necessity, of merging the terms gentlewoman and working-
woman has been widely recognized, and woman's labor placfed in the balance against
man's, we have heard much of the selfish and jealous opposition of the stronger sex, more
especially of work under-paid because it was woman's work. That many of these
complaints are only too well justified it is impossible to deny, but it is well to make out
a clear case, and be just, before we begin to argue, above all dispute, for rights, or we
may find those so-called rights a fruitful source of palpable wrongs, for the develop-
ment of which we shall, in the first case, have to thank our own semination of the
seeds of discord.
If we women really wish to enter the vast world's factory on equal terms with
Mrs. Theresa Elizabeth Cope is a native of London, England. She was bom in January, 1858. Her parents were J. M.
Jaqnemot and A. F. Dopry de Lavoase. She was educated in England, Germany, France and Italy, and passed " B. A." of
the London University. She has traveled over the world— India, China, Japan and America. She married in 1877 Captain
Cope, of the English army. Her special work has been in the interest of the pliilanthropic work in the East End of London,
among women. Her principal literary works are a work on women, dealing with labor questions, and articles in the
newspapers. She was a member of the Women's Committee of the Royal British Commission, and had charge of part of the
British exhibit in the Woman's Building during the Columbian Exposition. She was also American correspondent during
that time to " The Queen," published in London. She is a fluent writer and a brilliant journalist. In religious faith she is a
Protestant, and is a member of the Church of England. Her permanent postoffice address is No. 11 Holbein Houae, London,
England.
531
MRS. THERESA ELIZABETH COPE.
532 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
men, that is, as animated machines, to be paid for according to our marketable value,
we must fairly and squarely acknowledge that, on the whole (giving a large margin
to the numerous exceptions that go to prove the rule) man is a more lusty and reli-
able piece of machinery than woman. During a recent discussion and investigation
of the vexed subject of relative salaries in the case of government clerks in England,
it was pointed out that female clerks required more frequent holidays. Upheld by a
purpose, women workers do frequently succeed in walks that would be tough for men
to follow, but sudden collapse has been known to be the aftermath of a rich harvest
reaped by female enterprise; and, on the whole, permanent success and enjoyment of
it will depend largely on our knowledge of what is familiarly termed "the length of
our tether."
Logicalargument has hitherto been an exceptional power among us, and I am sure
many of us have only fully realized the humiliating fact on perusing the combative
newspaper tussles of a few of the women champions of our rights, many of whose
barced words are obviously doomed to miss their mark and recoil upon unintended
victims. We have certainly often seen professional men come warmly forward and
applaud those who have won laurels in domains hitherto deemed their exclusive
hunting-grounds, and the frank "well done" that not long ago greeted Miss Fawcett,
of England, who, in the mathematical triumphs, left all competitors far behind, had
nothing of envy in its ring.
Some of us are still weak-minded or old-fashioned enough to believe that honor
does come to whom honor is due, and that work honestly done for its own sake
carries its own' reward with it; and many of us have good reason to doubt the asser-
tion of an Amazon of wordy warfare and platform celebrity, to the effect that,
"chivalry is dead!"
No mawkish serenades under our window are likely to disturb our night's rest,
it is true; but many a noble woman finds gallant knight proud to buckle on his sword
in her service, and ready to go forth on her quest, even in these apparently prosaic
days of top hats and gaiters. I may safely venture to assert that many, even most
women, had rather be fought for than fight, and do not at all care about proving the
excellence of their intellect, having never realized that they belonged to an oppressed
race.
The consumptive little tailor (alas! I have seen so many in the East End of Lon-
don), toiling wearily and ceaselessly for his ill-fed family, is not a less pathetic spec-
tacle than the hard working shirtmaker in her attic. The anxious workman, forced
unwillingly into a strike by his companions, is as much to be pitied as the hardy
char-woman or "scrub-lady," as I hear they term themselves, who fights want single
handed, tidies up her children every Sunday and sends them to Sunday-school and
chapel, and sobs over her scrubbing brush for the sickly baby who kqpt her awake at
nights, and whom a kind Providence has saved from the evil to come.
How many women have we met whose daily martyrdom was the fear of being
crowded out of the work that earned their bread and cheese, are doomed to battle
with their bete noire till they fall. Who has not met with them in England, all
lonely and unfit for toil; trying, trying, trying, only to be jostled aside at last, and
who has not longed at some time or other to help them by teaching them to help
themselves?
Every suggestion that promises a reduction of the martyrdom of " worry " and
lonely failure is generally welcome. Not long ago a lady gave a sketch of her prac-
tical experience of profitable gardening. The publication is valuable for its cheery
common sense, and for the really encouraging account of the success in a field of
effort as yet almost unexplored for lucrative purposes by educated women in Eng-
land. The writer tells how, by co-operation and activity, a few ladies with very small
capital succeeded in gaining their livelihood from the produce of Mother Earth; how
they all improved in health, and to judge from the tone of the writer's article, enjoyed
their occupation in spite of its fatigue, disappointments and drawbacks.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 533
These lady horticulturists did a good deal of grafting; they sold young rose
plants, and some cut flowers; had a few shops in London and other towns which they
managed and supplied. They found that the roses which were most valued were those
that, to my mind, were ugly little enormities. A small, all but black,, rose, only
redeemed from entirely resembling an undertaker's rosette by a faint carnation flush,
which in the eyes of its growers was its one fault; a tiny green rose, like a pale and
bilious Brussel sprout among the darker foliage, and a small orange-colored rose,
recalling a double king cup without its gloss. These floral aristocrats had a corner
of the garden to themselves, fared delicately, and were sheltered from every blast and
every parasite with the tenderest solicitude. May they long retain their exclusiveness!
Old ecclesiastical chronicles sometimes solicit our admiration for St. Thomas or
St. Somebody Else, because he never doffed his penitential hair shirt, nor washed and
anointed his body. If being uncomfortable were virtue, virtuous indeed those dirty
old monks must have been. Well-born ladies, too, would dry a beggar's feet with the
hem of their garments to show their lowliness of mind, and walk about humbly in
miserable, scrappy under-vests for the glorification of their creed. Our nineteenth
century ladies have left them far behind. With the hem of costly gowns they do not
dry a tramp's feet that have first been well soaped; no, they sweep up the dust tramps
have carried in on unwashed feet from the slums of our great cities, mingled, perhaps,
with the refuse of garbage dogs disdained.
Well may they wear those large hats so much the fashion now. Are they not
nineteenth century halves? Fit circlets for those who humble themselves to the dust!
Our own young men and maidens vie with each other in boating, cricket and golfing.
The common, sensible and not unsightly costumes worn during these favorite pastimes
are influencing the costumes of working hours and social intercourse. Dress need
neither be ugly nor masculine because they are clothes instead of fetters. Indoor
trailing garments may be graceful, but even then no garment should be a hindrance.
Women are very eloquent nowadays on what is due to them. " Rights'. " " Fran-
chise! " " Equality! " is the burden of a good many speeches.
*' When I contemplate the vicious brutality of tyrant man," remarked a lady
speaker when I was last in London, to a deeply interested audience, " I am not only
glad to be formed in a different mold; I regret that I do not belong to a different
genus of created being! "
After all, one must have something to make speeches out of, and if "brutal man"
is the topic of the day, why not discuss him? Reaction will surely set in! It always
does. In twenty or thirty years we shall probably be devoted to worsted work and
cooing gently. If we progress as we are doing now, the pinnacle will soon be reached.
Nevertheless, at no time have women been such eager candidates for the servi-
tude of government as today, and in fairness be it added, at no time have a greater
number been willing to serve the rough apprenticeship that alone can fit them for
holding the reigns of government.
The avocations of English women are numerous. We have thousands of lady
clerks, typewriters, bookkeepers, cashiers, shop girls, governesses, postofiice and tele-
graph clerks, sick nurses, a few lady doctors and dispensers of medicine, matrons of
hospitals, etc., but the time is too short and my paper too circumscribed to give you
all these in detail; suffice it to say that all these women, each in their own specialty,
are earning their living nobly and well.
Chopping wood with a razor, and shaving with a hatchet, are laborious, even dan-
gerous, tasks. The razor and the hatchet may be most excellent and useful tools,
each in its way and used in the manner its maker intended; but reverse and exchange
the work you consigned to them and the chances are ten to one they will cut your
fingers, or even your throat. So it is with man and woman — they are each perfect in
and fitted for their own sphere, but there is danger and disaster in one climbing into
the place of the other. To fill her place fitly is not the ideal of woman's life!
Perhaps the time is not far off when the relative positions of trivial and great
534 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
will be more clearly taught, more perfectly understood. Perhaps the pettiness of
tyranny and dignity of true humility will then become accepted realities instead of
theories suitable for copy-book quotations. We may then possibly realize that it is
given to the poorest in earth's dross, the least influential in earth's puppet show to
govern by a better and nobler right than can ever be gained in incompetent platform
speeches and struggles. Our kingdom will be a garden for weary men and women to
rest in. Our ambition will be to make it so fair that the world will protect it unasked.
The noblest lady in our land is such a queen — not by right of the crown she wept
to wear, and wears so fitly, but by right of a broad and noble charity that can sympa-
thize with the weak, encourage the strong, that is purified by personal suffering into
a more tender pity for those that weep. Not only because Victoria reigns queen and
empress of the grandest country in the world are we women of England proud to serve
her, but because, as Carlyle says, " she has been a guide and deliverer of many by
being servant of many."
EXTRACTS FROM "POSSIBILITIES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES."
By MRS. SALLIE RHETT ROMAN.
John Bright, the great English commoner, who said: "Those beautiful states of
the South! Those regions, than which the whole earth offers nothing more lovely or
more fertile."
And, in truth, upon investigation, the agricult-
ural, mineral and commercial advantages possessed
by them loom up towering and imposing. To appre-
ciate the length and breadth of these resources, a
cursory glance over the past decade is imperative.
In 1865 the states of the South were in a wrecked
and shattered condition. Their banking system was
destroyed, agriculture was dead, no manufacturing
industries existed, capital had vanished, their rail-
roads had been all but completely destroyed, poverty
reigned supreme in town and hamlet, and recupera-
r g ^ ■■ '^—^ tion seemed wellnigh impossible.
■ ^^^^^m ^ ^ _ Turning from this desolate picture to the present
^t^^^m jflHIifi^ period, we see that the conditions which exist every-
^^^^m^ iS^^P^ where today throughout that section justify the as-
^^^■jk JUl^I^P sertion and the belief that these states must possess
^^^t -^^^SL'T great and unusual advantages to have reached within
^^. -^dSXw^ *^^ short space of thirty years a condition of pros-
^^ ^^■^'^ perity which points with a confident finger to a trium-
phant future.
The London Fi?ia?icial Times said recently : "The
phenomenal progress of the Southern States since 1881, must be profoundly gratifying
to every patriotic American. Within these past ten years they have shown a most
marvelous recuperative power." This assertion was made in connection with the
location of English capital; hence its importance.
To understand this statement a few figures will suffice: In 1881 the South pro-
duced 400,000,000 bushels of wheat, corn and oats. In 1891 the production in that
section has grown to 600,000,000 bushels, with a corresponding increase in the cotton
crop, and, despite the recent decline in the prices of that commodity, the advance in
money and benefit to the Southern States was not less than 200,000,000. Turning
toward the carrying power of the South, we see that the mileage of the Southern rail-
roads has grown from 23,000 to 44,000 miles, and that these roads have made far
greater strides within the past ten years than other lines, while their reductions for
freight and passengers have been greater.
The South's production of pig-iron in 1881 was 400,000 tons. In 1891 its output
reached 1,000,000 tons. The great Western roads have viewed with some apprehen-
Mre. Alfred Roman i8 the daughter of Hon. Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina. She was born in Washington,
D. C, while Mr. Rhett was serviag his state as senator in the United States Congress. Mrs. Roman's mother was the
daughter of Chancellor De Saussnre, originally from Lucerne, Switzerland. Mrs. Roman was educated at home by an
accomplished French governess. Her knowledge of French and music is most thorough. She married Col. Alfred Roman,
a son of Gov. A. B. Roman of Louisiana. Their permanent residence was in New Orleans, Colonel Roman being Judge of
the Criminal Court of that city. That eminent gentleman died in the early fall of 1892. Mrs. Roman is a member of two
brilliant literarj- clubs, and a weekly contributor to the New Orleans Times-Democrat. Mrs. Roman was reared as a mem-
ber of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but after marriage she embraced the creed of her husband, and became a Roman
Catholic. Her postoiEce address is No. 92 Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, La.
585
MRS. SALLIE RHETT ROMAN.
536 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
sion the diversion of traffic to Southern ports, for a marked and noticeable increase of
exports from these points has there taken place.
In 1881 the value of the produce exported from the Southern ports was $200,-
000,000. In 1 89 1 it had increased to $300,000,000. The further fact is established
that the assessed value of property per capita in 1881 was $142, which in 1891 had
advanced to $232, while the capital of the national banks in the South increased within
these past ten years from $45,000,000 to $95,000,000.
As the agricultural industries of the Southern States are the foundation of their
prosperity, they demand priority of consideration in the present investigation. Among
them, cotton, the greatest staple production of the world, stands unquestionably fore-
most; for the ramifications of interests interwoven in the cotton trade, which embrace
the planter, manufacturer, merchant and exporter, aggregate a colossal amount of capi-
tal and absorb the energies, ingenuity and genius of millions of men. The importance,
therefore, of this textile upon the commercial and financial destinies of all communi-
ties can not be over-estimated.
The Southern States of America furnish eighty per cent of the raw cotton con-
sumption of the whole world, retaining for home uses one-third of the quantity pro-
duced, the rest going to foreign markets. Of late years capital and enterprise have
combined to erect magnificent cotton mills throughout all the Southern States.
Nor could a more sagacious investment be devised, for the demonstration seems
plain that if Great Britain (which has no raw cotton at command and must import its
raw material from foreign countries, chiefly from the Southern States) finds it profit-
able to establish and maintain gigantic cotton mills, the South would clearly reap a
larger profit by locating and working mills in close proximity to her own cotton fields.
Great Britain's supremacy in cotton manufacture is solely owing' to the fact that it has
been the home of the most improved applications of machinery to that industry. The
Eastern mills of the United States, by their present superior equipment, now rival those
of Lancashire, while those splendid manufacturing structures being now erected in
North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, will
eventually outstrip both in the near coming years, because of the superior economic
conditions which they control.
These Southern cotton mills embody the newest forms of improved machinery,
and are located close to the raw material they employ.
Besides the consideration of cheap and contented labor, that of cheap fuel is of
the utmost importance for the success of the cotton mill. In Manchester the great
cost of extracting coal from the deep beds of the coal mines of England makes the
price of that commodity far higher than it is in the Southern States, where limitless
coal mines abound, whose surface strata alone is being utilized by easy obtainment and
at a small cost.
But the difficulties of climate, distance, labor and fuel are all obviated in the
states of the South. Holding, therefore, these splendid advantages, the states of the
South will naturally seek for a widening foreign market. This she will surely find
beyond her European trade in China and Japan and the islands in the Pacific, when
direct communications will be established with those countries through the cutting of
the isthmus which unites the two Americas, which engineering feat has now become
the imperious commercial necessity of this age. The states of the South, command-
ing a short and direct route, with her inexhaustible forests at hand wherewith to build
the necessary shipping for this trade, would supply this rich and prolific market with
their varied products and manufactures. Nor could any section or outside power
successfully compete with them; for a closer proximity gives, necessarily, a suprem-
acy none may dispute.
The history of the Suez Canal, which has poured millions into the coffers of
England, and that of the Sault Ste. Marie's Canal, on the great northern lakes, gives
the basis for the assumption that the tonnage of vessels passing through annually would
average nine million at a low estimate.
By opening this canal, breaking bulk in transit, a matter of immense monetary
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 537
importance, would also be eliminated; and the coasting trade for small craft among
those rich and fertile countries lying to the south along the Pacific, which embraces
most valuable product, would grow to enormous proportions and would belong exclus-
ively to the Southern States.
Indeed, the condition attendant upon the throwing open of direct and easy commu-
nication, through the Nicaragua Canal, is so supremely and undeniably advantageous
that they justify the prediction that San Francisco on the Pacific, and New York on
the Atlantic, will thereby command the markets of the world, while the ports of the
statesof the South must proportionately grow and prosper under the splendid impetus
of expanding trade to become shortly great and important commercial centers.
The Southern group of states has an area of eight hundred thousand square miles,
with a population of a little over nineteen million. Running through their center
extends the southern Appalachian region, along whose northwestern slope stretches a
continuous and unbroken coal-field of incalculable value, heavily timbered, with a
productive soil and a healthful and cool climate. Lying toward the east spreads
another strip of high, mountainous country, rising over two thousand feet above sea
level. These ranges are covered with dense forests of varied and most valuable wood,
and are prolific in slates, fine clays, marbles, ores, copper and other minerals, with a
wealth of iron which only equals its colossal wealth in coal. Piled up in the center of
these Southern States lies this magazine of enormous natural resources, greater far
than those ever possessed by Great Britain, and surrounded by more than a half mil-
lion square miles of lands whose fertility and productiveness is beyond computation.
It is incontestable that here is the section which offers the most advantageous
sites for economical iron-making, for the needed materials lie close at hand, and
economy in transporting this raw material gives to the manufacturer of iron enor-
mous advantages over competing branches of that industry, located as they are at
great distances in the North and West. The irresistible logic of circumstances has
been recognized, and Birmingham, the iron city of the South, has grown into import-
ance and wealth through her blast-furnaces and great iron industries, while others are
being erected in various localities to make of the South, as Mr. Edward Atkinson
says, " the future situs of the principal iron production of the world." And it may
be pertinent to add that the recent splendid invention, called the Basaic process, for
making steel of iron containing phosphorus, will unquestionably turn the scale for
steel manufacture in favor of the South, by throwing open to her the possibility of fur-
nishing at a lower cost, for the Southern railroads, whose extension and ramification
over vast areas establish an inexhaustible market, those steei rails now manufactured
by the steel mills of Pennsylvania and Illinois, and furnished by them to the Southern
railroad companies.
In the Flat Top ttegion, in the great Kanawha Basin, in the Warnor Field, and
elsewhere throughout these states, where coal mining has but recently been inaugu-
rated, the coal trade amounts to millions of tons yearly, and gives employment to
thousands of men, besides furnishing an enormous volume of paying freight to the
railroads. The coal fields of the South, by their extent and depth, are practically
beyond the limits of definite measurement, and the coal trade, yet in its infancy in that
section, bids fair to spread far beyond the limits of this country.
It may be added in this connection, that Mobile and Pensacola are now making
extensive improvements in their harbor facilities to accommodate the greatly increas-
ing export trade of coal to Mexico and Central and South America, brought by rail-
roads for shipment from these ports.
These rich timber districts are vast in area and extensive in variety. Here the
yellow and white pines, the white, black, Spanish and chestnut oaks, the chestnut,
walnut, hickory, poplar, cherry and laurel intermingle their luxuriant foliage and
mutely testify to the keen-sighted lumberman and manufacturer of the West and East,
that the lands which produce so superb a growth will likewise furnish the means to
satisfy a most laudable ambition — that of becoming, through their agency, a successful
and wealthy citizen.
538 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
There are two other salient features in Southern industrial life which may not be
overlooked, for their importance imperiously and justly clamor for attention. Over
a far stretching area of country to the southwest of Norfolk lie a series of highly
prosperous truck farms, under the most improved methods of culture, whose varied
products furnish the inexhaustible markets of the large cities of the East. Running
back from the old and sedate " City by the Sea," Charleston, and encased between the
broad sweeping waters of the Ashley and the Cooper, extend a succession of truck
farms, admirable from the perfected culture.
Passing through the wealthy and prospering State of Georgia, from east to west
the traveler's attention is attracted by the contmuous succession of handsome farms
which cover the gently undulating lands and form a pleasing and charming panorama;
while the orange groves of Florida need no comment to recall their beauty and their
moneyed advantages. Nowhere on this continent does truck-farming and fruit-grow-
ing offer so uniformly good and profitable results as among the Southern States.
After cotton, the product giving the most lucrative returns to the cultivator is
the sugar-cane of Louisiana, whose wealth of vegetation and salubrious climate make
it truly the Garden Spot of the South, Grown in rich alluvial soil, in a most healthy
region, by a population thoroughly educated concerning its culture, the cane-fields of
Louisiana present one of the most beautiful sights in the world. The splendid luxu-
riance of this crop, the waving grace of its billowy green rows, when swept by the
gentle breezes, under the radiant light of a glowing Southern sky, must needs enchant
the beholder. The cultivation and manufacture of sugar give remunerative employ-
ment to a large and industrious population, and brings millions of dollars annually
into the State of Louisiana, which circulates abroad for the perceptible benefit of all.
Through the old and historic states of Virginia and South Carolina, whose annals
contain names which will ever adorn American history, down through the prosperous
states of Georgia and Alabama, through Louisiana, glorious in her unrivaled fertility,
and through the undulating plains and .vast expanse of Texas, whose wealth and
power in the coming years may not be measured, arise prophetic voices from field,
forest, mine and workshop, telling of all that a sagacious and mighty population will
accomplish in the near future, when the glorious possibilities of the states of the South
will be stirred into life by the gigantic breath of extended commerce, enterprise and
capital.
" These beautiful states of the South," swept by the ocean and mountain winds,
nursed by the glowing sun and gentle rains, what a glorious invitation you grandly
tender the stranger to seek rest and contentment amid your fertile plains and teeftiing
valleys; how sublime has been the struggle of your people for what they deemed was
their constitutional right! how undaunted their attitude and how unsurpassed their
fortitude amid the upheaval of their colossal ruin! And now that the glimmering
dawn of a stupendous future is faintly spreading its transcendent glow of prosperity
abroad over the great Southern States, the throb of a pulsating triumph beats in the
hum of the factory, glows in the smelting furnace, and ascends in the soft twilight
hours from the rich furrows of her incomparable fields, while the salt-sea waves, as
they rock her shipping and dash against pier and wharf, add their exultant voices in
prophecy of the coming prosperity they so plainly foresee.
May the advancing wealth, which will crown with a fitting reward the efforts,
ambitions and genius of this people of the South, never diminish those high and true
aspirations which have hitherto adorned her annals and made of her citizens, in pros-
perity and in adversity, a lofty and noble race.
Standing today amid the magnificent achievements of the great Northwest, a vis-
itor to this imposing World's Fair, in the name of the South I tender the warm hand
of her true and steadfast friendship to her noble host, applauding her successful
efforts to demonstrate the power and capacity of the American people. And I render
heartfelt thanks to this gracious audience for their courteous attention to this most
imperfect showing of the grand possibilities of the states of the South.
WOMAN— THE INCITER TO REFORM.
By MRS. MINNIE D. LOUIS.
We are all familiar with the generally accepted source for the traceable origin of
the wonderful creation of man; that every word of that condensed statement is fraught
with deepest meaning no one will doubt. We read
that on the sixth day God created beasts, reptiles
and man. Man stands at the head of the animal cre-
>' " -'*■«., ation. We read further, and find that woman is formed
afterward. And -wit^iout diny rediictio ad absurdum msiy
we not utilize the Darwinian theory, and call her a
f higher evolution of man, the mental development;
in fine, the very perfection of God's noblest work. As
the poet says:
" He tried his 'prentice hand on man,
And then He made the lassies, O."
The great Creator caused a deep sleep to fall upon
Adam, and then He formed Eve out of one of his
ribs; which means, palpably, that being formed from
only part of him she could not possibly be endowed
with as much physical strength. But in His benefi-
cent law of compensation, by which the beautiful
balance of all distribution is maintained. He be-
stowed upon her keen perception, which, like the
delicate diamond-drill, easily penetrates where the
sledge-hammer would only shatter. She was given
to Adam in his quiet moment; not when he was frolicking with the other denizens of
Paradise, reveling in his superiority, but after he had slept, when his brain was in a
condition to be influenced by her gentle presence, then she appeared unto him, the
embodiment of a new revelation of his power, his slumbering, aesthetic nature.
I suppose it is as patent to others as to me that it was Eve who first gained
knowledge and then imparted it to Adam. It was she who first espied the lurking
enemy, and she who bravely dared confront him. The Serpent was not the enemy; it
was Laziness, that destroyer of Divine growth in mortal. The subtle, telepathic serpent
discerned Eve's mental unrest, and despite all the interpreters, translators, annotators
and commentators on the Bible, Eve's interview with that gorgeous, calm-eyed ophid-
ian was the first whisper of her energy and ambition, the real tempters; Adam's inborn
sloth was exacerbating to her active, progressive mind. There was no philosophy in
her brain to tell her it was better to bear the ills they had. Quick impulse, true as the
magnet needle, told her that pain, toil, endurance, exile, anything was better than the
Minnie D. Louis was born in Philadelphia, Pa. When four months old her parents moved to the South, so that in all
but the accident of birth she claims to be a native Georgian. Her parents were Fannie Zachariah Dessau, a woman of rare-
beauty and energy, born in Chatham, England, though a child when brought to this country, and Abraham Dessau, a native of
Hambarg, Germany, a man of wide learning and exceptional parity of character. She was educated in academic schools in
Columbus, Ga., and at Pecker Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y. She has traveled in the United States and Canada. She
married Adolph H. Louis in July, 1866. Her special work has been in the interest of uneducated and needy children of the
Jewish poor in New York City. Her literary works consist of essays and poems and the " Personal Service " Department in
the "American Hebrew," as yet uncompiled. She is a Jewess and a member of the Temple Emaouel. Sheisabeaatifol,
accomplished and most attractive woman. Her rare good taste in dress and deportment are a subject of remark. Her
permanent pKjstoffice address is No. 66 West Fifty-sixth Street, New York City.
539
MRS. MINNIE D. LOLIS.
540 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
weariness of pleasure provided, over which they had no sway. Adam saw not this
serpent, this charmer, that wooed beyond the gates of brute-inhabited Eden; it was
Eve who in turn tempted him. And who can gainsay that, had she not first tasted
and then given to Adam, there might now be but a race of satyrs frisking over the earth.
The ancient Greeks were not slow to recognize the due weight of woman's influ-
ence, for in their Pantheon male and female rule conjointly over the world. But
mark the nice distinction they make! To the gods are given all physical power, to the
goddesses all intellectual. Minerva is the living essence of Jove's brain, for she lit-
erally was born of his head. And through this belief to what excellence in war, and
song, and art, and virtue, did men not attain? Perceive the contrast in countries
where the female mind is ignored. Look at emasculated Turkey and shriveled
Arabia. How far the association of a female in the Christian religion has exercised a
humanizing effect " he who runs may read." The co-ordination of woman with man
in the laws of the Hebrews has given them that vitality which day by day impresses
mankind with the conviction of their immortal truth.
It would be too sweeping an assertion to say that all great men only attain their
eminence through the influence of woman. Poets and musicians receive their gifts
direct from the great Creator. Genius is a self-feeding flame, kindled from within; it
does not borrow fuel. And yet, would Petrarch ever have been bonneted had he not
so sonneted his Laura? And while Virgil dragged Dante down to hell, it was
Beatrice who lifted him up to Paradise. Everyone knows that Madame de Maintenon
forged the glittering rays in which Louis XIV. shone so grandly. Queen Bess was
the female Vulcan, who with all her brusquerie hammered out her own " Golden Age "
of poets and statesmen and navigators. A woman's finer sensibilities and foresight
compassed the way to America. And what is called today " the best government
under the sun" hails a woman at the helm. How much the abrogation of the Salic
law in monarchial France might have lessened the causes that made it volcanic in its
eruption of fiery, devastating hate, succeeding generations will pronounce; and
whether the stepping of our own government on the downward grade is to be arrested
by woman suffrage remains also to be demonstrated.
In the early days of American independence many famous men wore their laurels
more gracefully that the wreath was reflected also on the wifely brow. Mrs. John
Adams quietly upheld her husband's dignity during his ministerial absence, and
enhanced it when the demands of his position elicited her ability thereto. Mrs. John
Jay added brighter luster to the name of her liege lord. Mrs. William Bingham was
the admired lady, at home and abroad, who gave tone to the sex of her country. And
surely the memory of Washington's mother and wife descends to us with their own
halos of virtue and noble simplicity, contributing somewhat toward the glorious
light in which shines the " Father of his Country."
As the whole machinery of a watch without the small, delicate, almost unseen
mainspring is useless, so does the whole machinery of the terrestrial world require
somewhere the delicate, unseen influence of woman. Her care or neglect protects or
endangers mankind through the evil or the virtue that she propagates, and her subse-
quent fostering of it; while her individual character is Parcaean in its fiats. The
unfaithfulness of a Helen plunged almost a world into war; the chastity of a
Lucretia transformed a kingdom into a republic; the compassion and equity of Harriet
Beecher Stowe unbound the fetters of a nation of slaves and led them into the sun-
light of freedom. There is in the temperament of woman that which makes for weal
or woe; the question is how best to dispose of it.
I am not prepared to say that the mere concession to woman of the privilege to
cast her vote will purge all governments of corruption and establish a Platonian
republic, unless such restrictions could be imposed that only the most intelligent and
unbiased of her sex could be eligible, but in this country the wild scuffle for oflice to
subvention it to private ends has so become the "tramp! tramp! " of the nation's
march, that there is danger of the women too following this " Pied Piper of Hamelin."
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 541
She has some propaedeutical work before sharing the ballot-box. The money-mad
men with outstretched, rake-like hands, who scamper into position of whatever nature,
and who hope to scamper out again just grazing the portiere of the penitentiary, are
so many villainous dynamite bombs in the good Ship of State that threaten to explode
her. Does women see wherein she can help to avert the calamity? Does the thought
occur to her that extravagance and vanity are the charges in these bombs? And does
she entertain the thought that she has aided in charging them? That this desecration
of our paradisical country is a reflection of her yieldance to the gorgeous serpents
that woo her? Yes! Palatial mansions, regal toilets, Lucullus' feasts and Dionysian
pleasures are the tempters whispering to our Eves, and the Eves tasting first, make
the Adams do likewise. Certainly neither luxury, nor aught contributing to refine-
ment should be ignored. With every object created is also a corresponding thought
in man, and when the affinity is attained, the object is unfolded into higher and higher
degrees of usefulness and beauty; therefore there can never be any limitations. to the
production of what is called wealth; the earth is full of treasure and we only follow
out the plan of a Divine beneficence in discovering, utilizing and enjoying it; but let
" the means justify the end;" let "what happiness we justly call, subsist not in the
good of one, but all. "
There is not an hour of the day but some wail of woe from still-chained humanity
pierces the American woman's ears. She knows that industries are paralyzed, that
idleness and want are generating anarchy, that the laborers stalk stolidly, flaunting
pallid banners behind which Famine shrieks for bread, that the " black bat, " Desola-
tion, is hovering over the land! She sees the handwriting on the wall, and knows
there can be no delay. Before she claims her half of the ballot-box she will cope
with the impending disaster.
" Diseases, desperate grown by desperate appliance, are relieved, or not at all."
" Similia similibus curantur'' will be the therapeutics she will practice. It is through the
purse — the over-gorging of some and the evisceration of others — that this fair country
has become sick, its once healthy, honest countenance scarcely recognizable in its
present emaciation; and through the purse must it be cured. The remedy that the
American woman proposes is indeed a desperate one. She is well aware that com-
merce is the main pivot on which the civil world revolves, and that exchange with
foreign nations is, in a degree, necessary to maintain it. She knows, too, that not-
withstanding international courtesy, the Old World's interest in the New World does
not extend beyond the material advantage it can gain from her as a market and a
dumping-ground. And the American woman feels justifiable in obeying the dictum,
"self-preservation is the first law of nature." She sees our ragged children, our
despairing mothers, our hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked fathers sitting disconsolate by
the silent mill, the mine, the manufactory. And whether it be the tariff, or whether
it be the silver-purchase bill, or whether it be the monopolist, or whether it be the
land-grabber, one thing can restore life and vigor to all, at least for the present, and
that she proposes to do.
And this it is: That for the next three, four or five years, or as long as the tonic
is required to get our country on its legs again, she will not buy for her house, for her
person, for her cuisine, for her pleasure, or for any purpose except for sickness or
education, any article that is not produced and manufactured in the United States. If
the merchants must in consequence cease their importations, the gold will remain in our
own land; and if exportations, in retaliation, cease, and stop the influx of gold, then
let all the mines be worked and make up the deficiency; and if there be not enough
gold, our silver coinage, under honest and discreet regulation, must be accorded its
parity. Think of the resources that would have to be opened up to supply every-
thing! Think of the hands that would be needed to do it, and to convert the raw
materials into all their uses! Why are we dependent on the French bourse, the Eng-
lish exchange, the Indian or Austrian monetary policy? Are we not a whole new
world? Are we not sixty-five millions of people? But are we all fed, all clothed, and
all housed as our colonial fathers planned we should be?
542 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Why are we waiting for French cambrics, for English prints, for Scotch ginghams,
when we grow the cotton here? Why are we waiting for superior qualities of cotton
manufacture when we make the machinery for it here? If the manufacturers here
will not make the best qualities, why can we not boycott them till they do? And if
such manufacture should cost more than the foreign, which is not probable, for domes-
tic gingham is eight cents a yard and Scotch gingham thirty-five cents a yard retail,
eighteen cents direct from the factory, we must be willing to share in the just dis-
tribution. If American silks will not equal those of French manufacture, we can wear
them notwithstanding, and encourage the improvement. Our forests furnish all the
beautiful woods for every appurtenance of use or grandeur; our quarries, as yet almost
unknown, are rich in material for the finest structures or ornaments; our mineral realm,
yet but superficially surveyed, can surely overtop the world; our fields groan with
fullness of nourishment; in short, there is nothing that fails, if intelligent energy be
directed to unearth it. Even the contention-breeding wool could be produced in our
vast downs if the coveted quick returns did not preclude the patient nurture for its
prescribed standard.
It is positively disgraceful that there should not be employment here for every-
one. If the laborers are unskilled, establish plenty of schools wherein they may be
trained, which would be the most powerful extirpator of crime. We have the instruc-
tion and improvements of all ages and all nations at our command. What prevents
us from profiting by it and making all our people, the native-born and the latest refu-
gee, happy and contented? Nothing but the wild desire, like the prodigal son, to
seek pleasures away from home, and the mad pursuit of unrepublican opulence to
enjoy those pleasures; but like the prodigal son, we come back to the father's house
poor and humiliated. It is our own homestead that we must build up securely, this
pure city of the gods, the most beautiful ever on earth, is proof of the mighty con-
structive forces in our sons and daughters, and nothing short of the most determined,
inviolable, energetic home-support will thus build it. It is directly in the power of
woman, through her mercantile patronage, to accomplish this revival. " For if she
will buy American goods, she will, you may depend on't; and if she won't buy for-
eign goods, she won't; so there's an end on't."
But, " if it were done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." Now is the time
for her to assert her moral and intellectual strength, her comprehension of the under-
lying currents that should sustain the even flow of our prosperity, and also the quick-
f^ sands that will insidiously engulf it. I She need not for this wait for the ballot-box.
i The demonstration of her high resolve will bring man into wondering appreciation,
and he may ask woman as a favor to share the onus of government.
The basis ^bH reform, in whatever department of thought or action, is an
increasing knowledge of truth, to which purity is the leader. The veriest misogynist
pictures his ideal of purity in female form, and we all instinctively concede this attri-
bute to woman; but to lead man to truth, which will unveil all his errors, she must pre-
serve to herself purity uncontaminated. It is her most powerful weapon. The story
of the chasteDianawho, with merely a look, converted the sensual Actaeon into a stag,
torn to pieces by his own dogs, should be an ^z^^ in every woman's daily rosary,
for it would give a basilisk power to her glance upon evil. The drinking-bout, the
dice box, the betting pool, could all be denied admission to the festal or family board
if the hostess willed it so; but Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes is the only one who had the
courage to publicly do so. It is a sad confirmation of the rapid growth of vice, that
in our standard lexicon of 1869 a "bookmaker" is defined as "one who writes and
publishes book," or " compiles them," and in the one of 1889, the additional definition
to " bookmaker " is given, "a professional betting man," with all the details of the
process. It is safe to say, that if woman had ostracized the betting man, whether
prince or loafer, from her society, he would have gained no significance in our diction-
ary, which is a mighty umpire, especially for the rising generation.
It is first in the home that the reformatory processes begin, and from thence
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 543
are carried into life's wide arena. When at the Fourth of July celebration, though her
husband was not one of the orators of the day, Josiah Allen's wife looked up and with
glowing pride observed that Josiah's " biled " shirt was the whitest of any man's there,
is to me full of meaning. Pride that our men shall be the purest, the cleanest, and
that our efforts in the home shall make them so, will effect the greatest reform; for,
after all, it must come from within; the mere veneer of it in statutory enactments is
nothing without the vital spirit.
Ever since woman led the way to that wonderful tree in Eden she has been con-
scious that she is the leader of man; there is only fear of her conception of her position
reverting to that crude one of a certain savage tribe, whose women, when sought in
marriage, leap astride a horse and ride away furiously, the wooer in pursuit, and never
abate their speed till the wooer's swiftness elicits their approval, when they allow
themselves to be caught. But whether in the forum, or in the clinic, or in the acad-
emy, or in the pulpit, or in the legislative hall, or in the home, woman is the lode-star;
and with the suffrage which Heaven from the first accorded her, she can will the world
to sway which way she please; but her own mind and heart must be in consonance
with all the virtues if she desire to bring about the reign of virtue; she must strive,
and wait, and pray.
"Strive — yet I do not promise;
The prize you dream of today
Will not fade when you think to grasp it,
And melt in your hand away;
But another and holier treasure.
You would now perchance disdain,
Will come when your toil is over.
And pay you for all your pain.
"Wait — yet I do not tell you;
The hour you long for now
Will not come with its radiance vanished,
And a shadow upon its brow;
Yet far through the misty future,
With a crown of starry light.
An hour of joy you know not
Is winging her silent flight.
" Pray — though the gift you ask for
May never comtort your fears.
May never repay your pleading.
Yet pray, and with hopeful tears;
An answer, not that you long for.
But diviner, will come one day;
All souls will gratefully hear it.
Then strive, and wait, and pray."
'•KATHARINA" IN "THE TAMING OF THE SHREW."*
By MRS. EMMA PRATT MOTT.
The prelude to this play, " The Taming of the Shrew," is one of the richest, raciest
most delectable pieces of humor extant. This play has been called a perfect whirl-
wind of the oldest, maddest freaks and farces imagin-
able. " Let us for a few moments attend to a brief
study of the principal characters:
A rich gentleman of Padua has two daughters,
one apparently all that is shrewish, and the other
apparently all loveliness. Like other good parents,
he of course desired to see them married. Kate, the
shrew, must be married anyhow, and Bianca must
have a fat estate for a husband, but he wisely denies
the hand of the seeming angel to anyone until the
seeming shrew shall have been disposed of, which
sets the wits of the angelic Bianca's suitors at work
to find a suitor for the shrewish Kate. Presently the
very genius of whims and self-will appears as the
suitor of Kate, in the person of one Petruchio, a rich
gentleman of Verona, a friend to one of Bianca's
suitors. Meanwhile the son of another rich gentle-
man of Pisa visits Padua and is brought within the
circle of Bianca's attractions. Lucentio sees Bianca,
and the first sight is fatal. By a simple though skill-
ful enough intrigue he wins her in the disguise of a
tutor to her in classic lore, he being obliged to em-
ploy this method because Bianca's father has cut off all open approaches to her until
he shall have disposed of her naughty sister. This forms a sort of under plot in the
play, the interest turning upon the manner in which Petruchio woos and weds and
tames the so-called frightful Kate. Both these girls are affected, their affectation pass-
ing for sincerity, Kate puts on the show of what she has not, and Bianca puts off the
show of what she has. The one purposely seems worse and the other better than she
is. Kate, the shrew, too proud to be vain, will do nothing to gain friends, everything
to serve them. Bianca, too vain to be proud, will do everything to gain friends and
nothing to serve them. Bianca is fond of admiration and gets it. Kate envies her
what she sees, but will not stoop or bend to get it. In a word, Kate is willful, Bianca
selfish. The one affects shrewishness before marriage, the other conceals it until after
marriage, for they do not so much change their real faces after marriage as to drop
the masks which conceal them. We have all known men who were studiously wise,
gentle and amiable in appearance, yet mean and selfish apart, and who appeared to be
gentle and amiable because of their selfishness. Again we know men who rather
study to be rough, rash, reckless and unkind, seemingly from mere disinterestedness,
because they were more concerned for the good of others than for their favor, and
Mrs. Emma Pratt Mott is a native of Michigan. Her parents were Dr. and Mrs. Frank H. Pratt. She was educated in
Boston and Elmira, New York. She married the Rev. Henry Elliott Mott, a Presbyterian minister of high standing and ability.
Her principal literary works are magazine articles and j ournalistic work. Her profession is that of a Shakespearean Teacher.
In religious faith she is Presbyterian. She is a graceful writer and speaker, a beautiful and accomplished woman, of great
popularity as a social and literary leader in every community in which she sojourns. As a devoted and beloved wife, she is a
model for the world, and a pillar of strength to her husband in his most noble work. Her present postoiMce address is
Buffalo, New York.
MRS. EMMA PRATT MOTT.
♦The full title of the address as delivered was, "Katharina" in "The 'Taming of the Shrew' or The Rights of Men.'
544
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 545
more willing to do them a kindness than to have it known. The first will caress their
friends and then desert them. The second will abuse their friends, and then imperil
their lives to serve them. Kate belongs to that class of women who will never allow
their husbands to govern them if they can help it, nor ever respect their husbands
unless they do govern them; who, unsubdued, will do their worst to plague them, but
who once subdued will do their utmost to please them. There seems to be a desire
with some women to try to prove their husbands and to kno^y them, whether they be
what they call genuine pieces of manhood or not. Petruchio's treatment therefore
rather reforms the conduct than the character of his wife, rather brings out the good
which she seemed to want than to remove the bad which she seemed to have. After
marriage there are no traces of the shrew in her conduct. One writer naively says,
her sense of duty in the relation dissipates all her artificial life and straightens her
behavior. All the materials of her closing speech are in her heart all the while, but
she disdains to let them out, and it is not until Petruchio forces them out that she
stands before us in her true character. Still the tender and considerate husband is all
the while lurking under his affected willfulness. Some writers think that Petruchio
falsifies himself more than Kate does because he has more to falsify. He is himself
all truth, yet utters nothing but lies; full of kindness and good-nature, he will put on
the garb of a fiend to do the work of a benefactor. "He will at any time say more
and do fewer bad things than any other man in Italy." He now proceeds to work
out of Kate what seems to others the plainest impossibility by the wildest contradic-
tion. " Say that she rails; why then I'll tell her plain she sings." His outrageous
humor reached at once its height when riding with his wife he visits her father, he
meets old Vincentio, and requires him to salute her as a beautiful lady.
" Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly true.
Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?"
Thus do we see, as if by magic, Kate the cursed presently become the most loyal
of wives. We have not a grain of pity to spare for Kate, who is better pleased to find
a conqueror than to be the conqueror. On the whole it is satisfactory to her to dis-
cover that there is at least one man of force and spirit in the world, and to know that
he, and no other, has chosen her for his wife; and so Kate transfers all her boldness
to the very effrontery of obedience. Behind her delightful sauciness lie warmth and
courage at heart. Strange that Shakespeare should have known so long ago that
which most people still find so hard to learn. We behold in the great bard's wonder-
ful magic mirrors that his heroines are more perfectly feminine than any woman could
have found it in her heart or brain to make them. Woman, as she resembles man,
was of less consequence to Shakespeare than woman in herself. Shakespeare says:
" Here woman stands, the modern world stooping at her feet will have to yield some
of the reputed exclusiveness of men, but only such traits of it as Imogene, Cordelia,
Beatrice or Portia will elect." In dealing with married love Shakespeare, ever true
to nature, gives it no rhapsodies or flowers of speech. It may be a love that over-
whelms a man's whole nature, as with Othello, when he exclaimed after an enforced
absence, and looking into his wife's face:
"If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy."
Or Brutus, comforting his wife when she desires to know the secret that is oppress-
ing him:
"Am I yourself but as it were in sort of limitation, .
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
— And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife."
and his answer is full of profound, earnest, sad truth:
(35)
546 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
" You are my true and honorable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart."
Here is true, consistent, reasonable love. It does not worship the ground she walks
upon. It does not desire to kiss the glove she wears. He, the Shakespeare husband
lover, despises the ground, and would throw the glove into the fire. But Othello, in
that moment of fury, would willingly die, and Brutus would give his life for his wife.
This love in the married life, as represented by Shakespeare, is the real. It has grown
out of companionship and friendship, and passion only plays a super's part, says his
lines and departs. " My husband is my friend," is the grandest exclamation of
Shakespeare's married love. The great and noble friendship between husband and
wife which, like sun rays, serve to reveal the black and bloody canvas of human his-
tory, become fewer and fewer as the progress of the age teaches us the art of a greater
selfishness, and teaches us to laugh where once we wept, and never weep at all.
Petruchio had the right which was accorded husbands in those days to resort to the
English custom of selling wives whenever considered shrews,, but the thought never
once suggested itself to him, for he loved Katharina, and endeavored to let her see
herself in an exaggerated form, and thus become disgusted with such conduct. But
as late as April 7, 1832, at Carlisle, England, occurred an example of wife selling.
One Mrs. Thompson was eloquently shuffled off at auction, her husband being the
auctioneer, and this is his speech:
" Gentleman, I have to offer to your notice my wife, Mary Ann Thompson, other-
wise Williams, whom I mean to sell to the highest bidder. Gentlemen, it is her wish
as well as mine to part forever. She has been to me only a born serpent. I took her
for the comfort and the good of my house, but she became my tormenter, a domes-
tic curse. Gentlemen, I speak truth when I say may God deliver us from troublesome
wives and frolicsome women. Avoid them as you would a mad-dog, a roaring lion, a
loaded pistol, cholera, Mt. Etna, or any other pestilential thing in nature. Now I have
told you the dark side of my wife and shown you her faults and failings. I will intro-
duce the bright side and explain her qualifications and goodness. She can read novels
and milk cows. She can laugh and weep with the same ease that you take a glass of
ale. Indeed, gentlemen, she reminds me of what the poet said of women:
'"Heaven gave to women the peculiar grace
To laugh, to weep, to cheat the human race.'
" She can make butter and scold the maid, and she can sing Moore's melodies, and
make her frill and cap. She can not make rum, but she is a good judge of its quality
from long experience. I therefore offer her, with all her perfections and imperfections,
for the sum of fifty shillings."
It is marvelous that there could have been found any man with courage and valor
enough to buy, but such there was by name Henry Mears, who, after an hour s hag-
gling, offered twenty shillings and a Newfoundland dog. They then parted in perfect
good temper, Mears and the shrew and Mr. Thompson and the dog. Petruchio could
have exercised his right also to the use of the bridle or brank, which being put upon
the offender by order of the magistrate, and fastened with a padlock behind the ear,
she is lead in it around the town by an officer to her shame, nor is it taken off until
the woman begins to show external signs of humiliation. The character of Petruchio
is not so uncommon, and the world is full of Katharinas. Katharina's closing speech
is at once elegant, eloquent, poetical and true. It is worth all volumes on household
virtues.
What kind of a man is our modern Petruchio? A sensible fellow with practical
ideas to suit his wife, who fancies that men are in danger in their turn of losing some
of their rights. He is like the majority of young men in this country, well-meaning,
industrious, hoping to make a moderate fortune because a good citizen, husband and
father, and go through life creditably and honorably. He says: "What is my wife to
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 547
be to me and I to my wife? " Since I began to listen to the story of woman's wrongs
and woman's rights, the world is turned topsy-turvy. I am morally sea-sick. Tis a
state of transition with women, answers this modern American Katharina, with her
pale, striking features, a skin like dough, gray, thoughtful eyes, her chest flat, her
movements and her whole bearing full of unrest, and these hinting subtly at suppressed
powers, and whether she condemn a philosophy or dismiss a lover to arrange her hair,
it is done alike with the same careless air of superiority. This modern Kate grows
courteously satirical when she talks of her grandmother's days, but one notices that
this same charming woman on examining some old ivory miniature grows annoved to
find the features of those last century dames as refined as their own, and the vehicle
of as subtle and strong minds. " Strange," says the nineteenth century woman, as she
puts them away, "that these faces could have been content with a life of serfdom —
mere housekeepers." "But, Kate," says our modern Petruchio, "men are mulish;
these same domestic women are here in the nineteenth century. They won't die out;
they won't be weeded out. This domestic woman is a great stumbling block in your
modern woman's way. Man treats you precisely as the Chinese would were you a
missionary, would receive your new spiritual deity — that is to say, with all politeness,
with uplifted hands and drooping eyes of adoration, and then go home and plump on
their knees before their own private little gods behind the kitchen door. This same
old-fashioned domestic woman lives and moves and has her being in her home!
Really, Kate, how long is this transition to last? Whose fault is it that it lasts so
long?" " Petruchio, as you are one of those men who come in with the mob at the
end of a reform, I advise you to shut your ears to the tumult, and attend only to your
business." " But how can I shut my ears? The air is filled with the protests of women.
Do tell what it is they want. What is it that they do not want? What is it that is
needed in the right training of girls that is not needed just as imperatively in the right
training of boys? What makes the difference then between the position in the world
of young men and young women when we men have always granted, and always will,
that neither sex is naturally the superior nor the inferior of the other in essentials?"
"The difference," says Katharina, " lies wholly in the idea that underlies the
teaching of each, for from the day the boy chips the shell until he dies he is taught, he
breathes it in the air, he learns it by perpetual hard experience, that she is to be taken
care of all her days. Nearly every girl in our fashionable boarding schools and in our
public schools has the day, when the prince will arrive and carry her off, fixed in her
horizon like the light to which the mariner steers. What marriage means, what it im-
plicates of duty to herself, to her husband, and to her possible children, she never
thinks, nor is she required to think."
" It seems strange to me, Kate, that women will submit to live with us men when
they are feeling that we are depriving them of their rights, and that man is the enemy
of woman's best advancement. If we were told the history of any race which for three
thousand years had lived in daily intercourse with another with a chance for the same
culture, with the same language, seated side by side in perfect social equality, and
which had yet remained in a state of subjection, debarred from rights which they
had held to be theirs, we should be apt to decide sharply enough that the rights are
not fitted to them by nature, or that their cowardice and hesitation to grasp their rights
deserved the serfdom. There have been women soldiers, judges, merchants in every
country and in every age, women who were leaders in the state in war cr in intrigue, and
the readiness with which the ground was ceded to them, the applause with which their
slightest merit was welcomed, proved how easily climed was the path they trod, and
how accessible to every woman if she had chosen to climb it. It was not altogether
the fault of the obdurate rock that it hid for so many years the gifts of manhood from
the boy Theseus, but his own flaccid muscles and uncertain will which failed to over-
turn it. When the hour came to use them, the rock was put aside, the golden sandals
and magic sword, which were to make his path easy and clear to him, lay underneath."
" The transcendental inspiration you men have in guessing why God ever made
548 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
woman, the knowledge you have of the secret of our power, is appalling. We have
been told by our self-appointed advisers, how we may become charming, and in what
way we are in danger of losing our charms. That we are the last and most perfect
work of God, sprung from the rib of Adam, nearest the heart, we are told, and at length
after six thousand years of tuition we are flattered with having risen to an equality
with man. The efforts to equalize with man's woman's wages, to multiply her oppor-
tunities, to claim her interests in the politics of human rights, to secure her alleviating
presence in the rude scenes of republicanism, these, Petruchio, are of small conse-
quences to men."
" You have sprung so many points on me, Kate, I can only hope to see one at a
time. I wish I might answer you as a man who honors woman and longs for her noble
power in all that man holds dear. Let us look at equal rights first. The assertion that
the sexes are equal is true if rightly understood, but the way the word equal is often
used it does not convey the exact truth and leads to confusion. When we say that five
dollars in gold is equal to five dollars in silver, we do not mean that there is equality
of weight, but of value. The statement that Napoleon was equal to Milton is true.
An examination of the two brains would show a difference of mental organization so
that in some respects one would be found superior to the other, and at the same time
inferior in other points, but the value of mental endowments in one would be equal to
that of the other. The only kind of equality that can be said to exist between the
sexes is that which exists between objects that are unlike. If in addition to what
woman can do now, she could compete successfully with men wherein they have the
pre-eminence, she would not be his equal, but his superior. There is no danger of this,
as God has provided a regular system of compensation, so that when one person
covets that he has not with the idea that it is better than that actually possessed, he
loses the old in acquiring the new. It is not desirable that husband and wife should
stand on different planes, so that the mind of one is so far above the other that there
is no point of contact; but if their minds are on the same level, the blending of these
diverse characteristics produces a union which can not be readily sundered. If men and
women were alike this world would resemble the monotonous plane whereon there is a
superabundance of a certain kind of equality. The aggressive and tedious assertions
of woman's ability to do this, that or the other work in the world are superfluous, or
would be so but for modern myopia. In the outer world of fact, of demonstration, of
volition, tangible proofs and causalities and material processes, man is supreme, while
in that more subtle sphere where lie spiritual convictions which overtop our actual
life, and lead up from grossness to glory, woman is the priestess. Are these two
spheres independent of each other? Are they not conjoined indissolubly? It is a
mistake, and takes from us men one of our supreme rights, that which places antag-
onism between the two. There should be between them harmony as sweet as that
which moves the concentric rings of Saturn, which I viewed the other night. Untaught
by the presence and inspiration of woman, we men would soon become cold, dry
petrifactions, constantly obeying the centripetal force of our lives and ending by
alluring self. And I take it, without man's firmness and strength, woman, in whom
the centrifugal force is stronger, would remain a weak, vacillating creature, without
self-poise. Cultivate her intellect and his heart, and the healthy action and reaction
consequent upon such a balance of forces, you have the true relationship established
between the sexes — the relationship which the Creator pronounced good. Do not
misunderstand me, Kate. I say, let woman, if she will, measure the stellar distances,
study mechanical principles or the learned professions, make a picture or write a
book, and there are women, not a few, true and noble, who have done all this, but let
her never for such as these abdicate her own nobler work, neglecting the greater for
the less. If a woman has a special gift let her exercise it. If she has a particular mis-
sion let her work it out. Few women, though, are of this elect class, just as few men
are. But I would have woman never forget that it is not for what they may possibly
add to the sum of human knowledge that the world values them primarily. That
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 549
some man is as likely to do as not. But what women fail to do in their own peculiar
sphere, no man can possibly do. Did you ever think, Kate, that woman may be able
to do anything that man does in his sphere, if she be trained, but it is inconceivable
that man could do a woman's work, essentially that which is most womanly? Before
you answer this, let us look at your second point, where you generously and most prac-
tically inquire about the maidens by choice and the maidens by necessity. What are
they to do, and how are they to live in this world? Just here is where one of the
rights of man should be emphasized. There is one hard fact which women are apt to
shirk, but which they must after all — that is, that in the pitiless economies of nations,
the question is not the worker, but the value of the work. When Rosa Bonheur
or Jean Ingelow bring their wares to market, the question of sex does not intrude
itself in the matter of payment. If a woman has taken a desk in a counting-room,
let her do her duty like a man, expecting no favors because she is a woman. She has
no right to stay at home when it rains, and no right to leave before her hour because
she can not cross certain places after dark, no right not to expect to be 'blown up'
(using the expression which suits us men best) when she makes wrong entries. It is
one reason for less wages that woman will not submit to conditions that men have to
submit to, because their uncertain future makes them careless and less interested in
their work. Once let woman face fate, and not flirt with it, and this question of ' less
wages ' will emerge from its present muddle. In the matter of wages, as between
husband and wife, the husband's wages are not simply payment from the capitalist for
his work, but for his wife's also. The money he earns the wife applies to the house-
hold and their common wants. The wife in the truest sense is her husband's most
important business partner, his partner in a more complete and comprehensive sense
than any other he can have. The household is her department of the business of life,
as her husband's is the store, the manufactory or the office. If she fail to act con-
stantly upon this principle she is an unfaithful and untrustworthy partner, and is as
much to blame as if her husband were to neglect his stock, his shipping, his contract, his
client. Why should the husband be expected to manage his part of the business upon
sound and correct business principles while his wife-partner is letting hers go at loose
ends, with a shiftlessness which, if he should imitate, would ruin them in a year? Now
what is the principle upon which every good businessman manages his affairs? Why,
sjmply that of sovereignty. He keeps, if he is a sensible man, his stock under lock
and key, and exacts a rigid accountability in its use."
" But," says Kate, " we housekeepers would not dare lock up our butter, eggs or
sugar. We could not keep a girl a day if we doled out our stores and held our serv-
ants accountable for their use."
" Suppose a manufacturer of jewelry should reason as you do, Kate. He says, ' I
can not keep my help satisfied unless I give them free access to my stock of gold and
diamonds. I must throw open my tool drawers, and I must not ask how much mate-
rial this or that manufactured article has taken to make.' You know that man would
have to shut up shop in less than a year. Now I still ask, Kate, is it fair, is it right
that while the husband superintends his business himself the wife partner surrenders
her responsibility into the hands of ignorant and irresponsible subordinates? Thus
conducting the household on purely business principles does not necessarily entail
upon you the least participation in the labor of the family. It does not absolutely
require your personal presence at the scene of those labors, although the woman who
considers it beneath her dignity to go into her kitchen has no more business to under-
take to keep house than the master mechanic who is too proud to enter his workshop
has to try to carry on a shop. The absolutely essential thing is that yours should be
the controlling and directing mind, and that to you everyone in your employ should
be held rigorously responsible."
" I wish," says Kate, " that you would specialize a little. You men in laying
down your instructions to us women do it in the most stupendously general way, which
we are sometimes tempted to think betrays a condition of mind which lacks experi-
mental knowledge."
550 • THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
" Well, I readily own up to little experimental knowledge in housekeeping, but I
am only suggesting that housekeeping should be conducted on the same principle on
which we men conduct business. And first, to specialize, you should tell your serv-
ants that employing them at stipulated wages to do certain work their time belongs
to you. Tell them distinctly that if you prefer to keep your stores under lock and
key it is not because you suspect their integrity, but that you consider it your business
as a housekeeper to know what is the cost of living. And secondly, although the plan
of keeping a book of family accounts only belongs incidentally to the main subject
under discussion, it is so important that I can not refrain from a special mention of it.
It is the simplest thing in the world, not taking on an average more than ten minutes
a day. For reference in case of a disputed bill it is invaluable, while its influence in
keeping down expenses is wonderfully wholesome. It would be just as safe for the
merchant to neglect his cash book as for his domestic partner, who undertakes to do
her business properly, to neglect her cash book. I believe, Kate, that no higher com-
pliment can a husband pay to his wife than to say, ' She is an excellent manager of my
home, finely as she has been educated; she knows everything, and how to direct what
should be done, from the private family dinner to a sumptuous entertainment."
" You may add, if you please, Petruchio, that woman has done nearly everything
that has been done in the peaceful arts from the dawn of history up to the present era,
as you will have to acknowledge, if you have examined at all intelligently the Woman's
Building at this wonderful fair of this wonderful nation. In all the earlier ages woman
established the home, built the house, reared the family, provided food, tilled the
ground, garnered the crops, provided materials for raiment, spun thread and wove
cloth, designed and manufactured clothing, cared for the sick and educated the chil-
dren. Modern civilization, developing commerce and manufactures and improving
agriculture, has diverted the attention of men from fighting and hunting, and given
into their hands the task of providing food and raiment and luxuries for the family.
Indeed, the history of civilization maybe regarded as a history of the transfer of these
tasks from the hands of women in the household to the hands of men in the factory,
the mill and the shop. And may not the single monotonous occupation to which
women are now confined account for that which seems to militate against domestic
peace
?"
"Why, Kate, the science of domestic economy is one of the noblest arts, the hand-
maid of domestic and, therefore, national health, riches and welfare, and worthy the
highest powers of the most gifted of our women. You re-read the story of Ruth
Pinch as given in ' Martin Chuzzlewit.' It is enough to make one in love with cook-
ing and keeping house. The pretty girl does everything with such grace and alert-
ness, her whole soul is so bent on infusing comfort into everything, she is so unself-
ish, so wise, so unconscious of her wisdom, so good, and knows so little about her
goodness, that she is one of the sweetest of Dickens' many lovely, thoroughly
human, women. It is a pitiful truth that we may become homeless without being
actually houseless, for it does look as though the family or homekeeping was fast
becoming a matter of temporary arrangement. Home, once a woman's temple, is now
her prison. The sweet, quiet virtues which were once her greatest charm are now the
badge of her slavery. Strong to do, she is weak to bear, and while she can nerve
herself to perform the most revolting offices of a hospital nurse, and take an active
part in the most ghastly operations, she can not live under the comparative monotony
of her home life. Duty is not in her vocabulary now. She writes work over where it
stood. And, Kate, I fear work means simply excitement and publicity. Is there not
danger that not a grace, not a gift will be kept in the maturing shade, that not a violet
hides behind its leaves? All the treasure which once used to be kept in sacred shrines
are now laid in the shop window for everyone to stare at, and all buy who will. A
pretty piping voice, that can sing passably well a drawing-room ballad, hires herself
for public display. You hear girls say they are hoping to become anotherCamilla
Urso because they can strike a true note on the violin. Many a girl who can draw
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 551
well enough for a parlor album pluhges into an exhibit, and dreams of fame through
her art, and one with the faintest faculty for situation dashes off a novel which is to
bring her name very near to that of George Eliot. While I sincerely, deeply sympa-
thize with every reform which tends to afford a fair field for exertion for those women
who are forced to select for themselves a trade or profession, I deprecate everything
that allures those who possess the inestimable privilege of a home to desert their
fittest sphere of action. You will smile, Kate, when I say that the manhood of man
must suffer some loss when woman has appropriated a portion of it; for its nobler
attributes are created and evoked by the duty and privilege of ministering to her
wants, and fortifying and protecting her. I believe woman is a complement, not a
substitute, for man. Is it, my Kate, so beneath the glory of a woman to be one whose
society is sought with avidity by the opposite sex, whose most ardent champions are
men, at whose bidding men are prompt to respond, and in whose companionship men
seem to find peculiar happiness? A woman whose husband will think her adorable,
it matters little whether her eyes be large or light, small or dark, her features classic
or irregular, whether her tongue be eloquent or she be given to silence, she hides
within her being that subtle something which emphasizes the fact that men have some
rights which women are bound to respect. I can not express it better than to say
that, while she is restful, at the same time she coaxes out ambitions which we never
dreamed were ours. She seems to have the grace of leisure. She is never too busy.
She would inject a little bit of duncehood into our American life — into this restless
desire for study. If she be fortunate enough to possess children, she assimilates the
spirit of the age and interprets it to them, and in them evolution seems to take strides
swift and sure and forward. Should we give small credit to her who has kept holy
and watered with the rain of deep feeling this acrid, dusty highway of civilization, and
instructed her nature so that it will bring forth beautiful June blossoms?
" * Happy he!
With such a mother; faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and truth in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall.
He shall not blind his soul with clay! '
"You spoke, Kate, of securing woman's alleviating presence in the rude scenes of
republicanism. I suppose you have reference to her participation in politics. His-
tory tells us that when the contrast between the sexes has been least marked, the
tenderer one does not seem to have gained purity or the physically stronger elevation.
The Spartan maids who exercised in public unrobed, did not always, as Plato fondly
hoped, wear virtue for a garment. The mothers of the Partheniaes doubtlessly acted
from patriotism, but less strong-minded women would have considered their honor
paramount. The idea of marriage, of the natural choice of each other by one man
and one woman, to unite and form one separate family, seems to be as naturally
implanted in the human race as does the idea of language or religion, and if the famify
is one as the United States government is one, then it would be as absurd to send two
representatives to the polls as it would be to send two representatives or ministers to
Great Britain to act on their individual responsibilities. So long as a woman elects
her own husband, and she can sometimes take her choice out of several candidates, it
is her own fault if she is not properly represented."
" And have American women, whether married or single, any vital share or inter-
est in this grand free government of ours? " asked Kate.
" With all the emphasis of a profound conviction I answer, yes. Such a touching
and intimate interest as no women ever had before in any government under the sun,
because the principles embodied in it and represented by it have made her what she
is, and they alone can make her what she hopes to be. If it be true that the position
of woman in society is a sure test of its civilization, then is our America in the van
of progress. Nowhere else in the world is the ideal of womanhood so chivalrously
552 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
worshiped and protected. Nowhere else is she so respected, obeyed and beloved.
In three exterior forms of action women excel — talk, manner and dress. It is in talk —
yes, in all three that American women take the lead. Great as is your proficiency in the
handlingof manner and dress, it is by talk alone that you exercise a conquering force. I
know that dress and manner are regarded as indispensable auxiliaries, but none
except the foolish place them in the front rank of combat, while every woman who
merits being counted as a social artist, takes care in using them as but subordinates
to her speech. In society our American women are extremely self-poised, reasonable
and capable of defending their own opinions and of abetting their desires, and as you
talk more and laugh more you lead and dictate more to your brother man. It is to
you women that men must go for exhilaration, elevation, brightening and appetizing,
and above all, strengthening to do our duty, and contentment while we are doing it.
Kate, I do wish that men's rights could be regarded just a little — talked about, sung
about, prayed about, and preached about."
" Men's rights! What do you mean, Petruchio? Men have always had all the rights
there were to have, and what more can you cry for? "
" My dear Kate, this is the age of woman worship. Women are angels and men
are mostly demons. Our modern literature makes all virtues feminine and all vices
masculine. A well-formed, fair-faced, sweet-tempered, gentle-spoken woman, if young
and accomplished, is an angel, though her heart may be cold, selfish, incapable of a gen-
erous emotion; an angel, though utterly regardless of the misery she ruthlessly inflicts
upon others. What with women's journals and women's clubs and women's colleges
and women's departments, and women's this and that, we are beginning to fear entire
exclusion from the human family. Some one has said that we are in danger of for-
getting that ' a woman is a human being first and a woman afterward.' But we have one
hope and one consolation, and that is in the motto on the letter-paper of the Woman's
Branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition, viz.: 'Not
things, but men.' We are still recognized as a man and brother. For this I for one
am devoutly thankful. I confess to you, Kate, that I have just joined the P. A. S. O.
M. T. N. R., which in this age of cabalistic nomenclature, means the " Protective Asso-
ciation for Securing to Oppressed Men Their Neglected Rights.' I have never liked
the ' Taming of the Shrew' in Shakespeare version, and would like to get out an edi-
tion of my own. There is something so out of keeping with all reality in it. Whoever
knew a man in the better circles of society have his way by any domineering method
as against the contrary by his wife? I believe there are cases, such as that of the one-
time invincible John L. Sullivan, where man's superior muscular action is put into play
to secure him wdiat he is pleased to term his rights. But you know, Kate, that it is
not considered good form for a man in the best society to beat his wife. This puts him
at a certain disadvantage. If he is not permitted to show his superiority in the sense
physical, where then can he show it? There is something so far-fetched in the
whole conception of a man's having his way that it seems to me that the play lacks
hViman interest. Perhaps there will be a land some time —
" ' Where wives will all obedient be.
And men will have their way.'
" Meanwhile, Kate, there is another thing that you enjoy, and which seems to be
denied to us men, for the most part, at least. I refer to the literary circles all over our
land. Of the. members of the Chautauqua and kindred circles, what an infinitesi-
mal fraction are men. I know that we have, as a rule, less ability and taste for this
sort of thing, but the reason is that we have been repressed for generations. Give us
a chance. When you women gather to hear a play of Shakespeare, or to throw addi-
tional obscurity on Browning, or see what extravagant panegyric can do for Walt
Whitman, men look on with envious eyes. When there are 9 o'clock breakfasts
and formal luncheons and coffees and 5 o'clock teas, we men must rest content to stay
without the portals. The one persistent and unquestioned right which we seem to
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 553
have left, is to supply the ducats for the same. You know, Kate, that if }'ou attend the
fine literary association, of which }ou are a bright and particular star, I must mean-
while in my office earn enough to buy the paper and ink with which you write those
essays which delight all readers. If you will bear with me, Katharina, 1 would like to
tell you of two or three prominent faults of your sex which injure and restrict our
rights as men. The most mischievous and glaring, and the most ruinous, is extrava-
gance. I knew you would look aghast at this, and ask me for an account of the
money I spend for tobacco, etc., but you should be charitable toward some of our
habits, seeing that we do not interfere with yours."
" Bless mc, Petruchio, what habits have we, I should like to know? "
"A multitude, Kate. I don't know the half. Crochet work, embroidery, painting
— tea is milder than tobacco, but your systems are more sensitive. Then there are pow-
ders, perfumes, eau-de-cologne, lavender, verbena, heliotrope, and what not, against all
of which I have nothing to say, because their odors are nearly equal to that of a fine
Havana cigar. I would be glad if this feminine love for color and fragrance was
more common among men. Rut there are curious differences of taste. The peculiar
fascination in smoking is not in the taste of the weed, but in the sight of the
smoke. It is called the ear of corn which we hold out to induce into harmony the
skittish thoughts which are running loose. I understand that knitting is the great
feminine narcotic. You will agree with me, Kate, that this habit is not very impor-
tant in comparison with those vices of character. Is not the use of the weed less
objectionable than those systematic habits of envy, avarice, hypocrisy, or the vice of
extravagance? Wastefulness has almost become a trait of society. American women,
especially, are profuse and lavish in money and dress, in equipage, in furniture, in
houses, in entertainments. Perhaps the largeness, the immensity of our land's
resources and materials, as well as the wonderful national advance we have already
made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling of profusion and the habit of extrava-
gant display. When fortunes do not arrive by magic, but must be built up painfully,
slowly, at the expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and the heart of the builder,
and when a close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge
and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value than wealth, a
high national integrity and conscience, and sinking the immaterial and the intellectual
in the material and the sensual. It is, then, by you, the women of America, that the
men shall have saved to them their rights. Great financial crisises in which colossal
schemes burst like bubbles; commercial bankruptcies, in which honorable names are
bandied on the lips of common rumor and white reputations are blackened by public
suspicion; minds that started in life with pure and honest principles, determined to
win fortune by the straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted and ending
by enthroning gold in the place niade vacant by departed virtues; hearts that were
once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that were wont to
thrill through and through at a noble deed or fine thought, now pulseless and hard as
the nether millstone; souls that once believed in God, Heav^en, and good, now wor-
shiping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their
eager eyes fixed dustward. And yet, if this is to be checked, it must be begun in the
home and by its guardian woman.
"Another thing, Kate, which you women do, and which I think defraud us of our
rights, is your wild chase after, and copying of, European fashions, habits and styles
of living. We are accused of being a nation of copyists, and it is more than half true.
And why it should be I can not understand. I am thankful, as I look at this wonder-
ful "Dream City," that we are beginning to have an art and a literature our very own.
Let us have the fashion, as well, which shall be distinctively American. Not what is
sensible or becoming, but what is the fashion, does the American woman buy. Not
what she can afford to purchase, but what her neighbors have, is generally the crite-
rion. The aping of aristocratic pretentions has been a much ridiculed weakness of
Americans. It is certain that American society needs republicanizing in all its grades.
554 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
This is another right which men look to women to preserve — the effort to renew
society in the natural simplicity of our republican institutions. America has need of
you, Kate. Man has need of you. We suffer for the need, as well as for the power,
of loving and being loved. This is even greater in man than in woman, hence the chief
reason why she almost always controls him. Man craves for the ideal, suffers for the
want of it, but he dies not knowing how to get it. I say, Kate, that not even yet has
womankind, in spite of her irrepressible longing to utter the clear, free, elevated
speech, that shall yet stir the pulses of the world. I can not better tell you what I
believe is needed than to close with the words of that true American woman:
'* ' If thou wouldst have happiness, choose neither fame, which doth not long
abide, nor power, which stings the hand that wields it; nor gold, which glitters, but
never glorifies; but choose thou love, and hold it forever in thy heart of hearts; for
love is the purest and the mightiest force in the universe, and once it is thine, all other
gifts shall be added unto thee. Love that is passionate, yet reverent, gentle, yet
strong, selfish in desiring all, yet generous in giving all, love of man for woman, of
woman for man, of parent for child, of friend for friend — when this is born in the soul
the desert blossoms of the rose; straightway new wishes, hopes, sweet longings and
pure ambitions spring into being like green shoots that lift their tender heads in sunny
places, and if the soil be kind they grow stronger and more beautiful as each glad day
laughs in the rosy sky.' "
NORWAY AND THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
By MRS. ADELIA A. F. JOHNSTON.
This lecture began with a description of a storm on the North Sea. It dwelt upon
the physical geography of Norway, its mountains, fjords, snow fields, glaciers, water-
falls; upon its flora and fauna; upon its government
industries and schools; upon the characteristics of its
people, their general intelligence, thrift and economy.
The opportunity offered by such a subject was
improved by the eloquent speaker, who manifested
throughout her address the possession of those gifts
which have given her reputation as a lecturer and
high standing as an educator. There was the evidence
of keen observation and perception of all she had
seen, and this supplemented by the skill in delivery
of a trained speaker, made the occasion an enjoyable
one to those present at the Congress on the occasion
of her appearance. The description of Norwegian
scenes with Nature appearing in her grandest garbs
and moods was something to be remembered by the
gratified audience. On this occasion, as on others, it
was a source of regret that stenographic reports of
all the utterances at the Congress could not be had
to secure the preservation of all addresses delivered
on all occasions.
Mrs. Johnston closed with a graphic description
of the midnight sun. She spoke entirely without
notes, so the lecture could not be obtained.
MRS. ADELIA A. FIELD JOHNSTON.
Mrs. Adelia A. Field Johnston is a native of Lafayette, Ohio. She was born in 1837. Her parents were Leonard Field
and Margarette Gridley Field. She waB educated at Oberlin College, with two years of post-graduate work in Germany. She
has traveled extensively in Europe, having been abroad live times. She married James M. Johnston in 1859. Mr. Johnston
died in 1862. Mrs. Johnston was appointed principal of the Woman's Department in Oberlin College in 1870, which position
she still holds. She is also professor of Mediaeval History and lecturer on Italian Art. She is a member of the Congrega^
tional Charch. Her postoffioe address is Oberlin, Ohio.
5d5
THE JAPANESE.
By MRS. ROMYN HITCHCOCK.
Japan is a glorious land of balmy air and luxuriant bloom. Though its skies are
less famed than those of Italy, though its volcanic peaks, beautiful terraced hillsides
and cultivated valleys are less known to the tourist,
they are as bright and beautiful as those of any land.
There is a restful charm about life in Japan which
one can not explain and yet can not long resist.
Sailing: from Kobe or Hiogo upon our return voy-
age, after a two years' residence in Japan, was like
leaving a well-loved house. With a sad heart I looked
back as the great steamer carried us from familiar
scenes and friends. The mountains behind the town
soon faded away in the distance, and as darkness
closed around us we passed through the narrow strait
which leads to the famous Inland Sea.
The Empire of Japan embraces four large islands
and a great number of smaller ones, extending over
nearly twenty-seven degrees of latitude and more
than thirty-three and one-half degrees of longitude.
The form of the land is said to resemble that of a silk-
worm with its head raised, the irregular island called
Yesso forming the head.
It might be well to give a moment to the formation
and existence of this remarkable chain of islands. We
will not refer to the geologist, who would theorize about
corrugations of the earth's crust, earthquakes, volcanoes and the like, but we will take
the prettier mythological account which the Japanese themselves give. They tell us
there were two Creator gods, Izanagi and his wife Izanami. These stood upon a float-
ing heavenly bridge and thrust a jeweled spear into the waste of waters beneath. On
withdrawing it the drops of brine piled up and formed one of the islands of Japan.
Upon this the gods descended. They then gave birth to the other islands, and after-
ward to various deities who were necessary to govern the country. Finally the goddess
Amaterasu was born. She is the sun, and every morning as her beams light on the
misty hills the faithful Shintoist turns toward the east and worships. The first Mikado
was descended in a direct line from the sun-godde.<s Amaterasu. From her he received
his insignia of authority, the mirror and the sword. According to the native records
the successive Mikados form an unbroken family line from Jimmu Tenno, the first
emperor, down to the present day, a period of two thousand five hundred years. Japan
has, therefore, the oldest dynasty on earth.
Mrs. Emma Loaise (Bingham) Hitchcock was born in Ithaca, N. Y. She married Prof. Romyn Hitchcock, a chemist,
since which time she has resided alternately in Chicago, New York and Washington, as the position held by her husband
dictated. As a chemist, Professor Hitchcock was chosen in 1886 by the Japanese Minister at Washington to go to Japan in the
employ of the Department of Education. This was the beginning of Mrs. Hitchcock's extended travels and studies in the
Orient. She has since spent three years in foreign travel, and is familiar with almost every place of interest to tourists and
has gathered a fund of valuable information from her travels. She was one of the prime movers in the organization of the
Women's Anthroiwlogical Society, and became the first secretary. A year later, while the society was in a very active and
flourishing condition, she departed on a second voyage to the Orient, her husband having been appointed World's Fair Com-
missioner to China. Her literary work has been limited to a number of descriptive articles on travels among the Ainos,
Japanese and Chinese, several of which have been published.
556
MRS. ROMYN HITCHCOCK.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 557
The influence of that ancient myth remains. The belief that Japan is the land of
the gods, that the emperor is a child of the sun, and that the people are all of divine
descent naturally results in a feeling of importance and superiority which will not be
outgrown in a few generations.
This is the outline of early Japanese mythology, which has developed into a kind
of religion, known as Shinto. The word is of Chinese origin, but it is obvious that
the religious system which it designates must have developed many centuries before
any trace of Chinese influence was felt in Japan. Since then, however, Shinto has
changed so much in its ceremonial and external character that it is now scarcely to be
found in its original simplicity in any part of Japan. Indeed, it is only by the study of
the oldest books that we have come to know fairly well what pure Shinto was.
Different religions were introduced from time to time. First came the teachings
of Confucius, which spread rapidly and were received with greatest favor throughout
Japan. At the present day they still constitute an essential part of a Japanese educa-
tion. Then came a few Buddhist images and sutras from Korea, in the year 552 A. D.
But it was not until the famous priest, Kobo Daishi, in the ninth century, ingeniously
identified the various Buddhist saints with the Shinto deities that the new faith became
popular and finally almost supplanted the other. Then arose different schools of Shinto,
and now we find the two religions borrowing from each other, until it is sometimes con-
fusing to decide whether a certain temple is Buddhistic or Shinto, or both.
The oldest Japanese book known is the Ko-ji-ki (" Record of Ancient Matters");
it dates from the year 71 1 A. D. Authentic historical records began in the year 400 A. D.
The earliest mention of Japan by European travelers is by Marco Polo, who from
1272 to 1298 was in the far East. Marco Polo did not visit the country, but he was told
fabulous stories of the great wealth of gold in the island Kingdom of Zipangu.
When Columbus sailed, August 3, 1492, on his venturesome voyage of discovery,
his purpose was first to visit China, and on his return to search for the famous Zipangu.
He discovered America instead.
Japan was not discovered by the Portuguese, the pioneers in navigation in the
Eastern seas, until America had been known for half a century. By the merest acci-
dent, Mendez Pinto, with two of his countrymen, landed in Kinshiu from a piratical
junk in the year 1542.
The Japanese are a most charming and interesting people to live among. They
are small in stature, with black eyes and hair. The types of features of the higher and
lower classes are distinctly marked. The fine oval face with prominent, well chiseled
features, oblique eyes and high, narrow forehead, distinguish the upper class; while the
round face and less oblique eyes pertain to the lower.
Their dress is picturesque, and, generally speaking, convenient. The kimono, or
principal garment, is a long, loose gown, open in front from neck to feet and held to
the form by a gridle, or obi, which is usually made of very rich material fourteen
inches or more in width and four and a half yards in length, made of two thicknesses
of cloth, with a layer of wadding between them. This is wound several times around
the waist and tied at the back, thus forming quite a turnure. Unlike their Western sis-
ters, they wear the bustle on the outside. The long, flowing sleeves of the kimo?io
below the elbow serve as pockets, in which, among other things, they carry soft paper
to use as a substitute for handkerchiefs.
The dress of men, women and children differs but slightly, there being some
variation in length, cut and choice of materials. The kimono of women fits more
closely and comes down a little longer than a man's, and in full dress forms a train
which is stiffened with wadding. The obi or belt of the men is much narrower. In
place of socks they wear what are called tabi, made of cotton cloth, usually white,
precisely like a low shoe, except that there is a special thumb to receive the great toe.
The soles are of heavy duck. When a Japanese goes into the street he puts on a
straw sandal or wooden clog. The sandals or clogs are dropped at the entrance of a
house, and only the tabi are worn on the clean matted floors. The common coolie in
summer wears only a loin cloth.
558 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The hair of the women is dressed very elaborately, so that the services of a hair-
dresser are required to arrange it. For this reason, it is said, they adopted the wooden
pillow, that the hair might not become disarranged during the night, as they can
scarcely afford the hairdresser more than once or twice a week. The coiffure is held
in place by long hair-pins or combs made of tortoise-shell or wood, and is so plastered
with oil that it could not easily become ruffled. Cosmetics are very largely used, the
most important being a paste-like preparation of impure white lead and starch, with
which the face and neck are smeared. Carmine was formerly used to redden the lips,
but at the present time rose aniline is a favorite dye for the purpose. The color it gives
is quite as good as that of the more expensive carmine when seen in the proper light,
but the peculiar green, metallic luster is very conspicuous in a side view, and soon
dispels the illusion of rosy lips. It has been customary for all married women to
shave off their eyebrows and stain their teeth black, to show fidelity to their husbands,
but this custom is falling into disuse, particularly in the cities. The recent adoption
of foreign dress by the empress and her court is being followed by so many that there
is quite a revolution in the manners and customs of the higher classes.
Although woman occupies a position quite inferior to man, so far as I have observed
she is not abused nor harshly treated. Among.the lower classes she works as industri-
ously as her husband, frequently at the same labor. Among the higher classes her
principal duty seems to be to make herself a well-dressed household ornament.
Woman in the past has not received the advantages of a general education, but the
daughters of good families are taught several accomplishments, among these singing,
playing certain musical instruments and dancing are the most usual. The latter is a
system of graceful movements and passes, with fans, parasols and other implements.
Every movement is most carefully studied to ensure the utmost smoothness and grace,
and no young woman who has received a course of training in this art ever makes an
ungraceful movement or gesture. In this, as in a thousand other matters, the Japanese
habit of studying the minutest detail results in most wonderful effects.
The houses throughout the country are built upon one common plan, differing in
size and in the quality of the materials used. For the finer houses the principal building
material is cryptomeria wood, while for the cheaper ones pine is used. The Japanese
house is a low building of light framework, with no foundation, but with a heavy pro-
jecting tiled roof, which is very picturesque.
The rooms may be entered from any part of three sides, by pushing aside one of
the sliding, paper-covered doors. There is no privacy whatever. These doors serve
the purpose of windows, not to see through to be sure, but to admit light. A room of
ordinary size will have four such doors on each of the three sides, about three feet
wide, or exactly the width of the Japanese floor mats. These mats are made of rushes,
which are cultivated like rice, upon marshy ground, the inside filled with straw, mak-
ing them about two inches thick. The edges are bound with blue cotton cloth. They
always measure thirty-four and one-half inches by five feet nine inches, and the size of
the room is determined by the mats — a small room is a four-mat room, one of ordinary
size, eight mats. • The mats are used in the poorest hovels and the richest dwellings.
Chairs are unknown, and all the people sit on the floor in a manner peculiar to
themselves.
The fourth or closed side of the room will probably consist of a sort of double
recess, three or four feet deep, called the tokonojna, for the beauty of which the Jap-
anese houses are justly famed. The floor of the tokonoma is of polished wood, usu-
ally dark in color, is raised a few inches above the floor mats. An upright parti-
tion separates the two parts. On one side will be a clear space, where a kakemono
— a painting on silk— always hangs; on the other side will be a shelf, not a plain
board shelf such as we would probably put in, but a Japanese shelf, which is made
in two parts, running from opposite sides at a slightly different level, the ends over-
lapping a few inches about the middle of the space. Upon this shelf stands some
ornament, and below, on the floor, there is generally a low stand, with a vase of shrubs.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 559
Above there will probably be a small closet, with decorated or plain gilt sliding
doors.
The beauty of the tokonoma is in both the artistic design and the fine finish of
the wood. Some of the woods used are very valuable, and the tokonoma alone may cost
three hundred dollars or more, and yet not be of the richest quality\ The more costly
kinds of wood are imported from China. The most honored guest is always seated in
front of the tokofioma. The ceiling of the room is very neat, usually made of plain, unvar-
nished and uncolored wood. The space between the ceiling and the beams that run
around above the doors may be closed, but it is more likely to be filled with an open
fretwork of wood, which the Japanese are very skillful in making. The best rooms
are found at the back of the house, where the veranda overlooks a beautiful garden, a
landscape in miniature, such as only the Japanese can imagine and create. The peo-
ple love shrubs and flowers, and the poorest of them will have some green thing about,
even though they have only a tube of bamboo for a holder.
They are famous for dwarfing plants. Pine trees a foot high are grown like
forest giants in miniature. Oranges ripen on trees scarcely larger. It requires years
of patient care and watching to attain this result, and a climate such as Japan alone
affords.
They are great lovers of natural scenery. Around every city and town there
are resorts for pleasure and recreation. Usually these are temple inclosures, but
wherever there are plum or cherry trees in blossom there the people gather for a
holiday.
There are two articles which the Japanese deem indispensable to their comfort,
and these are the hibachi and the tobacco-box. The former is a brazier of bronze or
wood, copper lined, holding glowing coals by which the rooms are heated. In the
coldest weather this small brazier is the only source of heat in a Japanese house. The
cooking is done on stoves without chimneys, over fires of burning wood, but the
people depend for bodily comfort upon warm clothing, putting on suit after suit, one
over the other, and toast their hands over the hibachi. The tobacco-box also contains
glowing coals for lighting pipes and cigarettes, with a piece of bamboo to serve as a
cuspidor.
A Yankee invention, called a jin-rik-i-sha, is a comfortable two-wheeled carriage,
with a coolie in place of a horse trotting in the shafts, a veritable baby carriage, also
called a Pullman car. In this one travels over the plains and through the cities. A
sort of bamboo basket is used to travel over the mountains. This basket, called a
hago, is suspended from two poles, which are carried on the shoulders of coolies.
A Japanese hotel differs in proportion as the Japanese houses, ways of living and
customs differ from our own. A foreigner entering a hotel for the first time is at a
loss to know what to do. First he must take off his boots immediately inside the
entrance, which may be through a special doorway, although more commonly the
entire front of the house is open to the street; one finds a passageway leading along
the main floor, which is raised about two feet abov^e the ground. This main floor is
divided into a number of rooms by means of the sliding doors. Probably these doors will
be open, and one can then see through the house into the garden behind. In the pass-
ageway outside the rooms are stained and polished floors which would be marred and
scratched by boots or shoes. Having entered as an unexpected guest, the room will
be absolutely bare of furniture. A servant, or perhaps the proprietor himself, will
immediately bring some cushions about twenty inches square to sit on, and then a
hibachi and tobacco-box. Then follows an iron tea-kettle which is set on a tripod over
the coals, and a small tray on which is a tea-set. The teacups are very small and with-
out handles, very different from ours. There will also be an ornamented dish contain-
ing confections, probably thin, dry, twisted or curled cakes made of rice flour. The
guest will now have been provided with all the luxuries of a native hotel.
The hot water, not boiling, is no sooner poured over the tea than it is poured out
into the cups. You will probably be surprised that the tea is made so quickly and
560 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
without boiling water. As a matter of fact boiling water is quite generally used, but
whenever the best teas are used, and where, as in private houses, the people endeavor
to bring out the finest flavor, the water is just below the boiling temperature. As
regards the quickness of making the tea, it must be understood that the tea used by
the natives is not dried like the teas prepared for exportation. All the native dried tea,
such as is used by the people, is re-dried in the foreign godowns before it is sent abroad.
Just before dinner you will be told that the hot bath is ready. The hot bath is an
essential part of Japanese life. There is probably no other thing that the people enjoy
so thoroughly. The water is often quite too hot for foreigners, but to get the full
benefit of it the temperature should be as high as can be borne. It is then not
enervating, but restful. The bath-room is not always private, but is often quite open
to passers-by in the hall.
The water is used by all the guests successively, but as no one uses soap, the water
remains tolerably clear. The most distinguished guest is given the preference. After
the guests follow the heads of the family and children, aijd lastly the servants. There
are many public bath-houses for the people in every town.
The dinner follows the bath, and it is served in so many different styles that any
attempt to describe them intelligibly would be hopeless; but usually it is served upon
individual red or black lacquered trays, raised on legs from three to eight inches in
height. Upon these trays will come five different dishes.
The lower classes live mainly on rice, radishes, and a few other vegetables and
pickles, the latter being a very important article of diet. The staple article of food
with all classes is rice. The rice is boiled so that the grains retain their form, and it is
eaten without seasoning of any kind.
We will suppose the dinner served upon a neat red lacquered zcn, or tray. On the
right front corner, as we sit facing it, will be a lacquered covered bowl of jniso soup,
probably containing an o.^^ or some fine-sliced or chopped vegetable. On the left
corner will be the porcelain rice bowl; on the corner back of that, a clear vegetable or
fish soup, the suimono, or a soup made with G:gg, fish and vegetables, cooked up all
together and called wan-meshi. On the right back corner will probably be some kind
of baked or grilled fish. A small cup in the center will contain a relish; it maybe
pickles, or beans boiled in black sugar, or fresh cucumber; very likely there will be
some fresh radish tops with skoyn, or soy, a Ijind of sauce from which our Worcester
is made. The grilled fish is sometimes replaced by raw fish, cut in slices, to be eaten
with shoyn. There is no special ceremony about eating, but some skill is required to
manage the chopsticks. These are simply two straight sticks, which are used with one
hand. The food is prepared to be lifted with the chopsticks. The grilled fish is rather
difficult to manage without a knife and fork. However, every scrap of meat can be
taken up if one is skillful and knows how to begin. The daikon, or preserved radish,
is at first quite offensive to taste and smell, but after a time it is recognized as a valu-
able adjunct to a bill of fare, for unseasoned boiled rice soon cloys the appetite unless
some such strong flavored preparation is added. This is not a matter of individual
experience, but also of the Japanese people. There is always some strong pickle used
at their meals; they depend so much upon the nutritive value of rice that they must
eat it in large quantities, and this they can not do without something strong to supple-
ment it.
The Japanese bed is made by spreading a futon, or heavy quilt, on the floor, on
which is placed the peculiar wooden pillow and as many quilts for covering as the
weather may call for. It may be imagined that such a bed is not springy, even if two
or three such quilts are placed beneath one. The bed is not good as compared with
our spring and hair mattresses. However, habit is everything. The amado, or outer
rain-doors, which protect the house from intruders, and shield the paper doors from
rain, being closed, the house becomes quiet and you retire, but doubtless a late party
will arrive and make a great noise just when you wish to sleep. As the houses are so
open, speaking and laughing are distinctly heard all over, and the Japanese are inces-
sant chatterers.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 561
Early in the morning there will be a tremendous racket, caused by opening the
rain-doors. This lasts only a few moments, but long enough to get one wide awake.
As soon as you rise the quilts are removed, the hibachi brought in, and the room swept
and dusted. Meanwhile you make your toilet out on the veranda or down-stairs; you
must wash in the open air even in winter.
The people marry very young, being usually betrothed while in childhood by
their parents. Divorce is quite common and granted for what we would consider most
trivial reasons; for instance, a husband can divorce his wife if she talks too much.
Several modes of burial have prevailed in Japan at different periods. First w^as
the burial in artificial caves, next in simple mounds of earth, then followed burial in
mounds with rock chambers or dolmens, later in double mounds or imperial tumili
surrounded by moats, and lastly, burial in coffins shaped like round tubs, into which
the body is placed in a sitting position. Cremation is also now a very prevalent method
of disposing of the body. An ancient custom was to bury the retainers of a prince
and his family alive, standing upright like a hedge around the grave. This custom
is said to have come from China. Wives suffered themselves to be buried alive
around their deceased husbands. But this was all too terrible, and when, in the last
century before Christ, the Empress Hibatsuhime no Mikoto died, the Mikado asked
that some other way might be devised. One of his court, Nomi no Sukine, advised
making figures of clay to represent men and horses, and to bury them as substitutes.
This was done, and the Mikado, well pleased with the plan, ordered that henceforth
the old custom should not be followed, but that clay images should be set up around
the grave instead.
The making of these clay images is said to be the beginning of Ceramic art in
Japan.
(36)
WOMAN'S WORK IN KENTUCKY.
By MRS. EUGENIA DUNLAP POTTS.
What has woman done for Kentucky, for that romantic young daughter of grand
old Virginia, the throes of whose birth rang out in Indian bloodshed and violence,
who waded step by step in conflict and courage be
fore the dark and bloody ground could put on her
fair garment of nature's brilliant hues, and ever going
from this nursery of relentless discipline stand up in
the rank of royal Columbia's children a queen in her
own right, clothed in the panoply of her own inalien
able virtues and beauty. She has been called "God's
own country." 'Twas woman who helped to make
her what she is, and a woman gave her the name
What then has woman done and how has she done iti
Ruskin says: "A woman has a personal work and
duty relating to her own home and a public work and
duty which is also the expansion of that. The
woman's work in her own home is to secure its order
comfort and loveliness. The woman's duty as a mem-
ber of the commonwealth is to assist in the ordering,
in the comforting and in the beautiful adornment of
the state. What the woman is to be within her gates
as the center of order, the balm of distress and the
mirror of beauty, that she is to be also without the
gates where order is more difificult, distress more emi-
nent and loveliness more rare.
Lord George Littleton, the English author and statesman of a hundred years ago,
declared that " a woman's noblest station is retreat." Madame Roland, herself a
remarkable type of the sex, held the opinion that the talents and acquirements of
woman should never be for the public. It was about the time that she uttered this
sentiment that the marvelous richness and vastness of Kentucky were drawing
thither the highest and noblest elements of citizenship from Pennsylvania, North
Carolina and Virginia, to become the pioneers of a race, strong, tender, heroic,
simple, conservative and pure. These were the mothers of Anglo-Saxon blood who
upheld by the holy ties of family and a lofty womanhood, were equipped with the
armor of perpetual ownership. The fertile domain all rent with the red man's butchery —
he who contested every inch of soil — soon knew the tread of gentle feet; and from the
Rustic Parliament held under the Divine Elm at Boonesborough that mild May day
in 1775, down through the years, woman has historic value in Kentucky, Rebecca
Bryant Boone was there with her illustrious husband, whose statute, modeled in Ken-
tucky clay by a Kentucky girl, stands guard at our Kentucky building, wearing the
identical garb of that far away day. Enough is told of those early days of adventure,
Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potte was born at Lancaster, Ky. Her father was the Hon. George W. Dunlap, a distingnished
lawyer and statesman. Her mother was Nancy E. Jennings, a woman of brilliant talents. Mrs. Potts graduated from Frank-
lin Female Institute, then took a special course at Philadelphia in music and French. She married Surgeon-Major Richard
Potts, U. 8. A. andC. S. A., of Maryland. Mrs. Potts was lett a widow, with her infant son, quite young. Her literary career
always promising, now began in earnest. Her "Song of Lancaster," a metrical history after the style of Hiawatha, Long-
fellow read and approved in an autograph letter, of which the young author was very proud. She has several later works
ready for the press. Her favorite enterprise is the " Illustrated Kentuckian," which she owns and edits in a masterly manner.
She is a member of the Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is Lexington, Ky.
562
MRS. EUGENIA DUNLAP POTTS.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 563
of romance, of heroism, to make an epic as enchanting and inspiring as any of classic
lore.
Susannah Hart, the aunt of Mrs. Henry Clay, raised and pulled the flax which
she wove and spun into her wedding gown, with an art so clever that she could draw
the width through her wedding ring. She belonged to the wealthiest of those early
families of note, and was the wife of Gov. Isaac Shelby. She died at the age of
seventy-two years at " Travelers' Rest," the grand old homestead which has never
passed out of the Shelby family. She was the mother of ten children, and her
descendants are widely scattered. Mary Hopkins Cabell Breckinridge was a con-
temporary whose work can never die. Hers were not deeds of daring nor of tragic
from the lurking Indian. Her power was in her eloquent conversation, her strong
opinions, her decided views of duty. Her sons are orators and statesmen; her
daughters are ambitious and progressive. Margaret Breckinridge, a granddaughter,
devoted heart and hands to hospital work during the war of the Blue and the
Grey; and by her gentle, self-sacrificing ministering was named the "Angel of the
hospitals." She said: "Shall men die by thousands for their country and no
woman risk her life?" Still a younger generation is led by Miss Sophronisba
Breckinridge, who after years of travel in Europe, studied law in her father's
office. Mrs. Catherine Hunt, the chatelaine of one of Lexington's proud homes,
reigned a queen in her domain. The train of servants, the management of her
handsome estate and all the demands upon the mistress of such possessions, called for
executive ability of rare degree. Hers was the thinking head and the guiding hand. The
Baroness Burdett Coutts says: "Woman may be allowed to lead in acts of charity,"
and right nobly has she set this example. This woman, Mrs. Hunt, used her preroga-
tive here. Sixty-one years ago, when cholera wellnigh depopulated the Blue Grass
capital, she went forth on pious mission bent. Coming upon three desolate little
children, whose parents lay dead, she said to a friend: " W^hat shall we do with them?
Let us buy them a home." She opened her purse and established the Orphans'
Home, Lexington's oldest charitable institution, where many little feet have found a
resting place. Mrs. Henrietta Hunt Morgan was her daughter, and the Hon. Francis
Kay Hunt, of legal celebrity, was her worthy son. Mrs. Morgan presided over her
household much after the manner of her bringing up. She was the mother of a
remarkable family. Her sons were Gen. John Hunt Morgan, Col. Calvin Morgan,
Capt. Charlton Hunt Morgan, and Lieut. Thomas Morgan. Her daughters were
the wives of Gen. A. P. Hill and of Gen. Basil W. Duke. Behold the evolu-
tion of the Kentucky girl, if I may so term the greater liberty of today!
Mrs. Henrietta Morgan Duke, of Louisville, Ky., one of our commissioners, is
a woman of incomparable qualities of heart and brain. She reflects the grand-
mother and mother in strength of character and in executive ability. Times have
changed, and she has risen to the demands. Her young daughter. Miss Carrie Duke,
the violin virtuoso, represents the fourth generation of this family. The ancient code
would have held her captive, but the liberty of the present sent her abroad to develop
the divine genius that now sways multitudes. Another young descendant of Mrs,
Hunt is Miss Lucy Lee Hill, a World's Fair Commissioner, who bravely and briskly
went about the work of collecting exhibits; faithfully she has presided at the state
building. Yet another great-granddaughter is Miss Eleanor Howard Morgan,
daughter of Capt. Charlton Morgan, who entered Bryn Mawr College, where her
scientist brother, Dr. Thomas Morgan, holds the chair of biology. This young girl
perfectly illustrates the fact that developing a woman's brain does not necessarily rob
her of feminine charm. No lily of the valley, breathing its delicate fragrance far
below the gaze of man, is more modestly environed; yet her influence pervades all the
atmosphere about her. She inherits, not the dash of her uncle, the cavalry chief, but
the steady glow of woman's star when lit by the brilliancy of intellectual fire. Afterforty
years of Kentucky civilization and the advance of commerce and education, in 1822
Susan Lucy Bary Taylor, only fifteen years old, read from the platform of the La Fayette
564 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Academy, at Lexington, her essay upon " The higher education of women." Think'
of it! Schools were few and far between, the reading of fiction was barred to a degree-
by religious scruples, and woman was out of place except at the hearthstone or in the
drawing-room. No doubt many still thought with Cowley, that "she was one of
Nature's agreeable blunders," or with Thucydides, that " the best woman is she of whom
the least can be said either in the way of good or harm;" or yet with Mohammed,
that " the worst thing about a woman is that we can't do without her." Why, I
remember fully fifty years after the La Fayette commencement, a society young man's
shocked veto upon his sister reading her graduating essay from the stage to be gazed
at by men and women. This mother of famous sons and daughters made the plea that,
woman was capable of receiving instruction, of comprehending the science of numbers,,
of learning languages, of following the explorations of science, and of mental dis-
cipline through logic and philosophy, and begged that proud men will permit women
to spend some hours in improving their minds. She says: " History is no longer con-
fined to the exploits and achievements of men, but is proud to have its brightest pages-
adorned with the names of women distinguished for learning, for patriotism, for high
and heroic virtue."
Alas! I fear that proud men went away exulting over the pretty reader, and
ignoring what she read as a vagary to be pardoned. It cost the blood of battles, the
social disruption, the severance of family ties and the martyrdom of broken hearts, to-
plume the upward flight of Kentucky women, to grant them what has been termed
"their perilous freedom from social trammels." But now in 1893 1 clip the foUowing^
from a local paper:
"In Calculus."
" Professor Barbour, of the University of Richmond, Ky., has sent the work of two
prodigies in mathematics. In offering the papers for display, he explains that the
authors are very poor at foot-ball, and have not distinguished themselves either in
marksmanship or as oarsmen. Then he explains that they are young ladies, to whose-
work in higher mathematics he calls the attention of the educators and experts of the
world. The young ladies are Miss Estelle W, Walker and Miss Florence P. Wither-
spoon."
Miss Chenault, of Louisville, who is soon to be married, declined the chair of
mathematics in a Western college recently offered her. Similar triumphs are
getting to be neither few nor far between.
The descendants of Susan Taylor are identified with Newport, Ky. Here resides-
Mrs. Thomas L. Jones, one of the most cultivated, elegant women of the South. In
gracious hospitality she has not been excelled, and as a prominent member of the
Kentucky Historical Society she is conversant with the choicest bits of patriotic lore.
Mrs. Mary Gratz Morton, president of the Kentucky Columbian Club, is descended
from one of the most charitable and influential women of her day. Mrs. Morton is-
cultured and refined, has found pleasure in literary clubs where a few years ago they were
zn unknown quantity. Miss Mary Harrison, of Lexington, a member of the prominent
families of Clay and Harrison, has devoted her energies for years to the establishment
of charitable institutions. Not possessed of the necessary means to carry out her plans,,
she brought to bear her strong personal influence and untiring perseverance, till more
than one lofty pile has arisen to shelter the sick and the poor.
Mrs. Sarah Bruin Cronly, left a widow in her early prime, has consecrated her life
to good works. Systematic, clear-headed charity distinguished her methods, and so
active is she in her daily rounds among the poor, supplying the needs of the parish,
that she has been long known by the pseudonyn of "Aunt Busy." Mrs. Plliza Brand
Woodward, wealthy and charitable, built and endowed the Church Home for needy
women at Lexington, and gives liberally to every good cause Who does not know of
Jennie Casseday, the saint on her couch of pain during thirty years? She instituted
the Flower Mission for prisons and hospitals, and wrote her sweet songs of peace and
hope in the night hours of patient watching. Her leaflets are read from pole to pole^
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 565
and at Louisville the Jennie Casseday Infirmary stands a monument to her labors.
"They also serve who only stand and wait." She worked while she waited.
Mrs. John M. Clay, daughter-in-law of Henry Clay, was left a widow two years
ago with the broad acres of Ashland on her hands, and the green pastures of blooded
horses as a heritage. Diligently the turf-men put their heads together and picked
out the sires and dams and foals they meant to buy at the coming sale. But Mrs.
Clay held her farm intact and manages it herself. She is besides a writer of ability,
not only of novels, but gets out the annual pedigree catalogue of stock with the
accuracy of a man and the dainty binding of a woman's artistic taste.
Mrs. Cornelia Bush was our first woman State Librarian, and a woman has held
the office ever since. Miss Belle Bennett represents her family in this generation by
her work for church and school extension. She has traveled hundreds of miles and
has collected many thousands of dollars. The Scarrett memorial at Kansas City, and
the march of religion and education in the mountains of Kentucky, bear testimony to
her labors and those of her deceased sister. Miss Laura White, of Ashland, Ky., and
Miss Joe Carter, of the Kentucky parlor in your Woman's Building, have taken
•studies in architecture. Miss Enid Yandell is a sculptor, and our school of wood-
carving is crowded with proficients. Mrs. Mary Cecil Cantrill, Kentucky's World's
Fair commissioner, was born to the self-indulgence of wealth, yet she has long sought
the active walk of intellectual pre-eminence. Miss Jean W. Faulkner, another com-
missioner, a beautiful, bright girl, is descended from a heroic ancestry. Her grand-
mother, Mrs. Jane Kavanaugh Walker, is now a hale, active woman of four-score
years, all her lite remarkable for advanced ideas and strong will. In the bringing up
of her large family, in church, and throughout her region, she wields authority and
influence. First the wife of Gen. John Faulkner, the sturdy blood of the two pioneers
flows in Miss Faulkner's veins. She carries the reflection of the heroism which dis-
tinguished her grandfather on the battle-field, and which nerved him to sit calmly
down and have an arm amputated without a groan before the day of anresthetics.
Her father was a gallant officer in the late war, and through her mother she inherits
the fluent tongue of the Joshua Bell family. The aged grandmother, Mrs. Walker,
claims also as her grandchild the Estelle Walker just referred to as the winner in
Calculus; and her descendants comprise a veritable rosebud garden of girls who are
working their way as teachers in the schools. Miss Ida Symmes and Mrs. Sue
Phillips Brown, two more of our commissioners at the Columbian Fair, have worthily
shown their claim to confidence and enterprise. Miss Mattie Lee Todd, while yet a
young and handsome girl, was appointed to the position of postmaster in her native
town, and shouldering the burden of a family debt, as well as the arduous duties of
her office, has discharged all obligations and stands today triumphant at her post.
Mary Anderson raised the drama to a plane of personal purity hitherto denied by
critics to women actors. Her mighty genius attuned the gamut of fiery human emo-
tions, yet " Our Mary" came* forth unscathed. Mrs. Milton Barlow has invented some
clever cooking utensils, and her daughter. Miss F'lorence Barlow, is not only a self-
supporting artist, but is the first Kentucky woman to venture into the real estate busi-
ness. I have found it convenient thus far to pursue the line of woman's development
by connecting the past with the present by tracing ancestral characteristics through
generations of improved conditions on to pursuits both within the gates and without
-the gates of woman. But there is an era to which I must go back. I would I might
faithfully portray life in Kentucky during the long interval between that brave girl's
petition for enlightenment and the possibilities of the present. We did not call our
farms plantations. Broad acres stretched on every side and negroes tilled the soil.
Mansions of brick and stone loomed up, guarded and tended by well trained serving
men and women of the antebellum time. Children clung to their black mammies with
a love that has no exact parallel in history; and here let me say that many a white
nursling owes health, happiness and fine disposition to the good influence of black
mammy. The work of the colored woman was not alone the drudgery of the house.
566 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
She filled a higher, holier niche in countless instances, and her fidelity was almost sub-
lime. In her arms the little ones cried " Sanctuary," and in truth the tyrants of the
home were likely to be Aunt Dinah and Old Black Joe.
Larger children played with sable mates. Hospitality reigned with princely hand.
Social life held supremacy, and the mistress had all she could do to provide for her
guests and for the well-being of her dependents. The dying arts of spinning and weaving
were turned over to Aunt Sallie, who still rolled out yards of homespun for the " hands;'*
but once her wooly head was laid low and these implements of early thrift were
packed away, alongside of " Uncle Ned's fiddle and de bow." The mistress trained
and taught and managed, till she had time for little else. True, she did no menial
service. Did she venture with industrious intent into the kitchen, how promptly Old
Aunt Kitty would shake her beturbaned head and cry, " Now you jist go right along
in de house, Mistress; I ain't guine to hab yer spilen yer pretty white ban's." How is
it now? The cooking school is sending forth adepts in the art, and the pretty white
hands are of secondary consideration.
The aged negroes who have clung with child-like trust to the " white folks " are
cared for while they live, and buried when they die. Not from the cabin door, but
from the wide marble portals of the family mansion. Only last year an old servant
was thus buried from Dr. H. M. Skillinan's home at Lexington, and the remains lay
in state in their handsome parlors. This case is the rule, not the exception, and no
will is ever probated but a legacy is found therein to the old family servants.
Now let us look at the poor relations of the period; the old maid cousins and
aunts; for girls were old maids at twenty if still unmarried. Not one would dare
express her wish to get out and earn a living. It was a violation of social caste. She
might thus bring reproach upon rich Aunt Margaret. She was welcome to abide with
rich Aunt Margaret and take the snubbing that chanced to her lot. She might bring
up every one of the children till decrepit with age, and get an unsystematic sort of
providing for in pay. She knew absolutely nothing of business. Why should she if
she was gifted with a voice, she did not dare hear, but in a church choir. Oh, no; she
might sing if she did not sing too loud, for this though a bit conspicuous was a holy
thing to do. She could not take money for it; on no account must she earn money.
For a long while no exception was made in favor of school teaching. She might
trim bonnets if she kept her shop at home; or if married and abjectly poor, taking
a few genteel boarders might be forgiven, especially if that little evasive fib could
pass current, that she was doing it just for company. But there was a perceptible drop
in the social scale. Young women if caught washing dishes were talked about. The
very next sewing society sat on the case, for mind you, the women must not know
anything to talk about, and yet they were held fully responsible. Was it any wonder
that tea-table and sewing-society gossip passed into a proverb. There was actually
nothing for a girl to do but get married. This was the aim, if not the end, of her
career. .Old Miss Smith, I shall call her, was slave in' her father's house all her
life. She attended to the spinning, the weaving, butter making, sheep shearing, hog-
killing, fruit gathering, pickling, preserving, and all the rest from early morn to late
bedtime. He was a rich man. When he died he willed all his property to his well-
to-do sons, and left this daughter a black woman and one old mare. The old maid
mildly lifted up her voice in protest when the will was read. She ventured to say it
was not fair; at least she did not think it was fair. "Why, what on earth do you want
with money?" they said. "You are not married, you have no family, you know you
are to take turns about living with us." And whenever they saw her riding up on her
old mare, her face soured and disappointed and out of humor, there didn't anybody
enjoy her visit. Now a father dies and not only leaves money to his daughters, but
often ties it up so that their husbands can not touch it. Then mothers shielded their
daughters from menial work, and would not even acknowledge that they were help-
ing. They must not be old maids; and the dread of having to spend their lives irt
weary, thankless pilgrimages from Brother Joe's to Sister Mary's forces many a high-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 567
spirited girl to marry John Smith and risk this questionable extension of her liberty.
Anything to avoid being thrown on the kin. Poor girls, they would gladly have
earned their living, but then it wasn't genteel. Sometimes a little school was made
up in the family. By and by the more ambitious were sent off to Philadelphia or
Baltimore boarding schools to be finished in style; so to keep the patronage at home
seminaries were chartered and institutions built; but the teachers had to come from
the North. The Yankee school, more in jest than derision, was a necessity till, as her
admirable work went on, no other teacher could win the respect due her higher culture.
By an unreasoning perversion of sentiment the Kentucky girl, who was thought ever
so much better than her teacher, was not considered able enough to take charge of
a school. Then, too, you heard the silly mothers who had been made dunces from
necessity, remark, in the sweet bliss of ignorance: "I took Mary Eliza away before
commencement — so much is expected of a graduate, you know." How is it now?
The normal schools are flooding the country with capable young women. The once
dangerous forests of the dark and bloody ground now gleam with steeple and spire,
and not one of Kentucky's one hundred and nineteen counties is without its common
school fund, and women are being admitted to the school boards. Colleges, universi-
ties, institutes, seminaries, academies, kindergartens, whatever the name, have fol-
lowed the wake of railroads, and the children are sure of intelligent training from the
state's own cultured daughters. The loss of property in slaves, and in devastated
homes, brought a change that was destined to work only good. Necessity gradually
came to elevate honest endeavor and open the way for woman's buried talent. Par-
don me if I devote a paragraph to Mrs. Nancy Jennings Dunlap, who was very dear
to me. She eminently deserves a place in the annals of Kentucky women She came
of good old English stock, with every faculty on the alert for whatever was new and
progressive, for all that led onward and upward. Married at fourteen, her education
was meager; however, it included music and painting, and she had ambition and energy
and took up her burden of life with heroic determination. Forty years after she
could look back upon a record of doing such as few can recall. She was the mother
of eleven children, had sewed for her family white and black, educated herself with
her sons and daughters, read everything that was published in that day of compara-
tively restricted literature, was conversant with politics and every public movement,
entertained guests literally from one year's end to another, had helped scores of
people, old and young, to better their conditions, had accompanied her husband to the
state legislature and to Congress, was a staunch church woman, faithful at Sunday-
school during many years, founder of the Good Templar Order in her native place,
and a devotee to higher education. She w^as always well dressed and ready to con-
verse in her vivacious way upon any topic. She was one of the most graceful, popular
leaders in the state. She found time in her busy life to travel much and learn from
observation as from the books she so loved, and when at the early age of fifty-three
she closed her eyes upon the arena of so much industry and philanthropy, she had
fulfilled nearly to the letter the Bible portraiture of action for home and state.
The day has come when we look about us and say, " It is good." The shackles
of repression that w^ere forged, not by intentional injustice, but by the shortsighted
spirit of the times, are not all loosed; nor do we look just yet for a millennium of free-
dom from social prejudice. But the daughters of the house are filling places as artists,
musicians, poets, novelists, teachers, stenographers, typewriters, postmasters, matrons,
housekeepers and all the list of undisputed territory. They are slipping the leash
day by day. The labors of Mrs. Josephine K. Henry, Mrs. Mary B. Clay, Miss Laura
Clay and others, to secure equal property rights for Kentucky women, have paved
the way to much that was before impracticable. Their places shall ever be honored
in the archives of the state. Men are beginning to discriminate between usefulness
and unwomanliness. The press is falling into line, and we read that Miss Margaret
Guthrie, who died recently at the age of ninety-four years, was the first to introduce
the cultivation of strawberries in Jefferson County, and that she made Si,ooo on her
568 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
three-acre patch. We read of a vote of thanks to Mrs. Allie Hervy Ballard, who
brought the refining influence of music into the Lexington public schools, where it
has flourished for three years. Miss Elizabeth Harrison, of Kentucky, started your
Chicago Kindergarten Training School, now a college, in 1885. In'our literary exhibit
on these grounds is a pamphlet upon the life of Mrs. Julia A. Tevis, the pioneer
teacher at Science Hill, Shelbyville, which school she carried on for more than sixty
years; the gifted woman who, just three years after Susan Taylor's ambitious essay
in 1822, opened her school with a chemical laboratory in the building, and applied to
its mysteries the female intellect. This literary exhibit contains also volumes in prose
and poetry from Rosa Vertner Jeffrey, a brilliant writer, a woman of great beauty and
a social leader, whose pen has wielded infinite power. Other writers on the list are
Sarah Bryan Piatt, Catherine A. Warfield, Amelia B. Welby, Eliza R. Parker, Alice
Hawthorne Mudd, Nellie Marshall McAfee, Annie Chambers Ketchum, Ida Goldsmith
Morris, Elvira Sydnor Miller, Nellie Talbot Kinkead, Florence Griffith Miller, Sophie
Fox Sea, Ida Withers Harrison and a hundred more who, from the sheltered sanctum,
have moved the souls and molded the sentiment of mankind.
Did time permit, I might tell you of our marvelous needle-women, our societies
of church and charity workers, our " King's Daughters;" our missionaries, led by that
human saint, Sybil Carter; our farmers, with Miss Hannah Burgin in the van; our elo-
cutionists, all honor to Mrs. Bessie Miller Oton; our kindergartens, with the pioneer
Mrs. S. S. Higgins and Miss Sallie Adams in the field; our physicians, our journalists
and lecturers. I should tell you how the crowd of curious auditors flocked to hear
Mrs. Lula Adams Nield, the first W. C. T. U. speaker in the region; how her modest
and quiet voice left no room for frivolous comment. How the white ribbons fluttered
everywhere to the rally of Mrs. Frances E. Beauchamp. Your president, Mrs. Potter
Palmer, whose energy and tact, whose wisdom and philanthropy, made the Woman's
Building possible, is a Kentucky woman; your chairman, Mrs. James P. Eagle, who
has presided here with such winning grace and marked intelligence, is a Kentucky
woman. These need no comment; I could not add to their fame. But a volume would
scarce hold them all. We have no wish to be manlike. We care not to lose our right
of pleasing. We do not ask liberty of our individuality. Fathers and brothers are
helping us, and husbands do not all hold back. Society looks kindly on, and the rich
girl and the poor girl walk side by side where only dollars and cents constitute the
distinction between. And when voice and pen and brain and hand shall have filled
our boundaries with enlightened views, with the education of the masses, with happi-
ness at the fireside and with universal respect, then only shall it be said of Kentucky
women, "They have done what they could." Then only may we fold our draperies
about us in a painless sleep, and smilingly say —
" My old Kentucky home, good-night."
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Mrs. Mary A. Cochran,
Texas.
2. Mrs. Ellen M. Chandler,
Vermont.
5. Mrs. Melissa D. Owings,
Washington.
4. Mrs. E. S. 6. Paol,
Virginia.
7 Mrs. W. Newton Linch. 8. Miss Lily Irene Jackson,
West Virginia. West Virginia.
10. Mrs. William P. Lynde, 11. Mrs. F. H. Harrison,
Wisconsin. Wyonwig.
3. Mrs. John Sergeant Wise,
Virginia.
6. Mrs. Alice Houghton,
Washington.
9. Mrs. Flora Beall Ginty,
Wisconsin.
12. Mrs. Frances E. Hale,
Wyoming.
JUSTICE AND FREEDOM FOR ALL*
By PRINCESS M. SCHAHOVSKOY.
A few days ago I was asked to speak on the following quotation: "Justice and
PVcedom for AH are Far More Desirable than Pedestals for a Few." I was unable to
do it then, but some friends having read the few ideas
I had put on paper I was particularly asked to read
them to you this morning.
Freedom and justice for everyone indeed. Is
there anything more desirable than that, if those who
claim it know how to take advantage of these two
privileges? Freedom is the first condition of each
step of advancement, and justice the first duty of
those who wish to avail themselves of that advance-
ment.
And so freedom and justice become the condi-
tions of our improvement; but improvement, as all
development, goes step by step. These steps of
human development are the hard and arduous con-
quest of a few who give the example, and thus
become the leaders and helpers of those who are
more weak and have no strength to raise by them-
selves. The highest steps of this ladder of progress
we poor mortals of the crowd call pedestals, and for-
get that they are but footsteps for a farther way up.
Now, if freedom and justice are the only condi-
tions of advancement, pedestals are the only way to
Yes, pedestals for a few are abnormal, indeed; not
because they should not exist, but because as every privilege they should become the
aim of everybody. So let us not regret that they exist. Let us never put a man on
a pedestal, byt whenever he himself has risen higher than us, then let us strain every
effort to ourselves rise to his level.
The true way of hero worship is not to stay in passive contemplation and burn
the incense of adulation where envy, alas, often mixes its nauseous fumes, but to lift
ourselves in a joyful movement of admiration and thankfulness to the side of him
who showed us one of the ways of perfection.
For my part there is no pedestal that I consider so high that its height could pre-
vent me from looking up to it, no man so perfect that his perfection could intimidate
my imitating him, and no man so low that he should give up all hope of rising him-
self to reach a pedestal.
Princess M. Scbahovskoy, maid of hoaor to Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of Rassia, was the Roesian representa-
tive at the Congress of Representative Women which convened in Chicago, III., in 1893, Rnssian Commipsioner for Woman's
Work, exhibited in the Woman's Building at the Colombian Exposition, and Jadge of Awards in the Fine Arts Department
of same Exposition. Princess Schahovskoy is a sculptor of ability, and is devot^ to art and literature. In social circles
she surrounds herself with many admirers by her genial, aflfable and charming deportment.
*The full title under which the address was delivered was " Justice and Freedom for All are Far More Desirable than
Pedestals for a Few."
PRINCESS M. SCHAHOVSKOY.
its gradual accomplishment.
569
WOMAN IN MUSIC.
By MRS. GASTON BOYD.
It is interesting in tracing the development of woman along the line of music and
the change of sentiment with regard to her capabilities, to consider for a few moments
some of the thoughts contained in a work written
upon this subject in the year i88o. This writer says:
"The subject naturally divides into two heads; first,
the influence of women in encouraging the great com-
posers to labor and inspiring them in the production
of their finest works; second, the relation of woman
to the performance of vocal and instrumental music."
The writer states that the latter branch does not re-
quire special attention, hardly more than eulogistic
reference in the face of well-known queens of song.
But of the former branch he says: "More than one
immortal work of music may be traced to the stead-
fast love and thoughtful care of woman in the quiet
duties of home life." This is emphatically true in the
same sense as in a certain response once given by
Mrs. Ormiston Chant. After one of her characteristic
addresses upon the rightfulness of opening to woman
every avenue of employment or advancement she
cared to enter, a man of surly aspect and illiterate
speech arose and made objection to the arguments
and statements made by Mrs. Chant. He said woman
was not so intelligent and capable as man; if she were,
why had she never produced a Shakespeare? To which Mrs. Chant responded: "She
has; if she didn't, who did?" It is in this sense only that the writer to whom refer-
ence is made seems to think it possible that woman can bear any relation to music as
a composer. He says: " The attachments of love, the bonds of friendship, the endear-
ments of home, have played an important part in shaping the careers of the great
composers and in giving color, form and direction to their music." No one would
question the truth of this, but the application falls far short when it attaches the bonds
and endearments only to the woman and the noble career to the man.
In reading his work, were it not for the introduction of technical terms, one might
easily conceive he was reading the old and half-forgotten theories why woman could
never succeed as a doctor, as a lawyer, as a banker, as a voter, or in any of the many
avenues of life where woman has demonstrated her ability to succeed.
Listen to his reasons why woman can never succeed as a composer: " She lives in
emotion and acts from emotion. When the emotions lose their force with age, her
Mrs. Gaston Boyd was born in London, England. Her father was a descendant of William the Conqueror and her
mother of the House of Rutlands. She was educated while young by eminent private teachers. Upon the death of her
parents she came to America, was graduated from the Boston Conservatory of Music, from Mt. Carroll Seminary, and after-
ward studied with Madam Hall, Lyman Wheeler and Charles R. Adams. In London her studies were continued with Madam
Abbott and with Randigger. She has traveled extensively in this country and abroad. She married Gaston Boyd, M. D., of
Newton, Kan., in 1387, resigning her position as head of the Department of Music in Bethany College, Topeka, Kan., upon
that event. She was appointed member of the World's Advising Council of Music, and president of the Kansas World's
Fair Music Board. She is a professor of music, director of music in the public schools, director of the Newton Musical Union
and director of St. Mathews Church choir. Mrs. Boyd is a member of the Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is
Newton. Kan.
570
MRS. GASTON BOYD.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 571
musical powers weaken. Man controls his emotions and can give an outward expres-
sion of them. In woman they are the dominating element. There is another phase
of the feminine character which may bear upon the solution of this problem, and that
is the inability of woman to endure the discouragements of the composer and to battle
with the prejudice and indifference, and sometimes with the malicious opposition of
the world that obstructs his progress. If her triumph could be instant; if work after
work were not to be assailed, scoffed at and rejected; if she were not liable to personal
abuse, to the indifference of her own sex on the one hand and masculine injustice on
the other, there would be more hope of her success in composition."
One quality heretofore accorded to the feminine nature is that of endurance. If
we go back to the history of the early Christian Church we surely find no indication
of the want of endurance on the part of woman. One has but to look out over the
world to-day to realize that it is the woman rather than the man who is distinguished
in the exercise of this qualification. Indeed, the progressive spirit of woman often
meets with the rebuff that it is man's province to achieve, woman's to endure.
If we wish an instance of one who through scoffs, discouragements, indifference
of her own sex on the one hand and masculine injustice on the other, where can we
find a more shining example of the steadfast and courageous pursuit of the object to
be attained than in the life and labors of Susan B. Anthony? It can hardly be said
of her that she lives in emotion and acts from emotion.
At what age the emotions are supposed to lose their force is not stated; but he is
a manly man, indeed, who, of the years of Miss Anthony, evinces as great interest and
activity in the vital questions of the day; in the future of the young people of our
land; in the present good of the humblest of her sisters. It may be urged that Miss
Anthony is an exception. So are the great composers exceptions who are said to
require, pre-eminently, these elements of character. But in so far as these character-
istics are necessary to the ability of musical composition in its highest form, woman
is more richly endowed than her brother, man.
Still another reason why woman can never succeed as a composer is that woman
reaches results mainly by intuition. " Her susceptibility to impressions and her finely
tempered organization enable her to feel and perceive where man has to reach results
by the slow process of reason." You who have heard Rev. Anna Shaw illustrate in
her inimitable way the difference of reaching a result by reason or by intuition will
enjoy this illusion.
Acknowledging the list of female composers found in the appendix of his work,
this writer asserts: " But of all the works written by these numerous composers,
hardly one is known to the lyric stage today," and that the indisputable reason there-
for is, that having had equal advantages with men, they have failed as composers.
Inasmuch as this is found in a revised edition of the work published last year, the
entire statement is open to question. The defense of our sisters may safely be left
to their own achievements. An argument against their ability is as interesting read-
ing at this date as was the elaborate proof published years ago that an ocean steam-
ship was an impossibility ; which publication was brought from England to these shores
in the impossible steamship.
No; it is to the assertion relative to the equal conditions that your attention is
called. It is that, having had equal advantages with men, they have failed. Let us
find, if we can by our female intuition, the masculine reasoning through which he
establishes such a conclusion. He says: " It is a curious fact that nearly all the
great music of the world has been produced in humble life and has been developed
amid the environments of poverty and in the stern struggle for existence." "The
enduring music has been the child of poverty, the outcome of sorrow, the apotheosis
of suffering." " In this sphere of life, where music seems to have had its origin, the
lot of woman is bounded by homely but unremitting cares. Her existence is mainly
devoted to the same tedious routine of labor from the rising to the setting sun" (he
might well have added several more hours; the birth and rearing of children, sickness,
572 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
«
nursing, care of family often make her hours of labor from sun to sun again), " which
has few intervals of relaxation, certainly no leisure for musical effort. Its demands
are so exacting that she has neither time nor disposition for theoretical application
which musical composition requires." In this birthplace of the higher forms of musi-
cal composition the writer affirms that woman is so hampered by labor and excessive
family care, that no time and no spirit is possible for effort were she ever so capable
in this direction. It is she who must prepare the scant food; who must clothe the
children with a scanty provision of cloth; who not only shares the food she needs for
her subsistence, but gives from her own veins the nourishment for his child. Our
female intuition would lead us to the conclusion that this masculine reasoning is quite
adverse to the stated prevision. He acknowledges that Sebastian Bach was the son
of a hireling musician; Beethoven's father a dissipated singer; that Cherubini came
from the lowest and poorest ranks of life; that Gluck was a forrester's son; Haydn's
father, a wheelright; Handel, the son of a barber; Rossini's father, a miserable,
strolling horn-player, who led a wild, Bohemian life; Schubert was the son of a poor
schoolmaster; Schumann, a bookseller's son; Verdi, the son of a peasant; Wagner's
father, a petty municipal officer of little account as a man.
Now, these dissipated singers, these barbers, bakers and basket makers; these
hireling musicians, by a process of reasoning known only to the masculine mind, have
transmitted to their sons the stanch faithfulness to a high purpose in life, the
unswerving patience to endure poverty, discouragement, scoffs and bitter disappoint-
ments necessary to the composer
Female intuition sees with lightning glance the life of the wife tied to these loose-
principled, dissipated, shiftless fathers of our great composers. It sees the crushed
hopes, the privations, the toil, the endurance; the birth of the holy mother-love while
yet the child be not in her arms; the heavenly love awakening in her soul as the
infant lies upon her bosom. All the poetry, all the passion, all the suffering of her
poor heart given day by day to the child she has borne; perchance, the greatest hap-
piness she has known, the pitiful pride of her heart in the notes of the strolling singer
or the dissipated horn-blower, the father. If the lives and hearts of the mothers of
our great composers were laid bare it might not be difficult to trace the primary source
of their genius and poetic temperament.
In reading the lives of our great composers, one is struck with the determination
with which the boys were urged or compelled to earnest study, to incessant practice,
to the development in every possible way of the talent evinced; but we do not read
of the same parental anxiety and effort for the girls of the family. Nor can one
believe that with the same pre-natal conditions, with similar environment, the musical
genius was always wanting in the daughter. But custom, tradition, public sentiment,
all required the subservience of the girl to a simple domestic life, and the discourage-
ment of any efforts toward a place for herself in the world. As these old traditions
lose their power, as custom recedes before the onward march of achievement, as pub-
lic sentiment is revolutionized by the more numerous womanly woman who discovers
she has brain as well as bread-making ability, it may be thought worth while by par-
ents to make equal sacrifice and bestow as great effort to keep her well on the road
toward the highest point of possible development. Until this is done woman will not
have had equal advantages with man, nor can her ability as a composer of music be
judged from the same standpoint.
It is not necessary in this paper to give a list of the women who have achieved
success as composers of music, nor to relate what works have been written by them.
It is of more importance to direct our thoughts toward the future and discern what
may be done toward the highest development of the creative power.
It has been said that woman would possibly have flooded the world with harmony,
as she has with song, if music vv^ere only an object of the perceptions or a matter of
instinct; if it simply addressed itself to the senses; if it were but an art composed of
ravishing melody; of passionate outbursts; of the attributes of joy, grief, exaltation
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 573-
and vague, dreamy sensations without any determinate ideas; but music is all this and
more, for these are only effects. It is a science which, in. its highest form, is " merci-
lessly logical and unrelentingly mathematical." One must toil unceasingly and
patiently continue the most rigid application to achieve freedom in the correct
expression of poetical thought. Theoretical enigmas, mathematical problems, must
be mastered, and the same intellectual activities must be brought to bear as in the
acquisition of any other exact science. The unbeliever in woman's ability says: " For
these and many other reasons growing out of the peculiar organization of woman, the
sphere in which she moves, the training she receives and the duties she has to fulfill,.
it does not seem that woman will ever originate music in its fullest and grandest har-
monic forms." But we who believe in her, say, if her sphere revolves in the atmos-
phere of fashion, dress, display, society; if her musical training be to fit her for social
distinction or professional notoriety; if her duties be such as will limit her freedom or
opportunities for the highest development of her powers, then we may look in vain
for the materialization of her innate capabilities. That the physical force, the mind,
the soul, necessary for this consummation is given to woman, as well as to man, we
can not doubt. When mothers come to regard a musical education for their daughters
as something more serious than a drawing-room accomplishment, something higher
than a stage attraction, then we may look for that environment, that attachment of
love, that bond of friendship, the endearments of home which will play an important
part in shaping the career of woman in Music.
THE TEMPTED WOMAN.
By MRS. ISABEL WING LAKE.
When a detached corps of " Wellington's " army sent a message to him, asking
for reinforcements, the reply came back, " None to spare!" Later the general rode
down to cheer them by his presence, and the
shout arose, "There's the commander himself; better
than a whole battalion!" I have been laboring for
the past six years among the " tempted women" of
Chicago, but of late, for a few months at least, I have
been presenting this great matter (great in point of
numbers, great in density of sin, great in the need of
this suffering class), to the churches, and asking for
reinforcements — Christian women as workers in this
deserted field. But again and again have I been met
by the response, " None to spare, none to spare!"
until I have had to look up and confess, " Oh, my
Father, Thou art better than a whole battalion, and I
will leave with Thee this band of Christian women, to
have planted in their hearts a hunger so deep and
strong to see this awful social cancer wiped out of
our land, that ere long they will join the ranks!"
Why is it, oh, my sisters, that this branch of work in
the vineyard is so spurned, so ignored by the Church
of God?
As I look upon this grand assembly of represent-
MRS. ISABEL WING LAKE. . . Til r i i
ative women 1 wonder how many of them nave ever
spent an hour — one single hour — of their lives in digging out from the debris of super-
stition, rebellion, lying, theft, swearing, drinking, and often murder, these misguided,
imprisoned sisters of ours; prisoners often to the chain of circumstances that they
can not break without our help, and they will sink lower each day if we do not throw
out the life-line. Jean Ingelow says, " What if she did strive to mend and none of
you believed her strife? What if this sinner wept and none of you comforted her?"
I feel there is no sin in the category of crimes that carries with it such a trail of
woes. I do not wonder that the Bible says, " Whoredom and wine take away the
heart;" and need we question when we find it a difificult matter to redeem an aban-
doned woman when the very heart is eaten out? I have asked myself when in the
presence of one of these poor besotted creatures if there were left anything but the
animal. I did not know where to touch her and, indeed, I never can, with any per-
manent results, until that woman has a new heart to commence life with, in which
there can be no seed of the old appetite left; and God must do it, I can not. I do not
know any other way. I have followed cunningly devised plans of wiser heads; I have
run after the methods of institutions of reform; I have joined myself to the philan-
Mrs. Isabel Wing Lake is a native of Monroe, Mich. She was born in the year 1851. Her parents were Judge Warner
Wing and Eliza Anderson Wing. She was educated at Monroe Female Seminary, and graduated in a collegiate course after-
ward. She also attended one year a German school. She has traveled throughout America. She married Charles C. Lake, of
Chicago, in 1877. Her special work has been in the interest of tempted women. Her principal literary works are varied
newspaper contributions. The aim of Mrs. Lake's life is to make an open door for erring women, so that the victim of
impurity and of drink may know that there is womanly tenderness and help awaiting her — the comforts of home and the
prayerful counsels of true friends, who are interested in the fullness of their souls in her eternal salvation. In religious
faith Mrs. Lake is a Baptist. Her postoffice address is No. 3441 Calumet Avenue, Chicago, lU.
674
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 575
thropic leaders, but to no avail, only to find myself afloat, with these poor, drowning
sufferers clutching for life to my garments; and I could not pull them to shore. But
today 1 am glad, so glad to tell you we have found a way, the only one I have ever
seen, to really rescue from a life of shame these girls, and that is to love them. Yes,
we may love their sin to death. That great man, Talfourd, delivering his final verdict
to the jury, in these dying words said: "What the masses want is not kindness, but
sympathy," In my efforts at one time to point a frenzied woman up to better things,
she said to me: " Mrs. Lake, if you can, go from shore to shore and tell the people the
way to save us is to love us." I believe this to be the magic key to success in the
work.
The life in Chicago does not differ materially from that in New York, St. Louis,
Denver, San Francisco, etc. In Leadville I found it carried on more openly than
elsewhere. In Washington, with "principalities and powers," it is rampant. But I
have felt so earnestly that if the Church of God would everywhere put her hand upon
it as a part of her " home missionary " work, its downfall would be sure. They say to
me, "they never stand;" "so few are rescued.' This very argument is accusative.
Drop the question, oh Church of the living Christ, because it is not solved, because it
is a most difficult one to handle? No, no! If this post is held by the arch-enemy of
our souls, may it not be for the very reason of our inactivity in the matter? Are we
guiltless then of the blood of our sister in the gutter? Is it none of our business that
she lies groveling there? Let the- church bombard these forts and take them all for
God, and at any cost, each church sending one woman, at least, into this work to
report the awful condition of things to the Christian women of our country,
willingly ignorant of the entrapping snare, and they will not longer attire themselves
in flotsam and jetsam, meeting once a month to regulate work for mission workers
hundreds of miles away; but would themselves, with ungloved hands, be active mis-
sionaries; not deserting foreign fields — oh no, do not misunderstand me — but do this
first, and then know better how to feel for our far-away co-laborers.
Last year in our sin-sick city of Chicago alone, there came under the care of our
police matron, women and children numbering over thirty-one thousand. This is
startling; but visit our hospitals and reformatories, and examine for yourselves the
formidable facts. Let them from their beds of pain in the hospital, or the few remain-
ing days of their lives at the poor-house, pour into your ears their tale of woe. Then,
mother, fall upon your knees and plead for mercy in that you never knew before what
you might do for other mothers' daughters. Shall we not be more faithful in this
matter, faithful to the community, faithful to our sons and daughters, faithful to our
God in the solemn vows in which we are pledged to His service? I wish I might tell
you of some most heart-rending cases that have come under my observation, but if we
had great cathedral-like souls that would soar up and up until we were in touch with
God in this pressing matter, you would know it all. I leave the matter in your hands.
Do with it as you will. Know only that the answer will come back to you if you will
but honestly ask, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? "
ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. 1 347-1 380.
By the HON. MRS. ARTHUR PELHAM.
To grasp the true significance of history we should endeavor to look beneath the
surface of the current accounts of remarkable events, which are found in ordinary his-
tory books, and in the effort to do this, nothing is of more assistance than the careful,
sympathetic consideration of the thoughts and habits of individual men and women
as recorded by themselves in their writings, buildings, paintings, and other handiwork.
We have chosen today a woman of the fourteenth century, St. Catherine of Siena,
as our center of interest, with the idea that dwelling upon the personal records which
we possess of her life may assist us in freshening and vivifying our conceptions of his-
tory, and may possibly be found to have some bearing on the problems of the present
day.
We think that there will be found much of real living interest in the life of Cath-
erine, the " Beata Popolana " of the Republic of Siena — the city peacemaker. She was
the correspondent and counselor of popes and queens, of proud churchmen and
nobles, of independent plebeian magistrates and lavvless captains of mercenary troops.
The true value and significance of the life of Catherine of Siena has lately been
rescued from the atmosphere of legend, which had too long obscured it, by Mrs.
Josephine Butler's admirable biography, and a delightful essay by the late Mr.
Symonds on Siena and St. Catherine,
Catherine, one of the twenty-five children of Giacome Benincasa, a dyer of Siena,
was born in 1347 and died in 1380. She was, therefore, a contemporary of Chaucer,
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Froissart, Wycliffe, Edward III. of England and Philippa of
Hainault. One hundred years before Columbus started for Portugal she died.
She successfully resisted the desire of her parents that she should marry at the
age of twelve, and after a short period of domestic persecution was allowed to follow
her own inclinations in the adoption of a life of retirement and prayer. At the age of
sixteen she became a member of the third order of St. Dominic, wearing the Domini-
can habit, but living at home and not bound by monastic vows.
At seventeen years of age she represented herself as having received a Divine
inspiration to mix more with the world, and though this at first seemed contrary to her
idea of a religious life, she obeyed the impulse, and henceforth joined in family life,
and devoted much of her time to labors among the sick and poor. Her desire and
power to preach became so strong as to overcome the prejudices of religious ideas
and mediaeval customs. We find interesting traces in her writings of the mental
struggles she went through on this subject, and allusions in her biographies show that
she began to make evangelizing journeys in the neighborhood during this period.
In 1368 there was a great revolution in Siena, and we now first hear of Catherine,
aged twenty-one, as employed as peacemaker between various factions and persons,
and of her addressing two thousand people in the streets, cohorting them to peace.
It must have been at this time (1370) that she taught herself to read and write,
for she received no instruction of this sort in her youth. It is hardly surprising that
her biographers regarded her literary attainments as miraculous, when we find that in
spite of this drawback she is included by some writers as among those who formed
the Italian language. She wrote some poems of merit, but her letters, her " dialogue,"
or spiritual auto-biography and her written prayers are the chief evidences of her
literary merit.
Catherine's active life in her native city continued, and we have interesting details
in her own words and those of her contemporary biographers, of her power and
576
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 577
influence with persons of all classes, with accounts of several notable persons whose
lives were totally changed by her exhortations to peace and virtue, and descriptions
of her consolations to prisoners and criminals on the scaffold, and of her visits to the
wives and families of exiled nobles. A letter from her to the magistrates of Siena,
in answer to one from them complaining of the length of her visit to the noble family
of Salimbene, is extremely interesting, as showing the jealousy that existed between
classes.
In the year 1374 Italy was devastated by the great plague, described by Boccaccio
and other contemporary writers. Eighty thousand people are said to have died in
Siena, and the town has never since recovered its former prosperity. Catherine
became specially distinguished at this time, both by her unwearied exertions among
the stricken population, and by the power of her faith and prayers in restoring health
and courage to many of those attacked.
It is after the subsidence of this epidemic, in the year 1375, that we first hear of
her work in the wider sphere of national politics.
The spirit of war and discord was at this time greatly stimulated by the presence
in Italy of large troops of foreign mercenary soldiers. The old wars, though terribly
frequent, and bitter enough while they lasted, had the advantage of being, as a rule,
limited in duration, as the soldiers were citizens engaged in trades and occupations of
their own, and after a few days' campaign were anxious to return to their own busi-
ness. One decisive battle, therefore, often settled the point in dispute, and tribute
having been exacted, or other humiliations imposed upon the vanquished, the adher-
ents of the defeated party being exiled and their goods confiscated, everything went
on very much as before. But such was not now the case. In 1370, wars in Italy
increased in frequency and duration until they became almost incessant, and the pres-
ence of these large troops of mercenary soldiers made peace almost more terrible than
war. Catherine's first object seems to have been to free Italy from this heavy burden,
and by turning this restless fighting spirit into a legitimate channel by the old
mediaeval idea of a crusade. She visited Pisa at this time and there met the ambas-
sador of the Queen of Cyprus on his way to entreat the assistance of the Pope against
the Turks, who had invaded the territory of that queen.
Catherine seems to have at once thrown herself warmly into this project and to
have devoted herself for many hours each day to writing letters to the principal peo-
ple throughout Italy, endeavoring to inspire them with her own enthusiasm. What-
ever may be our own feelings as to the merits of this idea, these letters are full of
, interest and throw much light upon the ideas and feelings of the men and women of
that day, and on the motives underlying the so-called " Holy Wars." We must now
pass rapidly over the most important and best known events of Catherine's life, her
employment by the Republic of Florence, in the year 1376, as ambassador on their
behalf to the Pope, Gregory XI., at Avignon. It is a matter of history that the influ-
ence of Catherine had great part in the Pope's final decision to return to Rome, and
records of her conversations with Gregory, which were made at the time, show us the
practical qualities gained in her experience as an artisan's daughter, and a citizen of a
free republican city.
The continued appreciation of her services is shown by her being again employed
as ambassador between the Pope and Florence, and by her success in this capacity,
first under Gregory and finally under his successor. Urban VI. And we need not
think that Catherine's influence can be accounted for by the weakness and ultra refine-
ment of Gregory's character, for Urban VI., a man of a very different disposition, who
had first made her acquaintance at Avignon, equally valued and appreciated her ser-
vices. We feel that Catherine, among whose favorite words were " virile " and " viril-
ment," and who constantly exhorted women as well as men to act in a courageous,
strong, manly spirit, must have had much more real sympathy with the stern and
uncompromising Urban than with the gentle and irresolute Gregory. We can not
dwell upon the close of Catherine's life, the last eighteen months of which were spent
(37)
578 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in Rome by command of Pope Urban, in unwearied labors for the unity and reform of
the Church and the peace of Italy. We hear of her addressing the assembled Cardi-
nals in the Consistory, on the Schism and other Church questions, the Pope himself
summing up her remarks, and giving frank expression to the encouragement and help
which he himself derived from her advice. Catherine is said to have ruled in Rome at
this time; she had daily interviews with the magistrates and chiefs of the army and
other prominent citizens, and also, assisted by her faithful band of followers, visited
daily the prisons and hospitals. Her pen seems to have been never idle, and her last
letters are of great interest both from a political and a human point of view.
The chronicler of her last moments gives us no account of miraculous ecstasies
or visions, but tells us of her humble estimation of herself and of her continual prayers
for others. She died on April 29, 1380, and was buried in the Church of the Minerva,
at Rome, her head being later removed to Siena and deposited in her own dearly-
loved Church of St. Dominic. She was canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic
Church in the year 1461, eighty-one years after her death.
The memory of Catherine has never ceased to be cherished in her native city.
The mothers still teach their children one of her prayers, and many other traces of
her real existence may still be found and separated from the legends and supersti-
tions which so easily grow up around the memories of those who rise above the com-
mon level of humanity. What conclusions may be drawn from this outline of a woman's
life? Leaving aside many points of great interest, suggested by a closer study
of Catherine's life and writings, may we select as a close to this brief sketch, and as
appropriate to our present purpose, the three following:
First. Mediaeval saints will usually be found upon closer inspection to have really
been saints, but not widely differing from what men and women have been, and still
may be, in the present day; and we need a new Acta Sanctorum for the use of the pres-
ent day, with the lives of the saints as they really were, free from legend and mira-
cle, and including all whose influence has made for righteousness.
Second. Catherine was eminently a political woman, and owed her influence and
power to the honorable and direct qualities of her individual character and strength of
principle, and not to the indirect ones of rank or beauty. Such women prove better
than arguments that there may be a place for women in politics, and suggest that they
may be even necessary for the government of the perfect state.
Third. Studies of this description make us feel the unity of the ages, as we perceive
men and women in all times working together for the advancement of the world; liv-
ing for the improvement of their own age, and giving expression to its best thoughts;
and dying in the faith that their work will be carried on by future generations. "Their*
works do follow them."
We feel that we who enter into their labors should enjoy and appreciate them, be
grateful for them, and be encouraged by them to labor to do our own part in working
for our own generation, and in increasing and handing on the heritage which we have
received from the men and women of bygone days.
FOUR MONTHS IN OLD MEXICO.
By MRS. CAROLINE WESTCOTT ROMNEY.
LAU rights reserved.]
The exigencies of life in the development of a new country by a comparatively
poor people have been such as to necessitate frequent changes of abode among the
citizens of the United States. The young men, as a
rule, have been obliged to leave their Eastern homes
on coming of age, or before, to carve out their own
individual fortunes farther and farther West, with each
succeeding generation. The result is that, as a peo-
ple, we have imbibed a love for change and adven-
turous undertaking far beyond anything known among
European nations. Like the Greeks of old we are
constantly seeking " some new thing." Let anything
be but novel, and we immediately lose our heads until
we are able to see it or experience it.
Where everything is so exceedingly new as in our
own country, especially here in the West, it is getting
to be a difficult matter to find anything newer, a really
f "' " ' " fresh experience. In fact, paradoxical as it may
' —^ sound, " the old " alone can now be "the novel" to us.
A magnificent store of unmined wealth in this direc-
tion lies at our very doors, almost unexplored by
Americans, in the neighboring republic of Mexico,
where everything is as unique and different from what
we are accustomed to in our own land as though it
were on a different planet.
It is a land of extremes, of deserts and paradises, of rugged mountains and of
beautiful tropical valleys. The tablelands of the interior, averaging several thousand
feet in altitude above the level of the sea, produce the grains and fruits of the temper-
ate zones, while the Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land, teems with the most luscious fruits
and other precious products of the tropics.
When it comes to scenic attractions, some portions of Mexico surpass the world.
Not only is nature so prodigal in her gifts, so beautiful and inviting, but the people
and their manners and customs offer a most interesting field of observation.
I have made two visits to Mexico, which occupied upward of four months of time,
during which I visited in detail no less than twenty-seven different cities and towns.
I will say right here, that of all the twenty-seven places visited, there was not one
whose streets were not paved, not one (with one exception) which was not supplied with
water-works, generally consisting of stone aqueducts built hundreds of years ago, con-
ducting the water from sources in the neighboring mountains, not one that did not have
its public baths, not one whose streets were not paved and lighted, some with elec-
tricity, some with gas and some with oil lamps; not one that did not have its native
Mrs. Caroline Westcott Romney was born at Clyde, Wayne County, N. Y. Her parents were Hon. J. N. West-
cott and Sophronia Willar.l Westcott. She was educated in the public schools of Ohio, and at home by her father, who was
a very fine scholar. She studied Latin and Greek under his tuition, and has traveled in Europe, Old Mexico and nearly all
over the United States. She married Mr. John Romney in 1876, and was left a widow the same year. As a journalist she is a
voluminous writer. She has invented and exhibited at the Columbian Exposition filters, conservers of heat and cold, and other
inventions of value and importance to economic and comfortable housekeeping. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian.
Her postoffice address is Chicago, 111.
579
MRS. CAROLINE WESTCOTT ROMNEY.
580 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
band; not one that did not have from one to four plazas or public squares, ornamented
with trees, flowers and fountains; and many of them also paseos of greater or less
length, corresponding with our boulevards, consisting of double drives, bridle-paths
and walks, separated by narrow patches of ground planted like a park with trees,
grass and flowers, and frequently ornamented with fountains.
In the city of Pueblo the old paseo has no less than nine passage-ways for car-
riages, horsemen and pedestrians, alternating, with the little parks between.
The shortness of the paseo in general has given rise to the fashion of riding and
driving slowly, or on a walk, backward and forward many times in order to see and be
seen, as in Hyde Park, London. The Grand Paseo in the City of Mexico, however,
is an exception to this rule, owing to its greater length. A more brilliant or pictur-
esque scene could scarcely be imagined than it presents at about 5 o'clock in the
afternoon, especially on Sundays and holidays, with its glittering array of fine car-
riages freighted with beauty and fashion, and gaily caparisoned horses whose riders
are frequently arrayed in the national garb with embroidered jackets and trousers, or
at least leggings decorated with silver or gilt braid and buttons, or rows of small silver
bells, and broad sombreros heavy with gold or silver cord.
Mexico, for the most part, it will be remembered, consists of a great mountain
plateau ranging from about 4,000 to 8,000 or g,ooo feet above the level of the sea.
The climate, except in the Tierra Caliente, is charming, and even the Hot Land
affords great variety of climate, owing to local causes. That portion bordering on
the Gulf of Mexico is generally heavily timbered, humid and unhealthful, whereas
that part on the Pacific Ocean and the coast of the Gulf of California has a dry and
healthful climate, yellow fever, the pest of the eastern coast, and kindred diseases
being practically unknown. Owing to the trend of the mountain ranges, and the direc-
tion of the prevailing winds in summer, the climate is not nearly so hot there as on the
eastern coast.
The temperature on the table-land varies according to the altitude, from the semi-
tropic to the temperate, but in the main is most delightful, neither too hot nor too
cold; in neither respect being subject to the extremes of our western states and terri-
tories. The greater altitude, the frequent showers and the narrowing of the continent,
which permits of effects from the ocean breezes on both coasts reaching far into the
interior, render the climate on the central plateau much more moderate than in the
adjoining portions of the United States, and on the whole one of the most delightful
on earth.
The rainy season is really the most charming portion of the year, a season resem-
bling, somewhat, our April weather. As irrigation is necessary during all other por-
tions of the year, and that can be applied only to limited sections on account of an
insufficient water supply for the whole country, it will readily be seen that Mexico is
never so attractive as during the rainy season. The dust is effectually laid, rendering
travel more pleasant Most travelers go to Mexico in March — a disagreeable month
everywhere in the world, and one of the hottest in Mexico.
My greatest surprise in Mexico was in the people themselves. We are too apt to
condemn what is strange or unaccustomed, and I must confess to having had more or
less prejudice against the Mexican people, derived, probably, from casual contact on
the borders with so-called •' Greasers." They are not idle and \?izy per se, as they are
generally represented to be, but only idle and lazy as compared with Americans.
Cradled in the lap of a luxurious and generous nature, they lake life pretty much as
they find it, while we Americans are an epitome of the age of steam, doing the work of
centuries in a decade, but lacking all the sweet repose of calm content which charac-
terizes our brethren across the border. Who shall say which life is the more divine;
or is the charm of the one a mere matter of contrast, a grateful change from what we
know and are weary of? They are industrious and faithful when they do work, but
their activity is one of ebb and flow. They don't work when it isn't necessary. They
love holidays and sitting in the sun. They act on the principle that they have all
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 581
eternity before thehi, and there is no use in being in such a tremendous hurry. The
world was not made in a day. Why crowd the centuries? The result is they do not
wear themselves out, as we do, who call ourselves Americans — a title which belongs
equally to them, however— but in many instances live to an age unknown on this side
of the line. Centenarians are not at all uncommon, and many exceed that age by
ten, twenty and even forty years. It may be a case, however, of " a century of Europe "
being worth " a cycle of Cathay."
If one member of a Mexican family of the lower class is earning money the rest
can idle and be sure of their share of it. Sometimes it is one and sometimes another
who does the wage earning. Even a stranger, if in need, is taken in and cared for in
the same fashion, and if ill, treated with a kindness and consideration that knows no
bounds.
The hospitality of the better classes is well known. The visitor is told that the
house is his own — in fact, everything is his. If he admires anything he is immediately
presented with it; not that he is really expected to accept it. It is all equivalent to
our fashion, I suppose, of telling people to make themselves at home, only given with
more gusto. The men kiss each other when they meet upon special occasions, and
the women embrace and kiss on the cheek.
Through an English lady who had lived in Mexico for twenty-seven years, and
knew all of the first families, and to whom I had a letter of introduction, I met a
number of Mexico's aristocracy, whom I found very agreeable, very refined, and
possessed of the finest manners. We Americans are inclined to look down upon the
Mexicans as inferior to ourselves. They return the compliment by looking down
upon us. They admire our smartness, our inventive genius, and business enterprise
and push; but regard us as uncultured barbarians when it comes to literary attainments
and the amenities of life, in which respect they consider themselves vastly our
superiors. In manners we may well give them the palm.
The women of the better classes are refined, and many of them accomplished in
many ways, especially in music and the languages, although not thoroughly educated
like American women of the same classes. My English lady friend, just referred to,
pronounces them the sweetest women she ever knew, the best wives and mothers, and
says she prefers them to her own countrywomen. That is probably an exaggerated
view, arising from the fact that she has been so long absent from her own people.
The mothers and daughters are closely attached and always together; whereas
the sons break away early from maternal restraints, and are made much of and
taken about by the fathers, who take great pride in dressing them finely and
showing them off.
The Indians and lower classes of Mexicans I found everywhere to be as amiable
and kind, gentle and courteous, as their betters in social standing. They are good to
their own. No family permits any of its poor relations, or poorer relations (for all
are poor) to suffer. All such have a welcome, not to the family hearth or the family
chimney corner, but to shelter under the family roof tree, no matter how contracted
it may be, and a share of the tortillas and frijolis, no matter how limited the store.
It is a great mistake to think that the Mexicans are not cultured. Many of the
wealthy classes have been educated abroad, and their higher schools and colleges are
of a superior order, and education is held in the greatest possible esteem.
The City of Mexico has not only its literary colleges, but colleges of law, medi-
cine, technology, commercial colleges, a conservatory of music, etc., and among
others I saw one, with a sign over the door, reading " CoUegio de Polemica " — College
of Polemics. It also has art schools (one for women as well as men, for co-education
is not yet introduced in Mexico, not even in the public primary schools), which
have been in existence for about the same length of time.
The public schools, however, are the hope of the country, which are free in all
the grades, including the highest, and the curriculum of studies pursued would astonish
the opponents of " the fads " in our Chicago public schools, who think Mexico so much
582 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
•
behind the times. The writer was much astonished in visiting a secondary school for
girls at Aguas Calientes, with pupils ranging from eight to fourteen years of age, to
find taught, in addition to the ordinary branches of a common-school education,
English and French, drawing (with a room full of models), music (both vocal and
instrumental, with instruments for practice), fine needlework and embroidery, and
decorative penmanship, each with a special teacher, and telegraphy and photography
(with full apparatus), the schoolhouse being a new one, but one-story in height, and
built around an open court. Where in the United States could such a curriculum be
found in a free public school?
The Mexicans are natural artists in all lines, and when I say Mexicans I mean the
mixed race of Indian and Spanish blood; for they are the people of Mexico, the ruling
class, the statesmen, the scholars, the artists, the everything that is good and promising
and progressive in Mexico. A native-born Spaniard can not even hold office in Mexico
under the constitution, so great is the hatred of that nation born and bred in the
people whom they oppressed for so many centuries. This feature is mutual. Those
of pure Spanish blood look down upon and despise the Mestizos, and the Mesitzo can
not find words to express his contempt and hatred of the Spanish. Altimiranti, a
noted statesman, who died a few years since and who was a full-blooded Indian, said
that if he knew that he had a drop of Spanish blood in his veins he would open them
and let it out.
Juarez, the greatest President Mexico ever had, was a full-blooded Indian. Diaz,
the present progressive President, has a large admixture of Indian blood, and is a
very handsome man of his type. The same is true of all of Mexico's great men.
The Indians of Mexico are not of the same race as our red Indians of the United
States, however, it must be remembered, but of a higher and more civilized type, as a
a rule, although there are many Indian races in Mexico who differ greatly in point of
development and in racial peculiarities. Cortez recognized nine distinct races. Some
are of a very low type; some of a very high type.
In the state of Oaxaca, to the southeast of the state of Mexico, the native popu-
lation is of a very high order. The capital of the state of Oaxaca is also called
" Oaxaca," and presents the anomaly of a city of forty thousand inhabitants, without
even a carriage road giving access to it.
This isolated city has its own university and has produced more great men than
any other in Mexico. Juarez came from Oaxaca, and was a graduate of its university.
The same is true of Diaz, the present President, and of Senor Matteo Romero, the
accomplished Mexican Minister at Washington for so many years past, the latter two
being Meztizos or Mexicans, and the former, as before stated having been an Indian.
Another great center of letters and art, second only to the City of Mexico, if
indeed it does not lead it in this respect, is the City of Guadalajara, the capital of the
state of Jalisco, on the Pacific slope, off to the northwest of Mexico.
The Mexicans are also a nation of musicians. No town or village of any size is
without its string band, many of the instruments being of native manufacture. Even
the pure-blooded Indians are almost universally musicians and make their own instru-
ments.
The Indian women are also expert in many kinds of fancy-work; embroidering
with feathers, ante-dating Cortez; and the fine drawn-thread needlework of Mexico,
which is so much admired, is wrought by them, some of it being so delicate, that it can
only be done at midday with the work held between the eyes and the sun. This is not
an accomplishment learned from the Spanish, as I understand it, but is a native
acquirement of the Indian women themselves.
I went to Mexico entirely unattended. I was the first American lady, or lady of
any other nation, so far as I could learn, who ever went through the country in that
way, stopping over at the various cities and visiting them, as I would in any other
country. The camareros (chambermaids) are all men, and contrary to the generally
received opinion that they are all thieves, I never had a pin's worth taken from me
during my four months' sojourn in Mexico.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 583
Respectable Mexican ladies do not go on the street unaccompanied by some
other female, as a rule, even though escorted by a husband or brother, as people may
not know that he is a husband or brother. A duenna accompanies her, or a female
servant trots along in the rear. This rule is adhered to very strictly in the provincial
towns, but is beginning to be ignored, to some extent, in the City of Mexico; some
especially strong-minded Mexican ladies asserting their independence of suspicion, by
adopting the American custom in this respect.
Upon my first visit to a city, I generally hired a mozo (male servant) who would
consider two reals (twenty-five cents) a day, ample compensation, and twice that
amount, princely remuneration for his services, to go about with me for a day or two,
to show me the way, and carry my packages, as the Mexican cities are like most of those
of Europe, not regularly laid out ; the City of Mexico itself, however, being an exception
to the rule, although even there, the names of the streets, even when continuous,
change every two or three blocks, as they do everywhere in Mexico, which increases
the difificulty of finding one's way about.
The religion of the great mass of the people of Mexico, is the Roman Catholic.
It is pre-eminently a country of churches. No village, however small, is without one,
or perhaps two or three, and even the open country frequently shows an isolated
church crowning some distant hill. Time was when the church virtually ruled the
state; owned about a third of the property in the whole country, and at least a quarter
of the City of Mexico itself; was the banker of the people; in fact, was so powerful
that it dictated terms to the government.
Under such circumstances any institution would become corrupt, and the church
was no exception. In 1859, Juarez^ then President, issued a protiunciame?ito con-
fiscating the church property, all except churches in actual use, and a house for the
priests. This may strike you as a singular provision, but where there were so many
churches (one hundred and twenty-seven in the City of Mexico alone, and forty in the
little city of Queretaro — containing no more than forty thousand inhabitants), there
were many not in use for public services. All convents and monasteries were sup-
pressed, their property confiscated, and the members of the orders compelled to dis-
band or leave the country. The Jesuits were banished altogether.
This confiscation of the church property to the people, however, has not turned
out well, as a rule. If the fine old convent buildings could have been appropriated by
the state, and transformed into hospitals, schools and eleemosynary institutions gen-
erally, it would have resulted in saving, to worthy uses, a vast aggregation of valuable,
and in many cases, magnificent buildings, which are fast falling into decay.
The common people in Mexico are generally Catholics, but the ruling class — at
least the men — are generally free-thinkers. Their wives and children, however, are,
as a rule, Roman Catholics. Men in Mexico, as elsewhere, seem to like to have
their wives and children (at least, female children) religious, whatever they may be
themselves.
The Protestant movement has made considerable headway in some portions of
Mexico. It had its origin in the State and City of Oaxaca, for it commenced in
Mexico, as everywhere else, from within, and among pure-blooded Indians, an evan-
gelical society having been formed, with its president and secretary, and regular
meetings held for a long time before any Protestant missionary set foot in Mexico;
but its converts are confined almost exclusively to the so-called lower classes, the
Episcopal Church alone having made any progress with the aristocratic and cultured
classes, and that only in the City of Mexico, where it owns the fine old church of
the Franciscans, a native minister officiating, and counts a number of ex-Catholic
priests among its converts.
The Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists have also made respectable
headway in the City of Mexico, as well as in some of the provincial towns.
The abandoned convents make fine ruins, although it fills one with sadness to
see such valuable property — the result of so much effort on the part of man — going
584 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
to waste. One beautiful old convent that I visited in Queretaro, that of San Augustin,
had all of the arches of the upper and lower corridors, surrounding the patio, of
elaborately carved stone. Washwomen were pursuing their avocation about the cen-
tral fountain, and donkeys wandered in and out of the abandoned ground-floor rooms;
but they are not all thus deserted. There is occasionally a convent which is still put
to valuable uses. Some have been converted into hotels, like the Hotel del Jardin, in
the City of Mexico, which is the old refectory of the Franciscan Convent, and built
around the beautiful old convent garden which gives it its name.
The Hotel Zacatecano, at Zacatecas, is another converted convent. To the Amer-
ican the building itself is a most delightful surprise. It was a portion of the church
property confiscated under Juarez in 1859, and is a most beautiful specimen of Moorish
architecture. It is about three centuries old, having been begun in 1576 and completed
in 1596.
One realizes the ancientness of these border cities of Mexico, with their convents
and churches, when one stops to reflect that Christian church bells were ringing in
Chihuahua and Zacatecas nearly fifty years before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth
Rock; and not only in Old Mexico, but on what is now our own side of the Rio Grande,
at Yslete, Tex., as well as at Santa Fe, N. M., not much later, and long before the
Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving.
But to return to my convent. It is built around an open court or patio, entered
from the street by means of an arched and paved carriage-way, and surrounded on
both the lower and upper stories by arched corridors, open on the inner side, around
which all of the rooms are ranged, opening upon it by means of great, heavy, wooden
double doors, both the jambs and lintels of which are of solid stone, with caps sup-
ported by carved stone brackets. The arches of the corridors are the most beautiful
part of the structure.
The pillars supporting the arches, and the arches themselves, are of carved stone,
Hispano-Morisco and Aztec symbols appearing conjointly in the decorations; pilas-
ters, representing the rising flame of the Aztec sacred fires, being cut in relief upon
the face of the pillars, with mystic Arabic designs above. Even in the City of Mexico
itself no such beautiful court as this exists.
Both court and corridors are paved with tile, as are all of the rooms in the house
as well. Trees, shrubs and flowering plants of many kinds are arranged about the
patio, set in earthenware vases, tubs and casks, and an octa.gona.\ jardi/iiere, with its
shelves similarly filled, rises in a pyramid in the middle, crowned with a statue repre-
senting, one would imagine, the Mexican Minerva, her head adorned with a chaplet of
cactus leaves, and a sword in her hand.
The roof of the building is flat, with great domes rising on two sides and smaller
ones at the four corners. The walls are fully four feet through, and the rooms have
lofty ceilings and are much larger than in most ^rst-class American hotels. So it
seems the monks were not cramped for room when within the confines of their cells.
Heavy shutters, made of some wood which, like that of the doors, is seemingly as
hard as iron, close the double windows. When these shutters are closed and barred,
and the key ( nearly a foot long), turned in the rusty lock, which one is sure no burglar's
tools can pick, on account of the weight of the key if for no other reason, one feels as
secure against intrusion from the evilly disposed as though in a veritable fortress. In
fact these ancient convents and churches served a double purpose in the old days,
being places of refuge for the people — actually fortresses of defense — as well as relig-
ious retreats, and their strength was often put to the test, even up to a very recent
period.
At Guadelupe, a suburb of Zacatecas, five miles distant, an old convent is con-
verted into a hospicio para ninos — an asylum for boys — where two hundred orphans are
learning all sorts of trades, etc., besides receiving a regular schooling in text books.
Don Jose M. Mirandi, a very courtly and handsome gentleman, and a man of
great wealth, and who, as I understand, acts in this capacity through philanthropy
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 585
alone, is director of tne hospicio, and took the utmost pains to have me see the work-
ings of the institution in detail.
The pupils of musical talents have been formed into an orchestra and supplied
with brass instruments. They meet at four o'clock every afternoon in a large hall,
under the tuition of Don Bernabe Santoyo of Zacatecas, director de miisica del Hos-
picio. I was so fortunate as to be present at this hour, and to my mingled surprise and
delight, doubtless by prearrangement of Director Miranda, the band struck up " The
Star Spangled Banner " as I made my appearance, in honor of La Americana, only
one of the numerous instances I witnessed while in Mexico of the graceful gallantry of
these charming people. The boys of this school also receive a military training,
being divided into companies, uniformed and supplied with arms.
In the rear of all the buildings are extensive huertas (gardens), where vegetables
and fruits are raised. It is said that this orphanage owns a barra, or twenty-fourth
share in the great San Rafael mine, from which it derives a very large annual income,
sufficient to pay all of the expenses of the institution.
In front of the church and orphanage is a beautiful public garden filled with rare
trees and flowers, and with a fountain in the center.
The church is one of the handsomest in Mexico, it, together with the Colegio
Apostolico adjoining (the convent already referred to), having been founded in 1707,
but its splendors pale before those of the Capella de Guadelupe, or Chapel of Guadelupe,
adjoining, which is modern, having been only recently completed at a cost, it is said,
of a quarter of a million, and is the most beautiful church of its size in Mexico, if not
in the world.
It was built by a rich lady of Zacatecas, since deceased, Senora Dominga Miranda,
sister of Senor Miranda, director of the hospicio just described, who spared no expense
in either the building or its decorations, the best artists of the City of Mexico being
employed for the latter. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, with a dome in the
center. The walls are adorned with the most beautiful pictures of sacred scenes,
painted directly upon them, and the metal work of the chancel rail and gates, as well
as of the entrance doors, is of the most elaborate description, brass and bronze being
the materials employed, while the floor is inlaid in mosaics of the richest woods.
Speaking of charitable institutions I must not forget the Maternity Hospital at
Pueblo. The Maternity Hospital is very extensive and perfect in every detail, embody-
ing all modern improvements in the way of sanitation and hygiene. It is built around
a very large court, on which all the rooms open by way of the corridors. It cost
S2CX),ooo, and, strange to say, was endowed and built by an old bachelor, who has since
gone to his reward.
/
THE NOVEL AS THE EDUCATOR OF THE IMAGINATION.
By MISS MAY ROGERS.
Edgar Fawcett says:
" We, who write novels for existing time,
Should face our task with fortitude sublime.
Twice daily now we hear our critics mourn
r -.*. The unpleasant fact that we were ever born. "
Howells complains of the " little digs " that an-
noy authors, and he attributes them to woman's intru-
sion amon'g critics. The most spiteful feminine dig
into masculine vanity is as a pin-scratch to a dagger-
thrust in comparison with the ordeal of some of our
women novelists, who are suspected of being their
own heroines; with ruthless disregard of the rights of
privacy, the lives of these authoresses are reviewed
as a commentary on their romances. The career of
the woman artist is beset with pain and peril, between
the impertinent gossip and the malignant slanderer,
whispers the insinuator, who is always anonymous.
Anyone who aspires to sit in critical councils should
know that observation and imagination are essentials
in artistic creation, and not identical experience.
Criticism should have the positive value of recogniz-
ing talent rather than the negative quality of defining
limitations. The service of criticism is to cultivate,
and as critics, St. Beuve, Arnold and Lowell are educators. Guy de Maupassant
advised the critic to say to the novelist: " Make us something beautiful in the form
which suits you best, according to your own temperament." This ideal attribute could
be possible in France, but the young English or American novelist should early learn
that the English-reading public buys translations of the most naturalistic of foreign
novels, but it demands that the balance of virtue be sustained by the conventionality
of fiction originally written in English. Our novelists must conform or be accused of
immorality. A novelist should be an artist, who can imagine and tell a story that will
entertain and move his readers. If his art is true, the ethical situation will be evident
without emphasis. Thackeray is more critical than psychological. With sardonic
scorn he lashes snobbery, vulgarity in high places, and human folly. His incessant
expressions of hate divert us from judging the characters by the author's sermon about
them. But in his historical novel he leaves the narration to that grand gentleman,
Henry Esmond. Most English readers do not agree with Mr. Taine in admiring the
constructive art of Henry Esmond more than the satire of Vanity Fair. The difficult
Miss May Rogers is a native of Dubuque, Iowa. Her parents were Thomas Rogers, of New York, a distinguished lawyer,
scholar and orator, and Anna Burton Rogers, of Delaware. She was educated in the public schools and by private instruct-
ors in Greek, Latin and French. She has traveled in Europe and extensively in the United States, having lectured in New
York City, New Orleans, Washington, Cheyenne, San Francisco and Des Moines. Miss Rogers is one of the Board of Directors
of the General Federation of Women's Clubs and is a Daughter of the American Revolution. She was president of the
Dnbuqne Ladies' Literary Association for several years. Miss Rogers is a descendant of Dutch and Huguenot ancestors, who
emigrated, that they might enjoy religious liberty. Her literary works are the Waverly Dictionary of the characters in Scott's
novels, newspaper editorials, lectures and reviews. Her profession is journalism and lecturing. Her postoffice address is
No. 547 Locust Street, Dubuque, Iowa.
586
MISS M.4Y ROGERS.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 587
task of historical fiction has never been better executed, and since Thackeray, only
Romola and John Inglesart can be compared with Henry Esmond, which revivified
the age of Queen Anne. Emerson felt that it was a "jugglery" for a novelist to com-
bine characters and fortunes fancifully and sensationally, for he said there was in
nature a "magic by which she fits a man to his fortunes by making them the fruits of
his character." Realism is a protest against "jugglery " with the logic of character.
Mr. Hardy in his great novel was guilty of " jugglery " when he makes a betrayed girl
return to her betrayer. As Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to ridicule the bombastic
tales of chivalry, so the realistic novel is a reaction from the hysteria and exaggeration
of old-fashioned romanticism. The conscience of realistic art is sincerity .in describ-
ing the facts of life. Ouida reminds us that the passion-flower is as real as the potato.
The reality of the beautiful and the heroic is as much in the province of realism as is
the reality of the horrible and the commonplace. Truth is the only restraint of a realist,
and whether he writes of flowers or potatoes is a question of taste and, perhaps, of
vision.
In our Dubuque library last year, out of a circulation of over twenty-five thou-
sand books over nineteen thousand were juveniles and fiction. The report of the
Chicago public library for 1892 states that over forty-two per cent of the circulation
was English prose fiction, and over twenty per cent was juvenile literature. The
Nineteenth Century Magazine for June, 1893, states that the per cent of fiction in the
Battersea free libraries of England was four-fifths of the circulation. But of a circu-
lation of five millions in the Boston public library, extending over five years, four-
fifths of the books were juvenile and fiction.
Novels are the amusement and refreshment of our practical, overworked, over-
wrought age. Even children tire of monotony and seek the fairies. Novels are read
by those who read no other books, and they are also the recreation of scholars and
thinkers, Charles Darwin said they rested him. As long as age cherishes tender
memories, and as long as love is the dream of youth, romance will be the most fasci-
nating literature. A description of all the novels now being read would be a mirror
of the multiform modern mind. Any human interest is a legitimate theme for the
novelist, and it is as useless to dogmatize about the sphere of the novel as it is
useless to dogmatize about the sphere of woman. There are novels for those who
admire philosophic analysis, and for those who want exciting adventures on land and
on sea, and also for those who ask that their love stories shall give information about
history, science, reform, theology and politics. Harriet Martineau wrote Political
Economy in the story form, and I am surprised that there was not a tariff novel dur-
ing the last campaign.
In this age of the telegram and the paragraph, the novelist who wishes to be read
must be brief as well as brilliant. Tourgenefi's method was to condense and to con-
centrate. Guy De Maupassant made the short story popular in France by his genius
in eliminating the superfluous. His thirteen short tales, published as the Odd Number,
are masterpieces of concise but artistically adequate treatment. Our American novel-
ists have been most artistic as writers of short stories, whether we judge the result by
effectiveness of story telling, or keenness of character sketching or carefulness in lit-
erary construction. In the long list of our successful writers of short stories there
has been no discrimination against our sex in the awards of honor. Mrs. Jewett's art
is so finished that Howells compares her with Maupassant, to her advantage. I think
Miss Woolsen's finest story is her short novel, " For the Major," which has a touch of
ideal grace. New England has her Mary Wilkin, and we in Iowa are proud of our
Octave Thanet, who spoke at the literary congress of the American flavor of our short
stories. International novels have the charm of cosmopolitan culture, but they are
not contributions to a distinctive national literature, which must be written from an
American point of view about the characteristics of our people, with their local atmos-
phere. The late Sidney Lanier delivered a series of lectures on the development of
the English novel at Johns Hopkins University in 1881. He believed that the novel,
588 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
modern music and modern science are the simultaneous expressions of the growth of
individuality in man. Richardson, the founder of the English novel, was born in
1689; the musician, Sebastian Bach, in 1685, and the scienist, Newton, in 1642. Thus
being born in the same half century, he regards them as contemporary results of the
Renaissance. He argues that man's desire to have individual knowledge of his phys-
ical environments produced the scientist, man's desire to utter his individual emotions
toward the Infinite gave us the modern art and artist of music; man's desire to
know the life of his fellow-man resulted in the novel. The drama was inadequate for
portrayal of the minute complexities of modern personalities. The novelist succeeded
the chorus, and the novel was evolved out of the classic and Elizabethan dramas.
Before the printing press the multitudes were entertained and instructed by the thea-
ter. The reading public of today studies the story of human life. With the progress
of the democratic idea of the rights of man has grown a sense of the kinship of men.
In England the novel of individual traits, of manners and domestic life, with an
avowed or implied moral motive, began with Richardson's Pamela in 1740, and in this
field of fiction the English novel is unrivaled. In his history of European morals,
Mr. Lecky charges man's intolerance to feeble imagination, which prevents him from
understanding people of a different religion, pursuit, age, country, or temperament
from his own. He claims that men tortured in the past and persecute today because
they are too imaginative to be tolerant or just. What they can not realize they believe
to be evil, and he says that this " power of realization forms the chief tie between our
moral and intellectual natures." We think that only those who are intentionally
cruel would continue to inflict pain if they knew the suffering they caused. He con-
cludes that the " sensitiveness of a cultivated imagination " makes men humane and
tolerant. Thus imaginative literature is acivilizer when it develops tolerance through
sympathy.
The hesitancy of writers in other branches of literature to grant the importance
of the novel is due to their failure to see that it is the popular educator of the imag-
ination. George Eliot said: " If art does not enlarge man's sympathies, it does noth-
ing morally, and the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is, that
those who read them should be better able to imagine and feel the' pains and joys of
those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling,
erring human creatures."
What novelists have done to help mankind is incalculable. Imprisonment for
debt is now so hateful to us that Dickens' "Little Dorrit" seems a story of a forgotten
past. Charles Reade struck heavy blows at abuses in prisons, insane asylums and
trade unions in his " Never Too Late to Mend," " Hard Cash," and " Put Yourself in
His Place." The People's Palace in London is the result of Walter Besant's "All
Sorts and Conditions of Men," and the sorrows of the poor and the oppressed every-
where are told in our novels. It is impossible to measure how much of the prepara-
tory work of emancipation was due to and done by " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
As human nature is the inspiration of literature, characters of a novel must be
natural to be of any literary value, and of this anyone can judge who has had the
ordinary experience of life. There is so much fiction written only for sensational
excitement, and there are tales of silly sentimentality which can justly be called trash.
Mature, busy people often feel that it is a waste of time to read of phenomenally
gifted heroes and supernaturally beautiful heroines who keep their lovers in awful
suspense until the wedding bells of the last chapter. Novels devoted to expert testi-
mony in the art of kissing are unnecessary, and it will always be an experimental
science.
John Morley defines literature as the books " where moral truth and human
passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity and attraction of form." A novel
has not sanity unless it is true to the probabilities of conduct and represents the
passions of love in its ratio to the other interests of life. The " attraction of form "
can not be imprisoned in a definition any more than a woman's charms can be described
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 589
by an adjective. Its presence is the author's diploma of style, his degree of master
in the service of beauty. The French are the successors of the Greeks in the arts, and
their literary technique makes their fiction supreme in the " attraction of form " and
in description of human passion, but it seldom has the largeness that considers
responsibility as well as passion. A novel is written " with a certain largeness " when
we are shown passion not only in its relation to individuals, but also to their social
environment and to our universal humanity. This largeness was the greatness of
George Elliot.
While foreign fiction may have an emotional and artistic fascination, we cherish
our English novels for more reasons than those of entertainment. It is the history of
the manners and customs and daily life of the English speaking people here and in
the mother country. On its pages are recorded all our current thoughts and debates,
and all our dreams and despairs. It tells of the happiness of love, and of the anguish
of bereavement, of secret wrestling with temptation and of the weary questioning of
the mysteries of life and death. It also reflects the moral force and philanthropy of
our race, which is striving to make tomorrow nobler than today.
We are fortunate to live in this blessed modern age when electric science writes
the minds of men, and when the spirit's subtle sympathy makes us one in heart. What
Mrs. Browning says of the poet is true of the novelist:
•'Oh delight
And triumph of the poet, who would say
A man's mere ' yes ' a woman's common ' no,'
A little human hope of that or this,
And say the word so that it burns you through.
With special revelation speaks the heart
Of all the men and women in the world."
SAMOA— ITS PEOPLE AND THEIR CUSTOMS.
By MRS. E. J. ORMSBEE.
Samoa is the native name of a group of islands in the South Pacific, formerly
known as the Navigator's Islands. The group is situated in latitude 13-14° south, longi-
tude 171 ° west, and consists of eight or more inhabited
islands, besides several uninhabited ones. It is a
fifteen days' trip from San Francisco on the Austral-
ian steamers, which call at Hawaii for several hours,
where the steamers coal. Seven days after we find
ourselves on the Island of Upolu, which is next to the
largest island of the Samoan group, and is forty miles
long and thirteen broad. It has a range of mount-
ains, densely wooded to the summit, extending from
east to west, sloping to the shore, which is encircled
by a coral reef.
Street or steam railways are, of course, unknown
in Samoa. Most of the traveling is done by boat or
on horseback.' While we were there the first carriages
were introduced.
The moon and stars shine with unusual bright-
ness in this tropical country, and it was a constant
delight to us to see the constellations new to us, the
Southern Cross among others.
The Samoan people interested us greatly. They
live on taro, pigis, breadfruit, pigeons, and, of course,
fish and bananas, all of which they get without much
trouble, and certainly without the necessity of labor. It is hot and tropical, and cer-
tainly not of that character which would tend to make work a pleasure in itself; and
without the incentive of necessity, it is very easy to understand that the people nat-
urally incline to the idle, open-air life which they lead.
We were glad to learn that the Samoans were never cannibals. In war they still
practice decapitation, but justify it, so it is said, by citing familiar examples found in
the Bible, which they glibly repeat when expostulated with on the subject by the mis-
sionaries. In war they are unquestionably very brave and fearless, but I do not think
it is true that they delight in war; on the contrary, a little real fighting goes a long
way with them. In illustration of one of their characteristics, notably that of fair play,
it is a well-attested fact that in more than one battle one party has, under a flag of
truce, called for a cessation of fighting until they could replenish their exhausted
ammunition, which request was granted. Again they have been known to call a halt
in battle for the purpose of a feed, or a feast, which they would indulge in between the
lines.
The Samoans are a very good-looking and a finely-built race, both men and
women, with skins of a pale brown color, bright eyes, straight black hair and beau-
tifully white teeth. Physically it would be difificult to find a better developed race.
Only the men tattoo, not on their faces, but on their bodies from their hips to
Mrs. E. J. Ormsbee was born at Wadhame Mills, Essex County, N. Y. Her parents were William and Emeline
(Cole) Wadhams. She was educated in home schools and afterward in Essex, N. Y., and Burlington, Vt. She has traveled
very generally in her own country and in the Sandwich Islands. She spent one year in Samoa. Mrs. Ormsbee is the wife of
Gov. E. J. Ormsbee, of Brandon, Vt. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian. Her postoffice address is Brandon, Vt.
590
MKS. E. J. ORMSBEE.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 591
their knees, which gives them the appearance of clothing. One frequently sees a
native with his name tattooed on his arm. The tattooing is compulsory, and the
operation is said to be very painful, taking from two to three months, during which
time the patient remains in the bush or some retired place. No youth is really
respected until he is tattooed. The present king, Malietoa Laupepa, was averse to the
practice, and passed beyond the prescribed period without having submitted to the
painful ordeal, but when selected or raised to power his people refused to anoint him
king until he had been tattooed in due form.
The Samoans, as a people, are most courteous and kind, and seem to be naturally
endowed with pleasant dispositions and manners. They are particularly clean and in
every way a most attractive race. Their houses are suited to the climate. The roofs
are of sugar cane, very neatly thatched, supported on posts, and the better class of
buildings are made of the breadfruit tree. There are no walls, cocoanut mats are let
down at night when it is raining or during severe winds. Their native houses are built
to be very strong and comfortable, and without nail, bolt or spike. Every part is tied
with sennit, which is made from the fiber of a peculiar kind of cocoanut, braided in
three strands. This fiber is not more than a foot in length, so that it has to be con-
stantly spliced. The old men make this sennit when sitting in council. The floors of
their houses are made of small stones, four to eight inches deep, and covered with
mats. These mats are of native manufacture.
Here they live, sitting and sleeping on the floor, for they have neither chairs nor
beds, using in their place mats, and at night resting their heads on a bamboo pillow
raised a few inches from the ground. -
The natives wear very little clothing, save the lava-lava, which is a straight piece
of cloth or tappa, wound about the waist, falling like a skirt to the knees, but they
are never without that, men, women or children. Even the smallest baby always has
the lava-lava. The lava-lava proper is made from their native cloth, tappa, or for
everyday wear, of calico which is of European manufacture, designed especially for
this trade. The colors are generally the brightest, and the patterns in many cases of
the most wonderful description. One often sees large handkerchiefs of the brightest
colors used for lava-lavas on the smaller boys and girls. Older natives use all sorts of
leafy coverings made from banana leaves, and from the many vines which grow so
plentifully everywhere.
The costume of a high official, or a member of King Malietoa's Parliament, is a
white shirt and a lava-lava of brown tappa. The women, many of them, dress in the
same fashion as the men, though they often wear a white chemise over their colored
lava-lava. Another article of dress seen on young girls and offered for sale at the
shops at Apia, is a low-necked and short-sleeved bodice, rather loosely cut, made of
silk, satin and bright colored velvet, and trimmed with lace. On festive occasions
they wear similar bodices made entirely of fresh flowers and vines. They also wear a
garment that consists of a straight piece of cloth, about one and one-half yards long,
with an opening for the head in the center, falling down a little below the waist, both
front and back, leaving their arms free and uncovered. This garment is not only
made of tappa, their native cloth, but more frequently of calico put together in patch-
work style with white muslin, showing their fondness for a variety of colors. The
women always wear what we call a " Mother Hubbard" dress, when they attend church
or mingle with foreigners. I could tell you of numberless ludicrous costumes that
one sees on the street daily. On an extremely hot day one often sees a native woman
attempting to wear a Mother Hubbard with only one arm in its sleeve, and the skirt
on the other side brought up over the shoulder with the sleeve hanging, leaving this arm
free and bare, as they much prefer their natural freedom to the restriction which
European dress imposes. The missionaries insist that the women shall cover them-
selves when in church, and as a rule they do so, most of them also wearing hats,
though one frequently sees them with their hats in their hands or under their arms
until they reach the church door, and on leaving the church they remove the hat the
moment they are out.
592 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Many of the natives carry umbrellas, for though they are almost naked and bare-
headed, they dislike to get their hair wet. If they do not have an umbrella, they hold
a large banana leaf over their heads, or make a cap of the leaf, or use a small mat for
an umbrella.
Both men and women are fond of bleaching their hair by the use of lime that is
burned from the coral rock. This gives the naturally black hair a reddish color, which
they prefer. While this process is going on it is essential to keep their hair dry. One
frequently sees them with their heads white, their hair filled with this lime, which is
allowed to remain during the day, but is washed out in the evening and renewed in
the morning, and so continued until they are satisfied with the color. A flower is
never more than a minute in the hands of a native, either man or woman, before it is
transferred to the hair, or placed behind the ear, and when these white heads are dec-
orated with bright colored flowers and leaves, the effect, contrasting with the dark
skin, is quite striking.
The Samoan women have no regular method of dressing their hair. It is arranged
according to each one's individual fancy, but all devote a good deal of time to beauti-
fying themselves in this way. They shave their children's heads, and among young
boys and girls the fashion is varied. Sometimes a child is seen with merely a narrow
band of hair running down the back of the head; another with a small tuft in front,
which they call the " love-lock; " another with only a little crown of hair on the very
top of the head. Both men and women wear wreaths on their heads and garlands
about their necks, made from the scarlet and green fruit of the pandanus, and gener-
ally a single blossom of the beautiful scarlet hibiscus (which grows everywhere) placed
over their ear or on the top of their head.
Their clothing is made chiefly of tappa, their native cloth. Tappa is manufactured
from the inner bark of the ua (oo-a), or paper mulberry tree, cultivated for this pur-
pose. This bark is stripped from the tree and soaked for days in the river. Then the
women, sitting on the stones on the edge of the stream and frequently in it, lay this
juicy bark over a large flat stone or board, and with constant application of water,
scrape it with a shell until the vegetable mucus is separated from it and nothing
remains but the spongy white material. It is then taken to the house, and on a
rounded hardwood log kept for that special purpose, is pounded with the flattened
side of a heavy wooden club until the bark is expanded to the thinness wanted. Each
piece is then spread in the sun to dry, and when a sufficient quantity is ready the
women stick pieces together with arrow-root gum, layer over layer, until a cloth of
the desired thickness and size is manufactured. It is then painted in many different
patterns. Their paint is manufactured from nuts, plants and flowers which they find
in the bush. This painting is all done by the old women. This native cloth, when
new, is not unlike Japanese paper, but by use becomes soft and pliable.
The language of the Samoans is very musical. They have only fourteen letters
in their alphabet— a, e, i, o, u, f, g, 1, m, n, p, s, t, v — and every syllable ends in a vowel,
with only three letters in a syllable. They have a Bible, grammar and dictionary in
their own language; their children all attend school; their churches are their school-
houses, the pastor the teacher, and the Bible the reading-book. I was present at one
of their school sessions during an examination in grammar, arithmetic and church his-
tory, at which the scholars acquitted themselves in a way that would do credit to many
American boys and girls.
So far as I can judge, their life, ideas and practices, with reference to keeping
the seventh, eighth and ninth commandments, are not in keeping with their seeming
observance of the fourth, but before judging them harshly at this point there are
several things to be considered in their favor. They have no ambition as a people, or
aspirations to be other than as they are. They are happy and contented to a degree I
have not seen elsewhere. They take or make little, if any, note of time or space, and
even the better informed have no idea of their age, and I think there is no word in
their language denoting distance, or by which it can be measured. I also think the
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 593
same is true as to time. They seemingly have no more care or thought of the morrow
than birds, only they see to it that food for Sunday is procured on Saturday. They
are averse to doing more, or other, work than their wants require, and this is but little.
No one is overworked. They are kind to each other, and seem to be as happy in their
work as in their sports, which is evinced by the unreserved habit of singing when per-
forming any manual labor. They are much given to exchanging children, or adopting
each other's children, thinking in doing this that they strengthen their family ties.
Observation leads me to believe that they are fond of their own children, but are
seemingly as fond of others that come to them by exchange.
The chief article of export is copra, which is the kernel of the cocoanut cut into
small pieces and dried. Formerly this was dried in the sun, but now they use large
ovens, though the natives still dry in the sun in small quantities, of course, as they
have to protect it from the frequent rains of that country, and they bring this to the
traders at Apia and exchange it for whatever they need.
You can hardly imagine the many uses the Samoans make of the cocoanut.
Really, the cocoanut tree is the mainstay of Samoa, for it is used for food, implements,
utensils, fans, baskets, combs, brooms, roofs, and innumerable purposes. They serve
you kava, their native drink, in a cup made from the cocoanut, which is often highly
polished by constant use. When the cocoanut is wanted to drink, it is plucked while
the outer husk is green. The milk, which is like water, is clear, sparkling, slightly
sweet, and very refreshing, the meat at that time being fit to eat only with a spoon.
In native churches fresh cocoanut milk is used in place of wine at the communion
service.
While these natives use the cocoanut in so many ways, they are very dependent
upon taro and bananas for their chief food. Taro is their chief vegetable, its growth
being similar to that of our beet. It comes to maturity in four months, and is planted
continuously all the year. When the natives take up the taro, they cut off the top and
put it back into the ground, and another root forms as though nothing had happened
to it. They scrape the root and bake it in their ovens. A native oven is a hole in the
ground lined with stones, in which a fire is built and loose stones placed. When a
pig is to be roasted, these loose hot stones are placed inside the pig, which is then
wrapped in banana leaves, and after the fire is cleared from the oven, the pig, taro,
fowls, pigeons, etc., all wrapped in banana leaves, are put into the oven, the top is
carefully covered w^th stones and more banana leaves, and the whole is left over
night.
The soil on all these islands is exceedingly rich and is everywhere covered with
dense vegetation, from the water's edge to the mountain tops. The passai, or passion
vine, grows there with great rapidity. Europeans train it over arbors, but it grows in
the bush, climbing trees. The flower, with which we are all familiar in our green-
houses, is the purple passion flower, and the fruit we enjoy, only the center is eaten,
which is a mass of yellow jelly-like seeds, and very delicate, and is called grenadilla.
The Avoca pear is also very delicious, though it does not grow in abundance.
KAVA MAKING.
Kava is the national drink, and is manufactured from the root of a kind of pepper
shrub that grows luxuriantly in many parts of these islands, both in native and culti-
vated state. It is used both green and dry, though generally dried, and the root has
to be four or five years old to be good, and if it grows ten or fifteen years it is much
better and larger and will weigh thirty pounds or so; when young, only four or five.
It will keep for any length of time, and is bought and sold in all the stores of Apia,
bringing from two to three English shillingsa pound, dried, Kava is omnipresent and
indispensable. Nothing is correctly done in Samoa without kava drinking. You
enter a native house to call, and presently some native girls are summoned to make
kava, for it is always made in your sight, is expected on all social occasions and is
associated with every occupation. It follows working-parties in the bush. The fond-
(38)
594 ' THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ness for it is not confined to the natives, for laboring whites become fond of it, and
you as often see the kava bowl with this class as with the natives.
The making of kava is quite a ceremony. The root is either grated or pounded
in a stone mortar. On ceremonial occasions three girls, usually the taupou (the maid
of the village, with her attendants), appear dressed in their best, and seat themselves
in a row on one side of the house, or on the grass under the shade of the mango, or
orange trees (if the gathering is out of doors), and the large kava bowl is placed in
front of them. The girl selected to make the kava then holds her hands outside the
house and one of the attendants pours the contents of the cocoanut shell full of water
over them, to assure us that they are clean. Then one of the girls puts the pulverized
kava into the bowl, and the other pours some water in from one of the cocoanut water-
carriers near by. The taupou stirs this vigorously with her hands for some minutes.
The water-carriers are always cocoanuts especially prepared for this purpose. Then
the other attendant hands the fou (the strainer) to the taupou; the strainer is made
from the bark of the fou tree, which gives it the name, and is a bunch of strings of
vegetable fiber. The taupou takes the fou and with many graceful and dexterous
twists, moves it about in the liquid with great precision; then she takes up all the
particles of kava on the strainer that it will hold, and after wringing it dry passes this
to her attendant on the right, who flings it out in a most graceful manner and returns
it. This is repeated again and again until all the sediment is removed. This mixture
is of a yellowish tint, and I must say does not look very inviting to the uninitiated
stranger. When all is satisfactorily concluded, three claps of the hands by the girls,
proclaim the kava ready. You can hardly conceive, without seeing this ceremony, the
perfect ease and grace displayed in serving the kava. One of the girls takes the cup,
presents it to the taupou to be filled; this is sometimes done by plunging the fou into
the liquid and squeezing the contents into the cup, or dipping with another cup from
the bowl and pouring it into the one presented when filled, the girl faces about, and
holding the cup by the outer rim, crosses to the person named to be served, and bend-
ing forward, reaches him the cup in the most graceful manner. One is expected to
drain the cup. The taste of the beverage at first is by no means tempting, but it
leaves a not unpleasant aromatic taste in the mouth.
We are often asked if kava is intoxicating. We are told that the long continued
excessive use of it will produce paralysis of the lower limbs, while the head will be
perfectly clear, but the patient is unable to stand or walk, and he is obliged to wait
for the effect of his excess to wear off. Old foreign residents use kava equally as
much as the natives. Mr. Churchward, a former British consul in Samoa, says:
" During my whole stay in Samoa I do not think I met one white resident of more
than two months' standing who had not in a greater or less degree become a convert
to the use of the national beverage." I must say that this was not our experience,
for after a year's residence on the Island both my husband and myself still found it
difficult to drain the cup as is customary. The talolo is one of their most important fes-
tivities, of which there are several kinds observed. The talolo proper, we were told, is
the presentation of food by a whole district (which comprises several villages). The
scene of operation of the first one we witnessed was at Mulinu, where King Malietoa
lives, surrounded by his chiefs, who are selected from the Island of Upolu, and the
other islands of the group. These gifts were brought to be distributed among his
chiefs.
The natives marched in large delegations from different villages, and each chief
had a tu-la-fa-li (or talking man), as the chief considers it beneath his dignity to speak
in public, who stepped out with considerable flourish and enumerated what his village
had brought, the number of taro, pigs, cocoanuts, bananas, fowls, etc., and then this
was all carried across the square to the opposite side and placed on the grass. (This
square is always kept very neat and clean.) After several delegations had come and
been announced, one came, bearing on the shoulders of ten or twelve men what looked
like a boat made of the branches of sugar-cane, with bright flowers tied in them, the
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 595
Samoan flag in the center, and on each side of the boat handkerchiefs with bright
borders were tied in the branches, and filled in between with boxes of matches, cans
of meat, biscuit, etc. In the bottom of the boat was any amount of taro, casks of
beef, large tin boxes of biscuit, roast pigs and fowls, fish, bananas and cocoanuts.
Next came a native leading a handsome white heifer followed by a crowd dragging
by ropes two canoes lashed together, and filled to the brim with native food, ail sing-
ing as they came. Then came nine men, followed by others, bringing on a kind of
frame a cooked hog, weighing at least three hundred pounds. And so they came
until the ground was covered with gifts. They said there were as many as one hun-
dred casks of beef, weighing from thirty to fifty pounds each, and two hundred cooked
pigs of different sizes. One chief alone brought six hundred taro ; another three hun-
dred taro, seven casks of beef, yams, etc. After all had arrived and been called off,
the principal men and women of the villages withdrew to a neighboring bush to com-
plete their toilet and put on the finishing touches to their gorgeous array, a toilet con-
sisting of the best which they can secure in the way of a lava-lava of fine mats or
painted tappa. The chiefs are particularly dressed in full war paint, a gorgeous dis-
play of head-dress of human hair standing two feet high above a band of shells
around the forehead. In the center of the hair plume is fastened a round mirror, sur-
mounted by a bunch of long red feathers of the boatswain bird. Their bodies above
the waist are bare, shining with strongly perfumed oil (well rubbed in by the women),
the inevitable necklace of scarlet pandanus hanging to the waist or below, while over
the lava-lava is worn a girdle of streamers made from the leaf of the fou tree. The
/■rt7//>^«, or " village maid " (always a girl of high rank), who invariably accompanies
the chief of the village on state occasions, is, like the chief himself, bare to the waist,
well oiled, her beautifully rounded shoulders shining under the tropical sun, dressed in
her finest mats, while her head-dress is of distinguishing height and magnificence. At
the side of each division marches and dances the grotesque funny man, a cross between
a clown and an American drum-major, at whose antics and jokes all are expected to
laugh. The passing of the column occupied an hour or more. On the arrival at the
Malie the chief tu-la-fa-lt (the talking man), steps forward, throwing his fly-trap (an
article used to drive away mosquitoes and flies, which are unusually numerous in
Samoa), across his shoulder, and leaning with both hands on his long staff (which is
his badge of office), proceeds to deliver a lengthy speech, in which he usually apolo-
gizes for the poverty of the country, etc. Then other tu-la-fa-li make their speeches
very similar to the first, a proceeding much enjoyed by them, as all Samoans consider
themselves born orators, and then comes the ceremony of dividing all this food among
the different chiefs. How this is accomplished is astonishing, for it has to be done
with great care as to quantity, certain portions belonging to certain ranks. We were
told that some of their wars were started by the unequal distribution of food on these
occasions. There were at least twenty-five hundred natives at this ialolo, and it was
exceedingly interesting.
The taupou, or village maid, is a peculiar Samoan institution. She is chosen by the
old women, and is generally a daughter by birth or adoption of the chief, and must be
beautiful and exceptionally attractive. She has certain responsibilities. She leads
the siva, or native dance, presides over the house provided in every village for the stop-
ping place of visitors from neighboring islands, is conspicuous on all ceremonial or
state occasions, has several less prominent sisters to do her bidding and to follow her
wherever she goes, and several older women whose special dut)^ it is to see that she is
not led astray, for a taupou must be perfectly chaste and pure. She is eligible to
marry a chief who seeks her for her attractions and dowry of fine mats. Of late they
are quite ambitious to marry a white man. Suega, a taupou we knew quite well, much
prefers to dress like European women, and is very much averse to appearing in public
dress "a la Samoa," but the requirements of the Samoans in that regard on certain
ceremonial occasions are inexorable, and must be complied with in order to retain
caste or position.
596 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Sunday is a great day for all Samoans. They sing hymns from early morning
until late at night, with- the exception of short intervals of sleep. Their first service is
at 6:30 in the morning, when all go, men, women and children. About half an hour
before church they begin their preparations, and if there is not room to dress in the
house, the outside will do just as well. Their best things are kept in small chests at
one end of the house, or rolled in tappa or mats, and placed on the roof beams of their
houses. The men high in rank, as a rule on Sunday, wear clean white lava-lavas and
white shirts. They always carry their Bible and prayer-book carefully wrapped in a
clean pocket handkerchief. In the case of a chief a boy follows behind, carrying the
chief's Bible. The native pastor marches ahead, always carrying a large umbrella and
a lot of books, followed by a crowd of his people. He is usually dressed in a white
lava-lava and white coat, bare-footed and bare-headed.
In conclusion I am moved to say of the Samoans, as a people, that so far as I am
able to judge their advancement from barbarism to their present comparatively happy
condition is due entirely to the missionaries.
As Samoans they are, as I have said, in a physical point of view, good specimens
of men and women mentally, while they are probably wanting in ability to expand or
grow to any great extent, still there is no stupidity in the Samoan. In other words, as
Samoans, they may be said to be a success among the many races. An effort to
make them other than as they are, or to advance them on a higher plane, would in my
judgment be unsuccessful.
Speaking of Samoa as a race. Sir Robert Stout said: "Their development must
be slow; any attempt to force them, or to make them like Europeans, must end in
the destruction of the race. * * * Physically they are a magnificent race. No one
can see them walking without being struck with the gracefulness of their carriage
It is better than any race I have ever seen, white or colored. In point of intelligence,
they are at least equal to the Maoris, and morally their notions and practices are such
as would tend to their preservation. They are a kindly and hospitable people, good
tempered, not given to quarreling, and pass their lives easily and happily. In my
opinion it would be a crime to allow such a race to be destroyed."
THE ART OF ELOCUTION.*
By MISS ANNA MORGAN.
A sign of the times, which should be encouraging to all teachers of elocution, is
the progress of woman in public affairs, and the consequent necessity that they should
become proficient in public speaking.
I have had the pleasure of hearing the discussion
of Woman's Progress in various departments of art,
and have been much pleased with the natural and
unaffected demeanor of most of the ladies who have
participated. Conspicuous among them has been the
President of the Woman's Branch of the Auxiliary —
Mrs. Potter Palmer. She has addressed many crowded
and distinguished audiences with as much ease as if
she had been in her own drawing-room. Now, to con-
vey this impression, she has been obliged to use a
certain measure of art. It has been necessary for her
to speak with a fuller volume of tone than that used in
a drawing-room, and she has accomplished this with-
out appearing strained or artificial. The great beauty
of her manner was, that she was entirely womanly,
not a vestige being about her of aiming at masculine
methods. It has been delightful to me to see this;
for I know it means a newer and sweeter fashion than
the manner which previously prevailed among certain
woman lecturers and woman lawyers. Several, espe-
cially of the latter class, I have heard speak with the
swelling port of masculine pomp and masculine assertiveness. In the woman speakers
of the future, the assumption of virile methods will be in bad taste.
The voice of woman is less strong than that of man — a less perfect instrument
for addressing audiences — yet it may be made effective by judicious training. To
make it a more perfect organ, to give its possessor full control of it, will be the
proud office of the art of elocution. If it is not so robust as the male voice, we have
one consolation: In the laws of acoustics there is one which is, that a sweet sound is
carried farther than the rough and rugged one; that the soft and stealing notes of the
flute may out-travel on the wings of air the explosion of a cannon. The penetrative
quality of every woman's voice may be improved; every woman can be taught to stand
at ease, to speak with composure and to judge the objectivity of her own voice, to
know its extension — in other words, to feel within herself whether she is clearly and
distinctly heard in all parts of the hall. Elocution will not make women orators any
more than it will make them actors; it can not confer brains, nor in a great measure
impart that good taste which is the fragrance of the individual soul; but it can take
that disordered instrument, the body, and tune it.
Miss Anna Morgan was born in Fleming, N. Y. Her parents were Allen Denison Morgan and Mary Jane Thornton
Morgan. She was educated in Anbnm, N. Y. She has traveled over Europe and quite extensively in America. In personal
ap[>earance she is commanding, handsome and graceful. Mies Morgan is an elocutionist and philanthropist. Her principal
literary work is " An Hour with Delsarte," published by Lee & Sbepard, Boston. Her profession is that of teacher of elocution
and dramatic expression. Miss Morgan is a member of the Presbyterian Church. Her postoSice address is Room 80, Andi-
torium, Chicago, 111.
*The address here presented consists of extracts from one delivered before the Woman's Congress, under the title,
•' Some Modern Tendencies of the Art of Elocution."
597
.MISS ANNA MORGAN.
598 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Ex- Senator John J. Ingalls, in an article on " Oratory" contributed to a Chicago
newspaper, referred to the art of elocution in terms of condemnation — terms which
we, who profess the art. have long ago come to expect from those who examine it
superficially or judge it by its failures Said the ex Senator of Kansas: " No speaker
eminent at the bar, in the sacred desk, or on the platform, observes the rules which
the elocutionary teachers of ambitious and aspiring youth inform their pupils are
indispensable to eloquence." The public speakers who do not observe the fundamen-
tal rules of elocution are hopelessly bad in their delivery, and they are valued for other
gifts than that of expression. These men do not ascribe their success to the faults that
have hindered them; they know that intellect and imagination have triumphed m spite
of a muffled monotone, an indistinct enunciation and a laborious delivery. Their efficacy
as speakers would have been greatly increased had they been properly trained in elo-
cution. The positive philosophy of this century has effected all the arts, and particu-
larly the art of expressing the mind through the body — the art of elocution. Look at
literature in all its phases, and literature may be tersely defined " the expression of
life." Both in our own country and Europe the imagination which creates is gradually
giving way to the inquiring scientific mind which analyzes. To illustrate this idea is
the purpose of Mr. W. D. Howells' latest work, " Criticism and Fiction." Realism is
the direct result of the positivist philosophy. This realism is carried to such an extent,
especially in French and Russian novels, and in the art of acting, that extreme realism
is described by one class of critics as naturalism. I have no intention to go into a
literary discussion, though literature is moving on parallel lines to the art of expres-
sion. I am anxious, however, to dwell on the naturalistic impulses that are now actu-
ating the world of acting — impulses which must communicate themselves to the world
of elocution, students and teachers; impulses with which we ought to be in active sym-
pathy if we are to keep abreast of the art progress of the nations.
"All art," said Mr. Nelson Wheatcroft, "is nature better understood." A child
having no mannerism — that is, I mean, petrified peculiarities — has no occasion to be
taught elocution, especially if it be in a good school of acting. I can easily see that
teaching might check the originality of that child. It might give her self-conscious-
ness, that unpardonable sin which so many of us older people frequently commit,
that fault from which no work or study will ever completely free us. Now, a child
brought up on the stage might become a great and unaffected actress, other things
being equal. Miss Terry, Mrs. Kendall, and several other of our actresses were brought
up in this way (Joseph Jefferson and Ristori are also examples), and in naturalness they
are unsurpassable. Signora Duse's life was like theirs, only that her parents and grand-
parents were actors before her, and her aptitude for the boards (not speaking of her
particular genius) came as naturally as a young duck's inclination for water. The
teaching of pantomime should precede the teaching of elocution. Take a young
woman of eighteen or twenty; she can not speak or walk or stand with the natural-
ness of a child of six or seven. Elocution takes her, and if it fulfills its duty that
young woman is given freedom where she is constrained, grace wherein she is awk-
ward, is taught to breathe instead of choking herself; she is not taught new or arti-
ficial habits, she is only taught to rid herself of false ones. If she is a diamond she
will then begin to sparkle; if she happens to be a common bit of clay she is a little
better fashioned, but intrinsically not more valuable than she was before.
"What is elocution?" said Miss Cushman to an aspirant to the stage who asked
for advice on elocution. " I don't know what it is," said the great actress; " no one
ever taught me elocution. God gave me a mouth with which I can make a whisper
heard in the end of the largest hall; then what use have I for elocution?"
Very true; elocution had nothing to teach Miss Cushman, though she had much,
no doubt, to teach elocutionists; but how many actresses in her profession could truth-
fully repeat her words? The exception proves, it does not disprove, the rule. Blind
Tom needed no music-teacher, but the number of music-teachers has not been dimin-
ished since his phenomenal precocity astounded the world.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 599
A name that attracts as much undeserved ridicule as elocution itself is Delsarte-
fsm. People seem to regard it as a series of gymnastic exercises. This, of course, is
not its definition. The system which Francois Delsarte tried to formulate and left
unfinished was the expression of the emotions through the body. What Lindley
Murray was to English grammar, such was Delsarte to the art of expression. The
great Frenchman has revealed to us much about the body, the wonderful complex
organism through which the Ego or the spirit manifests itself; but on the side of the
soul so infinite is the speculation that Francois Delsarte, even if he had lived to carry
out his system, would have been incapable, I think, of formulating anything approach-
ing an exact scientific system. The reader or the actor who is educated on Delsartean
principles is necessarily no more self-conscious than a writer in the process of com-
position is handicapped by knowing the rules of syntax. Thousands of good actors
will live and do without bothering about Delsarte, just as Robert Burns sang without
troubling himself about grammarians, but this reasoning is no argument either against
Lindley Murray or Francois Delsarte.
In nothing was the naturalism of Signora Duse so apparent as in her economical
use of gestures, which one would imagine would be voluminous in one of the Latin
temperament. It seems paradoxical to say it, but it is a fact that this actress was even
true to nature in a certain awkwardness in moments of grief. The unimpeachable truth
of the attitude was their vindication. The modern tendencies in the art of expression
are to the closest naturalness attainable without flatness, to suggestiveness rather than
to literal expressiveness, and to hold to the exact truth in preference to any scheme
of decorative beauty. This is equivalent to saying that these tendencies are, first,
naturalness; second, naturalness; and third, naturalness. In the beginning of dramatic
art in Greece men walked on stilts, spoke through instruments that magnified the voice,
and wore masks that exaggerated the human features. The history of the art from
that day to this has been the gradual approach to nature, until now the art of conceal-
ing art seems almost to be identical with nature.
Declamation — old-fashioned declamation — has no longer any place in the artistic
economy. It is out of harmony with our time and our institutions. Though declaim-
ing has gone out of fashion the charm of the sweet voice of the accomplished reader
will never become obsolete. More may be left nowadaysto the imagination of the
auditor than in former years. It is now especially important to suggest the subtle
beauties of a poem or a chapter of prose — those beauties which would escape the cas-
ual reader, who voraciously devours the sense.
But it will not be impertinent, I hope, to commend to teachers, who deal largely
with the poets, to take a course in prosody. To anyone with a taste for rhythm it is a
knowledge which is easily and even pleasantly acquired. Many of us neglect the
rhythm and the rhyme of poetry. In reading verse strictly in accordance with sense
and punctuation many reciters, destitute of poetical sympathy, commit a sacrilege the
enormity of which they can not appreciate. Pity is that the reading-desk, which has
done so much to refine public taste and to minister to the intellect more directly and
more exclusively than did the stage, should now be obsolete. Let us hope that it is
only in temporary eclipse of public favor, and that when this day of follies and trivial-
ities has passed the reading-desk will once more emerge to shed on the world its mild
and beneficent influence.
ART-ISMS.
MISS ANNETTE COLE.
By MISS ANNETTE COLE.
"Isms" and "idiosyncrasies" are not synonymous terms, and yet for the past
century, especially in art expression, any erratic or revolutionary idea has received
the appellation of an " ism." When the human mind
became unshackled in the great upheaval of universal
freedom, we find, particularly in the theological world,
that thought moves in concentric circles, animated by
a strong initial or projective force, and this central
idea was denominated an " ism." Constant evolution
of thought changes the ideal or standard. So creeds
wear out or become de mode. Art canons are also
very transitory in their nature and formula, requiring
very close observation to keep pace with the latest
expression. The question is asked. Why should we
be troubled with so many perplexing isms? Or is
there a logical, historical and chronological develop-
ment, so we may grasp the significance of these
seemingly obscure, indefinite terms which, like the
will-o-the-wisp, are ever eluding our mental grasp.
The reply is in the affirmative. It is not necessary to
go farther back than the beginning of our century to
compass the thought or begin the study of the isms
of modernite. We can not philosophize deeply upon
the causes which introduced the new word Roman-
ticism. Politically, in this nineteenth century move-
ment, man asserted his freedom as an individual in proportion to the idea of his
own responsibility, and also his liberty of interpreting life after his own methods,
which changed the whole current of thought and action and revolutionized social and
intellectual life. Hence Individualism is only another expression for Romanticism.
Germany led the van in the literary world, particularly in the novel, poetry and
drama. Nerder was a reformer, but Goethe, influenced by the subjective philosophy of
Fichte, most emphatically announced the individual. Then England followed, and
Burns, Scott and Shelley opposed the classicism of Addison, Pope and Johnson. In
France, the reign of Napoleon and the Revolution burst the bars, and the people
opposed king-craft, convention and tradition. "Everyman can be a law unto him-
self," was the spirit which now animated the thinking world. Victor Hugo was the
great leader in France, although Madame de Stael and Beranger forecast the change.
No other canon of criticism was tolerated than this: "The work, is it good or bad?"
Art reflected more intensely the spirit of the age in her representations and interpre-
tations. Romanticism in art was a reaction against the formal and cold classicism of
the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the fossil ideas of Mediaevalism. In i8i2
the German artists, Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, Schadow and others, impelled by the
new impulse, went to Rome and formed a brotherhood, and in conscientious isolation
Miss Annette Cole is a native of Johnstown, N. Y. Her parents were Frederick S.'Coleand Phoebe Cole, of Connecticut.
She was educated in the Albany Normal School, New York, and in Cambridge, N. Y.; has traveled in England and Scotland, and
extensively on the Continent. Her special work has been in the interest of art, literature, history and music, devoting twelve
years to the study of art, and firmly believing that the multitude must be brought to art, since art can not reach the multi-
tude. She has written many works in manuscript. Her profession is that of art teacher. In religious faith she is Methodist
Episcopal. Her postoffice address is No. 4204 Calumet Avenue, Chicago, 111.
600
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 601
remained unshorn, and thus received the title of Nazarenes. They were also called
"The Church Romantic Painters" and "The Old School." They even donned their
kitchen aprons to attend to the culinary department. In their art labor they wrought
diligently. For what? To purify art by drawing their inspiration from the revered
old masters of Italy; and, returning, they transplanted the seed in the soil of the
fatherland, and not only revealed to it the significance of natural life, but imbued it
with a moral element which still dominates German art. This religious phase of
Romanticism found expression in England under the name of pre-Raphaeliteism,
which was a conscientious striving after truth and purity of conception. Entirely
idealistic in aim but realistic in method, evincing absolute fidelity to detail. But the
strong individuality or personality of Millais, Rosetti, CoUinson, and one or two others,
did not allow them to remain many years an organized brotherhood. Who shall say
pre-Raphaeliteism has not served to perpetuate sincerity and a nobler aim in art, and
also a more thorough mastery of technic?
With one notable exception, we must go to Europe to study the master-pieces of
that noted group and their followers. In France, Gericault and Delacroix were the
exponents of the heroic phase of Romanticism, while Scheffer alone represented the
religious. Delacroix was the most strongly individual and dramatic in his concep-
tions. He drew his inspiration from Dante, Byron, Scott and Shakespeare. The
school of Fontainebleau or Barbizon is another marked phase or illustration of Ro-
manticism. We all know how sincerely Diaz Dupre, Daubigny, Corot, Rosseau and
Millet sought to reinvest landscape with truth and feeling, and if we carefully study
their pictures we can not fail to observe how marvelously each has impressed his own
individuality and character upon his work. But now the vision of the artist grows
more sensitive and acute, and he says, "This world is visible to me only in proportion
as I annihilate myself and seek to interpret life just as I find it," and thus we have
Realism. Themes may be chosen from life, and the whole aim may be to render
objectively, but how can an artist sever his individuality and his art? Contrast Cour-
bet with Meissonier, Morot with Fhermitte, LePage with Bonnot,and decide as to the
possibility of the proposition. After due consideration is Realism more than a training-
school for Idealism? Many critics of the present time think we ought not to employ
the word " idealism," arguing that there is, and never was, but one true ideal, and that
is in Greece. This is philosophically true; yet every age has its ideal, or may have.
There are artists gifted with strong imagination, their minds teeming with poetic con-
ceptions and subjectively must find utterance. If art is imagination, then it is the
province of the idealist to create ideal standards of excellence, beatific visions of truth
and goodness. Quite relevant to this thought is the present innovation upon the usual
conventional manner of representing Christ. Is it sacrilegious to represent the Re-
deemer of the world as a Son of Man, clad in ordinary garments, walking and living
among men? We will not assume the responsibility of approbation or condemnation.
Every heart must pronounce its own dictum. Perhaps Skredsvig, the Norwegian artist,
in his work, entitled "The Son of Man," has struck a keynote to a chord which
shall long vibrate in the heart of mankind. W^hat is more pathetic than the absorbing
devotion of the woman who feign " would lay all at her Master's feet," expressed in the
act of bringing her rugs and adjusting them with the utmost care, and then bordering
the way His feet must pass with vases of precious flowers. Yes, the simple faith of those
humble people is sure of a benediction. Idealism should, we believe, receive not only
the sanction but the enthusiastic approval of all who sincerely desire the elevation of
mankind.
What about Impressionism, called in playful derision the " new lavender school?"
It is often abused and misunderstood as an appellation. This is a scientific age, and
many artists are only endeavoring to grasp heretofore unsolved problems in light and
atmosphere. They claim no moral purpose and surely we find none. Yet if consci-
entiously they are with keener vision penetrating deeper into the realms of nature, to
render more subtle and evanescent beauty, giving us glimpses of the intangible, who
602 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
should say their aim is an ignoble one? We can not but think the exploitation has
been made too public. Many of the experiments upon canvas should have been left
in the atelier, " face to the wall."
Mr. George Moore, the new English critic, may throw some light upon this sub-
ject. His definition of Impressionism in the most modern sense is " a rapid noting of
illusive appearance." Therefore, be sure to seek illusions. Then there is a theory
that whatever the artist is painting, his retina must still hold some sensation of the
place it has left. For instance, if a person leaves a brilliantly lighted salon, going out
of yellow, he would see the other primary colors, blue and red; in other words, he
would see violet. This theory happily furnishes a solution to the mysterious ultra
violet shadows seen in Besnard's "Two Ponies Harnessed by Flies," and Tarbell's
"Girl and Horse." These artists had been for a long time rambling in the fields in
the golden sunlight of an October day, and were true to the impressions left upon the
retina when they painted the shadows. The transmutation is not complete in Dannat's
"Spanish Girl." "The Iphigenia," in the harbor of Toulon, painted by the Parisian
artist, Eugene Dauphin, is, we think, the most exquisite example of Impressionism in
the P>ench section or in the Art Palace.
But the great pendulum of this ism is now swung to the utmost limit of the real-
istic arc, and already we hear ominous sounds from afar.
The Independents, Incoherents and Les Inquiets claim attention. Allow me to
offer just one word of consolation to the earnest artseer. When the " ism" is not
obvious, call it Incoherentism or Inquietism, and you will be a la tnode.
We sincerely hope that this grand reunion of international artistic effort will have
a tendency to obliterate or converge all lines or isms, including American Alienism,
into one broad Loyalism. This is the great hope for American art. Is there a lack of
patriotism? No!
Have not our artists quick appreciation and adaptation? There are doubtlessly
now living artists whose keen artistic sensibilities and powers will enable them to
mount on eagles' wings of sublime genius. Circumstances have compelled many to
meet commercial demands, or they have sought an artistic atmosphere away from the
feverish existence of American life. Art has been considered too much a diversion
or a luxury of the rich. Artists need more than the necessary commission; they
require appreciation to stimulate them to their best efforts. Loyalism must permeate
our picture markets. Art study must form part of the curriculum of more of our col-
leges and universities. Kindergarten must teach lisping lips to revere the names of
our Turner, Johnson, Homer, Millet, Gifford, Vedder, Richards, Melcher, Sargent and
Whistler. All our artists' names should become household words. Then with an
unswerving loyalty to truth, beauty and lofty ideals as a centrifugal force, and a con-
scientious striving after perfect technic as a centrifugal force, art in America will rise
Phcenix-like from its aspersions and become not only a grand conservative element
of peace and prosperity in our glorious Republic, but will hasten the day when the
kingdoms of this earth shall acknowledge but one ruler — the Eternal One, the Cre-
ator of all that is good, true and beautiful.
LINCOLN AND FARRAGUT.
By MRS. VINNIE REAM HOXIE.
When you so kindly invited me to speak upon myself, my work, and my illus-
trious subjects, Lincoln and Farragut, you opened to me so wide a field that, even if
I did not stray from it, I might wander very far. As
for myself, my work was ever, and is now, most fasci-
nating to me. It has never lost any of its charm, and
I can not see a block of marble or the modeling clay
without a quicker throb of the heart. When the war
commenced I was away down south on the Louisiana
line, and after its lurid fires lit up the whole country
my dear mother, with great difficulty, made her way
through the lines and brought her children to Wash-
ington. My father, although much of an invalid from
rheumatism, was one of the improvised guard around
the Capitol, and from its commanding dome, where I
had so often climbed to see the rosy sunrise, the
" smoke of the battle afar off" was to be seen rising
from the Virginia valleys, and the cannonading from
" Bull Run" resounded through the air. Time rolled
along, the horrors of war developing each day, when
a few months before its close, as I was walking along
Pennsylvania avenue, I met Major James S. Rollins,
of Columbia, Boone County, Mo., who represented
that district in Congress, in which I had formerly
attended school, saying that he had been looking for
me and had promised the president of Christian College to send him a picture of his
little pupil, Vinnie Ream. He walked with me to our home, and there arranged that
my mother and myself should go with him to Clark Mills' studio at the Capitol, where
a bust should be made of me to send to Christian College. As soon as I saw the
sculptor handle the clay, I felt at once that I, too, could model and, taking the clay,
in a few hours I produced a medallion of an Indian chief's head, which so pleased the
major that he carried it away and placed it on his desk in the House of Representa-
tives. It attracted the attention of Reverdy Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, General
Morehead and many other of his colleagues, who, learning from him that it was mod-
eled in a few hours by a young girl who had never been in a studio before, generously
encouraged me to try again — Senator Nesmith, of Oregon, being my first subject. In
rapid succession I modeled likenesses in clay of Senator Yates, Senator Sherman, Sen-
ator Voorhees, General Morehead, Parson Brownlow, General Custer, Thaddeus
Stevens and the venerable Frank P. Blair. These kind men became my friends, and
warmly interested in my progress. As a plant thrives beneath the sunlight, so I
MrB. Vinnie Ream Hozie was born in Madison, Wis. Her father was Robert L. Ream, her mother Lavinia McDonald
Ream. At an early age she showed such marked ability as a sculptor as to attract public attention, and her parents were
induced to give her special training. She miide striking pictures of many of the public men of the day, among them Presi-
dent Lincoln, who gave her sittings only a few months before his assassination. This model was transferred to marble and
now stands in the Capitol at Washington. She studied in Paris, Rome and Munich, where she received marked attention
from many noted men. Spurgeon, Cardinal Antonelli and Lizt each gave her sittings for likenesses. Her three marbles,
"America," "The West" and "Miriam," were exhibited in the Woman's Building at the Columbian Exposition as an Arkan-
sas exhibit, she having spent many years of her life in that state, where she has many friends and admirers. Postoffice
address Pittsburg, Pa., care of Captain Huxie, United States Engineer Office.
603
MRS. VINNIE REAM HOXIE.
604 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
throve under their generous influence, and worked early and late that they should not
be disappointed in their little protegee. They decided to give me an order for a bust
in marble, and I chose President Lincoln for my subject. Senator Nesmith, General
Morehead and Reverdy Johnson called upon the President, asking him to sit to me.
At first he positively declined, saying he " was tired sitting for his likeness, and he
couldn't imagine why any one wanted to make a likeness of such a homely man."
Finding him firm in his refusal they arose to leave. Senator Nesmith remarking, " This
will be a disappointment to the young artist who selected you as her subject. She is
a little western girl, born in Wisconsin. She is poor, and has talent, and we intend
to encourage her in this work, in which we feel she will excel, by giving her an order
for a bust in marble." Almost before Senator Nesmith had finished. President Lincoln
turned abruptly, and in a high key exclaimed: " She is poor, is she? Well, that's noth-
ing against her. Why don't you bring that girl up here? LU sit to her for my bust; "
and so it was, the great heart which vanity could not unlock opened with the sym-
pathy that recalled to him his own youth; his battle with poverty; his ambition; his
early struggles. So it was that I, a little unknown sculptor, born in Wisconsin, and a
stranger to fame, was allowed the privilege of modeling from life the features of this
great man. When these gentlemen took me to the White House and presented me to
Mr. Lincoln, his kind face lighting up, he exclaimed: "Why, this is the very same
little girl who came to me last week and received permission from me to visit her
rebel relative at the Old Capitol Prison! Why, we are old friends. Now, let's
measure and see which is the tallest; " and it was thus I was welcomed. Sometimes at
these sittings his face wore that look of anxiety and pain which will come to one
accustomed to grief. At other times he would have that far-away, dreamy look,
which seemed to presage the tragic fate awaiting him; and again, those quiet eyes
lighting up, a radiance almost Divine would suffuse the sunken cheeks, and the whole
face would be illuminated with the impulse of some Divine purpose. Often he would
go to the south window and, seated there, remain a long time with his face turned
away; then, hastily brushing away the tears from his eyes, he would say, " I was
thinking of Willie." He was still suffering from the blow of that child's death, while
great affairs convulsed the nation, and he hardly dared to take the time for personal
grief.
So lately had I seen and known President Lincoln, that I was still under the spell
of his kind eyes and genial presence when the terrible blow of his assassination came
and shook the civilized world. The terror, the horror, that fell upon the whole com-
munity has never been equaled. Terrible as this was, who can say that it was not the
best for Lincoln's fame that he died just then, for its measure was full? Yet in the
trying years that followed he was sorely needed. Maturing late in life, he was at his
best when struck down, and had in his heart and mind great reservoirs of usefulness.
His hand of steel and heart of kindness had guided us safely so far through the dark
waters, and our ablest mediator, he might, from his gentle, forgiving and humane
nature, have evolved plans of peace and reconciliation which would have more quickly,
more firmly and more closely bound the estranged ones together. But God planned
this Universe, and " He doeth all things well," though the Nation's leader and the
South's best friend iiad been slain. He lay there, dead, in the rotunda of the Capitol,
with white face and speechless lips, but mightier in death even than in life! The
Nation bowed its head and wept! The voice of those who had maligned him was
silent. A spell was laid upon the lips of men to do him reverence. He had been the
best friend of the Noith and the best friend of the South. His zeal had been unflagging,
his patriotism exalted above all thought of self. His power had been almost
unbounded, and how had he used it? "With charity for all, with malice toward
none." He had sworn to protect the honor of the Government, and history will tell
how well he kept that oath; and yet while he guarded the sanctuary of its honor with
fire and with sword, he wept that any should suffer.
When, soon after. Congress appropriated money to erect a marble statue of the
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 605
martyred President in the Capitol, it never occurred to me, with my youth and my
inexperience, to compete for that great honor; but I was induced to place my likeness of
him before the committee having the matter under consideration, and, together with
many other artists — competitors for this work — I was called before this committee. I
shall never forget the fear that fell upon me, as the chairman (the Hon.'John H. Rice, of
Maine, who had a kind heart, but a very stern manner) looked up through his glasses,
from his seat at the head of the table, and questioned and cross-questioned me until I
was so frightened that I could hardly reply to his questions: "How long had I been
studying art?" and had I " ever made a marble statue?" My knees trembled and I
shook like an aspen, and I had not enough presence of mind even to tell hini that I
had made the bust from sittings from life. Seeing my dire confusion, and not being
able to hear my incoherent replies, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand, and a
request to Judge Marshall, of Illinois, to kindly see the young artist home! Once
there, in the privacy of my own room, I wept bitter tears that I had been such an idiot
as to try to compete with men, and remembering the appearance before that stern
committee as a terrible ordeal before unmerciful judges, I promised myself it should
be my last experience of that kind.
Judge then of my surprise and delight when I learned that, guided by the opin-
ion of Judge David Davis, Senator Trumbull, Marshal Lamon, Sec. O. H. Browning,
Judge Dickey, and many others of President Lincoln's old friends, that I had pro-
duced the most faithful likeness of him, they had awarded the commission to me — the
little western sculptor. The Committee on Mines and Mining tendered me their
room in the Capitol, in which to model my statue, because it was next to the room of
Judge David Davis, and he could come in daily and aid me with his friendly criticisms.
His comfortable chair was kept in readiness. He came daily, and suggesting " a little
more here — a little on there — more inclining of the bended head — more angularity
of the long limbs," he aided me in my sacred work by his encouraging words and
generous sympathy. I had approached it with reverence, and with trembling hands
had taken the proportions of the figure from the blood-stained garments President
Lincoln had worn on that last and fearful night; and Judge Davis, a man whose heart
was as great as his stature, v/as deeply interested in the statue of Lincoln, whose
memory he loved. Friends flocked around Judge Davis. He was the lode-star that
drew them to my studio. During those years which I spent in the Capitol, modeling
the statue, I was thus thrown constantly with men prominent in public life. With
Judge Davis as the central figure, many were the brilliant and gifted men who clustered
around. Senators McDougall, Trumbull, Yates, Conness, Nesmith, Morton (of Indi-
ana), Proctor Knott, Ebon C. Ingersoll, Samuel J. Randall, Mr. Windom, and indeed
almost all of the senators and members were deeply interested in the statue of Lin-
coln, and were constant visitors at the studio. Friend and foe gathered there with a
common interest — the success of the work. Old feuds were forgotten, and they met
on neutral ground — some on friendly terms who had not spoken to each other for years.
What good friends they were to me! How true! Only for their sympathetic kindness, I
would never have had the heart to take up and carry on the work, which was herculean
for my fragile shoulders. Time has not dimmed the memory of their kindness, and I
lay this tribute of gratitude at their feet.
In the bright and rambling discussions of men and things which took place in my
studio there were told many tales of the war — its privations, its hardships and suffer-
ings — by the gallant soldiers who came to see how the statue was developing. Some
came on crutches, and told of how father and son, brother and brother, had met upon
the battle-field, only to die in each other's arms. I heard stories of prison life, of men
who were shot to the heart at Shiloh or perished in the Wilderness; of men who went
down at Antietam, fell at Winchester, or marched with Sherman " from Atlanta to the
Sea." Gettysburgh was often mentioned, and then, like a sacred poem intoned upon
the organ, came the memory of Lincoln's inspired words upon that blood-stained
field. The studio, with its circular walls and high arched ceilings, was lighted up by a
606 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
huge fire-place, the last one left at the Capitol of the olden time. Alas ! now unfortunately-
destroyed. It occupied one entire side of the room, and was kept blazing with great
logs, six feet or more in length. It was supported on each side by marble statues, and
so fascinating that no wonder the old soldiers lingered there. It was their camp-fire,
and as the glow from the blazing hearth lighted up the clay image, they remembered
with emotion the shout that went up from the mountains and rang in the valleys as
they responded to his call, "We are coming. Father Abraham." He had been a father
to them all, and they mourned him not only as a great man and wise ruler, but as a
friend and father. Cabinet ministers and diplomats, journalists and authors all gath-
ered there; such men as Chase and Holt, Blaine and Stockton, Field and Miller, Crosby
S. Noyes and Gen. Lew Wallace, Deems and Sunderland, Sheridan and Sherman,
Grant and Farragut.
I was generally a silent listener as these men conversed, but what they said made
deep impression, for ever on their lips was the name of Lincoln. Many stories touched
me deeply, but none like the story of his life. Oh, the pain, the pathos of it all! You
are all familiar with this story — I have told you how it came to me.
The model finished, I went to Italy with my parents to transfer it to marble. We
remained some time in London, and much enjoyed the sessions of the House of Parlia-
ment, where we heard John Bright speak. At Paris we remained three months, and
there I had the great privilege of daily instruction in drawing from Leon Bonnat, the
eminent French painter. Gustave Dore became my warm friend, and presented me
with a painting by his own hand, writing the dedication upon the margin: " Offert a
Miss Vinnie Ream de la part de son affectionne CoUegue G. Dore." Mr. Washburn
was our Minister there and showed us every attention. Pere Hyacinthe became our
friend, and we had the pleasure of again meeting General and Mrs. Fremont. Journey-
ing on through Switzerland, we enjoyed together its snowy mountain peaks and charm-
ing valleys. At Munich we became acquainted with Germany's great painter, Kaul-
bauch, who was even then passing away from the people he had so endeared to him by
his genius. We sailed together up the Rhine and around the Lake of Lucerne, by
the Lake of Como, we visited the Castle of Challou,and paid our tribute to England's
son of genius. At Venice we floated over the Lagoons together and wandered through
the galleries, and by the great Square of St. Mark, to see the pigeons fed. At Florence
we lingered long among its priceless gems of art, and then, journeying on to Rome,
rented a piano, a floor in an old palace, and went to keeping house. It was in the
Vicola Marsomti, and a studio for myself was selected on the Via San Basilio, adjoin-
ing the studio of my good friend — the gifted painter — George P. Healey. Oh, those
hours in Rome! Those days in Rome — those sunny days on the Campaigna! Those
golden hours when we made pilgrimages to the picturesque and historical towns which
make all Italy a gallery. I can hear those laughing waters that come down the steeps,
and see the gloomy catacombs, the sunny slopes, the ancient aqueducts and frown-
ing ruins — the peasant homes and princely palaces. They were with me — my parents
— oh, happy thought, and what pleasant memories dwell amid the scenes of our
wanderings! They are fresh in my memory — the Falls of Trivoli, the blue waters of
the Bay of Naples, the ruins of Pompeii, and the crater of Vesuvius. I can never for-
get those charmed days with their precious associations.
Through Bishop Domenec, the Bishop of Pittsburg, we presented our letters to
Cardinal Antonelli. We were granted an audience with the Pope, and his blessing;
and when Cardinal Antonelli found that I was making the statue of Abraham Lincoln
for my government, he became my warm and devoted friend, corresponding with rne
constantly after I returned to this country until his death. He sat to me in my studio
for his likeness, and when I left Rome presented me with three large and handsome
stone cameos— one the head of Christ, and the others heads of the Virgin Mary— all
three exquisitely cut, rare and valuable works of art set in etruscan gold; all made in
the workshop of the Vatican. Healey painted a picture of myself in peasant costume,
which he presented to my mother, and many were the lovely and valuable souvenirs
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 607
with which our friends in Rome enriched us. As soon as I arrived in Rome and selected
my studio, I had my model of Lincoln placed at the proper height, and, draping the
wall behind with two large national flags, invited the artists in Rome to see it. Among
the visitors who came were Sig. Luigi Majoli, the most gifted of the Italian sculptors,
and Sig. Pietro Regnoli, his friend, a brilliant man of letters. They became my warm
friends, and were really brothers to me in that far off land. The gentle Emelie Regnoli
became my sister, and my parents loved them all. All the artists, American and for-
eign, received me kindly, among them Randolph Rogers and Mr. Storey. Harriet Hos-
mer, who was the pioneer among women sculptors, was most generous. The painter,
Healey, was my neighbor and my friend, and as the golden days passed by, and the
shadows lengthened, when it became too dark in my studio to work I would leave my
modeling and go to his studio, and after helping him wash his brushes and put away
his things, we would wend our way homeward together through the Italian twilight.
Rossetti and Tadoline, the Italian sculptors, were my good friends, and Buchanan Reed
the poet-painter, kindly dedicated some verses to me.
Through some letters of introduction given me by Mrs. Cleveland (the sister of
Horace Greeley) I met many young priests, among them one who was a favorite
pupil of Liszt. When I told him I envied him his opportunity of knowing so inti-
mately such a man of genius, he exclaimed: "You, too, shall know him. Come with
me — your parents and yourself. He plays this afternoon at the old convent place
where he now lives. Come! " We were soon ready, and when we reached the convent
grounds found the street in front crowded with carriages. As we entered the vast saloon
every available place seemed filled with people who had gathered there to hear him
play. At the far end of the room Liszt was seating himself at the piano — a picture he
was indeed, with his fine features and slender figure, long black robe and snowy locks.
Tiptoeing softly, we followed Don Zeferino, our young guide, and disappearing for a
moment, he returned, bringing from some hidden recess seats for my parents, and
then, motioning me to follow him he placed a chair almost immediately back of the
piano at Liszt's right hand. The wonderful magician swept his slender hands over the
keys, fascinating all who heard, and with tremulous vibrations touched some tender
chords with such a spell that I was deeply affected. The tears which I could not
repress rose to my eyes, and being so near, and fearful of making the slightest inter-
ruption, I dared not raise my hand to brush them away. The great artist had felt the
spell he was exercising over me. He noticed my emotion, and playing softly with the
left hand, he reached his right hand over and laid it for an instant tenderly on mine.
We needed no introduction. We understood each other, and when he had finished
playing and all rushed up to congratulate him and thank him, I waited silently by to
try and speak; but he offered me his arm, and as we promenaded with the rest down
the old convent's halls, he said, " You need not speak. I understand you and you
understand me," and during all my stay in Rome this great master was a constant
visitor at my studio, and my warm and devoted friend.
All the while my work went on, and several ideal pieces, among them " The
West" and "America," were under way. The day from early morning was given to
work, hard work, and at 4 o'clock sometimes my Italian friends — the sculptor Majoli,
and the scholar Regnoli, with the ladies of Signor Regnoli's family, would come, and
gathering up my parents and myself, take us with them to the open-air theater or to
some one or other of the numberless places of interest in and about the great city
whose every inch is filled with monuments and memoirs of the illustrious dead.
These memorable days flew by on golden wings, and the time came for us to
tear these new ties apart and sail for home. When the Lincoln statue in marble
arrived in Washington, the Secretary of the Interior, accompanied by Judge David
Davis, Senator Trumbull, and other old friends of President Lincoln, inspected and
accepted the statue on behalf of the United States Government. The day was then
set for its formal unveiling in the rotunda of the Capitol. The ceremony took place
at night and the whole Capitol was brilliantly illuminated, the rotunda gayly decor-
608 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ated from floor to dome with the flag Lincoln had loved so well. All the officers of
the government, its generals and ministers, appeared in full dress to do honor to the
occasion. The marble statue was elevated to a proper height and surrounded with a
platform draped with flags, for the President, the speakers and the families of those
most nearly interested. The statue was completely enveloped in a great silk flag, and
when Judge Davis, Lincoln's friend, drew the golden cord which confined it, unveiling
the statue to public view amid the waving of banners and the sound of trumpets, a
great shout went up from the multitude. Then glowing tributes to President Lincoln
fell from the eloquent lips of Senator Matt Carpenter, Senator Cullom of Illinois,
and "the other distinguished orators who had been selected to speak. The great dome
rang with his praises, and thrilled by the eloquence and passion of some of these
utterances, sobs sometimes broke upon the air, and wails of sorrow. When the cere-
mony was over, the audience thought of the artist, and called for her. Senator Matt
Carpenter made his way to my seat upon the platform, and taking my hand, led me
out before them, but I could only bow my thanks, my voice was too full of tears to
speak in recognition of the cheers and flowers that greeted me. And so the people
and the old-time friends of Abraham Lincoln expressed their satisfaction with my
work.
It had been indeed a labor of love, not without its trials, but well rewarded by its
final triumph. How this verdict was afterward confirmed in giving into my hands the
commission for a statue of the immortal Farragut, I would like to tell you, but there
is not the time now. This night when the Lincoln statue was unveiled in the rotunda
of the Capitol was the supreme moment of my life. I had known and loved the man!
My country had loved him and cherished his memory. In tears the people had
parted with him. With shouts of joy and acclamations of affection they had received
his image in the marble. Upon the very spot where a few years before they had
gathered in sorrow to gaze upon his lifeless body lying there in state while a nation
mourned, they had gathered again to unveil his statue. " The marble is the resur-
rection," say the old sculptors, and now the dead had arisen to live forever in the
hearts of the people whom he loved so well.
WOMAN AND HOUSEHOLD LABOR.
By MRS. MARY HESS HULL.
Labor is getting thoughts into things; subduing the earth; gaining dominion over
matter. The commission to do this was given to man — male and female. God labored;
at least brought forth, produced the earth about us.
He then gave it to us to be completed by " the sweat
of the brow." The brute labors, but it is by instinct,
or when harnessed to man's thought. The brute works
without thought. But man's labor, to be real labor,
must be intelligent and it must be free. It must
be skilled and wise and true; differing in kind,
as individuals differ, as nations and sexes differ.
The home has done everything for the world and
its civilization and industry, but somehow the
working powers of the home have not received
their share of attention from either man or woman.
It has, however, held its own, and proved its mighty
right to life through wars and pestilence, famine and
neglect. But its running machinery is all out of keep-
ing with the times. The burden is simply immense,
and " will not down." It can upset all the tranquillity
and power and the blessing of the home. We want
to entertain our friends, we want to enjoy our
books, we want to eat our food under spiritual social
artistic conditions, but it all costs labor, skilled labor,
real labor, yet there seems to be no real place for
it; no time for it; nobody wants to do it; and today it is the only labor in all the
wide world of industry that goes begging. Every other field is overcrowded, while
men and women are begging for work. Somehow there is friction, lack of skill, no
right division of housework, no regular hours; it is not a profession, it has no name,
not even a trade. It is really the only labor left over from barbarons times which is
done by so-called " servants" instead of laborers.
All American life, all true life, is or should be a service from the President down,
but we speakof street-car drivers, diggers, statesmen, coach men, teachers or preachers,
but "servants" in household labor. Somehow this is all wrong; it seems there ought
not to be any housework at all; we don't like to see it, nor hear of it, nor do it; a man
or woman can work in a shop or in the field, and not feel the same friction and worry
and pinch that he does at real work in the home. Home seems to be the one place
to love and live in; is this why work is an intruder? Husband and children do not
like to have mother forever at work; hence the rule has been for her not only to be
sure to do it and to do it all, but also not to annoy others with it. She must always have
it out of the way, and her slippers and smiles on, and by some magic appear unto men
not to fast or to suffer, nor to be tired or worried like other folks. There must be some
Mrs. Mary HesR Hall is a native of Ohio. She received her edncation in a Young Ladies' Academy. Under the direc-
tion of an educated Scotchman she studied and read extensively. She married young and is the mother of six children, to
■whom she is a close companion and a devoted mother. Her special work, outside of her home life, has been in the interest of
temperance and purity. Her principal literary works are " Columbus and What he Found," for children, and " Lectures and
Studies in Robert Browning's Poetry." She is director of the Department of Domestic Arts in Armour Institute, in Chicago,
where she hopes to solve some of the domestic and social problems of the times. She is a member of the Congregational
Church. Her address is Armour Institute, Chicago. 111.
(39) 609
MRS. MARY HESS HULL.
610 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
way to overcome all this friction. The same science and thought must be brought to
bear upon this peculiar problem that is brought to bear upon other problems.
Women are in need of training; they have been drudges and slaves from time
immemorial, but they have never been laborers, skilled and respected as men; that
time is only at hand. Women will find, as men have, that the v^ery best way to get
work out of the way is .to do it in the very best way, and before we know it, the very
doing of it in the best spirit, we have grown in wisdom and in stature. We have become
educated in body, soul and spirit — "we kiss the rod " and thank God and work. How
familiar that man of Nazareth was with the smallest details of labor in the house, and
out of it. How well he knew the miracle of the yeast, the leaven in the lump. He
knew the light of the house couldn't shine if it was under a bushel, or any other
sort of a smothering lamp-shade, but instead it must be on top of things and shine out.
There was the salt, worthless if it had lost its savor; there was the garment not worth
patching, and the wine bottles too old to be used.
And hovv the daily bread problem must have pressed upon this family of Naza-
reth! There was the carpenter's bench which must have helped that out. How
strange to think of how this Master of material things so conquered that He brought
the very kingdom of Heaven into them. There was ministry and service and capa-
bility, and love in labor, not that which must be ministered unto. Only Mary can
ever know all that must have taken place in that wonderful home. So dignified was
the patient labor of love there that our homes can never be the same since the labor
problem was taken up by this Son of Man, and conquered. Christian civilization has
brought more labor into our homes than it has taken out. According to short-sighted
people, it would seem as though so much had gone out that our homes ought to be
eased of much of their labor. Spinning, weaving, threadmaking, grinding of wheat,
tailoring, have all had birth in the home, and gone out, and it would seem that the
home might be thus relieved. Life and industry are alike, always begetters of more
and more of their kind. The object of life is more life, and so it is with industry. The
home has been the cradle of almost every industry, and it does not seem as though
the cradle was as yet ready for the garret. 'Industry and trade grow and thrive on
the wealth of the human wants, and we must get away down into the " whys " and
" wherefores " of the present day life before we can begin to understand what most
troubles us as women and as housekeepers.
See the good man of today; nothing so burdens him as his wife's housework.
He stands by like a great gentle animal ready to lay down his life, pocket-book and
all, on the altar of the labor problem of the home; he has the greatest task in the
world on his hands, and it is killing him as well as her. See the difference between
any butcher's shop and his home. The husband superintends one and the wife the
other. The labor of one is systematically arranged, every sort of convenience put in
it; it is made attractive in every way, the best tools are in it, and pleasantness and
order reign. Why? Because of the money there is in it. The home is not system-
atically arranged, every sort of convenience is not put into it; order and pleasantness
does not reign, for the woman is doing a hundred different things, and none of them
thoroughly, skillfully. Why? Because there is no money in it, nothing is to be made
out of it. The wife's work and care is looked upon as being a sort of nonentity; it is
a small business; the sermons are all preached at him, not her. The work is not con-
sidered a trade or a profession; it has no commercial value, it has no name. If she
signs her name to anything which asks her even what her occupation is, she has none,
though we know she has worked fourteen or fifteen hours every day and Sunday
since she has been homekeeping, so it goes, and what is to be done? The first thing
to do is to elevate the work and in order to elevate it, it must be done well. In order
to do it well, we must think well. The best methods invented by you or me, or by our
grandmothers or by men, must come to the surface. Mr. Atkinson, the inventor of
the Aladdin oven, says he spends most of his time overcoming "the inertia of women
in using any new device." She blindly refuses to do anything but obey the old way,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 611
even when somebody thinks it up for her. But it is fast changing; woman can think,
and she is going slowly to get about it. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.
Our liberty is going to cost us something. " We must work; we must get the order of
work; we must love the law of labor. Labor is the law of development, the law of
progress, and we must work freely, without let or hindrance from any mortal source.
This ugly labor problem in our sacred institution the home, is perhaps our first great
problem. It ties us hand and foot — just now — we must first learn the great lesson of
labor, its laws, its base of energies and its productive nature, its blessedness, and its
mission to us.
We must capture its life, appropriate its strength by overcoming it; we must mas-
ter it, make it a joy, reduce it to order and system. This takes study and time and
opportunity, but every one of us can have a hand in it, each in her own way, in her
own life. Think, plan, experiment, invent, investigate, get the best method. Support
and organize training schools. Make our work what other work in the world is, a
science and an art. There is a law and order method in housekeeping. It is a mark
of most joyous hope for our future that what Frances Power Cobb said some years
ago is fast coming true. Said she: "It is not high genius, but feeble inability to cope
with domestic government, which generally inspires the women who wish to abdicate
the throne of home and take to the homeless American boarding house, or to the
continental pension." Our women of genius are not abdicating home, and our most
highly educated women are the ones who are awakening to these facts. They study
to make housework not a thing of drudgery, but the sacred intelligent foundation of
all other arts, and that it is the "houseband" that keeps the home together. Home
arts succor nourish, and bless mankind in every way.
The Sweetest Lives.
The sweetest lives are those to duty wed.
Whose deeds, both great and small,
Are close-knit strands of an unbroken thread
Where love ennobles all;
The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells,
The Book of Life the shining record tells.
Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes
After its own life-working. A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.
— Mrs. Browning.
THE HOME AND ITS FOUNDATIONS.
By REV. ANNIS FORD EASTMAN.
We can afford to lose all but the ideal; to part with all that we have if only there
be left to us that which we have not, which fills us with such longing as the poet hints
may help to make us immortal. Not that which is of
most value to man, but that which ought to be and so
is to be — becoming the star of promise that goes
before all seekers of the ideal. It is fancy and not
fact, such fact, perhaps, as Browning calls " facts'
essence," that rules in the poet and prophet's world,
the only world worth living in.
The worship of the Real has neither poet nor
prophet. Literature, religion, art, song — these all
are gifts of the ideal. Song dies and languishes in
the realm of that which is for want of atmosphere.
Civilization itself is the gift of the ideal, if it be as
one has declared, the sum of those institutions which
are shaped out of the best inspirations of mankind.
Because this is so, I afifirm that we might well
afford to loose all the rich heritage of knowledge
which scientific investigations have given us in the last
fifty years; we might dispense with all the inventions
and appliances which make human life safer, more
comfortable, more varied in resources for pleasure;
all that skill in medicine and surgery which has taught
man how to resist for a lengthening term of years the
foes of the body; all the marvelous achievements of man's intellect and the triumphs
of his handiwork which make of this generation the most knowing, most skillful and
most luxurious that this old planet has ever borne upon her bosom — all these things
might better fall away from us than that we should lose the vision of the ideal in
human life and destiny, which is the very life-breath of progress. The question is
still as pertinent as when it fell from the lips of the Great Teacher, " What shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose himself? '
I need hardly say that I would speak of home, not as it has been or is, but as it
may be, ought to be, as you and I may help to make it. The homage we shall pay
to the ideal home is not at all incompatible with a brave look at the actual home upon
which it is based in its origin. The family relations which make the home have a
physical basis — " first, that which is natural; afterward, that which is spiritual." This
fair flower which is at once the perfect fruit and the life-bearing seed of civilization,
finds its root in that dependence of the sexes upon each other for completion of life
which runs through all the forms of life, animal and even vegetable. Marriage is the
foundation of home, marriage and the long continued infancy and helplessness of man.
In the lair of the beasts, the hive of the bees, the nests of the birds, home had its
beginning. We see it struggling up through the promiscuous and temporary unions
Annis Ford Eastman is a native of Peoria, 111. She was born April 24, 1852. Her parents were George and Catherine
Stehley. She was educated in high schools and in Ol(frlin College. She is the wife of Rev. Samuel E, Eastman, and is her-
self a minister of the Gospel. In religious faith she claims to be an undenominational Christian. She is a member and the
pastor of a Congregational Church, and is a zealous, earnest woman of ability and great strength of character, and is doing
a noble work in the world. Her ptermanent postoffice address is West Bloomfield, N. Y.
612
REV. ANNIS FORD EASTMAN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 613
of savage men, evolving slowly and painfully one form after another of sexual rela-
tionship, until at last some form of marriage grew stable enough to determine relation-
ship with at least one of the parents. That was the birthday of civilized society.
From this time the family struggles up through the miasmatic regimes of polygamy and
polyandry in their various forms until the ideal form of a monogamous marriage
emerges, that ideal which is still so poorly realized among the most cultivated nations.
These considerations move us not only to gratitude for our heirship of the ages,
but lead us also to ask whether the family relations, as we have them today, are not
capable of further improvement at our hands and those of future generations. Some
claim that the family as we know it is a fleeting form of human development, a pass-
ing lesson in the divine art of living together. Nobody can claim this unless he is
able to forecast the future and declare what shall be. There is a wonderful reach in
Christ's teaching on this point when He challenges the claims of His family upon Him
thus, " Who is my mother and my brethren? For whosoever shall do the will of God,
the same is my brother and sister and mother." Did He mean to teach that spiritual
relationships are the only real and enduring ones — that oneness of spirit and purpose
is a stronger tie than that of blood? It is, however, beyond our purpose to speculate
as to the future form of human society. The foundation of the family, as we know it
today, is monogamous marriage, and home is the result of the long continued infancy
and helplessness of the young of man. When childhood had come to extend over a
period of a dozen years, a period more than doubled where several children were born
in succession to the same parents, then the blessed relationship of the home grew up.
"A little child shall lead them."
This is the historical foundation of the family. Has it an ethical foundation?
Does it subserve the highest ends of society? Is it in line with progress, and is it cap-
able of producing a higher type of man? It can not be doubted that a single affection
and a life union of man and woman has borne thus far the best fruits of civilization,
has given the highest and purest pleasure to mankind, and has afforded the best prep-
aration of the young for life and for service to the race. How shall the coming gen-
eration actualize this ideal so as to make it yield greater blessings to humanity? I
will indicate a few lines in which progress may be sought.
First. The recognition of the entire equality of man and woman as complement-
ary parts of humanity — of one humanity. The complete dependence of man and
woman, and their entire inter-dependence. This would mean equal opportunities for
education on all lines to both sexes; the free use and development of all their powers;
the sharing of by men and women in the great labor, in the results of which they have
an equal interest, of framing, interpreting and executing the laws of society; equal
advantages and protection under these laws, and equal representation in the govern-
ment.
Second. The recognition of manhood and womanhood as more excellent than
fatherhood and motherhood. How all chivalric souls of men leap, to declare that
these things are done. Done in them, perhaps, done ideally, sentimentally, but not
actually. Not yet has the world at large acknowledged the woman's right to a life as
large as her talents, an education which shall take account of her natural bent, and a
financial prosperity commensurate with her ability and her labors. Not ten years ago
a learned theologian said: "God foreordained man for the field and woman for the
hearth." This is the free translation: "God has foreordained man to breathe oxygen
and woman carbonic acid gas." The man for the harvest field, the orchard and the
vineyard, and woman for the laundry and the kitchen. From the opposite pole, the
setter of this world's fashions, the fiat went forth: " It must be every woman's supreme
aim to be beautiful." Out of this low ambition have grown the tortures of the body
for women in all ages and in all climes. Lord Bacon says that true friendship is only
possible between equals. How much more true this is of the close friendship of mar-
riage — of married companionship, intelligent, sympathetic companionship in all the
varied interests of life, in the highest joy of existence; this companionship is only
possible between equals in culture and opportunity.
614 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Who is to blame that this equality of the sexes is not attained? Nobody, This
is one of the hardest truths for human nature to accept. Given an evil, an abuse,
something contrary to present light, and the mind takes this as a challenge to find
somebody to blame; and when the curse is rolled off, even on to a serpent, the mind
experiences a sense of relief, just as when the unknown quantity in an algebraic prob-
lem is found. Nobody is to blame. This is one of the problems to be worked out; it
is a stage in the evolution of the spiritual man. Men are as much interested in it as
women. The complete emancipation of women will be as one has said, the regenera-
tion of man.
Nothing is more unw orthy of us, in the working out of this problem, than an
appeal to the conduct of life in the orders of animals below man, to prove either the
equality or the inequality of male and female in humanity. We know the argument:
The male bird sings louder and sweeter than the female; therefore woman can not be
a poet. In most mammals the male is stronger, more vigorous, more beautiful, and
the female has the chief care of the young; therefore a woman can not understand
politics. Why not collect data on the opposite side? The male of the American
ostrich sits on the eggs, hatches them out and takes principal charge of the young. A
species of spider has been discovered of which the female devours her consort when
he is of no further use to her. These things prove nothing. Our progress is away
from nature. What is natural in this 'sense is not the best.
When women are wholly persons and not property, when they seek freely the
development of all their gifts and powers, then marriage will not be barter and home
will not be a place of escape from the world to the woman, but it will be the highest
product of men and women at their best and purest.
I have emphasized the rights of women in this ideal family, but there is a right of
man which needs a fuller recognition from this generation — the right of a man to be as
virtuous as a woman.
I deprecate the emphasis laid today upon woman's work, woman's faith and
woman's enthusiasm for humanity. Does it not point to a day when the sexes may
be arrayed against each other, not on the old basis of strength versus subtility, of
brains versus no brains, but on the basis of religion versus materialism, of spirituality
versus animalism. If the old order, the pagan ideal, of such antagonism between the
sexes as made of the man a tyrant and of the woman a toy, a slave, was fundamentally
wrong, and held the race down, surely an antagonism which makes of the woman a
worshiping, spiritual being, and of the man a money-making, prayerless machine, is
equally fatal to the hopes of that crowning race which shall arise when the ideal man
shall be mated with the ideal woman, like perfect music set to noble words. Have I
over-stated the danger? In whose hands are the benevolences of our churches, their
missionary work, their prayer-meetings? We talk timidly of giving woman the ballot.
Let us beware lest she monopolize all that makes human affairs worth voting about.
There is no man's cause that is not woman's; there is no woman's cause that is not
man's. " If either be small, slight natured, miserable, how shall the race grow? " It
is time for men and women to realize that the home, the church, the state and the
world are theirs, that they must rise or sink together, " dwarfed or godlike, bond or
free." The children of the ideal home must not only boast of the precepts of a godly
mother, but of the example of a godly father. To this end the ideals of manhood
must be made high like those of womanhood. There must not be two standards of
conduct in the home — one seemly for the little boy, unseemly for the little girl. The
same social verdict must be pronounced against sinners, against purity, man and woman,
closed doors to vice in either sex, open doors of help to repenting sinners of either
sex.
But the last and best characteristic of the ideal home will be the realization by
its makers and members that it is not an end in itself. The fire of the family life, the
soul-culture gained in the duties and affections of the home, these must be as fuel to
the flame which is kindled on the hearthstone to give light and heat to the darkness
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 615
and cold of the world without. There is no fire for the warming of a home like the
fire of zeal for the service of humanity. A family bound together by mutual love,
levying a tax upon the bounties of nature and the arts of man to make the abode beau-
tiful, delighting in one another's peace and comfort, but with no thought or hope or
effort for the world outside, is a case of arrested development. It is just here that so
many of us make our fatal mistakes. We imagine that personal happiness is large
enough as an aim for beings created in the image of God — the Eternal Giver.
The supreme essential, then, for the attainment of the ideal home, is the serving
of some large ideal for the world. This is the characteristic of the ideal which we
can ingraft upon the actual in our hands. We can not bring about, in a moment, the
changes in the minds of men and women which will give women equal opportunities
with men in the culture and use of their powers, nor compel men to receive those
ideals of personal purity which shall issue in a nobler type of manhood; but the great
aim, the service of the world, this is for us all. Make your home great by great aims.
The family is the most important social institution of mankind only because it
affords the finest opportunities for the production and rearing of a higher social being,
who shall be^able to nobly discharge his duty as a responsible member of the social
body.
Home is the gift of the child to civilization. Shall not the home return the gift
to the race by sending forth men and women who have learned the art of living
together in so Divine a fashion that they shall be able to practice it in the school, the
shop, the market, the nation and the world?
CHICAGO.
By MISS MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.
The poem which I shall have the honor of reading to you today, was published in
the " Century" magazine, in March, 1893. It represents Chicago before the Exposition,
during the time of preparation and may now be
regarded as a prophecy fulfilled.
Among the newspaper comments upon this poem
was one which amused me greatly, and pleased me
also, because of its unintentional praise. The critic
said of me: "She evidently lives in Chicago." I am
a native of Philadelphia, and now live just across the
river from New York. I never saw Chicago until last
week, but I felt her; and I was glad to be so identi-
fied with her, even in the mind of a would-be satirical
critic, at a time when every sympathetic spirit in the
land was touched with the thrill of her heroic en-
deavor and her magnificent achievement.
Philadelphia did her best in '76; but the great
wave of artistic impulse which has since swept over
the world was, at that time, only beginning to gather.
It remained for Chicago to ride the crest of that
wave, and to show to the world — in this magical
White City — the very utmost that art can achieve —
art, which is man's vision of God's reality. Here it is
manifested that Imagination, noblest of human facul-
ties, has survived the intense realism of our century.
For there is nothing sordid about this work; that is the joy of it. It is "all for
glory and for beauty."
So last year I saw Chicago as in a vision; and now that I have beheld the result
of her labor and her munificence, I rejoice that my little song can be added to the
great chorus of praise.
The poem is simply entitled, "Chicago."
Chicago.
The blue lake ripples to her feet,
The wind is in her hair;
She stands, a maiden mild and sweet,
With sinewy form and fair.
No stress o.f age her hope restrains.
Nor checks its high emprise;
The blood of youth is in her veins.
Youth's challenge in her eyes.
Miss Marion Coathouy Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pa., October 22, 1853. Her parents were Henry Pratt, of Phila-
delphia, and Maria Conthony Williams, of Boston. She was educated at Miss Anable's School in Philadelphia, Pa. Her
principal literary works consist of magazine articles and poems contributed to the "Century," "Atlantic Monthly," " The
New England Magazine," and other publications ; also a booklet entitled " Chorister No. 13." Though retarded in her work
by ten years of ill health, yet she has demonstrated her ability, and a novel, published as a serial in " The Living Church,"
Chicago (which won a one hundred dollar prize) entitled "A Working Woman," accords to her talent of a superior order.
In religioas faith Miss Smith is an Episcopalian. Her postoifice address is No. 38 Walnut Street, East Orange, N. J.
616
MISS MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 617
She seized, with movement swift as light,
The hour's most precious spoil;
Now, glowing with her promise bright,
Her strength makes joy of toil.
With dextrous hand, with dauntless will,
Her pearl white towers she rears —
The memory of whose grace shall thrill
The illimitable years.
O'er leagues of waste, in sun and storm.
Their proud pure domes shall gleam,
The substance, wrought in noblest form.
Oft Art's imperial dream.
Here shall she stand, the Old World's bride,
Crowned with the Age's dower;
Toward her shall set the abounding tide
Of life's full pomp and power.
She hears the nations* coming tread,
The rushing of the ships;
And waits with queenly hands outspread,
And welcome on her lips.
The races, 'neath her generous sway.
Shall spread their splendid mart;
And here, for one brief perfect day.
Shall beat the World's great heart.
THE ''TURKISH COMPASSIONATE FUND."
By MLLE. CARICLEE ZACAROFF.
The Turkish Compassionate Fund was established by the Baroness Burdett
Coutts, in the winter of 1877-78, as a relief fund for the Mohammedan victims of the
Turko-Russian war, who, driven out of their homes,
sought refuge in Constantinople, the capital of their
monarch, the sultan.
The unparalleled distress throughout the Turkish
provinces in the districts north and south of the
Balkans, the burning homes, the thousands of starv-
ing and naked refugees in their mad struggle to reach
the metropolis, can find no more pitiful example in
the history of any war. Hundreds succumbed on the
way, unable to withstand the terrors of cold and hun-
ger. Thousands arrived in Constantinople before
organized assistance could be given.
In one of his letters Sir Francis de Winton says:
" One can give no idea of the painful scenes which
have occurred, nor the intensity of suffering which
these poor people are undergoing, and they are nearly
all women and children. One woman went mad; more
than one was confined on the journey; several per-
ished from cold, and little children were thrown from
the trucks as they passed the bridge into the river
Maritza, their mothers trusting rather to its waters
ending the sufferings of their little ones than prolong
them and the cruel horror of their dreadful journey."
The sympathy of the British public was aroused, thanks chiefly to the combined
efforts of Sir Henry Layard, ambassador in Constantinople at the time, and his wife.
Lady Layard. Help poured in from many quarters. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts
headed a relief fund, which, commissioned by Mr. Ashmead Bartlett Coutts and Sir
Francis de Winton, the African explorer, carried extensive aid into the localities, and
in the form most needed. This Turkish Compassionate Fund was a gigantic charity,
organized on a large-hearted and judicious plan, and supplying the necessities of life
for many months to thousands of perishing human beings. No one concerned then
thought that it was one day to develop into the beautiful industry which should con-
tinue for years to provide honorable employment dnd self-respecting support to many
hundreds who had been recipients of its bounty only.
To Mrs. Arthur Hanson, an English resident of Constantinople, a lady of high
social standing, is entirely due the credit of the development of the Turkish Com-
passionate Fund into one of the most beautiful and practical industries of Turkey
or of any other country. She first discovered the wonderful talent of these Mohamme-
dan women for needlework of a phenomenal character. From the first to the last
days of their "tribulation," and indeed up to this present moment, this noble woman
has worked among them; has devoted her talents, her energies, and her fortune to
Mile. Cariclee Zacaroff was born in Constantinople, Turkey, of Greek nationality, and educated in England. She is a
resident of Paris, France, and belongs to the Greek Church. She has devoted her services principally to the interests of the
Turkish Compassionate Fund. Her home is at No. 3 Rue Treilhard, Paris. Her present American and perm»»nent address
is No. 20 East Thirty-third Street, New York, N. Y.
618
MLLE. CARICLEE ZACAROFF
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 619
them; has learned to know and love the gentle, simple creatures to whom she soon
became an object of grateful worship. It was Mr. Hanson who first realized that
these strong, able-bodied women of magnificent physique could not long continue
paupers on any bounty — that with health and strength must return also the necessity
to work and provide for themselves. In time many returned to their former homes,
or were scattered in different parts of the country, to join their husbands, brothers,
and fathers in following their different callings. But many hundreds still remained
who had no homes to return to.
With the last two hundred dollars left from the relief fund Mrs. Hanson bought
materials and distributed them among the more eager workers. With the small
means at hand it was impossible to satisfy all. They would come on regular days to
Mrs. Hanson's country home, and not having a supply for all, their kind and wise
friend would place them indiscriminately in a row and give a piece of work to every
tenth; the fortunate ones would go away happy; the rest would pray that better luck
should fall to their lot next time.
The work grew. Not a large variety of articles was made. Doilies were fin-
ished by the hundreds and thousands — the many little things providing work to the
largest numbers. Many ladies in England still continued to take an interest in the
welfare of these poor exiles, and the work done was sent to them for disposal and
sale. Chief among these was Lady Charlotte Schreiber, and for many years she con-
tinued an indefatigable co-laborer with Mrs. Hanson. These articles at first produced
fancy prices; the money flowed into Mrs. Hanson's eager hands; more combinations
and varieties were created; rich materials bought; orders of every description taken,
and for several years hundreds of willing women were kept busy. Their condition
rapidly changed for the better; the object of the "Turkish Compassionate Fund"
seemed to have been attained — work for the able-bodied, alms only for the sick, the
aged and infirm. The organization was entirely self-supporting, and had even amassed
no small amount of capital.
Particular and grateful mention is here made of the " Liberty " firm in London.
At a time when there was but little demand for our work they gave large orders, and
paid for them generously.
But so extensive a work as this had become was too much for a few women, no
matter how devoted, to carry on to a lengthened success. In Constantinople, after
the first few months, Mrs. Hanson was almost unassisted in her labors. In a few years
(there being no organized system of renewal), those mostly interested in England
commenced to drop off; purchasers wearied of the same designs and combinations,
and wanted change and variety; much expensive stock remained unsold in the hands
of benevolent ladies in various parts of the world. Work continued to be given out,
but as the sales were slow, it was simply a drain on the capital, which diminished
rapidly; and finally, in 1888, it was decided to wind up the affairs of the Turkish
Compassionate Fund, reserving the small remaining capital for assistance in cases of
extreme emergency among the women, rather than spend it on materials for work.
In June, 1888, Mrs. Arthur Hanson, whom I had known and admired when in
Constantinople, asked me to interest myself in the work, and see what I could do in
France.
I showed our embroideries to the heads of various large firms in Paris. They
marveled at the execution and coloring, but would have none of our materials and
combinations. For a year or more Mrs. Hanson labored hard, at great expense, to
carry out the ideas, designs and coloring suggested by the French artists. Money
was not made — on the contrary, a great deal was expended — but at the end of twelve
months the production of the Turkish Compassionate Fund had undergone a great
change. Marvelous effects of color and design were obtained on the beautiful French
materials, which added to the wonderful technique of our women, and made of
their embroideries " dreams of beauty " indeed. The French pointed out to us the
boundless capacity of such skill, and showed us that nothing was impossible to eyes
620 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
that could " count threads in a cobweb," and fingers that could "work gold into a
butterfly's wang." For one firm ball-dresses on crepe-de-chine and mousseline soie
were made that were the wonders of that year's fashions. Alas! they were soon
copied and imitated by machinery. These imitations were not to be compared with
the originals, but they were produced at considerably less cost, and at first sight
appeared similar. Numerous other combinations and effects were obtained, with the
same results. We have embroidered bonnet crowns for the first millinery houses in
Paris — entire velvet cloaks and mantles, trimmings for dresses, etc., but in turn each
branch was imitated and forced to pass out of our hands. The ideas for some of the
most beautiful French creations of late years have been borrowed from originals
executed by the Turkish Compassionate Fund.
This explains why no pecuniary profits remained to the Fund from the work
made for Paris, though its introduction there was of great benefit in increasing the
beauty of the embroideries, and proving what could be done with such skill as was at
our disposal.
EMBROIDERIES OF THE "TURKISH COMPASSIONATE FUND" INTRODUCED INTO AMERICA.
During the first few years of its existence the Turkish Compassionate Fund
had obtained friends and well-wishers in most European countries, as also in America.
Benevolent ladies sold our embroideries and sent the money to Mrs. Hanson almost
entirely through the bankers of the Fund, Messrs. Coutts & Co., London. Mrs. Josephine
Heap, wife of the former American consul at Constantinople, sold largely among
her friends in Washington, D. C, and elsewhere. Still the stock accumulated, and
when, in 1889, it was gathered together from all parts of the world and sent to Paris
to be sold, the total amount realized was not one-twentieth part of its cost of pro-
duction.
That same year I was persuaded by an American gentleman, Mr. William H.
Brown, a brother of Mrs. John Wanamaker, who had seen and admired our work in
Paris, to try the fortunes of the Turkish Compassionate Fund in America, that land
of promise for all beautiful things, the encouragement of all noble charities.
After a trial visit of inspection, the reports of which were favorably received by
our authorities, an agency was established November 24, 1890. For the past two
years we have had a pleasant little apartment at No. 20 East Thirty-third Street,
New York, on a second floor, charming and comfortable, but too secluded to admit of
a hope that the general public will ever find out our existence. Our rooms in New
York are open all the year round, but once each year I visit several of the large cities
of the United States. Our most beautiful creations have been sold in New York,
Boston and Philadelphia I have visited California and Florida. By the kind courtesy
of Mr. H. M. Flagler, our embroideries are the only articles admitted into the mag-
nificent "Ponce de Leon" Hotel. From the spring of 1890, when commenced the
first preparation for American markets, up to the present time, from eighteen hun-
dred to two thousand of our poor women have been kept in constant employment.
They have been paid in ready money for every article of needlework which has
passed through their hands, and they call down blessings upon the American people
among whom such a field has been opened for them.
Mrs. Hanson relates many touching anecdotes of their surprise and joy at seeing
the work pour in upon them after the comparatively dull season of unremunerative
labor, in the years between 1886 and 1889; how the American letters were eagerly
expected; how the women and children would kiss her skirts with gratitude as she
announced new orders; how they would turn sadly away when there were none and
pray " Allah" for better news next mail.
And here I would like to give a short account of the character, life and habits of
these Mohammedan women, in whose behalf I am trying to interest you.
They are of good, strong physique, and rare beauty is by no means an exception
among them; their bearing is gentle and dignified — in fact, vulgarity is a' term that
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN 621
could never be applied to the lowest of them. They lead a simple, domestic life, and
their habits are unusually frugal. They are timid by nature, or rather, by training; are
very sensitive of, and grateful for, the smallest favor. Naturally indolent, they can
still apply themselves steadily to work when there is any incentive of love or a prom-
ise of reward. For love of Mrs. Hanson they will accomplish what neither threats nor
gain could make them do. What is still more astonishing, in a race to whom exacti-
tude and punctuality are qualities unknown (time being of no count with them), they
will, as a rule, keep their promises to her, as regards date of returning their finished
work. Their cleanliness would put to shame many cultivated Christians. " With a
Turk cleanliness is not next to Godliness, but part and parcel thereof." It is difficult
to conceive that these exquisite embroideries, on the most delicate materials and
colors, covered with fine embroidery requiring weeks and months to complete, should
be worked in a small room, where the members of a family are born, live and die.
Their work is stretched on a low frame, before which they sit cross-legged on the floor;
and this frame, containing the embroidery they are working upon, is an object of
reverent care. In cases of fire, which is by no means unfrequent among their poorly-
built frame dwellings, it has often happened that when not a thing besides has been
saved, the work attached to the frames has been found spotless and having been
removed to a place of safety before anything else was thought of.
Age makes but little difference in their deftness. A small child of seven or eight
years makes as perfect work as a grown woman, and there are great numbers among
them, seventy and seventy-five years of age, who still do the finest drawn-thread
work — in fact, there are some kinds of the old Persian work in which the old ladies
are the greater adepts. They do not take as kindly to innovations as the younger
ones, and they despise all work which is not exactly the same on both sides. The
test of perfection is, that none shall be able tell on which side the eyes gazed when the
piece was being embroidered.
Many of you may some day go to Constantinople. I would ask you to find out
Mrs. Arthur Hanson, living in the village of Candilli, on the Asiatic coast of the Bos-
phorus, and be present on her reception days when the work is given out, the silk
and gold weighed, the design and coloring of each piece explained, words of encourage-
ment and advice given, medicine for a sick child, a reward for a specially good piece
of work, a gentle reprimand for carelessness, inexactitude, or an unfortunate stain; the
language carried on between Mrs. Hanson, her lovely daughters, her assistants and
these women, being a mixture of English, French, Turkish and Greek, A veritable
Volapuk, unintelligible to the outsider.
I can only touch briefly on our preparation, to exhibit at the World's Columbian
Exposition. For many months we were in doubt as to the possibility or practicability
of doing this. It was certain that we could not exhibit for "glory" only. The
Baroness Burdett-Coutts graciously allowed us to use the " reserve " fund, on condi-
tion that we should return it as soon as possible. Finally, after an interview with
Mrs. Potter Palmer, at the Holland House, New York, the last days of November,
1892, word was cabled "start — " weeks before our material had been chosen in Paris,
our designs, colors and combinations prepared by Mrs. Hanson. An adequate descrip-
tion can never be given of the difficulties to be surmounted in so short a space of time
(but four months remained, if we were to have the work in America by April, and be
ready in Chicago by May 1st).
Everything arrived in time, and our beautiful exhibit was ready in the north wing
on the main floor of the Woman's Building, in the first days of May.
The " Turkish Compassionate Fund" had risked its existence on this effort. Every-
thing it possessed was in the stock. But for nearly the first four months our hopes of
pecuniary success seemed doomed to disappointment. From first to last little was
done in the Exposition proper, but regular sales were conducted in some of the
principal hotels in Chicago. Our embroideries were the wonder and admiration of
wealthy visitors from all parts of the country, and during the last ten weeks of the
622 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Exposition our sales were very large. We can not say that we have achieved a brilliant
success, because we had hoped and were prepared to sell extensively from first to
last. The " reserve " has been returned to the baroness, and good things may yet be
in store.
We ask for no subscriptions. From the time the " Turkish Compassionate Fund"
became an industry, every cent that has passed into Mrs. Hanson's hands has been
given as an equivalent for value received. Our motto is: " Not alms, but work."
Many forlorn hopes, many institutions, many charities, have turned to America
for salvation. May the eager, longing desire of our poor women for work, for work
only, not remain unfulfilled! And we pray you to give it to them. The^exchange they
will give will be art and beauty beyond words to describe.
LAW AND WOMEN.
By MRS. MARIA P. PECK.
Law, said Burke, is beneficence acting by rule. As an abstract principle or theory
human wisdom could hardly invent a more beautiful definition. In it is implied a
system of ethics stripped of the barbarous element of
might, purged of the discordant factors, cruelty, injus-
tice, dishonesty and harshness, leaving only the har-
monies so combined as to render it perfect. It is,
possibly, what the law might be if men were angels
and earth a paradise. But with the constantly increas-
ing struggles of conflicting interests, in its applica-
tion to the affairs and conduct of men, the beneficent
quality of law is many times conspicuous only by
its absence. So true is this that it has become an
accepted rule, that in law there is nothing certain
except expense.
How then to avoid becoming entangled in its treach-
erous meshes, how to invest securely and manage
property, how to conduct the ordinary transactions per-
taining to the concerns of every-day life without run-
ning the risk of disastrous loss, are some of the things
worthy of the serious study of women in this age and
generation, when fortunes large and small are rapidly
falling into their hands either by inheritance or ac-
quisition. It is the universal testimony of lawyers
that ignorance is one of the most prolific sources of
troubles that eventually find their way into the courts for adjustment.
At least it is a fact worthy of consideration that lawyers as a rule do not go to law,
any more than doctors take their own medicine. However unsuccessful a lawyer may
be in the practice of his profession, or whether he knows much or little of the great
science, he has by the time he is admitted to the bar learned enough to avoid litiga-
tion in his own behalf. This want of knowledge on the part of laity is not at all sur-
prising, when it is understood that the law in all its various and multifarious ramifica-
tions is now contained in upward of twenty thousand bulky volumes of the common
or unwritten law, and in this number is not included the works on statute or written
law. And in all this mass of material the language used is so overburdened with ver- .
biage and technical phraseology, often obscuring the meaning to such an extent as to
baffle the understanding of those trained in the profession.
The occurrences are by no means rare when the most eminent jurists disagree as
to the construction and application of the law in important cases. But even if the
language were clear, concise and so comprehensive that those that run may read, the
requisite amount of accurate knowledge to guard against business blunders that may
prove expensive and troublesome, or the rule that establishes the rights of one indi-
Mre. Maria P. Peck is a native of New York. She is the danghter of Hon. Merritt Pnrdy, of Western New York, who
was of Dntch origin. Both his father and mother belonged to the well known Datch families of Albany, N. Y. Mrs. Peck's
early education was under her father as tutor, afterward in an academy. She has traveled in Europe and quite extensively in
our own country. She married Dr. W. L. Peck, an eminent physician, practicing in Iowa. They moved to Davenport in 1865.
Her special work has been in the interest of her home and family. She is a graceful writer and frequent contributor to
leading magazines. Her postoifice address is Davenport, la.
623
MRS. MARIA P. PECK
624 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
vidual without infringing upon those of others, is not to be found in any one of these
books, or in any few. So that, practically, the wisdom concerning the laws and their
operations that are a constant menace to those controlling large business interests, is
inaccessible to the multitude, except as it is gained in that great democratic free school,
experience, which numbers many sorrowing graduates.
If a lawyer may be considered fully educated and equipped for his work when he
has mastered enough legal lore to know where to find the information that he is in
quest of at the right time and moment, what can be expected of those without any
special training? And in none of the affairs of life, affecting our material interests is
the maxim that half knowledge is worse than ignorance so applicable as in law.
With the importance which is now accorded to women in the financial as well as
the social world, an importance which establishes a distinct and separate individuality
in the body politic from a business and legal standpoint, a most perplexing problem
with regard to her signature has arisen. It can not then be repeated too often that
the signature of a woman, whether plain, simple or complex, in all business and legal
transactions, from the signing of a communication, a check, a deed or a mortgage to
the signing of a will, should be written plainly and fully, and with nothing added to
or taken from. The addition or omission of a single letter, the changing from full
name to initials, or substituting the husband's, causes confusion and, in cases of real
estate transfers, may work harm.
Women in business affairs maybe divided into three classes: the over-credulous
and improvident, the over-suspicious and miserly, with a small surplus or remnant of
conservatives, with clear business heads and quick insight that render their judgment
almost unerring, that may be called the saving grace.
Col. Mullberry Sellers is a typical American character, and flourishes more or
less fully developed in all our communities. The number of schemes that are con-
tinually being hatched by these fertile financial geniuses for splendid gains on a small
amount of invested capital would be amusing if they did not in so many instances
draw hard earned dollars into the vortex of destruction.
The members of the second class have no confidence in money-making schemes
of any kind, and are never caught in any of the delusive snares. They are afraid of
real estate investments; banks they are morally certain are not safe, and the tradi-
tional stocking becomes the place of deposit for many of these cautious souls until
some friend or acquaintance, in whom they have perfect confidence, is found, who
will undertake the management of their savings, thus relieving them of further
anxiety. Who can estimate the tears that have been shed, the bitter anguish that has
been caused to thousands of confiding women after finding that their little savings
have been swallowed up in hazardous speculations, or swept away by dishonest prac-
tices, leaving them absolutely without redress.
The members of the third or remnant class, however, conduct their business on
the same business principles that successful men do. They are not afraid of banks,
because they know that their soundness or unsoundness depends upon the business
capacity of the men who manage them. Before investing in stocks or making large
deposits in any one of them, they will investigate its condition, its resources, its man-
agement, and then, when a panic is threatened, will not precipitate it by withdrawing
their deposits. They know that there is no more safe or satisfactory way of making
investments than upon farm mortgages, but they will, before making a loan upon such
security, take the precaution to examine the title to the property under consideration
to see that no cloud hangs over it, and they will inquire into the character and stand-
ing of the local agent with whom they are dealing. They will further, if the loan is
made in a state remote from the one in which they live, ascertain all the law govern-
ing such transactions in the particular state, for in some they are specially favorable
to the debtor. Then if the loan is made only up to the one-half or two-thirds stand-
ard of value, nothing worse can happen than to come into possession of the land,
which does not burn and can not be spirited away.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 625
These women know when to make a written contract and when a verbal one will
be binding; they never sign a paper without understanding exactly its purport in all its
bearings, and never give unlimited power of attorney to an agent. That so many
women are disqualified for ordinary business transactions requiring exactness and
judgment is not so much because of mental incompetence as lack of training.
Rastus S. Ransom, Surrogate of New York County, in an article in the North
American Reviezu, June, 1893, " How to Check Testamentary Litigation," makes some
unwelcome statements about women. He says: "Many women are named as execu-
tresses of wills, and it is my experience that they know little or nothing of business,
rely largely upon their emotions and intuitions, and fall an easy prey to the ever-ready
and always convenient sharper. My judgment is that women should never be com-
pelled or permitted to undergo the labor and responsibility of these positions."
It is only fair to assume that Mr. Ransom, in giving expression to an opinion of
this sort, is not speaking from prejudice of the sex, but is givinghis honest convictions
founded upon association and experience. It is a matter of record that all the prop-
erty of the United States passes through the probate courts once in thirty years. By
the appointment of persons largely interested as administrators or executors the per-
centage allowed for such services is saved to the estate. Now if women are to be
debarred from acting in such capacity because of incompetence much that would
come to them from this source must go to strangers. This state of affairs is certainly
deplorable and must result in loss to women, whether they do or do not act as execu-
tresses of the estates in which they are chiefly interested.
One more quotation from the same paper: " Many intelligent persons do not
realize the absolute right both in morals and in law of a man to dispose of all his prop-
erty in his lifetime, to take effect only at his death, and which is defined to be his last
will and testament. His right so to dispose of his property is as certain and sacred as
his right to dispose of it by sale or gift during his life."
Embodied within this declaration of the law, as made by Mr. Ransom, there are
many perplexing questions that are intimately connected with the rights and interests
of women, especially wives. Believing that one instance drawn from actual observa-
tion is more valuable than a dozen hypothetical cases, I will take one under my notice
at the present time to illustrate this absolute right of man, both in a legal and moral
sense, that Mr. Ransom so emphatically proclaims and so fearlessly maintains to be
just and even sacred.
Mr. S, living a short distance from my home in Davenport, Iowa, owns four acres
of land on which he is now living with his wife. Every dollar that was paid for this
property, which is valued at $1,500, was earned by the wife, who is now in the neighbor-
hood of sixty-five years of age and partially crippled from an accident. At present
she works in the fields, makes the garden, milks the cows and makes the butter; she har-
nesses her own horse, drives to town and sells her chickens, vegetables, butter and
eggs, buttermilk and smearkase, and takes home, when she can get them, chairs to
re-seat at odd moments, besides, in cases of illness in the neighborhood, acting as
nurse. The husband, too fine a gentleman for this sort of work, leads a life of com-
paratively luxurious ease, and never contributes a dime to the domestic treasury.
Now Mr. S has, unquestionably, the legal right, and according to Mr. Surrogate
Ransom the moral, to make a will disposing of, in any way to suit himself, all but one-
third of this property at his death. If he should not survive his wife, whether he
makes a will or not the court would take possession of this property, and from what
is left after the settlement of the estate the wife would receive one-third; the balance
would go to the eight grown children all away from home.
That so many men are better than this infamous law is the only reason that it is
permitted to disgrace the statute books in so many of our states today. In all our
broad land there is only one state, and that is California, that has righteously con-
sidered the wife in the disposition of property.
Respect for the law has so long been considered one of the cardinal virtues, that
(40)
626 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
women meekly acquiesce in those that discriminate against their interests, when by
open rebellion a change could be effected. It is plainly a woman's duty not only to
know what the law is respecting her rights, but also, what the law should not be.
Many women are unable to comprehend the principle that capital is labor, or
that upon this principle rests its only equitable foundation; not physical labor alone,
but mental labor also. It is only wealth that is accumulated without effort that is
lightly esteemed by either sex.
This is so true that it has grown into a proverb that one generation by labor and
frugality accumulates wealth, the second enjoys, spends or dissipates, and the third
begins the struggle for existence in poverty again. We are living in a transitional
period, and possibly it is not so much what our rights are, or what our duties to our-
selves and to society with respect to property are today, as what they will be in the
future, when justice, upon which all law is founded, invests woman with greater author-
ity and responsibility by conferring upon her the law-making power.
Does justice, though, which has been beautifully defined as the soul of the
universe, peacefully confer its blessings? No, all the law in the world tending toward
the amelioration of mankind has been born of agitation and contest; every principle
is a victory gained over an inimical force. And so the pathway traversed by all
great reforms has been paved with long-continued human effort, and in many
instances cemented with blood. It is most fitting, then, that the symbols of justice
should be the scales and the sword. The scales, so sensitively adjusted that the slight-
est variation causes vibration, are used to determine what is just; the sword the power
to enforce its execution.
Law, with all its cumbrous machinery, is a plant of slow development but of con-
tinuous growth. The seeds were sown far back in the ages when the complex rela-
tions growing out of differing wants and conditions of men began to be considered.
Customs arising from associations became crystallized into rules, rules established by
usage, by legislative enactments, became laws. The Romans legalized their robberies
of land and laid the foundation of all our law governing property. The Venetians
traded on the Rialto, and upon their operations the basis of our commercial law rests.
"The law," says an eminent authority, "can renew its youth only by breaking with
its past."
What, with all the weight of a century or more of usage added to a law, does this
breaking with its past mean? New conditions and new demands may have arisen
that render it odious to a large majority, yet with its existence the rights and
interests of individuals and classes have necessarily become identified and it can not
be overthrown without a struggle; witness our tariff laws today in proof of this state-
ment. Who of our statesmen living today that advocated the Fifteenth Amendment
to our Constitution would do the same thing again?
If, then, when a law, either good or bad, is once enacted and becomes a part of
the working machinery of the system, if it is so difificult and even dangerous to repeal
it, it is not surprising that conservative, conscientious men are slow to accept new
theories which, when incorporated into law, admit a new and'untried element to the
already too great body of law-makers.
Allegorically woman may hold the scales in one hand and the sword in the other
as the personification of Justice, but actually she is without power, except as a bene-
ficiary of man, to defend her own rights of property. The ample, floating drapery
may envelop her fair form emblematically, but no ermined robes of state or bench
belong to her wardrobe. She is judged, but she can not judge.
This is true today; what will be tomorrow?
The history of all conflicts in which human rights are involved proves that when
the wave of reform has once been set in motion it never recedes until it reaches
the further shore. The demand for the ballot for woman has been made; it is founded
upon a principle of right and justice that can not be denied, though it may be delayed.
Indifferent, indolent women may oppose; Susan B. Anthony may never lift up her
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 627
voice again in behalf of the cause; the Suffrage Association may cease to labor or to
exist, and the principle upon which the demand is founded, enshrined in the hearts of
millions not openly connected with the movement, will be carried on to a successful
issue.
The time may not be near, nor is it very distant, when women, whether as a whole
they desire it or not, will become as important factors in the law-making power of
this country as men. What then is the duty of women today — not a few clever women,
but all intelligent, thinking women? Is it not that they shall use this probationary
period in preparation to meet the responsibilities that the new conditions will thrust
upon them?
The progress of humanity in its march toward a state of ideal perfection has
ever been slow, and the ballot placed in the hands of women may not inaugurate a
millennium, but it certainly should not be retarded by it. Give woman the ballot by
all means; but first give her a rational understanding of the complex system of our
laws and our government.
WOMAN IN AN IDEAL GOVERNMENT.*
By MRS. K. V. GRINNELL.
One of the most notable things said at the great congress of women in Washing-
ton in 1888, was the remark of the Rev. Anna Shaw that "every reformer had a.
vision before he entered the work of reform.
Doubtless many a heart in her audience thrilled
in response, in memory of the sublime experiences
which opened the spiritual eyes to a perception of the
interior forces and principles at work within and upon
human society. For many years my mind has been
searching for these ultimate principles.
The imperious demand of my spirit at last forced
open the gateways that lead to the inner realms, and
compelled its hidden meanings to be made plain to
my comprehension. " The kingdom of heaven suffer-
eth violence, and the violent take it by force," said
Jesus truly.
In answer to my persistent inquiry and demand
in the supreme struggle of my soul, was my vision
opened to see and understand the great idea and
underlying principles of human life, of social and
governmental order, of the kingdom of God, in other
words. These are expressed in the twelve-tribed
nations of Israel, and symbolized in the magnificent
vision of the new Jerusalem.
In a vague and undefined way the thoughts and
sentiments connected with the idea of the Kingdom of God, or of the millennium, have
always been cherished by the human heart. Its approach has been foretold these
fifty years or more. The cry of the angel with one foot on the sea and one on the
land, that the time of the end of the old dispensations had come — remembering not
that the Kingdom is first within.
The greatest miracle that can happen, the greatest sign that can be given, is the
" sign of the Son of Man."
The spirit must truly desire the truth before it can perceive and receive the stu-
pendous fact that the earth is to be the arena of all that has been foretold concerning
the destiny of the human race. The Kingdom of God is a political kingdom, if you
please, governed by spiritual laws. That is, it is based upon both the mental and spir-
itual laws of man's nature, which is a copy and reflex of the nature of God. It has
definite organization and form of government. It is not a phantasmagora nor a mere
sentiment, but is a real and human fact, involving human beings in their social and
Mrs. Kathemi Van Grinnell was born in New York in 1839. Her parents were religions, enterprising and public
spirited. They spared no pains to educate their children to become valuable members of society. She married Graham G.
Grinnell of New York, a gentleman of culture, and has five children, three daughters and two sons, who are a crown of
rejoicing to her. Her special work has been in the interest of a new social order which will give place to every interest of
society in systematic form, and place woman in her right position as helper of man in every department of society. Her
principal literary works are scientific essays and a monthly magazine. The character of Mrs. Grinnell is marked by a singu-
lar openness to truth in its exactness of detail and fidelity to her perceptions and convictions. Her postoflBce address is
Mayfair, 111.
*Thi8 article is an extract from an address, the full title of which is, " Woman's Position in an Ideal Government."
628
MRS. KATHERNI VAN GRINNELL.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 629
governmental relations. It is the reign of law in every faculty of the human mind, and
in every department of human society. All that we have known before about the
Kingdom we have found in the Bible. From this book we read of the first inception
of the idea, and the historical fact of a nation founded to realize it in their government
and personal life. This was the Israelitish nation, and it was founded under the direct
influence of Jehovah, who promised that it should be a " holy nation." Its history is
one of extreme interest, and has a singular fascination for the devout and spiritual
mind, and yet, so strangely have its history and prophecies been ignored, that Chris-
tians generally are almost ignorant of its annals, and wholly ignorant of its import as
a factor in the evolution of the race.
They miss entirely the purpose and intention of the book; and this notwithstand-
ing their faith in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and notwithstanding that they
think their whole claim to eternal life lies in its pages.
Moses, during the memorable forty days that he was in the mountain with
Jehovah, received the instructions which he afterward incorporated in what is known
as the Mosaic law, which today stands superior to any other system of laws among
ancient or modern nations. For this law was not only the expression of the will and
wisdom of Jehovah, but of the internal necessities of the people. It was suited to the
people of that child age. But we have come now to a more mature age, when, instead
of commands as to children, we need a scientific statement of the laws of the mind,
as well as of the physical laws. Law is the mode of action of internal forces. It is
never imposed on man against his nature, but in accordance with, and as a part of, the
fundamental principles of his nature. Indeed, when Moses finished the delivery
of the law, he gave this as its binding force and reason. It was so natural that they
needed no teacher, even from the heavens, to teach them how to obey.
Indeed it is now well known that their history and wanderings have been traced
by unmistakable signs until their identity with the Anglo-Saxon race, of which we are
a part, is fairly well established.
This brainy, energetic, practical, but spiritual people, then, are the veritable " lost
tribes " of Israel. I do not propose, however, to enter into the details of this account.
I only wish to trace the line of history to show our ancestry from whom we receive
•our inheritance of mental and spiritual power. This race is best adapted to the work
of completing a true social and governmental order, based upon scientific principles.
In their characters and in their prophecies were the most complete types and symbols
of the new order, which is the final outgrowth of our historic ages. All these symbols
and types find their key in the nature of man.
Each tribe was marked by distinct characteristics, and each stood for a basic
truth and fundamental part of society. This was why God chose them to lead in the
development of the Divine principles of life.
The Jews, whom we know as a distinct people today, have come to consider them-
selves, and to be considered, as the only representatives on earth of this historic peo-
ple. But the Jewish people comprise only a small portion of the nation of Israel,
being the descendants of only two out of the twelve tribes. Ten of the tribes revolted
and, choosing a king, set up an independent nation.
This was known as the House or Kingdom of Israel, but was also called Ephraim,
because this half tribe led in the revolt. The tribes who remained loyal to Solomon's
son were known as the Kingdom of Judah, from which come the Jews. After a few
hundred years of almost incessant warfare between these divided nations, the Israel-
ites were captured by the King of Assyria and carried away into captivity, from which
they have never returned. From that time they have been known by the descendants
of Judah, and all readers of their history, as the " lost tribes." But the burden of the
ancient prophecies is the restoration of these two nations under the tribal order, and
of their becoming reunited to form one nation again under one King David " whom I
will raise up."
At a culminating period in the age of this people came or was sent Jesus. He
630 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
offered to the Jews the opportunity of again restoring this ancient nation; not by war-
like prowess, but by the simple observance of the spiritual principles of life. He sent
His disciples to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, for He well knew that the
twelve tribes must all be represented to complete the nation. History tells us how
He was rejected, and how the Jews immediately lost what little power remained to
them. For the rejection or acceptance of great and universal principles of truth by
the people affects the race universally for good or evil during the ages that follow.
After Jesus, appeared another great prophet who had been one of His disciples.
He wrote a new revelation, mostly in symbols. Its symbolism concealed its interior
meaning from the people, until the time should come when the human mind would be
able to perceive the principles involved and the possibility of their application to
earthly affairs and institutions. This is the order of evolution. The burden of this
prophecy, which culminates in our day, is the sealing of one hundred and forty-four
thousand of the people in tribes, under the name of the twelve tribes of Israel; after-
ward of a multitude which no man can number. John saw that " Holy City," the
New Jerusalem, coming down from God, out of Heaven, prepared as a bride for her
husband, " having the glory of God, and the light was like unto a stone, most precious,
even like a Jasper stone, clear as crystal." It had twelve gates, and at the gates
twelve angels, and names written thereon," which are the names of the twelve tribes
of Israel. Have we a right to treat this as a beautiful but meaningless fancy? The-
ologians have sought in vain for its solution, and make no attempt to explain it. But
science has entered the domain of religion, and gives a real theology and a clear
explanation of these symbols.
The New Jerusalem is called a bride and seems most distinctly feminine, because
here woman's special forces and functions find their first recognition and place in gov-
ernment, and in all the great activities of society. And this place is perceived and
stated first through the discoveries of science.
It forever fixes woman's place and shows her to be an equal factor with man in
all the departments of government and of society.
She has already begun to perceive this in a limited way, and is seeking recogni-
tion in politics as a necessary expression of her natural right and as a tardy act of
justice on the part of men toward her. But she needs to have a more definite idea
of her place in politics and in government before she will be able to induce man to
grant her this right.
But right here is where Science has achieved her most splendid victory, by giving
an exact analysis of the faculties of the human brain and their modes of action in
individual, social and governmental life. Thus we find the law of the tribes^
which I promise to give to you.
The brain is a wonderful organ. The secret of its action has been slow of dis-
covery. Strange that this organ and instrument of the mind, which measures all
things in the heavens and earth, should have been so tardy of discovering the laws
and process of its own action, or so lately analyzed its own faculties.
"The human brain is constructed upon the mathematical plan of the ellipse, "^
says the Book of Life. A circle has a single center of force, but an ellipse has two
centers of force. A circle with its single center has no internal power or movement
of life. An ellipse with its two centers has internal power or movement and of life.
These two centers are polar to each other. All physiologists agree in saying this:
"Polarity involves the concert of opposite tendencies — the attractive and the repul-
sion; receptive and positive; masculine and feminine."
"The brain is the seat of all animal life; every bodily function receives its power
to act from the brain," says one scientist. The brain is the seat also of spiritual life.
From and through these centers of spiritual force every faculty of the human mind or
spirit receives its power to act. They are not only the centers of organizing power
in forming the body, but of all thought. There could be no activity or power to
create thought or being but for these polar, responsive and co-operative, masculine
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 631
and feminine forces, which center in the human brain. Let me emphasize this. As
in the physical organization of the brain, the structural fibers center here; so in the
mental organization. There are twelve groups of faculties which also center in these
brain centers. The faculties have each a distinctive location in the brain, the result of
the operation of a mathematical law. The special traits and characteristics of each
group of faculties characterized one of the tribes of Israel.
This fact was observed and stated by the great historians, Kitto, Evald Milmann
and other historians of the Jews.
The names of the twelve groups of faculties are: Art, which characterized the
tribe of Simeon; science, which characterized the tribe of Asher; letters, which char-
acterized the tribe of Gad; culture, which characterized the tribe of Naphtali; religion,
which characterized the tribe of Levi; marriage, which characterized the tribe of
Judah; familism, which characterized the tribe of Reuben; home, which characterized
the tribe of Zebulon; rulership, which characterized the tribe of Joseph; labor, which
characterized the tribe of Dan; wealth, which characterized the tribe of Benjamin;
commerce, which characterized the tribe of Isaacher. Each group is subdivided into
faculties. The functions of each group are dual, or masculine and feminine; the mas-
culine quality dominating in man and the feminine in the woman, for both elements
have entered into every part of each organism through the united forces of the
parents.
I will now give the primary or dual division of the faculties, the first in each
group being masculine, the second feminine:
Culture, subdivided into amity and reform; religion, subdivided into faith and
love; rulership, subdivided into dignity and laudation; science, subdivided into reason
and inspiration; marriage, subdivided into devotion and mating; labor, subdivided
into justice and industry; letters, subdivided into memory and attention; familism,
subdivided into parentity and reverence; wealth, subdivided into defense and economy;
art, subdivided into form and color; home, subdivided into appetite and feeling; com-
merce, subdivided into locomotion and aversion.
These form the different departments of society and government in a complete
organization. We readily recognize that in each of the faculties the masculine faculty
dominates in man, and the feminine in woman. Every brain organ or faculty pro-
duces a distinctive kind of want that has a natural right to a means of satisfaction or
expression.
A government, to be truly representative, must not only represent human beings
as a mass; but as each class of wants in society has its distinct or producing cause in a
mental faculty, this faculty must be represented in government by an officer.
In the Hebrew language, the language of Israel, in which Jehovah gave his name
to Moses, each letter has a number which determines its meaning. The number of the
name Jehovah is twenty-six (26), but none of the rabbis have ever been able to deter-
mine its meaning. It has always remained the mystery of God. However, they have
always had a belief that it would be revealed in the day or age when Israel should be
restored. John, in his revelations, foretells the time as being one of the events which
we perceive is culminating in our day, when "the mystery of God" shall be "finished."
In the vision of St. John, he says: "A throne was set in Heaven, and (one) sat on the
throne, and he that sat was to look upon like a Jasper and a Sardine stone." The word
"one" in the sentence is an interpolation, and the colors of the Jasper and Sardine
stones are masculine and feminine; for the law holds good among the colors that pre-
vail in every realm of nature. It is a well-known scientific fact that colors are mascu-
line and feminine to each other. This, John said, was a vision of that time that was to
be hereafter, and although it was represented as being in Heaven, and was undoubtedly
an actual vision of Jehovah and the officers of the Celestial Government, it represented
the form of government which is to be the center and model of all earthly governments,
because it is based upon the nature of God and of man, and for this reason is a subject
of prophecy.
632 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The capital city will be at Jerusalem, " for the law shall go forth from Zion," and
a new city, the form and architecture of which will be based upon the laws of the Divine
and human mind, will be built upon the site of the ancient city of historic fame. This
is what is meant by the New Jerusalem — not a phantom city in the skies, but an earthly
— expressing in its external form and its internal harmony the laws of the Divine and
human mind. But here we find that the equality of woman with man as an associate
ruler was foretold or foreshadowed in the ancient days. David, in his prophetic psalm,
picturing the beauties of the Messianic age, says: "Upon the right hand did stand the
queen in gold of Ophir." These two central rulers or ofificers will administer the Divine
government, not as autocrats, but as elected rulers by virtue of their eminent fitness,
representing the functions of the brain centers, which are called by physiologists the
"throne of the brain." A man and woman representing each tribe, and also each dual
group of faculties as manifested in the departments of society, will be associated ofificers
in each department of government, the male officers representing and exercising the
masculine functions, and the female officers the feminine functions. This makes the
twenty-four rulers which John saw around the throne, and, with the two central male
and female officers which represent the throne of the brain, makes the significant
number twenty-six, the number of the name of Jehovah, the finished mystery of the ages.
It is not in the smallest degree necessary for woman to establish her ability to do
precisely the same kind of work that man does, or has done. The sphere of woman
is equal to that of man, and is as important. The natures of the two are so linked and
interwoven and so equal in necessity that there should be no quarrel between them as
to supremacy. It is only a question of defining accurately the differences between
them and the functions each shall fill, not only in politics and government, but in all
the social and industrial activities of life. This is, I have stated and partly demon-
strated, the office of Science. All the employments of society are dual; that is, each
has its masculine and feminine side, as well as the offices of government; that is, one
side of it is more suited to the distinct characteristics of man, and another to that of
woman.
By organizing society and government upon a purely scientific basis, we can
secure opportunity for the full exercise of all the faculties of both man and woman,
without the functions of one interfering with the functions of the other. But by their
co-operation in orderly ways, the work of the world will be accomplished harmoniously,
and the currents of human life be united and blended with the central forces of the
Universe, and the Divine order and harmonies become established upon earth.
Let woman but proclaim this law of universal right and fundamental principle,
and like the army of Joshua before Jericho, so shall the walls of prejudice, supersti-
tion and weakness which now hedge her in fall like those ancient walls of stone, and
she shall enter into her eternal possessions, and so shall come the Kingdom of Woman.
Of woman, I say, not because of her dominance, except during her period of gestation
or organization, but because here alone, after all the ages of the dominion of man, the
functions of woman find their complete exercise as the real companion of man.
As an evolutionary step, I would suggest that women organize themselves into
one great party, elect their leaders among women who have proven themselves fit for
such grave responsibilities, study these scientific principles of life and government,
•and apply them as far as possible by forming departments which shall represent the
twelve groups of faculties of the mind. In this way you will necessarily create the
distinctive feminine offices and positions where woman can make herself an effective
power which man will gladly recognize and seek to co-operate with her, and so shall
cease the humiliating struggle for recognition which is so painful to the soul of the
true woman, and her suffrage will be practically accomplished to her honor, and gen-
erations of futile labor be saved.
May the grace and intelligence of the divine beings adorn and illuminate the
human mind, perfect the human character, and guide the nations of the earth to the
supreme fulfillment of their destiny— the establishment of that great and perfect
system of life and government, the Kingdom of God.
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Mrs. A. K. Oelaney.
Alaska.
2. Miss Isabella J. Austin,
A laska.
8. Mrs. Thomas J. Butler,
Arizona.
4. Miss Laarette Lovell, r>, Mrs. Franc Lnse Albright, 6. Mrs. Eklward L. Bartlett,
Arizona. A ew Mexico. New Mexico.
7. Mrs. Marie P. Harmon Beeson, 8. Mrs. Genevieve Guthrie,
Oklahoma. Oklahoma.
9. Mrs. Thomas A. Whalen,
Utah.
10. Mrs. Margaret Blaine Salisbury, 11. Mrs. John A. Logan, 12. Mrs. Beriah Wilkins,
Utah. District of Columbia. District of Columbia.
LANDMARKS.
By REV. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL.
The earth has its green valleys, its lofty mountains, its fertile plains and its stony
hills; but the elevations become the conspicuous landmarks. The higher they rise,
the greater distance they overlook, the more noted
are they as objects of remote interest and observation.
Today we are to consider character as offering mental
and ethical landmarks. Fifty years ago, with few
exceptions, the womanhood of Christendom was
restricted to a few carefully graded, nearly dead-
levels of commonplace. The terraces upon which
woman stood had several elevations which were
largely conventional, artificial. They differed in rank,
in position, in wealth, in influential connections
which gave distinction; notably they differed little in
cultivation or in obvious personal ability. In a ter-
raced vineyard, the vines on a lower level may
be more thrifty and beautiful than those higher
up. In the old days middle-class womanhood, and
that at the very foot of all the other social terraces,
was liable to achieve more real ihdividual merit, and
the distinction which that confers, than the appar-
ently much more favorably situated. This was largely
because it was not thought proper or ladylike to be
miscellaneously recognized for anything personal or
conspicuous. Every woman thrust into one world of
the modest violet order, could bloom and beautify the one private niche which had
appropriated her, but she herself and all of her friends believed that it would be little
less than desecration to lavish this brightness and loveliness upon the unappreciated
public. We have learned that a woman need not lose her modesty, her private worth
or her homely virtues because she has gained a wider outlook, and because she has
learned that her field of work may be as broad and helpful as she can make it in the
service of any human interest. It used to be said that women were not entertaining
to each other, the staple of conversation was too limited. Were such women enter-
taining to men, except in flirtation or as admiring listeners to liberal outpourings of
masculine wisdom? I would not depreciate earlier serene and beautiful days. Thou-
sands of admirable women were unselfish in life, gracious in hearing, long suffering in
sweet and patient amiability, but we can no more return to their surroundings, pursue
their work, or assume their character than a full-grown chestnut tree can put itself
back into the chestnut burr in which it was once inclosed. But we of our generation
are not the full-grown tree. We are still in the green and juicy state of the young
twig, easily bent away and made to grow into deformity. Wood, brick and mortar
may be oddly jumbled into the misshapen hollow blocks which we christen houses;
these may have utility, and some beauty. They are landmarks, but if enough of them
Kev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell is a native of New York. She was bom March 20, 182.5. Her parents were Joseph
Brown and Abby Morse, both of New England. She was edacated at Oberlin, Ohio, graduated in literary course in 1847 ; in
theology in 1850, and was ordained an Orthodox Congregationalist in 1858. She has traveled as a lecturer for a number of
years. She married in IS.'iB Samuel C. Blackwell. Her family consists of five danphters. Mrs. BlackweU is a minister,
lecturer and author of much popularity. Her postoSice address is Elizabeth, N. Y.
633
REV, ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL.
634 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
are scattered nearly at random over the country, each largely a copy of its neighbor,
they all become commonplace. Why need we each adopt the far from perfect cur-
rent manners, customs and opinions of our nearest surroundings as resignedly as chil-
dren accept mumps, whooping-cough and measles; as rapidly as the tree toad takes
on the color of the surface upon which it happens to rest ? Why should our prejudices,
our politics and our religion follow as closely in the wake of our fathers as sea foam
follows in the wake of the ship? We inherit features, tendencies; no one can inherit
characters. It is time women make that a deliberate personal formation. To be
shaped and molded without our consent has no better justification than Aaron's
apology for helping to make the golden calf. He explains: " They saith unto me,
make us gods which shall go before us, for as for this Moses, the man that brought
us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what has become of him. Then I cast it
(the gold) into the fire and there came out this calf." In the midst of a great clamor
of opinions women cast their brightest jewels — the power of testing and proving all
things for themselves — into the fire which tries all opinions; but to each there gener-
ally comes out the traditions nearest to her hand. The real test is evaded. Thus if
the man have eaten sour grapes it is the woman's teeth which are set on edge. In
every heart there are ideals which wait to be realized. Like gold tarnished and dim,
these ideals are often wrapped in a dark mind-rust. They are so obscured that they
are quite unknown to their possessor. If another will burnish them with the light
of his vivid perceptions, the possessor is amazed to find such rare gems hidden in the
forgotten chambers of his being. He knows little about his untold, unmeasured
wealth.
Every human being is an undeveloped wonder. There is no other like him in the
universe. Whoever will make it the end of life to embody the vast wealth of hope,
truth, beauty and goodness which he can find within himself, to give form and expres-
sion to his own highest ideals, such a one will become a glorious landmark at which
many will gaze reverently with admiration and emulation.
How pitiable, then, that women who are but just learning what some one assured
the poor little Hindoo widows — that the world was made for women, too — are still
content to be so largely the weak imitators of the more than questionable methods
already too prominently in vogue! Successful men and women are taken as models
to be imitated both in their lines of work and in their manner of work. Imitation
leaves only a dim, weak copy. Its defects are as glaring as those of the multiples of
a good solid handwriting imprinted on poor thin paper by machine pressure. Such
reproductions of merely verbal documents are convenient, but for any human being to
ape another instead of bringing out the best genuine character still undeveloped
within himself is suicidal. Nature, who makes no two leaves nor two blades of grass
precisely alike, has given also to every woman her own strength, her own symmetry
of possibilities. If these can be steadily unfolded from within, a sweet, wholesome
and useful character will certainly be evolved. Such a one may not develop into a
high or striking landmark; she will become an altogether admirable one toward which
every eye will turn with approval.
" Men have craved greatness where the fates withstood,
Not in this life can all be greatly wise;
But all who strive to may be greatly good,
For in the effort, the attainment lies."
The fable of the birds who agreed that whoever could fly the highest should
become their king is very suggestive. The feeble bat tucked himself under a feather
of the eagle's wing, so light a weight that the eagle did not even know he was there.
When the strong wing of the royal bird was weary, and the kingly eagle was compelled
to descend, the bat spread his skinny wings and fluttered up a few feet beyond all of
the others, then down he floated leisurely, wings but half closed, to receive admiring
congratulations and the coronation. But pitiable little king! he has never dared to
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 635
face the daylight since, lest his real weakness and his fraud should be discovered.
Borrowed plumes are always dangerous. Mishaps are liable to intervene under such
conditions. Too often the homely old proverb is illustrated, " Up like a rocket and
down like a stick." Parchment wings are no better than the thin membrane of the bat;
but to rely on our own resources, utilized by one's self, means an unending increase of
power.
I rejoice that women have not proved themselves to be pre-eminently given to
that class of methods. But if no progressive woman would descend even in the least
degree to these unworthy, pitiable, political but really most impolitic measures, the
great cause of womanhood would be much more rapidly advanced, and in the end
every woman would stand in her own true niche an honored, approved, wholly beau-
tiful madonna of integrity.
Men and women are the whole earth's rightful sovereigns by virtue of their intel-
ligence and their higher appreciation of justice and equity. The physical forces wait
their command, for it is intellect alone which can give them improved direction and
control. The strength, the beauty, the grandeur of the world are the lawful servants
and the inalienable possessions of all mankind. Many hued tiny blossoms and rich
fruits, divinely tinted regal lands and skies gladden human lives. The tall firs, the
white barked quivering aspens, the hearts of oak and the cedars of Lebanon are but
precious gems often in a setting even richer than they. All these are for intelli-
gent admiration, but equally for more prosaic human uses devised through ingenious
re-adaptations. Mind alone can re-create a still nobler earth. But simple absolute
truth to nature, physical and mental, is the charming method through which all desir-
able transformations must be effected. As heat, light, and the power in steam and
electricity can not be cajoled, cheated or defrauded, so neither can that in the far
more admirable mental and moral forces. The intellectual and ethical worlds await
transformations infinitely more glorious than can ever be realized in the physical
domain. Women just entering upon their heritage of work in that wider field which
is privileged to merge self-interest in the broader welfare of progressive humanity, are
not destined to become the simple imitators of our brothers, even as to their best
methods — certainly not as to their worst. Imitation is the genius of commonplace;
it proclaims its own insufficiency, its poor mediocrity. Imitation has atone, a puerile
side to even its best attempts. As womanhood is not a copy of manhood but its
correlate, so the ways and means of the women who become world-workers are not to
be the dimmer repeated impressions of the ways and means of the world-workers
among men. The monkey, like a good many queer plants and many still more odd
and curious animals, is certainly one of the numberless creative jokes. They all illus-
trate the desirability of humor, the wholesome sense of fun and enjoyment to enliven
the earnest realities of life. They serve to impress the lesson that a laugh may be
quite as healthful as a tear. The monkeys, whimsical caricatures of human beings, have
imitation as their leading characteristic mentally. They are the best illustrations we
have of the very low plane upon which we must place all pure imitation of every degree.
The blundering attempt to do what some one else has done well is often deliciously
absurd, and so far good as laughter provoking. It has its uses when imitation is
made a light, practical gymnastics; but one can almost fancy a leading intention in
making the monkey the standing illustration to enforce the imbecility of all serious
mimicry of others. Young children are mimics of course; but to women, it is both a
right and a duty to express their own individuality and every woman should aim to
express something of her own ideal character in her work. She can realize her best
self in her occupations very much as a novelist writes himself into the treatment of his
characters. He may do this voluntarily; he is impelled to do it involuntarily. In the
same way the life work of every woman becomes a revelation of herself and should be
made to represent the highest ideal, womanly self. In the beginning God made male
and female. Granite mountains joining their leagues of cold, rocky hands, but lifting
white crowned heads upward toward light and sunshine in all their grandeur, are not
636 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
man's superiors but his docile servitors. They are the high seats from which his pen-
etrating eye can study limitless spaces; and the foothills are but man's footstools.
Pathless oceans have easily become his entirely convenienthighways. At human option
Niagara, earth's diadem of waterfalls, is transformed into a still more magnificent
jewel in the coronet of intellect and its rational utilities. Men and women are right-
fully to possess the earth and its fullness of treasures; are to recreate a new earth in
which the desert will blossom as the rose. Better still, the swords must be beaten into
plowshares and the spears into pruning hooks. But in all intellectual and moral
advancement in the consummation of applied higher truths and the more unselfish
virtues, woman everywhere must uplift her own standards and illustrate her own best
achievements.
THE NEXT THING IN EDUCATION.
By MRS. MARY LOWE DICKINSON.
In this day of multiplied facilities for education, a day when training begins with
the kindergarten and ends in what is called " higher education" both for men and
women, the thoughtful observer is constantly con-
fronted by the question. Why are not the people
educated? It is quite true that a great many people
are; that very many more believe they are; and still
more believe the day is coming when they are to be
educated in the broad and liberal sense of the word.
Our systems, founded upon the old scholastic idea,
are generally considered satisfactory, and any failure
that may be observed in results is attributed to the
fact that, in particular cases, they have not yet had
time or opportunity for successful operation. And
yet, year after year, we are passing through the mills
of our public schools and colleges multitudes of
minds that come out like travelers who climb to the
top of every high tower on their journey, because they
will not come home without being able to say " they
have done it."
Apparently, too many of our students go through
their course for no better reason than to say they have
done it. There are grand and noble exceptions, but
these are generally among those who do not care to
say anything about it. The great majority, however^
come forth in the mental condition of the man who laboriously climbs step by step of
the tower, takes his bird's-eye view of the field of learning, accepts the impressions
made upon his mind by the vast picture and the vast mixture, and comes down to his
own level again with no more real knowledge of that at which he has glanced than has
the traveler who has taken a glimpse from the heights which he climbed because the
guide book said this was "the thing to do."
In every walk of life, among statesmen, men of business, and artisans, exists noble
examples of exceptional profundity and reality of knowledge, but in the great average
of so-called educated people of our own generation, we find the majority possessing
very fragmentary interest in any of the subjects which, as students, was supposed to
engage their attention. What they would have been without the so-called education,
we can not judge, and it might be unfair to infer, but what they are no discriminating
person, with a knowledge of what our systems claim, can fail to see. We can not
ignore the fact that, for some reason, they have failed to attain their natural and pos-
sible development.
Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson is a native of Maesachasetts. She has always been a student, choosing literature as a spe-
cial field. She has resided seven years abroad, and traveled extensively in Europe and the East. She is an educator and phi-
lanthropist, and held at one time the Professorship of Literature in the Denver University, Denver, Colo., and the chair bears
her name. She is now the Emeritus Professor. She has been President of tiie National Indian Association and is the Gen-
eral Secretarj'of the King's Daughters and Sons. Her principal literary works are (novels) "Among the Thorns," "Th&
Amber Star," and " One Little Life." In poetry she has written " The Divine Christ," " Easter Poems," etc., besides numer-
ous essays, critics and much editorial work. In days of wealth, Mrs. Dickinson's life was marked by liberal charities. In
less prosperoas times she has given freely of her time, strength and talent. Few women in the country have a wider knowl-
edge of, and influence over, the lives of the yonng. Their problems are her problems, and her life belongs to the childhood
and the girlhood of the world. Her permanent pobtoiKce address is No. 230 West Fifty-ninth Street, New York, N. Y.
6.37
MRS. MARY LOWE DICKINSON.
638 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Our educational theories, on paper and in text-books, are well nigh perfect; in
actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material
of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with
the work and noise, but the creature upon whom all this power is expended, is only in
rare instances a truly educated man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If the
machine is right, then the material with which it is fed must be defective. If the
material is right, then the machine has every virtue except that of adaptation to the
use for which it was intended.
Since the whole end and aim of education is to develop, not the ideal mental con-
stitution, but the real mind, just as we find it — the real creature, just as he is, and since
we can not change the human mind to make it fit the machine, the effort should be to
adapt the educational process to suit the human mind. To what extent they are doing
this is one of the great questions for teachers of the present day. To what extent —
admitting that now in some particulars they fail — it may be possible to modify and
adapt methods to the actual and genuine needs of human nature, is certainly a prob-
lem worthy of the earnest thought of the broadest and best cultured minds. In attempts
at adaptation we have fallen into a process of analyzing the youthful human creature.
Having discovered that he possesses mathematical capacity, we have supplied him
with mathematical training and have in this department thrust upon him all, and some-
times more hard work than he can bear. Having found he possessed religious faculty
we have emptied upon him the theologies and psychologies, and when we have sup-
plied him in these and other directions we look for the educated man. Judge of our
disappointment. We find the faculties, we find the modifications produced by the
training, but we look in vain for the man. With all our multiplied facilities for pro-
ducing a trained and disciplined nature, what we think we have a right to expect —
but what we do not find — is a creature conscious of his own heritage, conscious of his
kinship with all humanity, of his kingship over the universe, of his power to grapple
with the world outside of himself and of his rightful dominance over both the life
without and the grander life within. Instead, we find men weak where they should
be most purposeful and brave. We find him the slave of the body, who should be
able to make the body the servant of his soul. We find hands untrained to practical
uses, minds unequal to grasping the common wants of existence, hearts in which the
high ideals of character and strong impulses toward true usefulness are overswept by
that consideration for self that makes one's own interests seem the very center of the
universe of God.
The day needs giants; it produces pygmies. It needs men to fight; it produces
men to run. It needs women with minds broad enough to think and hearts large
enough to love. It needs motherhood that, while it bends protectingly over the cradle
of its own child, reaches out a mother heart to all the suffering childhood of the race.
It needs the capacity for heroism; it yields the tendency to cowardice. In the midst
of learning ignorance triumphs, vice rules and sensualism thrives; and all this not
because of education, but in spite of it. And when we consider that our schools in
their lower grades, our kindergartens and our primary and Sunday-schools take the
infant mind before the tendency to vice has had any chance for development, and that
the next higher grades take them on through successive years without being able to
prevent such results as those mentioned above, we naturally feel that at the very out-
set, our educational system must be wrong. However it may be suited to the ideal
conditions it can not be adapted to the average human creature, taken exactly as he
is. The lack, which begins at the very basis of our so-called intelligent discipline, runs
through the whole, in constantly increasing ratio. Brain is stimulated, and heart and
soul are left to starve, and nothing is more neglected than the cunning of the hand.
Even where some attempt is made at the training of the whole nature, it is done with-
out recognition of the infinite variety in the human mind. Processes ought to be
adapted, not only to the universal, but to the individual need. It does not follow that
the universal need is necessarily or invariably unlike the individual need, or that indi-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 639
vidual needs are always identical, but any system of education that gives for a great
variety of minds precisely the same course of training is sure to be, for a majority of
those minds, a pitiful and conspicuous failure.
What then? Shall we have a separate school for every child? Shall we have a
special teacher for each mind? That would probably be impossible, but we certainly
should have so small a number of pupils under each teacher that she (and we are tak-
ing it for granted that the teachers of little children will largely be women) may be
able to study the whole nature of every little one committed to her care. She should
be not only in communication, but in real communion with the mother; should know
the child's mental and moral inheritance, and, in as far as her own watchful care and
the help of the family physician may enable her to do so, she should understand its
physical constitution. She should acquaint herself with the temperament, the habits,
the degree of affection, and the little germs of spiritual insight and inspiration, all of
which go to make up the nature of the little creature in her charge. If she be the true
teacher, she should combine the threefold duties of mother, instructor and physician
for the young life unfolding in her care. If she has not the heart to love the child
and to let the child love her, and so to lay foundation for the larger loving, that, by
and by, shall outreach and take in the whole humanity of God, then we will not say
she has mistaken her calling, but her own process of education has been defective and
she has much to learn.
Such threefold development for heart, hand and brain of the little child makes
preparation for the next higher steps of educational work. Whatever form the train-
ing may assume, the individuality of the human soul should be kept inviolate. That
individuality betrays itself in many ways, by emotion and sentiment, by quickness or
dullness of perception, and above all, by preferences and dislikes. These minute indi-
cations as to just what elements of spirit and mind have entered into the nature of the
child, are the little delicate fibers that show the texture of the human soul with which
we have to deal. The child learns too soon to draw in and hide the frail, sensitive
tendrils that indicate that the life of the soul-plant is feeling its way toward the light
of God.
In the primary school the teacher (and sometimes in the cradle the mother who
is, whether she would have it so or not, the child's first teacher) begins the process of
training by which the little one is made to do as others do, to say what others say, and
to conceal the fact that it has any inward life or impulses that are not the same as
those of other children.
Instead of being able to read the God-given signs as to what the infant nature
really requires, we give it instead an arbitrary supply, based upon what we think it
ought to need, and then marvel that it does not thrive upon its unnatural diet. We
have not supplied what it craved but that which, from our preconceived notion, we
thought it ought to want.
This process of applying our rule and line to the mind goes farther and bears
harder upon the student with every succeeding year, until long before the so-called
education is completed three-quarters of the students have lost the consciousness that
they ever cared, or ever could have cared, for anything except that which the class
supplied. To be what the class is, to do what the class does, to be satisfied with know-
ing what the class knows, to have lost the sense of the value of the thing to be gained
and to measure by false standards, comes to be the rule until the conceit of knowl-
edge takes the place of the modesty of conscious ignorance, and the student becomes
a drop in the annual outpouring stream of so-called teachers, many of whom, in the
highest sense, have never been genuine students at all.
Searching for causes of such results, we can not fail to see that much of this dead
sameness of intellectual character is due to our habit of educating in masses. We make
an Arab feast of our knowledge. A dish is prepared that contains something that might
be strengthening for each partaker. With hands more or less clean, students select
their savory morsels from the sop. As in the Arab family, for old and young, for the
640 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
babe in arms and the strong man from his field of toil, the provision is the same; so in
all our class work we have the sameness of provision with almost as great disparity of
capacity and need. If, out of the whole mental " mess of pottage," that can be taken
which builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate; but if noth-
ing is assimilated on which the mind can truly thrive, no fault is found with the pro-
vision, nor is resultant ignorance considered to be specially worthy of blame.
The evil effects of educating in masses, or in classes, is sufficiently apparent to
cause us to consider the question whether there is any possible remedy, whether there
could be a substitution of individual for general training, or a combination of the two,
that would produce a better result. That student is losing ground as an individual who
comes to be considered, or to consider himself, as simply a factor of a class. If the
general teaching must be that which is applicable to the entire class, there should also
be provision for instruction that could be adapted to the individual need, and as great
effort as is made to adapt class work to the general need should be made in the special
direction also. But the objection arises that the modern teacher is not able to work
in both directions in the time allotted for student life. We are very well aware that we
have not yet passed the stage where the value of the teacher's work is measured by the
number of hours in which he is engaged in the class-room. Trustees, as a whole, pay
for the professor's full time, and expect it to be fully employed. Neither are the edu-
cators many of whom would know what to do if simply let loose among students and
left free to make their best impressions upon the minds of the young.
To many teachers the mind of youth is in reality an unexplored region, and until
we have a change in this respect, and learn that the knowledge of books is only the
beginning of wisdom, and that the true knowledge must include also that of the living
book — the student intrusted to our care — we have scarcely learned the alphabet of true
education.
The day will come, though it may be long in coming, when every institution of
learning will have — besides its technical teachers, its lecturers and its conductors of reci-
tations — one man or one woman, or as many men and women as are needed, whose
special province it will be to study the individual temperament, to discover native
tendencies, tastes and capacities of the mind, and whose knowledge will be true wis-
dom in the sense that they will know not only how to ascertain, but how to supply
real needs.
That cramping and stifling of natural tastes, which is now so marked a feature of
school training, will be replaced by the cultivation of every good natural ability, and
the suppression of only that which in itself is evil. Quite too often even in this latter
day the restraint is put upon the natural powers, simply because their development
calls for extra labor and special trouble, or because these powers indicate training in
lines of work not being attempted by the class.
Let the routine work continue to be done and, if necessary, in the routine fashion;
but let every institution have on its faculty one soul, at least, whose province is not to
crush, but to cultivate and develop individual traits of mind and character. Such an
instructor must not be ignorant of books, but that intricate book, the human heart,
should be his special study and he should know not only what human beings are, but
should be able to help them to grow into what God meant them to be. Such a man
with a large and sympathetic heart, that can be hospitable to boyhood as it is, will do
more toward the molding of genuine manhood than can a dozen professors of the
ordinary type. One such woman in every institution for the education of girls, holds
really the future destiny of those girls in her hands, for her life among them could
have but one dominant desire — that of helping them to be the thing God meant.
Practically living out that desire she becomes, not the restraint and destroyer of their
natural vitality of thought and feeling, but the guide and director of all their native
forces into every beautiful field of learning, and into the highest type of development
possible for woman under present limitations to attain.
Whether we recognize the fact or not, there is not a phase of our social or national
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 641
life that is unaffected by the lack of proper development or individuality. The whole
tendency of our civilization has been in the direction of making people as nearly as
possible like other people. Characters of marked individuality are relegated to the
class of so-called cranks. To be above the dead level of general sentiment and attain-
ment is to be in decidedly bad form. This work of taking out of people the char-
acteristics placed in them by nature, and making them over into the convenient and
conventional types thatthink as others think, and do what others do, has marked our
civilization from its earlier stages, and the more civilized we become the more pro-
nounced are the results. Among these results are great loss of spiritual and mental
vitality. It is time to call a halt, to change our methods, or to supplement them by
methods of individual training. The beginning of such a work will mark an educa-
tional era, the inception of which should not be longer delayed.
IDEAL MOTHERHOOD.
It only remains for the womanhood of this day, entering upon that broader,
deeper motherhood, which makes of its heart a bulwark against whatever evils threat-
en the young, to enter upon the study of childhood with half the energy and half the
time she devotes in other directions, for this problem of individual education to find
the first step in its solution, which first step, logically followed, will open all the rest.
For it is woman alone through whom this change, as well as all changes requiring
exercise of peculiar instinct and peculiar power, must come. In her ordinary efforts
for the world's betterment she counts too much upon outside aid, and too little upon
her innate ability. She forgets the true measure of her power.
In most of her undertakings she instinctively guards against trespassing upon
purely masculine fields, and shrinks from the opposition and disapproval of men. In
this field of the study of childhood she has undisputed sway. By and by, as his life
moves toward manhood, the father may claim his boy, but on all formative processes,
that make that young manhood worth the father's desiring, the mother has unques-
tioned control. To know her child's real inward life, his inherited tendencies, tastes,
habits, temperament, temptations, aspirations, as she knows the outward facts of his
existence, is not only her sacred privilege but her high obligation. To know herself in
order that she may know her child, to know the processes and methods of instruction
that educators offer, and to judge for herself whether they are suited to her own child's
nature is a task worthy of her noblest powers. We are busy with our provisions that
the next generation of mothers shall be a generation that has a college training, a
man's knowledge of books. Only those of us who knew what it was to knock, and
then to plead and then to batter at the brazen doors of prejudice that shut us out of
college, while we clamored vainly for our right to the knowledge that was denied,
know how rightly to estimate, rightly to encourage, rightly to rejoice that our coming
mothers may enter freely as they will. But the world's childhood should not wait for
that next generation to rear its children by the help of better knowledge of books.
The living book is open to the mother of today. The child is here, its young life ask-
ing for bread upon which it can grow bravely up to the full stature of the perfect man.
It asks for fish caught in our widespread nets of true knowledge, for fish in whose
mouths shall be found the coin which they will need for the tax that life makes on
every soul. How much of the hardness of heart think you in the manhood of today,
how much of the slimy dishonor of our political life, how much of the wriggling
inconsistency of character that marks men in high places, how much of the hiss and
sting that awaits the highest endeavor and the noblest aspirations are due to the fact
of a persistent diet of serpents and of stones? What then would we have? First, that
women, mothers especially, who are becoming students of everything else under the
sun, become students of childhood and students of every system, scheme, plan and
practice for the development of the body, mind and character of the child. It is not
more vital that the students of today shall make good mothers than that the mothers
of today shall make students. It is the one thing of universal interest to the present,
(41)
642 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of universal importance to the future of the individual, of the nation, of the race, that
the women of today accept as their divine responsibility the childhood of today. If it
were not that the world is sated with societies, one might plead for the advantage,
in every village of the land, of organized study of everything that pertains to the out-
ward and inward welfare of the young. There is already a psychological movement
in this direction which must necessarily be limited in its scope. We need something
broader, more general. A children's building in every large center of our land, includ-
ing all that this one of the Exposition has, and much that this has not, should be
the one result of such interest as such a society would arouse.
Any number of women united with the purpose to know for themselves whatever
things are being taught to their own children, beginning with the kindergarten and
the multiplication table, would not only find their own minds quickened and alert,
but be in a condition to discriminate as to the value of instruction and its adaptation
to real needs, but moving on step by step with the child, could, by no greater exercise
of their matured powers than they make in other directions, often secure the college
education denied to so many of us in our youth.
Not least among the advantages of such study would be the fact that the wide
separation which the college life and the student too often make between the heart
of mother and son might be avoided. The lad no longer leaves his mother behind
because he enters fields of knowledge where she may never hope to go, because he is
now finding his place among the stars, and she, from the threshold of home, can only
hope to catch a glimmer of his light in the multitudinous sparkle of the sky.
I am not unmindful of the objections that arise to the mind already accustomed
to the idea of seeing even their own children grow up and out and away into a life
the mother can only follow and share through her affections, her prayers. " There is
no time for study," they say; but the Shakespeare Club and Browning Club, and the
social world and the Missionary Society, and the Daughters of the Revolution and
the household, and the father of the children — there is time for all; and yet how the
flavor of it all turns to ashes on the lips when the boy, our boy, comes to belong to
the world or to the wine, or to the life that is not life but death, and so is no more
our own. In the bitterness of such hours mothers speak the truth, if the anguish is
not too deep for any speech. "No one knew him as I knew him," they say; "he
ought to have had this influence and that guidance and that help along the way which
no one supplied because no one understood him as his mother did." And that utter-
ance is the very truth of God concerning the motherhood and childhood of today.
No one knows them as we know them, and no one should and no one can, and, know-
ing through our hearts what they are and what they need, it is for us to so strengthen
the life of knowledge and of thought that we shall walk beside them all the way,
strengthening all influences that may avail for their good, that the true education may
result in such citizens and patriots, such men and women, as we shall be proud to call
our daughters and our sons. We plead, therefore, for the education of every child in
accordance with his individual nature and needs, and for the education of the mother
of today that she may be able to secure this individual teaching for the child who in
the tomorrow shall become the best interpreter and the highest expression of her pos-
sibilities and powers.
ETCHING.*
By MISS BLANCHE DILLAYE.
" Far away in archaic times, when the chief pride of man lay in his armor and
implements of war, these were ornamented with curious tracings in the manner of
engraving, or the bitten line, and here we find the first
faint trace of that which was to grow into a great
art.
" It was given to Holland, which had taken but a
slight part during the revival of etching in the six-
teenth century, to lead it in the seventeenth century.
Here Rembrandt, the prince of etchers, was born in
1607. He stands first, not only in the vast army of
etchers that made this century pre-eminent in the art,
but first for all time. Those qualities which particu-
larly adapt etching to the delineation of expression,
which form its central idea, which set it apart and
sanctify it for certain uses, these qualities were seized
upon, emphasized and perfected by Rembrandt. He
found the art in a crude state, but brought it out of
obscurity and developed its possibilities. He used
the free etched line with a masterly daring that has
never been equaled. His mind was so vigorous and
lofty that mere prettiness did not so much as reach
to his level. He was full of the dignity, character
and grandeur of stern humanity; all manner of men
were to him of endless interest. Decrepit old age,
ruin, ugliness — all had for him the power and intensity of individuality, and by his
imagination he lifted them out of the mire and showed the world the beauty of soul
that hides beneath rough exteriors."
What are the essential qualities of etching, which form its essence and differen-
tiate it from other mediums?
First of all, it is born of line; line is by its nature suggestive and not imitative, it
deals with selection and omission, not with elaboration and subtle tones. In all arts
reserve is strength; selection presupposes knowledge; and tact in omission is the
refinement of understanding. The limitations, then, which forbid to etching a diffuse
mode of expression add to its power by concentration, and elevate it to the level of
poetry by giving to it a hieasured form, and it becomes to art what the sonnet is to
literature."
" Etchers can not rely on an attractive exterior to cover up paucity of thought;
Miss Blanche Dillaye is a native of Syracuse, N. Y. Her parents were Hon. Stephen D. Dillaye (French descent) and
Charlotte B. Malcolm (Scotch descent). She was educated at Miss Bonney's and Miss Dillaye's School for young ladies (now
Ogontz Scliool), and has traveled in Europe, England, France, Holland, Italy and Germany. Miss Dillaye is director of the
art education received at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Her specialty is etching ; she has exhib-
ited in all the large cities of England and at the French Salon, Paris. She was one of the women who contributed to the
exhibition of the women etchers of America (exhibiting forty etchings), held at Boston in 1888, and afterward in New York
in the same year. She was chairman on etchings for the State of Pennsylvania on the Woman's Auxiliary of the Board of
Lady Managers for the Columbian Exposition, 1893. Her postofiice address is No. 1430 South Pennsylvania Square, Phila-
delphia, Pa.
*The following is a brief synopsis of the paper read by Miss Dillaye, followed by tixe anther's notes, showing the man-
ner in which the subject was treated .
643
MISS BLANCHE DILLAYE.
644 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
flowery additions and superfluous methods they leave to other mediums. They should
come at once to the vital truth; they should select the essentials and leave the nones-
sentials to them; there should be no joy in appearing to do a simple thing in a difficult
way; they should prefer simplicity always, for in this simplicity lies the sublimity of
their art.
" Large and elaborate plates should be shunned by the painter-etcher, for he can
not for months, while his plate is going through stages of undue finish, 'feel vividly
some overmastering thought;' nor can he be possessed by 'the heat of a passionate
inspiration' while he plods over an unwieldy copper plate and laboriously draws
straight lines to fill up numberless square inches of bituminous shadow. Passion does
not work that way; it has an ancient and old-time preference for spontaneity,
"It was discovered one day that etching stood as a stamp of culture, and all those
who love to masquerade in giant's robes sought to wrap themselves in its ample folds.
Etching was taken up by fashion, commerce discovered its golden uses; the demand
for etching was instituted and the artist succumbed.
"Step by step the art that has stood the test of the ages, the art of Rembrandt and
Claude, abandoned its birthright. One engraver's tool after another crept in, and
mechanism took the place of art. The line that once swayed to an impulse began to
labor unceasingly with tones and semitones, the spirit and passion took flight, and its
noble simplicity, its spontaniety, freedom and strength, its purity, suggestiveness and
emphasis were blurred and lost in a verbosity of line. It ceased to be autographic; it
became photographic.
"There will always be those to whom it will be a chosen art, a few original minds
who find in it an appealing something that other mediums lack. To these it must
ever remain dear, and among the many who have plied the needle there will be the
survival of the fittest, those who have been true to it, those who have never degraded
it, those who have preserved it in its integrity. In their hands it rests to carry it over
this period of apparent failure, and when it shall have revived, a century hence if it
must be so, it will be its true self that will rise, the mean garbs that have clothed it of
late will be stripped from it, and it will shine forth in the simplicity and beauty with
which it is endowed by those characteristics which are its prerogative."
Process: — Definition of etching; definition of biting; plates employed in etching (illustrated);
ground employed in etching (illustrated); needles and tools used in etching (illustrated); manner of lay-
ing the ground; mordant or bath used; slow acid; quick acid; individuality or temperament of etcher
shown in his manner of biting; methods of several eminent etchers.
Principal Processes— Stopping-out process, in use by etchers of old disadvantages. Continuous
process; advantages. The result of underbiting; the result of overbiting.
Etching Proper — Dry point, its charm (illustrated); the burr defined (illustrated); effect in print-
ing (illustrated); effect when removed.
The Printing— Proofs, how taken; plaster proof (illustrated); states of the plate (illustrated);
trial proofs (illustrated); retroussage (illustrated).
The Remarque — Its original significance, its history, its perversion.
Etchers Classified — The painter etcher; the reproductive etcher; the engraver etcher.
History: Early beginnings— Armor and war implements engraved in Archaic times; engrav-
ing known to Goldsmith before it was used in printing. Twelfth centufy, letters found bitten into steel.
Fifteenth century, a receipt found for a "water which hollows out iron;" earliest dry points; early
claimants; Germany gives us the Hopfers, a family of etchers; 1515, Albert Diirer, etcher. Sixteenth
century pervaded by commercial spirit. Seventeenth century, etching revives and advances; in Hol-
land, Rembrandt, Van Dyke, Rubens; in France, Claude Lorraine. Eighteenth century, a time of
exhaustion. Nineteenth century, great revival, French influence, publishers, writers; English
influence, Seymour Haden, Whistler, Hammerton; America, a powerful school arises; New York Etch-
ing Club organized; Philadelphia Society of Etchers; early exhibitions.
Value: — Essential qualities of etching, suggestive not imitative; its limitations, its beauties,
individuality, range, emphasis, directness; the necessity of thought; the necessity of significant line;
the necessity of personality; the necessity of spontaniety; unfavorable influences; demands of the public;
demands of the publisher; demand of the artist necessity.
^<?5«//.-— Abandons its true qualities; engravers' tools creep in; exhaustion follows, the art wains;
survival of the fittest; revival in the future.
COMPENSATION.
By MRS. ALICE ASBURY ABBOTT.
As the time draws near when the curtain shall roll down upon this extraordinary
drama of the exposition of the economic and aesthetic forces of the world, those who
have known the history of the unusual difficulties confronting women are tempted to
run up the story and look forward to some hoped-for compensation.
There are always people of loftiest impulses and purest ideals (occasionally they
are illogical in their radicalism) who have little patience with the tread-mill course of
human progress, who do not take kindly to the study of social economics, and who in
practice, though not perhaps in theory, deny the scientific principle of emulation unless
they can see the wheels go round. Such people hold there was no use for a woman's
building, and none whatever for a special exhibit through an independent representa-
tion, or in any sort of fashion. True, the interests of men and women are indivisible
as a race, but they do not stand upon the same plane in respect to their opportunities,
their social, legal and political rights. As an actual fact, the position she occupies,
unarmed and defenseless, is at present that of:
" Let her get who has the power,
Let her keep who can.'
The standard-bearers of the cause of women of an earlier period found it hard to
recognize the conditions wh-ch now confront us. It is so difficult to adjust one's self
to the life where the radicalism of yesterday has become the conservatism of today.
Never in the history of the world has a radical principle become an accomplished fact
until, after having served its purpose as an educator, it expresses the conservative sen-
timents of the mass.
There are social theorists and sound administrators of justice who insist that the
way to repeal a bad law is to enforce it. There are people who would make war
odious by carrying on war until conditions become so intolerable that all nations being
waste and humanity rendered delirious by suffering, men should declare that peace
must reign because the land is desolate and the very air heavy with the lament of the
living for the dead. At the critical period when the opportunity for place and influ-
ence is to be seized, or at that sublime moment when public opinion is to be molded
into tangible form, the statesmen, the politician and the man of affairs waste no time
in reflections upon ideal theories.
Human nature being the same in man and woman, whatever difference there may
be being the result of environment, success is never attained except through the rec-
ognition of one inexorable law of social and political economy. Expediency is the
lever which has always finally forced the cause of human rights, and expediency will
carry the advance all along the line. Not until it is proved that infraction of the great
unwritten code of justice is detrimental to the true interests of the body politic has any
vantage-ground been obtained by the individual sufferer. The appreciation of oppor-
tunity is the very genius of reform. When that opportunity is seized there may be
frantic outcries of protest, ludicrous and sometimes malicious criticism and indignant
howls from those who are compelled to keep up with the procession, but it is all futile.
The inevitable logical result of the imperious demand of existing conditions carries
the standard along the highway of progress, to be planted on the next vantage-ground,
Mrs. Alice Asbary Abbott is a native of Illinois. Her parents were Kentuckians. Her father, Henry Asbnry, was a
lawyer well known in Illinois during the past fifty years. She was educated in Qninoy, 111., and in Germany. She has trav-
eled in Europe and America. She married Abial Ralph Abbott, a lawyer of Chicatro, who was bom in New York and was a
graduate of Amherst. Her principal literary works are translations from the (Jerman, magazine and newspai)er articles.
Mrs .Vbbott's i>OBtoffice address is No. 353 East Fourth Street, Chicago, 111.
645
646 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and presently along come the laggards round the corner, grateful, though breathless,
to find the flag flying after all.
Now this was exactly the position of this queer thing called the woman question in
connection with representation at the Fair. The rapid development of women has pro-
duced among them the beginning of the close study of the social economic condition
of society. No building was necessary to prove that woman is an essential factor in
the economic world; that because she is such it behooved loyal citizens, anxious to
carry out intelligently the opportunity afforded by governmental recognition, to see to
it that a more accurate knowledge of her share of this labor be obtained and daily
honored. The time having come when woman is entering every known field of
action, she who is forcing her way to the front in the ideal arts, in the learned pro-
fessions and in all those lines emphasizing individual progress, should wake up to the
disabilities surrounding the women workers of that vast army, whose daily bread is
earned under conditions disastrous to that personal development and prosperity which
she, the more fortunate, is conquering for herself.
A skeleton exhibit of the work of woman, where she has been or remains a com-
plete artisan, was deemed the most valuable upon which to base knowledge and future
organization for the amelioration of the social economic condition. Supplementing
this by the exhibition of the enormous work of women throughout the departments,
the relative value of the artisan and the human part of a great machine, such as the
average workman has now become, is a matter of grave study.
The man or woman who hopes to amend or ameliorate cruel conditions along the
material side alone is undermining the foundations of good government, as well as
assuring the demoralization of the race. On the other hand, the idealist who would
neglect the improvement of the material interests of the individual who would not
first aid the attainment of the comforts of the physical nature, is doing much to crush
out that respect for the sacredness of human life, without which any lofty standard of
personal responsibility and personal purity is absolutely impossible. Consequently,
while the board of managers was, undoubtedly, mainly intended to stand before the
world for a representation of women, as an economic factor of society, this is not the
entire extent of its obligation.
Until there are national boards of labor and a more perfect system of census
returns in every country of the g'lobe, the light which statistics logically arranged
bring to bear upon the study of social science will in a measure be unattainable. In
the present condition of industrial competition an unauthorized, because not govern-
mental, demand for statistical information as to numbers, wages, social condition and
the consequent deduction of the result of all three, would be received with jealousy,
distrust and absolute mendacity on the part of the employer.
It is well that art and architecture have done so much for the Fair grounds. If it
were not for the lovely exteriors and enchanting landscapes, the tremendous force of the
materialism expressed by the exhibits would oppress beyond belief. To the multitude
there is but one building, and that the Woman's, which stands for an idea. They may
not formulate this into a thought, they may not voice the sentiment, but this truth
carries them along in its intangible vortex. Whether the motive be curiosity, intelli-
gent conception of the spirit prompting its erection, or a vital interest in the woman
question, they all come. There is not an official, foreign or native-born, who has not
desired audience of the president of the board; there is not a keen-eyed politician,
though he may be somewhat antagonistic if he has studied logic, who is ignorant of
the value of the building and the additional weight given the claims of woman by its
existence. There is nothing like an object lesson to impress the popular mind with
the importance of a growing idea. Occasionally, along comes some superficial
observer who pronounces the whole thing a failure; he does not condescend to inform
in what it is a failure, but he has no conception of its real purpose. All criticism is of
value as it argues interest. It is only the inconsequent things which escape comment,
ridicule, sarcasm. Caricatures are never brought to bear upon individuals or official
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 647
bodies unless the principle which they represent is of considerable moment to the
general public.
A permanent Woman's Building could not stand for a nobler or more practical
aim, as one of its grand functions, than as the headquarters of a great system of state
and international councils devoted to the temperate study of the condition of the
women workers of the world. How long would it be before this vast educative influ-
ence would result in striking from the statute book of every state in this Union laws
inimical to the interests of women. How long would it be before the limitation of the
hours of labor for both men and women would be a possible and constitutional enact-
ment sustained by the consensus of public opinion, without which no law can become
public practice. How long before the question of child labor, with all its attendant
complications of compulsory education and manual training schools would receive
active attention of legislators and rouse the supine interest of the mere sentimental
theorist.
Truly there is the noblest, the most inspiring result to be anticipated if the women
are now equal to the next step in human progress, made possible by the vantage ground
they now occupy. If they neglect it or supply it, it may be twenty-five years before
we regain the position. VVe are continually exhorted nowadays to be prepared for
dangerous and wondrous changes to be wrought in the condition of society in the near
future. It is one of the most curious fads of the time, this role of the Jeremiah of the
economic system, and is a very convenient form of an attempt to shake off all present
sense of personal responsibility for evils around, possibly in our power to alleviate.
It is the role of the hopeless pessimist. Suppose it is the bad quarter of an hour. It
is then the time for action. It is always the bad quarter of an hour, and has been
from the beginning of time to those who recognize the necessity of reform of present
evils. There always comes a time when education has performed its work and an
advance in civil and ethical progress becomes a feasible attainment.
We are also told nowadays that the danger, should women attain actual political
influence, is their tendency to introduce the ethics of the family with the ethics of
the state; that it is the nature of women to confer benefits in proportion to the lack
of merit of the recipient — that is, the more worthless the citizen the more she will do
for him. A sort of application of the maternal instinct to care most assiduously for the
worst of her children. This' is not a special feminine weakness, but simply the impulse
of sentimental misdirected and uneducated energy in both men and women. It arises
from confounding that wise degree of care which the state must bestow upon its help-
less, unfortunate or depraved classes with the injudicious use of governmental pro-
tection and beneficience which becomes absolutely detrimental to the development
and usefulness of the citizen by its paternal character.
Manual labor is not all the vital work of the world, though sentimental audiences
clap their soft hands at the reiterated enunciation of this proposition on the part of
professional agitators. While as a practical matter it is but a small proportion of
humanity which does not daily do some share of manual labor, slight though it some-
times may be; it is a preposterous proposition that actual physical exertion, to the
extentof earning a subsistence, is the inherent obligation of each member of the human
family. What a world of barbarians we would be! There are limitations to human
endurance, though the brainwork which does so tremendous a share in the advance-
ment of civilization is as exhausting labor as that of the purely physical. The only
difference is that, as a general result, we find the physical laborer working under
humane surroundings is granted a longer lease of life.
This deification of manual labor by half educated theorists is based upon crude
notions of shortening hours by division. The uncertainty in the public mind, in that
condition of society where intelligence is not general, as to the character of the obli-
gation of government in this respect, is another reason for the false reasoning we meet
so often. Hence, we find the attempt to revive the era of the complete artisan in an
age when the spindle, the loom and the marvels of steam and iron fingers have all
648 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
combined to make the human being the mechanical addition to the plant, by confining
him to the manufacture of certain parts only of the complete product; with the fur-
ther result also of shortening the hours of labor, and, except under specially adverse
circumstances, of increasing the amount of his wages.
The exhibits in the Woman's Building show most conclusively that, at the present
day, it is only in those countries where the masses have not yet attained a high plane
of education, and where the general condition of the industrial classes is the most
deplorable in point of wages, and consequently comfort attained, that the complete
artisan is to be found of either sex. The main object of exhibiting the work of the
complete artisan in this place is to show if there may yet remain a place where these
trades can be carried on with profit and under conditions neither antagonistic to sound
economic law nor injurious to human life. If antagonistic to present economic condi-
tions it is childish to attempt their revival. Some of these trades, indeed most of them,
may be of the class of luxuries for which there is but a limited demand, and wise
women would desire to limit and diversify rather than to increase the number in such
avocation. If, however, this class of display is in the ideal arts where machinery and
steam may never become a rival, it is safe to compete in the open market. It then
becomes the highest purpose and noblest individuality of expression, combined with
the capture of opportunity which wins a livelihood, fame or fortune.
While striving for a loftier conception of the dignity of labor, which may be con-
sidered one of the ideal uses of the Woman's Building, it would fail utterly of its
purpose if it did not rouse women to that knowledge of conditions which should make
them clasp hands with the many toilers pleading for shorter hours and that legislation
which will insure protection for life and limb and secure sound sanitary conditions.
We hear much of a demand for a higher education for women nowadays. There
is not in all this building one material thing which indicates any advance along any
lines where the higher education of women in its scholastic sense touches or has pro-
duced it, unless it may be through inference in the organization room, or where the
application of scientific knowledge in the care of the sick or the maimed has made the
art of nursing a profession.
There is small use of the higher education if its sole use is to enable women to
devote themselves to the learned or scientific professions, leaving out its noblest pur-
pose the application of the science of government and economics to the correction of
the miseries of mankind. The mightiest lever in society, next to the relentless giant
necessity, is sympathy, and for that noblest, most ennobling attribute of the human
race, this building stands today, and through this subtle influence its permanent suc-
cessor will for the future accomplish its mission, as one more step along the highway
of human progress.
WOMAN'S AWAKENMENT.
By MRS. ANNA S. GREEN.
Never before in the history of the world has the capacity of woman been more
recognized than now. It is her era of promise, a vivid reflection of exaltation, dis-
closing that period when the Angel of the Lord
appeared and made known to Mary the purpose of
our Heavenly Father, choosing her as the mother of
His Son, the Saviour of the world, that through her
His immaculate birth has to be humanized. Woman
will not, if true to herself and mission, fail to remem-
ber and ponder upon and hold fast to the vantage
ground, gained for her by this Divine choice, strength-
ening her claims as relative co-operator with man, his
well-wisher, co-worker and helpmate. With rever-
ential awe, down the annals of time, this mighty truth
will be echoed in utterances of thankfulness and joy,
praising Him ever for the priceless part He has given
to woman, which can not be taken away.
We, as descendants and representatives of that
woman whom the whole universe praises and blesses,
should endeavor to emulate her holy, virtuous life as
maiden, wife, mother and friend. Through love, she
accomplishes much. By love, was this great incarna-
tion wrought, and through woman's love; which in-
centive influence will, with reaching heart and hands,
with softened tones, reclaim the callous, cold and
wicked, from the extremes to which their morbid state consigns them. History, mod-
ern and ancient, is replete with examples of what good women have done. Guided
by this inherited, instinctive, practiced gift of charity, she has been enabled to over-
come great evils. Monica, the mother of the Christian patriot and Penitent Augus-
tine, taught him from his earliest youth the great tenets of love, forgiveness, penitence
and confession. Augustine's life was full of pathetic temptations and sorrow for sin,
but in his greatest trials, the mother's influence and example rescued him from fatal
fall ; that mother's love which shone as a beacon to call him back ; and from having been
a great sinner he became a great saint. The legacy of prayer he has left to the world
will go down to future generations as a solace, a plea, a hope for mankind.
Blanche, of Castile, and the mother of Godfrey of Cologne, trained their sons, the
great crusaders, for their heroic work. Joan of Arc, through love of country and kind,
from the simple peasant maiden was transformed into the leader of the trained vet-
erans of France, who followed her to victory. Letitia, the mother of the dictator of
Europe, known only in history as " Madame Mere," proved how the simple title of
mother could be made great and glorious.
When woman'sambition leads her to mount the highest plane of eminence and prog-
ress, God forbid that it should become necessary for her to abandon the province of home,
Mr8. Anna 8. Green, wife of Maj. James W. Oreen, a lawyer of West Virginia, is the daaghter of William McDonald, a
graduate of West Point, and Lacy Anne Naylor McDonald. She was edacated at Madame Togo's, Winchester, Va. She is the
mother of ten children. Her home duties for many years claimed the greater part of her time, but she found opportunity to
do much hospital service during the Civil War. After her widowhood she became owner and editor of the Culpeper Exponent,
a publication devoted to the best interests of the whole people. She is an active member of the Daughters of the Revolution.
She resides at Culpeper. Va.
649
MRS. ANNA S. GREEN.
650 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the great centrifugal center from whose radii warmth reaches to the heights, depths
and breadths of remote points, where hope waits for this surcease of sorrow. Woman's
real advancement can not invalidate this reserve power, which has home for environ-
ment. From thence must come her strongest plea to be heard. The best of our
statesmen and politicians realize this fact as the conserving influence of her co-oper-
ation; they would not repress or depress her desire for advancement, and, doubtless
with regret, they would mark her failure to value that province which is the custodian
of early impressions, where love and truth should ever be taught and found. " The
race is not always to the swift or the battle to the strong." Patience is golden, and
waiting rewarded. Let us work for the right and wait for the harvest — in time it
will come.
We, as Americans, have, as a nation, achieved a great plan of country. Individual
liberty has been symbolized and celebrated in the Magna Charta of American Independ-
ence; citizens have been made free to inhabit a land which is a refuge for the oppressed
and downtrodden of countries that are not blessed with the freedom of our own. Doubt-
less the men who made and signed that great declaration were satisfied with its pro-
visions; they did not realize the future to which we were tending. Perhaps some day
not far distant the true spirit of '76 will again pervade the councils of our country, and
women will be made citizens of America, with equal rights.
Let us hope on, that these lawmakers will some day grow magnanimous and not
fear to put the responsibility of citizenship upon us. Let us be their helpmates in all
things, and have power given us to protect our property, ourselves, and all rights,
equally with themselves. The laws of the land are good, but women claim they are
not in it. She has power to hold, but not to protect. Good women will not abuse this
trust; they will value its bestowal. When the human family can cease to be jealous,
and learn to love more for love's own sake and the God whom they serve, then will a
millennium of justice shed its rays over our land. All God's creatures will then join
to praise Him for mercies before unknown because of infirmities of sin. May woman
be patient, yet persevere in her efforts for justice, for recognition of the rights of
the citizenship which her country asserts, but which, especially for her, it has failed
to provide. We will work, wait, and trust the "men" of our land. When Gen. Robert
E. Lee, the great southern chieftain, Christian and soldier, became aware of the
necessity to surrender the Confederate forces which he commanded, it was not the
principle of " individual liberty " he gave up, but it was a truce to its active demand
and assertion. Having fought a good fight, he laid down his arms, trusting in his
God, who was mightier than all. He, wMth his people, were willing to wait, and
never did this great heart of resignation utter evil against those whom he consid-
ered as God's instrument to delay and frustrate the hope of his people for personal
liberty. Women must wait. Patience is golden, and in time will bring its reward.
SERVING ONE ANOTHER.
By MRS. ASHLEY CARUS-WILSON NEE MARY L. G. PETRIE, B. A.
The reports that it has been possible to collect for the Chicago Exhibition under
the heading of " Philanthropic Education" seemed at first sight, when I was asked
to make them the basis of a Congress paper, as for-
tuitous a concourse of atoms as ever gravitated to
a center. Seeking for common characteristics, I
observed:
Eirst. That all described schemes whereby, in the
battle of life, the rich may help the poor. I use the
old-fashioned expression deliberately as more appli-
cable to the present conditions than the ancient phrase
"gentle and simple," and truer to the facts of life than
the arrogant modern division of mankind into "upper
and lower classes." We speak here of rich and poor,
not only in money and what money can buy, but in
skill and knowledge, in leisure and friends, in mental
and moral power.
Secondly. I observed that the various devices
described, by which the one may aid the other, are
all of them new, and many of them very new. Our
fathers lived happy and creditable lives before the
mania for shaping and joining societies, associations,
guilds, unions and leagues for the amelioration of
MRS. ASHLHv CARUS-WILSON. socictj arose. Arc they therefore, mere fads and
superfluities of an age of peace and luxury? Nay.
Three features in the life of today seem abundantly to justify their existence.
First. The rising standard of comfort. As we move either geographically or
chronologically from a lower to a higher civilization, we observe that a larger and
larger number of men are dissatisfied with themselves and their surroundings. Indeed,
the motive power of all civilization has been well defined as "progressive desire." A
need felt for the first time is not, therefore, an unreal one, and today we need many
things that our fathers neither had nor missed.
Secondly. The increasing division of labor. Here we speak not of satisfying a
new craving, but of replacing something of value that would otherwise be altogether
lost. The application of machinery to almost every department of labor tends to
divide it more and more, and consequently to reduce the laborer more and more to a
machine. The artisan of the past, who brought the bit of work he had begun to the
highest perfection that he knew, found an interest and an education in doing it,
which his descendant does not find in the monotonous repetition of a single act. The
Mrs. ABhley Gams- Wilson (Mary L. (i. Petiie, B. A.) is of Scotch descent. She was born at York Town, Surrey,
England. Her father was Col. Martin Petrie, of the British Army. Her mother was of the Macdowall family, of Scot-
land. She was educated at University College, London, and took the B. A. degree of the University of London with First
Class Honors in 1883. In 1893 she married Mr. Ashley Carus-Wilson, M. A., Professor of electrical engineering at McGill
University, Montreal. Her special work has been in the interest of The College by Post, of which she is founder and presi-
dent. Its aim is to encourage systematic study of the Holy Scriptures; to aid in secular study those who cannot avail them-
selves of professional tuition. The teaching is all given by correspondence and is wholly gratuitous. Address inquiries to
the Secretary, Hanover Lodge, Kensington Park, London, England. Her principal literary work is " Clews to Holy Writ."
She is a member of the Church of England, and is well known as a lecturer, especially upon Foreign Missions, History and
Literature, Bible Study, etc. Her postotBce address is No. 66 McTavish Street, Montreal, Canada.
651
652 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
agricultural laborer of the past, who depended on his own eye and hand for the
unswerving furrow or the neatly felled sheaf, developed aptitudes which his successor
who rides a machine is without. A multitude of unremembered artists made our
ancient cathedrals glorious with lavish carving. Nowadays even our aesthetic needs
are to a large extent gratified by wholly mechanical processes. It is good that the
humblest cottages should be hung with chromo-lithographed copies of good pictures,
but the production of these copies draws out no artistic faculties in their producers.
Thanks, however, to the good artificial light which modern inventions supply, the
plowman or factory "hand" has an evening that his ancestor had not, in which
the day's dull toil may be supplemented by the carving class or instructive lecture,
calling out powers that would otherwise remain undeveloped.
Thirdly, the growing tendency toward separation of class from class. " Our
greatest industrial danger," said the Bishop of Durham lately, " lies in the want of
mutual confidence between employers and employed. Confidence is of slow growth.
It comes most surely through equal intercourse." The desc&ndant of the apprentice
who lived under his master's roof now receives his wages from an employer who does
not know his name. In many of our great towns rich and poor do not even meet on
Sundays before their common Maker. The employers dwell in a handsome new
suburb, and swell the well-dressed congregation of a new church. The employed herd
in the older part of the city, and form parishes where, as an East End London vicar
lately expressed it, " Every lady cleans her own doorstep." No wonder, therefore,
that in our days social questions are in the forefront, and "the human heart by which
we live" demands new means of bringing together those who would otherwise be
utterly separated in all relations outside of business to their great mutual loss. We
need (I again quote Dr. Westcott) "to hallow large means by the sense of large
responsibility; to provide that labor in every form may be made the discipline of
noble character."
It is the public-house that fills the workhouse and the prison; and the public-
house is too often filled by the mismanaged home, the badly chosen and the worst
cooked meal. When, therefore, a girl acquires practical skill in cookery, she not only
fits herself for the comfortable and well-paid calling of a first-class domestic servant
instead of the comfortless and ill-paid calling of an unskilled factory hand, but she
diminishes her risk of becoming the hapless wife of a drunkard. Board schools had,
however, been in existence more than ten years before the government recognized
that cookery should be regularly taught in them. Private enterprise preceded gov-
ernment action in training teachers for this subject and in forming schools of cookery
in London, Leeds, Edinburgh and Glasgow. To Miss Fanny Calder's initiative is owing
the Liverpool Training Schools of Cookery and the Northern Union Schools of
Cookery, and government recognition both of cookery and laundry work is due to her
vigorous struggle with the Education Department. Private enterprise must supple-
ment government actionals© in continuing the training when school is over, or giving
it then to those who have attended schools for which teachers of cookery could not
be provided.
Classes for cookery and domestic economy in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire were
founded by Mrs. Bell in 1889. The Bishop of Salisbury suggested this scheme, which
works through the organization of the Girls' Friendly Society. It began with a grant
of ten pounds, and gave during the next two years between fifty and sixty courses of
lessons in cookery and laundry work to girls fresh from school. Eventually it was
afifiliated to the Northern Union Schools of Cookery.
In days of old every woman, as the term " spinster" still indicates, " sought wool
and flax and worked willingly with her hands," and no part of the world produced
more characteristic and interesting fabrics than the Scottish Highlands. But when
the machine-made goods of our great centers of industry were distributed to the
remotest corners of the kingdom, native homespun was in danger of being altogether
discarded for cheaper but less durable and becoming raiment. The insight to recog-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 653
nize the value of these native industries, the sympathy to understand their usefulness
and profitableness to the peasants, and the skill and patience to initiate and perpetuate
a scheme for their resuscitation ere it was too late, were found in three successive
duchesses of Sutherland. Forty-four years ago Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, the
beautiful daughter of the Earl of Carlisle, "and Queen Victoria's chosen friend, organ-
ized an Industrial Society at Golspie, a little tovvn on the southeast coast of Suther-
landshire, close to her Highland home, Dunrobin Castle. Four hundred people
attended its first exhibition in September, 1850, and prizes to the value of ten pounds
were awarded to the fancy tartans, tweeds, plaids, blankets and hose exhibited. For
several years a similar annual exhibition was held in a pavilion erected for the pur-
pose, until it was no longer in the Duchess' power to give such active evidence of her
regard for the welfare of the Highlands. But the Scottish wife of her eldest son —
who was Countess of Cromartie in her own right— became the patron of a second
series of exhibitions, of which the first was held in Augu.st, 1886. The sales realized
over two hundred pounds, and thirty pounds were given in prizes. The present Duke
of Sutherland, then Marquis of Stafford, had recently married Lady Millicent St.
Clair Erskine, daughter of the Earl of Rosslyn, and she, supported by many other
ladies well-known in Scotland, and aided by Miss Joass, the indefatigable secretary
of the Highland Home Industries, has from the first thrown her whole heart into this
work. In 1887 the exhibition at Golspie represented the whole of Sutherland, and
men's carvings were added to women's spinnings, sales and prizes bringing the exhib-
itors over three hundred and seventy-seven pounds. In 1888 it was transferred to the
Town Hall of Inverness, and not only the number and variety, but the quality of the
articles exhibited, indicated the progress made. The exhibitors gained about four
hundred pounds, and received orders enough to keep them busy throughout the fol-
lowing winter. Two months later, on November 25, Anne, Duchess of Sutherland,
to whose patriotic zeal and untiring effort this success was largely due, entered into
rest. In 1889 the exhibition was held in the Earl of Dudley's London house, opened
by Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lome, and presided over by the Countess of Rose-
berry. Over six hundred pounds were realized,' the exhibits coming from many parts
of Scotland, and equally successful sales were held at Inverness and London in 1890
and 1891. Out of this pioneer scheme in Sutherlandshire other schemes have grown,
such as those at Beaufort and Gairloch, and Lady Dunmore's work in Harris. The
time-honored distaff and spinning-wheel reject altogether the inferior materials which
undiscriminating machines turn into shoddy, and amply vindicate both the artistic and
the useful qualities of hand-work.
That civilization means more, even for the poorest, than mere "creature comfort"
was the thought that led a woman to organize, in 1885, the Home Arts and Industries
Association. Its fourfold aim is to train eye and hand, and thus fit for many callings;
to fill the idle hours of working people happily; to foster sympathetic intercourse
between rich and poor, and to revive good old handicrafts. Its classes, to the number
of between four and five hundred, are held all over the country for girls and lads and
men, chiefly by lady volunteers; and the London central office, which is managed by
a female staff, supplies these classes with suitable designs and organizes instruction
for their teachers. Their pupils are drawn from the ranks of unskilled as well as of
skilled labor, and are always forthcoming in large numbers. The street arab who
came at first "just for a lark," comes again and yet again for the growing interest of
the work, and it has its own quiet influence in civilizing him. Moreover, this unos-
tentatious work must develop some of the latent artistic talent that here, as elsewhere,
only waits to be called out and do something to remove the reproach that in matters
artistic we are an uneducated nation — a reproach justified not only by the vulgar
delights of " the masses," but by the prevalent drawing-room " art criticism " of " the
classes."
A wood-carving class for working lads in Ratcliff, one of the poorest parts of
East London, was organized in 1884 by the Hon. Beatrice de Grey, and is now carried
654 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
on by the Hon. Odeyne de Grey, her sister, and Miss Gertrude D. Pennant. The
class meets for two hours one evening a week, from November or December till July
every year. Four out of the six lads who originally formed it are now working in it
as men.
From eleven to seventeen men have availed themselves of a class which Lady
Grisell Baillie Hamilton and her sister have, during three years, held in Scotland for
two hours twice a week throughout the four winter months. They pay a small fee to
cover expense of warming and lighting the barn in which they meet, and gladly buy
their own tools. The picture frames, hanging cupboards, bookcases, etc., which they
make they prefer to keep rather than to sell. Apart from the technical skill gained
they benefit by the awakening of interest and effort in connection with something
quite outside the ordinary routine of their lines.
In 1889 Miss A. E. Maude formed a class for the villagers of Drayton, Somerset,
in order to provide them with profitable occupation when the weather forbids outdoor
work. Observing that most of the other Home Arts and Industries classes chose
wood carving, she was enterprising enough to take up iron work instead. The zest
with which the men and boys, whom she teaches every Wednesday evening during
the winter, handle the pliers, and labor at the forge and the anvil, and the ready sale
found for the lamps, kettles, screens, brackets and candlesticks produced have amply
justified her choice. Gifts from the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the Somerset County
Council, and the Ironmongers Company enabled them to furnish their workshop in the
first instance, and it is now open every evening all the year round. Over four hundred
articles made by her pupils have been sold since the class was formed, and they have
won the bronze medal of the Recreative Evening Schools Association, and the " Gold
Star" of the Home Arts and Industries Exhibition in London.
The Working Lads' Institute 'at Torquay, Devonshire, founded about 1886, offers
to lads between twelve and eighteen years of age recreation and education, brightens
their lives by human kindness, and brings them under moral and religious influence.
Its bent iron and repousse classes are self-supporting. Their products are sold at
industrial exhibitions and privately; half the profits pay all expenses, the other half
is a welcome addition to the lads' earnings, and Miss G. Phillpotts states that the
classes also form a training school of good manners.
In 1890 a class for brass repousse work was formed at Bournemouth by Miss
Edith H. G. Wingfield Digby. A higher motive than either love of art or love of gain
led eight men there, chiefly artisans, to give some ten hours a week to brass-work.
Missionary zeal had been kindled at the Bible class they attended, and the proceeds
of their work, whose high artistic merit may be judged from the specimens sent to
Chicago, redeemed a little Chinese girl from slavery, and afterward helped to pay for
her maintenance and Christian education in the Jubilee School of the Church Mission-
ary .Society at Hong Kong. Certificates of merit have been awarded to three mem-
bers of Miss Wingfield Digby's class by the Home Arts and Industries Associations.
We turn to three schemes which combine cookery with the work of the loom and
the needle, and the carving-tool, hitherto dealt with separately, and four others nearly
as comprehensive.
That it was founded by the Princess of Wales is not our only reason for naming
the Technical School at .Sandringham first. Her Royal Highness' desire to train the
sons and daughters of the Sandringham laborers bore fruit some years before tech-
nical education had gained its present hold upon the public mind. The school began
in an old schoolroom, with evening classes instructed by an artisan from a neighbor-
ing town. The interest aroused was so great that the princess determined to make the
whole scheme larger and more lasting. She sent Fraulein Nodel, formerly German
governess to the young princesses, to study the subject in London and the great Con-
tinental centers of technical education, and then appointed her lady superintendent
of the school. In the enlarged schoolroom men and lads meet to learn carpentry,
joinery, wood-carving, brass and copper repousse, and bent iron work. Meanwhile,
THE CONGRESS OF WOJUEN. 655
the girls of the village are taught cooking, sewing, dressmaking, the making of baby
clothes, and general domestic management from lo A. M. to 6 P. M. every Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The Norfolk County Council inspected and highly
commended the school, but the Princess of Wales declined their offer to undertake
its supervision and cost, preferring to maintain it at her own expense and keep it under
her personal control. Her medical attendant. Doctor Manby, lately gave the elder
girls a course of lectures for the Saint John's Ambulance Association, and all who
attended gained certificates. The school has gained many prizes at exhibitions heki
in London and different provincial centers, and the sale of the articles produced
increases steadily.
In 1629 Baptist, Viscount Campden, bequeathed two hundred pounds, and in 1643
his widow likewise bequeathed two hundred pounds, " to be yearly employed for the
good and benefit of the poor of Kensington forever." Two acres abutting on the High
street of Notting Hill, London, are reputed to have been given for a similar purpose
by Oliver Cromwell. The money was invested in land, and, thanks to " unearned
increment," this modest capital of four hundred pounds and two acres now yields an
annual increase of almost forty-four hundred pounds. Of this sum, thirteen hundred
pounds is annually expended in pensions to the aged and deserving, and nearly nine hun-
dred pounds more goes to hospitals, provident clubs and special relief of special cases of
need. With this aid to the aged, sick and distressed, we are not here concerned. The
remaining sum of about eighteen hundred pounds is laid out for the young of Ken-
sington in apprenticeships, premiums,' exhibitions and scholarships for the pupils of
public elementary schools, and finally in providing the Campden trust lectures and
evening classes formed in 1888, whereby they may continue their education on leaving
school. The classes during last session were attended by one hundred and ninety-six
boys who learned carpentry, wood-carving, and mechanical drawing, and by one hun-
dred and forty-eight girls who learned cookery, dressmaking and drawing. Their
success is, in no small degree, due to the untiring energy of the honorary secretary.
Miss Catherine Hamilton. Out of four hundred and eighty-four pounds spent on these
classes twenty-two pounds and nine shillings was contributed by pupils' fees. The
recent founding of the Kensington Polytechnic by the Marquis of Lome and others,
promises to extend and develop the scheme still further, as this building has been
assigned to the Campden trustees, of whom the vicar of Kensington is chairman.
The Recreative P^vening School's Association, of which H. R. H. Princess Louise,
Marchioness of Lome, is an active president, is little more than seven years old. Its
object is to provide further instruction and healthful occupation for girls and boys
who have left our elementary day schools. Careful inquiry showed that not more than
four per cent of these continued their education in any systematic way; while it was
obvious that they were sent forth into the work of life unfitted for its duties, and
exposed, at the most critical age, to the perils of the streets at all hours. The secret
of the great success of the association lies in the fact that the evening classes have
been made bright and attractive. Instead of the dreary book-lessons in the three R's
and English, which were formerly almost the only attraction for evening scholars,
they introduced lantern illustrations of geography and travel, history and simple
science. Among other subjects taught were bookkeeping, shorthand, musical drill,
gymnastics, clay modeling, metal-work, wood-carving, dress-cutting, and cookery,
which no government grants were then available. Ladies and gentlemen of culture
and leisure were secured as voluntary teachers, and as managers of savings banks for
the scholars, whom they also took for Saturday rambles and visits to public build-
ings and places of interest. The association soon worked wonders. New pupils
flocked into schools which had been almost empty. In London the centers aided
increased from twenty-nine in 1886 to two hundred and thirty-two in 1892, while the
estimated average attendance grew from four thousand three hundred and fifty in 1887
to twelve thousand five hundred in 1892.
The Broomloan Halls Classes for Cookery and Sewing were founded at Govan,
656 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Glasgow, by Mrs, John Elder, in 1885. They form a technical school for the wives
and daughters of artisans, and are in the midst of a large ship-building population.
All their incidental expenses are paid by the generous founder. The cookery demon-
stration class, attended by some two hundred women and girls, is the most popular.
It is supplemented by the cookery practice class, at which their clever teacher. Miss
Gordon, shows her pupils how to turn out the best possible Sunday dinner from the
materials they bring on Saturday night. Eighty to a hundred women attend the
Monday evening sewing and mending class; a large number also appreciate that the
starching and ironing class will fit them for a useful calling; and lastly, forty-two girls
are carefully trained to be kitchenmaids, and never fail to find good places. During
the summer months housewives who choose to enter their names on a list, are visited
by intelligent and specially trained women of their own class, and shown how to cook
and clean and arrange their houses. This kind of help is most eagerly sought.
The Little Servants' Home, in connection with Brownshill High School, Stroud,
was founded by Miss Winscombe, This attempt to prepare young girls for domestic
service by training them under upper servants, might be imitated in other large house-
holds, for every effort that tends to raise the status of domestic servants, and the
standard of qualification for domestic service, is a real benefit to girls in humble
homes.
For the third time a village in Scotland claims our attention. The Misses Fer-
gusson, with the occasional help of their own servants, have, since 1881, organized and
carried on most successful evening classes for joinery, basket-work, fret-work, carving
and drawing among the men; and for knitting, crochet, embroidery, etc., among the
women of West Linton, Prebleshire. Their last sale realized about one hundred and
five pounds, all profit to the workers.
In Cumberland, the loveliest district in England, under the fostering care of Mrs.
Hardwicke Rawnsley, wife of the vicar of Crosthwaite (that picturesque vale, or
thwaite, where St. Kentigern reared the cross in the earliest age of England's relig-
ious history), has grown up, since 1883, the Keswick Industrial School of Art, and a
Linen Industry, which has Mr. Ruskin's leave to bear his name. Both are endeavors
to reduce to practice his characteristic teaching, that a love of the beautiful lies hid-
den in every human soul, and that things made by hand, and bearing the impress of
human individuality, are incomparably more beautiful than those which can be turned
out by machinery. There is something' quite mediaeval about the whole undertaking,
so little trace can be found in it of the modern commercial spirit, and so lovingly do
these northern peasants linger over the details of their work. From seventy to eighty
men now belong to the carving and brass-work classes. The linen industry was started
by .Miss Twelves; the spinning is all done with the old-fashioned wheels, and the weav-
ing is all done by hand. These earnest and artistic workers in the land of two nine-
teenth century laureates, lately had the satisfaction of doing honor to a third, by
weaving a pall of wondrous beauty for Lord Tennyson's cofifin.
We turn now to schemes that aim at imparting knowledge, at informing the head,
and according to our threefold being of body, soul and spirit, take these as they suc-
cessively deal with the physical, mental and moral welfare of mankind.
Canon Kingsley, Bishop Wilberforce and others, have taught our generation the
whole meaning of the old phrase, mens sana in corpore sano. Two societies, both
dwelling in Berners street, London, and both owing their existence to the insight and
energy of women, are waging successful war, not with flourish of trumpets, but by
quiet persistent work, against the arch-enemy ignorance, and teaching rich and poor
that the essentials of wholesome life are pure water, nourishing food, daily bathing
and daily exercise; that our homes must stand on high ground and dry soil, give
abundant entrance to light and air, and be thoroughly cleansed, not only above but
below ground. The Ladies' Sanitary Association, founded in 1857, grew, so Lady
Knightley, of Fawsley, tells us, out of a suggestion made by Dr. Roth, and has now
about four hundred members. Countless lectures have been given through it to all
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 657
sorts and conditions of women; it has organized loan libraries of books on health, and
distributed over a million and a half of tracts on hygiene for the people. Much of the
technical teaching of which we have already spoken may be traced to its influence, as
well as dinners for destitute children, nurseries for motherless babies, and many coal
and clothing clubs and temperance associations. From its " park parties " have sprung
the Children's Country Holidays schemes for city boys and girls, to whom an uncaged
singing-bird, a growing wild flower, an expanse of blue sky, a field of scented hay or
waving corn, or the rippling of water or whispering of leaves in the wood, arc things
as new and wonderful as they are joy inspiring. Its secretary is Miss Rose Adams.
The National Health .Society, founded in 1873, began with a modest scheme of
lectures by ladies at men's clubs and mothers' meetings. It now has three princesses
of Great Britain for patronesses, the Duke of Westminster for president, and over four
hundred and fifty members. Its aims are well summed up in its motto: " Prevention
is better than cure." Free lectures are given throughout the country to the poor,
subsidized now in many places by the county councils; while distinguished medical
men and eminent lady nurses instruct drawing-room audiences, who need teaching
scarcely less in the laws of health. A diploma of honor was awarded to its literature
by the Council of the International Health Exhibition, and among the varied matters
that claim its aid and interest are hygienic dress, smoke abatement, open spaces, and
boarding-out of children. Its secretary is Miss Ray Lankester.
The Ladies' Association of Useful Work at Birmingham, which was founded in
1874, is a local association, rather younger than these two national societies. It was
originally as comprehensive as its title; but since Mason College was opened it no
longer labors for higher education, but is chiefly active in giving eight or nine courses
of lectures on hygiene to working women, keeping up a recreation-room for business
girls, and organizing country holidays for children. Its useful work is almost wholly
carried on by voluntary helpers.
Education, in the narrower popular sense, ne.xt concerns us. This is not the place
for speaking generally of the system that has supplemented girls' schools by women's
colleges, and thrown open to the women of this generation a wide culture that is mak-
ing women's lives richer and happier than they ever were before. .Some women, like
some men, go to the university in order to take up teaching or another profession
that their attainments will render honorable. But some women, like some men, seek
a liberal education for its own sake, and for its usefulness to others, rather than its
gainfulness to themselves; and a new need of the help that they can give has grown
up with their new power to giv^e it.
The College for Working Women in Fitzroy street, London, was founded in 1874
in memory of the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, originator of Queen's College,
Harley street, the earliest of all women's colleges which now play so large a part in
our intellectual life. It seeks to provide women in business and in domestic service
with three things — teaching, amusement, and opportunity of friendly intercourse.
When it began three-fourths of the two hundred women on its books were learning to
read, write and spell in elementary classes. Now, thanks to the progress of popular
education, there is but one elementary class with twenty pupils, though the members
are between three and four hundred in number. The council seeks a teacher for any
subject desired by not less than six students. Some subjects, such as French, attract
from their usefulness for daily work; others, as in the case of a girl who lately took
up Greek, because of their remoteness from the daily toil. There is a Bible class on
Sundays, and lectures on first aid and sick nursing have been given in connection with
St. John's Ambulance Association. The classes are supplemented by a library of
some two thousand volumes, all gifts. Members who have worked for four terms in
a class may use the college as a club only, and the social side of its work grows more
important as time goes on. Take, for instance, the Holiday Guild inaugurated by
Lady Stranford. The four Saturday evenings in the month are devoted to a dance
exclusively for students, presided over by young ladies; an ambulance practice; a work-
(42)
658 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ing party for the Institution for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind; a con-
cert or lecture often given by some eminent person. About a quarter of the working
expenses is met by students' fees, the rest by gifts from friends and from the city
companies. Miss Frances Martin is the honorary secretary. The College for Men
and Women in Queen Square, London, founded in 1864, carries on a similar work.
The College by Post, founded in 188 1, sprang out of an effort which I made in my
own early days at college to help, by correspondence, other girls whose opportunities
were fewer than my own. University College, London; Westfield College, Hamp-
stead; Griton and Nevvnham Colleges, Cambridge, and Lady Margaret and Somervilie
Halls, Oxford; the Ladies' College, Cheltenham, and kindred institutions for higher
education, have contributed to a staff on which between two and three hundred
teachers have now been enrolled. From all parts of the United Kingdom, from the
continent and the colonies, students representing many different conditions of life
and degrees of education have joined to the number of between three and four thou-
sand. Competition with professional teachers is carefully avoided, and no " coach-
ing " for examinations, other than our own, is undertaken. Giving half an hour daily
to Bible study in one of our seventy Scripture classes is the condition of receiving
gratuitous instruction in other subjects. The scheme of historical Scripture study,
which I have elaborated for our students, has now been published in a volume called
" Clews to Holy Writ," which went into its third thousand within a few weeks of its
publication. About twenty subjects are taught in our secular classes. The hygiene
class; which is conducted by a medalist of the National Health Society, is one of the
most popular of these. The wise and kindly influence of teacher upon taught, and
the friendships, helpful to both, which grow up through their work together, are, per-
haps, the most valuable and the least describable part of the scheme. Through the
"writing mission," suggested by Lady Wright, some hundreds of our students are
also in friendly correspondence with factory girls.
So we pass from the intellectual to the moral sphere, and to organizations that
aim at enabling people to be, rather than to know, taking first those that aim at fitting
special classes for special duties. The Home and Colonial School Society, established
in 1836, is for the Christian training of women teachers, and sends forth annually some
seventy-five to elementary schools, and some fifty to family teaching and secondary
schools. Little can be done by the best of schools for those whose home influences
are adverse, and this was never truer than it is today, when the day-school system
prevails widely for every class of the community Hence the importance of insisting
upon the sacred responsibilities of parents, often so lightly undertaken and so thought-
lessly delegated to others. At the request of some Bradford mothers, Miss Charlotte
M. Mason, in 1888, drew up a scheme for assisting parents of all classes to study the
laws of education as they bear upon the bodily development, moral training, intellect-
ual work and religious bringing up of children. The Bishop of Ripon's wife was the
first president of the Parents' National Educational Union, and the Earl and Countess
of Aberdeen are the present presidents. Among those who warmly took up the
scheme were Dr. Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of London, Miss Beale of
Cheltenham College, Miss Clough of Nevvnham College, and Miss Buss of the North
London Collegiate School. Its organ is the "Parents' Review," an admirable monthly.
The House of Education offers definite training to those who hope to become mothers
or governesses. " I was deeply impressed," said Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools,
in November, 1892, "with the earnest and business-like way in which the students
addressed themselves to their work, and I do not doubt that they will devote them-
selves to the care of children with exceptional zeal and knowledge."
Throughout we have to recognize a duty not only to the destitute and degraded,
but to those who ask not alms but help of human fellowship, and appeal less to our
pity than to our sympathy. It is through the co-operation, and not through the con-
flict of clas.ses, that progress will be made, and the amount of this co-operation will
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.. 659
depend upon the degree in which each class realizes what are its special responsibili-
ties and what are the true interests and the highest aims of the human race.
" We must be here to work;
And men who work can only work for men.
And not to work in vain, must comprehend
Humanity, and so work humanly,
And raise men's bodies still by raising souls,
As God did first."
HARMONIOUS ADJUSTMENT THROUGH EXERCISE.
By MRS. MINNA GORDON GOULD.
"Oh saw ye bonnie Leslie
As she gaed o'er the border?
She's gone, like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther.
To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever,
For nature made her what she is,
And ne'er made such another."
Nature made her what she was, and therefore she
was beautiful. We all love beauty. Much of our joy
of living comes from our delight in the beauties of
nature. " Our heart leaps up when we behold a rain-
bow in the sky or dances with the dancing daffodils."
It must have been a part of nature's plans that it
should be so. And surely the beauty of woman's form
is no less worthy of admiration than any other mani-
festation of God in His creation. Indeed, by many
it is considered the masterpiece of nature. Macaulay
said that the most beautiful thing in the world is a
beautiful woman; and I am sure many another man
has thought so if he has not said it; and the wish
all women have to be beautiful seems to me as nat-
MRS. MINNA GORDON GOULD. ' , r 1 • J ^ • CO „ 4-^ ^^,U-,1^ r^ct-
ural as for birds to smg or for flowers to exnale per-
fume. It is part of their mission in the world. Beauty means harmony, whether
in music, painting, sculpture, or in the mind and body of man. A beautiful body
is one which is harmoniously developed in all its parts, whose organs are formed
as nature intended, and which perform their functions according to nature's laws.
Any deviation from this standard is deformity. An abnormal body is not beautiful
because it is not harmoniously developed. We all recognize abnormal development
in the fashionable woman, who compresses her waist by means of corsets, but we can
also see lack of harmony in the figures of many women who do not dress unhy-
gienically. Bad habits of carriage, such as standing or sitting with waist muscles
relaxed, and a consequent settling of the body into the hips, a rounded back with
hollow chest; indolent habits of inaction, which tend to the accumulation ^ of too
much flesh; hard work, as in the case of the blacksmith, whose right arm and
shoulder are developed out of all proportion to the rest of his body— all these
are illustrations of abnormal, inharmonious development. The same thing is seen
in the case of athletes, who often injure their health by undue exercise of some
muscles of the body at the expense and neglect of others, especially in faihng to
maintain the balance between the organs that supply and those that waste the vital
force.
Mrs. Minna Gordon Gould was bom at Brockton, Mass. Her parents were Andrew McKeown, D. D., a Methodist,
clergyman, and LinaB. (Pease) McKeown. She was educated at Roxbury and Cambridge, Mass., and at Vassar College.
She married Allen W. Gould, at one time instructor of Latin and Greek at Harvard College, and at present secretary of the
Western Dnitarian Association. Her special work has been in the interest of physical culture and improved dress for women.
Her profession is that of public reader and teacher of elocution, physical and vocal culture, for which she is eminently quab
fied. In religious faith she is Unitarian. Her postolKce address is No. 175 Dearborn Street, Room 94. Chicago, 111.
660
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 661
Harmonious development of all the parts of the body seems one of nature's great
laws, if we would have health and beauty. And so imperative are nature's demands
for harmony that when one organ is raised to the proper pitch, the other organs are
often brought up to the same key; or, when one organ is dragged down from its place,
all the other parts of the body suffer. To illustrate: We all know that a well-poised
head and full chest and flattened back are desirable from the standpoint of beauty.
To acquire a full chest the lungs must be developed by exercise, and increased lung
power means of course more o.xygen in the blood, and better blood means everything
better- — better appetite, increased vitality and the consciousness of ability to attempt
great things. Upon the other hand, whenone part suffers from being thrown out of
nature's harmony, all the other parts are sympathetically affected. For instance: A
woman who wearshigh-heeledshoes which aretoosmall forherfeet, will experiencemany
aches and pains, besides the comparatively insignificant ones of corns and bunions.
The muscles of the feet being rendered useless, the calves of the leg are not developed,
and the springy motion in the gait, so characteristic of health and happiness, is con-
spicuous by its absence. The effort to maintain an equilibrium, caused by the high
heels, throws many of the vital organs out of place and gives rise to an infinite variety
of ills. Even injury to the eyes is said to be one of the results of wearing tight shoes.
When we reflect that few, if any, see our feet, and that everyone sees and notes our walk,
it seems strange that we would ever be willing to sacrifice the great beauty of a grace-
ful carriage to the far lesser charm of a trim foot, even if no consideration of health
and comfort induced us to respect the natural requirements of our feet, instead of
treating them as pegs for balancing the body. There can be no one exercise more
beneficial to the body — the whole body — than a brisk, animated walk, with all the
muscles of the body participating more or less in the movement; but such a walk is
absolutely impossible when the various parts are impeded by the clothing, and when
to the tight shoes and corset is added the incubus of a muff to restrict the move-
ment of the arms, or long, heavy skirts to be held up, the lack of free harmonious
action is well nigh complete. The object of my paper is to emphasize the value of
exercise as a means to harmonious readjustment. There is always a tendency to the
normal in all diseased or abnormal bodies, and if the hindrances are removed, nature
herself will do much toward readjustment. At a recent rriedical congress, an eminent
physician made the .statement that "very few, if any, drugs cure; that educated physi-
cians hesitate before asserting that they have cured their patients; that at best they
but guide their recovery." Doctors recognize more and more the immense power of
self-cure by readjustment to nature's laws, and instead of loading the system with
powerful drugs which may do more harm in certain directions than they do good in
others, it is sometimes the part of wisdom to stand aside and let nature act. And
nature acts through motion. All her forces are but modified forms of motion. At
any rate, all organic bodies require motion as a means of life. I will not speak of the
ceaseless motion of inorganic nature, but if a human being wishes to live he must keep
moving. It is motion that gives value to exercise, and not the straining of the mus-
cles by gymnastic appliances of heavy dumb-bells and Indian clubs, etc. The less
apparatus one uses in exercise the better. Thus there will be very little danger of
straining the muscles and organs, and the muscular development will be more sym-
metrical, and grace and suppleness will be secured more easily than when weight is
added to motion as a means of development.
A perfectly normal body, like that of a healthy young child, needs only the
amount of exercise which his animal spirits secure for him. Such a one does God's
will, and knows it not. But when unhealthy habits of dress or unhygienic habits of
living have cramped the body and rendered useless certain organs, special exercise
of those organs will aid them to regain their normal power in the quickest and best
way. Since health depends upon motion, the clothing should be adapted to that
need, and should conform to the shape of the body rather than that the body should
be fitted to the shape of the dress, as our present fashion is. But while women are
662 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
afraid of ridicule for being odd, and arc slaves to fashion, no amount of argument
from an aesthetic or even hygienic standpoint will affect them. In .vain you may tell
them that beauty and fashion are not synonymous, as anyone can see by looking at
the hideous grotesqueness of the styles of the past; that some of the most celebrated
artists of today will not paint a woman's portrait until she has removed "those disfig-
urements," as they designate corsets, etc.; that the most noted house in London will
not make a gown fashioned upon the abnormal, inartistic lines of the corset; that hun-
dreds of the most intelligent women in this country and in England are striving for
something better for themselves and their children in the way of healthful and artistic
clothing. It is useless to refer to such other mistaken ideas of beauty as that which
induces the women in some countries to insert a round piece of wood in the lower lip,,
and then gradually increase the size of the wedge and so enlarge the lip that it projects-
far beyond the place that nature gave it. A wedge two inches in diameter was in accord
with the requirements of fashion, but four inches was the mark of an extremely stylish
savage.
These arguments seem to fall for the most part on " stony ground," and the
" thus saith " of fashion is as potent as ever with a large majority, even though
obedience to her commands entails agony and deformity. " Oh Lord, make us all.
stylish," was the fervent prayer of a little girl I once heard of, and this, doubtlessly,
is the sum total of many a woman's aspirations. So they cramp and distort their
bodies, force their hands and feet into coverings much too small for these members
and which destroy all semblance to the exquisite beauty nature shows in the perfect
hands and feet of an infant, and make them almost useless. All this abuse of the body
seems to be the result of a perverted notion that the female figure is not properly con-
structed and needs making over. But women are beginning to awaken to the fact that
a large portion of the sideaches, backaches, headaches, nervous prostrations, etc., are
nature's warning against the violation of her laws. I believe exercise and the conse-
quent ability ot relaxation to be the chief factor of health.
The other requisites of health are sleep, nourishing food, fresh air, clean linen and"
peace of mind. But exercise comprises in itself all the beneficial qualities of the others.
Sleep has been rightfully called " the chief nourisher in life's feast " Loss of sleep and
lack of nerve-control are among the most serious maladies of the present day. We are
in such a hurry, and live at such a high pressure of nervous tension during the day, that
we lose our ability to sleep, and thus fail to recuperate the nervous forces at night.
Well-directed exercise which draws the blood away from the brain will give a much
more healthful and refreshing sleep than that which is produced by narcotics.
We must also have nourishing food in order that we may have health; but no-
amount of nourishing food will help the body whose organs of digestion and assimila-
tion are ruined. And what good will fresh air do one whose lungs are unable to per-
form their functions? But exercise, that gives health to the muscles, aids digestion
and quickens the action of the heart and lungs. Peace of mind is impossible without
that harmony of the nervous system which a healthy body secures. Thus we see illus-
trated the story of the old woman getting her pig over the stile As soon as the fire
began to burn the stick, the stick began to beat the dog, the dog began to bite the pig,
and everything started in the way in which it should go. So, too, if you exercise, your
appetite will be increased, your digestive organs will do their duty and nourish you.
A well-nourished body demands sleep, suflficient sleep secures nerve-control, and so
" a sound mind in a sound body" is the result. Health of mind, on the other hand, is
necessary to health of body. We see plainly enough, in extreme cases of idiocy and
insanity, that a diseased mind usually accompanies, if it does not result in. a diseased
body; so, then, a diseased mind deranges the health, and as doctors can not minister
to a mind diseased any more than they can to a sick body, with drugs simply, then
here, too, harmony with nature's laws is the price of health and beauty. We reach the
highest beauty of all when we attain the beauty of expression. Beauty in its highest
manifestation does not consist in any one part, but in the harmony of the whole — mind,.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. G63
body and soul. A face may sometimes be faultless in contour and coloring, and yet
fail to satisfy our idea of beauty, owing to a lack of expression. Expression is the
painting and sculpture of the soul made manifest by the body, the radiation of char-
acter through the channels of expression. Physical exercise will fill those channels of
expression when they have become choked by habits of stiffness and self-conscious-
ness, and will restore the graceful suppleness, if not the unconscious grace, of childhood.
A harsh, unmusical voice and awkward body can not well express sentiments of affec-
tion and sympathy; neither does a shrinking, bashful carriage denote courage and self-
respect and kindred attributes which we value in our acquaintances. A fine bearing is
a valuable letter of recommendation to any position, because of the qualities of mind
supposed to underlie and to be expressed by this means.
When men and women study to know themselves and nature's laws working in
their minds and bodies, and when they are ready to obey those laws as confidently as
the chemist obeys the laws of chemical affinity, then shall we see mothers watching
and guarding their children against the sins of the body as well as the sins of the soul.
Our body, the temple of the immortal part of us, will not be considered bestial any
longer, but will be sculptured into Divine beauty by the Divinity within. The lofty
carriage and high courtesy of manner will reveal the noble» tenant within.
MUNICIPAL SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN IN MICHIGAN.
By MISS OCTAVIA WILLIAMS BATES.
When the women of Michigan were surprised, last May, with the news that munici-
pal suffrage had been extended by the legislature of that state so as to mclude them,
the great majority of those who heard the tidings little
knew of the bitter struggle that the pioneers of the
movement had sustained in years past. They little
thought of those who had endured the heat and the
burden of the fierce fight, but who had passed away
without enjoying the fruits of their labor.
A few were mindful of all this and the memory
of it chastened the joy of the occasion and made them
still more dearly prize the new jewel in their posses-
sion.
On that glad day a few women in Michigan of
clearer vision and keener insight than the rest of their
sisters realized that a great opportunity for good had
come to them, and grateful indeed were they for this
boon.
A few more saw that the " stamp of inequality,"
which is the " brand of degradation," had been, to a
certain degree, effaced from the women of the state.
But how has this revolution, as it were, been
brought about, is the question that an outsider might
naturally ask; and who should have the credit and
honor of putting Michigan in the van-guard of the
states by giving this larger life to her women?
Many causes have co-operated to produce this result. The passage of the mar-
ried woman's property act, in 1858; the opening of the University of Michigan to
women, in 1870, along with a steady, persistent demand for the representation of
women in the government of the state on the part of the advocates of that idea, have
all contributed their share to the formation of a public sentiment favorable to the
passage of a municipal suffrage bill for women.
It is not a new idea in Michigan — this idea of equal political representation — nor
is the beginning and growth of public opinion on the subject of woman suffrage a
recent topic of interest.
The agitation on this question began in Michigan in 1846, with the advent of
Ernestine L. Rose, who spoke twice in the legislative hall in Detroit. Her work in
Detroit, Ann Arbor and other places, was three or four years prior to the first report
by the Special Committee of the Senate in the general revision of the constitution,
nine years before the House Committee's report on elections in response to women's
petitions, and twelve years before the favorable " report of the Senate upon the memo-
rial of ladies, praying for the privilege of the elective franchise." After this time
there were various spasmodic and entirely unrelated efforts in different parts of the
state, until the formation of the Michigan State Suffrage Society which was organ-
Miss Octavia Williams Bates is a native of Detroit, Mich. Her parents were Samuel and Rebecca Bates, of that city.
She was educated in the public schools of Detroit and is a graduate of the University of Micliigan in the classical course.
She has traveled in various parts of the United States and Canada. She is a woman of great intelligence and very fine appear-
ance. Miss Bates is specially interested in the Woman Suffrage Movement. In religious faith she is a Unitiirian. Her
postofiB<;e address is No. 53 Bagg Street, Detroit, Mich.
664
MISS OCTAVIA WILLIAMS BATES.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 665
ized at the close of the first convention, held in Battle Creek in 1870, which has done
the usual work of aiding in the formation of local societies, circulating tracts and peti-
tions, securing hearings before the legislature, and holding its annual meetings from
year to year in the different cities of the state.
Legislative action on the question of woman suffrage began in Michigan in 1849;
continued in the legislatures of 1855, 1857 and 1859, until in 1874 "A bill for sep-
arate submission to a vote of the people on an amendment to the constitution relating
to woman suffrage," was passed by the legislature. Everything that could be done
was done by the friends of the amendment throughout the state, but it did not succeed.
The liberal action of the legislature in passing the bill, of Governor Bagley in sign-
ing the bill, the appeals of the women, nor the votes of forty thousand of the best men
of the state — all of these were of no avail. A blight fell on the spirits of the advocates
of the movement. The State BLqual Suffrage Association still continued its work
amid many discouragements. And a few heroic women in Michigan never ceased in
their efforts. Prominent among them are Mrs. Mary Knaggs, Mrs. Martha E. Root,
both of Bay City; Mrs. Mary L. Doe, Mrs. Emily B. Ketchum. of Grand Rapids, with
Mrs. Helen P. Jenkins, Mrs. A. A. Boutelle, and Mrs. C. P2. Fox, of Detroit, who have
all taken an active part in legislative work and to whom great honor is due for the
course they have pursued in obtaining the recent municipal suffrage bill for the
women of their state.
The work in Detroit ceased publicly until in 1887 the Detroit Equal Suffrage
Association was formed, with Hon. Thomas W Palmer as chief mover and director,
who has ever been ready to help the movement for woman suffrage, not only in
Michigan, but throughout the United States, with his speech, his pen, his money, and
the immense personal influence at his command. This association has never been
strong in point of numbers, but if the strength of an association is to be measured by
unanimity, moral courage and enthusiasm among its members, and work accomplished
by its members, then is this association strong, indeed. Brought together more for
the purpose of mutual support and sympathy, than for any definite plan of action,
their work has come to them more rapidly and with more imperative demands than
they have been able to perform. Very soon after the inception of the society, a prac-
tical plan of work for extending the suffrage was determined upon, which reached its
consummation when the amendment to the charter of the city of Detroit was passed in
the legislature of 1889, which gave school suffrage to the women of the city of
Detroit. That a very large number of women have so keenly appreciated this priv-
ilege and have so generally availed themselves of its advantages has been the most
telling argument in favor of still further extending the suffrage by means of the
■" Municipal Suffrage Bill for Women." This bill has been brought before the legis-
lature for the last ten years, with varying fortunes.
The discussion in the legislature of 1893, over this " Bill for Municipal Suffrage
for Women," lasted many hours, and was marked by many and unusually trying inci-
dents. Bitterly opposed by some of the membefs of the legislature, it was ably cham-
pioned by others. After an exciting contest the bill was finally adopted by that body
Governor Rich has since signed the bill and it is now a law in Michigan. At first the
argument was that women did not want to vote, and would not vote if they had the
chance; but, in the meantime, the school election took place in Detroit. The interest
and vigor shown by the women, in this election, convinced an objecting member that
the women of Michigan do want to vote. When the bill came up the second time,
with the educational clause in it. this member voted for it, and his vote carried the bill
through the legislature. The law provides:
" That in all school, village and city elections, women who can read the state con-
stitution printed in English, shall be allowed to vote for all school, village or city offi-
cers, and on all questions pertaining to school, village and city regulations, on the
same terms and conditions as prescribed by law for male citizens, if able to read at
least one section of the state constitution.
666 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
"That all laws prescribing the qualifications of voters at school, village and city-
elections, shall apply to women who can read the state constitution, as provided, and
they shall enjoy all the rights, privileges and immunities, and their names shall be
registered in the same manner, as provided by law for other voters."
It is thus a limited suffrage, for it expressly excepts town, county and state offi-
cers. The offices that women may vote for and the offices to which they are now
eligible under this law are: Mayor, city clerk, city attorney, city treasurer, five mem-
bers of the board of estimates for the city-at-large, a member of the board of esti-
mates for each ward, an alderman in each ward, a constable in each ward, and inspec-
tors of election in the several precincts.
This law has been held valid by the Supreme court of the state, as not conflicting
with the provision in the state constitution, declaring that only male citizens shall be
electors; and it is put on this ground: That the constitution makes it the duty of the
legislature to provide for a primary school system, and under that provision, the legis-
lature passed the provision defining the qualifications of voters under the act. The
system being a creature of the legislature, the latter was authorized to pass such reg-
ulations in reference to it, as it saw fit. Under this act the women of Michigan have
voted for a number of years; have entered into many election contests, and are now
sitting as members of our school boards.
The question the lawyers in Michigan are now debating is: Will this provision
stand the test of the courts?*
If this act be constitutional, all fair-minded and thinking people will regard the
educational qualification as a good and a prudent measure. It will, no doubt, prove
to be the entering wedge for full state suffrage, and, as such, it is of great interest to-
the whole country. A wise provision it must also be regarded because it gives munic-
ipal suffrage to a limited number of women, and to the best class of them, as a sort
of preliminary trial. It thus meets the objection that woman suffrage, if granted, will
only increase the number of ignorant voters. The bill recognizes woman as a political
factor, and from the small majorities now existing between the two great political
parties, it practically gives her an opportunity to hold the balance of power in the
villages and cities of Michigan. It is one hopeful sign of the new order of things
toward which we are evidently tending, that political organizations of women, called
Municipal Franchise Leagues, have been formed in different parts of Michigan and
are earnestly studying such subjects as: (i) Qualifications of voters; (2) Officers.
Elective, their requirements, duties and responsibilities; (3) Officers Appointive,
their requirements, duties and responsibilities; (4) Common Council; (5) Boards,
how constituted and respective duties; (6) City or Village taxes, school taxes and
highway taxes; (7) Elections, how conducted; Board of Registration, its duties; (8)
Ordinances.
In Detroit a member of the legislature — Representative Shellberg — is addressing
meetings of women every Thursday afternoon on such subjects as: (i) The Primary
Caucus; (2) Naturalization; (3) The Constitution; (4) Conventions; (5) Regis-
tration; (6) How to Vote; (7) The Strength of Independence.
As a result of these different modes of agitation women are forming themselves
into political organizations in different parts of Michigan. Everything indicates that
they will not be cajoled by political tricksters into furthering the interests of any party
or clique if the women of capacity and of sterling integrity, who are the leaders of the
movement in Detroit, can help it.
Another hopeful sign of the times is that numbers of noble, thinking men are not
only helping women, who are cautiously and timidly groping toward a comprehension
and an appreciation of their political rights and civic duties, but they are also giving
them freely of their own knowledge and experience, and are aiding them to use this
privilege wisely and well.
* The coarts have since decided the bill onconBtitutional.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 667
It begins to look very much as though what has seemed but a dream of the future
is to become a living reality in the near present, and that good men and good women
shall hold the balance of political power in this country, and that good men shall join
with good women in an earnest endeavor to bring about a better condition of affairs
than now exists. Not only are men helping women in political gatherings, but a gen-
erous and chivalrous spirit is also manifested in other directions. At a recent meet-
ing of the common council in Detroit Alderman Wright offered the following resolu-
tion, which was adopted without debate:
Whereas, By a recent act of the legislature the women of this city, under certain restrictions,
will be permitted to participate in the coming municipal elections; and
Whereas, Inasmuch as it is reasonable to suppose that several thousand of them will participate
in the election, be it
Resolved, That it is the sentiment of this body that the said women should be represented upon
each municipal election board in order that all the privileges and benefits derived by such representa-
tion may be duly accorded to them.
It is amusing to observe how both Republicans and Democrats are now doing
their utmost to secure the vote of the women at the approaching fall elections. In a
recent interview a prominent politician in Detroit gives it as his opinion that women
really do purify politics, and that when it comes to party enthusiasm and systematic
work women not only equal men, but even surpass them.
The *' Municipal Suffrage Bill for Women in Michigan " has made soijie enemies,
as the following will show:
"The Michigan Liquor Dealers' Association- met in delegate convention two
hundred and fifty strong, at Arbeiter Hall, Grand Rapids, August 23, and resolved to
oppose the law giving women municipal suffrage. In a preliminary circular sent out
to the trade some weeks ago, the association says:
" ' The last session of the legislature in this state, by giving to the women a fran-
chise with an educational restriction, struck a blow directly at our interests and
rights. It is only a question of time as to what the inevitable result will be to us,
unless we promptly get under one banner and fight shoulder to shoulder for our
interests.' "
There is one important feature of the situation in Michigan which must not be
overlooked, and that is the educational value of this bill toward the attainment of
full suffrage for women. The force gained from the success of school suffrage has.
carried the movement on to the attainment of municipal suffrage. Public opinion
must be educated by means of municipal suffrage, so that the attainment of state
suffrage first, and afterward federal suffrage, will be only questions of time.
" Now we have a definite purpose to work for: to enlighten women concerning
the situation and arouse them to a sense of duty and responsibility to intelligently
and judiciously exercise this new privilege and thus make way for their full political
enfranchisement," says Mrs. Emily B. Ketchum, President of the Michigan Equal
Suffrage Association.
The effect of this municipal suffrage law on the villages and cities in Michigan will
be watched with interest by thinkers all over this country and, possibly, all over the
world. The hope of its advocates is, that in proportion as the results predicted by its
adherents are realized, will men from other states adopt it in their own.
WOMEN IN POLITICS.
By MRS. J. ELLEN FOSTER.
When the theory of popular government finds its full development and perfect
realization in the American system, woman will hold her natural place in politics.
That she may serve her country today, though dis-
franchised, and when she has the ballot in her hand
serve better, I earnestly advocate her present partici-
pation in politics.
First, what can she do; second, what does she
do; third, what will be the result of her doing?
At the basis of all influence and action is knowl-
edge. Woman's first duty is to know the system of
government under which she lives. United States
history, political as well as geographical and social,
should be familiar to every intelligent woman. Like
a romance reads some portions of it. Woman's con-
scientious nature can not fail to find warrant for
present obligation and effort in the record of what
was done in America's heroic years.
American biography is another fruitful source of
information. Not the biography of women alone, but
of men who have fought our social, industrial and
political battles.
Every contest for better conditions of living/
bears directly upon the home and the woman in it.
Ignorance of what security costs lessens appreciation
and weakens effort. Every crisis in the state, and even the ordinary conduct of
political affairs, is the culmination of causes always operative among men.
Man is the subject of government. Man is the factor in politics. The continuity
of woman's political influence is proportioned to her knowledge of man in history and
aj~ma.n in the world of today. The woman who is thus equipped as counselor, friend
Land servant in political affairs possesses unmeasured influence for good.
Not only should she know what has been, but what is. Her brain and heart
" should be in touch with the tide of human life which flows by her own hearth-stone.
She feels for the poor, for the helpless, for the suffering; she gives of her love and her
labor for their relief; she should do more, she should follow these interests to the
point of society's comprehensive action in law.
It is well to visit and build hospitals; it is better to know what lack of sanitary
conditions breeds disease, and by public sentiment coerce political and legislative
action which shall substitute conditions of health for such as breed disease.
She should not only weep over the drunkard and his family, but should study the
Mrs. J. Ellen Horton Foster was born in Lowell, Mass. She is the daughter of Rev. Jotham Horton, a Methodist
miniater. She was educated at Lima, N. Y., and has traveled extensively in Europe and America. In 1869 she married Mr.
E. C. Foster, of (jlinton, Iowa. She is the mother of four children, two sons and two daughters. The sons only are now
living. Mrs. Foster studied law, and was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of Iowa in 1872. She first practiced
alonci and afterward formed a partnership with her husband. She became an enthusiastic temperance worker, and
abandoned the practice of law largely in that interest. Her legal knowledge has been of great value in securing legislation.
Feeling the need of woman's suffrage in the cause of temperance, she became a zealous suffragist. She is a successful and
pleasing lecturer, and has published many pamphlets in the interest of temperance. She is a member of the Methodist
Church. Her postoffice address is CJhicago, 111.
MRS. J. ELLKN FOSTER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 669
problem of temperance legislation, so that the state shall, up to the full measure of
public conviction and consequent power, destroy the traffic in intoxicating beverages.
At the point where philanthropic effort seeks the aid of political action and the
defense of legislation there is the danger line in woman's political work. If her
impulses are not guided by knowledge she will miss her opportunity of usefulness,
injure the cause she loves, and incidentally lose prestige as a political factor.
What does she do? Woman's present activity is usually applied to furthering
her personal interests or the philanthropic and industrial schemes where her sympa-
thies lie, and in securing the ballot for the disfranchised half of American citizens.
These aims are good. Is not a wife a real helpmate if she honorably aids her
husband to get to Congress? No patriotic citizen need blush for the desire to sit in
the greatest council chamber of the world.
Neither need Iowa women apologize for their part in the political action which
drove the saloon out of Iowa, nor for their present determined opposition to its
return. They still declare "the saloon shall never again have legal existence in
Iowa." The pathos of their cry is pitiful while their hands arc ballotlcss; but their
political power to a limited degree is admitted by friend and foe.
What does woman do? I dare assert that woman's political influence has been a -^
necessary factor in the progressive legislation which distinguishes our time; and with
even more emphasis I declare that if she were more studious of political conditions,
and more persistent in behalf of her convictions on political questions, she might
remedy many existing defects in the conduct of public affairs. The men in politics
who love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil, have occasion to
dread the light which wornen's tongues let in on their devious ways.
lip I repudiate the sentiment which declares that a woman need have no political
convictions and need give no political service until she is enfranchised; while I can
not understand how any self-respecting patriotic woman can be content without the
scepter of freedom in this republig, I still remember how much women owe to the
system of government under the flag, and remember those to whom much is given, of
them much is required; and that he who is faithful in a few things shall be made
ruler over many things.
What will the result be? This enlargement of woman's activities will make her
stronger and purer in her home. Stagnant waters are foul, the swiftest, deepest cur-
rent is the purest.
Woman is most to her home when she contains the most in herself She will bev
a defense to her home against the world, the flesh and the devil, just in proportion as
she is able to meet the world on its many sided attacks.
A NEW FIELD FOR WOMEN.
By MRS. JULIA EDWARDS SHERMAN.
" From the rising of the sun even until the going down of the same," the marvel
of life and the mystery of death is an ever discussed and ever unsettled question. One
of intense, of unending interest, but happily not so
hopeless of solution is the so-called " woman ques-
tion."
,.^^;; ' "* " ""^'^ Man and his destiny and mission we accept as
'fi \ any every-day fact. We expect him to work, to be
strong mentally and physically. He has, as a matter
of course, to do with industrial, educational and polit-
ical life. Business and moneyed interests, from little
to big, seem his born province. From the dawn of
creation it was clearly demonstrated that man was to
till the soil, blast the rock, hew the timber. He was
to be preacher, teacher, merchant, a skilled artificer;
and nowadays when he chooses to encroach upon our
domain we even accept him without hue and cry as
our dressmaker and our domestic, and we must say
that we usually like him in these capacities and wish
there were more of him. I wonder if he would as
gracefully accept us as his tailor? Sometimes as
" lord of creation " we honor and admire man, and
we always used to love and marry him, but alas! for
poor man! such cases threaten to become rather
sporadic.
But woman and her province! What an unending subject! In times long past,
save in her own narrow sphere, ostracized and ignored; in times present, revered and
honored. What she is, what she ought to be and do, what she will be and do, are
topics inexhaustible, of talk, thought and song.
" Fair Woman's World" is no longer confined to the fashionable and social col-
umns of our leading journals; but under educational, professional and political notes,
her frequent and usually worthy mention is no longer ignored, and when she is over-
looked, why all that she has to do is to start a newspaper of her own devoted entirely to
her own interests.
Right or wrong — created for this, that or the other purpose or vocation in life —
certain it is that womankind today has established her own and her sisters' inaliena-
ble right to do anything that she can competently and honestly accomplish. She is
indeed all along the lines of life successfully carving out her own career, much to her
own satisfaction and oftentimes to the amazement and generous admiration of man,
who, in my opinion, is maligned when accused of antagonistic propensities toward his
sister man.
Mr8. Jalia Edwards Sherman was bom at Ypsilanti, Mich., in 1845. Her parents were David and Maria Fairohild
Edwards, of New England. She is an only child. She was educated at Ypsilanti, Mich., and has traveled considerably in the
United States and resided in New York City many years. In 1866 she married Mr. George Sherman, of New York, prominent
in the insurance world. He died in 1877, leaving one child, a promising son now eighteen years of age. In 1887 financial
vicissitudes caused Mrs. Sherman to enter the business world. She chose Fire and Life Insurance, in which vocation she is
favorably known. In social and literary circles she occupies an enviable position. In religions faith she is an Episcopalian^
Her postoffice address is Ypsilanti, Mich.
670
MRS. JULIA fiDWARDS SHERMAN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 671
In short, whether Eve was made from one of Adam's true or false ribs, as they are
termed in physiology, matters little; for certain it is that in this good year of 1893 vvc
must concede to Mrs. Adam her full quota of ribs, and the most prejudiced, if such
there be, must admit that they are attached to just as good and stiff a backbone as any
modern Adam can boast of possessing.
I need not enumerate the splendid achievements of our sisters, nor need I go into
detail to show you the many ways, the many fields in which countless numbers today
are earning honest bread, and I am happy to add, in some instances, are also winning
health, wealth and fame. Suffice it briefly to remind you, that the professions and
literary ranks alone number over two hundred thousand women. Six thousand are
in postoffices in this land, aside from that mighty army of shop women and girls, office
clerks, stenographers and accountants, those in factories, and especially teachers; also
the few who are engaged in real estate, mercantile pursuits, even railroading, etc.
I do not know how great a proportion, but very many of these women are doubt-
less breadwinners not from choice, but necessity, which compelled them to put aside
their sentiment, their cherished ideals, and to bend all their energies to the stern prac-
ticalities of life. All honor to this class.
Another class today enters the business world, not quite so impelled by necessity,
but some definite object in life is a vent for their restless energy, and to them a happy
solution of their destiny.
A few yet higher in the social scales are today deliberately choosing business and
public careers, and if therein they find independence, money, glory or fame sweeter
than old-fashioned home joys, why the world will have to abide by the consequences,
and just what the outcome will be remains to be seen. Who shall prophesy?
It may be reassuring to remind you that Plato, who you remember wrote nearly
four hundred years before the Saviour's birth, tells us that "all the pursuits of men are
the pursuits of women also," and in all of them, he adds, "woman is only a weaker
man."
Well, happily all women are not breadwinners either from choice or necessity.
Granted that woman may today enter upon any business career that in her opinion
seems well and good, I would call your attention to just one field, by her heretofore
quite overlooked or ignored. It is a field full of promise and profit for women with
any aptitude in this direction, and it is an avenue that will never be crowded because
it is not the majority who can succeed in this line, and this field is life insurance.
The social and financial status of the business makes it a suitable, dignified calling for
womankind. Comparatively few women have as yet entered its ranks as solicitors,
agents or managers, but those who have attempted it are making money, and no mean
fame in the business world.
To fully explain this work, let me first speak somewhat of life assurance. You
are perhaps aware that it is today the greatest financial, and the most beneficent insti-
tution in this country. Its sure benefits are scattered broadcast all over this and other
lands. It has clothed, warmed, fed and built homes for countless widows and made
■education possible for their fatherless children. Indeed, its merits in the business
world are perhaps too well known to need any recital of them; perhaps, too, the least
practical woman here must be aware that in thesetimes of financial depression, collapsed
interests, and broken banks, no one questions the security of what is termed "Old-line"
Life Insurance Companies. I repeat that they are the most secure and the biggest
moneyed interests in the world today, and as you doubtless know, thousands of men
are covered by their protection, and there are many more thousands who need and
ought to have policies in these stanch companies. And this brings me to point out
to you the fact that as our country grows in age and wealth, we have among us not only
scores of wealthy men, but we have also great numbers of wealthy women. To most
of these their riches have come as a new thing, and American women until of late so
little experienced in business and money matters, find their riches oftener than other-
Avise, a not unmixed blessing. Shameful as the record is, many wealthy women have
672 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
been plundered by their too grasping brothers; however, today, women are fast learning-
how to invest and how to care for their own funds.
To this class, not as active workers but as participators in this " New Field for
Women," I would address a few words.
Like other things life insurance, of late years, has been progressive, and hand in
hand with its sure protection there is now added the investment feature also. Espe-
cially is this the case in what is known as the endowment policy; i.e., one insures for a
certain sum payable to one's self at the end of a stated period, say ten, fifteen or
twenty years hence, and the certainty of receiving again in life (or as an estate in case
of death) this sum, together with good dividends, commends itself beyond any savings
bank in the country. No other investment is so sure; consequently our richest and
keenest business men we find carrying the largest insurance upon their lives.
No wise, prudent man goes without fire insurance protection, and yet every house
does not burn, but every life ceases some day, and very few persons indeed in this
world of financial vicissitudes can afford to ignore life insurance. 1 say it deliberately,
there is not of insurable age one wealthy woman in this land who ought to be without
good life insurance protection in proportion to her financial status. Other investments
promising large returns are so often disappointing. Such unforeseen reverses con-
stantly occurring, all combine to make life assurance one of the necessities of our
times. An easy and simple thing it is to do; a wise precaution to take, and, except for
those in very straitened circumstances, within the reach of all persons.
Now to carry insurance and its blessings to just this one class of wealthy and tax-
paying women would indeed afford abundant, I may say inexhaustible work, for very
many women as life insurance agents or solicitors. Aside from good remuneration
for their labor, there would, in every instance, be the consciousness of having inesti-
mably benefited the assured.
If you please, let us take just one other class — school-teachers. A mighty army
they are. There is scarcely any work that makes such great demands upon a woman's
vitality, especially her nervous forces; consequently her working years in this field are
comparatively few. Now, if during these wage-earning years she will put for a few years
a certain sum called the premium into an endowment policy, it will insure her an old
age replete with creature comforts, and full of self-respect and dignity because robbed
of financial terrors.
Small earnings put into savings banks are so hopeless It takes years in this
way to accomplish savings for old age or calamity, moreover such savings are alto-
gether too accessible, and oftener than otherwise are drawn out for various purposes;
but one premium paid into a stanch insurance company means, should one die the
next minute, an estate of so many hundred or thousand dollars, which will protect the
living or those dependent upon us. This is financial protection, the cheapest and the
best that the financial world affords, and as said before, in the case of an endowment
policy and the insured living to the end of the endowment period or term there is the
certainty of funds for one's self.
Again, the time was when none of our best companies insured women's lives.
Today several are writing such risks, but some of them charge an extra premium upon
female risks. However, two or three of our oldest and best companies are not bound
by this absurd rule; instead, they insure women upon any and all plans just the same
as they do men, and without extra premium. Certainly such a company commends
itself to those seeking insurance.
In this field work is abundant. Whoever enters here can feel that she is doing
dignified, womanly, worthy work. Today women are standing by each other, trusting
and believing, not only in the honesty, but in the ability of their sisters as never
before; consequently, womanly women are in some cases finding it more agreeable to
do business with women than with men, though the latter are by no means bears or
boors when properly approached in the business world by women.
If our American men are as good and gracious as I personally rate them, they
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 673
will by no means have heavily burdened consciences. Business avenues are so
crowded, and the competition for bread is so sharp that we must forgive man if at
first he was none too gracious toward woman, who demanded her share of both his
bread and honors; but let a woman once demonstrate her ability to win bread, to do
good and honest work, and she has no further feuds with man, but ever after com-
mands his respect and esteem, and beyond that she must not presume.
As said before, one must be possessed of certain qualifications and an inborn
aptitude to do successful work in life insurance ranks; but any woman with talent or
inclination in this direction has but to enter an insurance office, which is b.y far the best
way to learn the business, and any of our companies will gladly instruct and aid to
the fullest extent, giving her a fair chance to test her abilities in this line. If turning
your attention to this subject induces even one wealthy or salary earning woman to
place yearly a share of her money where she will some day be sure to find it, espe-
cially if it suggests to any dependent sister a way whereby to support herself or her
dear ones, I will feel well repaid for this little effort in your behalf.
43
AN APPEAL OF ART TO THE LOVERS OF ART.
By MRS. MARY E. CHERRY NORRIS.
All men are conscious of the manifold diversity and multiplicity of the objects by
which they are surrounded. Few and far between are they whose gift is to discern
the underlying unity which characterizes the ultimate
reduction of this multiform diversity. As this is true
in the world of nature, so it is eminently true in the
realm of art. In the last analysis we find the divine
spark, which is the summum. bo?ium, concealed beneath
the drapery of all artistic productions. There lies
the divinity of the human soul. The fire which was
brought from Heaven and bestowed on mortals has
been cherished and kept alive, and men work at their
best when they endeavor to explain the potency of
that flame. The soul of art is the divinity of humanity
— it is the manifestation of God. So closely akin are
the members of that band of souls who live in the
work of art that at times we can not distinguish one
from another.
We look upon a painting and, suddenly, the can-
vas, the coloring, the framework are lost to sight.
Our eyes grow dim and the picture speaks no longer
to the eyes; the "dweller in the innermost" hears
what the eyes saw, the rhythmic lines of the verse
which tells the tale, and the painter is as truly a poet
as he who wields the pen. A thought comes down
from Heaven — it matters little whether it falls into heart of poet, painter or musician
— if the soul of the artist is there the thought will find true expression, and the frag-
rance of the flower from Heaven will be of heavenly sweetness in the soul, whether it
is borne in upon us through the gate of the eye or of ear, or whether it comes to us
in poetry of line and verse. Is there one heart present that has not heard the song
that has come from the heart of the true painter? and has not the discord or the har-
mony pained or soothed the soul when hearing, as it were, through the eye? And the
artist is great if his song or poem has been heard through the colors on the canvas.
Once, in an Old World city, a young woman, weary and discouraged and sorely
tempted to give up the struggle against the commonplace, came upon a picture by that
great allegorical painter, George T. Watts. The picture was entitled " Mammon
Dedicated to His Worshipers." What a change came into the life of this girl through
the song that picture sung no one save God and the artist can ever know, and so loud
was the voice that spoke that the reverberation will never cease, but ever onward roll
until all earthly life is past and self is lost in soul.
To be an artist! What does it mean ? Can anyone answer the query, or must it ever
Mrs. Frederic W. Norris is a native of the Island of Ceylon, East Indies, and is a real daughter of the Orient. Hei
parents were the Rev. S. Henry Cherry and Henrietta Ebell Cherry. She was educated under the continued supervision ol
her uncle, Prof. Adrian J. Ebell, M. D., Ph. B., late President of the International Academy of Science, Berlin. She has
traveled in Europe and America, her home being in New York City until her marriage in 1890. She married the Rev. Fred-
eric W. Norris, a clergyman of the Protestant church, who is now in charge of St. Mark's Cathedral, Salt Lake City. Her
profession is Shakespearean studies and vocal culture. She occupies the greater part of her time in visiting the poor and
Bick, in whose behalf she employs the gifts of recitation and song with which she adorns her profession. In religious faith
she is an ardent and faithful Christian. Her postoflBce address is St. Mark's Rectory, Salt Lake City, \} tah.
674
MRS. FREDERIC \V. NORRIS.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 675
remain unanswered? Is it the man who writes to please the people, or is it not rather
that man or that woman who looks upon talent as God-given, and who therefore
strives to advance art regardless of self, who says within himself, " Can I do aught to
lead others upward through this bond, this tie that holds me from out the mire
of the commonplace; can I not, by striving to be worthy, give others to drink from the
cup of precious ambrosia which is only left in my keeping that I may use it for good?
What can I do to prove myself a worthy steward of such a gift? " And can we claim
that one branch of art is greater than another so long as the one or the other is a gift
in the keeping of an unselfish soul? Is it he who paints with brush, or he who wields
•the pen; is it she whose voice entrances thousands of listeners as by magic spell; is it
he who charms the world with exquisite skill upon piano or organ; he who is master
of that other instrument which holds within itself a soul that cries for relief at times
from the wooden casket in which it is confined — a soul that is dumb until a master-
hand guides the song and interprets to those kindred souls the language of his captive
strains? Are the different branches of art, the different departments of music, rivals?
or is one but the complement of the other?
And now we would speak especially of music. We then look to those who
have been the great teachers or leaders of thought — the golden-tongued poets
who are among the world's greatest musicians. What says the king of dramatists
— that man whose strength of will is felt even now, though his body has long
since crumbled into dust, whose commands the greatest of earthly monarchs does
not disregard? " Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews, whose golden touch
could soften steel and stones, make tigers tame and mighty leviathans forsake
imsounded deeps to dance upon the sands." Robert Browning says, "Music (which
is earnest of a Heaven, seeing we know strange emotions by it not else to be
revealed) is a voice — low voice — calling fancy as a friend to the greensward in the
summer time, and she fills all the way with dancing steps which have made painters
pale, and they go on while stars look at them, and winds call to them as they leave
life's path for the twilight world where the dead gather." Carlisle tells us that "all
inmost things are melodies. The meaning of song goes deep. Who is there in logical
words can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomed
speech which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for a moment gaze into
that. See deep enough and you see musically, the heart of nature being everywhere
music if you can only reach it."
Ruskin, in one of his most interesting chapters, lights for us seven lamps which
are to illume the pathway for the artist who builds in marble and in wood. Is
not he who builds for us fairy palaces of sweet sounds as much an architect as he who
builds for the eye to see? Is not the ear one of the portals to the soul within? Let
us see whether or not Ruskin's " Seven Lamps of Architecture" may serve for the
artist whose life is given to the building of the music palace which will be worthy to
receive the royal guest before whom the heavenly hosts are bending in their never-
ceasing song of " Holy! Holy! Holy! " Ruskin gives us in the chapter of which we
have spoken the lamp of sacrifice, the lamp of power, the lamp of beauty, the lamp
of life, the lamp of truth, the lamp of memory and the lamp of obedience. Oh
music loving souls! let us look for a moment and see whither the lamp of sacrifice
would guide us with its rays. What may we offer in sacrifice to advance the growth
of the Music kingdom? As in a dream comes back the answer, " Forgetfulness of
self' and self-success." Yet who is willing to place self in the balance and be out-
weighed and forgotten for art's sake, and still rejoice in the work that is done? With-
out sacrifice nothing worthy can be accomplished — this is true in religion and it is
true in art. Look well to the weary and oft-time shadowed road, for unless the lamp
of sacrifice shines out brightly, the difficulties will appall, and we shall be tempted to
turn back; unless this lamp be held aloft, and our eyes with steadfast gaze be fixed
thereupon, our own shadows cast before from the lurid light of self will cause us to
stumble and to fall into depths of oblivion. Let this light go before us, and then
will the shadow of self fall backward.
676 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The lamp of truth. When one girds himself up for a journey — a life-journey into
the art world — let him beware of the serpent of deceit, whose wily tongue once brought
discord into Eden's bowers; whose tempting voice marred the harmony of human life.
Let him beware of becoming himself a traitor. Let him, already lighted by the lamp
of sacrifice, look now for the truth, the ideal which can light every shadow of doubt,
and burn in its white fire the last vestige of the veil which would conceal motives.
Let him look into his inmost soul and commune long with the dweller in the inner-
most sanctum. Let him look to it that he enter not into the way of quicksands, where
the lamp of truth can not burn; where damp, miasmatic fogs choke the light, and
where the traveler will lose his path, and the life be lost in darkness. Let him beware
that he follows not a will-o'-the-wisp, deceiving emanation from graves of the mold-
ering dead. Let him look closely that he be not led astray. The truth light wavers
not, but, like the pillar of fire which led God's people of old through darkness of the
night of bondage, the lamp of truth will guide through all dangers, through roughest
ways, to the very altar of God, where the reward will be found for all who have in the
art world been faithful.
Let him be fearless, and seek not to cover by flimsy artifice the many failures.
Stand firm, and in the white light of truth all faults will be burned away, and at the
last he may be worthy of being thought what he now wishes to seem. Truth will
shrivel forever and destroy the veil of the seeming.
The lamp of power. Is our traveler lighted by its rays? Neither intricacy nor
quantity (if I may use that word just here) denote power. Neither does an artist's
power depend upon surrounding circumstances. Not to be governed by, a true artist
must govern circumstances. Methinks Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Chopin and
Wagner could show more power, more greatness, as artist souls in weaving poetry
from the old-time spinet than can many a so-called artist of the present time hammer
from the keys of the finest instrument of modern days. Why is this? Is it not that
the lamp of power was alight within the soul, and the artist felt his power to be
master of the machine before him? He was the soul — the instrument but the acces-
sory. The artist held the secret, the "open sesame " to the garden of God, where
rarest pictures are painted in colors of sweetest sound. He could enter and gather
for us the heaven-born blossoms, at times bright roses of love, and again a wreath of
cypress or of yew, and his own hands could weave the crown of laurel which should
be given at the end. The lamp of power can be lighted only by true and reverent
love of art, and if the artist's soul is lighted thus, he dare not stop to ask excuse or
make apology, or tremble for fear of self-failure. If he loves his art, he shall carry
safely the lamp of power. If one has a message from Heaven, it will find expression.
Let the traveler think more of what that message may do for mankind, and less of the
messenger; more of its effect or power to uplift, and less of the praise that the world
will give. Oh, the commonplace to which a so-called artist stoops when he offers
excuse for work unworthily done! Lovers of art should bear the message that God
through them sends to mankind, with forgetfulness of self, and free from burden of
excuse and apology should carry with stronger hand the lamp of power, which will
light them toward the inner sanctuary, where they are called upon to act as priests
before the starving, thirsty multitudes. He who can not forget self (which is weak-
ness and sin) and grow toward strength and power gigantic, has no right at the high
altar. If he fears what the world will say, let him go back and grovel with the com-
monplace.
Beauty — the central lamp, as Ruskin gives the order. On the one hand are sac-
rifice, truth, power; on the other, life, memory, obedience. And what is it to be lighted
by all the other lamps, but to stand in the center and in the full light of the central
lamp of beauty? If this be so. will not the artist strive for higher motives, and leave
no earth-worshipers the caricatures of holy sound in way of catch tunes and trick
music, which appeals to the lower nature; and will he not strive after more uplifting,
heaven-born thoughts, leaving to earth-children the music that can only set the feet
' THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 677
a-dancing, while he carries reverently the divine spark which shall grow to light him
toward the source of all that is beautiful? Oh lovers of soul music! Do not deaden
this holy light by letting the dancers cast their shadow over yoii. The gates will never
open unless the lamps of beauty shine down and wither all the false growths about
the entrance. Uproot all flowers that have no fragrance. The music-flowers must
give forth sweet fragrance, or be unworthy a place in the garden about the palace of
music. That style of composition which is unworthy a place in the most reverent
love of art, should be cast aside as false. The flowers that God has planted in each
artist's soul must be watered with tears of reverent love and pure devotion, and the
sunshine of sacrifice and of truth and of power and of beauty must shine direct, not
through the colored glass of popular fancy.
And next comes the lamp of life. What can this be to us in the world of music?
We listen to some wonderful performance in the way of vocal gymnastics or of finger
dexterity, and critics say, " admirable execution!" " Remarkable technic! " and we
are silent or give assent because conventionality makes demand. Again, a true artist
sits at the instrument, perchance breaking many set laws and rules, but now and again
striking chords that flash like white light from highest Heaven into our own souls.
The instrument may be poor, the voice imperfect, but the soul of the artist is there,
living near to the source of light and life, and the life speaks forth. Would that more
of those who struggle for the name of artist might begin within to fan into life the
divine spark, if it be there, and if not, then cease to ply at art — go back — there is no
room for triflers in this palace. All the outside polish of a common stone can not
discover a diamond; all the technic and outside finish can not create an artist. The
true artist is a living thought of God, and though his path may oftentimes lead over
rough ways, it is ever lighted by the lamps of life, which can not die.
The lamp of memory. Ruskin says: "It is in becoming memorial or monu-
mental that true perfection is attained." An architect conceives within his soul some
vast structure; carefully he selects material that will endure, and carefully he builds;
each pillar is in place, and the dome crowns all. The completed structure, though it
appeals but to the eye while we are bound down to earth sense only, is like some
grand oratorio that the soul may hear — music that has been caught and frozen into
form. Like the architect, the musician longs to leave behind him just such noble
work that may be a worthy memorial. As the architect scorns all tawdry ornament
which detracts from the dignity of the building, so does the music builder scorn all
light, trashy combinations of sound which may tickle the ears of the groundling, but
which can not stand as memorial work. All true work must be memorial. The thought
of the ideal demands that the lamps of future memory guide toward the leaving a
worthy monument of the artist's better self. The ideal that walks ever by the side of
and outlives physical man; the ideal that compares with the real as eternity compares
with time; the ideal self can never forget, even when long centuries have passed, and
men have forgotten the dust that once was infused with life by that ideal.
Oh lovers of music, strive to have worthy monuments of your work! Hold in
uplifted hands the lamp of memory, that its rays may be sent forward toward a grand
memorial erected in honor of the God-given gift that is yours.
Obedience! Is not the lover of art a worshiper at art's high altar? Will he not
listen ever closely for the voice that commands his homage, and will not one who so
loves follow without question, even through weary years of loneliness and toil? To
obey, even though it seems to tear the heart from all the ties of earth-loves!
Surely 'tis a solemn thing to enter the gate — to cross the threshold of the palace
of art — for one may not play at going in and out. There is no turning back without
sacrilege. A gift once laid upon the altar can not be recalled, and obedience is the
law in the art world — obedience to the masters. One may not trifle with an art sub-
lime. Far better take up some petty trade and be faithful thereto than seek to be an
artist if the whole soul be not in deepest earnest. *' Better pursue a frivolous trade in
678 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
serious meaning than a divine art frivolously." Look to it that there be loyal obedi-
ence, even unto death if need be!
The rays from the lamp of obedience must mingle with the other guiding lights,
and in the blending of the seven we shall find the perfect sevenfold light which will
make the darkness as the noonday. As to the architect, so to the musician; these
lamps must be the guides. When the way is dark, and gray clouds gather thick and
fast, and the heart is weary, does the artist sit down in the dark and moan and weep
and become entangled in the folds of the commonplace, whose limbs reach out among
all ranks to drag down to earth those who fain would rise above? If so, let him not
claim brotherhood with those who are yet aspiring. He has sold his birthright for a
mess of pottage that will never satisfy the craving of his soul, whose hunger may be
appeased only when the new birth comes to him, when he shall be born into that life
of which true artists while on earth catch faint glimpses in a dream.
From the time the morning stars first sang together, from the time when Miriam
rejoiced triumphant in singing with her maidens,
"Sound the loud trumpet o'er Egypt's dark sea,
Jehovah has triumphed, his people are free,"
down through the ages until the beloved disciple, seeing through cycles of time, tells
us of the song which has been sung in highest Heaven by the glorified worshipers, the
song no man could learn save those redeemed from earth — from that time gradually
unfolding its pages, developing into an art of wondrous and mysterious beauty, music,
like some strange flower opening its leaves to the light, has gradually opened petal
after petal, and we stand in awe as we catch faint glimpses of what the entire flower
may be when all is perfected.
Perchance — who knows — this great music-thought of God may be advancing and
growing greater as the ages pass, in order that it when perfected may be earth's great-
est offering to Him whose first coming was heralded by music of the heavenly host,
on Bethlehem's plain, when was sung,
" Glory to God in the highest.
On earth peace and good will to men."
THE DAWNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
By MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL
We stand today in the dying light of the nineteenth century and in the dawning
cf the twentieth. If you and I could have chosen when to have existed I think there
would have been no more inspiring time than now.
Look back fifty years, and from the dim twilight of
the tallow candles of those days we stand now in the
brilliant electric light of this year eighteen hundred
and ninety-three. Look back farther still and we
find that the battle of New Orleans was fought three
weeks after the treaty of peace had been signed in
England, because no electricity bound together the
two continents. Now New York and London talk
together as two men face to face. A dynamite explo-
sion under London bridge is read by you in your
evening paper, one hour after it happened, and by
our time five hours before it really occurred. We
talk with those we love the best hundreds of miles
away, as though they were in the next room. We
catch their dear voices and catch the merry mirth of
their laughter. We travel in elegant cars nearly equal
to our finest drawing-rooms. We sleep on luxurious
beds and dine better than the kings of old on our rail-
roads that carry us even in midwinter all over this
great country without the least discomfort. Look
back again fifty years and see our fathers and mothers
making their way in cold, comfortless stages over terrible roads, taking days where
now we take as many hours. My friends that listen to me today, this progress has
not come easy, and if it had been prophesied fifty years ago I think the prophet would
have been mobbed or thrown in jail. Again, this progress has not come from con-
servatism, it has come from the persistent efforts of enthusiastic radicals; men and
women with ideas in their brains and courage in their hearts to make them practical.
As the first steamship crossed the Atlantic it brought to America the first copies of
Doctor Lardner's book proving that an ocean steamship was an impossibility. What
strange reading this book would be now for a traveler after a lapse of fifty years, when
twice a week a fleet of ocean steamers leave New York City for the different ports in
Europe. There are scores of books prophetic of the impossibility of equal rights for
men and women in education, industry and politics that will be even more absurd
after an equal lapse of time. In all this progress woman has been in the van. With
the prejudice of the ages confronting her on every hand she has pushed steadily for-
ward and the stone wall of opposition is beginning to crumble. Indeed, now it is tot-
Mre. Mary Seymour Howell is a native of New York. She was born August, 1848. Her parents were Norman Seymour,
a kinsman of Gov. Horatio Seymour, and Frances Hale Metcalf , a cousin of Salmon P. Chase. She received a classical edu-
cation at the Mount Morris Academy and Mrs. Laura Ralston's Seminary for Young Ladies at Lockport, N. Y. She has trav-
eled extensively in the United States and Canada. She married Mr. George Rogers Howell, Presbyterian clergyman and
author. Her only child, Seymour Howell, a young man of great promise, died a Junior at Harvard College March 9, 1891.
Her principal literary works are contributions to the press and a book not yet published entitled, " Glimpses of Immortality."
She has fourteen lectures and is now under the care of the " Bryant Literary Union," New York City, and " Woman's Lecture
Bureau," tind is national lecturer for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In religious faith she is a devout believer
in Christ. She now attends the Presbyterian Church, and believes in the union of all churches under a liberal creed. Her
Ix>8toffice Eiddress is Albany, N. Y.
679
MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL.
680 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
taring and we must get out of the way, the stone still standing, before the full dawn of
the twentieth century is here. Ever since woman began to think for herself, ever since
woman took life in her own hands, the dawning of a great light has flooded this world.
We are the mothers of men. Show me the mothers of a country and I will tell you of
its sons.
The destiny of the world today lies in the hearts and brains of its women. This
world can not travel upward faster than the feet of its women are climbing the paths
of progress. Put us back if possible, veil us in harems, take from us all knowledge,
make us beasts of burden, teach us we have no souls or brains, and this earth goes
back to the Dark Ages. The nineteenth century is closing over a world arising from
bondage. It is the sublimest closing of any century the world has ever beheld. The
nations of the earth have seen and are still looking at that luminous writing in the
heavens, " the truth shall make you free," and for the first time are gathering to them-
selves the true significance of liberty. The freedom that endures comes not with the
clash of arms and din of battles. The victory that is lasting is not gained on bloody
battle-fields or by the selfish arbitration of scheming men. Blood and battles may be
a means to an end, but the liberty of the sons of God must be in the souls of men,
must be the very blood of that soul's life, and thus far in the history of this world it
has never been fully known. The dying light of the nineteenth century beholds it in
the dawning rays of the twentieth, because the mothers of men are, for the first time,
putting on the beautiful garments of liberty. We need, and the world needs, our
political freedom. Even our social and religious liberty is worthless without political
liberty. Let us this morning dedicate ourselves anew to our labor for woman, and
go forth with braver souls, cleaner brains and more resolute purpose to our work for
these years.
I would have the women of our country so aroused to the greatness of the work
and the few years that are left us in this century; so filled with zeal, determination and
enthusiasm that the Congress of the United States and our legislatures may know and
understand that our freedom must be fully granted to us by 1900, so that the twentieth
century shall dawn on a " government of the people, for the people and by the peo-
ple." Now it is a government of the men, for the men, and by the men. God bless
the men.
It is the evening of the nineteenth century, but its twilight is clearer than its
morning. I look back and I see each year improvement and advancement. I see
woman gathering up her soul and personality and claiming them as her own against
all odds and the world. I see her now asking that that personality be felt in her
nation. I see old prejudices giving way. All reforms for the elevation of humanity
have the great woman heart in them. Have I been too radical? Would you have
me more conservative? What is conservatism? It is the dying faith of a closing
century. What is fanaticism? It is the dawning light of a new era. Yes, my friends,
a new era for the world will dawn with the twentieth century. I look forward to that
time with beating heart and bated breath. I lean forward to it with an impatient
eagerness. I catch the first faint rays of that beautiful morning. In the East the star
has appeared and soon the full dawn of the twentieth century will be upon us. I see
a race of men, strong, brave and true, because the mothers of men are free, and
because they gave to their sons the pure blood of liberty.
Hail, then, twentieth century, and hasten on thy coming! Go to thy grave, oh,
nineteenth century! A century that will stand out for all time as an epoch that buried
slavery and ushered in liberty. A century that had a Lincoln who wrote his name
among the stars as a lover of the free. A century that saw enfranchised the colored
race and woman. A century that had its peerless Wendell Phillips, its dauntless William
Lloyd Garrison, its indomitable Sumner and its irrepressible Seward. A century that
had its brilliant Chase, its eloquent Frederick Douglass, its commanding and uncon-
querable Gerrit Smith and its glorious old John Brown. A century that has known
its Greeley, its Garfield and its Grant, A century that has had its great statesmen,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 681
Webster, Clay and Calhoun. A century that ha.s had its Stephen Douglas and its
Horatio Seymour. A century that has known its Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose
verses wedded together Italy and England. A century that has had its Harriet
Beecher Stowe, whose " Uncle Tom's Cabin " has been read only less widely than the
Bible. A century that has had its George Eliot, who took the name of a man that she
might reap a man's reward. A century that has known an Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a
Lucy Stone, a P" ranees Willard, a Florence Nightingale, a Clara Barton, and hosts of
other grand women, will stand out to the ages as a century pre-eminent for women of
vigorous thought and strong minds, who waged without bloodshed the greatest battle
of all time, and whose victories will usher in the dawn of the twentieth century. When
the historian shall make up the record of the nineteenth century, these noble men and
women will be found on the roll of the illustrious ones who have adorned and ennobled
the world.
The late lamented William Hunt of Boston has two paintings in the Assembly
Chamber of the State of New York. One is entitled " The Discoverer." It represents
a man in a little boat on the trackless deep. He stands with folded arms looking
calmly and fearlessly into the future, for a woman is at the helm and safely guides the
little craft. Another woman is partly in the water with her head bowed on her arms
which clasp the side of the boat, the very embodiment of despair. That picture fitly
represents the nineteenth century. The companion picture is called "Darkness Flee-
ing Before the Dawn." The darkness is represented by wild horses that plunge and
throw themselves madly about as if to escape the approach of light, and that
inspired, that immortal artist painted that dawning as a woman. The picture is ever
before me and I leave it w^ith you. Superstition, ignorance, injustice, intemperance,
impurity, all fleeing before the coming of women. My friends, that picture represents
the dawning of the twentieth century. Then in the effulgence of our nation's trium-
phant and glorious career, the noble and the true representatives of fifty millions of
women gathering from the North and South, the East and West will meet in the beau-
tiful capitol of our republic and with one loud acclaim shout, " Daughters of America,
the home of the brave and the land of the free, arise and shine, for thy light has come
and the glory of the Lord is arisen upon thee."
THE MONOLOGUE AS AN ENTERTAINMENT.
By MISS JENNIE O'NEIL POTTER.
One night, in the year 1891, after listening to a monotonous elocutionary
recital in Chickering Hall, New York, I returned home with rather a heavy heart, feel-
ing that I had chosen the wrong profession.
Retiring to rest in a listless manner, I fell into
a dreaming sleep. Again I was wending my way to
a soliloquist's entertainment, but the place seemed
changed. Instead of a dimly lighted corridor, electric
flashes in bright-colored globes gave splendor to the
scene. There was a clamor for seats, and every one
seemed expectant and happy. As I entered the audi-
torium, the odor of sweet flowers filled the air. I
could see no orchestra, but the low, soft music that
stole out and rested sweetly upon our ears, told that
they were there, screened by palms and foliage.
I scanned my program closely. Is this to be
an elocutionary entertainment? thought I. On deli-
cate perfumed cards I read: " Monologue Dramatic — ■
The Life of Woman in Tableaux." By whom imper-
sonated I could not discover. A party of giggling
girls back of me were wondering who she was, and
■ whence she came.
Looking back and through the closely seated hall,
my eyes were dazzled and pleased with the appear-
ance of the audience. Not a hat marred the many
lovely faces there. Now and then a spray of forget-me-nots, or a curl of bright ribbon
nestled around a fair girl's head. And like sunbeams peeping through a shaded
grove, diamonds and precious jewels flashed. The men were all in evening dress,
wore gloves, looked wide-awake and brilliant as the women.
Suddenly a hush: The music swells and the curtain rises. Our eyes linger on the
dainty stage, turned so deftly into a perfect bijou of beauty. Soft silken draperies
covered all the angles of the ungraceful platform. Rugs, rich and soft, were carelessly
strewn upon the floor, while roses, white and red, nodded and welcomed us there. In
the distance we heard the ripple and laugh of a child's voice, and rushing before our
eyes came the figure of a little girl, clad in tiny frock and pinafore. In her arms she
carried a doll, and as the applause died away, she flitted here and there, now with her
doll then with her playmates, weaving with imaginary friends wreaths of flowers, and
serving them all a cup of tea from her cherished tea set. On and on in merry laugh-
ing childhood, only to be turned to tears when she finds that her doll and tea set
have been spirited away.
She fades from our view, but in a moment she returns to us, now older and
stronger grown, her girlish form decked out in mannish clothes. Stepping lightly
from off her bicycle she unrolls a manuscript on "Woman's Rights." Here we saw
Miss Jennie O' Neil Potter was born in Patch Grove, Wis. She is a young woman of much talent and energy. Miss
Potter is a gifted and cultured elocutionist, and is meeting with great success presenting monologues. She first appeared
in New York in 1889, and met with great success in 1891. " Flirts and Matrons," by Robert G. Morris the well known play-
wright ; " Orange Blossoms." and " A Letter from Home," were written by Townsend. These three monologues are copy-
righted and belong to Miss Potter. Several of Miss Potter's poems have been published in the Texas Siftinga. She belongs
to the Methodist Church.
682
MISS JENNIE O'NEIL POTTER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 683
the student. She discussed Aristotle, and delights in the study of biology. She talks
to men in the same tone that she uses in ordering her maid. And the reformer of the
nineteenth century disappears.
But how quickly the change. Before our startled eyes stood the same young
lady, a vision in white tulle and rosebuds. The gauntlet of reformation is thrown
over, and she lets her eyes and sweet smiles bring to her feet suitors and admirers by
the score. At last her heart is captured, and we are rather tired of the silly chatter
between two young hearts, and rejoice when they decide to wander away into the
refreshment room to cool their fevered throats with lemon ices.
It seemed but a moment when she returned to us a bride, radiantly beautiful,
clothed in spotless white, her soul as pure as the pearly whiteness of her face, bidding
good-by to girlish follies, and fervently praying that God would watch over her and
protect the future which would make her wife and woman. The veil is lowered; the
organ plays. She is gone.
Again and again we saw her as the tender and loving wife — as the mother
watching over a precious flock of little ones. Their bright eyes and curling locks we
could almost see as she busied herself among them, now scolding, now petting them,
and at last, clustered around her knee in evening prayer, the grandest and most
exquisite scene of all, motherhood, passed from our gaze.
To be followed in our imagination, fifty years later, by the appearance of an old
lady, her face beaming with the soft, though deep-seated lines, from a life well spent
in rearing and caring for her loved ones. The husband and father is dead. It is her
birthday. She waits alone her children and grandchildren. Her thoughts go
back to the earlier days. The Bible, her sweetest comfort now, is resting upon her
knee. One by one the children come, but alas! the face of the husband and the cheery
voice of a favorite boy are gone forever. But there she stands, crowned queen of
many hearts. Her arms embrace grown men and women who seem as children yet.
Vanished hours return, and grandmother is to that little group the most precious and
lovely figure of them all.
The curtain is lowered; the strains of "Home, Sweet Home," swell from out the
shaded screen, and we knew the end had come.
I was about to congratulate the young woman who had portrayed the wonderful
tour de force y when I awoke. But the dream haunted me, and at last became a practical
materialization. With no idea that I could impersonate the ideal of my dream, yet I
saw where I could at least give promise of a novel and refreshing entertainment.
Repeating the dream to Mr. Robert Griffin Morris, a man blessed with the unique
faculty of creative genius, he grasped the idea, and in a few weeks I held in my pos-
session the manuscript of "Flirts and Matrons," a departure somewhat from the
ideal, but —
" I wonder if ever a song was sung,
That the singer's heart sang sweeter;
And I wonder if ever a rhyme was rung,
But the thought surpassed the metre."
The insight that the study gave me to dramatic art I never before discovered in
recitation. There are ten millions of people (it is estimated) who do not patronize
the theater, and probably thrice as many who admire the dramatization of such
authors whose books would not make a play. Placed in vivid impersonation with the
power of a Coquelin, the grand and beautiful thoughts and words of George Eliot in
the mouth of "Adam Bede" would be a dramatic monologue greater than many pre-
sumptuous plays with a long list of players and parts. Ibsen's plays seem classic and
profound when a refined impersonator portrays and suggests the wearied characters
in "The Pillars of Society," or " Ghosts."
It is there one gets the deeper meaning of the author's words, which are too often
sacrificed when placed in the hands of players who, for effect, dwell upon situations
684 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and scenic display. With a monologue effectively presented, there would necessarily
be less of plot, fewer striking situations, and none of the complicated incidents that
give excitement to a play; but there would also be something that would attract even
more strongly than any one character in a play — the ability to infuse in many char-
acters "life" without artifice, and making the one impersonation a physiological study
and mental accomplishment.
There is a serious difficulty in overcoming monotony in even the brightest writ-
ten monologue. Therefore, it must not abound in long drawn-out declamatory
speeches. Everything must tend to natural effect. Change of expression and attitude
is necessary, and above all a natural tone of voice. I don't believe that a person with
a high-pitched voice could play successfully the brightest written monologue extant.
The emotion and control of the voice, the vivacity and earnestness of the player, are
the requisites of success.
I once attended an informal reception in New York, and as most " informals " are
very formal and stiff-jointed, the hostess thought of a plan to introduce dancing.
How to clear the drawing-room was the question. " I have it," she said. " There is
Miss ; I shall ask her to recite." And while that naturally pretty girl twisted
her face in agonizing wrinkles, begging " the sexton not to ring the bell," one by one
the rooms were cleared. At the conclusion she was left alone, save for a few patient
listeners, and as I listened to the congratulations of the hostess, " Thank you, my dear,
you have such talent; why don't you go on the stage? " my imagination carried me to
the bedside of that fair unemotional girl, and in fancy I could hear her plan her future
as a great actress, while the hostess slept soundly that night, content that her dance
at least was a success.
Dramatic schools and colleges also have a great share in burdening the platform
and stage with " failures." Their methods may be ever so perfect, their knowledge
ever so complete; but they lack the moral courage to refuse the applicant who can
offer the necessary fee for tuition, although absolutely deficient in natural ability, and
thereby, many a useful mechanic is spoiled, and any number of clerks, housekeepers
and people who would be successful in any business line are " possessed forever," until
hope dies, and they often realize when too late that a mistake has been made. But no
one would think of presenting a bill of damages against the schools that first fostered
and held their youthful ambition.
Eloquence and dramatic instinct are gifts, and can not be artificially acquired.
There is a tremendous amount of crude eloquence that is never properly developed,
for, strange as it may seem, the naturally eloquent person rarely develops and polishes
his or her talent in schools set apart for this purpose. This is a mistake; for the cul-
tivation of a voice for speaking is as necessary as the cultivation of a voice for sing-
ing. A serious trouble with American women (I do not speak of the men) is the lack
of melody in her speaking voice, and if a woman or girl has the money to spare for
the cultivation of a soft, low-toned voice, I would advise them by all means to do so.
I have often thought that if all the mighty women who make public speeches in
behalf of woman's suffrage had soft and eloquent voices, we women should havevoted
long ago. Any method that teaches unnatural attitudes and meaningless expression,
claiming it to be Delsarte or any other " sarte," is wrong. Every good, graceful thing
we do is the method of the much abused Delsarte. For instance, if a woman calls
upon you and tells you that the day is beautiful and the sun is bright, without the
lighting of the eye; whose face bespeaks cloudy weather, she does not understand
Delsarte, whose only teacher was sublime nature, inspired by the eloquence and grace
of God's footstool.
With the Dramatic Monologue Entertainment a success, playwrights and authors
can so dramatize subjects, plots and stories, until small towns and cities can be supplied
with the very best dramatic literature. Artists who present such dramatic monologues
or monodramas, as my thought wishes to convey to you, can give millions of people
glimpses of grand and glorious characters, practically unknown heretofore. What a
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 685
wonderful monologue Victor Hugo's " Les Miserables" would make. His terrific
power in working up a situation and displaying it is as in a calcium light of intense
imaginative description. The impersonator should be able to do mentally for the
audience that which they otherwise would miss in the mere reading of the lines. The
monologist could suggest the meaning between the lines, for there never was a genius
with more inseparable, unescapable, tyrannizing consciousness of itself than Victor
Hugo. The listener would feel the personality and genius of the great author.
" Imaginary companies need no salaries." There are no breaking of contracts, no
elopements of the soubrette, and, in bad luck, only one has to walk home.
" Music hath its charms," and should go hand in hand with every dramatic enter-
tainment, save, I could never see anything but absurdity in the orchestra playing a
doleful tune when at last the " wife " or " sweetheart " is " pushed " to tell the story of
her past, and how she " once suffered." The story is often drowned by the music,
the audience left in a chilly condition, and with but a faint idea of how it all happened.
Music at intervals, or to illustrate some poetical idea, is an acquisition, but I do not
approve of the so-called " singing reading," unless it aid the rendition of a dirge or
the chanting of a prayer. The reciter invariably spoils both the accompaniment and
the poem. Only once have I heard a successful serious reciter accompanied with the
piano, and that was the clever monologist and reciter, Clifford Harrison, London,
England. Corney Grain and George Grossmith are successful only because they
make comedy a story that can be illustrated by caricature music. Themselves
natural musicians, and full of the comedy element, they succeed in stories which
abound in humor, introducing musical accompaniment. But to recite a poem in unison
with a piano and monotony of the speaking voice is to my mind neither artistic nor
entertaining.
The world is filled with genius and progressive artists. They study the wants of
the public and follow not after fads. When the monologue is presented in its com-
plete beauty, thousands of people who have not the opportunity to hear great plays
will become acquainted with characters that have helped to civilize the world, and
many a home will be made brighter by the glimpses into other lives, and thousands of
hearts will hold dear the name of the monologist and entertainer.
MADAME DE STAEL
By MRS. HELEN P. JENKINS.
On the northern shore of Lake Geneva lies the small hamlet of Coppet, famous
for its chateau, which was once the home of Madame de Stael and her celebrated father,
Necker. A century ago this chateau was an intellect-
ual center of Europe; today it is a shrine which tour-
ists visit with tender and reverent interest. Three
summers ago it was my privilege to visit this chateau
where the most notable literary characters of France
used to gather, drawn there by the charming hospital-
ity and the brilliant talents of the most celebrated
woman of the century. Madame de Stael is undeni-
ably the most remarkable literary woman France had
produced up to that day. For two hundred years
French women have shone in the salon, an institution
which they had created, but the literary achievements
of the women in the early salons are trivial beside the
" Germany " of Madame de Stael. That work was the
first vigorous, philosophical work from a woman's
pen. To the multitude of readers she is best known
as the author of " Corinne," but it is her " Germany,"
and her " Considerations on the French Revolution,"
which gave her highest rank as an author. But it is
not alone as a writer that she will be remembered.
She was one of the most remarkable conversational-
ists of the world's history. There have been many
famous talkers from Socrates to Margaret Fuller, but there is reason to believe that
Madame de Stael excelled them all in brilliancy of thought, in wit, and in that myster-
ious quality we term illuminism. No subject was so profound but she seemed inspired
with its true meaning, no subject so trivial but her wit flashed over it and gave it bril-
liancy. Bonstetten declares that in conversation she never had a rival.
She has an especial interest for us because of the times in which she lived. She
was a young woman at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution, and lived
until after the Battle of Waterloo, and was associated with many of the most remark-
able personages of that most remarkable period of French history.
Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris in 1776. Her father was a
wealthy banker, Necker, who was three times made minister of finance, and as many
times dismissed, owing to the upheavals of the times. Her mother, Susanna Curchod,
was the daughter of an obscure Swiss pastor. She became one of the notable women
of the day. It is in the salon of Madame Necker that we first see the little Ger-
maine, not yet ten years old, seated in a little chair beside her mother, listening to the
discussions of the learned men about her. The stories told of her precocious intellect,
Mrs. Helen Philleo Jenkins is a native of New York. She was born in 1835. Her parents were Dr. B. Philleo, o£
Huguenot ancestry, and Eliza Bensley Philleo. '. She was educated at Fairfield Academy, N. Y., and at Utica Female Semi-
nary. She has traveled extensively in her own country and twice through Europe. She married Mr. Dean M. Jenkins, of
Buffalo, N. Y. Her special work has been in the interest of the educational and the political enfranchisement of women.
Mrs. Jenkins has written " A Mother's Letters to a daughter," and many articles on the women's suffrage question. Sha
was one of the prime movers in the organization of Woman Suffrage Associations in Buffalo, N. Y., in 1867; in Pittsburg, Pa.,
in 1871, and in Detroit, Mich., in 1887. In religious faith she is a Unitarian. Her postoiiice address is No. 517 Fourth
Avenue, Detroit, Mich.
686
MRS. HELEN PHILLEO JENKINS.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 687
and of the flattering attentions bestowed upon her even in childhood, are too well-
known to need repeating. Madame de Stael has been severely criticised for her exces-
sive fondness for society and for admiration. The marvel is that she was not utterly
spoiled by the adulation lavished upon her in her youth. It was a remarkable char-
acter that could withstand such flattery and develop into so generous and radiant a
life. When Germaine was twenty years of age a marriage was arranged for her with
the Baron de Stael, Holstein, Swedish ambassador. It is not counted a happy mar-
riage, but there was no open rupture. At the time of her marriage she was already
known through Paris as a brilliant talker, and this fact, combined with her social posi-
tion as ambassadress and daughter of the most popular man in France, made the
Necker salon, where she presided with her mother, the most brilliant and influential
salon in Paris. Not only literature and art were discussed there, but politics became
an absorbing theme. There were no absurd pen-portraits of each other, no sentimen-
tal verses of these earlier salons, but the talk was of the alarming condition of France,
its bankrupt treasury and its masses taxed to starvation; of the American Revolution
and the republic beyond the sea; of the wisdom of representative government and
of the future of France; and no man in France was more keenly alive to these great
questions than Madame de Stael. She had an aptitude for politics, which she considered
a sacred subject. If she were living today she would be one of the foremost women
in demanding political equality for women. Her marvelous gift of speech, combined
with her remarkable dramatic power, would have made her a world renowned orator,
but in that day women had not yet ventured to address the public from the platform.
France was already feeling the premonitions of the approaching »"evolution. A
flash from the gathering storm entered the Necker household one evening when a
lettre de cachet was received from the king commanding Monsieur Necker to leave
Paris immediately and secretly. Once before he had been dismissed from the
ministry and recalled, but this dismissal had a darker look. The king disliked Necker,
Marie Antoinette hated him, but the people believed in him and were furious at
his dismissal, and demanded his recall; and he was recalled within forty-eight hours
after his departure from Paris, even before he could reach Switzerland. Within those
forty-eight hours the bastile had fallen, blood had been shed, and the nobles were
fleeing over the boarders. Out of the revolution which was breaking over France
Madame de Stael hoped to see evolved a constitutional monarchy, a government similar
to that of E^ngland. Her salon was the rallying place of the " Constitutionals," as
they were called, among whom was Lafayette, Count de Narbonne and M. de Mont-
morency. But all such hope was swept away by the fury of the revolution. Terrorism
prevailed in Paris. Those suspected of sympathy with the king were seized and
imprisoned. The Baron de Stael was recalled to Sweden, Necker was again dis-
missed and sought refuge in Coppet. He entreated his daughter to save herself by
flight. But Paris held her. The very terror of events fascinated her. More than
that, she felt she had influence that might save some dear friend from destruction. But
the hour soon came when it was no longer safe for her to remain. She attempted to
leave, but in her efforts to assist in the escape of the old Abbe Montesquion, she came
near losing her own life. She was seized and carried to the Hotel de Ville and into the
presence of Robespierre. She protested against her arrest, asserting her privilege
as the wife of an ambassador to depart. It was only after ten hours' deliberation
that the commune decided to spare her life, and Tallien was appointed to accompany
her beyond the borders. While at Coppet she was continually devising schemes
to get her proscribed friends in Paris out of danger. Coppet became in those days
and years the home of many of the proscribed whose escape she had effected. She
did not return to Paris for three years — the years of the " reign of terror." It was
during these years that she made her first visit to England, and joined that famous
colony of French refugees at Michleham in Surrey.
During those three years of her absence what tragic events had transpired. The
king and queen had been executed. Thousands of noble men and women had fallen
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
victims to the guillotine. Robespierre himself had fallen, and a new figure had
appeared upon the scene. Bonaparte was the hero of the hour. The directory had
been established, and peace seemed spreading her wings overweary France. Madame
de Stael watched with eager interest the career of Bonaparte. She hoped, as thousands
hoped, that this rising genius who had suppressed insurrection and conquered invading
armies, would bring repose to France; but when the high-handed overthrow of the
directory was followed by the consulate, and Bonaparte made himself first consul,
she recognized the hand of imperialism and tyranny, and in her salon, crowded with
thinking men and women, she did not hesitate to criticise Napoleon's policy, and
to talk the boldest liberalism. The hostility between Napoleon and Madame de Stael is
notorious. Never were two persons more out of harmony with each other. He
hated a literary woman. He despised women who had opinions differing from his
own. Madame de Stael as leader of the principal salon in Paris, where they discussed
politics and favored a republic, was an obnoxious person to Napoleon. She published
about this time a work on " Literature," which abounded in the most liberal political
sentiments. Napoleon was annoyed; he wished to silence her. The only way he
could diminish her influence was to get her out of Paris. This he did by banishing
her. She retired to Coppet, but not to seclusion and solitude. Coppet became one
of the famous intellectual centers of Europe. Generous hospitality and devotion
to her friends were her most marked characteristics. Friends came and lingered
at Coppet for months at a time, and there was a constant coming and going of
distinguished literary people. Among the famous guests at this period were Benja-
min Constant, who was in exile, Camille, Jourdan, Sismondi, the historian of Italy, her
life-long friend, Matthieu de Montmorency, Mme. Necker de Saussure, who was her
earliest biographer, Madame Krudner and Madame de Recamier.
During these years of exile she visited Germany and Italy, those countries fur-
nishing material for two of her most celebrated works.
Many of the German literati received her cordially, Schiller especially; others
were disturbed by her peculiarities, and others disliked her. Her vivacity and volu-
bility startled the quiet temperament of the Germans. They were not used to this
kind of women. The narrow views they at that time entertained of woman's intellect
did not at once accept this woman of genius, of enthusiasm and self-assertion. It was
on the whole an excellent thing to happen, that a gifted French woman should invade
German complacency and prejudice. She gained in breadth of mind by contact with
the great intellects and the literature of another nation, and they were compelled to
learn that a high order of intellect is possible to woman.
Her travels in Italy gave to the world " Corinne," which was published in 1807.
Its appearance was one of the greatest literary events of the day. Sainte Beuve says:
"As a work of art, as a poem, the romance of Corinne is an immortal monument."
Another critic says: "There was but one voice, one cry of admiration throughout
lettered Europe on its appearance." Even at Edinburgh it created enthusiasm. Jeff-
rey pronounced its author " the greatest writer in France since Voltaire and Rousseau."
We, at the close of the nineteenth century, make a different estimate of this romance.
We say it is too sentimental, too idealistic. But we must remember fiction has changed
greatly since the day Corinne was written, ninety years ago. There had been then no
George Eliot, Thackeray or Dickens. Even George Sand had not appeared, and the
Waverley novels had not been written. It was the era of " The Sorrows of Werther,"
and we should compare " Corinne " with this work of Goethe before we criticise its
sentimentality. One characteristic of the book, which gave it great value in its day,
is the description of works of art, and of churches and monuments in Rome, In an
era in which there was little travel, when a guide-book was unknown, when Italy was
a region of romantic mystery to most of the educated people throughout the re-
mainder of Europe, what an interest this book must have created.
The success of " Corinne " irritated Napoleon. Though he was at war with half
the nations of Europe, though forcing conscriptions and arranging treaties with con-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 689
quered nations, all this did not prevent his eagle gaze from following Madame de
Stael. The publication of " Corinne " was followed by a new decree of banishment.
She buried her chagrin and vexation in literary work, for she was now writing her
" Germany." When that work was ready for publication she submitted it to the
imperial censors, who, after cutting out a few passages, consented to its publication.
But the work was hardly out of press when an order was issued by Napoleon, or his
minister of police, to destroy it, and the whole edition of ten thousand copies was lit-
erally chopped into pieces, and the author was ordered to leave France within three
days. The officer who brought her the message demanded the manuscript of
the book. Her son, during the absence of the mother, with remarkable pres-
ence of mind, gave to the officer a rough copy, which had fortunately been
preserved, instead of the perfect one, and thus the work was saved to the world.
Madame de Stael was nearly crushed by this blow. She wished to escape to America,
but permission to leave was refused her by the minister of police, who, in handing the
letter of refusal to her son, said: " Does she think. that after we have been fighting
Germany eighteen years she can print a book without mentioning us? " He added:
" The work deserved to be destroyed, and its author ought to be sent to the prison at
Vincennes."
Madame de Stael retired to Coppet, but persecutions did not cease. Friends who
visited her were banished from France, among them Schlegel, Madame de Recamier
and M. de Montmorency. She was forbidden to drive over two leagues from Coppet.
The surveillance became unendurable. She resolved to flee to England. As every
port was blockaded, she was obliged to make her escape through Russia, which Napo-
leon was on the point of invading. She has given in her " Ten Years of Exile" a
vivid account of the secret departure of herself and family, and of the flight through
Switzerland, Austria, Russia and Sweden. When she reached Moscow there was the
most intense excitement, as they were daily expecting the arrival of Napoleon's
armies. She left Moscow, she says, " while the din of war filled the air, and the whole
empire seemed tremulous under the tread of armies." After nearly a year's journey
she reached England, and she was received in London with great eclat.
In England she published her " Germany," having carried the precious manu-
script with her in her flight through many lands. " In less than a year it appeared in
German, French and English, from the presses of Heidelberg, Hanover, Bremen,
Paris, London and Edinburgh." It created great excitement in the literary world. All
the great scholars iii Europe acknowledged its power. Goethe says: " It was a pow-
erful engine which made a wide breach in the Chinese wall of prejudice which had
divided Germany and France." The book was published safely in Paris, for Napoleon
was no longer in power. The Russian campaign had failed, and Napoleon had abdi-
cated, and Madame de Stael returned to her beloved Paris, which she had not seen
for more than ten years. She was at Coppet when the defeat at Waterloo occurred,
but she would not return to Paris at once. She did not wish, she says, " to witness
the second invasion, and Paris bristling with six hundred thousand foreign bayonets."
The summer of 1816 was one of the most brilliant seasons at Coppet, and it was
the last she spent there. The following, written by Stendal (Bayle), may give us an
impression of the gatherings that made Coppet famous. This was written soon after
her death:
" There was here on the coast of Lake Geneva last autumn the most astonishing
reunion. It was the states general of European opinion. The phenomenon rises
even to political importance. There were here six hundred persons, the most distin-
guished of Europe. Men of intellect, of wealth, of the greatest titles — all came here
to seek pleasure in the salon of the illustrious woman for whom France weeps today."
The Review Politique, 1880, says: " It was a parliament whence came forth political
doctrines, a race of statesmen, a school of thinkers, which have filled with their com-
bats, their triumphs or their defeats, more than half a century of our history."
Probably no woman has ever had a more positive influence over political thought
of her times than Madame de Stael.
(44)
690 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
During her last season in Paris, our countryman, Mr. Ticknor, called on her.
Though prostrated by illness, she discoursed eloquently on America, and her face
grew luminous as she said: " You in America are the advance guard of the human
race — you have the future of the world." She died in Paris, July 14, 181 7, but fifty-
one years of age.
I have given but a glimpse of the career and character of one of the most remark-
able women of modern times — a unique character, combining the highest gifts of intel-
lect with the woman's heart of tenderness, sympathy and devotion. Doubtless she
had faults, but remembering her noble and lovable characteristics, we may hesitate in
passing trivial judgment upon this remarkable woman, who was one of the pro-
foundest ethical thinkers, "the leader of the reaction against the materialistic philos-
ophy of the Revolution " — a woman whose intellect towered so high that a century
full of great names has not obscured it. To the women of today she has great signif-
icance. She inaugurated a new era of vigorous writers among women, of which the
present century has furnished many examples. Every gifted woman who has nobly
used her talents has brightened this era for us, and we acknowledge Madame deStael
one of the great women of the past, whose fame and whose triumphs illumine the
world today.
AN EPIC.
By MRS. E M. SOUVILLE.
[Copyrighted 1892.]
We greet thee, fair Columbia, sing to thee,
Wonder of nations! Home of liberty!
A continent is thine. Thy realm how vast!
Here see thy children gathered, first and last,
To do thee homage on this day which gave
Thy form to sight above the ocean's wave.
Four hundred years — four centuries of years —
How many joys and sorrows, hopes and fears,
For earthly generations thou hast wrought,
And unto gladsome birth a new world brought.
To toil-worn, weary and care-burdened man
How slow thy passage, and how long thy span;
To nations, scarce a lifetime thou dost seem;
To ages of eternity, a dream,
A moment's stay, an evanescent guest;
As vivid lightnings flash thou vanishest.
Back through these fleeting years intently gaze,
Where, o'er the tangled web of history's maze,
A mind colossal towers into view;
And thou, Columbo! with unwilling crew.
Art scanning western horizon's blue line
Which yet unbroken lies. Still o'er the brine
Thine anxious eye perpetual watch maintained;
O'er thy frail deck, by courage high sustained,
Undaunted by adversity, dost go
Thy tedious round with steadfast heart; when, lo!
A bird on tired wing, from land a rover,
A messenger of hope; all fears are over;
Near is the port so eagerly desired —
The golden India. This ambition fired
Those sordid souls wide ocean's rage to dare,
And bold attempt the minds of jewels rare,
Whose fabled riches, told in distant Spain,
By repetition magnified again
Desire entranced. Belief now woke apace
In all his followers' breasts, and for a space
Upheld them. Greater and prolonged delay
Discouraged them once more, and on a day
When meeting was rampant 'twas proposed
To bind Columbus. He to this opposed
But three more days of waiting; then, indeed,
Mrs. E. M. Soaville is of a family of the earliest colonial times. She has traveled in Europe and America. Mrs. Soa-
ville is a writer of some conseqnence. Her profession is that of literature, and she is a member of the American Protective
Society of Authors. She is also an oflScerof the American Authors' Protection Publishing Company, located at The Potomac,
Michigan Avenue and Thirtieth Street, Chicago, 111. This company was incorporated during the Columbian Fair, and is one
of the consequences of woman's co-operation and of the facilities afforded by the great Exposition. Her postofiGice address
is Jacksonville, Fla.
691
MRS. E. M. SOUVILLE.
692 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
If no land cheered their failing hopes, with speed
He would return according to their will;
But give him three days yet, for good or ill.
For all his years of patient study, left
Three days to crown with triumph; or, bereft
Of opportunity and the laurel wreath
Of victory by those minds so far beneath
His own grand genius. Faith undimmed still shone
And nerved him those three days; although alone,
He braved derision, ridicule and scorn.
And when the third day came, on its bright morn
The sun arose, climbed high, and slowly set.
A waste of waters circled, but regret
Not then assailed Columbus; day was ended,
But westward, where the sky and water blended,
Obscured by sunset's softly fading glow,
He ceaseless vigil kept untiring, though
The twilight darkening fell upon the deep,
And stars appeared their nightly guard to keep.
As still he gazed and gazed, a sudden light
An instant gleamed on his enraptured sight.
Could he believe? Could hope and faith depart,
And blissful certainty possess his heart?
Not long he doubted, when again it came;
No more with transient beam, but steady flame.
He knew his work accomplished; ocean's bound
Was passed and measured — proved the world was round
And like the egg he used for demonstration
To others, great in influence and station,
Reputed wise, whose favor to attain
He argued, plead, desired and hoped in vain,
For Plato's "opposite continent" to find.
He dreamed not but to reach the farther Ind.
While yet he pondered, loudly surging out
From tall main-top-mast came the joyous shout
Of " Land! the Land! " the long wished land ahead!
Up rushed the crew, and quick the anchor sped
Down from its moorings. Now to him advanced
His followers all, and, bowing, hardly glanced
High as his face; but he, serene and calm.
Most graciously received them, and as balm
On painful wound, the words that from him fell
To their accusing conscience. It were well
To leave them thus, but truth compels the end,
And to that shameful story none can lend
A palliating circumstance or grace,
That aught detracts from its revolting face.
What then received he for this gift to men?
Attend, it shall be named, although the pen,
With trembling indignation scarce controlled.
Shrinks from the task its features to unfold.
Vile envy roused devouring jealousy.
Calumniation blighting touched, and he.
Through selfishness, was sacrificed by those
Pretended friends who secretly were foes.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 693
For honor, degradation was his meed;
For gratitude, chains bound him, and his need
Gaunt poverty replenished; for a world,
A prison his reward: and when unfurled
Spain's banner, and the king the land possessed,
Another's name Columbo's right confessed.
Almost forgotten, then, he died; and now,
Four centuries scarce remembered, come to bow
Before his fame, as they of ancient days
The old and new world's gathered nations. Praise
And justice here we offer him; but wait,
Give justice it is said! nay, 'tis too late;
No justice now, but tardy honor pay
To him who over ocean led the way.
The scene is changed. In swift review years pass,
And many names mar history's page — alas!
For Cortez false, and Montezuma true,
Pizarro, and unfortunate Peru.
But haste away from pictures grim, and dwell
On things more pleasant far to hear and tell.
A rugged coast; a wintry wind that blows
A good ship onward; while each wave that rose
Around her gave but impulse toward the shore,
Sought by these troubled hearts, to leave no more
This haven blest, where with untrammeled zeal
To worship God in freedom, and for weal
Or woe, as He in whom they trust might give,
A sturdy pilgrim band they hoped to live.
Full soon contentment reigned o'er all the land,
When once more on them fell oppression's hand.
Again the mighty sword must arbitrate.
So seven long dreary years throughout the state
War's tumult stalked. But peace at length returned,
And joined in league with liberty; they earned
By thrift prosperity and wealth, until
The land too strait became; so, over hill
And vale and prairies wild far west they went,
Through strange vicissitudes and trials, sent
To prove them stanch and with all worthy traits
Of worthy sons of the United States.
Again the changing ages shift the scene
Where circling horizon sky and earth between
Surrounds the barren waste; a little band
Of hardy and adventurous spirits stand,
Resolved to conquer in life's battle stress —
Upbuild a state — transform the wilderness,
Make deserts blossom as the rose beside
A great metropolis, its people's pride:
So from the shore of Michigan's blue water
Chicago grew, our greatest, youngest daughter!
Most fitting that the latest born of all
The cities vast of this wide land should call
A universal celebration due
That glorious day of fourteen ninety-tw^o.
694 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
As overhead in untrod realms of air
Above stupendous towers some mountain fair,
So soared Columbo's lofty thought, and grasped,
Within its compass, earth by ocean clasped.
And we, the monument of his genius great.
Do thus his name and fame commemorate.
While circumscribed within Chicago's halls,
Behold all nations; science all enthralls;
For strife assembled, but these fields are won.
With smokeless powder and with shotless gun,
With wonderful machines; with fabrics fine;
Electric marvels; treasures of the mine.
Here see rare sculptures; art and objects strange,
To elevate the mind, enlarge the range
Of thought; amuse, instruct in love and peace,
That with such gentle contests wars may cease.
Ye empires, kings, republics, now give ear
Unto our welcome! heartfelt welcome, here!
Our task is finished. Ere we part we pause.
For swift defying all of nature's laws,
Which limit to the past and present hour
Man's knowledge, and experience, and power;
A bright, prophetic vision, dimly seen.
Before us rises, robed in dazzling sheen,
And in the zenith of the heavens high,
An eagle, gray and hoary, cleaves the sky.
Eastward his flight, and hovering o'er the main,
Toward Europe gazes. In his own domain
Mount we with him, and through his clearer eye
View all on sea and land he can decry.
Where prairies stretched their treeless desolation,
Lo! fruitful fields and cities bless the nation;
Great navies swarm, and, like the birds in motion,
On every hand flit over sea and ocean.
While o'er them strange, and yet familiar seeming,
A banner waves, upon its azure gleaming
A single star displayed its rays, disclosing
Forms of a hundred stars, the one composing:
From sea to sea, from Frigid Zone to Torrid,
One Union bounds; and war's contentions horrid
Disturb no more. Sweet Truth, its form revealing
In beauteous garments; Justice, naught concealing.
Dispensing equally to equal worth,
With righteous judgment ruling all the earth.
See Might and Right now hand in hand united;
See brother's love by ample love requited;
Mild Peace attending, watching o'er the free.
Rewards mankind; and crowning Justice, see.
The land of Christopher Columbo named
No more America, but Columbia famed.
DRESS IMPROVEMENT.
By MRS. JENNESS MILLER.
There exists such pre-conceived prejudice in the minds of many because of
former attempts at dress reform, so-called, that the scope and purpose of the present
work for dress improvement is more or less misunder-
stood and its value and success under-estimated in
consequence.
Dress reform was inaugurated as a crusade against
the worst evils, physiologically speaking, of the fash-
ionable dress of a period when deforming exagger-
ations were conspicuous to a degree. The heroic
women who wore the earlier forms of dress reform
were martyrs to freedom of body. They did not con-
cern themselves with artistic selection, nor strive after
picturesque and pleasing effects. Their banner was
inscribed with the bold and uncompromising words,
dress reform — nothing more.
Because of this fact they did not succeed. Were
one, ignorant of color combination, poetic expression
and picturesque accessories, to undertake the work of
creating a great painting because of technical knowl-
edge of drawing, his work would prove essential fail-
ure. In like manner, dress-reformers failed to impress
the public with the importance of a work that con-
cerned itself with physiological functions alone.
I emphasize this fact in order that the essential
difference between the earlier dress-reform movements for which modern dress improv-
ers have suffered vicariously, and the present effort at evolution of a high type of
clothing for the human structure may be recognized and afford a basis for thorough
understanding of what is hoped for in the future.
One who carefully examines the pages of fashion magazines, and looks into the
history of dress, will find the conclusion forced upon him that there has never been
any attempt upon the part of fashion makers to clothe the body consistently. Novelty,
exaggeration and display have been the ends sought. The body has been cramped
and distorted, its requirements for health and comfort disregarded according to the
caprice of fashion's arbiters. The fundamental laws of beauty have been violated, and
the human form robbed of its expression to what end? Who can answer? One
might offer defense of the dress of today, but he would be compelled to reverse his
decision tomorrow, for what obtains today may be regarded by the fashionable world
tomorrow as " perfectly hideous," as women are often heard to say of fashion plates
that are out of date.
Trace dress through its successive changes, and its absurdities, frivolities, deform-
Mre. Annie Jenness Miller is a native of New England. She was born in the White Mountains, January 28, 1859. Her
parents were Solomon Jennees and Susan Wendell Jenneee, both of the oldest New England stock. She was educated prin-
cipally at Boston, Mass., and by private tutors. She has traveled over nearly all of the European continent and many times
over America, Canada and parts of Mexico. She married in 1887 Mr. Conrad Miller. Her special work has been in
the interest of womecp and a higher physical status for the race, one branch of which has been dress improvement. Her
principal literary works are " Physical Beauty " and " Mother and Babe," besides which she is the owner and publisher of the
"Jenness Miller Monthly." Her profession is literature and platform speaking. In religious faith she is Episcopalian.
Her postoffice address is Washington, D. C.
695
MRS. ANNIK JKNNESS .MILLER.
696 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
ities and exaggerations are almost beyond belief. At fashion's command, anything
may become the vogue without regard to eternal fitness. Women vie with each other
in being the first to appear on the. promenade in the latest fashionable caprice, and
yet women, when appealed to in the name of health, grace and art, timidly ask:
" Could one wear such a dress?"
All this brings us back to the central truth, that the education of principles hav-
ing reference to line, color, arrangement and expression, must precede any great
advance in artistic methods of dress. There are laws fixed and unchangeable that
may be learned, and we are just now at the threshold of this great study of bodily
possibilities and clothing for accurate expression.
Like all higher artistic evolution the work proceeds slowly, because of ignorance,
prejudice and tradition, but the triumph of higher forms of dress is as certain as the
progress of human beings along other lines of science and art.
Physical development must precede the artistic clothing of the body. We must
become as gods in physical grace and expression before the highest types of dress
will perfectly become us. While our bodies are ill-shapen, chest sunken, shoulders
raised, abdomen protruded, classically free dress seems in truth to exaggerate our
deformities; but once our bodies become nobly erect and vitally expressive, dress
radiating from the natural points of support in free lines, will seem artistically grace-
ful and expressive. For this reason I always urge upon my hearers and followers con-
servation and good judgment in selecting and adapting the least exaggerated forms
of prevailing fashions while working with muscles, nerve-centers and joints for grace-
ful poise and bodily culture. A stiff and unyielding figure will not become at once
beautiful and expressive through disregarding the garments that have cramped
motion, but disregarding such garments will give the body that freedom without
which improvement remains impossible. Therefore, bodily development and free
dress must go hand in hand for higher results.
Art in dress demands study of the body and adaptability of fabric, color and dec-
oration of individuality. Exquisite needlework and ornamentation of a noble and not
of the trivial kind will make the dress of the future sumptuous, elegant, costly and
magnificent, according to the requirements of time and place.
Upon the other hand, art knowledge and regard for form and fitness will make
simple dress devoted to the utilities no less attractive in its place and for its purpose
than the robes of the lady of wealth, whose social requirements demand splendor and
richness. The eternal principles, of art in dress will be recognized as fixed and
unchangeable, and regard for nature's unalterable laws will prove the keynote to
eternal harmonies.
Inconsistencies in general extend to all departments of dress under fashion's
rule. Fashion gives no attention to such fine distinction as appropriate dress for dif-
ferent occasions, excepting it be a distinction between evening and street attire, and
even these are not arbitrary. Street dress frequently offends good taste by too great
length, suitable to house and carriage wear only; while evening dress jostles street
attire upon occasions that should be sacred to picturesque costuming.
When art in dress becomes recognized, every walk in life and every occasion will
have its appropriate dress, and every class of society will be the gainer. Under the
regime of art in dress no woman will be seen picking her way along filthy streets in a
dress-skirt bedraggled with mud, nor will women wear gems and rich fabrics at church,
cloth tailor-made gowns in the reception room and high hats loaded with bustling
and aggressive trimmings at the theater. We shall not be served by kitchen girls
arrayed in tawdry finery; shop girls in cheap jewelry and cotton lace, nor denied our-
selves the privilege of proper selection in dress for time and place in any profession.
In short, with the study of principles order will evolve from chaos, and each depart-
ment of work will have its recognized dress, appropriate in detail, self-respecting,
because the right thing for our immediate needs, and beautiful because appropriate.
RESIDENT MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. Mrs. Bertha M. Honors Palmer,
Chicago, III.
3. Mrs. L. Brace Shattuck, 4. Mrs. James A. Mclligan,
Chicago, III. Chicago, III.
6. Mrs. M. R. M. Wallace, 7. Mrs. Leander Stone,
Chicago, 111. Chicago, III.
8. Mrs. James R. Doolittle, Jr., 9. Mrs. Matilda B. Carse,
Chicago, III. Chicago, III.
2. Mrs. Solomon Thatcher, Jr.,
River Forest, III
5. Frances Dickinson, M.'D.,
Chicago, III.
THE ITALIAN WOMAN IN THE COUNTRY.*
By COUNTESS CORA SLOCOMB Dl BRAZZA.
The peasant women of Italy. Who of you on hearing those words does not think
of the opera chorus gesticulating as gracefully as jointed dolls expressing emotion by
clock work, or the swarthy fruit seller at a frequented
corner, or of some weary wan family of immigrants
such as has more than once crossed your path?
And yet the peasant woman of Italy among her
native fields, olive groves and vineyards resembles
none of these, and I trust when we part you will be
truly acquainted with our humble sisters across the
seas and carry away in your heart one grain of the
rich harvest of love I bear them.
I will introduce you to those I have known inti-
mately in Fruili, for it is better to have a clear impres-
sion of a group than a confused memory of a mass,
the more so as the peasants in the north of Italy live
in isolated homes, and each household forms a com-
plete miniature government, composed of many gen-
erations and ramifications of relatives living as one
family and submitting to a regularly patriarchal ad-
ministration of their interests. Some of these peasant
homesteads, with their courtyards, barns and out-
houses, shelter no less than fifty human beings, scores
of quadrupeds and hundreds of feathered bipeds. The
father of the oldest branch directs the others, or in
case he feels incompetent through age, the son in whose favor he abdicates reigns
supreme over the conglomerated existences. No individual feels entitled to sign a
contract or undertake any enterprise without consent of his chief or else formally cut-
ting loose from the guidance of his relatives who he knows will show him no pity if
once he has broken with the immemorial traditions of co-operative duty among the
members of peasant clans. Should the hereditary chief prove himself incapable of
guiding the household, he is formally deposed by his relatives and another member of
his family, endowed with the necessary ability, is elected, by vote, in his place, in which
case the women as well as the men are consulted.
Among the peasants the ancient Biblical appreciation of a numerous offspring
flourishes, and to remain childless or be forced to replace the willing toilsome hands
of sons and daughters by hired help is felt to be a keen disgrace.
Much is to be learned by visiting this unfrequented province, which lies directly
north of Venice, and so I trust you will permit me to lead you in imagination through
some of the pleasant experiences which await you there.
Countess Cora Ann Slocomb Di Brazza Savorgnan is a native of New Orleans, La. She was bom Jannary 7, 1862. Her
parents were Cuthbert Harrison Slocomb, captain of Washington Artillery, and Abby Sarah Day Slocomb. She was edacated,
up to the death of her father, at New Orleans; then spent two years in the North with private tutors ; at thirteen years of age
went abroad, studied German in Germany, French in France, and finished her education on the Isle of Wight. She visited
Italy for the first time in 1887, when she met and married Count Detalmo di Brazza Savorgnan. Her special work has been in
the interest of poor people living on her estates in Northern Italy or in the City of Rome, her winter residence. She speaks
fluently four languages, English, French, German and Italian, and makes all the designs for her own lace school. She
came to the World's Fair in charge of the Italian Lace Exhibit and the Queen's laces, with the object of making Italian lace
known to the public of the United States and establish a trade with this country. In religious faith she is a Protestant Epis-
copalian. Her postofiice address is Caetello di Brazza, presso Udine, or Palazzo Vaccari Via del Tritore, Borne.
*The title of the address, as delivered in the Congress was "Life of the Italian Woman in the Coontry."
697
COUNTESS CORA SLOCOMB Dl BRAZZA.
698 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
«
The fast express leaves Venice at 2 o'clock every afternoon and is due in Udine,
the capital of Fruili, at 4:20. It first traverses the massive viaduct, which rises above
the blue lagoon, which is ever dotted with orange and red lateen-sails. The salt
marshes and sluggish waterways we see sleeping tranquilly on our right like a worn-
out combatant, the sacred fortress of Margera, so gloriously defended in 1849 by a few
brave men in the Italian rebellion against foreign rule, when the Austrians hemmed
the volunteers in on every side except that of the city. There another more dreaded
foe, the " cholera," wielded the scepter. All had surrendered but this handful of stanch
hearts, and still they fought on, single-hand, until in the baptism of their own blood
and misery the dross engendered by the ease of centuries was washed from their
characters and every Venetian was born again a hero.
The train crosses the hot, rich Venetian plains; then it turns to the East and
seems to lose itself on the verdant plain of Fruili, the great Patria or fatherland, from
which the Venetians fled a thousand years ago before the devastating hordes of bloody
Attila, surnamed "the plague of God." Now all is pretty, prosperous, peaceful; the
waving fields of grain, the rippling water-courses, sparkle in the sunshine. The neat
roads, leading to well filled barns, are planted in avenues of great shade trees; the
peasant houses are large, the meadows are rich, and the gray cattle fat and sleepy.
All seems to speak of contentment and repose and one is aroused with a kind of
a moral shock at sight of the old Mahin country house, with its memories of turbu-
lence and war. For, by an irony of fate, this beautiful home of the last of the Doges
of the Venetian republic, was chosen as a resting place by the modern Caesar, Napo-
leon I., when he was studying the peace of Campoformido, which forged the chain
of Venetian slavery to Austria. Here on this very spot it was welded upon the neck
of the once proud Venetian republic with gold rung from her children by purchasing
Austria to furnish the conqueror (alas! a born Italian) with the sinews necessary to
carry on to fresh fields of misery his conquering banners and their attendant train of
woes.
The train whistles twice. The modern suburbs of a prosperous little city come in
sight. The past is lost in the present. The thirty thousand inhabitants of Udine greet
you with the clatter of iron foundries, cotton and flour mills and a hundred other great
industries — young life, young enterprise, have conquered. United Italy has arisen,
strengthened by that long period of suffering. We pass through the turreted city gate
and you gaze in wonder upon gushing fountains, electric lights, gas burners, tramways,
and telephone wires interlaced curiously among the ancient palaces. A miniature parlia-
ment existed on the citadel of Udine centuries before the proud barons of England com-
pelled King John in 1 2 1 5 to sign the Magna Charta, assuring to their descendants liberty
and representation. This little Patria can, therefore, boast of having been one of the old-
est countries in Europe to possess a representative assemblage by election and by inher-
itance, divided into two bodies, called the Peers and Commons. These met yearly in
Udine to decide on all that concerned the well being of the country, and this parlia-
ment only ceased to exist when Napoleon conquered Italy.
We can not linger. Time is flying, and we must hasten on that you may become
acquainted with the people up in the hills around the castle and learn to love them a
little before we part.
The carriage spins out of the gate at the other end of the town and away between
the Indian corn-fields, called there Turkish grain, and the vineyards. The road is
macadamized and very white. It is flanked on either side by deep ditches and mul-
berry trees which have been cropped into a resemblance to chubby, rotund personali-
ties. There are millions of them, stretching row upon row, as far as the eye can reach.
Their leaves serve to feed the silkworms, for you are in Italy, which produces one-
fourth of the silk consumed in the world, and in one of the two provinces which yields
the most silk in Italy.
The peasant men who pass salute respectfully, but the women here are very proud,
reserved and dignified, and never bow unless they are acquainted. The strong soft
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 699
homespun in which these people are clothed is composed of the refuse left from the
silk culture, which is washed, carded, spun, dyed and woven at home by the women
and made by the village tailors into most comfortable and durable costumes. This
material is, alas! being supplanted by cheap factory goods also made up by the tailors,
for the peasant women consider that none but men can fashion garments worthy of
admiration.
The horses climb up and up through picturesque villages, and past flowering walls
and verdant vineyards, orchards and copses. On every side bits of most charming
landscape attract the eye studded with villages, and you are in Fruili, the third most
populous country in the world, China and Belgium alone having more' inhabitants to
the square mile.
The carriage spins over a long rough causeway flanked by old acacia trees. At
the end stands between massive stone columns a wide open iron gate draped in wysteria
and roses, forming a graceful frame to a ruined castle that closes the vista. From its
highest tower float the Stars and Stripes and the Tricolor of United Italy, sanctified by
the White Cross of Savoy.
We have reached home. A hubbub of sweet feminine voices caresses the ear;
down the old terrace steps swarm half a hundred girls led by a gary-haired old hunch-
back. They scramble to kiss our hands, they courtesy and murmur " Servito suo." They
are very neat, with their white aprons and sleeves and bonny kerchiefs. They are the
children of the Home Lace School, who learn the new patterns and then teach them
in their turn to their one hundred and fifty companions in the neighboring villages.
Many of the little ones have been to the public school all the morning, and the big
ones come from the fields or stables, for as soon as they can get away they hasten to
their lace cushions as to an entertainment, fresh and merry as chattering magpies.
We do not wish them to forget what they have learned at school, and so each girl
is compelled to write her own name and address on the piece of lace made by her, as
well as its price and the date when finished. They sing while they work, street litanies
and lovely part songs, as well as the stirring war choruses of young Italy. They are
visited twice a week by a chaplain and school-teacher, who recounts to them anec-
dotes about the helpful lives which members of their class have led for others, and
tells them of the great charitable organizations and institutions founded through their
self-abnegation. Each morning they begin the day by united prayer, and if the priest
is not expected one of the stories learned from him is repeated for the amusement of
the others. If you asked Italia, our most lovable and industrious lacemaker, she
would repeat to you the following in soft and modest accents:
" One day not so many years ago — alas! I forget the date, but I think it was about
183O — a priest in Sicily entered one of the most squalid houses of his parish just at the
hour when the family was about to partake of its mid-day meal. He was politely
invited to join, and what was his surprise, after the blessing had been asked, to see
each cut off the most delicate part of his portion and place it on a plate in the center
of the table. He asked for an explanation of this strange action. The father answered :
'You see we have no money to spare with which to help our neighbors, but we find
that if each of us gives away a good big mouthful of his food, though it costs him
nothing, it suffices to remind him of those who have no meals, and the united bits are
ample for the nourishment of an old man who comes daily to get what we have
saved for him.' " The priest marveled at the example of true Christian charity set by
this simple household and went away full of the idea that what had been done by one
family could be done by many. And at present, owing to his teachings, each day that
the sun rises on Sicily six thousand poor people are fed with the mouthfuls of the
poor.
Oh my compatriots, you and I grew up with tales of Mafia Camorra and blood-
shed poisoning our hearts against the Sicilians, while their poorest were developing
this noblest brotherhood which teaches to take the bread from one's own hungry
mouth to feed a poorer neighbor.
700 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
You and I were reading of the Sicilian vespers reeking with blood, while from
the scanty dinners of the poor ascended to the Lord a sweeter savor than from our
rich and dainty boards.
The lacemakers know scores of such stories. Learning thus daily of the great
influence for good which even the lowliest can exert, let us also learn from them never
to neglect the smallest opportunities, for they are the stepping-stones set by Provi-
dence to bridge the deep chasm of egotistical selfishness which lies between our frail
humanity and the great example, Christ. The little seven-year-old lacemakers will
join the big ones in showing with pride their lace pillows. Each one is absolute pro-
prietress of all she makes, and can even sell it herself. She must then charge a small
percentage above the price paid to her and hand it in to the cashier to assist in defray-
ing the expenses incurred for the lighting, heating and the administration of the lace
school by which she has profited gratuitously to learn her art. The simple tools used
by the lacemakers are loaned to them, but any wanton loss or destruction of these
objects is deducted from their earnings. The accounts are settled monthly, and the
price paid for the lace augmented up to a high percentage above the regular rate in
proportion to its superiority to the sample, and a percentage is deducted if it falls
below or is needlessly spoiled.
The scale of payment is governed by the money we can obtain for the lace.
Hence we seek to originate new designs and have objects made which will attract the
wealthy. Could we command enough work there are thousands of women in Fruili
alone waiting to join our schools or organize into co-operative societies.
The race which inhabits Fruili and speaks its language is robust, handsome, intel-
ligent and patient.
The women do not work as regularly as the men in the fields, but assist them there
whenever necessary, and as they have the usual feminine fear of storms, one often
sees when the thunder growls a posse of the weaker sex huddled together beneath a
projecting bank, praying in abject fear. The women in the high-perched village are
the first to spy the thunder-caps scudding along toward the quarter of the heavens
which arches their homes, and they hurry to the church-tower and ring the bells to call
the laborers from the fields and the old to their orisons. They ring with a will, for
they believe that by establishing an aerial commotion through the swinging, reverber-
ating bells the devastator can be warded off. As the storm approaches the prayer of
the bells is heard ringing clear and strong between the gusts of wind. It increases to
a wild entreaty in the on-rush of the tempest, and the wild clamor breaks in a frenzy
of despair when the storm bursts.
Then begins the deep tolling of the great passing bell as the battered flowers and
lascerated branches are carried along, tossed and torn by the blast and bruised by
the cutting sheets of ice, fit emblems of the dying hopes of the hard-working peas-
ants and the anguish of crushed nature.
The voices of the village bells die away in a quivering sob, which seems wrung
from their metal hearts in pity for the devastation around them. At the vesper hour
they will rise again clear, despite the past, to praise God. Fit reminders of the Eternal
Spring, the sunshine and the fresh budding and blossoming that lie beyond.
Since peasant and proprietor suffer alike from these terrific rain and hail storms,
the gentlefolk of Fruili are seeking in every way to render their tenants familiar with
all the means for rapidly substituting fresh crops for those destroyed. They also seek
to supply them with other means of earning a livelihood in inclement weather so that
they may maintain their families and meet their financial obligations with the proceeds
of their manual industry.
About twenty-five years ago a gentleman farmer named Pecile died in Tagagna, a
village which numbers about two hundred thousand inhabitants. He left an income
which consists of five hundred dollars, to be spent yearly on agricultural instruction
for the peasants, and in assisting any enterprise or industry started in the place which
promised to add to their physical or moral development. Despite its modest propor-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 701
tions this small sum has not only provided for the villagers admirable lectures on agri-
cultural and economic topics and competitive prizes for the best crop of grain, etc., to
the acre; it has also established an agricultural intelligence office for the peasants, to
which is due a great improvement in the productiveness of the neighborhood. To
this influence of Tagagna by means of discreetly placed loans for importing foreign stock
is due a much finer race of cattle and pigs.
It has also donated to the village a model vineyard, tended by the peasants, in
which experiments are made with every kind of grape vine to discover the one best
adapted to the exigencies of the climate. Many co-operative establishments flourish
under its guiding influence. All of these were founded by emitting small bonds worth
two dollars each, mostly subscribed for by the peasantry.
One of these supplies the province with the seed or eggs for the silk-worm culture,
prepared according to the system introduced by the great Pasteur when he lived in the
province and studied the disease which was destroying the silk industry of Southern
Europe. This establishment, with the exception of the director, is run entirely by
about sixty peasant women, who perform the minute microscopic work, as well as all
the other delicate branches of the culture, with such exactitude that the eggs from
this co-operative establishment have reached the highest standard. The Pecile fund
has also assisted the peasants to build the co-operative ice-houses which are filled by
the people gratuitously every winter, and from which each has a right to free ice in
time of necessity. It instituted the co-operative dairy, to which the villagers bring
the surplus milk from their cattle, which is churned by dairy women into butter and
cheese according to the most approved Swiss systems, or retailed to other members of
the society. By its judicious initiative it rendered possible the opening of a splen-
didly appointed co-operative slaughter house. It provides lessons in mechanical
drawing, and it has founded a school of basket-making frequented by fifty or sixty
peasants and children, which is now self-supporting.
See what a colossal work can be accomplished in twenty-five years by a paltry
five hundred dollars well administered.
The gentlemen in the province have followed its example, and award prizes to
their tenants for the greatest percentage of grapes or grain produced per acre under
their cultivation, and for the greatest number of pounds of silk returned for the eggs
distributed. But we all found that a greater stimulent and more extended competition
was needed.
Many, yes too many, exhibitions for mechanics had been held in the cities of
Italy. We knew all that could be known about their work but we were ignorant of
our neighbors' in the country. They lived apart, and were reticent, modest, and clung
to old worn out customs. They were doing little that was practical in their leisure
hours — in the winter evenings — and while listening to legend and story, or joining in
tender or merry part songs called "Vilotti," of which they were themselves the
authors.
We decided to copy the English Cottage Garden shows in a broad sense. Instead
of one village and a few cottages, seven great communes with a score of villages
clubbed together. Each poor village can have a cottage garden show each year.
Every inhabitant can bring a knit stocking, a neatly made frock, a pumpkin, a basket
of peaches, a sheaf of wheat, a boot, a shoe, or a basket. The point is the emulation,
the showing to each what others have done with no better opportunities than his
own.
We had our machinery hall full of spades, plows, thrashers and simple agri-
cultural implements and furniture made by the peasants. We had our manufactures
building full of coarse stuffs and garments woven and fashioned by the peasant
women; full of spoons and utensils and ornaments made by the men. We had our
horticultural and agricultural display, and going out into the fields we judged the
houses and the farms themselves as well as their productions which were brought to
the Fair. We had our stock pavilion full of small animals. Besides this we had a
702 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
•
gallery containing the best foreign models for simple objects and a book in which all
could inscribe their names and the number of the object they wished to copy. We had
a band, a speech from the senator of the district, a distribution of prizes, when each
worthy peasant, man or woman, was called by name and the class of his production
and reason of his choice announced. He answered and mounted the old stone steps
of the castle terrace with a proud heart to receive his two or three dollars award;
or the prizes were graded according to the importance of the exhibit, and the man
whose farm was in the best agricultural and economic condition received decidedly
more than the man who had grown an exceptionally fine cabbage.
Last evening I received a letter announcing that my lace school had just been
awarded the gold medal at the National Italian Exhibition of agricultural industries
at Cesena.
And whence this .amelioration? First, because the seeing what others could do
inspired a healthy emulation and a desire to outstrip those of the neighboring villages
in the percentage of prizes carried off by the home community. Secondly, because
we had judiciously used it to acquaint the peasants with fresh means of emolument.
Among others we had taught six girls in a fortnight how to make a simple bobbin
lace; and as they worked merrily before their astonished neighbors who stood densely
packed before them, they inspired all the girls with a desire to learn the dainty lace
art and the children asked us to open schools. When the fathers saw that the girls
were wisely directed and never kept from doing their field work, from caring for and
leading the cattle to pasture, or from washing with their mothers at the brook, they
willingly sent them to the school. When they saw that their little maids became neat,
respectful, contented, and brought home pretty stories to enliven the evenings in the
stable and the bright silver coins to swell the family hoard —then the whole country
side was converted. For the cheapness of the cotton goods has discouraged the
women from weaving and they waste their leisure hours in crocheting and tatting and
gossip.
The priests and the heads of the households begin to appreciate that while it in
no way interferes with their usual laborious tasks, it adds to the financial resources of
the family.
Among our lacemakers we have hunched-backs and lame and deformed bodies
of every kind, and some that have spent thirty years on rude beds of pain. The lace
children, like the sunbeams, have penetrated everywhere and taught them the easy
twists and delicate turns by which their unlovely fingers could evolve the soft white
lace. Think of the ignorant mind, as dark, as squalid, as miserable as the roof
chamber to which this useless member of a busy household was banished, where it was
left alone to solitary repinings, filled suddenly with the inspiring thought that in its
decrepitude it could earn as much and be as useful to the family as the blooming
maidens out in the fields. Think of the room now filled with the pleasant clatter of
the bobbins, the pleasant chatter of the children who have come to work beside their
aunty and tell her what their dear maestra said of her work when they carried it in on
last pay-day. Watch the women and children trudging through ice and snow for
many a weary mile to learn the new art. See them yielding to the education of
the heart, and spending their modest earnings to help their mothers or some
dear invalid to a simple comfort they would not have dreamed of getting for
them a few months before. Hearken to the terrific roar of the vast ocean of thirty
million Italian voices behind them, asking if I have fulfilled the mission on which
I came. •
In the silent watches of the night it awakens me to wonder if I am doing my best;
to search for what means remains as yet untried to touch your hearts.
Above the roar in machinery hall, above the sharp crack of the fireworks, above
the music of the bands, above the applause of the multitude, above the thunder of the
storms in this White City, I hear it.
Like Heine, I would snatch the tallest pine from the mountains, and dipping it
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 703
in the crater of Etna, would write the name of my beloved (the laborious, patient
peasant women) upon the skies, that it might compel the gaze of the whole world.
Can you wonder, with this great opportunity, the Congress of all nations, drawing
to its close, each nerve is stretched to snapping, the flesh is forgotten, each heartstring
is vibrating in the agonizing desire to make all these voices reach your ears through
my one frail organ? They are crying to you for your friendship, for your patronage.
It means to them their homes, their children, their all. They are not begging; they
offer you their work, the product of honest manual toil which is being driven from the
market by machines which can never be weary or hungry or ill, which can never die, but
also have no souls to lose through the temptations of misery.
The frail fingers of these women and children are competing with iron rods and
steam power, and yet have courage; for the laces, the homespuns into which are
entwined their dreams, their prayers, their songs and their tears, are unsurpassed.
What I am striving for I can never accomplish. But you can do it if you only will.
The storekeepers tell me if there was a demand for Italian goods they would place
them in stock. They say to me: Create the demand, we will do the rest. I entreat
you to ask in the shops for Italian laces, Italian silks, Italian homespuns. Fashion will
obey your summons, such is your power. I can speak, but yours is the nobler part,
you can act. Act, only act; the modest Italian women of the people in their far-off
country homes will feel the benefit. Their loving, unforgetting prayers have borne
me up in my hours of trial; their dear, blotted letters come to me across the waters
full of confiding faith and longing to know what I am doing for them in my father-
land. Poor, ignorant darlings, because they love me they think me omnipotent.
To you I confide their future. It is safe if you grant my prayer, though it hangs
upon a frail shred of lace.
God grant that you may never again set eyes upon a piece of lace, however
mean, without being reminded of what you can do for the hardworking women of
the people in Italy.
THE NERVOUS AMERICAN.
By MRS. MARTHA CLEVELAND DIBBLE.
Nations, like families, usually develop certain traits and peculiarities which are
recognized as characteristic and typical. The pugnacity, virile courage and beef-eat-
ing capacity of the Englishman, the wit, vivacity, and
alas! the fickleness of the Frenchman, the pains-tak-
ing persistence of the German, the indolent indfffer-
ence which veils the Spaniard's volcanic nature, have
all been generally acknowledged. And though there
may be an occasional protest at some pungent thrust,
the nations themselves usually accept the universal
verdict. Each nation colors for itself the legends
which it inherits, and it is difficult to identify in the
heroes of one people those whose acquaintance we
have already made under far different guise and sur-
roundings. Indeed, the Orient and Occident are not
geographically farther apart than they are separated
in habits of life and thought.
Conceding all this, I think we may not be aston-
ished if the dwellers in these United States have gained
the reputation of being a peculiar people. And when
we read or hear of the nervous American, we recog-
nize its allusion to ourselves and take it home as tol-
erably descriptive. The word nervous is somewhat
..„e .-. ^„. ^, ^„^ ..„ .,„»,^ ambiguous, but we understand it to mean in this con-
MRS. MARTHA CLEVELAND DIBBLE. ■ ■, ^ i i i i i r
nection that hurry and restlessness, that lack of repose,
which seems to permeate not only our business circles, but social life as well.
Uncle Sam and Brother Jonathan have been so many times faithfully described
and pictured that you can readily recall their personal appearance. Then the high-
keyed voice, louder than your ear quite relishes, the rapid jerking out of sentences at
the risk of losing a part of the words, the direct, brusk manner which wastes no
time in formalities — all these things are familiar to everybody. And then this nerv-
ous American is so busy. No time to stop; the days all too short to carry out his
plans; no leisure for home or friends or amusements.
Of course it is the American who revels in a trip around the globe in sixty days,
and who yearns to whirl along one hundred miles an hour. Said a witty Russian:
" The American seems to have a wager with Time, and I am really interested as to
which will win."
Night travel is nowhere so popular as in this country. To retire at night to one's
Pullman couch and awake the next morning in a distant city with a full day's work
before him, is great gain to the average American, and if he can repeat the perform-
ance and be ready for business at home on the following day, his happiness is
doubled. Any possible fatigue is not to be counted in the transaction. Now all this
Mrs. Martha Cleveland Dibble is a native of Bath, N. H. Her parents were Rev. Edward Cleveland, a Congregational
clergyman, a graduate from Yale, and Mary M. Lang, a very cultured lady. Mrs. Dibble is a graduate from Iowa College,
Grinnell, Iowa; later studied medicine in this country and in Europe, and holds a diploma from the Woman's Hospital
College, of Chicago. She has traveled quite extensively through this country, and in Middle and Southern Europe. In 1878
she married, in Michigan, Dr. LeRoy Dibble. Her special work has been in the interest of hospital and reformatory effort
for women. Her profession is that of medicine, to which she gives most of her time. In religious faith she is Protestant.
She is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Her postofBce address is Kansas City, Mo.
704
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 705
is, according to popular verdict, nervous; and it is quite pertinent to ask the cause of
such a trait — whether it is a permanent characteristic, and its probable effect upon our
welfare, present and future.
It has been somewhat widely discussed, and various causes assigned. Some hold
that it is due to the dryness of our climate; others consider the electrical currents of
this continent especially stimulating, and that their great prevalence affects our tem-
perament. Still others believe that it depends on the large quantity of meat which
forms so prominent a part of the diet of our people. Again it is held to be indicative
of a defective nervous development, an irritable unstable condition which accompanies
a weak organization. This is a favorite theory with those who believe in the poor,
frail physique of the Americans,
It may be that all these contribute to the same end, though they are somewhat
contradictory.
We know that food and climate have a powerful influence upon the general con-
dition of a race; its wealth, its physical development, its mental and moral status.
The immense amount of work which has advanced this nation so rapidly could never
have been done except by a people well fed. Our relatively small population, dis-
tributed over a large and fertile territory, has made food cheap and plentiful, so that
even our poorest classes, as a rule, have had an abundant and nourishing diet. Mental
quickness and ingenuity, large brain power, and equally great muscular activity and
endurance, are a legitimate result. And it is true that muscle without the propelling,
directing vitality or nervous force would have been useless. Our nervousness, then,
is what has done it, and if it has been sometimes over-stimulated, there is a comfort
in knowing that, up to date, it has made an unparalleled' record.
The question whether the perfected American type has been reached must cer-
tainly be answered in the negative. We are yet in the formative stage, and conditions
tend to keep us there. While our advancement in business methods, in manufactures,
agriculture and scientific research, shows great precocity in this infant nation; we must
remember that we have inherited much, and that we have been continually receiving
from outside both brawn and brain, so that what we might be if left to ourselves is
yet to be determined. Successive generations of a homogenous people are necessary
to perfect a type, and only during our colonial period, before the Revolution, was
there a century in which our evolution was comparatively undisturbed, and what is
distinctively American belongs to the influence of that time.
The handful of men and women who set their faces westward builded better than
they knew. They braved undreamed of perils in the wilderness, but they conquered a
new world. Before them, waiting for the magic touch of intelligent toil, was a conti-
nent with limitless forests, mighty lakes and rivers, golden, swelling prairies, treasures
of precious metals, and all the harvests which were garnered in the bosom of mother
earth for the future blessing of her children.
The star moved westward; they followed. Through blood and flame, in poverty
and distress, they fought their way; beaten back only to advance farther tomorrow,
stronger for the rebuff, discovering new resources which lured them forward, even
though the way was beset by a new foe; ever on, till they reached the shore of the
sunset land and gazed on the waters of a new ocean.
I need not bring statistics to show you what has been the result of that pioneering.
This great Exposition, which holds the world by sample, as one might say, brings us
into very favorable comparison with the older countries, and if the American bosom
swells with pride and complacency, and if American lips utter words of self-congratu-
lation, and, perchance, of self-laudation, there is surely sufficient material excuse to
free us from the charge of mere bombast and save us from ridicule.
Those who share in our triumphs today are not all descended from the Revolu-
tionary forefathers. Fair Columbia, holding aloft her liberty cap, and lighting with
flaming torch the path across the deep, has smiled a welcome to millions of eager
helpers. Not from the ranks of the rich and happy, certainly, but largely from the
706 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
toilers, from among the poor and illiterate of other lands longing to find in a new
home, under a new flag, that comfort and reward for labor which could not be theirs
in the already over-crowded fatherland.
The consideration shown them, their independent and responsible position, filled
them with a novel sense of individual importance, and stimulated them to ambitions
heretofore unknown. They have swept over the whole country, and that they have
not entirely uprooted and blotted out the native stock is proof of its original strength.
But while it is in a sense still the controlling force, how under these circumstances
could a national type be formed? Look around you in any city of the land. Do you
see Americans? Do not your eyes fall rather upon faces unmistakably Irish or Ger-
man or Swedish, Italian, or other marked nationality? How many generations will be
needed to harmonize these dissimilar types, even if today were to witness the coming
of the last immigrant? Give time for the embryo American to come forward and claim
his heritage.
Whether he will possess all the nervous energy of his predecessors is doubtful.
So far as climate affects him, he will, of course, be much the same; but the relations
of food supply to population, the inevitable change in habits and pursuits and all those
conditions which the years will impose upon us, must affect the temperament of later
generations. Even now the first settled parts of the country are accused of looking
with an assumption of dignity upon the crudities of younger sections. And these in
return have shown the customary heedless disregard of the wisdom of their elders,
dubbing them old fogies, and scorning the quiet respectability of New England vil-
lages as the decrepitude of old age. Ah! but there is a pace which kills, and the
decadence of a nation comes only by the follies of its constituents. Its life maybe
long or short; its influence great or small; its career brilliant or inglorious; its fame
enduring or transient. It will be strengthened by the morality, conservative business
methods and true patriotism of its people; it may be destroyed by reckless specula-
tion, individual ambition, sectional strife, or anything else which weakens its physical
or moral fiber.
* How many of our men live, or seem to live, only to do business. The man seems
lost, submerged under its exactions. The thing he created to serve him as a means
to an end is transformed into the master, to which he is chained. He no longer seeks
amusements; home sees little of him; wife and children are small incidents in his daily
life; friendship is an almost forgotten word; general reading is out of the question;
and the grind of the counting room or office goes on year after year, till the wheels
stop, utterly worn out. These men tell us, when they are implored to give up busi-
ness and take needed rest, that they would rather " wear out than rust out." Rust out,
indeed! Does money-making — for that is the great incentive in most cases — does this
constitute the only legitimate and worthy employment of time? Is there not today a
large field in philanthropy, science, art, literature and healthy recreation of many kinds,
which can profitably and agreeably occupy one's powers, conferring benefit in the
change it affords, as well as by enlarging the bounds of human sympathy and knowledge?
Why should one's success in life be measured by the amount of wealth he has acquired ?
It does not always represent industry or honesty or any other virtue, and to accept
such a standard would be to prove that during our exceptional progress we have lost
something precious that we once had. Such gross materialism is not a worthy result
of all this toil and struggle, nor an acceptable answer to the prayers and hopes of our
fathers.
Where are our grand old men, the Gladstones of our country, hale and hearty, still
young at eighty-four, enjoying life and foremost in questions relating to our welfare?
We have a right to the accumulated wisdom of those who have had the experiences of
life as teachers. " Young men for action, old men for counsel," is still and always will
be the natural order. We can ill afford to lose the services of our leaders who have
been falling so fast around us. And the almost universal verdict is: " Killed by over-
work." Not by age, nor by accidental disease, but cut off in their prime, the victims
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 707
of nervous exnaustion. The tremendous strain upon the nervous system, which is
wearing out our people in business, social and domestic life, is a serious matter. All
seem keyed up to an extreme tension, and the evil does not end with the individual.
The law of heredity is that an overtaxed vitality reproduces itself in a feeble offspring,
at least having strong tendencies to mental, as well as physical, infirmities. Insanity
is increasing among us. Our asylums are quite inadequate to the demands upon
them. There is a constant cry for more room in which to shelter the poor demented
beings who have become a menace to the peace and safety of their homes. Certainly
parents have no right to bequeath this affliction to their children, neither have they
the right to bestow a wrecked nervous system, which is the legitimate predecessor
of insanity. Isolation, hard and monotonous work, have filled many wards of the
retreats in our agricultural sections with the wives and daughters of farmers. These
women have not neglected the wash-tub for the piano; they have not written books
instead of rocking the cradle; they have listened to the steady thud of the churn-
dasher, rather than to the silvery and enticing accents of the " female orator; " they
have brewed and baked and scrubbed according to the most orthodox prescriptions;
they have literally staid at home and looked carefully after the welfare of their house-
holds; and yet these patterns of domestic industry head the list of demented women.
"True 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." Some sage has observed that " it is worry, not
work, which kills;" and it must certainly be true that work with worry is doubly
exhausting, for it depresses both mind and body, preventing that quiet rest which is
so necessary for recuperation.
Now that physical culture is attracting so much attention, what with rowing and
running and tennis and bowling, riding, swimming and base-ball, the muscle of our
sons and daughters bids fair to be tolerably developed. True, this may, and probably
will, be abused; but it is a move in the right direction, and will give to the country
some superb physical specimens of men and women. The future race is partly depend-
ent on our women, and nervous, hysterical girls will produce children with nerves
irritable and over sensitive. It is popular to publish articles exhorting them to do
thus and so, because upon them must rest the responsibility of motherhood. To many
of these I say heartily, "Amen." But after all, that is only half the matter. Young
men are to bear the responsibilities of fatherhood, and it is therefore just as important
that they should be virtuous and temperate, deserving the respect and confidence
which their position should command. Healthy minds in healthy bodies the coming
generations demand from all.
In the name of our watchword, liberty; in the name of our English-speaking
ancestry, in the name of our early defenders against foreign interference, and of later
upholders of the nation's right to decide as to its citizenship and their duties, and for
the sake of those who will come after us and who will have to suffer for our mistakes,
let us think upon these things, squarely face the issues, and act in the courage of con-
viction for justice, patriotism and self-preservation. Then will " the nervous Ameri-
can " stand as a shining example of wisdom and prudence as well as of energy and
industry.
CHICAGO WOMEN.
By DR. SARAH HACKETT STEVENSON.
[Read on Chicago Day.l
Twenty-two years ago to-day, as I was about to take the train from my native
town to this city, a telegram came, saying that Chicago was in ashes, that the people
needed food and clothing. I turned back, began a
canvass of our own and our neighbor's kitchens and
wardrobes, and the next day we shipped a carload of
necessities for the destitute. I followed after in a few
days; my duties as a medical student called me to the
barracks, where the sick and destitute were cared for,
and where I had an opportunity to observe the
devoted work of Chicago women. From that day to
this I have been in touch with them and feel qualified
to speak both of their faults and their virtues. The
young women then are matrons now, the matrons,
many of them are dead and a new generation is fill-
ing the homes of a new Chicago. But the old spirit
born of the war and the fire is still the ruling spirit.
Though we deplore calamity we must acknowl-
edge its humanizing effects. The proof of this in the
great calamity of 1871 is found no less among Chi-
cago's own people than in the noble response of the
world at large. While it is too true that here and
there a human vulture was found who feasted upon
the dire necessities of his neighbors, yet, for the most
part, the lost image of God was found again in the
The common sorrow, as in war times, drew people closer
together and made it easy for them to work side by side.
So the genius for organization has found here a fruitful soil, and it is to this power
born of affliction that Chicago women owe their advancement. There is probably
no city in the world whose women are so bonded together for the promotion of the
various interests of life. Indeed, this has gone so far, and the societies of women have
multiplied to such an extent, it is a serious question if the healthful limit has not been
reached.
Twenty years of unbounded prosperity have tended to make us vain — the height
of prosperity is the most dangerous period in the life of any community or individual.
Again, this tendency to organize is not conducive to the highest individual
development. While we have great organizations of women, we have few, if any,
great women. I scarcely know one who has made any great and original contribution
Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson was bom in Buffalo Grove, Ogle County, 111. Her parents were Col. John D. and
Sarah H. Stevenson. She was educated at Mt. Carroll Seminary, State Normal University, Bloomington, and Woman's-
Medical College of Northwestern University. Has traveled and studied in Europe four different times. Her special work
has been in the interest of medicine and the medical education of women. Her profession is that of medicine, and she is-
a member of the International Gynaecological Society, the Pan-American Medical Association, the American Medical Asso-
ciation, the Chicago Medical Society, the Chicago Medico-Surgical Society, president of the staff of the National Temper-
ance Hospital, member of the Illinois State Board of Health, Consultant at the Woman's Hospital, Consultant at the Belle-
vne Hospital, Batavia, Professor of Obstetrics in the Woman' s Medical College Northwestern University, president of the
Chicago Woman's Clab, a member of Fortnightly, etc. In religious faith she is Episcopalian. Her postoffice address is-
Cbicago, 111.
708
DR. SARAH HACKETT STEVENSON.
every day man and woman.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 709
to any department of thought or work. The great people of the world, as a rule, are
not developed in societies, but almost always in solitude. Then, too, if one belongs to
an organization which, by the united effort of its members, accomplishes this or that
work, quite frequently one is deceived into the belief that he individually has done
the work, and thus is begotten an exaggerated opinion of one's own powers.
In brief, the Chicago woman has attracted so much attention of late, has been the
recipient of so much adulation, it is well for us, for our own sakes, as well as for all
women, to bring out the quadrant and the line, take our latitude and longitude and
sound our depths. Of one thing we may be assured, without quadrant or soundings,
we have not arrived! We are still at sea! And many of us who are known as great
commanders are only common sailors. Common, did I say? All honor to the com-
monest of common who does his duty. Who knows if in the infinite adjustment of
the relation of things the common shall not be exalted, as the last shall be first?
In our population of fifteen hundred thousand, probably about one-half are
women, for we are midway between the excess of one sex in New England and of
the other sex in the West.
What are these six or seven hundred thousand women doing? Probably one hun-
dred and fifty thousand of them are domestic servants. They are taking care of our
homes at the greatest possible expenditure of resources, in the greatest possible extrava-
gance. In the three hundred thousand homes of Chicago it would be hard to find a
scientific domestic department. Domestic science is scarcely germinated. Here is an
army of at least one hundred thousand women representing unskilled labor; worse than
a devastating army of soldiers destroying health, life and property.
Here is a problem for Chicago women, a real home mission. I am glad to say that
the Columbian Association of Housekeepers has made a beginning, but it deserves
more encouragement from women than it has yet received. The truth is American
people do not know how miserably and extravagantly they are fed and housed. Cooks
and housekeepers need training schools just as much as nurses need them. Good as
our nursing schools are, they are defective in one great essential, viz., economy. It is
almost impossible for people of moderate means to satisfy the many demands of a
trained nurse. Our people have yet to learn that economy is a great fundamental prin-
ciple of universal application — the exact adjustment of means to an end, and not
something to be practiced merely when people are poor. It is the great and almost
only preventive of poverty.
We do not think seriously enough of this alien population, which forms an integ-
ral part of our households. These girls come to us young, their characters unformed.
They represent, sooner or later, a hundred thousand homes, -each with its children, the
future citizens, good or bad, of Chicago. What are we doing for them? Literally noth-
ing. Why should we be puffed up with vain glory, our heads in the clouds, when this
great population of wasteful, unskilled labor stands upon our thresholds? Let no Chi-
cago woman boast of her sex until her sex has grappled with and solved the problem
of problems — household economics — the one department which undisputably belongs
to woman. One is positively filled with despair to think of the amount of hot bread
and greasy pie daily consumed in Chicago. Still we have the face to raise money and
send missionaries to the heathen; the mote in our brother's eye is such an irresistible
and universal temptation.
It is estimated there are about five thousand day laborers among the women of
Chicago who earn upon an average about six dollars a week. They work in all sorts
of factories, the manufacture of liquor being about the only industry in which they are
not engaged. This group of women is still more isolated and alien than the domestic
group. They almost never come in contact with women who have greater opportunities.
Yet if you were to know them intimately and analyze their aspirations you would find
that their standard of getting on in the world is a purely material one, just like ours;
a finer house, more clothes, more jewelry, especially more jewelry. It has always
been a mystery to me why people as they acquire money begin to hang out signs.
710 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
They soon move from one street to another, or, as in Chicago, from one side of the
river to another — for what? That their old neighbors may be envious of them and
their new neighbors visit them and estimate the cost of their furniture and food. We
set the example and the women we are pleased to call beneath us follow hard after.
The pinchbeck jewelry and the gaudy plush furniture are pitiful, but they are all
potent indices of the actuating motive. If we do not see to it carefully the advent of
this great Columbian Exposition will simply accentuate this monstrous error of life.
The real, the artistic will be crowded out of its influence upon the masses, and the
greed of gain will be the only survival. For it must be remembered the fittest to sur-
vive is not always the best, but too frequently merely the strongest. Have we, as
individuals, or have our boasted great and influential clubs anything to give to these
women in domestic and factory life? They do not need charity, they are self-sup-
porting. Do they need us? Do we need them? Are there no reciprocities which
have gone unrecognized while we are searching for causes to espouse and missions to
support? As to how these factory women are doing their daily work we have little
information, they stand or fall with the market. They must do mechanically well or
they would not be employed. Is it possible that a knowledge of the ideal can be
breathed into the life of the factory girl, that she can put a soul into the tobacco leaf
or the tin can? Is the work of the Chicago woman complete while the domestic or
the factory girl, or she herself, spends her money for that which is not bread?
We have also a great army of women teachers, more than three thousand strong,
to say nothing of the private schools. Our pride was a trifle wounded when a visitor
told us the truth about our boasted public schools. How perfectly absurd to under-
take the education of the masses with educators who are grossly illiterate. And how
much more absurd, even criminal, it is to try to destroy the only institution in our
midst that recognizes pedagogics as a science — the Cook County Normal School.
How much do we know or care about the quality of mind that is molding the minds
of the children of the city? All talk of education is as sounding brass when primary
education is neglected. Primary! it is well named, in that the first is the greatest. In
our present system the accomplishment of adult life is left unaccomplished in trying
to unlearn things which never should have been taught. A great professor is called
to teach our young men and women, but anybody may teach the children. Let the
child have the great, yes, the greatest professor. The young man and woman can
teach themselves; if their infancy has been directed they know what they need and
how to get it. What are the women of Chicago doing for the public schools of Chi-
cago? Do we not feel that our school work is finished since we have helped to place
two women on our school board, and — left them to their fate?
After the domestics, the factory women and the teachers, come the comparatively
few professional women. They compare favorably with the average, some of them
above the average professional standard, but none of them can be said to be great. I
know of no woman who has made any new contribution to science, art or literature.
I am fully aware that the great men of the earth are few and far, and that this is an
age of greatness in masses rather than in individuals. Mediocrity is the genius of
modern times. Still we should welcome a great book, a great picture, a great scientific
discovery with unfeigned delight, especially if made by a woman, and a Chicago
woman. May the time draw near.
We have a fair share of society leaders, and these have been compared to the
women of the French salon — possibly the women of the salon have been over-esti-
mated. Be that as it may, our type is very different, as it should be The environ-
ment is totally different. Commercialism does not develop socially brilliant men.
The yardstick and the steelyards are not at home with the lace handkerchief and the
fan. The socially brilliant women of all ages have developed in the same atmosphere
that develops socially brilliant men, from the age of Aspasia to that of the Hotel
Rambouillet. A woman can not will to be brilliant and straightway shine. She must
have an atmosphere and perspective. Her relations in time and space must be cor-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 711
rect, and these things are not of her own volition. The whole thing is more or less
traditional, and far better is it for the American woman when she elects to ignore the
traditions which, however she may try, she can not counterfeit, and be that to which
she was born, the uncrowned queen of the people.
Beside all the women described there are several hundred thousand to be
accounted for. A little girl whose schoolmates were telling what great avocations
in life they intended to follow, declared that she intended to be a plain, married
woman. The plain married women must ever constitute the great majority of any
population, and it is right that it should be so. But of all the women we have named
these home women are of the greatest importance. What they are thinking and doing
is the thinking and doing of the city or the nation; this is true of any country, especially
is it true of a republic. A lady in describing how she spent her time said: when she
was not rowing with the servants, or ill in bed, she was doing fancy work. I should
be sorry to believe that this described many, and yet so true an observer as Howells
speaks of the prevalence of the women " in a permanent state of disrepair." Let us
hope these are few in Chicago. These so-called home women have the greatest
influence and they should be able to use it intelligently. Everybody bewails the cor-
ruption of the state. Politics are a by-word. Now, if these home women cared very
much for the state, if they could be taught the love of country, as the mothers of the
revolution learned it, do you not think it would be improving to the politicians? We
often hear of the phenomenon of double consciousness; it is an important question;
but a double conscience is of far greater importance. It is quite the fashion now to
have two consciences, one for private the other for public use. Now this divorce
between the individual and the social conscience is the most dangerous evil of modern
times; doubly dangerous because it is not recognized as an evil. If a man says,
"that's business," or "that's politics," no other explanation is deemed necessary
for any advantage he may take of his neighbor, or of a public trust. I was once
asked by an anti-emigrationist what I thought to be the great evil with which we
had to contend, if it were not the great influx of ignorant foreigners? I replied,
the double standard of conscience among our own people. It is like our double stand-
ard of virtue. I am well aware that the relation between the intrinsic value of a thing
and its market value is very elusive, but I am equally well aware that there is such a
thing as selling an article for far more than it is worth, and no one knows it so thor-
oughly as the seller. The power to find the fine point of discrimination between this
and stealing is left out of my moral sense. It was my fortune to know very well some
of the so-called "boodlers" of this county, being officially associated with them in my
hospital work. There could not be found a better illustration of what I mean by
double conscience — the divorce between private and public moral judgment. Some
of those men are truly excellent in private life. They would have scorned either to
lie or to steal from a rteighbor, and yet?
But what has this to do with Chicago women? Very much. Women, especially
home women, the class composing the great multitude, have much to do with this
matter. The truth is, the ordinary town girl in marrying prefers a smart trickster to
a plain everyday man, because the former can put on style, and that to her is price-
less above rubies, and he knows it. To the heart of the ordinary city woman it is so
much better to live in a fashionable hotel or boarding house, wear showy clothes and
drive on the avenues than it is to go into modest quarters and honestly help an honest
man to make an honest living. They frankly tell you that they marry to be taken care
of, to be supported, and they do not propose to help support any man. That they fail
of their object in the majority of cases does not prevent the procession from recruiting
its ranks every year. It is the appearance, not the reality; the shadow instead of the
substance, that all these people are striving for, and these shadows are so costly, con-
science, comfort, even life itself are thrown into the scale to outweight a mockery.
Shakespere told it all as it never could be told again in Wolsey's lament.
When wives can say to their husbands, I do not want ease and luxury, fine homes
712 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
and fine clothes at the cost of your very soul; you must not take public office at the
price of your honor! do you not believe the reign of the single conscience might be
inaugurated?
Some one in trying to criticize " The Angelus," called it the apotheosis of pota-
toes. This is just the need of the world and the especial need of Chicago, the
idealization of the humblest things in life. And who is to do it if our women fail?
Now more than ever, with this great material wave forcing itself upon us, do we need'
the apotheosis of quiet, homely, honest life, " far from the garish day." Not for one
moment must anyone infer that all Chicago homes are artificial and superficial. It is
only that the artificial are so much more in evidence than the genuine.
I have always maintained that no woman in history ever had the opportunity that
the Queen of England has had to help the cause of woman. I am equally sure that
to no community of women has been given such great opportunity as the women of
Chicago possess today. Our greatness then does not consist so much in ourselves;
there is no one of us who could not be immediately replaced should her place become
vacant. Our greatness lies in our opportunity, born of conditions and events
which are for the most part inevitable, and for which we deserve little credit. How
we shall use this gift from out the great eternity is for us to decide. Let us hope we shall
not need the horrors of a great war or a great fire to arouse us from our self-admiration
and make us realize that we are in no way exalted above our fellow beings, and that
our only genius is the genius for hard work; our only greatness the greatness in
opportunity to be useful. Let us hope that Chicago women are too thoroughly
wholesome to be spoiled by the fulsome flattery that well-meaning people have so
bountifully bestowed upon them.
FOOD FOR STUDENTS.*
By MRS. ELLEN H. RICHARDS.
The success of a state or nation, as well as its wealth, depends on the energy and
capacity of its citizens. Schools, colleges and universities are founded and maintained
in order that students may grow up into successful men and women with energy to
spare for the nation's good beyond that required to sustain their own life.
The only known source of this valuable human energy is derived from the food
eaten and converted in the human machine into work, whether this work be thinking
or lifting weights. So human force, power, heat, work, thought, come from the assimi-
lation of food.
If double work is required of a horse he is given double feed. The young student
has double work to mature his own physical body and to learn to think great thoughts
at the same time. All work is one; work means expenditure of energy. No sane
engineer would start out with a World's Fair train without coal enough to run his
engine. No sane man would begin to paint a great picture, invent a great machine
without force enough to accomplish his aim.
Since this fact is now perfectly well established, it should be recognized by all
educators that good thinking, like good rowing, requires proper feeding.
A cow is worth to the state perhaps a hundred dollars a year, a trained mind one
hundred thousand dollars a year. A nation which so carefully feeds its cattle should
take care of its young men and women with promising brains. In fact, the future of
our nation may be said to depend on the feeding of the students now in the schools.
Therefore the dietary of the college student should be a subject of careful study
by every college faculty, and as great care should be exercised in selecting the steward,
who is, in fact, to determine the mental standard of all the students, as in selecting the
professor of Greek or history. When the academic world becomes convinced of the
importance of this factor, we shall see a race of American students far outstripping all
others.
Herein lies a new problem in the conservation of energy, and of that most pro-
ductive of all forms of energy, that of human thought.
Mrs. R. H. Richards (" Ellen Henrietta Swallow") was bom in Dunstable, Mass., in 1842. She was educated at the
public schools, Westford Academy, Westford, Mass. ; Vassar College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ; received
from Vassar in 1870 A. B.; in 1873 A. M., and S. B. from Institute of Technology in 1873. She married Robert H. Richards,
Professor of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy in the Institute of Technology. Her special work haa been in the interest
of sanitary science, particularly in reference to the water supply. Her principal literary works are "The Chemistry of Cook-
ing and Cleaning Food Materials and their Adulterations," " First Lessons in Minerals," and " Domestic Economy in Pnblio
Schools." Her profession is that of instructor in sanitary chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her
postoffice addrebs is Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Mass.
* What appears here is bat an abstract of the addrees delivered before the Woman's Congress.
713
THE EVOLUTION OF HOME.
By MISS JULIET CORSON.
Through the oldest race-records we may trace the origin of home to the hearth-
fire kindled by women. Today, among the races remote from civilization in the South
Pacific Islands, we find women making fire by the
friction of dry wood. In the United States Govern-
ment Building the Indian fire-drill is shown in the
Ethnological exhibit, which was the usual means of
kindling flames in all the tribes ot our continent. It
is the same implement as the fire-drill used by the
Brahmans of Asia in lighting the sacred fire. Its use
is so ancient that its origin is not recorded, but its
Sanscrit name, Pramatha, which means " to bring forth
by friction," is the root of the word Prometheus, and
the story of that immortal thief is but a new version
of the myth of the god Agni; the heavenly fire forced
to come to the service of man. Women have alv/ays
been the custodians of the precious element. Nearly
every early religion had its fire cult, the most beauti-
ful virgins being its ministers; our own generation has-
found them in Tasmania, and the Onondaga Indians
have the women make the fire of the White Dog feast
with the fire-drill, a little rod twirled within a disc of
dried wood until both burst into flame. Well might a
woman's cunning hand have achieved that miracle of
patience as she brooded her young in some rude
shelter of a desolated world, racked by the rage of elemental storms; torn by some
furious destruction, some such tremendous cataclysm as is recorded in the earliest
traditions of every race. The Asiatic traditions say that such cycles of destruction
occur every six thousand years, and that another is now nearly due. The Aztec writ-
ings specify four such catastrophes when the human race was almost blotted out; their
greatest religious ceremonial was a solemn sacrifice and supplication to the supreme
God that his people might be spared the awful fate that had befallen their ancestors;
and the relighting of the sacred fire was the visible token of their present immunity.
Women, as priestesses, formed a conspicuous part of this imposing ceremony as
they did in all national functions. To them the relighting of the fire of promise was
an office of memory and hope — memory of that fearful time when the little children
were torn from the shelter of their mothers' bosoms, while the heavens seemed falling
upon the earth, and in the faint reflection of the far-off "morning star," that burning
mountain of terrible death, they taught them the first words of that passionate cry for
mercy; that agony of supplication, which echoes in the prayer raised from trembling
Miss Jaliet Corson was bom in Roxbary, Mass. Her parents were Mary Henderson and Peter Ross Corson. She was
edncated chiefly in the state and city of New York. She has traveled throughout the United States and British America. Her
special work has been in the interest of Domestic Science, Social Economy and Hygienic and Sanitary Dietetics. Her prin-
cipal literary works are " The Cooking School Text Book," " The Cooking Manual," " Meals for the Million," "Fifteen and
Twenty-five-cent Dinners," "Family Living on Five Hundred Dollars a Year." "New Family Cook-book," " Practical
American Cookery" and " Household Management." Miss Corson was the first teacher of cookery and the founder of cook-
ing schools in America. She was the first lecturer on domestic economy and teacher of cookery in the public schools of the
United States and Canada. She was chosen as director of the Cooking School Exhibit at the Colnnibian Exposition; was
awarded a medal and diploma. Her postoffice address is New York City.
714
MISS JULIET CORSON.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 715
lips, while the prostrate people watched for the fire-drill's tiny thread of smoke which
meant another generation of safety.
Plato's " One Dreadful Night and Day" is an echo from the other side of the
world of this terrible terrestrial overturning which is described in the Central Ameri-
can sacred books, and possibly in our Old Testament's oldest book, fearful pictures of
a broken and blasted humanity wandering, heartsick, about a ruined world. Such ter-
rors as they must have suffered confront us, written upon primeval rocks in characters
of fire, to be read by the eye of science after the meaning of these prayers is lost to
the race that has preserved the words of supplication. Despairing of saving even life
amidst this wreck of the world, the dying souls uttered this cry to their gods for rescue
from the tempest of fire and molten stones that seemed pouring upon them from
Heaven; the very abode of God — "the God by whom we live; who knoweth the
thoughts and giveth all gifts; one God of perfect perfection and purity, under whose
wings we find repose and a sure defense." Sorely tortured souls, they poured out
their agony for refuge as we today would beseech our God for protection should some
awful convulsion of nature shake these white shining walls down upon our devoted
heads.
Mothers, you who have little children at home, go presently through the stately
avenues of our White City, from this Memorial Hall of the women of today to
another, dedicated to the memories of our vanished American civilizations, and regard
their relics; poor shreds and patches of humanity, and yet so eloquent of mother-
love, for who but a mother would have swathed those small bodies in softest feather
cloth, and placed in the little hands food for that last long spirit-journey upon
which no mother compassion can brood over the infant soul. From the cailon of the
Mancos, through the temples and palaces of Yucatan, wife-love and mother-love can
lead us back to ocean-buried Atlantis, the plains of Aasgard and the Islands of the
Blest, which Poseidon planted in the midst of his watery realm for his mortal love.
Always woman, and always motherhood, for this was the cradle of the race hidden
within the dark and misty Mare Tetiebrosum. Veiled in the mist of ages, save for these
fleeting terrible echoes, still we may read the mother's tortured heart. Where there
had been a fruitful earth, brilliant with the light of fair and tranquil days, and where
were safe and happy homes, she saw only desolation and ruin, " little children per-
ishing with hunger and none to give them consolation or caress, suffering for the sins
of their fathers." This cry was cruelly wrung from the broken spirit, " Death is Thy
messenger, so powerful that none may escape. But, O most pitiful Lord! at least
take pity and have mercy upon the children!"
Then, when after the whirlwind and the tempest of fire came the deluge and the
icy rains, can you not see the stricken fragment of humanity huddled in some cavern,
perhaps sore pressed by equally terrified beasts in the mad rush for refuge; or beneath
some overhanging rockshelter, striving to maintain the vital warmth? Do not
believe that man, the creature of God's sunlight, was first a cave-dweller from choice.
The cavemen who carved the reindeer's figure upon the animal's horn, and etched the
portrait of the mammoth upon one of the creature's tusks, were too deft of touch, too
certain of skill to be habitual dwellers in the dim light of caverns. If archaic art
means anything more than accident it means that men and beasts, without conflict,
were rushed into the nearest shelter from terrible and sudden peril that admitted of
no choice in the chances of escape. It means that the cave-dwelling was of long con-
tinuance; and, taken with other circumstances familiar to the student of pro-glacial
history, both in the record of the rocks and in the traditions of the earliest religions,
it implies a decided civilization already flourishing. The ancient British record says:
"The patriarch distinguished for his integrity was shut up, together with his select
company. * * * Presently a tempest of fire arose. It split the earth asunder to
the great deep * * * and the waters covered the earth." All this overthrow of
the foundations of nature in consequence of the profligacy of mankind. That very evil
state implies a knowledge of the luxuries of life. There could not well be profligacy
716 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in a state of Spartan simplicity. From the safety of a luxurious home to the wild front
of the cyclonic storm in the twinkling of an eye the woman was borne with her chil-
dren. If ever it were her province to comfort and console now v/ould come the test.
Well might the strongest man sink under profound discouragement, since from the
apparent sovereignty of nature he had fallen to be its slave, the very sport of the
elements. Then indeed was woman's task pre-eminently to soothe and cheer; to rouse
his flagging vigor, to claim his utmost efforts, to send him forth to seek through the
waving elements the scant sustenance still afforded by the desolated earth half buried
under the debris of celestial and terrestrial wrack. And although the outside world
seemed on fire, in those cavern recesses, dark and gloomy depths within the earth, fire
seemed the first necessity, the treasure most desired, the sole reminder of those lost
blessings, the light: and warmth of home. Then it must have been that the fire-drill
was invented or remembered? For who shall say through how many such cataclysms
this earth has passed? The Aztec records say the next will destroy the world of
existing civilizations. For the direct connection of the last with the relighting of the
Sacred fire of the Aztecs we are indebted to Mme. Alice Le Plongeon, who has
translated from the Maya language the story of the destruction of the land of Mr. Plato's
Atlantis. Geology shows more than one such convulsion; and the falling of Java
head, and this year's terrible Persian earthquake give proof of the activity of the
internal fires.
In the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, near where the twenty-fifth meridian from Lon-
don crosses the equator, there exists a submarine volcano or earthquake belt, the
explosions or shocks of which agitate the waves to such an extent as to seriously
menace all vessels sailing near. What the evidence of today has verified must have
been terrific in its effect. In those desolated margins of the world which had escaped
destruction the first faint flame upon the rude cavern-hearth must have been cher-
ished as the thing most desired. And when the. earth gradually became staple, and
the scant gleams of light returned across the sky, when the hollow in the rock could
be moss-lined, and sheltered by a pent-roof of reeds, it was the woman's hand that
gathered at the fireside the fruits of the long day's search or toil. When the scarred
earth once took on the aspect of life renewed from the invisible source of things,
hers it was to foster the germs of vitality outcoming from the war of the elements.
As the gloom of the primeval storm was pierced by the shining lances of the sunlight
she might dare to venture from the shelter of rock or cave to search for some edible
root; or, following the trail of the few animals or birds that had strayed within her
racked borders from the confines of some undestroyed land, to gather the seeds they
might let fall or the eggs they might nest, or perhaps to find the young of this return-
ing life. Some spoil of the chase surviving its wounds, and fostered by her, might
become the firstling of her domestic flock, from whose hair or fleece her cunning hand
could contrive a garment as boon inestimable. A few seeds falling to the ground and
flourishing might grow into the first new harvest. Let us consider. As the woman
grows helpful she grows strong; her old spirit returning. She bears her share of the
cultivation of the soil, the building of the house, the clothing of the family. She is
again the helpmate and co-worker with man, as she is fabled in the Golden Age
pictured in the legends of every country.
The hearth-fire built, the harvest garnered, the game brought to the fireside, the
next step in the evolution of home is the development of the art of cookery. The
first traces which we find of man's efforts as a cooking animal show that he has pro-
gressed only in detail. The pre-glacial man laid hearth-stones, broiled and boiled his
meats, and had used tiny scoops to extract the marrow from the bones in ages that
have left us but the cave deposits for history. But we know from his own etchings
that he drove reindeer, had horses, and carved the handles of his hunting knives;
even scenes are rudely depicted, reindeer thrown down and entangled in their har-
ness, and a man driving horses bitten in the heel by a serpent.
This definite character of the early form of cookery comes to us not only through
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 717
antiquarian sources, but the conditions of today in remote countries known usually
through the works of travelers are shown here, in the World's Fair, by actual investi-
gation of methods among the semi-civilized peoples located with all their native cus-
toms and appliances in the Midway Plaisance; they accord with the archaeological
remains shown in the Anthropological Building in the South Park. Dr. Mary E.
Green and Professor Kinsie, with whom the writer was associated on the judges' com-
mittee for the examination of food-products, by Prof. W. O. Atwater, made exact
investigation of the methods in operation at the native villages; their conclusions
accorded with the writer's, which were formed after continued research among the
records and relics of the progenitors of these and other so-called uncivilized races.
The fundamental principles of cookery are the same among all peoples; those are the
best fed who have adhered to slow, moderate heat, and the long-continued process
now advocated by modern science. The woman seemed naturally to perform the cul-
inary office; she is fitted for it in all ages and countries, and should comprehend its
mysteries for that reason; if other were needed modern medical and sanitary science
show how entirely by its agency she can mold the mental and physical condition of
humanity. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, thirty years ago, that medical curative
treatment would resolve itself into modifications of the food and natural stimuli; and
medical science today verifies his prediction. This same modern science repeats the
lessons learned by man when he lived closest to the heart of Mother Nature. The
stone-age man in the South Pacific still uses the earth-ovens of his forefathers, and the
epicures of the Eastern seacoast cook their clam bakes in just such way. This is only
one of the parallels afforded by the latest discoveries among the ruined civilizations
of this great continent, whose re-discovery we are now celebrating with such pomp
and circumstance.
In the last of the great American empires the domestic virtues of women were
most highly esteemed. We have already seen that they were prominent in civil and
religious capacities, and even the stern Franciscan, Torquemada, who came to Mexico
before the conquerors had vanished from the scene of their glory and their shame,
says that the Aztec women were an "admirable example for our times, when women
are not only unfit for the labors of the field, but have too much levity to attend to
their own households." These Aztec women became the mothers of some of Spain's
noblest houses. While today we honor the children of Columbus and the memory of
Isabella within the precincts of this our City Beautiful, shall we wholly neglect the
homage due to merits so transcendent as to stir to enthusiasm that grave Franciscan's
heart?
When we leave this Congress let us go to those sections of our White City which
contain the sad mementoes of this dead and gone greatness, through the galleries of
our Government Building, to the Central and South American sections of the Liberal
Arts, to the exhibits of Mexico and Peru; above all, to that vast repository of our
country's vanished glories, which overflows with relics of the oldest of the great civil-
izations of this changeful earth. Let us stand before the remains of this grandest of
man's ruined supremacies, and yield the homage of a few short moments to the mem-
ories of those noble wives and mothers. A woman's hand will point us to the monu-
ments of that noble wife and queen who raised to her murdered husband's memory
one of the greatest mausoleums that ever weighted the bosom of Mother Earth with
carven images of human grandeur. Let us follow where Madame Le Plongeon lets in
the light of modern day upon the palace and tomb of the queen long dead, dust with
the dust she lamented — work well worthy a place in our most beautiful of modern
cemeteries. The colors, fresh as when laid upon the walls, show the beautiful queen
weeping beside her dead lord; and the superb photographs of Mandsley bear out all
that Madame Le Plongeon has written about the Tiger King's wife. These architect-
ural links are no closer than the religious and ethical, which show a degree of enlight-
enment that will bear comparison with our own.
• So far as women are concerned, if the test of their advancement be the degree of
718 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
influence they exercise upon their age and the part they play in culture and progress,
we may seriously ask ourselves in what respect we have raised the standard of
womanly usefulness? And whether we are not in danger of losing sight of the homely
virtues of wifehood and motherhood in our strife for public equality with men? If
our best and brightest are to be devoted to competition with men in the learned pro-
fessions, may we not question where the home-makers are to come from to whom we
must look for the motherhood of the next generation which shall create our rulers?
Without doubt it is- sweet and proper to serve one's country in public; but what will
result if only dull-witted ones are left to maintain the elevation of the home? In what
shall we have excelled the women whose memories we have traced among the relics
of their lost civilizations? Shall we, with all the gains of the ages about us, do no
more than they have done before us? And if, from the sacred precincts of the home,
we can not hope to achieve greater blessings than they gained for their kind, upon
what point of vantage shall we plant the lever with which we women hope to move
the world?
ASSYRIAN MYTHOLOGY.
By MRS. ELIZABETH A. REED.
The far East was the home of poetry and the land of mythology, before the
hundred gates of Palmyra were swung upon their massive hinges, or the crown of her
beautiful queen had been set with its moonlight pearls.
A land which was rich with jewels and radiant
with flowers held in her background a mythology so
primitive that it appears to have been the mother of
them all.
The Assyrians counted no less than three hundred
spirits of Heaven, and six hundred of earth, all of
which (as well as the rest of their mythology) appear
to have been borrowed from ancient Babylonia, the
birthplace of that common mythology which in vari-
ous forms afterward became the heritage of so many
nations.
In those early days, when men did not like to
retain God in their hearts, they made gods with their
own hands for their worship — they erected the altars
of Baal, and prepared the hideous feast of Moloch.
They glorified the god of wine and offered their
daughters upon the shrine of Ashtaroth.
In the days of this primitive idolatry, elaborate
and costly temples were built for these uncouth
deities, and when the image of a god was brought
MRS. ELIZABETH A. REED. • i. U • 1 U Mi. i. 1 ^U £ ^- I j
mto his newly built temple, there were festivals and
processions, and wild rejoicings among the worshipers.
The principal gods mentioned in the early tablets may be briefly sketched as
ioUows:
Ann was the sky god, and ruler of the highest heaven, whose messengers are evil
spirits.
The messengers of And are elsewhere described as the seven storm-clouds, or the
winds, and their leader seems to have been the dragon Tiamat, who was defeated by
Bel-Merodach in the war of the gods.
The tablets have preserved an Accadian poem on this subject, the author
of which is represented as living in the Babylonian city of Eridu, where his horizon
was bounded by the mountains of Susiani, and the battle of the elements raging
around their summit suggested to his poet mind the warring of evil spirits. It was
these seven storm spirits who were represented as attacking the moon when it was
•eclipsed.
In this primitive mythology we find also Assur, the god of judges, who was the
special patron of Assyria, and afterward made to express the power of the later
Assyrian empire by becoming " father of the gods " and the head of the Pantheon.
Mre. Elizabeth A. Reed is a native of Maine. Her i>arents were Alyin and Silvia Armstrong. They were of English stock
4uad almost Puritan habits. She was edacated partially at the South and largely by private tutors, bat being happily married
before she was eighteen to a man of letters, she has been a life-long student, and her intellectual training has been very largely
aader her husband's influence. She married Hiram Von Reed, who is one of the most original thinkers of the day, and a
brilliant orator. Her special work has been in the interest of philanthropy, moral reform, Christianity and literature. Her
principal literary works are " Hindoo Literature " and Persian Literature," published by S. C. Griggs & Co. Her books have
Teceived cordial praise from some of the most distinguished scholars of Europe. Her postoffice address is 41 Seeley Avenue,
Ohicago, 111. ^
iiy
720 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Hea was the god of chaos, or the deep; he was the king of the abyss who
determines destinies. In later times he was also called the god of the waters, and
from him some of the attributes of Neptune may be derived. It was said that Chaos
was his wife.
In later mythology, however, Nin-ci-gal, instead of Chaos, was the wife of Hea.
She was the " lady of the mighty country," and the " queen of the dead." This god-
dess may have been the prototype of Proserpine, who was carried away by. Pluto in
his golden chariot to be the queen of Plades.
Sin is a word which signifies brightness, and it was the name borne by the moon-
god, who was the father of Ishtar or Ashtaroth, A golden tablet found in the corner-
stone of a palace or temple, at Khorsabad, contains an account of the splendid tem-
ples which King Sargon II, built in a town near Nineveh and dedicated to Hea, Sin,.
the moon-god; Chemosh, the sun-god; and Ninip, the god of forces,
Hea-bani was represented as a satyr with the legs, head and tail of an ox. This
figure occurs very frequently on the gems, and may always be recognized by these
characteristics. He is doubtless the original of Mendes, the goat-formed god of
Egypt, and also of Pan, the goat-formed god of the Arcadian herdsmen, with his pipe
of seven reeds,
Nergal was the patron deity of Cutha, He was the god of bows and arms.
According to Dr. Oppert, Nergal represented the planet Mars, and hence the Grecian
god of war appears to have been merely a perpetuation of this early deity.
Bel-Merodach, or Marduk, had a splendid temple, which, according to the inscrip-
tions, was built by Nebuchadnezzar, with its costly woods, its silver and molten gold
and precious stones.
It is from the name of the god Nebo that the name of King Nebuchadnezzar was
derived. In a ten-column inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, which now forms a part of
the India Office collection, the king speaks of building a temple in Babylon "to Nebo
of lofty intelligence." Even the portico of the shrine of Nebo was covered with gold,
and many dazzling gems were used in the decoration of the temple.
Ninip, the lord of strong actions, finds an echo in Hercules of Grecian mythology,
who received his bow from Apollo, his sword from Mercury, his golden breastplate
from Vulcan, his horses from Neptune, and his robe from Minerva.
The Assyrian Dagon was usually associated with And, the sky-god, and the wor-
ship of both was carried as far west as Canaan.
Of Moloch little is said upon the tablets except the very significant statement
that "he took the children," but a curious fragment of an old Accadian poem indi-
cates that the children of these highlanders were offered as burnt offerings in very
early times. It will be remembered that the Mosaic law was especially severe upon this
"abomination" of human sacrifices, the death penalty being ordered for every such
offense.
Chemosh was the sun-god who was often worshiped as the supreme, while hi.s
early worshipers sang praises, offered sacrifices and performed incantations. The
success of Mesha, the King of Moab, in his revolt against the King of Israel, was com-
memorated by the erection of the celebrated Moabite stone, whereon was recorded
the inscription ascribing his victory to Chemosh, his favorite deity. But the hideous
idols of the sun-god that occupied the palatial temples of Chemosh at Larsam, in
Southern Chaldea, and at Sippara, in the north of Babylonia, became more refined in
the poetry of the Vedas, and he appeared in the mythology of the Hindns as Snrya,
the god of day, who rode across the heavens in a car drawn by milk-white horses.
In this pantheon of mythology Im was the god of the sky, sometimes called
Rimmon, the god of lightning and storms. He is represented among the Hindus as
Indra, who furiously drives his tawny steeds to the battle of the elements. With the
Greeks and Latins he was personated by Zeiis and Jupiter, "the cloud-compelling-
Jove," while among the Northmen he wears the form of Thor, whose frown is the
gathering of the storm clouds, and whose angry voice echoes in the thunderbolt.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 721
•
Baal, or Bel, was also an important character, and indeed, according to Dr. Oppert,
all of the Phoenician gods were included under the general name of Baal, and human
sacrifices were often made upon their blood-stained altars. Baal had a magnificent
temple in Tyre, which was founded by Hiram, the King of Tyre. Not only human
sacrifices, but also the grossest sensuality characterized the worship of Baal.
Tammuz is another form of the sun-god who is represented as being slain by the
boar's tusk of winter. June is the month of Tammuz, and his festival began by the
cutting of the sacred fir-tree in which the god had hidden himself. Tammuz is the
proper Syriac name for Adonis of the Greeks, and doubtless Adonis is merely a later
form of the same myth.
.Ishtar, the goddess who is sometimes called Astarte, was the most important
female deity in this early pantheon. The Persian form of the word is Astara. In
Phoenician it is Ashtaroth, and it is said that all the Phoenician goddesses were included
under this general term. Another form of the name afterward appeared in Greek
mythology as Asteria, and it was applied to the beautiful goddess who fled from the
suit of Jove, and, flinging herself down from Heaven into the sea, became the island
afterward named Delos.
Ishtar of Arbela was the goddess of war, the " Lady of Battles." She was the
daughter of Ann, whose messengers were the " Seven Evil Spirits," and she was the
favorite goddess of King Assur-bani-pal, who claims that he received his bow from her.
Her image, according to Pliny, was of solid gold, and her high priest was second only
to the king himself.
The character of Ishtar is apparently a prototype not only of Hecate, but also of
Medea, whose chariot was drawn by winged serpents, and the caldron or pot which
Ishtar filled with her magic herbs suggests the statement of Ovid that Medea on one
occasion spent no less than nine days and nights in collecting herbs for her caldron.
The character of Ishtar may also have suggested that of Circe, who
" Mixed the potion, fraudulent of soul.
The poison mantled in a golden bowl."
And she loved Ulysses as Ishtar loved Izdubar, even though she had transformed all
his companions into swine.
In Column II. of the tablet under consideration we find the story of the king whom
Ishtar changed into a leopard, " and his own dogs bit him to pieces." No one can
doubt that we see here the original of the Greek fable of Actaeon, the hero who offended
'the goddess Diana, when she revenged herself by changing him into a deer, and his
dogs no longer knowing their master, fell upon him and tore him to pieces.
Ishtar of Nineveh, who is identified with Beltis, the wife of Baal, became the
goddess of love. She is the prototype of Freyja, the weeping goddess of love among
the' Northmen, and the Aphrodite of the Greeks — the beautiful nymph who sprang
from the soft foam of the sea and was received in a land of flowers by the gold-filleted
seasons, who clothed her in garments immortal. Her chariot was drawn by milk-white
swans, and her garlands were of rose and myrtle. Ishtar of Nineveh appears as the
imperious queen of love and beauty, and was undoubtedly the original of the Latin
Venus. Indeed, Anthon says: "There is none of the Olympians of whom the foreign
origin is so probable as this goddess, and she is generally regarded as being the same
with Astarte or Ashtaroth of the Phoenicians." We find upon the tablets a beautiful
legend concerning her visit to Hades. She went in search of her husband Tammuz,
as Orpheus was afterward represented as going to recover P2urydice, when the music
of his golden shell stopped the wheel of Ixion, and made Tantalus forget his thirst.
It was doubtless through the Phoenicians that this legend reached Greece, and was
there reproduced in a form almost identical with the fable of the tablets. Adonis,
the sun-god, who was the hero of the Greek fable, was killed by the tusk of the wild
boar, even as Tammuz, the sun-god of Assyria, was slain by the boar's tusk of winter.
Venus, the queen of love and beauty, was inconsolable at his loss, and at last obtained
(46)
722 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
from Proserpine, the queen of Hades, permission for Adonis to spend every alternate
six months with her upon the earth, while the rest of the time should be passed in Hades.
Ishtar is represented as going down to the regions of darkness wearing rings and
jewels, with a diadem and girdle set with precious stones, and this fact would indicate
that this ancient mythology was the source of the idea that whatever was buried with
the dead would go with them to the other shore. Hence India for ages burned the
favorite wives with the dead bodies of her rajas, while other tribes placed living women
in the graves of their chiefs, and our own Indians provide dogs and weapons for the
use of their braves when they reach the " happy hunting grounds."
OUR NEIGHBORS, THE ALASKAN WOMEN,
By MRS. CLARA A. MCDIARMID.
For many years, perhaps about six, I had an intense desire to visit Alaska, but
not until August, 1891, was I fortunate enough to do so. Donninga warm, short dress,
with grip in hand, I made a start for this land of night-
less days and midnight rainbows.
Alaska, or Al-ay-ek-sa, the name given by the
native islanders to the main land, signifies great coun-
try; and great it is, being one-fifth as large as all the
other states and territories together. The population
in 1891 was about 49,850, of these thirty-five thousand
are wholly uncivilized, and seventy-three hundred
semi-civilized. We are sending millions of dollars
every year to foreign lands, while almost within sound
of our own cannon thirty-five thousand barbarians in
Alaska alone are waiting for the time when the Chris-
tians of their own country and the United States gov-
^ly ,, j^ ^^^^K ernment shall see fit to investigate the needs of their
1^^ ^L j3^^ ^^^ °^'" home circle. There is great diversity of opin-
w ^^J^B ion regarding the ancestry of these natives. Some
claim they are Mongolian, while the historian March-
land recognizes the pictures, writings and monuments
of the Aztecs, and thinks they may be the remnants
of tribes driven by Cortez from Mexico. If this be
true, the Aztec and Alaskan women differ greatly in
domestic habits. The Aztec mother says to her
daughter on her bridal day, "That your husband may not take you in dislike adorn
yourself, wash yourself, and let your garments be clean;" so all along the streams and
the great ditches in Mexico can be seen the natives, men, women and children, bath-
ing the bodies, washing the linen, and drying it on the grassy banks, while the Alaskans
cover the body with the oil of the seal and walrus.
All the Alaskan tribes take the name of Siwash, a corruption of the French voy-
agers, Sauvage; but the tribes are divided into sub-tribes, the Thinklets being the most
influential. The Haidas are most ingenious and noted for their fine carvings.
Sailing from Seattle August 31, it was not until the fifth day of our journey that
we had the favor of landing at Met-lah-cat-la, where we were first introduced to the
civilized native Alaskan woman. We found there a model mission station, the pop-
ulation of nine hundred composed of the mixed tribes, Thinklets, Haidas and Chims-
heans. We were cordially received by Mr. Duncan, the superintendent, who has given
his heart to this enterprise for many years. This mission is conducted much on the
Bellamy plan, and is the most successful of any experiment yet tried among sav-
ages. The mission was started with fifty Chimsheans, who signed a temperance pledge,
Mrs. Clara A. McDiarmid is a native of Indiana, bat was reared in Kansas. She was born December 11, 1847. Her
parents were John T. Cox of Ohio and Catherine R. Allison of Indiana. She closed her school life at Christian College at
Ottamwa, Kan., and has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Alaska, Cuba and Mexico. Mrs.
McDiarmid stndied law, attended lectures at Ann Arbor, Mich. As the statutes of Arkansas do not permit a woman to prac-
tice she gave it up as a profession. In 1866 she married Maj. Geo. W. McDiarmid of the Federal army. Mrs. McDiarmid is
aworker for woman's enfranchisement and temperance. Her literary works are as a contributor to periodicals during her
travels, and articles on suffrage and temperance, etc. She is a successful dealer in real estate. Mrs. McDiarmid is a mem-
ber of the Christian Church. Her postoffice address is Little Rock, Ark.
723
MRS. CLARA A. MCDIARMID.
724 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
agreed to give up their medicine men and observe the Sabbath. What is the result of
twenty-three years' labor? A nicely laid out village of frame houses, a beautiful
church, a schoolhouse, and best of all, an industrial school where the girls are taught
all kinds of domestic labor. The missionary's wife was the only white woman in the
village. She devoted her whole time to teaching the women how to make their
homes comfortable. The women were modest in their dress and very industrious.
These Indians have discarded all forms of the Anglican Church and have organized
themselves into the Christian Church of Mat-lah-cat-la, pledging themselves to exclu-
sively following the teachings of the Bible without ritual or discipline. I was im-
pressed with the simplicity of this teaching, because I do believe that the teaching of
the different creeds to any heathen to be most disastrous. Who knows, they may be
the first to tell us what the Bible does teach, for the fifty-eight denominations of the
United States have failed so far, else there would be only one united church.
We bade adieu to these kind friends, and on a dark and rainy night we landed at
Fort Urangel; however, fortune favored us, the morning dawned bright. We went on
shore to pay our first visit to our Alaskan sister in her native element. As far as the
eye could see the tall totems loomed up, each telling its own story, intelligible to none
but the natives. Only the powerful and wealthy can afford these expensive affairs.
They are the actual historians of these very odd people, and show the descent and
alliances of the great families. It is gratifying to know that the descent is counted
on the female side. The first emblem is the eagle on the mother's side, next the image
of a child, a beaver or a frog, as the families have intermarried. Sometimes there
are two totems, if the father happens to be a chief. If feuds arise, the husband must
fight with the wife's family. Their houses are usually about eighteen or twenty feet
square, having one door, and in the center of the room an excavation of perhaps four
feet square, which is filled in with stone, on which all the family cooking is done.
Two or three families often occupy one house. I saw the men and children huddled
in the corners heedless of our presence, while the women were preparing the breakfast.
They sit on the floor while they eat with their large spoons made from the horns of
the mountain sheep. When one of the family dies the body is never taken out
through the door, but a board is taken off the side of the house and the corpse passed
through the hole or through the smoke-escape in the roof; this keeps the spirit away.
The Indians cremated their dead until the missionaries, I regret to say, taught them
burial.
The women make all the bargains, and if you are not informed of their tricks you
may be the loser. They will ask two prices for everything, from the fif\.y cent horn
spoon to the bracelet of gold, the price of which is sometimes fifty dollars. The nose
ring was common, but I was most curious to know what the button in the chin meant.
On the older women it was of ivory or wood, but on the young woman it was small and
of highly polished silver, and indicated that she had arrived at the proper age to
marry. I think this rather a pretty and modest manner of revealing the state of
affairs, and is a vast improvement on the common law of Massachusetts wherein a girl
of seven years may become a candidate for matrimony. The law stands very much
this way: If a child below the legal age should marry, the marriage is not necessarily
invalid, provided either she or he be above the age of seven years. If the parties
continue to live together after both have attained legal age, fourteen for boys and
twelve for girls, the marriage is thus ratified, but either party may disaffirm it by
ceasing to live with the other before that time arrives. This is the common law rule,
and is still law where it has not been set aside by statute. No statute in Massachu-
setts has ever established any other rule, so you see the extremely intellectual on one
coast and the barbarous on the other differ widely on these marital questions. The
great objection I have to the Massachusetts law is the partiality shown the youth and
the disadvantage it places on the sixty thousand unmarried women of mature years. At
Fort Urangel, instead of the fashionable door-plate of civilization, if they have a door
at all, there is placed over it an inscription. A man of much wealth makes a will and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 725
leaves all to his wife, and the inscription reads thus: " Let all that read know that I
am a friend of the whites. Let no one molest this house. In case of my death it
belongs to my wife." Another reads: "Jake is a good boy, a working man, a friend
of the whites and demands protection."
The Alaskan Indians are migratory in their habits. They spend much time in
visiting their tribes and in the fall are off for the salmon-fisheries, or maybe all the
family are crowded into the cedar canoe with the blankets and cooking utensil. I say
utensil, for the woman has only one large pot for hot water, the meat or fish are put into a
woven basket, dropped into the boiling water, thusconstituting the meal. The family
once loaded into the canoe, they are ready for a journey of two or three months, for
it is eleven hundred miles down to the hop fields of Washington or Oregon. We saw
hundreds of them wending their way down the channel, hugging the shore, the mother
with a pappoose in her arm often helping the master to paddle the canoe. The
women and children are paid good wages for picking hops, but the men are addicted
to gambling, seldom saving any money, leaving the mother to look after the supplies
for the winter.
The tenth day we arrived at Sitka. No place except Muir Glacier created so
much interest. It is a gala day always when the semi-monthly steamer arrives there.
The whole population turn out and give themselves up to the entertainment of the
visitors. The wharf is crowded with a motley throng. The best society Sitka affords
may be looking for faces of friends among the arrivals, the humblest seeking a buyer
for her wares, and a general confusion prevails while the ship unloads her mail and
freight. Scattered along the streets for a few blocks, women were sitting on the
ground, beside them the stock in trade of all kinds — horn spoons and silver spoons,
wooden totem-polls and faun-skins. They were typical epitomes of the fashions. One
young woman had on a pair of rubber boots, a gentleman's linen shirt open in the
back, and a red plush skirt. She looked a grotesque figure, indeed,, as she sat on a
log and drank her coffee from a blue china cup. Some of the women are quite good
looking, but most of them are very homely, and, when in mourning, are positively
hideous. In mourning they smear the face with soot mixed with grease, leaving only
the eyes visible.
The Sitkan Indians and those at Juneau are the best educated of any of the
tribes. Their houses are modern cottages of frame or hewn logs, with doors and win-
dows. I noticed many were numbered. They are comfortably furnished, especially
that of the chief. We were greatly disappointed in not seeing Princess Thom, the
greatest personage of all the tribes, the chiefs and medicine men all yielding to her
authority. She has a very comfortable house, is rich in blankets and bracelets, wear-
ing thirty gold bracelets, each made of a twenty- dollar gold piece. Her wealth is
estimated at $10,000. This princess is about forty years old, is said to have had
seventeen husbands, and still not considered a flirt. Some of these husbands have
been cremated, some discharged, most of them are scattered around loose. She has
been Christianized, and lives at present with her last, a very young man. When she
sees a gentleman Indian whom she fancies, she trades blankets and bracelets for him;
if he has a wife who can not be bought over, she takes her beautiful white yacht, invites
the wife to take a sail, spreads the white wings, and floats out to sea. It is needless to
say the wife is never heard of again. This princess is an exception to the general rule;
it is usually the chief who has more than one wife. When he dies his wives fall to his
heir — grandson or nephew, whoever he may be — and if the heir refuse to accept the
legacy, his clans unite in rebellion and compel him to submit, though the relicts may
buy their freedom if they desire. Miss Scidmore, in her history, remarks: " Curiously,
with this subjection of the women, it is they who are the family autocrats and tyrants,
giving the casting vote in domestic counsels, and overriding the male decisions in the
most high-handed manner. The woman's rights and her sphere and influence have
reached a development among the Sitkans that would astonish the suffrage leaders of
Wyoming and Washington Territories."
726 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
All around Sitka the scenery is most picturesque, and if I could paint from still life,
I should first want to try the view along the half-mile walk to the Indian River. The
ferns grow to immense size. The great fir branches are laden to the ground with rare
mosses and lichens, and looking back over the bay, studded with innumerable fir-
bound islands, snow-capped mountains in the distance, the effect is enchanting and
most conducive to romantic and legendary lore. The schools were under the manage-
ment of the Presbyterians, and they have seven important mission stations in Alaska,
The study halls and manual training schools were large and commodious, almost
obscured by evergreen foliage, and flowers were blooming everywhere. The teachers
told me the girls were very intelligent, quick to learn, and the only trouble they had
was from the United States marines stationed there, who occasionally coaxed one
away. There was only one public school in Sitka, and they told me the United States
had done comparatively nothing for education in Alaska. The Russians complained
bitterly of the faithlessness of our pledges given to Russia regarding educational
facilities. With a yearly revenue of a million dollars on seal furs alone, and enough
gold in the Treadwell Mines at Douglass Island to pay our national debt, the United
States only supports six public schools in Alaska, for a population of fourteen thousand
eight hundred and fifty civilized and semi-civilized natives, and then wonders why
there are cannibals within one hundred miles of Sitka. At Chilcat, one hundred and
sixty miles north of Sitka, and the highest navigable point in the inland channel, we
found the women the most peculiar of any yet seen. Their homes were wretched
huts made of small poles, and the odors arising from the fish-oil on their bodies and
cooking was stifling. The only articles the women offered for sale were the Chilcat
blanket, the prices ranging from fifty-five dollars to seventy-five dollars each.
Juneau was our next important stop, and is the largest city in Alaska. Notwith-
standing the cold, drizzling rain, the women and children were along the sidewalk,
with their curios and salmon berries for sale. These latter are a most delicious berry,
in size and shape like the raspberry, in color salmon. The women make them into a
thick paste and dry for winter use. They have a good school and mission in Juneau.
A lady of culture told me it was almost useless to try to do anything in the way of
missionary work, for the miners were so immoral in their habits they greatly hindered
the influence for good. Many of the Indians were dissolute gamblers, and it is a
common affair for them to sell their wives and daughters to the miners for three, six
months, or more, as the inclination or gold of the miner might warrant. For crimes
these men are amenable to United States law. Is there any law that gives them the
right to barter their wives and daughters? Are you surprised that the Russian women
sent a letter to President Harrison containing the following items: " It is with amaze-
ment and profound regret that we learn of the despotic rule of men over women in
the one country to which of all others the world turns with hope, expecting progress
toward equal rights and privileges." After twenty years of neglect and wrong, Alaska
presents to us the only instance in the history of the United States where the right of
representation and local legislation has been denied. If this is the state of affairs
under a government of men alone, could they be worse, and might they not try the
experiment of allowing the women to take a hand in straightening the tangles?
" Whatever do you women want? we hear the scornful cry.
To you, O Christian commonwealth, we women make reply:
We want a Christian commonwealth where just and equal laws
Shall make a needless mission ours who plead the woman's cause.
There are wrongs that must be righted, bitter wars that seek redress;
We can hear our sisters calling in their weakness and distress.
We need the power to lift them from their sad and evil plight;
'Tis for this we want the franchise, and we claim it as our right."
PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.
By DR. MARY E. DONOHUE.
The doctrine that public health is public wealth is accepted by all. To maintain
it, to improve it must therefore be the constant aspiration of individuals and society.
But if we might indulge in lofty anticipations which
the progress of this century might seem to justify, it
is evident that hygiene and medicine are separating
and drifting apart, each into distinct fields of study and
activity. Its significance is manifest in the fact that
with the progress of civilization cure must more and
more yield to prevention. As exponents of this sci-
ence, it becomes our duty to understand the means of
preventing impairment to health, to be vigilant, ever
on the guard ready to protect the health of individ-
\^^^W ' ^ -^ uals and communities, to discover causes and reme-
^■H '. ' dies.
"^BE^das. v_ . Ifj order to secure health in adult age we must
begin our labors during the early years of life; and if
we would have healthy homes the future fathers, and
above all the future mothers of our race must be so
instructed that they will themselves appreciate the
advantage by applying the elementary principles in
their daily intercourse with their families.
The great physical degeneration of the present
age is due to aggregations in towns and cities, over-
crowding, vitiated air, impure water, unhealthy occu-
pations and the diseases to which they give rise. The last census tells us that blind-
ness and mental troubles are on the increase. In the state of Delaware blindness has
increased in greater ratio than the population. What is true of Delaware may be true
of other states. Blindness is in a large measure a preventable condition. If suitable
legislation were enacted much could be done to prevent the increase or occurrence of
blindness.
In England alone, according to the last statistics of 1890, there are 23,000 men
and women blind, 1,000 less women than men; 14,000 men and women deaf and dumb,
12,000 less women than men. There are 97,000 men and women mentally deranged,
of these no less than 51,000 are women. In our own country, according to last reports,
indicates that insanity has increased 50 per cent in some states. The increase is greater
than that in other states. There are several problems of public interest involved in
the relations of society to this last named class. Among the more important of these
are questions of the dependence and prevention of insanity.
If we exclude from the human family all preventable diseases, including those pro-
duced by mental strain, by physical strain, by alcohol, narcotics, tobacco, impure air
and foods, occupations, indolence, irregular hours, moral contagion, all of which are
evils that may be avoided, how small a percentage would be left for drugs. If inter-
marriage of disease were considered in the same light as that of poverty, hereditary
Dr. Mary E. Donohue is s native of Ohio. Her parents were the late Sara Can and John D&nohne. She was edncated
at the Convent of Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Ohio. Her principal literary works are "Art in Public Places, " ' ' School Hygiene,'
and " Temperance Teaching." Her profession is that of medicine, and she has spent much time in the interest of public
health. In religions faith she is a Roman Catholic. Her postoiiice address is Cincinnati, Ohio.
727
DR. MARY E. DONOHUE.
728 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
transmission of diseases, the basis of so much misery would be at an end in a genera-
tion or two. Or if a candidate for matrimony were obliged to submit to a physical
examination, as they do in Brazil, and if found in a proper physical condition a certifi-
cate of marriage would be granted, and not otherwise.
Candidates for a life insurance policy are subjected to a rigid physical examina-
tion, and if found in an unsound state of health by reason of hereditary taint or vicious
habits, the candidate is rejected, as the risk is considered too great for a reputable
life insurance company to run. And when we consider the danger to health and even
life itself to v/hich innoc-ent and pure girls are exposed when entering the state of
matrimony, as many believe in two codes of morals, one for women and the other for
men, so long as women will submit to this injustice and indignity, just so long will
marriage be a failure. If they will not muster up sufficient moral courage to demand
of the man that they expect to marry that he be every whit as pure as they, just so
long will disease be propagated and divorce .increase. Unprecedented progress in
human knowledge characterizes the present century, and has not been wanting in pre-
ventive medicine. How much it has operated for the public good, and how much it
is gradually imbuing the public mind with modern sanitary knowledge that preven-
tion is not only better, but often easier, than cure, that health and happiness may be
preserved, that life may be prolonged by the observance of certain simple laws. To
have perfection in the adult we must begin our labors with the child. To have per-
fection in the child we must begin our labors with the grandfather. We now have the
future grandfathers and grandmothers of the nation in our hands. The primary cause
of much if not all of the present misery is due to the neglect of the moral and indus-
trial training of children at home, and later at school, during the pliable period of
youth. It is no easy matter for one to raise the voice against abuses that every one
knows about. Not only the members of school boards, but parents and teachers also
become involved in this same conspiracy of silence. Of all places in the world, the
public school is least open to sanitary influence. Many valuable lives are lost because
no one puts into operation the means that could and would save them. One by one
they fall and pass out of sight, because those whose duty it is to speak lack the moral
courage to do so, or are so completely engrossed in their business, pleasures and vices
that they do not throw out the life-preservers that are at their hand. The state annually
spends large sums of money for the protection of the imbeciles and the vicious, but a
very small amount in comparison for the thousands that are in perfect health of mind
and body, and who not only contribute to their own support, but that of others, and
are law-abiding citizens. As a result, the state loses annually by death enough of her
best citizens to form of themselves a small city, while the worst element increases and
multiplies under the protection afforded them by the state. If women had the oppor-
tunity of entering into the field of politics, they could make their power felt in the
legislation and correct many of the existing evils.
Physical inspection of children in schools, asylums and reformatories involves
several questions of general interest.
" It is recommended that in all schools and institutions the general health, sight,
hearing and teeth of the children should be periodically examined." Physical exam-
ination is useful as a means of selecting cases for special training. A physician would
have an opportunity of observing children in various conditions, mental and physical;
nervous children with catarrhs and headaches, and partially deaf or blind — conditions
without a fatal termination and not preventing a modified and adapted education.
Such children should be trained in and along certain lines. Without it they would
probably tend to failure and incapacity in after life. There are quite a number of
children that are more or less defectively developed in brain and body. If they are
not properly trained, there is great probability of mental and moral deterioration.
Putting the bright with those who are mentally deficient, an injury is done to the
former by preventing them making the advance they otherwise would, while the latter
is not benefited. It was in evident recognition of this principle that a deputation
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 729
from the British Medical Association lately advised the members of the school board
that many children are mentally or otherwise unfit for the ordinary course of study,
but might be taught usefully on certain special lines. They contended that certain
children of defective brain construction would, unless their deficiency were thus par-
ticularly recognized and treated, grow up idle or vicious as a natural consequence. A
solid industrial, as well as an intellectual training, is required for every boy and girl
in order to fit them for their duties as citizens, and as a permanent guarantee against
poverty and crime. If a boy or girl is not so educated as to be able to earn their own
living, he or she is liable to become, directly or indirectly, a public charge. We are
now ready to raise the question as to the right and duty of the citizens and the state
in this matter. The state has a manifest right in the matter. It is clearly the right
and duty to see that as far as possible this is done. To secure this, the hand needs to
be trained as well as the brain. Thus the opportunity for an industrial training should
be an integral and essential part in our school system. While the present system is
retained in our schools, it will be simply impossible to impart to the children of the
poor an education calculated to fit them mentally, morally and physically for the per-
formance of their duties in life. They will elevate pecuniary considerations above
those which are educational, and set up a false gage of efficiency in the minds of
teachers, pupils, trustees and inspectors. " This will raise a system of over-pressure
or ' cram,' which will be fatal to intelligent teaching." Our education is too theoret-
ical. Its object is to educate the mind without regard to the great hereafter of school
life. What becomes of our sweet girl and boy graduates who are launched, year after
year, upon the country? They go to swell the ranks of the unemployed who possess
nothing but their education, and are more dangerous to society than those possessing
less knowledge, because they are more discontented. We are forced to the conclu-
sion that in the world of action the self-educated man and woman is the most success-
ful. It is an undisputed fact that many of our most distinguished men and women
have achieved wonders without education, technical or otherwise. A contempt for
manual labor seems to be the natural outcome of the many acknowledged faults of
our artificial social system. We can not 'deny that if our education does not attain the
truth by developing the body and mind it is certainly at fault.
Physicians, especially lady physicians, have opportunities, and they have no holier
duty than to use these opportunities wisely and gravely. " By all means let them
importune the public law to do all that it can do, and more than it ever has done, for
the protection of the young." But the remedy of this great evil will not come from
legislation alone. The remedy will surely come through the cultivation of purity in
thought, word and deed in the home, in the school, in the newspapers. A proper
knowledge of physiology and anatomy is one of the hopes of a better state of things.
These are essentially moral and religious questions. They arise in each individual
when passion is strong and judgment and experience are weak. In other words, they
arise in the human mind when it is in great danger of being misled by the body. By
all means let public law be on the side of the weak and those that need its help.
Let our streets be cleaned of their vile theatrical advertisements and literature that
now disgraces our cities. Virtue is too important an element of health to be neg-
lected. The publicity of sins against this virtue has all the evils of publicity and few
of its advantages, and should not be so much as named among Christian people. This
is the philosophy of Saint Paul, who devoted himself as none have done since to the
cultivation of whatsoever is pure. Among the lower classes impurity is forced upon
the people by the condition of their existence; but among the wealthier it is sought
in its voluptuous and revolting forms; it implies the possession of money to command
it. Acquired habits are often transmitted to the offspring. A disposition to unchas-
tity is often inherited, hence the greater need of safeguards in our schools, or the
acquired disposition may become second nature. If the evil is to be removed, some-
thing must be done, or the conditions which fostered these will engender others. The
poison and the antidote are side by side. The education of youth should be placed
730 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
under regular sanitary inspection by appointed officials. The principle of medical
inspection is of precisely similar character as that recognized by the government in
the emigrant service for the prevention and spread of disease on board of ships, and
is found to work well. An investigation.into many of the fatal outbreaks of diphthe-
ria, etc., would show what active centers large schools are in propagating infectious
diseases. And yet this source of danger could be so readily removed. The success
attending the systematic inspection of troops, emigrants and others, in checking the
outbreaks of infectious diseases, still more convenient would the work of supervision
be in the case of schools. Instead of a changing mass of people of all ages, the
inspectors would have to deal with the same persons for several years, and that at an age
when the face soon indicates illness. To obtain good results the inspection ought not
to be of the intermittent kind. By such means the extension of disease would be
checked and much of the illness incidental to childhood and consequent suffering
in adult life caused by conditions in the schoolroom be obliterated.
It is incumbent on us as women to see w^ith all care that the growth of children dur-
ing their years of puberty, which is of vital importance, is not disturbed, or disturbed
by influences adverse to nature.
The^ education of the young people of a nation is to that nation a subject of vital
importance. This fact has been clearly recognized at all periods of the human race.
Into the hands of the children now at school we must in the near future place the
destiny of this great nation. With them it rests to decide the question whether our
national greatness, wealth, industry and well-being shall continue, shall not only con-
tinue, but increase. From all points of view, religious, social, moral, political or utili-
tarian, it is necessary that young America be properly educated; surely it behooves us
carefully to consider how we may best impart the requisite knowledge with the least
detriment to health.
We turn to the main question: is it, or is it not, the fact that in simply applying a
uniform pressure to a vast number of boys and girls, some must be in the nature of
things too weak or not sufficiently developed to bear the strain thrust upon them?
It would seem to us a proper time for a declaration of rights in behalf of helpless
children, and in behalf of future generations, whom we shall load with a burden more
disastrous and heavy than the national debt, a burden of disintegration and disease.
What a monstrous and inexplicable blunder, this insistance upon a level code of
education for all! Even as regards a soldier or sailor, a medical examination precedes
the commencement of" the drill, and medical inspection from time to time keeps the
question of health in view. Muscular weakness is not half so serious a bar to physical
training as mental weakness is to intellectual exercise. Is it not strange then that,
without any medical examination whatever, the brains are formed of multitudes of
children, the majority of whom are under-fed? It is not enough to know the age of a
recruit for the army or navy; means are taken to ascertain whether his heart, lungs and
organs generally are healthy, and medical officers are specially appointed to examine
them from time to time with a view to determine whether he is bearing the strain
healthily; but no provision is made for testing or watching the immature cerebral
organs upon which the public pedagogue is not only left free, but is required to operate.
The brain, according to all we know of that organ, is the last to reach perfection of
growth and maturity of any in the body, and therefore of all others the last that should
be overworked in childhood, when its specific gravity and development are utterly
incomplete and unfitted to bear overstraining. Whereas as the body ceases to grow
after twenty-five years, the brain, we know absolutely, grows in bulk for fifteen years
longer. And if the mind is any index of its perfection it certainly increases m strength
and capacity for work for fifteen years after that. The functions of the brain may be
stunted and crippled as those of the body often are. They may be cramped, dull or
precocious, accordingly requiring intellectual work in proportion to their development.
The days of whipping children to death are gone. We are more refined now; we
whip their brains instead, and if the brutality is not so repulsive, it is equally efficacious
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 731
in the end, and far more cruel, as the process is slow and its ultimate consequences are
far more serious, for it effects the generations yet unborn. There is over-pressure and
over-crowding, and the effects are becoming evident in the prevalence of nervousness,
especially among girls, due to the circumstances of school, such as overwork, punish-
ments, the excitements of examinations, harsh treatment, etc. The origin, progress
and development of St. Vitus dance is probably due to the causes named above.
Statistics report that during the last decade the American quota to the popula-
tion has fallen off over one million, that the negro and the lowest of the foreign born
have greatly increased. We must never lose sight of the elements which go to make
a powerful and enduring nation. It is not by propagating the worst elements. Time
is not given me to enter into the discussion of this serious question. It is the duty of
every American woman to arraign herself at the bar of her own conscience and call
her duty in question in this matter, for it has a close relationship to the many mental
and physical ills that afiflict the women of the day, which specialists have recognized
and profited by. A noted foreign specialist who has achieved fame and fortune
through the practice of his specialty condemns vivisection on animals, but does not
hesitate to experiment on women. An American gynecologist equally successful has
in his annual report of a few years ago stated that after an experience of over twenty-
five years in his specialty that more than half of the operations performed by him during
the last ten years were errors. We may well ask if during the latter period more than
half are acknowledged errors, how many errors were there during the first fifteen years?
We are forced to the conclusion that at least two-thirds were.
As a woman intimately and widely concerned in the application of human knowl-
edge for the preservation of human life and the relief of human suffering, I would say
that we are in great need of restrictive legislation for this practice. And were we
properly educated in physiology public sentiment would demand these restrictions.
This branch of surgery calls for special exercise of the protective and educational
functions of the state.
A writer in the New York Tribune, of July 6, 1893, says: " If hospital experi-
ence makes students less tender of suffering vivisection deadens their humanity and
begets indifference to it." And again: " By experimentation that has no restrictions
but the will of the experimenter, by the slow process of benumbing pity in the young
students, may it not be tending to deteriorate one of the chief safeguards of society,
the moral sensibility of the future physician? There is an astounding record of
utterly heartless crime by educated men. What else is the cause of it? What is the
underlying cause of that mysterious outbreak of homicide among physicians revealed
by the criminal records of 1892? The object of one physician for the commission of
several homicides was the pleasure of killing. That pf nearly all the others was
money." The great crimes of history may be often traced to the education of youth.
Surely this is a serious question. Cassandra goes on to ask, " to what lengths unre-
strained by law or religion a scientific investigator sometimes permits himself to go."
Another evil is the use of hypnotism by the medical profession, of which a recent med-
ical authority says: "Therapeutically the value of hypnotism is obviously but slight
and occasional. Its moral and social perils are certain and serious." I would say in
conclusion, " that there is an urgent need for the protecting services of women as physi-
cians, as officers of public health, factory inspectors, members of school boards and
school inspectors, superintendents of all hospitals, asylums and places where women
and the young of both sexes are kept and employed. There are obviously a vast num-
ber of complaints of evils that should be remedied, and of inconveniences that should
not be suffered, which would much more readily be brought before the notice of women
inspectors than before men occupying a similar position, or would be made to the
latter under any circumstances. We may hope for many improvements in the condi-
tion of women when their interests are guarded by one whose training and tastes have
been so congenial to the subjects which would be brought under her constant notice.
There are many among my audience who have nothing to learn in the matter of
732 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
enlightened and energetic work for the benefit of humanity. Many it is safe to say
from the chairman of these congresses, Mrs. James P. Eagle, to Mrs. Mary Pugh
Hart and many of the members of the Board of Lady Managers whose lives were
honorable examples of self-sacrifice to duty. But something more is required than
individual initiative and exertion, however well directed and exemplary. The field
for woman's work in the hygienic re-habilitation of America is not only broad but
easily understood and attractive. The main factors will be personal and public well
being, and will contribute to that most desirable consummation by which every indi-
vidual shall be taught to become the intelligent custodian to her own health." By
thus inculcating the future generations, particularly the women, in all that conduces to
the healthy and natural life, there is prepared that public opinion so sorely desired.
On you, the women of America, rests the moral and physical regeneration of American
youth. In this combat for humanity there are posts innumerable. Let each select her
part, great or small, according to her strength, her vocation. Let us consider it a
sacred duty to give of our means and abilities to the nation's wards. And so from the
luminous examples of female heroism which honor women, will emerge the collective
power of educated duty. Not by self-seeking, but by spontaneous instinct and senti-
ment will become one of the most vigorous of the healing forces of national well
being. A ladies' national health association would have the strength of angels and of
men. Any great sanitary improvement of the nation must be the result of elaborate
co-operation, legislation and administration before we can effect any good result.
Everything that concerns health and morals and education occupies the minds of
women ten times more than it occupies the minds of their husbands or fathers. Their
standards of administrative ability are fifty per cent higher than that of men. Woman
holds the key to the solution of this serious problem.
Preventive medicine covers all physical and moral evils. The social relation of
the classes to each other, and of labor to capital, of man to woman, of both to the
state, are destined to be tested by that new power which is just feeling its strength. It
is of vital importance to us that the guiding of this new power should be in the hands
of those who are actuated by deep and enduring principles, and prepared to use
their influence.
In these glorious days of the nation's history, these days of Columbian celebra-
tion, the rise and progress of this great American nation from 1492 down to 1893 has
been recognized, eulogized and glorified. The achievements of every walk in life,
the wonderful discoveries, the innumerable inventions, the magnificent results which
are found here displayed in this magnificent White City, the Woman's Building, its
beauties, its comforts, its joys and delights, must all be considered. And the sum total
stands unparalleled in the history of nations.
During a period of four hundred years, great work has been accomplished, and we
stand before the gaze of the entire world, at this moment, as a nation exemplifying
the truest type of Christian civilization. While all this progress has been reviewed and
considered, American work can not be said to be a mere herald and forerunner of a still
greater and better; that its proud distinction was to have found man ignorant of much
that concerned health and happiness and to have left him better protected against ill-
ness and misery; to have found him insensible to their moral and intellectual power, and
have awakened them to a sense of duty and responsibility to which God and nature
had called them.
THE YOUNG WOMAN OF THE SOUTH.
J^.
* V
By MRS. JEAN LOUGHBOROUGH DOUGLASS.
Since the first days, when in the dawn of humanity the destiny of the race was
shaped by the single act of a woman, her "hand has ruled the world." Statesmen
and warriors have trifled with the fate of nations, and
intoxicated beyond reason have madly flung away
earthly power and hope of Heaven for a woman's
smile! How great has been her power history alone
can tell. It has ever been her divine right to mold
and shape the lives of men, to comfort and uphold
the weak, and to admire and reverence the strong.
But it is needless to mention the grace and charm
which has ever been conceded to women born under
Southern skies and fanned by semi-tropic breezes.
It is of the young woman of this day that I
wish especially to speak, mentioning in their social
and business relations and calling attention particu-
larly to their high order of talent.
To the old dominion belongs the honor of hav-
ing had more famous beauties than any other state.
Her daughters have shone socially the world over,
and many have married men of title and note abroad.
The White Sulphur Springs, the social Mecca of the
South, has been the scene of some of the most courtly
gatherings of this country. There the beautiful Miss
Mattie Quid, of Richmond, was wooed by a score of
suitors, and her witty sayings are still remembered. South Carolina, Alabama and
Tennessee also gave many famous women to the world. The wife of Commodore
Vanderbilt was from the last named state. To her the South is indebted for one of its
most valuable institutions of learning — the university that bears his name was erected
by her husband as a tribute to this lovely woman. Indeed, the beauty, grace and
charm of Southern women has been too often sung, and is too well known to need any
comment. Their refinement and culture are most marked and represent the purely
American type, having none of that affectation apd imitation of foreign customs that
some of their Eastern sisters consider necessary for a woman of society to acquire.
While the South has reason to be proud of the achievements of her daughters, it
is but just to mention first, their mothers, the noble women who were the heroines of
that unfortunate epoch, the Civil War. For that true remark of Matthew Vassar in his
first speech to the trustees of Vassar College, is most applicable: " The mothers of a
country mold the character of its citizens, determine its institutions, and shape its
destiny." To quote from the recent speech of one of the most brilliant young
orators of the South:
Mrs. Jean LoughborouBh Donglass was a resident for many years of Little Rock, Ark. She was bom in St. Louis, Mo.
Her parents were Mr. James M. Loaghborongh, of Kentacky, and Mrs. Mary Webster Loughborongh, of New York City. She
was edncated at Mrs. Cuthbert's Seminary, St. Loais, Mo. She has traveled ext-ensively in the United States and in Mexico.
She married Mr. Frank Middleton Douglass, a native of New York City. He is now connected with R. G. Dun & Co., Chicago.
Her special literary work has been for newspapers. She is a member of the National Press Association and the Woman's
Press League, of Chicago. Her principal literary work is as associate author of " Three Girls in a Flat." Mrs. Douglass is a
most popular and gifted woman, possessed of many personal charms. In religious faith she is a Presbyterian. Her postoliice
address is No. 369 Chicago Avenue, Chicago, lU.
733
MRS. JEAN LOUGHBOROUGH DOUGLASS.
734 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
*' Of all the pages of history written of our great fratricidal strife, there are none
so fraught with glory and true bravery and high patriotic endeavor as those which tell
us of woman's love and woman's self-sacrifice and devotion and woman's tears. Let
us not forget the mothers and wives and sisters and daughters whose best days of
womanhood were consecrated to a ' Lost Cause.' "
Patient, courageous and strong were these women, and what was left for them to
do after the war?
To rise up bravely and found new homes upon the ashes of their former glories,
to encourage and inspire their husbands, to teach their young sons and daughters to
be courageous, and above all, to keep up a cheerful spirit under the most depressing
circumstances with which gentle women have ever had to deal in the history of our
country.
Is it possible to think that the heroism and self-sacrifice shown by them at this
crucial time in their lives could fail to implant a like nobility of character in their
daughters?
It is a true saying " that a fountain never rises higher than its source," and in
speaking of the present young women of the South let us first remember the mothers
who influenced and molded their characters. It is from these women that a race of
daughters has sprung whose necessity for self-reliance and independence has steadied
their characters and been the means of developing the deeper and more serious part
of their natures.
The desperate feeling which took possession of the Southern people immediately
after the war made them realize that a mighty effort was needed to bring about a
change of affairs. This feeling, which has made the New South, did much toward
making it possible for young women to be self-supporting, and opened avenues of
work for them which were formerly pre-empted by men. The Southern legislatures
have within recent years allowed young women to be elected to the offices of enroll-
ing and engrossing clerk in the House and Senate, while there are a number of post-
offices and public libraries in charge of women.
In many Southern states there are women who own and manage large plantations,
and the outdoor life seems peculiarly fitted for them; while in Texas they own and
successfully manage large stock farms. One young woman in Arkansas was left a
very valuable plantation by her husband. Owing to his long illness, however, it
became embarrassed with debt, and upon his death suits were brought against the
estate. The widow took entire charge of affairs, and on horseback personally super-
intended the two thousand acres and five hundred employes; at the same time prac-
tically acting as her own financier and bookkeeper. She built gins, attended
to the cultivation of the ground, the picking of cotton, etc., and in five years this
plucky woman cleared the plantation from all indebtedness and made it one of the
most prosperous in the state. Another young woman of whom her state is justly
proud is Mrs. Mary B. Murrell, of Little Rock, Ark., who organized a Young Wom-
an's Building Association, and as its secretary carried out a number of series success-
fully and made it a splendid interest-bearing investment. She has written various
articles on finance for New York papers, and was the only woman chosen by Mr.
Seymour Dexter, of New York, to read a paper in the General Congress on Building
Associations.
A most important business position, and the only one of the kind occupied by
a woman, is that held by Mrs. Annie Moore, who is president of the First National
Bank of Mount Pleasant, Tex. She is said to be thoroughly familiar with the banking
business, and can shave a note or refuse a loan with as much facility as any of her
male colleagues.
There are various newspapers in the South edited and managed entirely by women,
while the South has given her daughters numerous other positions of trust, which they
fill with credit to themselves and honor and dignity to their states.
The World's Fair has been justly called " woman's opportunity," and it has been
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 785
especially an occasion for Southern women to show their executive ability, courage
and persuasive power. There is no more striking instance of this than the erection of
the Texas State Building. After six months of hopeless effort the Texas World's Fair
Association announced its inability to erect a building, and forfeited all right to the
ground set apart for Texas. It was then that Mrs. Benedette B. Tobin, president of
the Woman's Board, came forward" and obtained a promise that if the women would
begin work in ten days after July 19, 1892, the site would be reserved for them. Mrs.
Tobin immediately took out a charter for the Women's World's Fair Association of
Texas, and assisted by the other members of the board, began the difficult task of
raising money, handicapped as she was by the failure of the old organization, political
dissensions, and the financial depression that the people of Texas were laboring under.
Sufficient money was finally raised, and the beautiful building, which was copied from
the Alamo, in San Antonio, was considered by architects and artists one of the most
artistic in Jackson Park. Thus it is to the ceaseless labor and indomitable courage of
Mrs. Tobin that the people of Texas are indebted for representation at the World's
Fair, and well may they be proud to do her honor.
Another Southern state which is largely indebted to the work of her women for a
state building is Arkansas. When the legislature failed to make an appropriation, in
1890, for a creditable display of her resources at the World's Fair, Gov. James P.Eagle,
who realized what such a failure meant for the state, called a World's Fair convention,
and an association was formed to raise funds by popular subscription. Mrs. Eagle then
asked that a clause be inserted in the by-laws of this association creating a woman's
board. The request was granted, and thus officially recognized the women of the state
commenced their valuable work. Mrs. Eagle, as president of this board, did most
valuable service in collecting funds and perfecting organization. She was efficiently
aided by the other members of the Woman's State Board. Women's Columbian Clubs
were formed in all the large cities of the state, and each club made most valuable con-
tributions to'the work.
In speaking of Southern writers, the woman who compiled *' Living Female Writers
of the South " some years ago spoke in her preface of the slight encouragement given
the women who had ventured upon a literary career. In the case of Rebecca Harding
Davis, Mrs. Terhune (Marion Harland), Margaret J. Preston, Catherine Ann Warfield,
Virginia L. Townsend, and many others we might mention, the world of letters has
welcomed their ability and genius with generous praise and acclaim. The prolific pen
of Augusta J. Evans has, it is true, been severely criticised, but " honor where honoris
due " has surely been accorded these early writers.
Today we point with pride to the young women who are undoubtedly set high
among young competitors for secure distinction in the noble art of letters. Amelie
Rives, that wild bird of brilliant plumage, who appeared so suddenly among the sober-
tinted song birds of the South, has called forth more criticism, favorable and unfavor-
able, than any young writer has done before or since. Coming of a family of talent, it
is not remarkable that her first effort should have shown great strength. She is a real-
istic writer, and raised, as she was, afield and on horseback in the balmy climate of
Virginia, she seems to have absorbed the tropic sun of many summers, and the inten-
sity and fierceness of an ungoverned mind is everywhere discernible. Her writing has
been pronounced inaccurate and not painstaking, but there is nothing tedious in it, and
her prodigal use of fervid and intense words leaves a highly colored picture in the mind
of the reader which is not easily forgotten.
Entirely different are the wonderful pen pictures of Miss Murfree (Charles
Egbert Craddock), and her correct representation of the queer people in the mount-
ain districts of Tennessee has been received with enthusiasm by critics. The highest
praise a young writer could ask was given Miss Murfree when her delineation of char-
acter was compared to that of George Eliot.
Pressing close upon these two daughters of the .South, most famous for literary
distinction, come Mrs. Burton Harrison, Grace Denio King, Julia Magruder and
736 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Minnie McClellan, while Ruth McEnerny Stuart has a wonderful gift for dialect
stories. Frances C. Baylor has written some extremely clever satires, and Mary
Moore Davis is one of the Southern contributors to " Harpers' Monthly," while a score of
others might be named who contribute to the literature of the day. Kentucky has been
proud to claim that charming young woman and clever dramatic artist, Mary Anderson
Navarro, who, though born in California, spent the' early years of her life in Kentucky
and there received her education and training. Music owes much also to this state,
for Miss Curry Duke, the daughter of Gen. Basil Duke of Louisville, stands today
with the foremost violinists of the country. Miss Enid Yandell of Kentucky, whose
fine statue of Daniel Boone stands before the Kentucky State Building, has received
much favorable criticism from artists.
Another sculptor of note is Vinnie Ream Hoxie of Missouri, whose work in the
Woman's Building has been given a place of honor, and whose statues of Farragut and
Lincoln have a world-wide reputation. Caroline Shaw Brooks, whose " Sleeping
lolanthe," modeled in butter, was one of the attractions of the Centennial, is a native
of Missouri. It has been said that the South has produced no artists worthy of note,
but there are at least 'three whom the world has honored. Mrs. Frederic McMonnies,
a native of Missouri, and the wife of the artist who designed the beautiful fountain in
the Court of Honor, has enriched the north tympanum of the hall of the Woman's
Building by a decorative painting representing the primitive woman, which has
received most favorable comment; while Miss Mary Solari, one of the judges of fine
arts, and the first woman ever admitted to the Academy of 'Beaux Arts in Florence,
although of Italian parentage, was born in Memphis, Tenn., where she spent the early
years of her life. Still another woman is Mrs. Dobe of Helena, Ark., and her work,
which had a creditable representation in the Woman's Building, was admitted to the
Paris Salon. These three have come prominently into notice in connection with the
World's Fair, but there are many other Southern women who have attained distinction
in the critical world of art.
In summing up the three classes, can we find a happier combination of them all
than that possessed by the young Southern woman who has stood so nobly at her
post as President of the Board of Lady Managers for the past three years? Only
those who have seen her from day to day realize fully her wonderful capabilities. In
situations that would have tried the souls and tempers of the greatest statesmen in the
country she has been calm, diplomatic and thoroughly mistress of the situation. It
is well known that her magnetism and influence in Washington did more toward
obtaining an appropriation from Congress for the Columbian Exposition than all the
arguments of the Solons put together. And it is safe to say that the most skillful
politician of his day could never have accomplished what Mrs. Palmer has done in
matters of tact and diplomacy connected with the management of the Board of Lady
Managers. To her the poet's words may well apply:
" The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill."
Standing today in this building, where we breathe the very atmosphere of the
concentrated genius of the nineteenth century woman, the air is fairly charged with
inspiration. Instead of criticising the Board of Lady Managers, or drawing attention
to the petty differences which have arisen in their meetings, as some small-minded
people have done, let us rather look at the splendid result of their three years' work.
They have held out a hand to woman the world over, aided her development and
encouraged her in all branches of art and industry. In every way have they strength-
ened the weak and encouraged the strong.
All honor to these women who have made it possible for the young women of the
North and South to clasp hands, and to stand upon the threshold of a new life! And
as they stand, their faces turned toward the future, and their hearts filled with the desire
to give the highest and best in them toward the ennobling of their race, let us hope
that their lives may be full of earnest purpose and noble endeavor, and that the world
may be the better for their having lived in it.
INTELLIGENT TREATMENT OF THE BODY,
By MRS. MARIE MOTT GAGE.
1 am one of those who believe in the dignity of the body; the sacredness of things
physical. I am convinced, however, that a very large proportion of people do not so
believe, and that the vast majority have no definite
ideas or convictions whatever upon the subject. It is
matter of common experience to hear the human
body depreciated, not to say reviled, as frail, infirm,
perishable; a heavy burden to be tolerated with as
much resignation as possible until final dissolution
shall set the uncongenial spirit free from a hateful
bondage. Now this is all wrong; all contrary to
nature; betokens conditions wholly morbid, and, as I
believe, results in untold sorrow, misery and suffering,
and loss, spiritual and intellectual not less than phys-
ical. For so fine is the adjustment, so delicate the
balance established by nature between the physical,
the moral and the mental, that you can not ignore or
neglect one of these without serious damage to the
others. The world at large is incapable of dealing
successfully with abstract ideas. The vast majority of
people are neither by nature nor by training spiritual,
and if we really desire to benefit them in any given
direction we must adapt our methods to their possi-
bilities. In other words, we must be practical. The
accepted method of working, first, for spiritual, and
second, incidentally, for physical regeneration and uplifting is empirical, illogical,
wholly unscientific and out of harmony with nature. Otherwise how can we account
for such pitifully meager results from so gigantic and persistent efforts. As the
visible material universe is the physical manifestation of Deity, so I regard the
human body as the mental manifestation of the human soul. As such it rises to very
high dignity and demands thorough, honest and respectful attention. When a mere
child I had the good fortune to hear a truth bearing upon this point so forcibly and
clearly presented that it impressed me more profoundly than any sermon which I have
ever heard. The words of wisdom fell from the lips of a noted educator, casually, in
the course of general remarks to his pupils. He said: " Respect your bodies, for they
are sacred." Whether regarded as a divinely perfect machine, or as the abiding place
of the soul, the human body is of the highest dignity. Never permit frivolous or care-
less familiarity with your person on the part of your companions; though seemingly
innocent, the tendency is wrong. Regard the violation of the simplest law of health
as equally sinful with the violation of a moral law." This is the doctrine which I
believe, were it earnestly and universally taught, impressed upon the young and carried
Mrs. Marie Mott 6a^ was bom in Vermont. Her parents were Hon. Ashley Mott, a professor of physical sciences,
and Rosetta Abigail Graves, also a teacher. She was educated at Vassar College, receiving in 1885 the degree of B. A. Her
specific aim is to teach women how they may make the most of themselves physically ; how by intelligent observance of
Nature's laws, physical beaaty and grace may be developed and retained. Her principal literary works are contribations to
the " Centnry," Harpers' publications, CAris^ian f/nion and New York Tribune. Her profession is chemistry as applied to
the manufacture of toilet preparations. She is a member of the Protestant £piscoi>al Church. Her postoffice address is
Cfaicatfo, 111.
(*7J 7.37
MRS. MARIE MOTT GAGE.
738 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
out in detail, would result in the complete physical and moral regeneration and sal-
vation of the nations of the earth. I would make physical health and development
the solid foundation of all spiritual and intellectual work. I would place the dignity
of the body on a level with that of the spirit and the intellect. I would make physical
laws pertaining to the health and preservation of the body as sacred and binding
as the most sacred moral law. So much for theory. Now how shall we obtain prac-
tical results? In all efforts for the improvement, the uplifting, the advancement of
our fellows, I hold that we should take advantage of and utilize to the uttermost all
the natural instincts and impulses, only one of which, in so brief space, shall I attempt
to discuss. I refer to the almost wholly misunderstood instinct for physical personal
beauty, involving the universal desire to be pleasing to others. This instinct is usually
characterized as vanity, sinful, selfish, ignoble. The desire to please is so deeply
rooted, particularly in the feminine breast, that it certainly must be recognized as a
natural instinct. If it is a natural instinct it is of God, and is intended to serve some
wise and useful purpose. As such, it should neither be ignored nor suppressed. In
fact, its total obliteration, if such a thing were possible, would result in utter paralysis
and stagnation of the entire being. If we closely scrutinize humanity, we find that
every natural impulse, when rightly directed, serves some high and necessary end,
promoting true development in some direction. We also find that in order to accom-
plish development or regeneration in any desired respect, the surest and easiest method
is to stimulate the natural impulse tending thereto. This is nature's method, and we
can not possibly improve upon it. Now in this desire to please, usually and fash-
ionably denounced so unsparingly as woman'a vanity, I can see a lever by which
womanhood can be moved to its very depth, and woman may be made to strive most
ardently for self-improvement along all lines — physical, spiritual and intellectual. For
is it not manifestly better economy to utilize a force already in existence than to
attempt the double task of suppressing the natural motive and creating an artificial
one? By the inductive method I would teach women to strive for perfection in all
things. Upon the broad and enduring foundations of the necessary and the useful 1
would rest the development of the beautiful. Women must learn that beauty is soul
deep, or it is not true beauty. The old saying, " Beauty is but skin-deep," originated
in an unscientific age. Modern science brings forth records to prove that there never
has been a beautiful idiot or a really comely lunatic, Shakespeare to the contrary, not-
withstanding. It is fully proved by all asylum records that the downfall of spiritual
empire obliterates whatever of beauty the unfortunate may have once possessed. The
features lose their harmony of contour; the divine light vanishes from the eyes, which
now become either dull or fiendish; the skin becomes coarse and of repulsive color;
the very hair degenerates, growing harsh and lusterless.
It is not necessary to argue in this enlightened day to convince women that a per-
fect physique is desirable. The day of the artificial is wholly past. The wasp waist,
drooping shoulders and invalidism in general, which under the name of delicacy were
wont to be admired, are now, thank Heaven! out of fashion. Women, the world at
large, have learned that nothing is beautiful which is artificial; or, in other words, a
perversion of nature. Consequently any new theory or system of physical culture
advanced today must, at the very outset, prove itself to be scientific — strictly in
accord with the sacred laws of health— or it will be promptly rejected. True beauty
can not be cultivated without the most careful observance of health laws, conse-
quently the development of physical beauty has today the full sanction of modern
science, and rests upon a sound scientific basis. Listen: if you would be beautiful, if
you would have an admirable physique, you must have exercise in the open air, pure
air in the house, proper food, sensible hygienic clothing, frequent baths and plenty of
refreshing sleep. Again, if you would be truly beautiful, you simply must practice
self-control. You must not, at the peril of your beauty, indulge in evil passions, such
as envy, hatred, malice and anger. Why? do you ask. Because all violent emotions
by unduly contracting the facial muscles, not only rob the face of its calm dignity,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 739
always one of its chief charms, but also tend to harden the entire countenance, engrav-
ing harsh, rigid lines where only softest curves and dimples belong. Again, unhappy
states of mind habitually indulged, particularly fretfulness, discontent and despond-
ency, by depressing the animal spirits, tend directly to paralyze the sympathetic
nerves which control the vital functions. The general physical tone or vitality being
thus lowered, stagnation more or less complete of all the vital organs is the sure
result. Those members most directly and unfavorably effected are the stomach, liver
and heart; and right here, in indigestion, torpid liver and sluggish circulation, is to
be found the origin of nearly all unhealthiness, and at the same time the chief blemishes
of beauty. Is it not a most significant fact, and one worthy of respectful attention,
that every noble, worthy, generous, gentle and pure emotion, without one solitary
exception, tends directly to beautify the face and to produce physical grace? The
beautifying power of love is well known. Under the magic influence of this gentle and
tender emotion the hardest face will soften into lines of beauty. Sometimes the
transformation is so marked that beholders are amazed and wonder how it is that
homely, commonplace Mary is actually growing beautiful. On the other hand do not
fail to observe the boldly destructive work of all harsh, violent, ignoble and selfish
emotions stamping their ugly traces deep into the brow and about the mouth.
Obtuse indeed must be the woman who does not read between these lines a message
both of warning and of inspiration. I would have every woman understand that it is
worldly wisdom to cultivate an angelic disposition. Why, I personally know numbers
of beautiful women who simply can not be ruffled by any annoyance. The world
wonders at their remarkable preservation of youthful charms, their grace, their love-
liness. Only those who penetrate into the charmed circle of their private life can
know that the physical beauty so largely a reflection of the angelic spirit is the
result of absolute self-control. The woman who realizes that she is undeniably plain
and unattractive should at once take a strict and careful inventory of her traits of
character and her ruling emotions. She must show herself no mercy in this intro-
spection- beholding herself " as in a looking glass." If she be an intelligent woman
she will not go about the task in an aimless, haphazard manner, thereby lessening her
chances of final victory. She will not only take a rigid inventory of her defects, but
also she will seek out the most scientific and trustworthy methods for their eradica-
tion. She is doubtless in danger of becoming disheartened, but she must be made to
realize that her case however serious is not hopeless; that it all rests with her whether
she shall continue to sit idly down and nurse her defects, silently envying those
graces in others which she lacks, or whether she shall nobly gird on the armor of high
resolve and successfully encounter and overcome every foe. I have a gospel of hope
for every daughter of Eve. I hold that there is no woman blessed with reason, aver-
age physical endowment and good common sense, who may not, if she will, become
an ideal woman after her type.
VOCAL ART.
By MME. THORA KUNIGUNDE BJORN.
The voice is spiritual; therefore it holds the absolute position as the leading prin-
ciple, which becomes, in consequence, the vocal center. This principle expresses itself
distinctly and invariably through the vocal glottis.
Why we can find the key to the natural voice in this
part of our natural organism is, because the ligaments
and tissues of the glottis in the larynx are alone capa-
ble of the friction which determmes pure vibration.
Because, secondly, these edges are provided with the
motor fibers which furnish them capacity for stretch-
ing or lengthening, identical with the pitch or range.
Because, thirdly, the same glottis can become sus-
tained as open or respiratory by other fibrous muscles
which, when understood, do not need to disturb or
interfere with the two other functions. In all and
every known method of singing, one and often two
of these principles become obscure, insufficient or
changed. The spiritual voice means perfect control
for expression of the soul, mind and body, which,
vocally defined, is pure vibration, respiration and res-
onance. So, of course, methods are experimental,"
because they deal with observation from effects, for
it is a very easy thing to compel a determinate form
m singing through the study of Italian, French or
promiscuous original ideas. These become, indeed,
quite consistent and uniform as to results, so as to deceive most listeners, in mistakes,
the great labor and wonderful art which have made so much out of these effects for
the perfect cause itself, the natural voice par excellence. And on the other hand, we
can not leave the voice untrained until we understand its nature. We once in a
while hear people speak of the freaks of nature, but those who really discover any
natural law can never find anything but absolute order and unchangeable results from
the same process. Nobody denies that we have to deal with the most subtle obser-
vation in regard to the human voice, which would, in my own case, have caused noth-
ing but fear, doubt and hesitation, but for the purpose of my endeavoring to present
the true vocal principle for universal use; for, to my thinking, only that which can be
of universal use and pleasure has any established and recognizable order. Therefore
we can lay the ever increasing vocal mistakes to the fact that vocal art has been
experimental and initiatory from the first, and has so remained, and is so today, in
spite of all we have done; and it will remain as unsatisfactory unless a good part of
the public decide for an acceptance of entirely new premises of observation.
We are not used to associate the voice with the idea of having a distinct law for
its vibrations, and it might be suggested that, if this be found controllable, it would
Mme. Thora Kunigande Bjorn was born in Christiania, Norway. Her parents were Consul and Fra Arentz. She
was educated mainly in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has traveled in the northern countries of Europe, and came as a widow
to this country. Her special work has been in the interest of vocal and instrumental music. Her principal literary works
are articles on tlje voice in several magazines. As a child she played the piano and studied with Die BuU ; Niels Wilhelm
Gade became interested in her voice, through her singing she was offered the position as vocal teacher at Vassar College
but accepted and retained such a position at Miss Porter's School, Farmington, for several years. In religious faith she is
a Protestant. Her postofiBce address is No. 2 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Mass.
740
MME. THORA KUNIGUNDE BJORN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 741
sound mechanical or monotonous. No more likely than that the law of harmony,
which is founded on the twelve fundamental tones, though the result of this is listened
to in ever varying effects, ergo our conclusion must be that the unclassical is, at the
best, a loss of time.
The second point of my subject is the natural respiration, which means both
inspiration and expiration. What is natural should be no effort, and the methods of
taking, holding or losing breath means nothing less than strain, effort and insufficiency.
To my thinking, the artificial singing and effort of unnatural ways of breathing is the
reason we have so little genuine expression. How can one look for a realization of
what we conceive to be ideal singing when there is nothing but difficulty in doing
what — well, what is unnatural? It would take as long as a Wagner opera to dwell
upon the various expressions and agonies of so many singers, before and after the
breath has become controllable, but I think these present know by sight and sound
'the truth in this matter. I thought first of proving the value of true respiration by
vocally giving the contrast of all the different ways in which the air is taken, held or
sustained, but the dragon is so many-headed and would leave me exhausted and unfit
to proceed farther, so I will be satisfied with illustrating a few of these. I think my
audience will be able to judge by the sounds whether my statement may be credited,
that the breath for the tone forms in a decided channel. The breath, which is in con-
stant respiration while singing, is moving in the vocal channel, which belongs to the
principle of vibration, and constitute the nostrils, nasal-chamber, head-passages, soft
palate, pharynx, tongue, epiglottis, vocal glottis and trachea, in connection with the
lower portion of the pharynx, which combine with the oesophagus. This current is up
and down. The slower and softer motion is from back forward. The air through the
nostrils becomes inspirational through the uvula, and can be expirational as well in the
mouth through the lower soft palate. We can perceive the fibrous and more delicate
muscles absorb air on the sides around the main channel for strength or action. The
vibrations react on the membrane with which certain and various muscles are invested.
The action and the reaction thus form resonance in all directions, still this could not
be done fully and satisfactorily without the assistance of the muscles themselves.
The lungs not being inflated, expanded, nor muscular for the sake of being expelled
or held but by their natural capacity for natural work, deep expression should compel
their strength where they are most sufficient, not least, and this is necessary above all
so as not to interfere with the emotional parts of the lungs and free circulation. The
Italians depend on clavicles and chest, which we do also, and we add the spine,
which preserves ease and again assists the diaphragm, leaving the stomach free, while
all are remaining natural, not raised or depressed. As the lower neck and upper
chest are considered immutable, and are so nearly, the knowledge of one who has had
patience and courage to mvestigate the nature and functions of these very parts will
no doubt be appreciated by the results derived from this study. The lower neck and
upper chest contain the respiratory glottis and trachea, the dividing line from the
frontal bronchia to the posterior roots of the lungs. Thus the intimate connection
between the full but curved length of the main channel for respiration, the vertebra
through its center, and the nerve center, direct through the spinal cord and the var-
ious other leading nerves, probably forming an oblong circle through the directing
center from the medulla oblongata, or lower brain.
Vibrations — not " vibratos " — are the law of the perfect voice, and these occur on
an up and down line on the fibrous sides of larynx and pharynx; these absorb and
cause the coarser vibrations, and are derived from the incoming and rising air. The
finer and absolutely musical vibrations occur only through the impressions of the more
purified air passing through or touching the sensitive membrane, though the ligaments
act with one and all the others through successive changes. The articulating muscles
have usually no vibratory, much less resonant, capacity, therefore the voice with so-
called distinct articulation becomes so monotonous. Alas! it is all so monotonous.
Where are the expression changes we dream of for the delight of our souls? where is
742 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the coloring? In " coloratour" perhaps. Well, how can we expect to have beauty^
strength and ease on theories of diaphragmatic breathing, which kills natural respira-
tion; on theories of forming tones where they are not indicated by a single natural
reason, to be taught that the breath makes the tone, and then expelling the breath,
which stops the incoming air? Rubenstein has made the statement that the human
voice is a less perfect instrument than any string instrument. As a rule he is cer-
tainly right. I am just bringing conviction to a good many people that we have looked
on the wrong side in training it, in judging it, in merely hearing it. In fact, what is it,
what should it be?
In the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago the outcome was, I believe, love,
truth, unity, form and color may vary; but love, which vibrates through the human
voice, must be felt; and truth, which is expressed through the classic ideal as purity,
must be observable. Then we shall hear the voice, made by no hands, superior to all
other imitations of it; then methods and false foundations shall vanish; then the
clashing of dissonances in the realm of harmony will be transformed into an earnest
and successful endeavor to work out good and beauty through knowledge of Divine
laws.
^^
ENCOURAGEMENT OF HOME INDUSTRIES.
By LADY ISHBEL ABERDEEN.
My subject may perhaps seem a little out of place here in the midst of an Expo-
sition in which the highest triumphs of mechanical skill and invention are shown in
such perfection, but a moment's reflection will show
this was not so. For in the first place this Exposition
has endeavored throughout to give honor to whom
honor was due, and therefore has traced back in every
department to its earliest source the beginnings of
those arts and industries which have gradually been
evolved by the hard toil and concentrated thought
of many humble workers, until they are now the won-
der and admiration of the civilized world.
We can here watch the gradual stages of transfor-
mation from the rude canoe, hollowed with flint im-
plements, to the gigantic liners which now annihilate
the ocean distance between the continents; we are
vvvsATOmB^-— »• T swHCMO/ sliovvn the quaint devices of the cave men of antiquity
v^^^^l R J ^ii^\§I^M^^^ leading on, step by step, to the noble works of art,
"^^ ^S^tj/^BsSu^n^ which are the pride of the nation who produced the
jl^^j^^^^^^tmBB artists; we see the first rough attempts to make wear-
^^■*^^^^^^^^™^^ ing material leading on to the fine linens and woolens
and silks and brocades of modern times. All the
triumphs that civilization can boast of must be traced
LADv ISHBEL ABERDEEN. back to thc ingculous contrivances of our forefathers,
and especially of our foremothers under very adverse
circumstances, and with very few resources.
And here in this Woman's Building I may be pardoned for again drawing atten-
tion to the facts which Mrs. Potter Palmer has so eloquently pointed out — that it is
women who, for the most part, invented the means of carrying on domestic industries,
that men only took them up and developed them on a larger scale when they saw
there was a profit to be made out of them.
But there is another special interest attaching to home industries as connected
with this Exposition, and that is, that you find amongst its choicest treasures are
exhibits by human hands alone. Look at the paintings, the fine embroideries, the
lace work, the carvings in this very building. Look at the homespun skirt I am wear-
ing, made in the wilds of Donegal where it was presented to me a few weeks ago;
Lady Ishbel Aberdeen is a native of Scotland. She was born in March, 1857. Her parents were Lord and Lady Tweed-
month, both of old Scottish families, though Lady Tweedmouth is also of ancient Irish descent. She was educated in her
own home by governesses and masters. She has traveled in many countries and all around the world, especially in the
British Empire, India, Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. She married the Earl of Aberdeen in 1877, a strong
Liberal, a supporter of Gladstone, prominent for many years in both the political and philanthropic world, holding the
office of Viceroy of Ireland, and at the present time Governor-General of Canada. Her special work has been in the interest
of women, both in the religious and political sphere ; also in the promotion of home industries, and the extension of a market
for home goods. She established for this purpose the Irish Village at Chicago, which has resulted in the setting up of a per-
manent office at 279 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. Her principal literary works area magazine for women, " Onward, Upward,"
one for children also, and an account of her travels in Canada entitled, " Through Canada with a Kodak." In her religious
faith she is broad in her sympathies, and is a member of both the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches. Her permanent
postoffice address in Great Britain is Hadde House, Aberdeen, Scotland, but for the next six years she will reside at Govern-
ment House, Ottawa. She is president of the International Council of Women, of the Canadian National Council of Women-
of the Women's Liberal Federation of England, of the Women's Liberal Federation of Scotland, of the Upward, Onward
Association, of the Irish Industrial Association, and of many other societies.
743
744 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
this homespun cloak from Sutherlandshire, this fine crochet work from Clones, this
point-lace handkerchief from Youghall. Is it possible for such work as this to be pro-
duced by machinery, however delicate? No; let us be thankful that the work of
trained human fingers is still superior in many directions to the iron monsters devised
by human brains, and that there are manufactures which can not be turned out by the
dozen, and where every value consists in their not being so turned out. But then the
question arises. Is it desirable to encourage or continue the existence of these home
industries, which are produced at the expense of so much more labor than the machine
goods, and which in comparison cannot be paid so well for the time and toil and outlay
given, or should they be regarded even as these beautifully illuminated manuscripts of
bygone days, things to be admired and treasured, but the production of which now
would mean willful waste of life.
Now as far as the starting or maintenance of such home industries in a compara-
tively young country like this simply from a commercial point of view would be a
doubtful proceeding, as far as I can understand, and I speak under correction. It is
very different in the old countries on the other side, and especially in agricultural
districts where there is so much difficulty in getting the people to remain on the land.
A few extra shillings there makes all the difference between want and comfort, and
you can very easily mark the difference between districts where such industries exist
and those in which they are not to be found. My experience is gathered from Scot-
land and Ireland, but I imagine the same result is found in other countries. The spe-
cial field where home industries are of peculiar use as a source of maintenance, is in
the country there where women and children can employ their leisure time in carry-
ing it on and where men can do so also through the winter. Then when a bad season
comes the people have something else to fall back on besides the precarious and
often scanty crops. It was in times of famine that most of the lace-^making indus-
tries had their origin, benevolent ladies setting themselves to teach the people some
work whereby to gain a little money, and the quick Celtic fingers learning the art
rapidly and successfully. And it was in a time of distress that a clergyman's wife,
Mrs. Webster, taught the women of Pitsligo in Aberdeenshire, how to make the only
hand-made lace which is still produced in Scotland. Other ladies have perceived in
the home-made stuffs and knitting made from their own wool possibilities for a wider
market, and have instructed the people so to dye it and weave it as to make it
attractive to the fashionable public. I knew a lady in Invernesshire, who for many,
many years has made her own house a sort of center and depot for knitting and
home-made stuffs. She instructed herself also in how to make home-made dyes from
vegetables and mosses, like Mrs. Ernest Hart has done so successfully, and revived
this knowledge among the people and sold their goods for them.
A large knitting industry in the Northwest of Ireland, though poorly paid, sup-
ports in large measure hundreds and hundreds of families who have but little other
resource than harvest work, which the men go to seek in Scotland. The people walk
miles to get this work. This home-spun industry is also one that supports a whole
district. It is an increasing industry, and we hope that our Irish Industries Associa-
tion has been able to find a way of improving it with a large shirt and underclothing
industry of the North of Ireland, the Shetland knitting of the Shetland Isles.
I have only mentioned these examples to show you why I and others are such
enthusiastic supporters of home industries in our own country if only from a com-
mercial point of view. If you could see these poor people clamoring for work, if
you could see the earnestness with which they put themselves to it when they do get
it, you could have a notion of the comfort and brightness that the sale of their goods
in that Irish Village yonder has brought to many and many an Irish home, you would
not wonder at our enthusiasm.
But there is another side to these industries besides the commercial one, and this
is one which applies to all countries alike, and even if there were no money to be made
out of them, I would be a strong upholder of them because of their educational and
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 745
moral training. I know you recognize this to the full in America by having manual and
technical instruction introduced into your educational establishments; but nowhere do
I think is the principle sufficietitly recognized that our hands need training as much
as our heads and that training in some home-industry prepares the boy or girl for
skilled paying work hereafter, and not only does it train the hand but the eye and
the sense of beauty, too. The young people who are taught to draw, carve and model
and do carpentry will also surely wish to beautify their own homes and thus become
more attached to home life, and more likely to make good husbands and good wives,
good fathers and good mothers and good citizens. Then again think of the happiness
it brings into a life if there is some useful hobby to pursue, no listless hanging about
if the weather is wet, no "I've nothing to do mother," and in consequence a habit is
formed of healthy pleasurable occupation which will prove a valuable safeguard
against the attractions of the bar in after life, in times of sickness, of sorrow and of
old age too, the knowledge of some handicraft which will divert the thoughts from self
is a possession not to be despised. So for all reasons the cultivation of home arts and
industries among persons of all classes is greatly to be encouraged both for what
they prevent as well as for what they promote and for their influence on both national
and individual character.
But in order that they may obtain their full scope, whether in commercial, educa-
tional, artistic or moral grounds, they need some organizing.
The tendency of the present day is to organize, perhaps to over organize, but in
this case it is certainly necessary to make some arrangement whereby the country
workers can be put on a level with town workers, and whereby those scattered in rural
districts can obtain good designs and can be put in touch with a good market. A
considerable movement to endeavor to effect this has been noticeable in the British
Isles during the last years, and several associations has been the result. There has
been the Royal School of Art Needlework, under Her Royal Highness, Princess
Christian, which has had for its object to train workers and to spread beautiful designs
and work and the taste for them, and the result of that school and of the sister school
in Ireland may be seen in the British show case in this building.
Then there is the Recreative Evening Schools Association, which has for its object
to enable boys and girls who have left school to continue their education, and they,
recognizing the fact that simple plodding book-work is very unattractive to young
people who have been working all day, have introduced into their system the instruc-
tion of various crafts and hand-work, as well as other kinds of recreative instruction.
The Home Arts and Industries Association touches, however, the country districts of
which I have spoken more directly than the other two I have mentioned. They have
in the last few years started over five hundred classes in England, Scotland and Ire-
land, where wood-carving, metal work, embossed leather, basket-work, and such like
have been taught. This association has done much good, its aims have been chiefly
from the artistic and moral standpoint, rather than from the commercial, though it
holds most successful exhibitions and sales annually.
The Scottish and the Irish Industries Associations with which I am chiefly asso-
ciated, lay great stress on the commercial side, as well as on the educational. Roughly
speaking, we may say that both associations have two main aims, one being to open
up a market for the goods produced by the peasant workers of Scotland and Ireland,
the other being to educate them to keep on producing better and better work and such
work as will meet the demands of the public.
In both associations we pride ourselves on not being charitable societies; we are
educational and commercial, and we are striving, only striving, to help the people to
help themselves through honest work, and in both associations we unite persons of all
politics and creeds.
It is to objects such as I have mentioned that every penny of the surplus from the
Irish Village will be devoted. I have had more than one opportunity of speaking in
Chicago of the object of the Irish village, and of the association which erected it,
746 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
before now. I only wish, therefore, to take this opportunity of thanking you, ladies,
and through you the public of Chicago, for the kind interest that you have taken in
our work as there exemplified.
I can assure you that the kindness shown, both by the people of Chicago and by the
press, has been very warmly appreciated by the people of Ireland, and on their behalf,
of our association and for myself, I tender you my most grateful thanks. I am proud,
indeed, of the success of the village, and I am free to speak of that success, as it is
mainly due to first, the preliminary organization of the late Mr. Peter White, and then
to the wonderful executive ability, tact and untiring zeal shown by Mrs. Peter White.
I am proud, too, in a special way of the village, for it can be truly said to represent
the people of Ireland, in as much as it has the personal support of every class, creed
and politics in Ireland, from the leaders downward. This is, indeed, a proud boast to
make, but it is a true one, and it has been a very marked feature of our association
throughout and one which it will be our constant aim to preserve. If corroboration
of my word on this point is required, it can be had from the Lord Mayor of Dublin on
the one side, and the Hon. Horace Plunket, M. P., on the other, who are both in Chi-
cago at this time, and who are both on our committees.
But there is another thing in connection with the village of which I am most
thankfully proud. I am proud that the people of Ireland have been so well repre-
sented as they have been by the village staff. The enthusiasm, the true patriotism,
the loyal unselfishness and brightness which they have thrown into their work, is past
all praise, and their country may well be proud of them.
The forty Irish girls whom we brought out with us, go back the pure, true, sunny
maidens that came out with us, and I know that my friends on the Board of Lady
Managers will rejoice that I am able to state this without fear of challenge, but in a
spirit of deep thankfulness. And so once more I thank you, and may I also thank
you for favors to come — we shall not be content if we are only able to open up an
American market to our poor workers this year — that would have been but opening
the door of hope to shut it again in their faces. No, we hope to establish a perma-
nent depot for Irish goods under Mrs. Peter White's management, and I would like to
solicit your interest — and your custom, for that. We do not ask you to buy. for char-
ity; we only ask you to buy what you deem to be good and beautiful of its kind; but
in buying that, and thus benefiting yourselves, I will guarantee that you will bring
sunshine and hope into many a heart and home beyond the seas.
ORGANIZED MOTHERHOOD.
By MRS. LIDE MERIWEATHER.
The word gospel means glad tidings. The gospel of organization is preached in all
of nature's temples. "The locusts have no king, but they go forth in bands," and the
whole country pays tribute to their needs. " The ants
are a people not strong, but they prepare their meat
in summer;" and not alone that, but they make war,
take prisoners, keep them in servitude, and provide
means of offense and defense by a systematized
organization which no human ingenuity could im-
prove upon. The birds accomplish their semi-annual
migration in organized bands, and by preconcerted
action. All animated nature, from the tiny ant be-
neath our feet to the huge bison of our Western plains,
shows the unerring instinct that illustrates and em-
phasizes the inspired words, " In the multitude of
council there is wisdom."
But the world of humanity has been slow to
interpret nature's language, and only in these late
December days the Christmas-tide of the nineteenth
century, the shepherds on the plains of toil and the war-
ders on the watch-towers of reform, alike have caught
the seraph song, " Glory to God in the highest," for
the work that brings surcease of sorrow, and the
friendly clasp of organization's hand that yet shall
bring " peace on earth, and good-will to all men."
Every era of the world has had its key-note rung out from the great clock of the
centuries; these eras bring marked and open uprisings of forces for whose organized
action the sentiment had been growing through long and silent years. Such an era
was the fifteenth century, when Columbus found the new world, and Luther found the
new faith, and the conquering career of printing began. All through these years
another force had been gathering — the Brotherhood of Man. Today this vital force
has woven its sensate wires in and out through all classes of men, making every pulse
thrill at the electric touch of a clasping hand, and every heart respond to the "touch
of human kindness, that makes all the world akin."
This same key-note sounds on, but another and yet clearer note is the voice of
today. Time, touching the keys of the nineteenth century, has rung out, clear and
strong, a sound all Christendom has heard, and whose echoes have reached the isles
of the sea. All humanity knows it, for through it " hands grow more helpful, voices
grow more tender." And this sound has reached woman's heart as it was never
reached before, for *' woman is the mother, the mother is life, and life is love." And
thus we have climbed another round of the ladder, beyond the Brotherhood of Man,
up to the Motherhood of Woman. How strange it seems to us, upon whose heads
many winters have sifted their snows, to look back and realize that half a century ago
Mrs. Lide Meriweatherisa native of Virginia. She was born Octobar 16, 1829. Her parents were Mays and Elizabeth Pflr-
ker Smith of Acconnac County, Va. She was edacated at Washington, Pa., gradaating from thatinstitation in October. 1845.
She married Mr. Niles Meriweather of Christian county, Ky., October K, 1855. She interests herself largely in philanthropy,
and social and political reform. Her principal literary works are "One or Two," a volume of poems, and "Soundings," a plea
for erring women. She is a woman of liberal views and all-embracing charity. Postoffice address No. 14 Talbot Street,
Memphis, Tenn.
747
MRS. LIDE MERIWEATHER.
748 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
there was no such thing in our land as an organization of women, and the mere sug-
gestion of such a possibility would have produced a moral earthquake in masculine
ranks. Today there is not a home in America that has not felt the power of her
organized motherhood. Women who sit in the darkness of Eastern despotism have
felt the benediction of this mother-love. She has touched the doors of colleges and
universities; the locks were rusty and the hinges creaked, but they have swung wide
open that her daughters might walk in. And today those daughters are artists, sculp-
tors, poets, novelists, and successful business women — ay, M. Ds. and D. Ds. — and
nobody is hurt. In conference and convention these mother-hearts meet and discuss
great social, moral, and political questions, and nobody marvels. Churches that but
a few years ago would have been considered desecrated had a woman's gown but
touched the pulpit floor now give her cordial welcome; sad eyes in prisons and asylums
look up and smile beneath her motherly care; schools are made more practical by her
oversight, and churches more charitable by her influence. The loving arms of organized
motherhood have encircled the world.
These bands of organized mothers are known by many different titles: the
Woman's Missionary Society, King's Daughters, Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, Woman's Suffrage Association, Free Kindergarten, Working Woman's Guild,
Association for Advancement of Women. These are but a few branches on the giant
tree of organized motherhood; but by whatever name known, "their toils, their hopes,
their aims are one" — the progress and elevation of the children of their love.
In the band of organized motherhood, of which this little white ribbon is the sign
and seal of membership, the motherly arms are opened as wide as the world, the
mother-heart bows in benediction over every son and daughter of Adam. This band
is organized, armed and equipped with the weapons of offense and defense— first,
against the three great dragons that devour humanity — Alcohol, Tobacco, Impurity —
these three, and the greatest of these is alcohol, for in his slimy trail inevitably follow
all the rest. Our great dominant issue is the extermination of the liquor traffic, whose
baneful effects it is needless that I should tell you — not a man, woman or child in
America but knows them. To this end we work along three great lines: Prevention,
first and best of all, for that means educating all the children of the land scientifically
against its baneful influence; next, reformation of the drunkard whenever, whatever,
and by whatever means it may be possible; and, lastly, legislation as the only feasible
means of making such reformation possible and permanent.
Could the individual efforts of these two hundred thousand women ever have
wrought out one tithe of the marvelous results that have been achieved by the com-
bined and systematic action of this great organization?
This mother-host takes into its loving care the entire child-life of the nation, from
the day the baby first opens its wondering eyes upon the world until it reaches young
manhood or womanhood, and is then transferred to the sheltering arms of the White
Cross or the protecting aegis of the White Shield. First, for the baby, comes the
creche or day-nursery, where the children of wage-working mothers can be cared for
while the mother goes out to work. Here all comforts are provided; the little one is
bathed, dressed, fed, and cared for by kindly nurses. In the evening the mother
comes and takes it home for the night. For this, if able, she pays ten cents a day;
if not, the care is given free. In any case, the little fee is taken to foster an inde-
pendent spirit in the mother.
Next comes the baby hospital, where the sick baby is taken and given medical
treatment without the mother. Dr. Sarah McNutt of New York, who founded the
first baby hospital, has evolved a new idea in hospital life. Among her friends are
many young girls, daughters of well-to-do or wealthy parents, whom she has organized
into what she calls the petting committee. She maintains that petting is just as
necessary to the health of a well baby or the care of a sick one as food, fire or medi-
cine. So each day a certain detailed number of these girls go to the hospital, carrying
toys, pictures, flowers, and such delicacies as the doctor will permit; then they carry,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 749
play with and pet the babies — to the great delight of the little ones, and their manifest
improvement as well. To my mind, that was the sweetest thought that ever entered
the heart of woman. And yet some folks think that women have no business to study
or to practice medicine.
Next for babyland comes the care of the little toddling waifs in the free kinder-
garten. The best physicians are not those who follow disease, but those who go ahead
and prevent it. If the child is taught to be virtuous, self-governing, law-abiding, there
will be no need to spend later years in re-formation. After nineteen centuries the
" little child " still stands in our midst, and these loving mothers have taken him by
the hand, and it is a pledge and prophecy of the coming of the blessed Master's
kingdom.
After this comes the kitchen garden, where neglected girls from tenement-house
districts of our cities are gathered and taught the rudiments of an education, also
cooking, sewing, housework, and other means of making their homes brighter and
better, or of making other homes pleasanter by becoming competent servants.
And for that great multitude, the poorest of all God's poor, that innumerable and
sorrowful company who, even in years which my memory can recall, were deemed
utterly lost and hopeless, whose name must never be breathed by a good woman, and
for whom it was almost a crime to pray — for these outlawed and wandering ones the
nation's motherhood has built the anchorage, the mission home, the refuge, the open
door, wherein the best and brightest of these loving hearts preside, where the mother's
welcoming hand is always outstretched, and her sweet voice is calling, day by day and
night by night, to the weakest, the guiltiest, the most despairing, the most desperate:
"Come back, no matter how or from whence; here is home, here is mother, here is
always 'a light in the window for thee.'"
Dear sister woman, you who have been standing afar off, folding idle hands and
sitting "at ease inZion," do you feel no pulse of pity for the great multitude who live
and weep and sin and suffer all around you? Do you see nothing helpful, noble, grand
in this great band of organized motherhood? Can you with a clear conscience longer
sit with folded hands, turn deaf ears to their pleadings, and refuse to come up to their
help? "Your days vanish as a tale that is told;" the sun of your years hastens toward
its going down. Oh, kindle your zeal at the altars of their glowing example; let your
faith be firm, your courage strong, your love limitless! Awake, arise, and fight the
good fight ere yet your sun has set, that you go not down to the dark valley with the
blood of souls resting upon your head.
Mother, do you see the great multitude whom no man can number standing out-
side the door of pity and protection with outstretched hands imploring help — the
drunkard's wife, the convict's mother, the murderer's child, the poor, the weak, the
ignorant, the guilty? Day by day, hour by hour, they call you. Will you come up to
their help? And when you have crossed the swelling river and the pearly gates swing
open, will you miss the blare of trumpets or the clash of cymbals, if only there shall
stand within that radiant gateway the familiar face of some poor, sin-stained woman,
whose bleeding feet you once helped to climb the shining stair? Will you sigh for the
golden vesture or the jeweled crown if she but hold out toil-worn, welcoming hands,
and, smiling, say: "Come over the threshold?"
Among the manifold works and ways of the organized motherhood of this land
not the least important, and, I am grieved to say, by no means the least painful and
pitiful, has been that of petition and legislation. This being interpreted, reads: The
mothers' petitioning, and the fathers, in legislative hall convened, making of their peti-
tions subjects for the amusement of the assembly. Nearly one-half the papers I pick
up contain pointers on this subject. Should I try to use all I find 1 should be still talk-
ing to you at the day of dawn of 1893, which wouldn't be comfortable for you. So,
leaving out all the rest, I take for illustration one near home. The issue of
August 4 contains an account of a mothers' meeting, from which I quote this para-
graph:
750 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
" The scientific temperance course of instruction is now a part of the common
school course in all our states save seven, Tennessee ranking the least hopeful of the
seven in all movements of reform and advancement. Strenuous efforts were made dur-
ing the last legislative session to introduce our scientific temperance educational bill,
but it, as well as all the bills for promotion of social purity and other reforms, were
deemed good jokes, and afforded occasion for great hilarity among our wise and hon-
orable lawmakers."
My own experience among our legislative Solons, both state and national, has
brought me to the conclusion that among all the feminine opponents of woman's bal-
lot there is but one woman who claims my sincere sympathy, and she is the affectionate
spouse of the politician who said: " No, John, I don't want any woman suffrage."
" You don't? Why not?" *' Well, John, just because if I had it 1 should always feel
like voting for you, and I don't think I could conscientiously do it."
I know a worker who once upon a time, when she was a trifle more verdant than
she is today, carried a petition for better temperance legislation, signed by fifteen thou-
sand women of her state, to a friend in the Senate, and asked him to present it. He
declined. "Why, Mr B," said she, " I thought you believed in temperance." " Oh, so
I do." " Well, don't you think this is a good bill?" "Yes — just between us." "Well,
then, why don't you present it?" " Why, my dear friend, you know I am a politician.
I don't expect to stop here. I am heading for Congress. Now, suppose I present this
bill and champion it, some of my friends would not stand by me when that race comes
off." " But we women will stand by you, every one, and here are fifteen thousand of
us." Here he broke into a loud laugh. " My dear madam, did you say that ironically?
It's capital if you did." "Ironically! Indeed I didn't; what do you mean?" "Oh,
well, then, you're more innocent than I had supposed. My friend, how much do you
suppose your fifteen thousand women would weigh in an election scale against two
German votes ?" Suppose these fifteen thousand women, wanting this voting well done,
could have done it themselves, and so neutralized fifteen thousand German votes, would
that gentleman have declined to present, plead, and vote for that bill? I trow not.
In the columns of the average newspaper, or the fulminations of the average orator,
one can scarcely go amiss for censorious remarks regarding the "wild and fanatical female
who is shrieking for the suffrage, for— she knows not what, expecting to be benefited —
she knows not how." These gentlemen are either stubbornly or wilfully blind, or they
have penetrated a very short distance into the tangled morass of woman's legal and
political situation. Ask any widow in this state, whose wayward boy is daily and
hourly being lured down to destruction, if she thinks her ballot would be of any benefit
to her or her boy in an anti-saloon fight. Ask the tax-paying widow who sung and
prayed and talked and worked and paid all through our late prohibition amend-
ment campaign what she saw when she went to the polls on election day. She will
tell you that she saw scores of male paupers, whom her quota of tax helped to feed
and clothe and shelter, driven from the poorhouse to put in their ballots for the defeat
of the amendment; but if she had attempted to cast a ballot it would have been tossed
scornfully aside, and she would have been subject to punishment for illegal voting.
Ask her, if, in the light of that experience, she thinks she " shrieks for — she knows
not what."
During our legislative session — I mean during the brethren's legislative session
of 1888 — a bill was introduced " for the better protection of the property of married
women." It was referred to a committee, recommended by that committee for rejec-
tion, and our honorable Solons promptly followed that advice.
Ask the drunkard's wife, who toils day and night for the support of her children,
whose hard earnings may be taken any day, even to the table at which they eat
and the bed from under them, to pay her husband's saloon bills — ask that woman,
when she pleads for a voice in making the law or choosing the lawmakers, if she is
clamoring for — " she knows not what." Go to the poor, barren tenement of 'the work-
ing girl, whose young life is dragged out in ceaseless drudgery, who toils month after
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 751
month for the merest pittance of starvation wages — ask the sad-eyed mother who
watches her roses fade and her young strength fail, who knows the terrible temptations
that daily beset her in that unequal race — ask her if, in pleading to be made a member
of a representative, not a silent and subject class, she is asking for — "she knows not
what." Ask that widowed mother, whose ceaseless " stitch, stitch, stitch" from day-
dawn till midnight scarcely provides the coarsest and commonest food and shelter for
herself and her little girl, who knows that after her tenth birthday no law stands
between that baby-girl and the devouring wolf of legalized sensuality — ask that anxious
heart if, when she prays for the day when she shall hold in her hand the only weapon
with which she can protect that child she is sending up vain, ignorant petitions to a
merciful Father pleading for — " she knows not what."
We read in olden story how a Scottish leader inclosed the heart of the hero of
Bannockburn in a silver. casket, and hurled it into the ranks of the enemy, that his
devoted followers might rush after it with the instinctive battle-cry: " Heart of Bruce!
I follow thee!"
Brothers! not the dead senseless ashes inclosed in silver shrine, but the living, bleed-
ing, breaking heart of American motherhood lies trodden under foot in the ranks of the
enemy. The chords that vibrated to sweetest melody when the eyes of her first-born
son, the hope of her heart and house, smiled up into hers, lies torn and bleeding under
the relentless tread of the legalized liquor traffic. The strings that were twined with
a life and death clasp around the life and destiny of her little baby girl lie crushed
and quivering in the devouring jaws of legalized and law-protected sensuality. The
ebbing life blood oozes, drop by drop, as her fair young daughter, hounded on by the
pursuing fiends of ill-paid labor, treachery and starvation, plunges over the fatal
precipice and is lost in the black, fathomless abyss of moral and social degradation
and death.
And as of old that Scottish leader stood, so stand I here today; and I call upon
you, friends! brothers! fellow soldiers! knights of the nineteenth century! Let your
battle-cry ring out so loud and clear that all the world shall hear it: " Mother heart! I
follow thee!"
SYNOPSIS OF A PAPER ON CHARLES LAMB.
By MRS. C. A. R. DEVEREUX.
Mrs. Devereux's paper was both analytical and dramatic. She spoke at the
outset of the peculiar quality of the wit and humor of Charles Lamb, as it shim-
mers and sparkles in his essays and sayings and gives
luster to his letters. She said in brief what follows:
To quote boldly his quaint and delicate fancies is like
tearing a bunch of wood violets from their mossy
nest and holding them up to the sunshine — they
wither at the touch. Lamb's wit is not simply a
tissue of jests and far-fetched conceits, but a combin-
ation of humor and pathos essentially different from
that of any other man.
Taking her audience with her in a charmingly
confidential manner the essayist looked in at the
South Sea House, Oxford, Christ Church Hospital,
and crossed the pleasant fields of Hampstead;
lunched off roast pig with Bo-bo, and drank Hyson
out of Bridget Elias' China teacups, with the man-
darins on the saucers, and then made the acquaint-
ance of the family at the rambling old house in Nor-
folk where Grandmother Field used to see the appa-
ritions of the two golden-haired infants glide up and
down the staircase near where she slept.
Then Mrs. Devereux touched upon the story of
Charles Lamb's life, his griefs that make him vener-
ated, his frailties that make us press our fingers to our lips and command silence.
His life is a story of insanity, and the shadow never left it. His sister Mary, in a
moment of frenzy, killed her mother, an old, infirm invalid. His was the hand that
snatched the knife from her grasp. It is enough to say that for thirty years after-
ward (he was then a man of twenty) he devoted himself to her with a singleness of
purpose entirely without parallel. Talford says that when these fearful times came
upon her she blazed out into descriptions of bygone days in jeweled words and
speeches like those running through the works of the old comedy's masters.
An interesting portion of the essay was a description of an evening at Charles
Lamb's humble quarters in the inner temple, with word pictures of Leigh Hunt, Haz-
litt, Coleridge, Godwin, Talford and Holcroft, where the champagne was in the talk,
whose aroma and effervescence has come down to us and will go on forever.
The essay concluded with a little circlet of Williant's, a few examples of Lamb's
quaint and jocose speech that have escaped into notoriety so well presented that their
luster was scarcely dimmed.
His was a many-sided mind. His wit wins us, his pathos woos us, his grand and
simple nature fills us with equal awe and reverence. His is an influence that can never
die.
MRS. C. A. R. DEVEREUX,
Clara A. R. Deverenx was born in Boston, Mass. Her parents were Zoeth and Phcebe Rich. She was educated at
Oread Institute, Worcester; at Framingham and Bedford Academies. She has traveled extensively. She married Gen,
Arthur Forrester Devereux, of Salem, Mass. Her special work has been editorials and correspondence on the staff of the
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, Mrs. Devereux enjoys the distinction of being one of the most brilliant writers on the
Western press. Her ready wit and warm heart make her equally admired and beloved by all who know her. Her profession,
journalism. In religious faith she is Episcopalian. Posfoffice address Cincinnati, Ohio.
762
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 753
We do not say, " I should have loved him had the self-same day but found us liv-
ing, but I hold him dear now, at this moment, and if patient ears, wrapped in God's
silence dimly now and then, catch echoes of the grateful love of men, Charles Lamb
rests happily through all these years."
(48)
OUR SPANISH-AMERICAN NEIGHBORS.
MRS. ANNA A. DODD.
By MRS. ANNA A. DODD.
In January, 1891, I sailed from New York for the purpose of taking the position
of principal literary teacher in the Santiago College, Chili, the largest and best En-
glish college in South America. At the end of eight
days, after experiencing every variety of climate and
weather, including a fierce storm off Cape Hatteras,
we reached Colon. Here a perfect transformation
scene awaited us — a new Heaven, a new earth and a
new people, who spoke to us in a new and unknown
tongue.
It required five hours to cross the isthmus, which
seemed a mammoth conservatory of tropical plants,
or a glimpse into the interior of Africa, with its banana
plantations and the rude huts of the negroes, made of
sticks and plastered with mud and thatched with
grass. The people appeared to be an indigenous
growth, and they were as listless and aimless as the
vegetation of which they seemed a part. The chil-
dren were suggestive of the real in art, and would
have delighted the heart of the sculptor. They were
wholly nude. Their minds had never been profaned
with the cultivated idea of modesty of some of our
ultra civilized contemporaries, who, for the sake of
ethics, would drape the cold and unresponsive marble
that leaves so little for the imagination.
I might linger here and tell you much of the ruined and wrecked machinery and
the deserted villages, which mutely represented the wrecked fortunes and hopes of
thousands of people, as well as the ruined reputation and lost manhood of the specu-
lators whose infamous conduct has furnished food for scandal in the late Panama
swindle, but I must hasten on.
The evening of the same day we took the elegant English steamer Santiago for
our three weeks' voyage to Valparaiso, the port of Santiago. To exchange the choppy
Caribbean Sea and the tempest-tossed Atlantic for the mild and undulating swells of
the Pacific was a happy release for the seasick passengers. The ship stopped at every
port, which gave a good opportunity to observe the country and the people, but this
soon becomes monotonous, as it is a constant repetition. The rugged Andes are bare
and desolate, except now and again a fertile strip of land watered by a mountain
stream on its way to the ocean. At Guayaquil the weather was truly tropical, 100° in
the shade in February. It was toward the close of the rainy season, and the streets
were full of green and stagnant water, which offered good breeding ground for the
yellow fever. Callao was reached in the height of the carnival season. The captain
advised us if we went on shore to put on such garments as we would be willing to cast
overboard on our return, for the revelers were no respecters of person. We dis-
MrB. Anna A. Dodd was bom at North Bend, Ohio, in 1834. Her parents were natives of the United States. She is a
granddaughter of James Silver, -who was a judge in ( "incinnati. Ohio, for twenty years. She was educated in the free schools of
Cincinnati, including the Hughes High School. She has traveled in her own country and South America, having spent nine
months in Chili. She married Edwin D. Dodd, of Cincinnati, who is now deceased. She is the mother of three daughters.
Mrs. Dodd was principal of a Cincinnati school five years. In religious faith she has been an Episcopalian. Her postoffice
^iddresB is South Bend, Ind.
754
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 755
erectly remained on board the ship. The condition of the watermen who came out
the following day bore testimony to the wisdom of the captain's warning, for their
clothes were like Joseph's coat, of many colors, from the frequent drenchings of col-
ored fluids cast on them the previous day. When we left the United States there was
a small speck on the political horizon of Chili, which had rapidly developed into a
portentous war-cloud, of which we were blissfully ignorant until we reached Callao.
Here the captain of the Santiago received orders to go no further, but to transfer all
passengers to the Pizarro, an older and less valued vessel. On entering Chilian waters
a man-of-war fired a shot across our bows and ordered us to halt. As the muzzles of
some very fierce-looking guns were peering through the portholes of the aforesaid
man-of-war, no time was lost in obeying orders. We remained quite stationary while
the man-of-war performed a sort of nautical war-dance or waltz, by moving entirely
around our vessel, while the captain asked several questions, which being answered
satisfactorily, we were ordered to "move on." We began to feel like poor Joe in
" Bleak House," who responded to a like order by saying, "Where would you have a
poor cove move on to?" For we had been told that in all probability we would not
be allowed to land at a single Chilian port, but, fortunately, results proved otherwise.
We tarried in the Bay of Valparaiso all night waiting for the captain of the port to
give us permission to go ashore, still in a state of uncertainty. But morning brought
a blessed relief to mind and body, and we lost no time in accepting the freedom of
the city.
When I reached Santiago the following day I was literally turned round. Mid-
summer in February! Washington's birthday anniversary the hottest of the season!
The sun rose in the East as usual, but turned to the North instead of to the South, The
constellations had reversed their positions. The Dipper was lost to view. The South-
ern Cross was not a compensation, for it was a disappointment.
The school year began in March and closed for the summer holidays at Christ-
mas. Santiago is the head of a system of schools established in Chili for the purpose
of furnishing'funds for missionary purposes. It is on the plah of our seminaries in the
North, but it is not intended for propaganda. It meets a much needed want for edu-
cational purposes. Its patronage is from the best families in Chili, and now numbers
about two hundred and fifty students. The most of the teachers are from the United
States. The graduating class, which I taught, was composed of Spanish, French,
German, English and American, the latter being represented by one girl. They all
spoke two or three languages. The school observes all feast days that the national
banks do, but the greatest feast day was the 7th of July. The United States minister
also observes this day by a formal reception of all good Americans, foreign ministers
and state ofificials.
Just here I wish to offer a tribute of respect to Patrick Egan who, whatever may
have been his errors of commission or omission politically or ministerially, proved
himself a humane. Christian gentleman, as his legation was a place of refuge, not only
for Americans during that fierce and bloody war, but for the opposing factions who
sought his protection.
^' Old Glory " never appeared to a better advantage than when peacefully floating
in the breeze as a menace even in a foreign country, when the war-dogs were loosened
to hound down those who had the courage of their convictions and openly asserted
themselves. Every building in the city is required by law to erect a flagstaff, that the
national flag may be raised when the order is given to do so, a custom worthy of imi-
tation. The college rejoiced in two, one for the flag of Chili and one for the "stars
and stripes." The latter was treated with all the respect due it during the terrible
sacking of the city that followed the close of the war.
Santiago, a typical Spanish-American city, is the finest on the Pacific slope. From
its geographical position it enjoys a delightful climate much of the year, but its close
proximity to the mountains that are covered with snow in the rainy season brings the
mercury down to forty or fifty degrees, and occasionally to the freezing point. There is
756 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
a scarcity of fuel, as the early Spanish settlers cut away the timber, and tree planting-
has not become a universal custom with their descendants. Coal is found, but it is
expensive; hence the people accustom themselves to do without fire save for cooking
purposes. The result is great mortality among children and anaemia among women
who rarely live to an advanced age. Men wear their overcoats in and out of doors,
rub their fingers to excite warmth, and imbibe wine and strong drink, not only to relieve
the biting cold of winter, but also the oppressive heat of summer. Servants move
about with shawls on their heads and cover their mouths to retain the heat from exha-
lation. It is a pitiful sight to see the poor and thinly clad sitting outside of their
miserable adobe huts when the weather is fine to enjoy the warmth of the sun. The
stores are never heated, and the fruit and flower venders may be seen the whole year
round in the open air. This remarkable country, with more attention to the amenities
of life, would be a delightful abiding place. It is free from thunderstorms^ cyclones
and blizzards, and there is no snow except in the mountains. The people are occa-
sionally shaken by an earthquake which at the time is very terrifying, to which I can
bear testimony by personal experience. The name Valparaiso means " Vale of Para-
dise," which is significant of the climate. There are three distinct grades of society
in Spanish America, the rich, the middle class and the very poor. The rich are the
aristocracy, or nobility, as they style themselves. They are very exclusive, and only
admit people of their own rank to intimacy. Their revenues are obtained from mines
and haciendas, which are worked by the peons, a mixture of Spanish and Indian.
The rich lead lives of idleness, the men are fond of gain and gambling, and the
women of dress and gossiping. The sons of rich men are often educated abroad, and
the daughters acquire a few superficial accomplishments and a smattering of lan-
guages, either in the convents or from foreign governesses. They have the Spanish
style of beauty, and are very devout about attending mass every morning, wearing a
black dress and the Spanish mantilla, as bonnets are forbidden in the churches of Chili.
In the afternoon they may be seen riding or walking, with uncovered heads. It is a
disgrace for a lady to nurse or attend to her children. These (maternal) functions
are delegated to servants who are ignorant, and most of them examples of total
depravity, as they are supposed to break every commandment in the decalogue.
Women do not command respect, but simply admiration in proportion to their beauty,,
courtesy and gallantry on the part of the men being, like veneering, but on the surface.
Young women dare not venture on the street in daytime without an escort or chap-
eron. Schoolgirls are not allowed to go and come from school, no matter how short
the distance, without a servant at their heels, or a protecting guardian beside them.
In Chili a woman is an infant, under the law, until she reaches the age of twenty-five
years. To marry under that age without the consent of parents or guardian, would be
illegal. If, by any stretch of the imagination, we could fancy these women organizing
a literary club after the manner of our women, from the largest cities to the smallest
villages, they would be the butt of ridicule in the newspapers and clubs, or thought fit
subjects for a lunatic asylum. The women of the United States are regarded by our
Spanish-American neighbors as very despotic, and are rarely selected by them as
wives.
Schools are greatly needed in these countries to elevate the women as well as the
masses. Missionary schools are doing much good, but in many ways they are handi-
capped and fail to reach the large majority, who need to learn that labor is honorable
and that idleness is vice. President Balmaceda understood the wants of the people.
He was a progressive and broad-minded man. He built fine public schools to educate
the common people, and did much to improve the country, but his efforts did not suit
the conservative element, and he was falsely accused of squandering the public money,
which finally precipitated the late war in Chili, with which you are all familiar. These
schools now stand for his monuments, and the time will come when his memory will
be respected The people are patriotic, in their way; they are great hero-worshipers,
and love to honor their distinguished men, when dead, by erecting statues to their
memory in the public squares and other places of public resort.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 757
The bulk of the property is held by the church, and a small minority of the peo-
ple, who make the laws and place only a nominal tax on the realty. To meet gov-
■ernment expenses, heavy duties are imposed on the necessaries of life, but the lux-
uries escape with a small tribute.
Nearly all business is in the hands of foreigners. Every store and shop, even to
a cobbler's stall, must pay a license or patent for revenue. An auctioneer pays one
thousand dollars and upward per annum. This burdens the tradespeople and the
poor, and there is no redress, the despotism of the rulers being proportioned to the
ignorance of the people as a mass. There is no provision made for the indigent poor;
the halt, the lame and the blind all meet in the marketplaces and other conspicuous
points and beg for aid. Yet the religion of these people is noticeable in all relations
•of life. Even business houses are dedicated to a patron saint, whose name is deeply
cut in the pavement, and his figure placed in the window where goods are exposed for
sale. Private houses often have a niche in the outer wall, in which is placed an image
of the Blessed Virgin, surrounded by plants and cut flowers, and lighted at night by
a gas jet. Cemeteries are filled with tombs built above ground, descending two or
three stories, under which is a receptacle for the bones of the " oldest inhabitant."
These tombs are fashioned like Greek temples, and are guarded by a favorite saint
and the Virgin cut in marble. Some of them are very expensive. One belonging
to the De Soto family, built wholly of white marble, surmounted by a life-sized angel
•exquisitely carved, cost twenty-five thousand dollars. The poor have no permanent
burial place; a hole is made in the ground, the same being rented for a certain length
of time, but at the expiration of the lease, the body is thrown into the Gehenna beyond
the wall, and covered with lime. The cities have no beautiful suburbs. There are
quintas and chacras of a block or a few acres, surrounded by high adobe walls to
exclude the "Goths and Vandals." These grounds are highly cultivated by the aid of
irrigation. Statuary is largely used for decorating the grounds as well as the houses.
Except in the parks, there are no fine driveways; the country is in a state of nature,
and during the rainy season the roads are wellnigh impassable. Agriculture is con-
ducted on the chacras or small farms in the most primitive manner. The old Abra-
hamic plow is used to tickle the ground that is expected to laugh with the harvest.
Donkeys with their panniers, and clumsy carts drawn by oxen, carry the fruits and
vegetables to market. In the month of September I spent the diez e ocho holiday of
ten days on a large hacienda of five thousand acres, valued at six hundred thousand
dollars, which formerly belonged to Balmaceda. Three thousand acres were in wheat
in all stages of growth. Peons were plowing for the last sowing, twenty in a field.
These haciendas are superintended by practical Scotchmen or Englishmen, who require
the peons to use modern plows. They are stubbornly opposed to change of tools or
fashion. Thousands of horses, cattle and sheep roamed over the foot-hills, often
straggling across the mountains to the other side. Once a year the cattle of the
country are driven in by herdsmen to an appointed place, and, as each owner has his
brand, they are easily assorted, taken where they belong and sold.
The peons live for successive generations on the same hacienda. Each family
has an adobe house and a plat of ground, and they close together in a sort of village.
They work for hire, and are faithful servants. No provision is made for the intellect-
ual and moral elevation of these people. They amuse themselves on Sundays with
horse-racing, etc. Bull-fighting is prohibited in Chili, but not in Peru or Mexico.
The Chilians are experts in the use of the lasso.
Manufactures are limited to a few necessary articles of but inferior quality.
Americans have built most of their railroads, the French improved their harbors, and
these, with the German and English, established their commerce.
Briefly outlined, this is the social and political condition of a typical Spanish-
American country, which, after an existence of over three hundred and fifty years, is
walking in the beaten paths and living after the manner of its ancestors. With a
desire for liberty and independence, it threw off the yoke of Spain, but among them-
758 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
selves there is a constant struggle for supremacy. They are proud, fond of power,
gain, ease and luxury.
The docile peons, although free, are still slaves, and constitute the fighting force
in time of war. Through their veins trickles the same blood that coursed through
those of the early Spanish discoverers and conquerors. Cortezand Pizarro were relig-
ious bigots and fanatics, who came with the sword in one hand and the cross in the
other. They fought in the name of Spain's patron saint, lago, but showed- a greater
desire to obtain gold than to convert souls to Christianity. " They came, they saw,
they conquered," and the descendants of the Incas and the Aztecs rest like an incubus
on the sleeping, dreaming Spanish-Americans, who have not only exonerated the
crimes of Pizarro, but first exalted him as an hero and later as a saint. After three
hundred years his body was exhumed, placed in a glass casket, and enshrined in the
cathedral at Lima, Peru, where I saw it on my return home. Minister Hicks, who was
present, related to me the ceremonies that attended his consecration. This was done
at the close of the nineteenth century. The soil of Peru is so impregnated with niter
that the bodies of the dead are preserved.
The early settlements of Spanish America were almost one hundred years in
advance of those of North America. The very garden of the continent was their
chosen abiding place. From Mexico to Chili, nature has been lavish in her gifts of
climate, soil and products. Within a space embracing the tropics and semi-tropics,
sea girt on all sides, with ranges of mountains inclosing fertile valleys and rising into
tablelands adapted to the culture of every cereal, fruit and plant that may be culti-
vated for the sustenance and the pleasure of man; gold, silver and precious stones,
as well as the baser metals; large domains suited to the grazing of cattle or agricul-
tural purposes; forests in which abound the greatest variety of woods; rivers navigable
far into the interior, of the country on the banks of which the soil is inexhaustible;
rare and beautiful plants, that may adorn the conservatory or supply the alembic of
the chemist for medicinal purposes. Surrounded by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,
barter and trade may be carried on between the two Americas with almost as much
ease as on our great rivers of commerce, as the ships that ply up and down tKe coast
are rarely out of sight of land; so that to those who enjoy ocean travel is offered the
most delightful opportunity, as summer reigns the year round and the traveler may
revel in all the luxuries of the tropic and temperate zones.
Yet, with all these advantages, our Spanish-American neighbors have failed to keep
abreast of the times. It is mostly due to two causes: first, the homogeneousness of
the people; second, uniformity of religion. In the plan of creation a diversity of races
was wisely provided, with the differences of temperament and color to adapt them to
the various locations wherein they dwell. The different species of the same race also
seems necessary to evolve or develop the highest and best conditions of society. To
this variety is due, no doubt, in part, the remarkable advancement and prosperity of the
United States. By tacit consent, we all learn to speak the same language which enables
us to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific without guide or courier, and distinguishes
us from Europe by removing the insuparable barriers to free intercourse and travel.
The same language is universal in Spanish-America, but there the antecedents
have been the same, and their habits and customs gain nothing by contact with each
other. Uniformity of religion leads to bigotry and intolerance, as well as persecution
of those whose beliefs and forms of worship differ from those of the established
church. This is largely true in all of Spanish-America. In Peru, to preach the gospel
in Spanish, except after the prescribed methods, subjects the offender to arrest and
imprisonment. Chili is more tolerant. Protestant churches are allowed, but they are
not permitted to have a belfry or tower in which to place a bell to call the people to
worship. Differences of religion and politics are better for the body politic if they
may be openly expressed. Free speech, free press, free schools and freedom to
worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience, lie at the foundation
of true republicanism.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 759
With a deep sense of gratitude to Spain for having made it possible for Columbus to
discover America, where so many millions of people find free and happy homes, there
is a tinge of regret that her own offspring in the New World has been surpassed in
achievement and enterprise by her twin sister, North America. Columbus was not a
Spaniard, He owed his nativity to that land that' has produced poets, painters, sculp-
tors and men of letters, where they breathe an atmosphere filled with inspiration.
Columbus felt its influence, and it stirred his pious soul to its very depths. He felt
God had given him a mission, but he was looked upon at home and abroad as an
impracticable dreamer, until a woman, who understood and interpreted his dream, lent
a helping hand, and that woman was a Spaniard.
When Columbus landed on the shores of the New World, he claimed it in the
name of his benefactors; when he planted the cross, he dedicated it to Christianity,
Since then thousands of people who have been persecuted for opinion's sake have
here sought refuge and found a home.
With the dawn of the twentieth century may our Spanish-American neighbors, who
are bound to us by natural ties, be still closer bound by bands of steel, bearing the
cars of progress laden with a higher civilization. May there be a transfusion of
Anglo-Saxon blood to quicken their sluggish veins, to lift them to a higher and bet-
ter condition materially and spiritually.
AGRICULTURE.
By MRS. AMANDA M. EDWARDS.
The first efforts of the human family toward a livelihood must have been to till
the soil. Necessity demanded it. The rich soil of the valleys was utilized for farm-
ing purposes, and in time the hilly portions of the
country were covered 'with " cattle upon a thousand
hills."
The first agriculturists were the prime factors in
the wealth and stability of the land, and of untold
influence in elevating the nations to positions of
splendor and power; and today we have proof on
every hand that agriculture is the leading industry of
the world. With the settlement of the various colo-
nies, agriculture was the first and most important
branch of business. With it was allied the raising of
stock, and the differentiation of industry which must
follow the manufacture of the various articles of
clothing from the raw material thus provided.
Columbus in his second voyage brought the first
cattle to America. Careful practical study, and knowl-
edge applied, has developed great improvement in all
our breeds. They are also fed and fattened accord-
ing to scientific principles.
Nature has most lavishly placed at man's com-
MRs. AMANDA M. EDWARDS. "1.^"^ thc richcs of hcr hattdiwork in natural growths,
with all the opportunities of advancement.
The early Romans did not bring the art of agriculture to its most perfect con-
dition, but they understood a mode of culture which insured abundant crops.
Some claim that those who would make a failure of all other business could profit-
ably engage in agricultural pursuits; but to obtain the greatest success a farmer must
know more of the occupation than merely the sowing and reaping. It is not enough
to put some seed in any ground and wait for the harvest. The grain must be sown upon
soil best adapted to it, and the natural fertility of the soil must be retained. The prac-
tical and scientific agriculturist understands the composition and formation of soils,
and the economy of nature in making the various deposits of fertilizing matter in such
form as to be utilized by man as necessity requires. He must judge of its texture, its
composition and its productiveness. He must understand the definitions of soils from
their obvious qualities, and be able to designate from their composition the clays,
loams, sands, gravels, chalks or peats, and to tell of their texture whether heavy, stiff,
or impervious, or light friable or porous; whether wet, cold and late, or dry, warm and
early, and according to their measure of fertility whether rich or poor. He learns the
color-tone of darkness of the soil, which conveys to his practical eye the power of
vegetable production. He detects the badge of mourning resulting from the decom-
position or slow cremation of organic material. He learns of the ways and means of
nature whereby the richest elements in the soil can be set free from the organically
Mrs. Amanda M. Edwards is a native of Montgomery County, New York. She was born May 16, 1848. Her parents
were Isaac Mereness and Sarah Bingham. She was educated at Ames Academy, Whitestown Seminary, and at Utica, N. Y.,
and has traveled in th United States and Great Britain. She married De Wayne Palmer, Utica, N. Y., 1870, and Ira Edwards^
New Hartford, New York, 1878. Mrs. Edwards is engaged in agriculture and stock farming. She is a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. Her postoffice address is Fremont, Neb.
760
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 761
dead to the organically living state, and to note the steady resurrection from death to
life. He can judge of the adaptation of different sections to the growth of varied soil
products, and their resources in the essential elements of fertility. He is able to select
the localities and conditions best adapted to the largest growth of farm products and
to state where the greatest nutritive value to such growths would be imparted.
Education with the farmer has become a pressing necessity. The claims of agri-
culture and of education are co-extensive. The greater the appliances of mind to any
department of physical labor the greater the results. Well trained and informed mind
can control physical energies quite as it pleases, and never is its power of control of
more avail than in the business of husbandry. Brains are brought into use as well as
muscle. In order to have any worthy success the agriculturist must carry into his
work a fullness of knowledge; not merely a sufficiency, but more than a sufficiency.
His success calls for intelligence and observation, and pays a premium on energy and
ability. With the naturally sound judgment which his business cultivates, the farmer
needs a good education, as well as the lawyer, the physician or the clergyman. The
times demand this on considerations quite distinct from mere agricultural skill. The
affairs of state and the intimate relations of agriculture to them call our legislators
from the intelligent body of agriculturists.
That which is true of the farmer applies to each and all the departments of agri-
culture.
Among the many good things which stamp the agriculturist's work as of Divine
appointment is its diversity. While it always includes contact with and care of the
soil, its wide range allows us to speak of the agriculturist as a farmer or a shepherd,
or a grain-grower, or a stock-raiser, or a market-gardener, or a dairyman, or a granger,
or a hayseed, all of which vocations are unlimited in their aim and broad in their
scope, and are capable of developing a variety of talents or gratifying a wide range of
tastes.
It has been said that "Agriculture is a born science." It is full of botany, zoology,
geology and entomology. It is full of chemistry from the soil to the growing plant.
It gives full employment to the powers of both mind and body. An agriculturist may
have the best thought of the vocation which he represents. He may daily find a
broader sphere than that prescribed by the dollars invested. Owing to the fact that
he is closely associated with nature, he is in close relation with the spirit of all life,
and in the immediate presence of the Great Author. The natural tendencies of his
aspirations are daily led toward good and toward God. From the day the farmer
sows his seed until he harvests his crop, every day of the season, he is dependent upon
beneficent Providence for favor and prosperity upon his broad fields, and is intuitively
led to look from " Nature up to Nature's God."
The great freedom from excitement, peculiar to the farmer more than any other
class of citizens, gives opportunity for cool and undisturbed investigation, ancj helps
to form a character which the clergyman covets most for his hearers and which our
judiciary system most needs for the jury box. In no department of work is good
judgment more essential than in agriculturcc
The farmer is obliged to deal with many things which are entirely beyond his
power to control. He can not control the seasons, the weather or the markets.
While he may base his calculations upon facts obtained from observation and expe-
rience, his own judgment must decide whether the season is late or early, when to
plant, when to harvest, and, in fact, the seasonable time for all his work. There is no
person engaged in business of any kind who is not dependent upon the prosperity of
the agriculturists for his own success. If crops fail the merchants, ministers, doctors
and lawyers all suffer from the failure. The welfare of our towns, cities, states and
nations is due to the adequate success of agriculture. Failure upon the farm brings
financial distress to every business enterprise, while abundant harvests insure great
national prosperity.
We as a people realized the value of good crops recently, when Russia needed
our corn and we needed their gold.
762 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
The quality and standing of any honorable calling can only be measured by the
character of the men and women engaged in it. No occupation affords better oppor-
tunity for mental, moral and social advancement than agriculture.
In the primitive days crude implements and primitive methods were used in culti-
vating the soil. The exhibit here at Jackson Park, of agricultural machinery, in qual-
ity, in artistic presentation and in infinite variety, proves that we live in an age of
invention and of application of ideas to the interests of humanity, whereby agricul-
ture is made less laborious, more pleasant, more refined and remunerative. Progress
is illustrated. The bent stick and wooden plow is replaced by magnificent steel
plows; the sickle by the powerful reapers and binders, and we are led to believe that
in the near future electricity will be used to draw agriculture onward. With the
progress before us may we not expect, in the world's tomorrow, to see the golden era
in which the alchemist's dream is more than realized, and some of the latent forces of
nature utilized in the fertilization of the soil, and that our statesmen will see the air
turned into gold and silver.
MASTER WILLIE K. DOTY.
MISS CLARIBEL THATCHER.
MISS FLORENCE THATCHER.
MISS ADA FIERCE.
PAGES OF THE CONGRESSES HELD IN THE WOMAN'S BUILDING.
SYNOPSIS OF LECTURE ON MARGARET FULLER.
By MRS. CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY.
Margaret Fuller belonged to the most brilliant era in the intellectual growth of
America, whose highwater mark was reached in Emerson, and whose lesser waves are
counted in the names of Alcott, Thoreau, Ripley,
Theodore Parker and others of almost equal fame —
with one woman among the rest, the acknowledged
peer of the best, a thinker and scholar, and a woman
of passionate moral conviction besides,
Margaret Fuller was the typical woman of her
age, because she embodied, so far in advance of their
more general recognition and demand, those qualities
of mental courage, industry and devotion which alone
can bring about that new state and ideal of woman-
hood so much talked of in the present day. Margaret
Fuller was, in culture, in character, in influence and
in the permanent quality of her work what the women
of a later age are eagerly contending in their clubs
and conventions women might, could and should be.
What we in the last half of the nineteenth century are
declaring women ought to do and ought to be allowed
to do, Margaret Fuller, back there in the first half of
the century, did; and that at a time when the obsta-
cles to woman's progress were tenfold as numerous
and difficult as now.
Margaret Fuller was the typical woman, not only
Through toil and talent she became the possessor of
a rich and varied culture that linked her with the older civilizations of the past, but
she always remained true to those principles of individual worth and freedom on
which our republic is based. She was thoroughly American, an enthusiastic believer
in our national standards and ideas. She loved and believed in her kind. She lived
before the day when the advocates of higher culture tried to demonstrate themselves
such by decrying all that pertains to their own age or country in favor of the time-worn
systems of the past. Culture was to her a means of clearer understanding of the prac-
tical problems of life; she wished to know more in order to be more. Pettiness of all
kinds was far removed from her. Her faults were those of a rich and ardent nature;
they were her virtues run to excess.
It was Margaret Fuller's fortune to live at a time when the highest exponents of
the intellectual life were also the known champions of the most unpopular reforms.
She was one of the reformers not in any perfunctory sense; her name was identified
with no particular movement or cause, but her sympathies for all forms of human suf-
fering and wrong were active and deep. She was always a strong friend of her own sex
and employed her talents in practical efforts for the improvement of the condition of
women. The lesson of this woman's life lies in the thoroughness of her work. She was
fully equipped for every task she undertook. She will also always be gratefully
remembered for the nobility of her aim, her unworldliness and constancy to high prin-
ciple, a moral activity which found outlet in many directions Her attainments and
her character will remain an inspiring example to the world for all time to come.
Mrs. Celia Parker Woolley is a native of Toledo, Ohio. Shewasborn June 17, 1848. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. M.H.
Parker, of Coldwater. Mich. She was educated at Coldwater, Mich., and Painesville, Ohio (Lake Erie Seminary). She
married J. H. Woolley, Esq., in 1868. Her principal literary works are three novels: "Love and Theology," "A Girl Gradu-
ate," and " Roger Hunt." Mrs. Woolley was formerly a writer, and is now a minister. In religions faith she is a Unitarian,
and a minister of the society at Geneva, lU. Her postoffice address is Chicago, 111.
763
MRS. CELIA PARKER WOOLLEY.
of her age, but of her country.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MODERN WOMAN.
By MRS. CAROLINE K SHERMAN.
It is well known that the condition of woman in the early periods of the world's
history was inferior to that of man. During the Middle Ages the tendency was to
treat her as a being " enskied and sainted, and to be
dealt with in sincerity as with a saint." The disposi-
tion in this modern time is to treat her neither as an
inferior nor superior to man, but as a being having
a status of her own, and not necessarily to be judged
in comparison with man. In this paper I speak, there-
fore, of the condition of woman at the present time,
the causes which led to that position, and the possi-
bilities which may result from it.
So long as the political conditions of a country
are insecure and its resources limited, woman is
obliged to accept the position allotted her, whether it
be the low position assigned her by the Orien-
tals and Greeks, or the higher one granted in the
Middle Ages. In either case what privilege she en-
joyed was not granted as a right, but conceded as a
favor. As civilization advances, however, and politi-
cal conditions become more stable, material resources
at the same time being easier of access, woman nat-
urally occupies a place quite different from any she
has known hitherto. Those manifold events which
mark the change from the mediaeval to the modern
era, necessarily affected the status of woman. The invention of printing, and with it
the diffusion of learning, the discovery of gunpowder, and the changed modes of war-
fare, the Reformation and its emphasis on the rights of the individual — each of these
was significant in opening larger and freer opportunities to woman. The invention of
printing meant liberal means of culture for all, woman as well as man, greater range
and freedom of thought and, naturally, greater freedom of expression. The discov-
ery of gunpowder meant a death-blow to feudalism — to that system of helpless
dependence by which the masses were held as serfs and servants because of the neces-
sity for military protection. The improved modes of warfare gave to the lower as
well as to the upper classes opportunity for other occupations, while at the same
time the peculiar sentiment of chivalry, as it prevailed in the Middle Ages, died a nat-
ural death, since women were no longer to be protected by the right arm of valiant
knight, but by the cannon, the musket, and the shell.
The influence of the Reformation was to set a higher value on the good things of
the world. Hence the impetus to modern science and the fruitful discoveries and
Mrs. Caroline K. Sherman was born in MaseachuBetts. Her parents were Silas Swift and Lydia Davis Kempton Swift,
She graduated from the New Bedford High School, and later from Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Mass. Also was instructed by
private tutor, who was a theological graduate of Andover. She was early grounded in sound orthodox theology, and under
the direction of her private tutor went forward with the study of theology as well as philosophy. She married Mr. Jonathan
Sherman Jr., of Boston, Mass. She is vice-president of the Aristotelian Society, an organization of scholarly people who
devote themselves to the study of Aristotle. She was chairman of the Woman's Branch Department of Philosophy and
Science, World's ('ongress Auxiliary World's Columbian Exposition, and is at present a member of the Chicago Board of
Education. She was a member of the Concord School of Philosophy, and delivered a lecture there in 1885. Her postoffice
address is No. 225 South Leavitt Street, Chicago, 111.
764
MRS. CAROLINE K. SHERMAN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 765
inventions resulting from it, which, perhaps more than anything else, have contributed
to the freer and, as we hope, better condition of woman. While, to the praise of the
Mediaeval Church, it recognized the fact that we must look to spiritual rather than to
material discoveries for the highest welfare and happiness, it sometimes neglected
the other important fact that spiritual well-being is dependent on physical and intel-
lectual agencies, and that only by the proper use of these can the desired spiritual
attainment be made. Protestantism recognized this neglect and directed itself at
once to these forces which have reference to the physical side of life, to whatever
would increase thesum total of human pleasure and decrease the amount of pain, and
the results are, as we all know, marvelous beyond expectation. It is true that in
avoiding the mistake which the Mediaeval Church had made. Protestantism incurred
the danger of going to the opposite extreme, and of regarding physical and intel-
lectual comforts as most important so far as this world goes, while spirituality too
often is thought desirable only as a preparation for death.
If this were the necessary and veritable outcome of modern science, we might
well question whether the loss were not greater than the gain, especially to the women
who partook so fully of the best which the mediaeval life had to offer; but every
thoughtful person knows that the largest means are best for the highest ends, and that
it is only irrational souls who lose sight of final purposes to rest satisfied with what
are only means to an end. As it is, all these developments of physical science will, in
our opinion, eventually lead to the best results. This being admitted, women can look
upon the achievements of science as the important factor which has brought about
for them the great changes from a state of helpless dependence to one of desirable
self-reliance and more efficient activity. So long as women were compelled by neces-
sity to spin, weave, sew, care for their households and attend the sick, so long their
time and hands were fully occupied, leaving little opportunity or strength for other
pursuits. This certainly was the case with wives and mothers, while the condition of
unmarried women was even less desirable, compelled, as they often were, to suffer the
humiliation of receiving a precarious living from strangers, or possibly worse yet, of
accepting a humble seat at the table of kindred, for Protestantism did not, as Cathol-
icism did, offer a refuge and a vocation to unmarried women.
The various organizations at the present time afford splendid opportunity for the
wise use of surplus time secured by the introduction of machinery, and women are
not slow of availing themselves of it since they have learned, what it was not possible
for them to know before, the value of organized effort. The worth of organized
activity is seen in the various reformatory methods introduced into our hospitals and
prisons, by which more humane and refined influences are brought to bear in the treat-
ment of criminals and the insane. It is seen in educational matters where women
occupy positions of trust, not simply because of the desirability of having women to
co-operate with men in public affairs, but because in many cases these women repre-
sent the sentiment of a large body of thoughtful women whose opinions it would not
be politic to ignore. Nor is it only among the so-called leisure class that there is the
disposition for self-improvement and for these advantages that come from wisely-
organized effort. I have been surprised as I have talked with members of the Knights
of Labor, and others of the wage-earning class, women of comparatively little culture,
perhaps, but with an earnest purpose to make the absolute best of themselves and of
the circumstances which too often dwarf rather than develop them. They, too, are
disposed to let the old routine of personal matters and petty gossip give place to
questions of wider scope. They, too, are taking an interest in public matters, knowing
by painful experience how closely the decision of these questions may affect them,
their homes and especially their children. And already their interest in these broader
affairs has obtained results in a practical way. Their demand that children born of
the abject poor shall not be defrauded of their childhood, but that they shall have
opportunity for education, is meeting a response all over this country, not only from
public sentiment, but from public sentiment as expressed by law. In these, as in so
760 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
many other philanthropic aims and purposes, intelligent women of all classes are
heartily engaged, and the unity of aim, the common purpose in public matters, espe-
cially in matters which bear directly on the home, is one of the happiest results of the
enlarged opportunity which this modern time affords. It not only promises benefit to
all classes of women by giving to each the moral support of the other, but it tends
also to do away with the artificial system of caste among women, which is almost
inevitable where there is a division of interests, and an inability to recognize the prin-
ciple that the good of each is bound up in the good of all.
I The strength which comes and shall come from this wider union of interests and
influences can hardly be estimated. We know that the power of woman's influence has
been acknowledged in all times; that poets have sung it, and men have delighted to
echo the song. Again and again the refrain comes: " The hand that rocks the cradle
is the hand that moves the world," but that was the influence of individual women and
of woman in the abstract. It was very intangible, very indefinite, limited in the main
to a narrow circle, or affected a wide range only through narrower, naturally losing
force, as .all power does, by the greater number of media through which it is transmit-
ted before reaching the desired end. Now for the first time that influence is taking on
a more definite form, is more surely felt. That it will increase instead of decreasing is
but natural, since " it is not the genius of civilized institutions to take away social or
political rights that have once been granted." That woman's influence will radically
change the character of public affairs is not to be anticipated, since the intellect of
woman does not differ essentially from that of man, and it is these two forces, the intel-
lectual and the moral, which are to be the controlling forces in the future. The greatest
changes and the greatest advantage arising from the new order of things will be to
woman herself. The enlarged opportunity of the present time means for her, first of
all, the privilege of gaining an independent livelihood, or, in other words, of deciding
for herself the direction of her life. How much this signifies, and what a unique privi-
lege this has been hitherto, they know best who are most familiar with the social con-
dition of woman from barbaric times to the present. There was no choice, so to speak.
Marriage was almost the sole opportunity of gaining or obtaining a desirable living,
and even then the decision was usually made by parents, brothers or near kindred, and
not by the person whose fate was the most concerned. If, as in more recent times, the
woman was allowed the choice, it was often necessity rather than free choice which
directed her, and too often she was compelled to be governed by motives of prudence
rather than inclination.
The narrow means and necessarily contracted habits of the woman who remained
unmarried made her an object of silent contempt, not from any fault of her own, but
because outside of wedded life and the interests of rearing a family there was no indus-
try that offered a worthy compensation for her work, and her whole thought was neces-
sarily bent on a narrow economy that could save where it could not earn. The manifold
employments that are now open to women, employments that are rapidly increasing
year by year, offer for the first time the glad opportunity of avocations that in their
way command respect as marriage commands respect. We have only to call the names
of Harriet Hosmer, Clara Barton, and others, and proof is at once given. Many less
widely known testify to the same effect, and the day is fast passing away when women
will be obliged to accept marriage either for the sake of support or to avoid the con-
tempt once attached to the unmarried. This freedom of choice naturally increases the
respect given to woman, whether the choice she makes is in favor of marriage, or
whether she decides to follow a profession. The woman who accepts a husband out
of pure and free inclination, conscious that this union is for her the surest opportunity
for happiness and usefulness, must stand much higher in the estimation of the husband
than the one who marries simply because there is for her no other alternative, while
the woman who is wedded to her profession in the thought of bettering her own and
the world's condition must gain the respect which is naturally accorded to those who
have an earnest purpose in life and steadfastly adhere to it.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN 767
I know it may be said that this large opportunity for women does not necessarily
imply greater improvement on their part. It may be said that women in the future,
as in the past, will still continue to live in the narrow routine of a circumscribed life;
or, if their ambition takes a wider range, it is in the direction of richer apparel,
daintier food and costlier living. It may be claimed, too, that in many cases the
great advantage offered by the so-called modern improvements have only led to
greater complexity of living and still greater perplexity, and that the added leisure
furnishes opportunity for added frivolities. The justice of the claim is admitted, but
at the same time I am right in refusing to admit that the latter class of women are the
representative women of our time. On the contrary, it is the women who are making
the absolute best of themselves and of their fortunate surroundings who are the truly
representative women of our time. These evince the latent bent, the tendency of the
masses, and the success possible to all, A tree is to be judged not alone by its fruits,
but by its fairest fruits, because these show its possibilities, these show what the
others might have been if earth and air and sunshine had been graciously disposed,
and the noble-minded women who are availing themselves of the glad privileges of
the present time are the truly representative women because they are those who are
shaping the influences which are affecting the masses beneath them, and they are
representative women also because all other women would desire the higher rational
life if they only had a consciousness of the joy which the rational life alone can give.
If there be any fear lest this higher life, as we are pleased to term it, and these
broader opportunities for women may lead them in time to the extreme of ignoring
limitations of family life, and of preferring the more public career of business or a
profession, so that family life would become distasteful to the extent that the
welfare and perhaps even the existence of the race would be in danger, we can
reassure ourselves with the fact that nature will take care of all that without any
anxiety on our part, for " nowhere is she so sensitive to encroachments as in those
matters which lie at the foundation of life." We may cheat, distort and circumvent
her in other respects, but nowhere is she so keen, cunning, so absolute and imperative
as in this determination for life, this will to live, as Schopenhauer expresses it. Nor
need there be any fear lest these higher opportunities open to women shall take away
their tenderness, their confiding trust, or any of these finer qualities which are usually
termed "womanly;" for the grace which comes from strength is far more graceful
than that which comes from languor; the tenderness which comes from efficient
sympathy is no less tender because of its efficiency, and the trust which is based on
a full recognition of all that love and trust and self-surrender imply is certain to be
more permanent than the trust that is based on ignorance.
I know the sweet illusions that still adhere to the idea of chivalrous devotion on the
part of man, and of clinging dependence on the part of woman, and this might be well
perhaps if men were always strong and women always young and beautiful; yet even
here it is questionable whether it were possible for a woman to find lasting happiness
merely as a passive recipient of loving admiration, however ardent, for so long as a
woman has a rational and spiritual nature, so long she fails of highest happiness if these
are lost sight of. And further, grant that these conditions of devotion upon the part of
man and clinging dependence on the part of woman could be permanent, it is question-
able whether such a state would be healthful to either mind or body, since this form of
selfishness, like any other, is liable to die of its own excesses. Furthermore, the fates
of the Juliets, the Ophelias, the Desdemonas, and of countless hosts of other women
who were all that is gentle, sweet and confiding, does not lead to the belief that the
fate of such women is at all enviable. On the other hand, the tragic consequences of
all this emotional fervor, this unrestrained expression of feeling, especially when com-
bined with artless simplicity and utter ignorance of what is worthy to be loved, which,
strange to say, men and women are so slow to learn; for this frenzied emotion and
intensity is still hallowed with the name of love, its dicta are regarded infallible, and
that too in the most important concerns of life.
768 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
If the privileges now afforded to women shall lead them to more realistic views in
regard to the affections, incalculable results for good must in eviably follow; for there
is no truth that men and women need to see more plainly than the fact that the
emotions and the affections are to be kept under wise control, and they are of value
only as they are under control, and that the infallibility of love is not in proportion
to its intensity, but rather in proportion to its clearsightedness. How plainly Dante
saw this truth, and how firmly he was guided by it is evident from what he says in the
"Vita Nuova," after describing his first meeting with Beatrice: " I say that from that
time love quite governed my soul, and with so safe and undisputed lordship that I had
nothing left for it but to do all his bidding continually. And albeit her image that
was with me always was an exaltation of love to subdue me, it was yet of so perfect
a quality that it never allowed me to be overruled by love without the faithful counsel
of reason whensoever such counsel was useful to be heard." I know the tendency
of women is to live in their feelings; still this tendency need not be abnormally culti-
vated, as it has been in times past, and above all things this emotional state should
not be considered the ideal condition for woman, for in whatever way we may regard
woman, whether as an individual of and for herself, or whether we regard her as a
helpmate for man, in either case it is the rational life that gives a permanent worth to
the emotional life. Desirable and indispensable as the latter may be, its best signifi-
cance is in its subordination to the rational. Shakespeare knew this well, and while
he has portrayed every phase of the emotions with all the allurements and attractions
which undisciplined ardor knows how to offer, he has not failed to show the evil
results which are sure to follow when reason fails to obtain control. The Juliets, the
Ophelias and the Desdemonas perish, the victims of their own impulses, but women
like Portia, whose wealth of feeling was not under the sway of caprice, loved, not only
to their own advantage, but to that of their households. No submission is more
womanly than that of Portia to her husband, but it is the submission of strength and
not of weakness.
Of the many old superstitions in regard to woman there is one which has not
entirely passed away, and that is that women by a kind of intuition or divination have
a feeling for truth, which is an easy substitute for the unremitting labor and continual
mental activity that is essential to the logical comprehension of truth. Hence the
inexactness of women and their inability to tell the truth, not from lack of moral
sincerity, but because they do not recognize the fact that a clear apprehension of the
truth is not a free natural gift, but is an acquired ability, that is gained only by the
most rigorous mental discipline. It would be quite as easy to gain strong physical
power without continuous exercise of the muscles as to gain intellectual and moral
strength without the constant activity of the moral and intellectual faculties, and
women can never expect to arrive at an accurate knowledge of any subject so long as
they are willing at a moment's notice to give hasty answers to the most profound
problems, social, economical, religious or philosophical, merely to follow some impulse
that with them takes the place of intelligent conviction. So long as this is the case,
so long as feeling takes the place of accurate thinking, women can not have that
subtlety of analysis and sustained power of reasoning which is absolutely essential to
the correct investigation of any subject, philosophical or scientific.
And so of those other mists of feeling which obscure the problems with which
women of today have to deal, especially the disposition to let personal matters decide
rather than the consideration of broad universal principles. It is not strange that this
is the case, since women have been governed so long by motives of personal con-
siderations. Yet if they will share in the larger life of today it will be by a recognition
of the value of underlying principles, and not through the oldtime artifice, intrigue
and use or abuse of personal influence. Is it not a little singular that while patience,
one of the most significant virtues in the Middle Ages, and one considered essentially
feminine, that in the modern time women are restlessly impatient? Here I should
make a distinction and say that they are patient under inevitable physical ills, but are
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 769
exceedingly impatient under moral wrong. At first thought this may seem a virtue
rather than otherwise, for so long as the bad can be made good, and the good made
better, no one has a right to be passively indifferent.
The difficulty lies in women failing to perceive that the process of the universe
can not be violently hastened; that the moral world as well as the physical has its
laws which must be regarded if success is to be attained. It is not easy for women to
see that what ought to be may be practically impossible at present, and, indeed, in
many cases can be reached only by the slowest processes, but this impatient haste on
the part of women will brook no delay. They have a restless, feverish desire for
activity, and inability to stay quiet, an irritable impatience to accomplish something
and to see immediate returns for the amount of energy expended. Increased oppor-
tunities for philanthropic and reformatory effort have added to the intensity of this
impatience. Seeing, as they believe, the Kingdom of Heaven to be within reach, they are
ready to take it by violence, and so defeat the object in view. It should be said, how-
ever, that within the last few years there is evidence of decided change in this respect.
Already the disciplinary power of systematic thought and study is making itself felt
among women who have availed themselves of it, and instead of bending their energies
exclusively in trying to alleviate poverty, squalor and degradation, we find many of
them making earnest inquiries as to the cause of all this poverty and vice — trying to
find out the underlying causes which bring about the need of charity and almsgiving,
for that there should be continued poverty among men and women sound in mind and
body proves a radical injustice somewhere. And women as well as men should make
it their duty, if not pleasure, to know where the evil lies, and apply the remedy there
instead qf resting content with the system so long in vogue of almsgiving out of
ignorant pity and useless sympathy. It is a question much discussed at the present
time what effect the increase of thought and study will have upon the health of women.
Docto-rs disagree upon the subject, but meanwhile women are going right along
solving the problem in a practical way. Whether the answer will be in the nega-
tive or affirmative is not yet apparent, but this much is certain, as Professor Mor-
ris has so aptly put it, " Patient thought and study are not half so perilous to one's
nerves and brains as are the fret and worry incident to the strife for the possession of
the thousand and one now alleged necessaries of decent living. Genuinely patient
thought and study are as much a sedative as an excitant, for they bring the repose of
strength." So far as my own observation goes, it is not the stimulus of thought and
study which works the ills of which physicians complain today as it is the irrational
life which women are disposed to live, simply because material productions have
increased so rapidly that it is comparatively easy for nearly every home to have an
excess of luxuries, which, instead of adding to the well-being of those who possess
them, are often an increased perplexity and aggravation.
Until our homes are simpler and less an object of care and anxiety, until our dress
is determined by beauty, health and utility rather than by fashion or caprice, and until
our tables are ordered with regard to physical well-being, we do wrong to lay the
various forms of nervous prostration to the account of thought and study. Even in
cases where household luxuries are not an occasion of fret and worry there is danger
of pernicious influence from them, since they lead one to rest content with the lower
forms of happiness rather than to seek the higher. The sense of vision is the most
tyrannical of all our senses, and few women have it under wise control. I would not
wish to advocate stoicism and puritanism in the home, but this love of luxury, this
gratification of the senses tends to enervate and make us satisfied with ourselves and
our surroundings, forgetful of the facts that it is in the activity of our powers rather
than in the passive gratification of them that we eventually come to that real satisfac-
tion which alone is the object of highest desire.
In reflecting upon the broader opportunities open to women, the question arises
as to what effect they will have upon religion and the church. Hitherto women have
been the conservative element in the church and its chief support. Evidently a change
770 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
in this respect is going on, and remembering the effect which the logical keenness of
the Mary Shelleys, the Harriet Martineaus, the George Eliots has had upon their
religion, it is not strange that there is serious questioning as to what will become of
the church in the future, and whether religion is to be thrown aside as a thing of the
past if women are no longer to be its chief supporters. But to my mind there is little
cause for apprehension on this score. So long as there is in humanity a spirit that
impels one to the knowledge and performance of practical duties, so long as there is
a desire for such an explanation of the universe as shall give life, aim and meaning, so
long as there is a love for the truth which shall make one free, so long there need be
no questioning but what religion in some form will claim the deepest interests of
humanity, and whatever form that religion may take, women in the future as in the
past will give to it loyal fidelity and faithful service.
In conclusion, let me add that if in my paper I have said some things of women
that seemed ungracious, it is not because I do not appreciate women or because I do
not know them — for I know woman well, the good, the bad and the indifferent, and
have hope for all. If what I have said shall lead any to the higher rational life of
which I have spoken, the object of my paper will be accorrtplished.
CULTURE— ITS FRUIT AND ITS PRICE.
By MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.
Every time has its catch words, its popular phrases indicativ^e of the caprice, the
motive, the opinion or the aspiration which rules the passing hour.
In the verbal currency of our day perhaps no
other word experiences more frequenter more aston-
ishing fluctuations than the word culture. As young
people are certain to infer the definition of terms
from their use, it is not to be wondered at that,
through its numerous and contradictory applications,
the meaning of culture is in many youthful minds
vague and nebulous.
Culture, when applied to men, is often used as a
synonym for learning; when ascribed to women it is
frequently employed as an equivalent for accomplish-
ment. Thus one may, within the same hour, have
culture predicated of a distinguished linguist and of
a noted aesthete, of one woman who paints china and
velvet and of another who does Kensington embroid-
ery; of one who reads French, of another who speaks
German, and of a third who sings Italian; and it is
daily asserted with lavish impartiality of companies
of women who in clubs and classes are continuing an
education which in their youth and in its proper sea-
son suffered an untimely abridgement.
Thisundiscriminatinguseof the word has debased
its originally noble significance, and it has come to suggest to the inquiring and crit-
ical mind a tendency to dabble, a dilettant habit, and superficial acquirements in
superfluous departments of study.
This misuse of the word has been followed by a misunderstanding of the sub-
stance which it rightly names, and it is the fashion of the day in certain circles to
scoff at culture, to belittle it by making it take on a provincial air through limiting it
to a single locality, and playing that Boston is its habitat; to degrade it by a ridicu-
lous orthography and an affected pronunciation; sneeringly to attribute it to fops and
pedants, and finally, to put it on the defensive by assuming that it belongs to the dead
past, that it is inimical to modern progress, and must, in the interests of progress, be
shelved and labeled with other interesting but outgrown antiquities, or ticketed with
the extinct arts.
In recent years another word has gained a strange ascendency over the popular
Mrs. May Wright Sewali, of Indianapolis, vice-president International Council of Women, president of the National
<k>oncil of Women of the United States, chairman of the committee on a World's Congress of Representative Women, is a
native of Wisconsin. Her parents, however, were both from old New England families. She was graduated from the
Northwestern University of Evanston, 111., with the degree A. B., in 1867. The degree of A. M. was conferred upon her
three years later. Mrs. Sewali is known as a most thorough and successful educator. She united in marriage with Mr. The-
odore L. Sewali in 1880. In 1882 Mr. and Mrs. Sewali opened a private school for girls, known as the Girls' Classical School.
She is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Women, an honorary member of the American Historical Asso-
ciation of Sorosis, etc She has spent several summers in England, France, Germany and Italy. Mr. Sewali h&s many lee
tares on social, educational and reform topics. She is perhaps at her best as an extemporaneous speaker, her style being
olear, cogent and eloquent. To various activities Mrs. Sewali adds those of a housekeeper and entertainer, her Wednesday
afternoon receptions being a feature of the intellectual and social life of her city. Her postofiice address is Indianapo-
lis, Ind.
771
MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.
772 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
mind, the influence of which has increased as the authority once associated with the
word culture has declined. The word practical acts on large numbers in every mod-
ern community as a charm in superstitious eras acted upon its victims.
Let any new interpretation of religion, any new system of education, any scheme
of finance, any civil policy be heralded as practical, and its advocates may rely upon
an immediate following to be enumerated by thousands. It is by the victims of this
epithet, by the worshipers of utility, by the self-styled practical people, that culture is
held in disdain. One sometimes questions whether the disdain springs from con-
scious superiority or from envy, which is the forced confession of conscious inferior-
ity. Whatever its source, disdain is a poisoned weapon, and it is the weapon of
suicide.
The man of action is the hero of the practical world, and hardly less does the
woman of action control the imagination of contemporary maidenhood. But far from
being, what numbers of their admirers proclaim them to be, the foes of culture, living
proofs of the uselessness of culture, men of action and in a very particular sense
women of action, are the heralds of culture, its prerequisites, and almost always its
agents.
The achievements of practical men are, to the great and permanent detriment of
numberless young people in this generation, frequently cited to show how unessential
to success culture is. When men of action, like Fulton or Whitney, like A. T, Stew-
art, Vanderbilt or Jay Gould, or in very different lilies of action, like Edison, or Pull-
man, or Powderly are under discussion, the feature of their careers which is dwelt upon
with particular insistence is, that "they were or are men of no culture;" that "they
were or are men of no education," or " men of the most elementary," or in favorite
phrase " of the most practical education." It is readily admitted that the madequate
education of these men is an element which, in their careers, was calculated to attract
attention; an element properly emphasized by biographers and economists, since the
fact emphasizes their extraordinary ability in the direction of their successes.
Such careers may be regarded with complacency, with certain pride by every
human being, since they indicate the dignity, the potency of the human spirit, which
can set all obstacles at defiance and transcend circumstances. But such careers do
not, as too many young people are led to believe, prove that success is the logical out-
come of ignorance, the calculable goal of mind minus culture. What the man with-
out culture, the practical man, has achieved in the world of matter may but grossly
figure what the same man with culture might have achieved in the world of thought;
and one element never to be forgotten in calculating one's achievements is the plane
upon which they are won. It is mainly the result of such careers and of the partial
interpretation given to them that, in popular language, the antithesis of culture is
practical education. It is by the advocates of practical education, who assume the
role of the natural and necessary sponsors of progress, that culture has been put on
the defensive. By them she, who, like beauty, has been wont to consider herself her
own divine excuse for being, is compelled to state other and lower grounds which
justify her continued existence. Thus any analysis of culture seems to involve an
analysis of practical education; and in attempting such an analysis a numble disciple
of culture hopes to show that the practical education, far from being the antithesis of
culture, is the straight, broad path to it.
You will see then that the first question that arises in an attempt to define culture
is: What is meant by a practical education? Is it not fair to reply that a practical
education is such an education in kind and degree as can be practical, as can be used
with effectiveness in subsequent life? Is not a practical education one that looks to
a definite, a distinct and probably attainable end, instead of to the vague and
intangible end of personal development, which is culture's avowed aim? One of the
striking advantages of the practical education is that its end is thus definable; that it
has an infallible test. One laying claim to a practical education must be ready at any
hour to make answer to the pass-word of the work-a-day world: "What can you do?"
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 773
This necessity, although deplored by shallow pretenders to culture who deem it antag-
onistic, is really one of culture's strongest allies. The man who can make no response
to the challenge of the business world, " What can you do? " is, by the modern code, a
tramp, a vagrant. The demand that she too shall meet this test, that she too shall
answer to the password of the practical world, "What can you do?" is, remembering
all other boons — I say it deliberately and with no reserve — the greatest boon that mod-
ern civilization has conferred upon woman. Today the ability to give a sufificing
reply to this challenge is essential to self-respect in man or woman, and that it is so
is a triumph of practical education; but the ability to answer this question is also a
proof of culture.
In this assembly one could confidently inquire, "What do you expect your edu-
cation here to do for you?" Probably every young man and every young woman
would be ready with a definite answer. They have formed definite expectations of
the education they are engaged in obtaining, and their parents have formed definite
expectations of them and of what their education will do for them. It is definitely
expected that this education will make of those who pursue it competent civil or
mechanical engineers; or good draughtsmen or designers, or efficient farmers, poul-
terers, horticulturists or stock raisers, or reliable pharmacists or chemists, or skillful
wood carvers or decorators; and looking toward these occupations most, if not all of
them, see in the education they are getting here a direct means of self-support. This
is admirable. If life itself is noble and dignified, that which alone can support it can
not be ignoble and mean; and any institution which stands for the dignity of labor
and which brings up successive generations of young people with sound healthy
notions of labor is a source of benefactions.
There is a tacit division of society into the professional and practical classes, and
a tacit assumption that these classes are reciprocally inimical: the division is mislead-
ing, and the assumption arising from it absurd. The professional class includes cler-
gymen, lawyers, physicians (broadly embracing surgeons and dentists) and teachers;
and latterly authors and artists; the practical class includes the followers of business
trades, of mechanical arts, and indeed of all pursuits not specifically included under
professional, but following either the etymology of the two words or the simple facts
regarding the two classes of workers, do not the practical profess as much as the pro-
fessional? and do not the professional practice as much as the practical?
As for the tacit assumption, often boldly proclaimed, that the professional class
prey upon the practical, that the professional class consumes what the practical class
produces, is not its refutation read in the statement? The two classes serve one
another, and to a corresponding extent live on one another. This is inevitable and it
is to the common advantage of both.
A second division of society follows the lines of the first, and assumes that the
cultured class is identical with the professional and that the uncultured is synonymous
with the practical. If absurdity could pass beyond the first division, it may be said
to culminate in the second. That a man is a member of one of the so-called profes-
sions (in distinction from one of the so-called business avocations) is no ground for
the inference that he is a man of culture. The professions, once called the liberal
professions, where thus called because no man could hope to enter thern who had not
enjoyed a liberal education, A particular education was called liberal from the gen-
eral belief that certain studies tended to liberalize the mind, and by putting it into
possession of the best thoughts of all times and all enlightened countries, freed it
from the bondage of the prejudices of its own time and its own land At a time when
such a liberal, i. e., such a liberalizing education was the indispensable condition for
beginning the preparation of a professional career, it was reasonable to infer culture
of a man in any one of the professions; but now when the call to preach may come to
the most illiterate, and when the license may be granted to whomsoever claims the
call; when the degree of M. D, will be granted to the youth or maiden who will give
an indifferent attention to two or three courses of lectures; when anyone may be made
774 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
a notary, and any notary may be admitted to the bar, it is folly to profess to maintain
the old and honorable identification of culture with these professions.
**********
Since success is that which everyone most desires, the relative probabilities of
success that wait on different courses usually determine the young man's or young
woman's choice among them. The lowest measure of success to which one's life can
be subjected is the character of the shelter and the quality and the quantity of the food
and raiment which he has been able to provide himself. Measured by this lowest unit,
I believe the cultured as a class are more successful than the practical as a class. Let
success be first gauged by bread and butter if you will; you will find the whitest loaves
cut in the thinnest slices, most thickly spread with butter are on the table and in the
larder of the cultured man. The second measure of success is in the number, the
variety and magnitude of material luxuries in excess of the three primal necessities,
shelter, clothing and food, enjoyed by the man himself, and in the number and mag-
nitude of material benefits bestowed by him upon the community. In the personal
application of this second measure, the average man of culture has the undoubted
advantage of the average man destitute of "culture. Measured by the material bene-
factions which they bestow upon the public, it is granted that the non-cultured man
enjoys a relatively superior degree of success. Great inventors, great discoverers, great
business magnates, who generally belong to the practical as distinguished from the
cultured class, have been conspicuously successful in promoting the material interests
of the world. To them society owes the railroads, the steamships, the telegraphs, the
telephones, the artificial lights,the banks, the insurance companies, and an innumerable
et ccBtera of devices fo rdeveloping material resources and for increasing, distributing
and preserving material benefits. But all of these intruments of material advancement
are immediately made the instruments of culture, and are noble in just the degree to
which they can be used to promote the ends of culture.
The third measure of relative success may be taken in the public honors enjoyed
by the two classes. The impartial application of this measure nearly establishes an
equilibrium between the two classes; and as the young man fevered by ambition
applies it, he may feel the balance tip in favor of the practical class, especially as he
sees representatives of this class in increasing numbers pushed into high public offices
and into the social prominence incident. to exalted official station. But even in the
world of politics, of all worlds that most easily conquered by the practical man, that
world which offers an exceptional field for the exercise of practical qualities, that
world whose atmosphere lends a peculiar glamor both to practical talent and to its
rewards, even in this world, the highest department of service is almost exclusively
reserved for men of culture. In the diplomatic department the diplomatic man stands
aside for the man of culture; in the records of diplomacy one reads few names of mer-
chants, mechanics or inventors, but here with Franklin, the one conspicuous repre-
sentative of the practical, and who is equally a representative of culture, in diplomacy
are registered the names of Ticknor, Taylor, Prescott, Bancroft, Adams, Motley and
Lowell, of men equally at home in the world of letters and in the world of affairs; of
men whose culture was the instrument of their success in the practical world, and was
the occasion of their official elevation and whose elevation in turn advanced their
culture.
A fourth measure of success may be found in the degree to which a man has con-
tributed to the amelioration of human hardships, to the eradication of human wrongs,
to the promotion of intelligence and virtue, and maintenance of institutions and soci-
eties for the spread of learning, for the practice of benevolence, and for the promotion
of religion. By this measure the success of the cultured as a class is relatively taans-
cendent. The churches, the colleges, the universities, even the public schools, which
are the sharpeners of the practical wits of the practical class — all of these institutions
which hold, perpetuate, increase and measure the civilization of our period are, with
some notable exceptions, the products and the movements of men of culture.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 775
Shall fame be counted one of the units of measure by which relative success can
be computed ? Whose names does the gilded trumpet proclaim in tones that promise
echoes from unborn generations? Croesus is seldom remembered save when and because
•associated with Solon. In this respect an exquisite irony seems to wait on practical
men; having served the practical all their lives to insure fame, they dedicate the
practical results of their lives to the ideal. Having worshiped all their lives at the
altar of utility, at their deaths to purge the gold they have won from their goddess,
and to secure from it an immortal gilding for their names, they must needs desert her
and lay her gifts upon the shrine of culture. Through what agencies are the names of
Astor, Girard, Cooper, Cornell and Hopkins kept green in the grateful memories of
generations that knew them not? Not through trading stations, commercial agencies,
financial systems and mammoth business enterprises, but through the colleges, the
universities, the art institute, the library which they respectively founded. Through
giving local habitations to culture do these kings of the practical alone secure a name.
This generation, reared in the doctrines of Utility, promises to be conspicuous
above all generations by virtue of the voluntary tributes which her most distinguished
apostles of the practical pay to culture. Nevef has the practical been more exalted
or more faithfully served than by the adventurous explorers and speculators who have
pursued its ends on the Pacific Coast; but Leland G. Stanford entrusts the perpetua-
tion of his name not to ranch or mine 'or mint, or vineyard or gold mine, but to that
noble university where his practical successes shall all be transmuted into the Olympic
nectar, the Hymethian honey and the fair Minervan loaves, upon which Culture feeds
her children; and his compeer, James Lick, builds his millions and his hope§ of fame
into the stately columned and towered observatory which shall hold his name always
above the clouds, and link it with celestial contemplations.
To one who will consult their inner significance, these tributes of the practical to
the ideal make touching appeal. In that the name of Aristotle will outlast that of
Astor, of Claude Lorraine that of Cooper, of Bacon that of Girard; in that the names
of Homer and Dante and Milton will outlive that of Stanford and those of Galileo,
Bruno and Herschel will outreach that of Lick, there are two lessons which he who
runs may read.
The first is that the humblest lover and devotee of culture has a claim upon im-
mortality which can not be won by those vVho build even the proudest altars in her
honor, if they have spent their own lives in worshiping at other shrines.
The second is that there is no quarrel between the practical spirit and culture, but
that as God makes the wrath of man to serve him, so culture turns the fruit of prac-
tical careers into soil and seed, which shall insure the enlargement of her harvests.
Culture has repeated these object lessons so often that practical minds are beginning
to see the corollary of them, and are wisely using culture as an instrument in forward-
ing their plans for the conquest of the material world.
They are unmistakable evidences that culture is, more and more, commanding
from the devotees of the practical that recognition which is her due; that she will
never be satisfied with the tribute of temples and altars from the practical world until
that world shall carry into its offices and market places the spirit and methods to be
learned only at her feet.
COME SOUTH, YOUNG WOMAN.
By MRS. MARTHA R. FIELD (CATHERINE COLE).
The invitation which I have today the honor and the pleasure to extend to that
most important class of American citizens, the young women, is inspired by the triple
forces of selfishness, patriotism and hospitality.
It is selfishness of the most admirable quality to
enrich our riches by an access of the pure gold of
young American womanhood. It is a patriotism of a
high order to labor for the proud progress of one's
own state, and it is hospitality of the old-time, un-
quenchable, Southern sort to open our doors, our
arms and our hearts and give with that largest benefi-
cence of all, not only the best we have, but all we
have.
These are the sentiments, and this the spirit in
which, with a great state behind me to corroborate my
words, I give the invitation: " Come South, young
woman."
In directing an immigration address to young
women, rather than to young men, I am conscious
that I am inverting the old order of things, but speak-
ing to women in a woman's building that is filled with
woman's work — much of it of a character to still hap-
pily demonstrate the fact that women, like pigeons,
,.» ...„^^, „ ^,^,^ have not yet lost their homing virtues — I could hardly
MRS. MARTHA K. FIELD. -^ *=> ., tii- i
address any other than my sex. Also, 1 believe that
wherever brave, bonnie, winsome young women are, there also the strong, sturdy,
desirable young man will be.
Some one tells a story, by the way, to the effect that once on a time all the men
were put on one island and all the women on another, and that an ocean rolled between,
and that all the women got drowned. I do not believe it, but I do believe that the
future of Louisiana is assured if the young women of the North, East and West take
us at our word and come South. From the earliest records of our country, the extreme
South has managed, somehow, to be always in evidence. It has contributed to litera-
ture some of its most picturesque and dramatic pages; to history some of its most
heroic deeds, and to the civilization of the New World it has given the most gorgeous
and splendid illustrations of effete and luxurious living.
Today life is easier in the South than elsewhere in the United States. The far-
sighted observer watching the direction of capital, the gradual opening up of the inex-
haustible resources of the New South, is already certain that the Southern States are
inevitably circling back to an indestructible prosperity that is to be based this time on
the substantial and entirely commendable foundation of material resources that are
being practically developed, w^ithout the work of any "slave-driver's whip" or the fear
of any intervening disruption.
Mrs. Martha R. Field (Catherine Cole) is a native of Lexington, Mo. She was educated in New Orleans at the Mac6
Lef ranc Institute. She has traveled all over Europe, America and Mexico. She married Charles W. Field, a prominent stock
broker of San Francisco. Her special work has been in the interest of literature, decidedly eclectic and especially in the
interest of Louisiana. Her profession is that of a journalist, and she is the best known newspaper woman in the South.
During the Chicago Fair she wrote daily letters from thereto the Picayune, which were declared by the New York press to be
the finest accounts of the Fair published. In religious faith she is an Episcopalian : member of the Trinity Church in New
Orleans. Her postoifice address is New Orleans, La., care of Picayune office.
776
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 777
Less than a year ago it was my good fortune to make the entire tour of the big,
beautiful, and infinitely varied State of Louisiana. Less sensational than a journey into
darkest Africa or a race over the globe, it was a long story of unique experiences.
With only a small colored lad to drive my wiry little Creole ponies, and a compass
and map for a guide, I visited each one of our thirty-nine parishes. Traveling in a
buggy, or often in a canoe, or even on that mercurial craft whose equanimity is as
susceptible as that of a spirit level — I mean, a pirogue — the journey covered nearly
eighteen hundred miles. It extended from the fated Island of the Cheniere Caminada,
wrapped in its scarf of sand, to the high red hills of Caddo parish, touching shoulders
with Arkansas; from the cypress swamp of the east boundaries to the salt licks and
long levels of prairie that margin the shores of the Texan Sabine.
Sometimes, through the pine forests, it meant thirty miles from house to house;
sometimes it meant a pallet on the floor, sweet potatoes, and bacon; sometimes it meant
a bed a prince of the blood royal had slept in and frapped champagne. But whatever
the material environment, on every hearth there burned the torch of hospitality that,
come good fortune or ill, never goes out while the home walls hold together.
Once our buggy broke down in a dismal swamp, and I had to walk out of it nine
miles. Once we were taken for patent medicine show people. But wherever I went I
only gathered more facts to prove that Louisiana is the best poor man's country, and
that on its lands and under its sky no one need feel the biting teeth of hunger, the
quick of poverty, or know the lack of home comforts.
Louisiana is vaguely but popularly supposed to be composed of swamps, Spanish
moss, and alligators — three things that, by the way, have an appreciable market value.
My colored friends assure me that a nice boiled alligator's tail is very good eating; in
fact, I know that it is a sort of mock pork, and the amphibian's skin is reserved only
for the use of the rich. Spanish moss, that hangs our great cave-like forests with its
airy stalactites, is worth from three to seven cents a pound, and time and time again
have I seen a colored woman snatch up a large bundle of it from her fence and rush
off to the little cross-roads store to exchange it there for green coffee or gin. Perhaps
all of you have stood in the superb vestibule of the Forestry Building, with its amber
walls inlaid with onyx-colored panels of "curly" cypress. It is a hall fit for a king.
Less than eighteen months ago all of it was the heart of a moss-hung Louisiana swamp.
These beautiful woods — the world's future strong ships, casks for its most precious
wines, cabinets for its loveliest gems, homes for its richest people — these, lying undis-
turbed in forest primeval, these are the unquarried Canovas, and quite as precious, of
Louisiana.
That beautiful vestibule is the enterprise of a Northern firm, who are thriftily buying
up timber lands all over the South, knowing it is inevitably the site of the future fac-
tory and the future mill.
So you see, if we do have swamps, Spanish moss and alligators, they yield us
money as readily as Aladdin's lamp gave him gold. If one should try to paint the pict-
ure of Louisiana it would be as difificult a task as trying to write the great American
novel. Too many conditions and phases of life are American to be compressed into
the limits of one story! Too many geographical features belong to the great Southern
state to be artistically placed on one canvas.
High hills, rocks and marbles, gushing waterfalls, mineral springs, rolling
uplands, clover pastures, boundless prairies, traveled by wild ponies, pine forests like
great green cathedrals, cypress swamps all hung with weeping moss, salt sea marshes,
long sand dunes, sluggish bayous, brooks like crystal — all these are Louisiana. The
alligator and the turtle, the mocking-bird and the linnet, the pompano and the brook-
trout, the quail and the papabotte, the deer and the bear — all these are Louisiana.
The squalor of the cabin, the comfort of the prosperous home, the splendor of the
old historic mansion — all these are Louisiana. W'e have almost the oldest towns in the
Union, and millions of acres that no spade has ever touched. We have a culture
incomparable, and an ignorance almost incomparable, but between t^iese two is a
778 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
great, hearty, wholesome, humanity that knows more of the sweet side of life than the
bitter, as little of want as Marie Antoinette knew of the price of bread, and lives
like a king with a sugar cane for a scepter, a cotton boll for a royal standard, who
tickle the soil with a plow and it laughs into a golden harvest for them.
About the'lonely waters of the Gulf of Mexico sand lands dribble off through
rushes to the sea. These island lands are the homes of gulls, terns, and those beauti-
ful white-plumaged pelicans we call the white aigrettes, and which are hunted for that
single dainty feather that floats like a thistle down on many a lady's best bonnet. It
takes sixteen thousand aigrettes to make a pound, and a pound fetches seven hundred
dollars. The deer hide in the salty sedges, and through the soilless wastes the bayous
trickle like sprawling watery fingers, reaching out from the land to clutch the sea.
On these low coasts and islands are orange groves and cauliflower farms, and
here the fisher folk dwell, their only vehicle a little, red latteen-sailed lugger, their
only law the good priest whose teachings keep them from evil just as the gulf waters
keep them "far from the madding crowd." Westward the coast gets firmer, and the
live oak trees lean with the bend of the wind. The orange trees are taller. In
Cameron Parish, not twenty miles from the gulf, there is a grand old tree that many
times has borne in one crop ten thousand oranges. I have seen it so, and it is a sight
to put all the golden apples of Hesperides to the blush.
Beyond the lowlands of the coast we come into a stretch of magnificent prairie,
boundless and golden as Nebraska, that unfurls like a scroll waiting to be written on
in all the paying hieroglyphics of the plow and harrow.
Almost all the northern and western people who have come into the state have
settled on this western prairie or in the priceless pine forests that clasp it like a
girdle. It is a great rice country. Every fruit known to the Middle and Southern
states flourishes here and vegetables grow to an almost unequaled perfection. From
ten to twenty dollars an acre is the selling price of these lands. Cattle on these
prairies do not need to be housed at all during the year, and require not more than
six weeks' feeding, even for milk cows.
To the East, the rolling lands begin to take on hardwood trees; the streams that
we call "bayous" braid in and out like silver threads through a sober fabric; the
ombs of red-tiled roofs and the admonishing crosses of the village churches paint
their serene pictures on the bending sky. The fallow fields swell as if breathing, and
here we are in the heart of the " Attakapas country," the land of "Evangeline" and
the home of the Arcadians.
It is all as pastoral as England. The green banks of the Teche slope like gardens
along the Thames; the light mosses on the oaks float the gray crape of their veils so
that their most delicate tendrils are etched against the air; the Creole cattle stand
knee-deep in the clover or in the bayou shallows cropping lily pods. Beyond the
banks you catch the broad green flicker of the cane ribbons. The contented negro
croons over his hoe; a plantation bell rings off the workmen for the noonday rest;
a wagon creaks by, frothing over with fresh cotton; a mocking-bird sings on a
Cherokee hedge; a pelican rests on the queer pontoon bridge that clasps shore to
shore. This is Louisiana.
In the northern parishes, where cotton is an ungrateful king, are steep hills,
a great untouched marble quarry bursting its bondage to earth, and the long country
roads are lined with walnut and persimmon trees and are thick-set with hazel bushes.
Here in the orchards apples, peaches, pears and plums pelt their fruits down into
the tangled grasses.
In very truth only a minor portion of the state is composed of swamp land or salt
water marsh; only a small portion is in danger of overflow; and in the best alluvial
districts the black soil will be thirty feet deep. There are farms in Louisiana that
have been in cultivation for fifty years, have never had a pound of fertilizer used on
them, and yet show no signs of giving out. These lands are sold at from twenty to
fifty dollars an acre, according to the improvements.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. - 779
I should like to say a word about the tenant or share system. Any large planter
will rent a man, black or white, a farm of, say, forty acres. On it will be a house, a
mule, a plow, harness and garden tools. It includes the right to free fuel. The rent
is half the man's crop. That is, if he makes four bales of cotton, two go to the planter.
This liberal system exists, I believe, nowhere else in the world. It offers to every
immigrant a chance for a home and a fortune.
A great many good things are free in Louisiana. In one of the pine land parishes
there is a great salt well. If one touches a match to this water it flames up over all
its surface and burns for several seconds. The neighboring farmers collect annually
at this well, boil huge kettles of the water, and by this entirely simple, primitive and
picturesque process get salt enough to savor life.
Louisiana is waiting to be cut up into small holdings, just as it is waiting with all
its fallow fields for the young owners and the new, brave, blood that is to come to it
from all parts of the country. These Corydons and Phyllises will grow crops for the
central factory; they will have market gardens, orchards, dairy farms and poultry-
yards. They will grow flowers and make honey.
Splendid, indeed, are the stories of whatyoung women have done in Louisiana. It
is a record of bravery worthy of a state that allows a woman to be captain of a steam-
boat — Captain Mary Miller; of a state that builds a great monument to the memory of
a woman who never had on a kid glove in all her life, who could not write her own name,
who was only great in her goodness. I mean Margaret Haughery, the baker woman,
whose loaves built asylums and yet feed thousands of hungry ones.
A few years ago a family owning prairie land in Cameron Parish built themselves
a home on it. The nearest neighbor was fifteen miles, the nearest tree four miles. In
February they took possession and in July of that year I visited them. The cottage
was canopied with roses, and phlox and zennias, carnations and geraniums splashed
all the garden walks with bloom. In the kitchen garden where six months since had
been only wild hay, corn, tomatoes, ochra, potatoes, egg plants, peas, beans, pump-
kins, beets, lettuce and melons grew, equal to the best I have seen at this fair. Two
young girls had made that garden, and their sweet faces it was, I reckon, that coaxed
from Mother Earth this tribute of all her graces.
Not far from Jennings is a little estate of one hundred and sixty acres, a cottage
of three rooms, a few fruit trees, good fences, and all about waving fields of that most
beautiful crop, rice. This is the rice farm of a girl squatter, a young Iowa woman, who»
with her sixteen-year-old brother came South, took up one hundred and sixty acres of
government land, and whose first rice crop paid her Si, 200. Her nearest neighbor is
another girl farmer who got her land the same way, and who is growing an orchard
that already yields her a comfortable living.
Here in Chicago there lives a young dressmaker who saved up enough money to
buy twenty acres of land in Louisiana and to start a poultry farm on a small scale.
She sent her mother and brother to run the farm, and so successful have they been
that this year she is to resign from " seam and gusset and band," and go south to its
pine-scented hills, its flower-set hedges, its glorious, generous climate, where, raising
her strawberries and early peas for Chicago millionaires, she shall meantime live like
a little autocrat on her own principality. All along the line of the Illinois Central
road, when it reaches Mississippi and Louisiana, are fruit and vegetable farms man-
aged by women, most of them new comers. A young lady told me how she was one
day packing her berries for the Chicago market when she ran out of clover. "I just
went to an old mint bed under the parlor window and cut mint and covered my boxes
with that," said she. " To my surprise my Chicago merchant sent me back a dollar
for the mint. During the rest of the year I shipped him fifteen dollars' worth of
mint and ten dollars' worth of camelias."
On an old plantation just below New Orleans there lives a woman who had this
house but no money. She could not eat, wear or read her queer old gabled home,
but she sold her camelias and has been twice to Europe on the profits. These are grand
780 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
bushes, and I can not describe their alabaster beauty when each one has on it a thou-
sand stainless blooms.
On a cotton plantation in the Red River country, in Grant Parish, lives an eight-
een-year-old girl who is her father's engineer. She runs the cotton gin and gins
every year about eighteen hundred bales. She handles that snorting machine as if it
were a baby, oils it, feeds it, feels over it, scolds it, tidies it up, and when it is working
as good as gold she sits beside it — dear, dainty and only eighteen — crocheting lace
for her petticoats. Dead forever, in the face of these shining facts, is the old
reproach, " as helpless as a woman!" In every parish are women farmers, stock raisers
and planters, and a typical Louisiana woman planter, honorably representing the gra-
cious womanhood of her state on your Board of Lady Managers, is our Miss Katherine
L. Minor. All professions are open to woman. She is legally eligible for any office.
I wear today on my breast a medal given me by the working women of New Orleans;
the givers represented twenty different trades and professions; and that is not bad
for the South, whose women Lincoln emancipated when he did the slaves.
Women are a power in the South of fearful force when they organize. It was the
women of Louisiana who killed the Louisiana State Lottery. When the Women's
Anti-Lottery League was formed, the lottery leaders practically admitted they had
got their Waterloo.
I have said that life is easy. Perhaps it is too easy to be quite good for us. One
day I called a colored man out of the street to help us move some furniture. He was,
as he expressed it, " settin' on the wheel of time," and "letting it roll over with him."
I offered him a quarter for the job. He rummaged in his pockets and finally bawled
back at me: " I reckon I ain't gwine to missy; I'se got fifteen cents."
Our climate is genial. We do not need heavy clothes or big fires. In the coun-
try, and in nearly all the small villages and towns, fuel costs only for the hauling.
Diphtheria, typhoid fever and small-pox are never dangerously prevalent. Yellow
fever has been quarantined out of the state successfully for fifteen years. It will never
devastate us aagain. House rents are cheap, schools are good, and it is indeed God's
country for little children.
And this brings me to say a word on the relations between the blacks and the
white people. What a child-like, lovable, improvident, aggravating, dependent crea-
ture the negro is on his native heath only those who are born and brought up amongst
them know. It is to the older ones we must turn for all those beautiful and humor-
ous traits that grace the exquisite and tender stories of Thomas Nelson Page, Richard
Malcolm Johnson and Joel Chandler Harris. What a pride of family have these fine
old mammies and sable men-servants who toted their masters and mistresses when all
were children together. In my own family is an eccentric old fellow who owns us all
and rules us with a rod of iron. His name is " Mr. Montague." Often on those red let-
ter Sundays when we are to have ice cream for dinner, he will go to the street corner
and call back to know if it is time to come and freeze the cream. I mildly scolded
him for this. "Well," said he, "when we is going to have ice cream we might as well
let the neighbors know about it."
One proud old mammy, who is now out at pasture, or " exempt," in the home she
served so faithfully, told me with delight that when the soldiers came to search her
madame's house during the war, she hung all the family silver under her dress and,
sitting by the fire, pretended she was too old and too fat to stir. I might tell stories
galore of the picturesque, pathetic and sweet side of the negro character as we know
it best.
Is a woman safe in the South?
A thousand times, yes. She gets always what she asks for, and every man is her
guard of honor. To the working woman every man's hat is off, and in social life she
holds securely the position that her virtues, her brains and her blood demand. I can
say no better word for the chivalry of the men of my state than to remind you that
alone, with a twelve-year-old lad, I traveled in a private vehicle eighteen hundred
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 781
miles in Louisiana as safely and unafraid as I could walk the halls of this Woman's
Temple.
Divorces are almost unheard of in my state. Even in the newspapers a woman's
name is sacred.
The South has faith in its women, especially its coming women; such faith even as
Mrs. Gladstone, who knows him best of all, has in the Grand Old Man. One day a
clergyman went to call on the Gladstones to condole with them at a particularly
troublous time. Mr. Gladstone was not present, and the visitor said: "Do not
despair, dear Mrs. Gladstone, there is One watching overall." " Indeed, I know there
is," exclaimed the lady; "he's just changing his shirt, and bid me say he'd be down
in a moment." They tell the story of a Kansas family who moved so much that
whenever the chickens saw a covered wagon come into the yard, they laid down on
their backs and put up their legs to be tied. If that family had only moved South,
even the chickens would have known it was for good and forever.
Come South, young woman, and you will never leave it. You will take root in
its rich soil and flower there, perfuming all the air with your sweetness. There you
can be freely what you will — an ant in the morning, a bee at noon and a butterfly at
night. Once on a time there were two knights who went away from their beautiful
home gardens to search for some wonderful roses. They went the wide world over
and at last came back with empty hands. Lo! upon the old familiar walls there grew,
as for years, the very roses of their quest.
In the sweet gardens of Louisiana there are blossoming the most beautiful roses
the heart can wish — the immortal flowers of time, opportunity, content, love and hap-
piness. These are the roses of our quest.
AN IDEAL HOME FOR CHILDREN.
By MRS. KATE OLDHAM MILLER.
Visions are sometimes fulfilled. The Dream City is indeed the fulfillment of Tenny-
son's vision when he
" Saw the heavens filled with commerce argosies of
magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with
costly bales.
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle
flags were furled
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.
My theme, a vision, is worthy of your attention
if only for these two words that the world will not
forget: Home and Children. When I visit the mag-
nificent cities of our land there is always one thought
that saddens me — the children are in jail. Dashing
down Drexel avenue the other day with a gay party of
friends, filled with enthusiasm and admiration for the
wonderful achievements of man seen in the magic
White City and* in Chicago itself, I was gay with the
rest, when by accident, or, as I believe, by the subtle
influence of some higher power, my eyes turned sud-
denly to a face at a window — the face of a child
framed in golden curls all in perfect order. Every deli-
cate ringlet around the pale temples clung just where
it should, and the lips were parted, smiling, as she trundled a toy horse on the casement.
But the smile seemed sad to me, and the eyas, which must have been blue, looked
longingly for something nearer akin to nature.
"Dainty little maiden, whither would you wander.
Whither from this pretty house, this city house of ours?"
"Far and far away," said the dainty little maiden,
"All among the meadows, the clover and the clematis,
Daisies and kingcups and honeysuckle flowers."
I found myself whispering, "Open the window; oh, open the window and let her
fly. I would not imprison a bird. God made the birds and the children to be free to
learn from nature's books. Let her drink from the running streams, and let the bright
curls wave and tangle in the sunlight as she chases the butterflies over the clover.
The city is well for the busy men and women of the world; but the inventor who
can contrive some way to have all the children of every condition reared in the coun-
try, where the boys may have the natural companionship of animals, where the ponies
Mrs. Kate Oldham Miller is a native of Kentucky. She is the daughter of William K. Oldham of Kentucky, and J.
Kate Brown Oldham of Virginia. She was educated for the most part at home under private tutors, but was graduated from
the Richmond Female Seminary of Kentucky. She has given several years of her life to teaching select schools, and is a
most successful and popular teacher. In 1885 she married Mr. Will H. Miller, for many years the efficient and popular circuit
clerk of Madison County, Kentucky, where they still reside. Mrs. Miller is a handsome, accomplished and gifted woman.
She does not claim to be an author in any sense, but has from time to time published short articles in periodicals that have
always elicited favorable comment. She is a member of the Regular Baptist Church. Her postoffice address is Richmond,
MRS. KATE OLDHAM MILLER.
Ky.
782
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 783
come to the door for the girls, where their bodies strengthen and develop that they
may lay by a large store of constitution to draw upon when the real work of life begins,
will confer a greater benefit on mankind than Promethius, who brought fire from
Heaven that the blood of man might be warmed into quicker motion. Another fire
we need to keep alive the one that glows but never burns, or burns out all too soon in
our dwindling race. Our best men and women are breaking down and passing to
dumb inactive dust, with work half finished. Children whose lives begin in the city
are apt to take up the serious questions and purposes of existence before the body is
able to bear their weight.
They are generally reckoned far in advance of the country child in knowledge,
but I think the difference consists rather in kind than quantity. This often makes an
exchange of ideas between the city and country child most amusing. They are both
kept in a state of perfect amazement during the interview. This is an example:
*' Mother, Laura says she never saw Washington's monument;" and "Auntie, Charlie
says there is no such thing as a spring of nice water running out from a hill, and
Charlie won't talk about anything but the mint, and I don't know what is the mint."
Then Charlie complains: *' Mother, Laura says she sees at her home in the country
every colored bird growing loose in the fields and woods — woodchucks, rabbits and
squirrels; what are they, mother, and why don't they come to the city to live? "
One little country miss, anxious to improve her manners, and learning from a city
cousin that calling was visiting, was noticed to take up the expression and was soon
calling on the cat, the dog, the flowers, and even the garden.
In my life, or in my dreams, it was once my good fortune to see a home created
by nature expressly for the children, and as the bees know where to find the sweetest
flowers, the children far and near found this ideal home. Often its hospitable roof
sheltered as many as thirty of them on a single night, and oh, what happy times they
had.
Passing through a long rolling pasture, with its carpet of blue grass, you came to
the old-fashioned farmhouse, green with its vines and its flowers, and all the air fra-
grant with the breath of the honeysuckle and the rose. Its beauties began to burst
upon you the moment the gate of the dusty highway closed, and one thought filled
all your mind — the thought of " Home, Sweet Home." Large sturdy oaks stood as
sentinels in speaking distance of each other near the entrance to the farm, and through
their midst a tiny stream meandered, just that its miniature banks might be orna-
mented with wild flowers and beautiful dark stones, some of them large enough for
the children, on the rare summer days when they wandered that far from home, to call
cliffs of the far-famed Hudson ; or if the fancy struck them the stream was the Kentucky
River, and they legislated about "locking and damming," making thrilling speeches
from the pinnacles of the largest stones. I can not think of one thing lacking in this
ideal home for children. It had its haunted house, that dream of childhood, just in
sight about half a mile from the dwelling, a heavy structure built of rough, undressed
stones, tall, angular and cold. Near to the ground a black hole yawned, in reality,
the entrance to the cellar, but to the imaginative child well instructed in such lore
by the more imaginative negro, the very entrance to the unseen world. The children
were proud of the possession of the old " stone house." Only half believed the stories
about it, but took their strolls in other parts of the grounds unless strongly guarded.
Whenever they passed near its tall, cold walls it was with bated breath, turning their
heads away and unconsciously quickening their steps. If perchance a stray sheep
was noisily licking salt in the open, unused pantry, it was to them " a confirmation
strong as proofs of holy writ."
Entering the inclosure near the home, the whole country around seemed under
the shade of the royal locusts which grew there. Over a hundred feet in height, and
measuring from three to five feet in diameter, they told of many years gone by, and
as the bold boy climbed into their dizzy heights, and dropped the snowy flowers on the
heads and into the aprons of the children playing below, the locusts whispered and
the children heard:
784 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
" We have stood many years in the sun and the rain,
And crowned many children before you came,
Our blossoms as white, their fragrance the same.
Then the noisy blackbird, raising his wing.
On the topmost branch would shout spring! spring!
The locust, our home, is king, king!
Wait, chirped the robin, you'll see, you'll see!
From the boughs of the black-heart cherry-tree."
How the bodies of children grow and strengthen in such a place, ay, and their
minds as well. They are laying by a fund of useful knowledge, and study ornithology
and natural history fresh from Nature's hands.
The fine old garden, which made a part of this ideal home, with its broad walks
crossing at right angles in the center, was a world within itself to the children. It was
as full of birds as of flowers; and the beautiful borders of blue-bells, snow-drops and
lilies of the valley, the lilac, the snow-ball, and the mock orange trees, all belonged to
them. They made seats in their shade and swinging shelves from their branches, which
sometimes held a pitcher of cool water, sometimes mother's knitting, and were often
converted into gorgeous flower-decked tables for the marriage supper of a favorite doll.
Here they made beautiful, soft, green nests for the birds, and when they had set them
in the boughs wondered why, and grieved because, their little friends did not use them.
Through the shady yard, which stretched out tronr. the long back porch, where the
damson and the plum trees grew, a narrow path through the grass led to a dear old
lumber-house on the brink of " Spring Hill;" three stories high it stood, with a large,
round ice-house underneath, all walled up with stone, that seemed to be always about
half-full of ice and pretty yellow straw. Inside there were old looms, those clumsy
devices of a past age, curious little spindles, broaches, quills, shuttles, bits of
woven cloth, moth-eaten balls of yarn, wheels to turn and cords to twist, the cast-off
occupation of a people who were now devoting all their time and abilities to the new.
business of voting. These happy children had fallen heirs to the whole, together with
some little black children which their aspiring and ambitious parents had left behind.
The first they put to uses new and strange, the last they taught to love them, and for
the sake of that love, to make themselves useful then and in after years. Many bright
winter days were there, but summer-time brought them to the orchard just beyond, the
finest in all the country round, and which furnished apples through all the autumn and
winter. At the foot of the hill was the stone walled spring and milk house, from
which milk and water seemed to flow with like abundance. Below the spring a huge,
flat rock, tilted up on the hill at just the right angle for sliding on boards from top to
bottom, affording a trial of skill and good muscular exercise to climb to the top again.
Oh, happy time! Oh, charming place! Was there ever a better one for children? On
the banks of the artificial pool, below this gushing underground spring, were molded
from the fine blue and white clay marvelous tea-pots, all kinds of dishes, horses,
camels and buffaloes with humps on their backs that would make the originals blush
for shame. No sculptor whose works now adorn the Art Palace was ever prouder of
his achievements than these who molded blue clay at the foot of " Spring Hill."
Sometimes wandering down the spring branch through the beds of mint dipping
in the cool water, and chewing the fragrant leaves, they came to a stream of more
importance in their eyes because they knew it to be the headwater of a creek not far
away, which emptied into a river that flowed into the great Mississippi, then to the
Gulf; and so in fancy they followed the waters all over the world, from the spring
which gushed from the hillside in their own yard, and often started out a little craft
talking of the possibility of its reaching the sea. Their bodies grew and their minds
expanded as they wandered down the stream to where it dashed over a fall fifteen
feet high, bubbled and rolled through a wild ravine. The waterfall they called the
Niagara, and it was to them a veritable illustration of that wonder of creation. Thus
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 785
they mapped out in the pleasant fields and streams everything they learned, and geog-
raphy became an open book.
The ravine was deep and dark, romantic and beautiful, in some places completely
hidden by the overlapping branches and huge bowlders which had rolled down from the
hills; again opening into a small valley dotted thick with daisies and blue forget-me-
nots. Upon the steep hillsides the wake-robbins grew in the crevices of the rocks and
the woodbine clambered up their sides; twenty-five or thirty varieties of flowers were
often collected on a single expedition, and thus with a little help from mother or gov-
erness botany was learned without study. It needed but a small stretch of the imagi-
nation to people this weird place with elves and fairies; echo shouted to them from
the hills; Narcissus smiled at his face in the brook, and Orpheus moaned among the
trees for Eurydice. They learned all the myths and legends of the Ancients, for they
had need of them. Having the groves, the cliffs, and the streams, they must find for
them inhabitants Oh that every child could be reared in such a paradise. While
the mind thus feasts on the good things of nature and assimilates them, the body is
nourished by the purest food; fresh vegetables and berries from the garden never
stale or withered; fruits juicy and ripe from the orchard in summer, and the same pre-
served after the most approved style in winter, with only the freshest of milk, butter
and eggs that never gave out.
These children of this ideal home were bound by few rules, unwholesome food
and imposition on each other were almost the only things forbidden. They never
seemed to be watched, guarded or chaperoned. Their wonder was how " the umpire "
or " the physician " always appeared on the scene, unbidden, when a difificulty or an
accident occurred; it was almost a superstitious belief with them that all trouble came
bringing with it "the remedy."
About this old house of my dream were endless pleasant nooks and apartments;
the children loved to gather in the " family room " and hear the old folks talk, and to
sit on the straight, long seats in the high portico in front of the parlor door, shaded
by the green vines, and watch the humming-birds. One place in particular the chil-
dren and their visitors loved. It was a large upper room, the fartherst removed from
that occupied by the heads of the family, that they might not be disturbed by the
noise, full of light and sunshine and warmed by a big open wood fire, with ceiling
high and white and a pretty flowered carpet. Here they played their games in winter
dressed their dolls, and at the approach of the Merry Christmas season, with the door
carefully locked or guarded, with an air of greatest secrecy and mystery, they con-
trived all kinds of surprises for the grown members of the family and the smaller
children. Tiiey became adepts in the art of needlework, in the use of paste and
scissors, made pincushions, 'kerchief bags, letter boxes, paper holders, pretty little
chairs, etc. One old lady said admiringly: only give the little witches the material
and they could make a hornet's nest. All the interior of the house and the grounds
was a faint foreshadowing of this wonderful Woman's Building. The clay dishes and
statuary, the swinging seats in the trees, the bridges over the spring branch, the cur-
ious headdresses, baskets plaited from the long trailing branches of the weeping
willow, the bur baskets, the moss-covered swinging baskets for delicate vines and
flowers were all the work of the feminine fingers or the inventions of feminine minds.
There were just enough boys to be useful, and the girls were inclined to be a " Board
of Lady Managers."
So ran my pleasant dream of happy childhood's happy home.
" But if I dream that all these are
They are to me for that I dream.
For all things are as they seem to all,
And all things flow like a stream."
Are not these things infinitely better than Fifth Avenue, the Mint, Smithsonian
(50)
786 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
Institution, the wonders of Libby Prison, or even a menagerie for the children? Are
they not better for the growing mind and body than the Lottery, the city streets,
cigarettes, smoke and dust, or even elegant steam-heated or furnace-heated mansions?
Make homes like this for the children and man's days will be a hundred years on the
earth and great things will be accomplished.
"Is the goal so far away?
Far, how far no one can say;
Let us dream our dream today.
And mix the seasons and the golden hours,
Till each man find his own in all men's good,
And all men work in noble brotherhood."
LECTURES TO WOMEN.
By MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
Miss Anthony appeared at the Congress and spoke on more than one occasion,
but, as she did not read from manuscript, and spoke entirely without notes, it is impos-
sible to give here any one of her addresses. Her
appearance was, on every occasion, the signal for much
applause, and she was listened to with the greatest
interest whatever the theme to which her attention was
given. Despite her advanced age, she exhibited her
old-time vigor and earnestness, and evidently enjoyed
the Congress very much, as certainly she added to
the enjoyment of others.
Speaking in almost every state in the Union as
she has done, and before large audiences, there were
still many thousands of people who were curious to
see her but who had never had the opportunity before
to look upon Miss Anthony, and whenever it was
announced that she would speak there was certain to
be a crowded Auditorium. Among the many famous
women brought together by the events of the Exposi-
tion, she was at all times a conspicuous and interesting
figure. Her lecture on "Woman's Influence versus
Political Power " was a specimen of that line of reason-
ing so generally employed by the advocates of woman
suffrage in pleading for equal rights. It was argued
that woman's influence had accomplished more in the
field of reform than man, backed by political power, had been able to achieve, and that
such power, given to woman, would be used to far greater advantage and to the
greater glory of the nation. Miss Anthony's other address, " Benefits of Organization"
was a plea to the w'omen of America to unite in working for their rights, and so make
a formidable and impressive showing in demanding recognition from the law-making
bodies of the country.
Miss Susan B. AnthoDy was born at South Adams, Berkshire County, Mass., February 15, 1820. Has spent most of her
life in New York. Her parents were Lucy Read and Daniel Anthony. Her father, being a Friend (Hicksite Quaker), had his
children educated mainly in private schools at home. Her last school days were spent at Deborah Moulson's Quaker Board-
ing School in Philadelphia; she taught in the district schools in New York for fifteen years; has traveled in nearly every
state in the union lecturing on woman's need of the ballot as a means of protection to her person and property, and of secur-
ing to her equal chances in education and in the world of work. She advocates equal rights for women, civil, political, edu-
cational, industrial, social and moral. Her principal literary works are the publication of The Revolution, a weekly
woman's-rights paper, and " The History of Woman's Suffrage" in three large volumes. Miss Anthony has carved for hei^
self, through an independent, and for years a most unpopular, course, a monument of esteem, respect and veneration in the
hearts of the women of the world. In religious faith she is a Hicksite-Quaker or Friend. Miss Anthony took active inter-
est in all congresses held in connection with the Columbian Exposition, and made two addresses in the Woman's Building
on the following subjects: " Woman's Influence versus Political Power" and " Benefits of Organization." As she invariably
speaks without notes it was impossible to secure either address for pablication. Her postoffice address is Rochester, N. Y.
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
787
EXTRACTS FROM "WOMAN AND RELIGION."
By REV. IDA C. HULTIN.
Let me say first that I deplore, as much as anyone can, the necessity for dividing;
humanity; and in the discussion of high themes of treating men and women as though
they were not naturally and similarly related thereto.
But the necessity is upon us, and however it may have
come about, it is a fact that men and women sustain
different relations to some of the most vital questions-
of the day.
We who are hoping to help in the bringing about
of greater freedom of thought and action for the
woman half of humanity are anxious for a state of
affairs that shall be beneficial for men as well as for
women. For we recognize the inevitable law of asso-
ciation and that " they rise or fall together." Every
right that we ask for woman we ask in the name of a
better humanity. It is true great advance has been
made; it is just as true that more is yet to be won.
While woman has been in conversation and in
complimentary address associated with the angels,
and while it has been superficially understood that
she is better religiously than the other half of human-
ity, yet when we come to examine her relations to
real religious thought and life we have not always
found her occupying the most enviable of positions.
We do not mean by religion theology, theories
about religion — methods of theological exegesis or warfare. We mean the capacity
for godliness inherent in the human soul; in action it becomes the science of the
highest human development. So understood it has relation to the commonest details
of the everyday and to the supremest moments of prophetic insight and conservation.
In religion, so understood, there are lessons to be learned, questions to be answered,
mysteries to be probed, problems to be solved, work to be done, and struggle and
growth resulting in life moving on and on to diviner issues. In such religious living
there can be no artificial vicariousness. No one human being can think, learn, ques-
tion, live for another. The whole of humanity can not be complete in its religious
life till each one has untrammeled opportunity to live such life for himself or herself.
If woman's morality means no more than the result of coddling or coercion, then
it is not vital morality. If her piety is the result of repression, then it is not regenerat-
ing piety. If her soundness in doctrine is the result of ignorance and irresponsible
submission, there is no real soundness. In short, if her religious life is the result of
automatic processes, it is not religion and it is not life. There must be freedom,
thought, action, growth, in order that the inherent religious possibilities of the human
soul may find Divine fulfillment.
With such an understanding of religion, we claim for woman the freedom and
the right to undertake the solutions of all of the problems relating to the subject. We
Rev. Ida C. Haltin was born in Michigan. Her parents were Dr. Karl Constance Hultin, born and educated in Swe-
den, and Susan Parkins Soman, born in Michigan and educated in same state. Miss Hultin was educated in Michigan High
School and Michigan University. She has traveled somewhat extensively in the United States. She has rare gifts as a public
speaker and lecturer. Her profession is that of minister. In religious faith she is Unitarian, Her postoffice address is
Moline, 11.'.
788
REV, IDA C. HULTIN.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 789
claim for her the right to tread any path, enter any door, probe any mystery, ask and
try to answer any question that has significance to her as a responsible and religious
being; a right to become the prophet of any gospel whose message has transformed
her. This, to the end that her morality may partake of the healthfulness that comes
only through trial and choice, that her piety may be the result of self-conscious devo-
tion to truth and right, that her soundness of doctrine may mean the legitimate con-
clusions of her own independent thinking. In short, that religion shall not mean to
her the imposed or borrowed theories of masculine authority, but the progressive
enunciations of her own personality; her own thinking, loving, living self; a manifesta-
tion of her own spiritual life in vital relationship with the Infinite life. If this shall be,
then woman alone will not be lifted, but humanity as a whole must be benefited.
There would be one practical result of such a change as this, which in itself would
almost revolutionize society, the establishment of one code of morals for both men
and women.
It is not the masculine in the woman, but the womanly element, the mother element,
which has so long been lacking. This we need in the religious life of the world. Not
this at the expense of the masculine half, but both together — man thinking and doing in
man's way, woman thinking and doing in woman's way. He, true manly; she, true
womanly; each intelligently, responsibly, personally religious, thus complementing
each other and each other's work, and helping and blessing the world. Woman will
thus become a better homekeeper, truer wife, fitter mother, a more refining influence
in society, a greater shaping power in the nation and the world. Man will become a
better home-founder, truer husband, fitter father, more efificient member of society, a
more potent factor in the nation and the world. Out of such a sainthood, which
recognizes no sex in the realm of religious experience, will come the divine brother-
hood of the human race, a brotherhood recognizing inevitably the Fatherhood of God.
I have not been pleading for any ism or creed. Theologies become trifles in com-
parison with the one supreme subject of real and universal religion. Be true in that
which seems to you to be true, and let religious consecration be the sacred impulse of
the faith you cherish. Recognize the right of every man and every woman to that
form of truth which seemeth to them to be sacred, and be very sure that wherever
there is a human being there is God, and between that human being and God there
is a relationship which in its essence is religious. Is it a lowly, unfortunate, chaotic
soul? God is there working and working at a disadvantage, until you and I lend our-
selves and the divine in us to the struggle. Is it a lofty, victorious, calm soul? God
is there, and no matter the name of the prophet, no matter from what uttermost part
of the earth he may come, no matter the form of his faith, God is there with a bene-
diction, a baptism for you and for me if only we are able to bear it.
It is not the province of religion to do away with different forms of faith, but it is
the duty of religious men and women to be so religious that forms shall be forgotten.
Let us work toward a diviner conception, a more abundant realization of religion, a
religion which shall unite the peoples of the earth and make men and women one
in God.
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF APPLIED ARTS.
MISS ELIZABETH B. SHELDON.
By MISS ELIZABETH B. SHELDON.
The value of any education is two-fold; first, to make life more valuable to the
individual, and, second, to make the individual more valuable to society. An untrained
person is not merely passively useless. He is actively
dangerous — to himself and to the community.
The world has begun to realize the dangers of
ignorance, hence we have free public schools. The
world is beginning to realize the dangers of idleness;
of mere head-cramming without hand training; and
is establishing free manual training schools as a cor-
rective.
Now that it has been discovered that man has a
body as well as a brain, moral and educational reform-
ers claim that the salvation of the masses lies in uni-
versal manual training.
I would take one step further. I would teach
them not only to do something, and to do it well, but
to make it beautiful.
I would do this as a matter of public improve-
ment and public economy, as well as a matter of indi-
vidual benefit. I would carry into the manual train-
ing schools the kindergarten idea of making work
attractive by adding the element of beauty, by giving
play to the imagination, and by developing still fur-
ther the universal creative instinct. We have happily
evolved from the idea that work is a curse and beauty an invention of the devil. We
now see in the former a glorious opportunity for culture and service — the two things
that make life worth living — and in the love of beauty inherent in every child of God
we recognize a link connecting us with "that power not ourselves that makes for
righteousness."
Our desires for usefulness and for beauty are legitimate, natural, vital, and should
be developed equally. Through the lingering effects of our stern Puritan training our
tendencies are overwhelmingly utilitarian. Only that side of our natures has been
cultivated. Imagination still lies dormant, overshadowed by the unparalleled growth
of our practicality. It is, however, criminal wastefulness, from an economic stand-
point, to ignore the possibilities of wealth and culture in a general thorough under-
standing of the principles of applied art.
A nation is rich in proportion as its inhabitants have the ability to turn ideas,
taste and manual dexterity into things desirable.
The inimitable French touch, like a fairy's wand, transforms four or five dollars'
worth of ribbon, flowers and lace into a bonnet for which women willingly pay twenty
dollars — five dollars for the material and fifteen dollars for their skillful arrangement —
and the important part of it is that the Frenchman still has the same skill to put into
another bonnet the next day, for which he may receive another fifteen dollars, and so on
Miss Elizabeth B. Sheldon is the daughter of Joseph Sheldon and Abby B. Barker Sheldon. She was educated in the
public school of New Haven, Conn., and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She has traveled in Europe since maturity
and spent part of her childhood abroad with her parents. Miss Sheldon has delivered speeches in many Eastern cities. She
is a member of Sorosis. New York City. She is a decorator by profession. In religious faith a Unitarian, Her postoiiice
address is No. 364 Mansfield Street, New Haven, Conn.
790
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 791
indefinitely. It is a sort of cake that you can eat and have, too. Had he put equal
skill into raising grain or potatoes he could have had but one crop to sell in a year,
and that one would have been subject to the accidents and freaks of nature during
the long period of its growth. This is the secret of the universal inferiority of agri-
cultural nations as compared with manufacturing ones.
It was just this faculty and manufacturing skill in the French people — developed
in every direction — that enabled them to pay, in three years, that enormous indemnity
demanded of them by Germany in 1871. It was the direct result of the general
applied art training of the masses — the philosopher's stone creating gold out of sim-
ple raw materials, mixed with brains, taste and dexterity.
The French government maintains the most elaborate and efficient system of free
art schools and schools of design that the world knows. As a result her decorative
manufactures are unrivaled, and are her greatest source of wealth.
The Columbian Fair has been an object lesson of our position in applied art and
its kindred professions. Its architecture is surpassingly beautiful. Our architects,
however, after securing more or less knowledge of their subject in one of our four or
five good schools, have been abroad to reap the advantages offered by more liberal
and far-sighted governments than ours, as well as to study from original masterpieces
of the world s architecture.
This is true also of our artists. In both of these departments our standing is
creditable, for in these the necessity of rigorous training has been recognized and
accepted. Not so, however, with our designers. The great majority of them are
practically amateurs. They have never even imagined that there are comprehensive
principles underlying design. Their aim is to evolve some fantastic idea that will
attract attention by its novelty, irrespective of merit. The community receives a suc-
cession of shocks, and mistakes its curiosity for admiration. Of course there are glo-
rious exceptions among our designers, and more every year. But back of their work
you will find patient, intelligent study and hard training possibly, a rare case of what
— from their demoralizing influence upon designers — I hesitate to call " happy acci-
dents." They lure us into relying upon luck rather than upon a comprehensive under-
standing of cause and effect and conscientious painstaking.
In the main our decorative art is hopeful in its vitality — it is pitiful in its crude-
ness. It is struggling for existence like a mob, with vigor, but without method or con-
certed action. Our failures in design are the legitimate result of ignoring theory and
trying to stand on the single slender leg of one person's experiments — discarding the
accumulated wisdom and experience of other times and nations.
We have in this country possibly ten fairly good schools of design — all private
enterprises — one school to seven million people. Is it any wonder that ugliness is
rampant in the land? That we find homely domestic tools, insulted by paint, gilding
and a ribbon bow, masquerading apologetically as decorations in our parlors? That
parasitical ribbon bows flaunt themselves from every possible coigne of vantage, reduc-
ing all things to the level of millinery? It would be ludicrous if it were not so sad.
It is a pitiful expression of the hunger of our people for decorative effects and
their blind grouping after the good they scent afar off. They are eager to learn. They
only need to be convinced of the necessity and money valueof such education. If we
could but engraft upon their quick wit and inventiveness the refinement and unseduced
patience of the Japanese, our manufacturers would stand pre-eminent.
The Japanese and the French realize that the best results are obtained when
the designer is also the workman, and, above all, an artist.
In this country, however, designing is usually spoken of lightly — as a limited
business, requiring only originality, and of very little consequence anyway.
In fact, however, the study of design is of particularly far-reaching importance.
The material for this study is the visible universe. Everything may give a suggestion
of form or color. The range of its application is whatever may be fashioned by man.
The field is sufficiently broad — the opportunities are infinite.
792 THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.
If the training I plead for were general, the advantages accruing to society would
be — an improved public taste, demanding better goods, a constant rise in the standard
and value of our decorative manufactures, until salesmen should tempt us by saying that
their wares were of domestic make, instead of relying upon the magic word "imported"
to make a sale, and upon the popular belief in the efficacy of a sea voyage to render
any goods desirable.
It would mean beauty in the place of ugliness; a large crop of ideas — the most
profitable crop that can be raised — and an army of artist artisans in the place of
bungling amateurs. Probably the most important advantage to the individual in-this
study is in learning to see and discriminate. We are all more or less blind — princi-
pally more.
I know a bright college girl who was taken through a garden last summer. The
owner pointed out his fine strawberries, peas, lettuce, etc., all of which were duly
admired. At length they came to a long row of bean vines trained to grow in decor-
ous stripes on the garden fence. " Oh," said this educated young person, " what a
great quantity of morning glories you are raising this year! "
She literally did not know beans. The next day, however, when she saw the
gardener transplanting some tobacco plants, she capped the climax by saying, " Well,
I do know cabbages if I don't know beans!" Truly we have eyes, but we see not.
We learn to see things by modeling and drawing them — especially with the idea
of using them in design. We learn to discriminate between the fundamental charac-
teristics and the details — the important and the unimportant — a most valuable accom-
plishment in every department of life. The imagination is quickened and the invent
ive genius developed by the possibilities of design everywhere suggested if we have
but learned to look for them. We learn the adaptation of means to ends, and gain a
new perception of beauty in common things.
The best way to attain general culture is to study a specialty — making it a base-
line from which to branch out to take measurements and compute values.
No study could be better for this purpose than applied art. It is educating and
refining — it is also the means of earning a living. It is thoroughly practical and
equally ideal. Beauty and utility meet there on common ground. It broadens our
outlook in every direction. It touches our life in the most constant and intimate way.
It makes life and the individual more interesting, for a person is interesting in
proportion as he is interested in living, in learning, in doing; in proportion as he
irradiates facts, ideas and enthusiasm.
In our day and generation subtraction and division are lost arts. We only remem-
ber how to add and multiply our needs, our luxuries, our duties. I would add, there-
fore, to our manifold requirements a general comprehension, at least, of the principles
of applied art, believing that it would be of infinite advantage to every one of us and
a source of unmeasured wealth to the nation.
Metaphysicians assure us that every deed, yes, every thought, is eternal and inef-
faceable. Then let the product of our hands and the thoughts of our hearts make for
beauty and for harmony evermore.
NOT THINGS, BUT WOMEN.
By MRS. EFFIE PITBLADO.
Things are great. They are either the thought of God or man. Natural things are
the thoughts of God; artificial things are the thoughts of man. But woman is greater
than things, because she is the breath of God, or soul.
Things are matter; woman is spirit. So she, with
.,.. . -. . man, has dominion over things. The meaning of soul
grows upon us, as we see it gaining the mastery over
natural things — over wave and wind, over thunderbolt
and sunbeam. The greatness of soul grows upon us,
as we see it, turning thoughts into things of its own —
into pictures, sewing machines, congress buildings,
glass dresses; into things that make not only the
esthetic soul sing, but the utilitarian heart rejoice. Out
of the silence of thought c^me all these forms ot
beauty and things of usefulness we see at this World's
Fair. Things represent ideas. Ideas are not mascu-
line or feminine, but human. Ideas are uppermost
here. The dominion of mere physical force is dying.
The dominion of mental and moral ideas is growing
wider and stronger. It is evident from what we see
at this World's Fair that women of ideas and moral
stamina are fast coming to the front. Woman has a
great part to play in this age, and she is prepared and
is preparing for it. The arguments against equality
are all answered, and today we smile at the belated
being that talks about the superiority of the masculine intellect to the feminine. They
are both superior in their way, and the sphere they choose is their sphere. If a man
may sell ribbons and cut dresses, a woman may sit in the editor's chair, give a mission-
ary address, deliver a political oration, open a drug store or run a convention or a mill.
It is too late to deny that her imagination is just as fine and full of eyes as man's^
that her heart is just as brimming over with poetry and pathos, that her reason is just
as forceful and keen as man's.
The thought is growing that God has ordained certain rights to woman that
somebody has denied. She is beginning erradually to seek to stand alongside her
brother, her husband and lover in all the rights of mankind and in all the ordinances
of our great Father. Such women still get a great deal of advice. They are told
that woman was made for a higher sphere (or hemisphere), the home; and that if she
departs from it her womanhood will suffer, and the domestic shrine be overthrown.
But all this is contradicted by the facts and experiences and history of today. Who
ever thinks of saying that Mrs, Cady Stanton's domestic shrine is overthrown, or
that Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker's, or Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's, or Mrs. Mary A.
Mrs. Effie Pitblado was bom in Edinhnrgh, Scotland, in 1849. Her parents were Hngh Wilson, a lawyer, and Eaphemia
Gibb Wilson. She was educated in Edinburgh, and afterward in England. She has traveled in Europe, Canada, and in
America, and has crossed the Atlantic five times. She married Rev. C. B. Pitblado, D. D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
and is the mother of two sons. Her principal literary works are addresses upon temperance, woman's suffrage, missions,
education and religion. In religious faith she is a Methodist. Mrs. Pitblado has been a delegate to the National Woman
Suffrage Association Convention in Washington, the New England Woman's Suffrage Association Conventions, the National
Women's Christian Temerpance Union Conventions in New York, Denver and Chicago, and to the annual Woman's Foreign
Missionary Conventions in Lowell and Boston, Mass.
793
MRS. EFFIE PITBLAUO.
794 THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.
Livermore's children are neglected, or their husbands not attended to, or their dishes
not washed and stockings not darned? This wail about domestic shrine belongs to
past history; we live in new times. I wish we had time to speak of the many great
and useful women of our homes and hearts.
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, as everyone knows, belongs to the wonderful
Beecher family, and is decidedly one of the most talented among them. She stands
at the front among the leaders of the great vital reforms of the day. She is a woman
of marvelous force of character, and to her the women of Connecticut owe the
improvement of the laws in that state with regard to their property.
I have enjoyed the hospitality of her delightful home in Hartford many times,
and she did me the honor to introduce me to the judiciary committee in the Capitol
at Washington as a Scotch woman who would speak to them on the political status
of women in Great Britain, when I went up with the committee of our National
Woman Suffrage Association. I was at Washington in 1888 when I first became
acquainted (through Mrs. Hooker) with her co-worker, Susan B. Anthony, a woman
who is known everywhere for her principle and pluck, power and purpose. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton is another woman of brains and bravery. She is one of the ablest
women of our times. Julia Ward Howe is not only the author of the " Battle
Hymn of the Republic," and of other poems as rich and grand, but she is
also a leading philanthropist and lecturer. Lucy Stone was a woman of radical
ideas, and quiet, magnetic eloquence and heroic individuality. We all regret
that we can never again hear her (as I have often heard her) plead before the
Legislature of Massachusetts for the enfranchisement of women.
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore has for twenty-five years been one of the star lecturers
in our most attractive lyceum courses, and she never was more popular than she is
today. She is one of the ablest lecturers in the country at this hour.
I have heard her tell of Lady Henry Somerset's life and work in such glowing
terms, that we could almost worship our English White Ribbon Queen, who is to the
British women what our Frances Willard is to our American women — the head and
the heart of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Lady Henry Somerset's
sympathy for and helpfulness to our American queen has been truly beautiful, and
we love her not only for it, but for her own sweet self. Mrs. Ormiston Chant is
another English woman who has charmed us with her inspirational speeches in
behalf of womanhood, and she also is devoted to the elevation of woman, and the
salvation of mankind. On this side of the Atlantic we have Mrs. Van Cott, a really
successful evangelist, and Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, one of the grandest philanthropists
that ever lived. Frances E. Willard, our queen of reforms, has probably more influence
in this country than any other man or woman. She is president of the World's
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which has at least three hundred thousand
members.
What a fine looking body of women the Board of Lady Managers are, with their
attractive and gracious president. Mrs. Potter Palmer has visited nearly every court in
Europe in the interest of women, and she has won by their exhibits official recogni-
tion from every foreign country. She has also enlisted the co-operation of the women
of her own country for the World's Fair, and addressed congressional committees
with such genius that she obtained from them the legislation necessary to begin and
carry on the work, and at the dedicatory services of this great Columbian Exposition
crowned all by her splendid address, in which she said: " Even more important than
the discovery of America is the fact that Government has just discovered woman."
We have always had our queens since the days of Queen Esther, Queen of Sheba,
Queen Semiramis and Queen Boadicea, but never have we had more worthy queens
than those of the nineteenth century.
Who can forget the smiling face of Vice-President Mrs. Charles Henrotin as she
gave her delightful address of welcome to every World's Congress? Who but will say
that our chairman of the Committee on Congresses in this Woman's Building, Mrs.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 795
James P. Eagle, has not only shown great ability and tact, but a remarkable degree of
executive power and steady perseverance to arrange for, and preside at, all these
addresses, every forenoon, for so many months? Her beauty and grace and kindly
manners to all her speakers have added greatly to the charm of these Congresses in
the Woman's Building.
I wish there was time to speak of Mrs. Palmer's secretary and her assistant secre-
tary, Mrs. Helen M, Parker, in whose home I had the pleasure of stopping for a few
weeks, and who, as you know, has been elected treasurer, at our last convention, of
the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. It would be impossible in my
limited time to tell you about the many gifted women in that organization. We have
our lecturers, like Mrs. Mary Lathrop, whom you all know, and Rev. Annie Shaw; we
have our superintendents, like Mrs. Mary H. Hunt.
We also have missionaries, like our all-round-the-world missionary, Mrs. Mary
Clement Leavitt, who has had in connection with her addresses the services of two
hundred and twenty-nine interpreters, in forty-seven languages. She has carried our
white ribbon around the globe. And secretaries like Miss Anna A. Gordon; and state
presidents like Mrs. Clara Hoffman, so well known here; and sergeants- at-arms like
Mrs. Cornelia B. Forbes, of Connecticut, to keep our great national conventions in
order; and organizers like Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell; and preachers like Miss
Greenwood, of New York; and elocutionists like Miss Eva Shonts, who read on this
platform, and who is called by Miss Willard our white ribbon elocutionist. I wish I
had time to speak of such women as Pundita Ramabai, the student and teacher of
the young widows of India, and of the heroic women who have gone out to heathen
lands to carry the glad tidings of the Gospel to their sisters, and of the grand women
at home whose plans and gifts have created such an organization that they can now
disburse annually, for the work and support of these missionaries, one million five
hundred thousand dollars. I need not tell you about the president of our National
Council of Women, Mrs. May Wright Sewell, for many of you have heard her brilliant
and learned addresses in this assembly hall; nor of Miss Elizabeth B. Sheldon, who
decorated our Connecticut room in this building with such delicate taste and fine har-
mony of color; nor of Miss Hosmer, the sculptor, for you have seen her exquisite
statues and busts, and you know that her statue of Queen Isabella has been secured
for the Californian World's Fair and will find a home in San Francisco. Neither do
I need to speak to you of my countrywoman. Lady Aberdeen, for you have seen
her exhibit here of the industries of the Irish women, and you have heard what
she is doing for women in Great Britain at the head of the Woman's Liberal
Federation. Few men have spoken out so freely against social wrongs as Mrs.
Josephine Butler of England, and Dr. Kate Bushnell of this country. From the days
of Madam Roland women have never been without their champions like Flor-
ence Nightingale, and Mrs. Browning, our delightful poet. Time would fail us
to speak of our women journalists, like Mrs. Frank Leslie and Alice Stone Black-
well; our women ministers, like Rev. Olympia Brown and Dr. Augusta J. Chapine
who, as chairman of Women's Religious Congresses, discovered that seventeen denom-
inations have ordained women to the ministry; our discoverers, like Mrs. French
Sheldon, ¥. R. G. S., who went unattended by a single white person through the wilds
of Africa; and our temple builders, like Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, of Chicago, whose
"Woman's Temple" is the finest oflfice building in the world, and the architect of this
beautiful Woman's Building, which is a monument to the brain and work of woman.
But we must stop mentioning names, for the gifted, all-sided women of our land are
legion. Many of them are unknown to the great public, and do their work quietly in
their own church or town or home, and many of them have voluntarily become the
rounds of the ladders on which their brothers and sons and husbands have climbed to
fame. But many of them do their work in the eye of the world. Some of them are gen-
iuses — none of them are angels — all of them are peers of men. Among them are
inventors, lawyers, architects,physicians, painters, engineers, astronomers, editors, edu-
796 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
cators, actresses, novelists and brilliant authors. Well known to all readers are such
names as Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Fanny Fern (or Mrs. Parton), Gail Ham-
ilton (or Miss Dodge), Louisa May Alcott, Pansy (or Mrs. R. G. Alden), Josiah Allen's
wife (or Miss Marietta Holly), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Kate Field, Mrs. Helen Hinsdale
Rich, the poet of the Adirondacks, and last, but not least, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe,
There is about their writings and addresses a sterling sense, a short-handed reasoning,
that is not only charming but oracular. They are giving literature a healthy,
fireside tone. These women, and many unnamed by me, are among the leaders of
thought today.
Religion to them is the divinest reality. They believe in God, and so feel that
man and woman must grow into mutual greatness and goodness. together, and that
the ages have never yet seen the regal men and women that are to illustrate God's
ideal of humanity.
A BUSINESS WOMAN IN KENTUCKY*.
By MISS FLORENCE BARLOW.
Some eight or ten years since a pleasant escort and curiosity took me to a ball at
the Lunatic Asylum in Lexington, Ky. These balls are given by the board for the
pleasure of the inmates. The visitors are expected to
dance with the lunatics and assist in making the even-
ing pleasant for these unfortunates. While in con-
1,, versation with one of the board, he remarked to me
that if it should ever be necessary I would make a
success as a business woman. He little knew the
seed of encouragement he was sowing in the remark,
and it pleased me to have him say this. A business
woman — that which my heart had most yearned to be
for years. But I had been raised surrounded with
all the comforts of a delightful Kentucky home, and
at a time when it was considered a reflection upon the
head of the family for the women to be self-support-
ing, or do anything out of the ordinary duties allotted
to women. But in a few years reverses came upon
my family as they will come to the best of us. Then
for the first time I realized I must act for myself, for
with the loss of home my father, who was nearing
seventy, was declining in health and years, and too
old to recover from losses, or do anything but submit
to the inevitable. And so began my career as a busi-
ness woman of Kentucky.
Thrown upon my own resources, what were they? I had never before stared the
question fairly in the face; and when I did, I saw none; that is, I had no training or
preparation for any special vocation. Oh if fathers and mothers could only realize
they are killing their daughters with kindness, as it were, by not fitting them for
some special life-work, just as they do their boys, how happiness, self-reliance and
prosperity would take the place of anxiety, suffering and poverty.
All honor and glory to the great and good women, the projectors of the "Vir-
ginia Dare Association." God speed them in their noble work, and crown them with
success. Open the hearts and pockets of men and Congress to build these manual train-
ing schools for girls all over the land, and endow them as the emergency of the times
demand, that they may redound to the credit o£ the American woman as nothing else
ever has. To my mind, it is one of the greatest ideas conceived by the women of our
country, and should be nourished by the support of every man and woman. My
resources were a very good school education, such as the girls' colleges of Kentucky
afford, but I did not feel capable of any adaptability to teach or train young minds.
I speak of those days until some of you may think, as my little niece did when I
Miss Florence Barlow is a native of Lexington, Ky. Her parents were Milton Barlow, Sr., and Anaatasia C. Thompson
Barlow. She was educated in Richmond, Ky., and has traveled through the eastern and southern portions of the United
States. Her si>ecial line of work has been in the interest of newspapers and magazines. She is a professional business
woman, in religious faith a Presbyterian, being a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Lexington, Ky. Miss Barlow
is a beautiful, cultivated and most charming woman, whose lovely character and winsome manners always surround her
with a host of admiring friends. Her postoffice address is Lexington, Ky.
MISS FLORENCE BARLOW.
*The foil title of Miss Barlow's address was "The £zt)erience of a Basinees Woman in Kentacky."
797
798 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
tried to persuade her to wear the long white aprons I think so pretty for little school
girls, by telling her I wore them when I was a little girl. " Well, but aunty," she said,
"you lived^in ancient times." Well, I didn't exactly live in ancient times, but you
know until the past few years very few colleges were open to girls. I had a general
knowledge of housekeeping that I saw no way of turning to a very profitable account.
I did have some knowledge of painting and drawing, such as we acquire in boarding
schools. I had taken lessons one year when I was about fifteen years of age, but com-
bined with some talent and love for art, I had made unusual progress, and had a greater
degree of excellence, probably, than anyone in the little city of Richmond, Ky., at
that time my home. I had taught a few friends on china, having had more advan-
tages in that line than anyone else in the town, and had taught so well that one of my
pupils took the premium over me at the county fair.
I suppose I ought to have felt chagrined, but I felt pleased and flattered and
encouraged to teach art, drawing and painting in oil, water and china. And so I opened
a studio, teaching for several years. In that time I found that I was doing a great deal
of hard work, with small profits and breaking myself down. I had not learned to teach
and save myself. I concluded art in Kentucky did not pay. My ambitions were cramped.
I was not satisfied. While in this frame of mind I chanced to attend a press associa-
tion of Kentucky, and there I met one of the solons from Middlesborough, Ky. I
was glad to meet this wise man from this interesting city of the mountains. News-
paper men are supposed to know everything, to be a walking encyclopaedia for the
public's use, and so I plied him with many questions, as to the advisability of my
going into business in Middlesborough, suggesting real estate as a probable opening.
To my astonishment and pleasure he encouraged me, and so I decided at once that was
the thing I would do, my parents having gone to Southern Florida the fall before to
escape the chilling blasts of winter. I returned to Lexington, where I then had a
studio, dismissed my class and told my friends I was going to Middlesborough to be a
real estate agent. Most of my friends protested. Who is going to chaperone you?
Who is going to meet you? Who is going to help you? were some of the more im-
portant questions put to me. But I told them I couldn't be having a chaperone all
my life; I couldn't always expect the pleasure of someone meeting me, and I had no
reason to expect any but Divine help.
It was in the latter part of April, and the May sales of town lots were near at
hand. I had no time to lose if I wished to be on the ground and get information
necessary to my success, I had absolutely no knowledge of the business, but my
father and grandfather, having been most distinguished inventors of the day, and my
mother a woman of more than ordinary ability, I knew I had an inherent right to a
degree of intelligence, and I had heard Dr. Willets say in his celebrated lecture on
sunshine, that one of the most useful and best traits for woman to possess (a good
square word; it was found in all the dictionaries), was " Gumption!'
The word embraces a great deal; and so I determined to cultivate gumption, and
bring into use all the intelligence I could command.
I shall never forget the night I left the city of my birth, Lexington, Ky., and bade
farewell to the most beautiful, the most hospitable and devoted people the sun ever
shone upon. To give this in exchange for a new town in the mountains, among total
strangers, to embark in business I had no knowledge of whatever, with no financial
backing, defying as it were the code of Southern usages in sundering the bars and
going into new fields of business not before tried by a Kentucky woman, I knew it
was a venture and I was taking desperate chances, but the occasion demanded this at
my hands and I determined to risk it. Nothing ventured, nothing won, an adage
worth remembering. These and many more were the thoughts that passed through
my brain when I was given time for reflection as the lo o'clock train rapidly length-
ened the distance between those I loved and myself.
When I had taken my seat I discovered I was the only lady in the coach, with
about twelve or fifteen men, principally rough men of the mountains, for we had by
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 799
this time gotten into the knobs of Kentucky. They were going to Middlesborough
to gather tanbark for the tannery there, the largest in the world. More than once,
when several of them grew loud or boisterous, one would say: " Keep quiet; there is
a lady in the car," showing they respected my presence, which pleased me.
After a few stations an old colored woman got on. I beckoned her to take the seat
in front of me that I might not feel so alone. I saw she was a nice old-fashioned
darkey, and asked her if she knew anything about that part of the country. " Bless
your heart, honey, I was born and raised in these parts." "Well," I said, " I am glad
to know that. I am a stranger here and I want you to take care of me until I
reach my destination.'' We who have been raised with black mammies have learned
to trust them, and know them to be loyal to the charge. The bonds that exist
between an old-fashioned mammy and the white mistress must be felt to be appre-
ciated, and it has been felt only in the South.
After we had changed at Corbin, at 3 o'clock in the morning, the most deso-
late, forsaken spot to be found, where the answering of whip-poor-will to whip-poor-
will, at the silent hour of 3, was the only sound to be heard, I gave her my ticket
and told her I was going to take a nap, and she must hand in my ticket, so I would
not be disturbed. I saw she was pleased with my confidence in her, and when we
reached her station, just before Middlesborough, she passed out so quietly I never
knew when she left.
Si.x o'clock found our train pulling in to Middlesborough. I had had a refresh-
ing nap. It was a glorious morning early in May. Everybody was hustling and
bustling. The steam plows worked day and night, moving young mountains, build-
ing roads and streets, digging canals; hundreds of men working in relays, building
a city. I felt the inspiration of the surrounding scene, and felt anxious to be at
work doing something. The very atmosphere was exhilarating, and I seemed to
breathe a new life. I seemed to be in a new and different world from any I had
ever known. The city was in the shadow of early morn covered with the snowy
mantle of fog, waiting for old King Sol to climb yon distant mountain, and with
his warm caresses and soft blandishments entice it up into fleecy cloudlets, bearing
them away over the mountains, into other, but I am sure no fairer, scenes. I wish I
had time to describe to you some of the enchanting views and historic points of this
interesting place. I soon found a room to my taste in a new hotel, just opened,
and kept by a widow from Central Kentucky. I counted myself fortunate in being so
pleasantly located, and rendered thanks unto my Maker for all His goodness to me,
invoking His Divine guidance and protection in my new career.
The first thing was to secure an office. The demand for offices was already in
excess of the supply, often two, three and four going into one office. The city had
a few weeks before gotten out a city charter, and had just had its first election of city
officers; mayor, three councilmen, etc.
One of the councilmen, hearing of my arrival, came into the parlor before break-
fast to meet me, and extend to me a most cordial reception, and to offer any
assistance he could give me. That was encouraging, and he proved to be one of the
stanchest and best of friends, often rendering me invaluable assistance. The news
soon spread that a real lady real estate agent had come to town. I was scarcely
through my breakfast before a business man called to extend to me a cordial welcome,
handing me his card, saying he was an abstract man; I would no doubt want abstracts,
and he solicited my patronage. This struck me as being very funny; how could I be
buying an abstract; what was an abstract, anyway? I hadn't the slightest idea what
he meant. I mention this because there are plenty of young ladies with finished
education who are no wiser than I was. Of course I knew what abstract meant, but I
couldn't understand his application of it. But I waited my time, and soon learned he
meant abstract of title to property I was expected to sell. The Kentucky gentlemen
is ever ready to be courteous to ladies, and ofttimes will put themselves to great incon-
venience to serve or favor them. I have had frequent evidence of this in my varied
800 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
experience. A young man offered to vacate his office that I might have that, the best
and only office in the city suitable for me, on the first floor, he going in an upstairs
room with several others.
I fitted up my office; that is^ I had a new carpet put down. Then a new friend
came in and said, " Don't buy a desk; I have two; one is in my way, and you will do
me a kindness to use it. I'll send it in for you." Another said, " Don't buy chairs; I
have half a dozen extra ones; they are yours." Another sent his bookkeeper to open
my books, put up my maps, tag me a hundred or so lots for sale with prices and
terms. Another, and another, and another called to extend the right hand of fellow-
ship, as it were, and proffered their assistance, until in less than a week nearly half
the men in town, married and single, had enlisted in my behalf, and declared they
would rather see me sell a lot and make money than do it themselves.
Well, I thought, this is delightful. If this thing keeps up they'll do the selling
for me next and hand me the commission. But it was gratifying and encouraging to
me to be so well received and have the approval of these splendid men. The sales
came on the next week; the city was full to overflowing with strangers from all parts
of the country, and many from abroad came to invest in city lots and build industries.
Everybody was in a state of feverish excitement. Bidding ran high, corner lots ran
up to ;^4I0 per foot, and many believed that this city, which in less than two years had
grown from an open cornfield into a population of five thousand people, would in five
years be twenty-five or thirty thousand souls. Fabulous prices were offered for cen-
ter property, some few taking advantage of it and selling, others holding on for still
more advance.
After the Town Company had continued their sales for four days, selling many
thousands of dollars worth of lots, the real estate agents declared it was time they
should have a chance now, and the company should take their property off the mar-
ket, which they consented to do on Friday. Everybody was buoyant, feeling good,
going to make more money than they had ever heard of. The real estate agents, of
which there were something less than a hundred, were busy making their arrange-
ments to reap a rich harvest in the next week, and all time to come. Property was
already beginning to change hands at a good profit to the seller and promise of better
to the buyer. Dozens of newcomers were locating every day. Houses could not be
provided for them fast enough. They crowded into the hotels and into every avail-
able space, paying enormous rent and board.
An agent for the United States Building and Loan Association of St. Paul came
in to establish an agency. He asked me if I would take it. 1 told him I knew noth-
ing of the workings of building and loan; that if he could teach me I would take it.
He was pleased to find that after I had read the matter put into my hands, and
heard him talk "building loan" an hour, I was able to talk "building loan" intelligently.
Small posters were struck and distributed, "$200,000 to loan by Miss Barlow," and I at
once became the most popular woman in the city. (Money makes the men move.)
Men thronged my office to borrow money, but when they found they must give a first
mortgage on real estate, and could only borrow fifty per cent of the most conserva-
tive valuation of their property, they gave the matter more deliberate thought. But
we had no trouble in organizing a good board, and I launched into the "building loan"
business, in connection with real estate, with the brightest prospect of doing a splendid
business.
You must not think I had gone thus far without having to overcome an immense
amount of embarrassment and timidity. No one can ever know what I have suffered
from timidity, and what a fight 1 have had to overcome it. I had never been thrown
with people before, except in a most cordial, social, and home-like way; and all this
was so new to me, and I was so timid I many times wished I could hide. But I had a
certain feeling of pride that I must not fail at anything I undertook; that often came
to my rescue. I remember one of the first would-be customers who came into my office
was a man from Massachusetts. He introduced himself, and said he had come to Mid-
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 801
dlesborough to invest in improved property, and he had come to me first as a lady,
preferring to buy from me, as he knew women were more honest than men, and he
didn't intend to be fleeced by those real estate agents. He was a great, splendid-look-
ing man, about six feet two inches high, weighed about two hundred, age about forty-
five, handsome to a remarkable degree; in fact, a magnificent specimen of manhood.
To say I was embarrassed and overcome would be putting it mildly, I had had my
office, probably, a week, and had not had a genuine customer, and my ability had not
been put to a test. Here was one who meant business, and I must talk real estate to
him intelligently. Embarrassed! Why, the room turned round, the blood all rushed
to my eyes. I looked at my map on the wall, and for the life of fne I couldn't distin-
guish a single lot for sale, though there were a hundred of them tagged right before
my eyes, and as many more listed in my books; and so, as soon as 1 could command
my voice, I told him: Really, I did not think he could buy any improved property;
that those who owned it appreciated its value and did not care to part with it at
any but the most extravagant prices, and I would not advise him to buy. Of course
this was stunning to him. "Well," he said, " I have great faith in the outcome here,
and I am very anxious to invest." " Well," I said, " you can't buy property now unless
you pay the most enormous prices, and you'll be sure to lose if you do." I had rather
have lost a thousand dollars than to have tried to make a sale in my embarrassed con-
dition. And so we chatted a few minutes pleasantly, and he left. I was heartily glad
when he was out of my sight, and hoped another man would never come into my pres-
ence again to buy lots.
He evidently divined my feelings and was much amused, and related the incident
at the table of one of the hotels much to the amusement of some of my friends, who
came into my office and joked me considerably over it. We afterward met often and
became good friends. He did invest ^50,000 in improved property, which he holds to
this day, and, no doubt, has wished many times he had taken my advice. He would
have been $50,000 better off if he had.
The next day was Saturday; the people had scarcely slept, so full were they of the
feverish excitement incident to the scenes and experiences of the past week — every-
body talking of the industries that were already planned for, of the wonderful min-
eral resources, of the great financial backing of English capitalists, building of a
canal at a cost of $150,000, planning waterworks, one of the finest in the South,
enlarging the electric-light plant, and extending lights away out into the fields and
woods.
Capitalists had come from far and near to consult with the president of the Ameri-
can Association ( Limited ) and Middlesborough Town Company with regard to locating
industries, and almost every hour word was given out that a new industry had been
negotiated for — planing mills, tanneries, shoe factories, glass works, clay-pipe works,
wood works, furniture factories, foundries. The great Watts Steel and Iron Works
were already well under way. The South Boston Iron Works were to be transplanted
in our midst and make cannons for the government. Almost every known industry
had been encouraged to come. The hopes of the people ran higher than the old
man of the mountains, perched on the pinnacle 3,300 feet in the air, looking down
upon us with an approving smile.
I had gone home to dinner feeling I could scarcely take time to eat. As dinner
was being brought in the cry of fire rang over the city. You people of Chicago know
better than any people on earth what the cry of fire means With us it meant
as it did with you — nearly our all. I looked out of the window and saw the flames
leaping high from a shed of hay back of one of the business houses. I knew the city
was doomed; built largely of inflammable material it burned like tinder. The splendid
new engine refused to work; some villain had plugged the hose and piston, and the
fire only ceased with the blowing up of several houses with dynamite In four short
hours the whole business portion of the city, with the exception of about a dozen
houses, had been swept away.
(51)
802 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
And now the people were as distressed and depressed as they had been buoyant
and hopeful a few hours before. Hundreds were rendered homeless, no provisions
were at hand. But you know the distress following a fire. Hundreds of people left the
city as rapidly as the trains could take them away, going back to their old friends and
homes. Tents were provided by the government for those who remained.
What must I do? The question came to me again. I shared with others the
depression. To go back to my friends in Central Kentucky, with failure written on
my face, I would not, I could not lend money for my building and loan, because all
this property had been bought on payments of one, two and three years, and could
not give first mortgage, and no one had money to take stock in building and loan
as an investment.
In a few days they began talking of rebuilding the city. The city council met
and passed an ordinance that no frame houses should be built within a square and a
half of the principal street, Cumberland Avenue. I reviewed the situation and knew
if they did build, it would create a demand for building material of all kinds. It was
then I conceived the idea of going into the building material business on commission,
as ignorant of the business as it was possible for a woman to be. But by the time
they had cleared away the rubbish I had corresponded with various firms, and made
satisfactory arrangements to furnish my customers to be with brick, lime, sand, doors,
sash, blinds, lumber, mantels, grates and iron fronts. I had also taken the agency for
Hall's Safe and Lock Co., and sold a number of safes.
One thing I always kept before me, and that was to represent none but the best of
whatever I handled, I didn't want my customers to be saying somebody else's mate-
rial was better than mine. I studied and worked hard. I found the lumber business the
most difficult to learn and manage, on account of the great variety of woods and
measurements, and so pushed that branch of my business less than any, and generally
when I had a customer sent for a lumberman to come and take the order, and I would not
advise a lady to take up this business. But I did splendidly in all the other branches,
selling thousands of brick, a large number of mantels and grates, many car loads of
sand, and a number of iron fronts, now to be seen in Middlesborough. I compelled
my mind to remember the different grades of brick, and the prices of each, their
weight, how many a car would hold, how much the freight would be, the rebate
allowed on an extra quantity, etc.
I ordered my common brick from Knoxville; they were not smooth, but very
hard and a little over size, which made them popular with the brickmasons. Some of
my pressed brick came from there, too, and some from Findlay, Ohio. I handled the
white marble lime from Knoxville; it was a few cents higher than the limestone lime,
but was much purer — being ninety-eight per cent pure carbonate of lime — was whiter
and worked more smoothly, and when they once use it they would use no other; and
so I soon established a good trade in lime, I supplied them with better sand than
they had been getting. They had been using sand that had earth in it, so that several
houses had to betaken down to the foundation on account of it. Mantels, grates and
iron fronts came principally from Chattanooga and Louisville, They have a furniture
factory there now, and foundries making all these, I made friends with the con-
tractors and the workingmen, they ofttimes giving me their orders in preference to a
man. Of course this business brought me daily in contact with some of the roughest
workingmen, but in all my business relations I have never been treated with the slight-
est discourtesy or rudeness. I never forgot I was a lady bred and born, and others
always remembered it.
My attire was thoroughly feminine. I do not believe in, nor do I think it neces-
sary, for women to adopt masculine attire for business. When her business is such as
to demand masculine dress, then she should take up some other business. I believe
woman should be thoroughly womanly and men should be men. It isn't necessary
for a woman to adopt a stiff shirt-front, a vest and a mannish hat to succeed, and men
are not better friends for this poaching on their preserves.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 803
In this new town there were no pavements or macadam roads, and we frequently
had to go through mud a foot deep in rainy weather. For such occasions I had gum
boots and a cloth dress eight inches short; this was also a comfortable costume for
roaming over the mountains, boots being a protection against snakes, briers and
insects, and very comfortable to walk in. I frequently needed the services of a notary
public, and so I obtained suitable credentials and wrote to the Governor for a com-
mission as notary public. I remember the first occasion I had to make use of it was
with one of the native mountaineers, a member of the notorious Turner family, a
family in which one or two are killed every year, and they pride themselves on dying
game. I remember how dreadful it seemed to me to have a man hold up his hand
and swear, and how I impressed on him the solemnity of an oath. Although he was
a native mountaineer, fifty years old, worth sixty thousand dollars, he could not write
his own name, and had never taken a drink of whisky in his life. Some of these men
are as simple and as easily managed as children, and would come to me with their
domestic troubles. One man was going to leave his wife, and told me of the trouble
between them. I preached him a regular sermon and told how wrong he was doing;
that he had taken her for better or worse, and that God would not countenance such
proceedings on his part, etc. He said he had never had anybody talk to him like
that, and he guessed I was right about it. . He brought his wife in to see me a few days
after that, a fine looking young mountain woman of about twenty-three. A woman
really often has an opportunity of doing a great deal of Christian work in being thrown
with this class of people, and can exert a wonderful influence for good.
With the knowledge of business came confidence, self-reliance and perfect self-
possession. I always made my customers feel welcome and at ease in my ofifice. I
soon learned that the workingmen generally were as diffident about coming to me as
I had been on some other occasions. When I found this out 1 hunted them up, had
a few pleasant words to say to them, let them know I was interested in their work,
and wanted their custom. I then had no further trouble; they came to me without
any hesitation, always taking off their hats on coming into the office, and apologiz-
ing if their coats were off, as work often demanded they should be.
Time rolled on, business flourished; I did well in business. Middlesborough was
handsomely built up. Elegant business houses, beautiful stone pavements twenty feet
wide on the main avenue, and all modern improvements provided, when the financial
crash overtook the whole country, and our brave little city once more succumbed to
the inevitable. Business was again dead. I returned to my former home as business
manager of the Lexington Observer, a weekly paper, and later went on the staff of the
Illustrated Ke?ituckian. Woman's greatest discovery is herself. If anyone had ten
years ago told me I could accomplish what I have I would have laughed at them.
Every little accomplished fits us for further attainments.
I am now with "The Southern Magazine," edited by Gen. Basil Duke. Itgives me
the benefit of travel, which is a fine schooling for me, from which I derive great ben-
efits and profit. My experiences are a parallel to the experiences of nearly every
business woman of Kentucky. They are always given a most cordial and hospitable
reception, and every encouragement. If any of you young women anticipate entering
the field of workers, come to Kentucky; we will give you a hearty welcome, and the
field is broad.
THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH.
• 'Wilt ^
By MRS. S. C. TRUEHEART.
Woman's position in the community marks the stages of progress. Her name is
written on the mighty influences of the ages, and most conspicuously upon the brow
of modern civilization. Examine the records of the
past, and a great difference will be noted where her
touch is felt, and where it is wanting. It is felt in the
intellectual, but more deeply in the spiritual realm.
The domain of the spiritual seems to belong to her
in a special sense, and the measure of spirituality in
thought and life is the measure of the best — the highest.
Without this softening and refining power, Greek liter-
ature is cold, lifeless. Beautiful it is certainly, and
wonderful, but it is the beauty of polished marble,
with no tints of rich life. A country whose literature
breathes a spiritual atmosphere imparts moral tone,
and dissipates mental darkness. In America, since
woman has found her voice, and ventured to use her
pen freely from platform and press, have gone out
influences elevating as well as refining. Since she
began to study herself, to more fully realize her own
powers of mind and spirit, she has introduced into
our literature an element that is working out striking
results. She takes a keen delight in discussing her-
self — in impressing her individuality upon every sub-
ject within the range of human thought. From this
platform, during the passing month the ablest thinkers and speakers have discussed
woman — her place in history, in society, in church and state — woman's work, woman's
destiny, woman's past, present and future, in all the relations of life as citizen, reformer,
philanthropist, daughter, sister, wife and mother — showing satisfactorily that in the
tremendous realities and activities of the day, she is an indispensable. I wish to speak
of her as I know her in the Southland — a sister beloved, useful, honorable. Mrs.
Helen Watterson protests against woman's continual excitement over women, as if the
agitation of the question would postpone the full recognition of her worth. The agita-
tion of a question has the opposite effect, usually rather tending to bring its true
worth to the surface. These countrywomen of mine are not dissatisfied with the rec-
ognition already accorded, and are convinced that their position among men is as they
decide to have it. Truth and worth speak for themselves, and in the end prevail in
the face of controversy and opposition. A luminous body shines; one does not have
to appeal to parliaments, or indeed to the general public for permission to shine.
When the light is there it will show itself. The women of whom I wish to speak dwell
Mrs. S. C. Traeheart is a native of Middleway, Jefferson County, W. Ya., which constitates part of the famed Shenan-
doah Valley. • Her parents were natives of Virginia. Her father was a tradesman, her mother the only daughter of Dr. .Tames
Macoughtry, a celebrated physician. She was educated in Virginia and Maryland. She was graduated from the Baltimore
Female College, Baltiioore, receiving the degree of A. B., and from the same college, in 1870, received that of A. M. She
married Prof. Wm. E. Trueheart, of Amelia County, Va., who web elected principal of Stanford Female College, in Kentucky,
in 1872. He died in 1873; his wife succeeded him as principal of the same school, which position she occupied for twelve
years. As a teacher she has also spent four years in Staunton, Va., one year in the Baltimore Female C^oUege, and since 1885
has been teaching in the Female College, Millersburg, Ky. She is a devoted Christian, is now secretary of Home AflFairs,
Woman's Board of Missions, Methodist Episcopal Church South, of which church she is a member. Her postoffice address
is Millersburg, Bourbon County, Ky.
804
'^ '^1
MRS. S. C. TRUEHEART.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 805
in a goodly land, pleasant to the eye, a land of fine resources, both agricultural and
mineral; where may be found fertile cotton fields, vast rice tracts, large sugar planta-
tions, bright skies and balmy breezes. The whole land is plowed by mighty rivers,
is ribbed by long mountain chains and washed by the sea. Such natural advantages
have been attended by the usual results, have fostered and deepened a love of country
strong and abiding, and rendered the people averse to emigration. Without remark-
ing upon the Anglo-Saxon women of the South in colonial days, or of revolutionary
days even, as the time will not suffice, I refer to them as I knew them immediately
before 1861, before the changes of the last thirty years.
They were not, as some have supposed, useless, half educated, irresponsible creat-
ures, unable to handle intricate problems, or incapable of undertaking enterprises
of moment. They did not always rush forward along any lines. They usually walked
and talked without hurry, and left the outside, world-wide interests and enterprises to
the notice and management of others, feeling they were not called to so exercise them-
selves; but they were ready to endure, were true to their purposes and patient in the
pursuit of those matters custom authorized as their proper work. As priestesses at
the home altar, these women felt they must keep the sacred fires ever bright without
being fully aware that any other and better plan of serving could be devised. As are
the mothers, so are the daughters, we believe with intense faith; what wonder, then,
that the daughters were slow to perceive that a wider place for the exercise of their
gifts was possible, unless they neglected the imperative duties of the home. The
mothers had been taught that without the sanctuary of the inner circle they were not
called. These mothers committed grave interests to the daughters when their labors
were over and the death angel bore them away. As little as such an inheritance may
have been desired, it came — it could not be otherwise; came with all its responsibili-
ties and anxieties. To suppose that daughters with such an inheritance had nothing
to do — could be idle or lazy — is a serious mistake. True, among them were to be
found individuals whose daily lives were absorbed by trivial concerns or frivolous
nothings — who wept over the sad fate of an impossible hero in the pages of a possible
novel — who were distracted if a favorite poodle turned from his " chops," or a pet
canary could not sing. Weak and foolish people are not the staple product of this
section, and of course can not be regarded as representative. Southern women, even
women of great wealth, could not be idle had they been inclined. The fact is, their
hands were full from the days of their maturity to the end of life. Not always, not
often, perhaps, were they engaged in manual labor; but a more trying work was theirs
— that of keeping others busy in useful tasks. About them were those who must be
taught to work, must not be permitted to suffer, must not know the pain of sordid
poverty. The wrinkled matron near by, sitting childlike and improvident in the cabin
door, appealed to heart and brain more powerfully than any vexed question of world-
wide interest that husband, son, brother and father were better fitted to settle. Under
the circumstances they practically endorsed St. Paul's views about women keeping
at home, without concerning themselves whether St. Paul's remarks were intended for
them or the noisy, meddling busybodies who troubled the infant church in St. Paul's
day. The duties of Southern women in those days being so circumscribed, tended
somewhat to narrowness, I confess; but the fidelity with which their duties were dis-
charged elevated and ennobled. No women were more loyal, warm-hearted, religious.
The faith of the mothers passed on with the inheritance without a touch of agnosti-
cism. Buddha did not distract their thoughts or puzzle their brains. It did not occur
to them that the faith of heathen India could, or would, supersede the Christian faith;
nor did they wish to see any resemblance thereto, even with the "Light of Asia" to
tone up the paganism. They did not reach out into the spirit world to get important,
vital information by means of " raps" or "table turnings" from spirits that professed
to know more than the Word of God, given by the God of man through human instru-
mentality. The " isms" that were heralded in some quarters, and had a following, and
passed away or were superseded by some other excitement, did not move them from
806 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
the even tenor of their ways. They were not superstitious, though they had listened
to fairy tales; had heard from the cabins of ghosts and goblins. I never heard of
their hanging up a horse-shoe over the door or over the bed for good luck, nor did
they cross themselves if a rabbit flitted across the way before them. No; the old
faith in which Abraham walked, for which their forefathers fought, in which their
mothers died, was theirs to enjoy and teach to others. Church work, attendance upon
its ordinances, reverence for those who were authorized to minister at its altars, had
place in their creed. The distance to a place of worship was not an insurmountable
obstacle, nor rough roads too great a difficulty in the way of attendance. A family
of fourteen went regularly to church every Sabbath day, unless rain or storm pre-
vented, for forty years, fully ten miles. This was not an isolated case. Many daugh-
ters thus trained grew to womanhood with profound respect for the institutions of the
Christian religion. The means of education were prized. School was a marked
feature in household plans, and the teacher, or private tutor, a person of importance.
Education for the masses was not provided as it is now; but many Southern women
were finely educated — were educated out of the barbarizing tendency to flatten their
" i's," broaden their " a's" or drop out their " r's." In the line of literary productions
I can not note many women very distinguished in the times of which I speak,
" Beulah " and "Alone" were extensiv^ely read, but I can not §ay they gave rise to
activity of very high literary worth. Purely sensational books give birth to a numer-
ous progeny of weak stories, but do not nourish the reasoning, thinking soul, or much
excite the imagination while feeding the fancy. Books and periodicals filled the libra-
ries, but these were not often products of the soil. On these they depended for men-
tal food, from these they learned when the world was out of joint, but " cursed spite,
they did not feel that they were born to set it right." Their training was not for the
big, round world, but for the place they called home; where rich, true womanhood
could be found. They had no doubt about their sphere, and talked little and wrote
less on the subject. Education for the marts of trade or lines of commerce was not
thought indispensable; though many, when compelled, managed business affairs. A
lady of Mississippi, whom I knew, was left with a large family and an encumbered
estate (a thirty-thousand-dollar debt), cleared off the debt, educated her daughters,
gave her sons access to the learned professions, kept herself well posted in current lit-
erature, and found time to enjoy the classics. Many Southern women had to cook,
too, and could do it well; to patch and darn, and often to provide food and raiment
for the household, because the husband and father frequented drink-shops or wasted
his substance in riotous living.
In such trying cases no thought of seeking a competency behind the counter or
in a work-shop entered a woman's brain as possible. The cotton-field or tobacco-
patch was preferred. They were inclined to walk in the old paths, to follow old
customs, and carefully scrutinized an innovation, or regarded it with suspicion. They
were not ambitious, were strong m their likes and dislikes, and in their heart of hearts
believed their own skies were bluest, their own cornfields greenest, their tobacco finest,
and no cotton-fields like theirs on the face of the earth. Somewhat resentful, they
were not bitter in their animosities, nor pugilistic, nor cruel, though slow to take to
their hearts again those who had been estranged. Broad in their hospitality, they did
not seal a friendship until gathered about the table, where the bounties of the home
were dispensed. They were not slow in their mental processes, were self-sacrificing
when love prompted, were devoted to old friends, old manners and customs, gloried
in their birthright— desired no better country. The mighty civil convulsion of 1861
brought about new conditions in the social as well as industrial life of the South.
Women who had been satisfied and happy under the old regime, were stirred to the
depths of their natures. They were not eager for change, but soon open to con-
viction; they showed a readiness to advance along the lines of the new development.
Awake now to affairs that affect the good of the race, they realized that a better way
to establish the home, as well as preserve it, is to rid the country of the great evils,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 807
dark and threatening, that confront it. Conservative in a high degree, they move
cautiously, though not timidly, to effect their purpose. Feeling in a higher degree
individual responsibility, more fully realizing that their co-operation is needed, they
respond most heartily and cheerfully. The time has passed to be satisfied to cultivate
the roses in their own gardens; they long to make all solitary places glad, all deserts
rejoice. They are eager to take part in all enterprises that have for their object the
social and economic interests, not only of this, but of all lands. With a keen desire
for the necessary equipment, they have prepared and are preparing themselves for
whatever will place them abreast of the times. They are not in any sense forsaking
the interests of the family life, the Christian home, the foundation stone in the cause of
freedom and justice. No, no; more than formerly they love it, and set its base broad
and strong in faith and hope. In Sunday-school work they are doing much. While
lawlessness of thought and lawlessness of life seem to invest the great social and
political questions of the day, they plant themselves upon the Word of God, where all
questions of humanity and civilization may be settled and give time and energy to
guiding the young along the paths of truth. Sabbath after Sabbath they gather the
young about them and time and voice are consecrated to instruction in the pure, the
simple word of revelation. In the county, state and national conventions they take
part with success. They are not occupied with the mistakes of Moses, nor possible
errors of dates and numbers in Genesis, nor of the probabilities as to two Isaiahs or
three Daniels, but in the Word which is supremely and authoritatively God's will con-
cerning the race of man. The Christian Association, Christian Endeavor, Epworth
League — all have now their personal, powerful help. The voice so long attuned solely
for the quiet fireside sends its sweet melody out to the great congregations, stirring
the hearts and wills of mighty gatherings. In the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union they are doing telling service. Nowhere on the continent has prohibition
succeeded as in the South, and the work is largely, if not solely, due to the
efforts of the women. If they persevere, continue true to their trust, in the near
future, I doubt not, that the destroyer, intemperance, will be thrust out from our
borders; The contest is not over, and the women are not planning to retire, because
success has crowned their efforts. The foe is cunning as well as malignant, and
hydra-headed, springs into vigorous life whenever vigilance is remitted or watchful-
ness abates. The enemy is most deadly among those not self-sustaining since their
enfranchisement, the ignorant and improvident. Among these a great work is being
done without respect of age, condition, or color. These are taught, strengthened,
guided and removed from temptation by banishing the death-dealing saloons from
their midst. There is much patient, persistent work along this line — much self-denial
and prayer as well as work. I know one who rides five miles through all kinds of
disagreeable weather to teach a school of negro children the necessity of total
abstinence. She is a woman of culture and wealth, and the six years she has weekly
given to this work is telling upon the settlement, as no whisky shops cast their dark
shadows in the village where her work is about done.
As regards the privilege of the ballot, the women of the South have not been very
pronounced. They are not sure they need it, do not know that they want it. Their
indecision does not grow out of the fact that they fear the stones or broken teeth
that Mr, Richard Harding Davis declares English women sometimes meet in the
exercise of the ballot. They are not sure such disorder would obtain were they in-
vested with the prerogatives their brethren have accorded to themselves. Nor are
our women afraid of passing through a crowd to deposit the ballot, nor do they think
leaving home for the time it would take would cause hurtful neglect of other duties,
nor do I think they regard the study of politics damaging to their morals, nor is it
because they fear differences of opinion may mar the family harmony, since difference
of opinion on other subjects has no such effect, nor do they hesitate because they are
not sure which political party should have their support. Not this, certainly — to a
man, every woman, white or black, would vote for the prohibition candidates. No;
808 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
none of these considerations weigh with them; but there is a shrinking from the re-
sponsibility of the ballot, perhaps because they are not fully satisfied that they would
gain all involved therein. Southern, women, as others, feel there is no limit to the
possibilities of mind for highest culture, if proper conditions and suitable opportunities
are guaranteed. They are more and more impressing the age as teachers, not only as
teachers in the ordinary class work, but as organizers and superintendents of a high
grade. As yet not many have entered the learned professions, possibly because their
brothers are crowding in, leaving fields and vineyards for desks and offices. If this
continues they may have to run the plantations to provide food and raiment. In
speculations, booms, large money ventures, they do not plunge, not because of cow-
ardice solely. They do not covet the bravery that risks their own property, the
property of others. They do not indulge in gambling enough to blunt their moral
sensibilities; a necessary training, I think, for a conscience that will spend other peo-
ple's money with no reasonable expectation of remuneration.
Perhaps in no direction have Southern women shown themselves more capable,
more noble, than in the work of missions — the work of evangelizing the world. Rec-
ognizing the fact that American civilization and Christian civilization should take the
world, they have projected and are carrying on the grandest enterprise of modern
times. Mission stations have been planted in many parts of the world where the Gos-
pel was not. As teachers they have gone out to occupy these stations, to deliver the
Divine message with cheerful devotion. Those who have planned and now sustain
the work, collect and disburse large sums of money with a cautious, discerning bus-
iness integrity truly admirable. Their labors are unremunerative, as far as salaries or
money go, and have been incessant and abundant. Those in the foreign field have
shown as intelligent, devoted service as those at home, and with far more self-denial
and suffering. From Georgia, in 1884, there went to China a woman who was born
for great achievements, which marked her home life. Called to the foreign work, she
took with her those rare qualities of mind and heart that distinguished her in her
native state, and soon proved her power to do and dare much for the needs of China.
Her first work, after mastering the intricate Chinese language, was to Romanize it, thus
facilitating its acquisition. She next planned a home and school building; the money,
$25,000, she secured by selling ten^doUar shares, which did not pay dividends in money —
no dividends at all except the satisfaction that accompanies a soul-saving investment.
From Kentucky went out a woman who founded and carried to successful issue a
boarding-school in Piricicao, Brazil, and another from the same blue-grass section
opened a school upon the Mexican border, which sent out branches into Mexico, and
now manages successfully five schools in five separate mission stations, with an exec-
utive skill truly remarkable. The leaders of the work at home — the women who have
made the basic work broad and strong which sustains the foreign, have shown keen,
discriminating foresight, a foresight that has saved the missions during this phenome-
nal, financial restriction. A crowning result of their perseverance, their persistency in
this enterprise stands on a high bluff overlooking the turbid Missouri in the suburbs
of Kansas City.
After some years of missionary labor, realizing that trained workers were as nec-
essary to success here as in secular pursuits, a training school was determined upon.
There was no money — no, not a cent at command when the women determined upon
the measure; but there was much prayer and strong hope A consecrated woman of
unusual business tact and fine culture at this juncture consented to work up the finan-
cial resources, and passed through the South soliciting aid. Born and reared amid
the wealth and refinement of Kentucky she laid aside the attractions of a beautiful
home and did the work, a distasteful work, with untiring zeal, and in less than four
years from its inception the cap-stone of the Scarritt Bible and Training School was
placed upon it, amid the silent, though heartfelt, rejoicings of more than fifty thousand
Southern women. A massive, well proportioned, elegant structure, it stands a hand-
some mormment of the business tact, economy, self-denial and devotion of women,
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 809
who persevered in the face of opposition and difficulty. That which her intelligence
and love plan, her hands rear, if possible. In scientific pursuits the women of the
South have not made striking progress. The need of university training, growing out
of the selfishness of the brothers or the conservatism of the daughters, has, to the pres-
ent, prevented. This need will be met. When our women of means devise sufficient
sums to meet the pecuniary demands of such institutions, or will endow chairs in those
universities that are beginning to unlock their doors to women, this hindrance will be
removed. Statistics are provokingly meager in endowments of schools for women in
the Southland — indeed for women in all lands. Few magnificent gifts of this kind to
educate women, even by women themselves, have been made, though they will leave
large sums oftentimes to open or aid male schools. Why, I know not. Possibly from
want of faith that their sisters would value such opportunities. May the day speedily
come when opportunities of the highest culture will multiply in the Southland. While
our women have left the bugs and bats, rocks, rockets and comets, and much more of
scientific research to their brothers, and have never startled the world along mathe-
matical highways, they are turning their attention to such matters, and in the near
future may rival Caroline Herschel or Mrs. Somerville. In imaginative literature there
is much promise of books that will live; in narration, exposition and description there
is a creditable showing. Macaulay said: " Poetry of the highest order may not be
looked for in nations whose culture has attained perfection." So we look for poets —
look confidently, too — since of late years from under our own magnolia came one of
the sweetest singers of the century, Sidney Lanier. In journalism the women of the
South are being heard and felt, and, indeed, they are making ready to enter any lines
of usefulness their preferences, necessities or tastes dictate. Time will not permit
illustrations, or I would name many women of the South who are recognized as lead-
ers — honored for their attainments, admired for their success. Let me name one, the
chairman of this Woman's Congress — born in Kentucky, reared there, educated there,
claimed by Arkansas as its ideal of beautiful, energetic womanhood — who well represents
the refinement, the intelligence and executive skill of our women. Do I claim too
much when I say the women of the South are the peers of the best, the truest, the
purest and richest womanhood of the world?
COOKING AS AN ART.
By MISS HELEN LOUISE JOHNSON.
Since the days when it was first discovered that heat could be applied to, and
improve the material Nature so bountifully provides for the use of man, much has
been written on the subject of cooking. Some of the brightest men and women of all
countries and generations have devoted their time and powers to this theme; yet today
it must be confessed that to a large majority it seems commonplace. The old poets
knew of its prolificness in sentiment, and inspired, no doubt, by some delicious con-
coction. Homer and Horace sang of its virtues and its pleasures. Even the Father of
History, Herodotus, deemed the easy grace and lively vigor of his style none too good
for such a subject, and he gave us many interesting historical facts concerning it. It
was after the Asiatic conquest that luxury in eating crept into Rome. Lucullus first
introduced habits of epicureanism after his return from Asia, and the gourmand Api-
cius, carved for him.self a deathless name. Athenaeus preserved for us in his writings
the name of perhaps the first author of a book on the subject of cooking, that of
Archestratus, who was called the guide of epicures. During and before the time of
Julius Caesar, cooking was actually regarded as one of the greatest of arts; birthdays,
funerals and victories being celebrated by great banquets, at which the chief cook, or
" chief, " was often crowned, was always an honored guest, and no limit was placed or
the fortune he could command. The most famous cooks were those of Sicily, and
they were generally men of noble birth. But in the conquests of England, in the
forming of a to-be mighty race, arts were pushed to the background. The science of
war and a defensive existence were the kindergarten, the school and the college. In
the days of Shakespeare cooking appeared only as a means to a desirable end — that of
satisfying hunger. And in the simple living of our Puritan forefathers luxurious cook-
ing had neither time nor place for its being. From the throes of gnawing hunger and
of bitter pain, from the heart-aches, homesick longings, fears by night and stern labors
by day were born those traits of American character which made Chicago possible,
and crowned Columbus' discovery with its triumph of today.
When Kate Douglas Wiggin was just beginning the study of childhood, she was
asked to give what she considered the qualifications of an ideal kindergartener, her
answer was as follows: The music of St. Cecilia, the art of Raphael, the dramatic
genius of Rachel, the administrative ability of Cromwell, the wisdom of Solomon, the
meekness of Moses and the patience of Job. And in her recent book on " Children's
Rights," she appends the following: " Twelve years' experience with children has not
lowered my ideals one whit, nor led me to deem superfluous any of these qualifications;
in fact, I should make the list a little longer were I to write it now, and should add,
perhaps, the prudence of Franklin, the inventive power of Edison and the talent for
improvisation of the early Troubadours."
If these are the qualifications necessary for the woman who is to have the training
of your child certain hours only during the day, what are those necessary for the
mother, out of whose life and love and daily example must grow that child of larger
growth, the man or woman? In no place in life is so needed the wisdom of all the
ancients as in that high calling — the home-keeper. Breadth of view, many interests,
any amount of true education will but serve to raise the standard of ideal womanhood,
Miss Helen Louise Johnson was born in Watertown, N. Y. Her parents were Mary Louise Clarke Johnson and Levi
Arthur Johnson. She was educated at the public schools of Wat«rtown, Wells College, Aurora, N. Y., and the Philadelphia
Cooking School. She has traveled in the United States and Canada. Her principal literary work is magazine work. She is
editor of " Table Talk," published in Philadelphia. Her profession is that of teacher of domestic science. Miss Johnson is
a member of the Presbyterian Chorch. Her postoffice address is care of Table Talk Publishing Co., Philadelphia, Pa.
810
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 811
and make of the hearth-stone, not a public campus, but a stepping-stone to Heaven.
The true girl, and especially the American one, if she speaks ten languages, and thinks
in four dead ones, if she paints like a Turner or sings like a nightingale, will, when
love comes, forget to be artist in remembering how to be woman.
At the present time the subject of cooking is demanding more attention than it
has ever before in the history of America. Hunger demands the daily use of the knife
and fork; custom and fashion decree certain kinds of living, and science enables us
more and more to perfect our modes of life. But until the generality of people will
consent to study the subject of cookery with unprejudiced minds, it must remain a
necessary evil to a few, a means to a happy end by many. Mrs. Henderson has most
truly written that the reason why cooking in America is as a rule so inferior is not
because American women are less able and apt than the women of France, but merely
because American women seem possessed with the idea that it is not the fashion to
know how to cook; that as an accomplishment the art of cooking is not as ornamental
as that of needlework or piano-playing. When cooking is recognized in its proper
place as a science as truly as chemistry, of which it has so much in itself, as an art
more far-reaching than many others in its results, and as delightful and becoming as
being able to decorate the family sideboard with hand-painted china, then American
women will not alone equal their French sisters, but should, by reason of their superior
advantages in education, surpass them in this as in other things. French women know
how to dress because they make a study of it. They are world renowned cooks because
they make a study of that also. " It takes more brains to prepare a good dinner than
it does to learn French and German or to write a good essay."
The domestic problem is as much the question of the day to the women of this
country as the labor question is to the man, and assuredly of as much moment. In the
Congress of Household Economics, held only a week ago in the Art Institute,
the much-disputed question of domestic service was viewed in all its phases. And the
answer to the problem, given in so many forms, could always be translated a higher, a
better education — the education of our girls — not alone the few who are finished in
fashionable boarding-schools, nor alone the many who crowd the colleges, although
this step must to a certain extent begin right there. But the hundreds of " home " girls
should be taught as well that cooking is an accomplishment every girl should pride
herself upon possessing. When the generality of women who have homes to keep
understand the art of cooking so that they are not dependent upon chef, caterer or
cook for daily bread; when Dame Fashion has decided that cooking is as indis-
pensable a part of the curriculum of study in all schools as arithmetic or literature;
when girls of all kinds and conditions of life realize that cooking is not lowering to
one's dignity, then, and not till then, will the Sphinx have to bestir herself to propound
another riddle to womankind. When our girls as well as our boys are taught that any
honest labor raises, not lowers, their dignity and standing; when they realize, as only
good sense or higher education can teach them, that people make their work honored
or degraded by their manner of performing it, not their occupation renders them so,
then girls, instead of rushing into mills and factories, will, having studied the art of
cooking, prefer the more quiet, dignified and elevating occupation of cooking. But it
must first be placed in its rightful position, and this reform be from the outside,
in; from the top, down. It must be made the fashion. " Every revolution was first a
thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurred to another man, it is
the key to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a
private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age." If this reform be needed,
it must come. If a remedy for a crying evil be found in a private opinion, let it be
known. Let it become the fashion.
When you consider the wonderful mechanism of the human body, its manifold
requirements, and how wonderfully Nature has ordained our being, we can well be
aghast at the accepted ignorance of the art of cooking as an art, and the accepted
ignorance of our cooks. What man would permit the walls of his house to be laid by
812 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
a tinsmith? What man would trust his life in a boat steered by a man who had been
but a fireman in the hold? Yet how many of our so-called cooks have any real knowl-
edge of the subject? How many, not alone of the cooks, but of the housekeepers,
know why we eat butter with bread, rice and potatoes with meat? Or why Nature
gives us fruit and green vegetables in the warm season, and not in the cold? Yet it is
this very knowledge that makes of cooking an art. Why should we not demand of the
person who has so much that concerns our well-being in her hands, that she have a
training for it as well as the man who holds our horses, or the woman who makes our
clothes ? Most assuredly we would not employ a physician who had only read Steele's
physiology and experimented on his own family. And it is safe to say that if we had
better educated cooks, we could not support well so many doctors. But we can not
demand, any more than teach, that we do not understand ourselves. "Perfection
consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily
well." Cooking is an ordinary, everyday occupation, but when rightly done is not
only easily performed, but becomes a delightful labor. Raise it to its true dignity.
Give it its rightful place among the arts. Women have been fighting many battles for
higher education in the last few years, and they have nearly gained the day. But
when their victorious banner be unfurled, let not one star be missing from its field of
glory — this star of household labor, which must include the training from childhood
to motherhood, from the mother to the child. " It is better to be ready, even if one
is not called for, than to be called for and found wanting."
GOD'S THOUGHT OF WOMAN.
MRS. ANNA RANKIN RIGGS.
By MRS. ANNA RANKIN RIGGS.
God's thought of woman is a subject that has engaged the attention of the prophet,
the theologian, the poet and philosopher all along the ages. Sometimes, unconsciously
to themselves, have they betrayed the fact that they
were not clear in their minds as to the Divine intent
concerning her mission apart from wifehood and
motherhood. All concede, sage and seer, that as a
class God's thought of her was that of queen of the
home, but not all the wise(?) think of her as equal
to the king, whose happiness and sorrow, prosperity
and adversity, she must share to the full half; not so
in her right to govern and direct in the affairs of that
home, not only in relation to its internal workings,
but in those things outside the home which make for
its weal or its woe. Her right to a voice in deciding
what institution of learning her son may choose for
his alma fnaterxn^iy or may not be questioned; but her
right to decide as to what will imperil his safety out-
side of the home is supposed to be a matter entirely
beyond her fight to consider. She may insist that the
ever-present saloon and its twin evil, the brothel,
threaten at every turn the moral integrity of her loved
subjects, who from the nature of things can not be
always within "woman's kingdom" (the home); they
must go beyond her declared jurisdiction. She may,
and does, in thousands of instances, see the son, husband and daughter exposed, directly
or indirectly, to influences having their origin in one or both of the above-named sinks
of iniquity; but she may not, as a rule, protest with the slightest degree of effective-
ness, because of the disabilities imposed upon her through man's thought of woman!
Not so God's thought of her, as we read His thought in history, both sacred and pro-
fane. The first reveals to us His exalted purpose concerning her when He said: " It is
not good that the man should be alone, I will make him an helpmeet for him, and they
shall be one flesh;" not two, distinct and separate in life, but one. Adam acknowl-
edged her power to lead, and did obeisance to her judgment when he followed her in
the great transgression. It is nowhere intimated that God does not expect her to
share man's responsibilities of church and state; on the contrary it is most clearly
implied, by numerous examples given in His Word, that God designed woman should
be man's helpmate in all the avenues of life. It can not be said of every man that he
is expected to assume or permitted to assume responsibilities, or give any attention
in particular to affairs which involve governmental questions and responsibilities, or
questions of state. The great mass go not beyond that which is needful to the welfare
of the body and interests most commonplace in their nature; still, man sits the soli-
tary in- families as regards rulership (in most instances, both of the family and in
church and state); he sits the solitary often when in that home treads with queenly
step a woman born to lead and think on matters that concern the welfare of the world,
whose gifts, if utilized in the direction which God designed, would be the balance-
wheel to that man, would supplement his power in a way that would broaden his
capacity and influence beyond his power to think or compute. As it is, he is as a
813
814 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
bird with one wing, never soaring to the diviner heights because he ignores the bal-
ancing power divinely provided.
Who can estimate today the potency for the uplifting of the race, the purifying of
nations, the better organization of state and municipal governments, the lifting up and
purifying of that typical paradise, the home where woman's full right to be a helpmate
for man is fully recognized. Some women are, through gifts, graces and providential
surroundings, eminently fitted to be helpmates, and were they recognized as such the
world would then have its full complement of power and would rapidly solve many of
the social questions and other problems which today vex and perplex the most astute
minds. God is waiting for the world to recognize His thought of woman before His
edict shall go forth that is to free the world of much of its thralldom, much of its sor-
row and mourning, before its moral mists shall be cleared away.
The world must learn to estimate His thought of her when He said: " Male and
female created He them, and blessed them." As the world is now, woman as a class
is largely cursed, not blessed. This is not God's plan, for wherever His love and guid-
ance holds sway she is blessed equally with man. God has no other thought for man-
kind than that they shall be blessed. What right have we to divorce from being
blessed man's helpmate, when God in His Word declares His purpose to bless her
equally when male and female created He them, and blessed them, in the day when
they were created.
He made clear His designs concerning her as a helpmate outside of the home
when he called Deborah to be a poet, a prophetess, a judge and a warrior. Where is
the man combining in his person and work all this versatility of talent and variety of
ofifice? It has been stated by high authority that Deborah was the only person in the
nation, amid its millions, that could save the people at that time. She could decide
the law cases of the people as judge, and sing the national songs as a poet, yet man in
general denies woman's right to express at the ballot-box that God-given power that
would, when added to that of good men, free our world from its greatest evil and the
home of its deadliest foe, viz., the liquor traflfic. What a shame that our race should
be thus bound, simply because we are not willing that God's thought of woman should
enter into the management of the world's affairs, and thus make it possible for His
Kingdom to come, and His love to " reign where'er the sun doth his successive journeys
run."
In the days of Josiah, the king, Huldah, the prophetess, who was also a wife,
received a message from the king, a deputation of the high priests and princes of the
nation, to inquire of the Lord concerning his people, she being the only one, judging
from the sacred narrative, who was qualified to expound the Word of the Lord, and
reveal the message of Jehovah to his people.
Queen Esther fasts and prays, lifts up her heart to God and her hand to the scep-
ter of the king; turns the sword of the foe to his own destruction and saves her peo-
ple, and puts the blush to King Saul, who failed to obey the command of God against
Amalek.
First in the " Fall," God's greatest thought of her seems to have been when he
made her the mother of redeemed humanity through the incarnate Son. The gentile
world was looking forward to this event when Virgil wrote to PoUio, the consul, con-
cerning his expectation of the golden age in connection with the birth of the long-
expected Messiah. It would seem as if this divinely exalted relation to humanity's
weal should forever settle the question of woman's right as an equal factor with man
in the development of the social, political and religious life of the human race.
In mythology woman is high in distinction, although Jupiter sits enthroned in the
heavens as supreme; by his side sits Juno, the mother of gods and goddesses. In
idolatrous worship woman has a most exalted position; hence, great was Diana of the
Ephesians.
In personifying the church prophecy makes mention of her in the most exalted
terms: "Rejoice greatly, O, Daughter of Zion! Shout, O, Daughter of Jerusalem!
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 815
Behold, thy king cometh unto thee." In his apocaliptic visions, John beholds the
church as a " woman clothed as the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of
twelve stars upon her head." (Rev, 12.) Surely, this is an indication of her mission
and power among the nations of the earth.
Her power is clearly set forth in history, sacred and profane. Scarce had the
head of Samson rested in the lap of Delilah when he was shorn of his strength and
delivered to his enemies.
Cleopatra wielded great power over Caesar, Antony, Egypt, Pompey and Rome.
In the patriotic and moral reforms of the age a most striking example is that of
Joan of Arc, whose power for conquest ceased not until she delivered France from the
English.
Many books might be written in defense of God's unmistakable thought and design
for woman as an equal factor with man in power and responsibility, varying but rarely
in methods of application, with that class of women whom God providentially endows,
and through this endowment calls to special work outside the home, just as he endows
a special class of men whose mission is to lead and direct through pulpit and press,
legislation and government, the advance of mankind.
Woman, whoever thou art, see to it that thou art true to thy call, be it in the
home, at the editor's desk, on the rostrum, in the sacred desk, for in the fullness of
time most surely coming He shall place thee beside thy brother in sharing with him
the untangling and settling of governmental affairs. Be faithful to thy trust; hide not
thy talent in a napkin, though it deprive thee of the queenship of home with its sub
jects so sweet and tender. God's thought of woman is superior to thine.
MRS. PALMER'S PORTRAIT.
ADDRESSES DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF ITS UNVEILING.
The Board of Lady Managers having ordered a portrait made of Mrs. Bertha
Honore Palmer, to be placed in the Assembly Hall of the Woman's Building, with
other distinguished women, and after the close of the Exposition to be permanently
installed in the Woman's Memorial Building, Mrs. James P. Eagle and Mrs. Mary S.
Lockwood were appointed a committee to see that the order was executed.
The following are the remarks made by Mrs. Lockwood, Mrs. Eagle and Mrs.
Wheeler at the unveiling of the portrait:
PRESENTATION OF PORTRAIT BY MRS. MARY S. LOCKWOOD.
When the question arose among the lady managers, " What can we do that will
best commemorate the work of women in the Exposition?" this happy thought
came to us: We have in our midst the foremost artist of the age, Mr. Anders L. Zorn,
who could put upon canvas the embodiment of that genius that has led us for three
years over mountains of difficulty, through valleys of humiliation, to the crowning
peaks of victory, listening to no such word as " fail," always helpful in voice and
heart, ever ready to encourage in our days of discouragement, and always just in her
verdict of " Well done! "
In the after-time, when our names have been forgotten, those who will come after
us will look upon the portrait we now present to you, and see not only a likeness of
our president, but the attributes which surrounded her, that helped us to help the
women of this nineteenth century.
We thank her for the time and opportunity she has given us to accomplish our
wishes. We also thank the artist for what he has done to commemorate the work,
the life, the likeness of our president of the Board of Lady Managers of the World's
Columbian Exposition, Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer.
UNVEILING OF THE PORTRAIT BY MRS. JAMES P. EAGLE.
The most important work of the Board of Lady Managers is now drawing to a
close. Some have called this last day a funeral day, since such a sense of sadness
must steal into each heart when we think of the separations, and of our beautiful
Woman's Building being robbed of its wealth of paintings, statuary, lace, wood carv-
ing, libraries, statistics, all these and more that have been exhibited to the credit,
honor and advancement of the women of every land.
We have not claimed perfection in any department of our work. We have not
reached our ideals. We very seldom do in any undertaking; but the visible work of
the board has overstepped the expectations of the most enthusiastic and friendly;
while the unseen and incomputable has touched the hand of woman in every nation
to lead her to greener pastures and richer fields. The seed-time is just over. A little
patient resting and waiting, then comes the ripened harvest.
Here have communed together women from every state and almost every
nation. More than twenty nations have spoken from this platform for the Committee
on Congresses, and almost every state has sent a representative. Other committees
have been instrumental in bringing together many people from many lands.
As a member of the Board of Lady Managers I hope I may be excused for ref-
erence to questions so nearly personal. There are one hundred and fifteen members
of that body, and I believe there never was such singleness of purpose in a body so
816
PORTRAIT OF MRS. POTTER PALMER.
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 817
large to do the best things in the best way. There has been the greatest harmony of
action, the majorities on almost every question being so large and so pronounced that
very seldom has the chair been " in doubt " as to the result. On very few vital ques-
tions has there been a close vote. You will be charitable enough to admit that this
first national board of women has existed under the searchlight of criticism. The
commission owes us a vote of thanks for claiming public attention, when, except that
a woman's board was more novel, that body could have furnished much more sensa-
tional reading.
When I compare the Board of Lady Managers with the great number of organ-
ized bodies with which I have been familiar I am proud of the board. As individuals,
or as an organized body, it does not suffer by comparison. When I compare its
officers with the officers of other bodies we have the advantage; but when I compare
its president with the presidents of any and all organizations, the gold medals are our
own, with the chromos added.
We covet not titles of rank in this land of ours, where every woman may be a
queen, and when the women of America choose a leader and representative she is not
only a queen, but queenly. This day of sorrow we would turn to joy, and make it our
coronation day. If we can not crown Our Queen we will present to you Our Queen,
already crowned. [The veil is withdrawn from the portrait.]
(52)
CONGRATULATION ON THE POSSESSION OF MRS. PALMER'S
PORTRAIT.
By MRS. CANDACE WHEELER.
t
Mrs. President and Ladies of the National Board: I am glad to have had some-
one speak of this new possession of women. Who knows just how rare a possession
it is? We all know when a picture pleases us, and a few know why, but it is very few
who know whether it is intrinsically good, and why it is so. Miss Hallowell does,
and, consequently, she is a dread or a joy to painters. She is like one of those men
who are employed by great importers, and whom they call " tea tasters," and to whom
they pay fabulous salaries. Of course, everybody drinks tea, and everybody knows
when they like it; but only one in ten thousand or so can tell, when they hold a drop
of tea on their tongue, exactly how much it is worth a pound. The tea taster by some
subtle divination connected with that one drop can tell just where the tea was grown,
from what stock, and from what soil. He can almost tell the color of the man who
tended it, and, certainly, he can tell what proportion of rain fell and sun shone and
airs blew around it as it grew, and what all these conditions make it worth. That is
exactly what Miss Hallowell can do for pictures. She is an " art taster." She can
tell what the artist knows by what he paints — what he holds back as well as what he
puts into it; and it is often what the artist holds back — what he knows of character
and people by intuition, that makes his work valuable. Sir Joshua Reynolds said that
a man could not put more into his picture than he had in his head, and that is true, but
if he knows more than he has put into the picture, certainly it is all the better for it.
Now, when Miss Hallowell looks at a picture, she sees exactly how much the artist
knows, and that is why some artists are afraid of her, for we do not all like to have
our brains gauged. What she has said about this portrait is as true as truth — as true
as knowledge. The success of a picture, the fact that it is, or is not, a great work
does not depend alone upon the method of the painting or even the capacity of the
painter. It depends upon the fact of whether or not it makes us feel, of whether it
can strike a spark from the electric girdle which encircles the body of collective
humanity, the subtle, unnamed element which makes feeling rise to the eyes and the
throat and suddenly suffuses us with warmth and tenderness. If a picture can do this
it is great, even if it flies in the face of all precedent painting. We all know there are
emotions which compel response, certain thoughts and moods in their expression upon
the faces of friends or even of strangers can call up exactly the same thought, the same
mood in us. And here comes in the miracle of the painter — that he can sometimes
paint that thought, and make it so alive that it can compel the answering thought m
us. We respond to the picture which is the work of man as we respond to the emo-
tion which is a part of nature.
I think we all know how we feel when we sit in front of Mrs. Palmer as an audi-
ence, and she, standing on the platform, prefaces any uttered word with a smile. It is
really a thought which rises to her face and greets the audience, and every face in the
house responds. I have watched this wordless thought make its greeting and receive
its instantaneous response many times, but I never expected to see it painted, and
painted in such a manner that it will go on making its still friendliness touch the heart
of everyone who sees it, long after we, her first audience, have grown familiar with the
language of Paradise.
This picture which is here unveiled is not simply a portrait of a woman to whom
818
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 819
we are all bound by ties of love and loyalty, and a picture which has the power of
evoking feeling. It is more than this — it is the materialization of the dignity of a great
office — the first world office made and bestowed by women.
Ladies of the National Board, at the close of your appointed efforts, I congratu-
late you upon the selection of a president who has justified your hopes and made a
reality of your dreams, and upon the choice of a painter who has made the dignity
you created a perpetual one.
CLOSING ADDRESS.
By MRS. BERTHA HONORE PALMER,
Mingled with our regret at seeing this great Exposition and ihis unprecedented
opportunity for women drawing to a close, is a feeling of satisfaction that the aims
proposed to be reached by the Board of Lady Managers have been carried to a suc-
cessful conclusion.
Not only have the material exhibits drawn attention to the skill of women and
shown the degree of development which has been reached by them, but their interests,
their capabilities, their needs and their hopes have been brought before the public
and thoroughly discussed from every point of view.
In the Exposition at large, but particularly in the Woman's Building, her attainments
have been spread before the public; successes in unexpected directions, which had
hitherto escaped notice, have been made known to the world, the building itself being
one of her notable achievements in an altogether unaccustomed field.
It has been the means of opening new and congenial lines of work, and as woman
is the acknowledged home-maker, to her hands will be entrusted more largely than
heretofore not only the atmosphere and the influence of the home, but also its place,
construction, sanitary arrangements, decorations, furnishing and all practical features.
The general appreciation and commendation of the Woman's Building have greatly
hastened this result, and the exhibits contained within it of designs by women for
the weaving of carpets and textiles, for wall paper and hangings, as well as archi-
tectural plans for the construction of houses, show that they are already alert and
equipped to take possession of this newly acquired territory.
The interest felt in the Woman's Building and the sentiment it expresses was
made manifest by its great popularity, it having been crowded from the beginning to
the end of the Exposition. In days when visitors were few and exhibitors in other
buildings were forced to provide bands of music, scatter special advertisements and use
ingenious devices to attract attention, the Woman's Building was crowded. Early in
the summer letters came from our committee in France, saying that they understood
there were ten persons who saw their exhibit in the Woman's Building to one
that saw it in the Manufactures Building. The order to close the building at six in
the evening, which was issued by the director-general some two months since, was
thought to be a great hardship by visitors, who plead so earnestly for longer hours that
director-general consented to rescind his order.
Perhaps the most remarkable result obtained by the efforts of the Board of Lady
Mrs. Bertha Honor6 Palmer was born in Louisville, Ky. Her father is of French descent. Her mother of an aristo-
cratic Southern family. Her early education was received in Louisville, but later in a convent in Baltimore, Md. She was
married in 1871 to Mr. Potter Palmer, a wealthy and representative citizen of Chicago; she has since resided in that city. To the
poor she has always been a stanch friend, giving generously to public funds and more freely to private charities, and be it
said to her glory that all this work has not been neglected during these years of public life. She has traveled extensively
and has wide acquaintance with wise and fashionable people, making her a valuable leader for the Board of Lady Managers.
Her numerous addresses delivered in their interests have been read and admired by thousands, but the peculiar charm of her
beautiful face and bell-like voice can never be forgotten by those who were fortunate enough to hear her speak. She was
the chosen President of the Board of Lady Managers, and to her office she gave time, persistent energy, executive ability and
wise leadership, to which in large measure is due the success of the women's exhibit, which excelled the fondest hopes
of its most sanguine supporters. Few women and not many men have become so widely known and universally admired as
Mrs. Palmer. All nations have received and delighted to honor her, giving aid in securing exhibits, and statistics which
will prove of great value in future; through her womanly tact and irresistible influence she secured favorable legislation
without which the Exposition could not have reached its marvelous success. In all this work she has had the hearty support
of Mr. Potter Palmer, who has sealed his approval and won for himself a place in the hearts of the people by donating
$200,000 toward a permanent building for the exliibition of woman's work. Mrs. Palmer's postoffice address is 100 Lake
Shore Drive, Chicago, 111.
820
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 821
Managers was the unprecedented official co-operation secured from women of every
country and of every race; from women who are interested in charitable, educational,
religious and ethical and reform work, as well as those desiring to make practical
exhibits of their skill in industrial arts.
Letters, documents and circulars were sent out, explaining the character and
scope of the Exposition, the classes of objects and the degree of excellence which
we wished to secure from exhibitors. Having issued these invitations, the fact
that we had independent control of the space in the Woman's Building became a
great factor in carrying out our plans. We were able to include exhibits from the
women of many countries, who would not otherwise have possessed influence to
secure space. None of the ladies appealed to had a commercial interest in send-
ing exhibits to the Exposition. The unusual nature of the plans which were pre-
sented were attractive enough to gain their attention and secure their adherence, and
our foreign committees, after being organized under the most distinguished leadership,
set themselves diligently to work, at great cost of time, effort and money, to send us
such exhibits as would illustrate what was being done by the women of their respective
countries. The exhibits sent were not, perhaps, in every case of the high grade we
desired to maintain, but the actual truth of the situation was represented by each, and
there was vast significance in the fact that these collections were forwarded to us by
the first committees of women ever appointed by their respective governments, and in
many cases represented the first independent steps ever taken by women in certain
countries. Before they were trained to act for themselves, perhaps, before they even
sympathized with the thought of so doing, we thus secured a precedent for them which
will be of incalculable value hereafter, and will pave the way for great changes of
public sentiment and of custom.
The exhibits proved to be of such different grades and classes that discrimination
was found to be impossible and unjust. We therefore decided not to exercise the
right of rejection which we had reserved to ourselves, but that everything coming to us
from foreign countries should, by courtesy, be received and installed just as arranged
and forwarded to us by those committees. Among the exhibits secured, in addition
to many rare and unexpected articles, were the most marvelous loan collections of
laces and embroideries ever brought together.
No attempt has been made to demonstrate any theory, or to realize Utopian ideals
which we would wish to see prevail. Our only desire has been to present the actual
conditions existing, which will give us a basis to build upon for future improvement.
This conservative course may have caused us to be censured by many holders of the
two opposite extremes of opmion. Many " advanced " women have become impatient
when contemplating the evidences of infinite detail and elaborations shown in the
marvelous webs and stitchery of other days; they resent the confining and infinites-
imally painstaking drudgery of arts which formerly were the only outlet among women
for originality of taste and the desire to create beauty. On the other hand are those
who disapprove heartily what has been accomplished by the adventurous spirits who
lead in invention, manufactures, literary and professional pursuits, etc. These pes-
simistic souls see with dismay the walls of the old " sphere " being battered down;
walls within which women have been held for centuries willing prisoners; the light of a
new day and a new common sense shining upon the inmates, revealing their antiquated
and ignorant helplessness and their incapacity to meet the many demands pressing
upon them from the new needs of today.
It is evident that the tendency of modern life is to remove women more and more
from the seclusion of the home. The theory that the following of industrial and com-
mercial pursuits may make her less domestic, lessen the charm of family life and the
home atmosphere, may have truth for its foundation.
If women be withdrawn largely from the home and placed in the steady conflict
of life, a great source of inspiration will be lost to her, her ideals may be lowered, her
perceptions become dulled, and she may cease to be the great conservative and regen-
822 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
erative agency which has helped to hold the world to high standards. Undoubtedly,
the home and the privacy of domestic life is the chosen sphere of every woman.
There is only one here and there who would prefer any other career than that of the
happy wife and mother, but alas for my sex, there is, unfortunately, not a home for
each woman to preside over; most men are unable to maintain one. That is where
the great difficulty occurs, and not in the objection of women to occupying them. If
we consider it an unwritten law that it is the duty of the husband and father to main-
tain his wife and children, then we must face the fact that the majority of men
must be failures, for they are certainly today unable to accomplish this result with any
comfort to themselves or families.
I do not speak. of the comparatively few men who are conspicuous exceptions to
this statement, but of the rank and file, the unnoticed men, men occupying small
clerkships, the second and lower grades of mechanics, factory operatives, etc., whose
labor must generally be suppllemented by that of their wives, and too often that of
their children, to maintain their homes.
We have heard for years of the incompetent wife and mother, but it occurs to me
that we have heard singularly little of the incompetent husband and father. It would
seem to be the fact that comparatively few marriages could occur- if women were not
able to assist in maintaining the home, and we constantly see girls, trained to self-
support, marry and continue their avocations as a matter of course. The filling up of
the factories, shops, schools, offices, and every avenue of fairly paid employment with
women, does not, therefore, result from a revolution on their part against their role as
wives and mothers. Those who theorize about a possible changed relation between
the sexes because of the so-called emancipation of women, and fear that the world
will no longer be replenished and that the peoples will iade away from the earth,
have only superficially studied or understood the facts under their eyes. The fact
that women are self-supporting, or educated, does not greatly change the result of
the old, old love story, and the man who has objected to the competition of women
in the industries, seems to accept the situation philosophically when the time arrives
for his own marriage. Women prove to be no less sweet because they are strong, no
less companionable because their opinions are based upon knowledge rather than
prejudice, no less attractive and fascinating because they have given up superficial
accomplishments for the practical knowledge that makes them true helpmates
and burden-sharers. There is no science .which teaches them that human love and
helpfulness are not the highest ideals, and lead to the best service that can be ren-
dered to humanity.
Should men discover at any time in the future that they are capable of assuming
the entire maintenance of the home, women can undoubtedly be persuaded to give up
the tedious and wearing grind of the factory, the shop and the office, to turn to higher
service. Until that fortunate moment arrives the wise course would seem to be the
acceptance of facts as they exist. We are not able to see how far-reaching may be
the result of this period of change and experiment. We feel urgently impelled to
follow the highest law known to us, that of evolution and progress. We must abandon
ourselves blindly to the instinct which teaches us that individuals have the right to
the fullest development of their faculties, and the exercise of their highest attributes.
We reassure ourselves with the thought that there can certainly be no great harm in
doubling the intelligence and the mental and moral forces of the community.
It would seem that the only way to assist in the rapid solution of the problem is
to put within the reach of women technical training and the education which is nec-
essary to promote their ends, and to hope that the unreasonable conditions which
force them to work, yet condemn them for doing so, and withhold from them proper
training as well as just compensation for their labor, may be swept away. We hope
that no woman may henceforth be forced to conceal her sex in order to obtain justice
for her work.
We expect to demonstrate by means of the statistics which we are now collecting
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN. 823
that the larger proportion of women who are forced from their homes into the industries
of the world are married women or widows, working to help maintain their homes and
children. The only figures which show with certainty the proportion of married to
unmarried women, are those sent us from the French banks and railways, which are
under the control of the government. From them we learn that in the railway Com-
pagnie d'Orleans there are employed 4,154 married women and 220 single women;
in the Compagnie de I'Ouest there are employed 3,391 married women and 214 single
women; in the Compagnie du Midi there are employed 2,700 married women and 127
single women; in the Compagnie du Nord there are employed 2,536 married women
and 254 single women; in the Chemin de Fer de I'Etat are employed 2,024 married
women and 88 single women.
The results attained from the statistical investigations undertaken by the Board
of Lady Managers are so interesting in their nature, that the different government
agencies, which have been making original investigations for us, and tabulating the
results, are themselves surprised by the facts elicited, and they willingly give us the
credit for having organized new and important lines of statistical investigations which
will be immediately incorporated in the bureaus of their respective governments.
The work of the Board of Lady Managers in these new and unexpected directions
has been a constant source of pleasure and inspiration. The material exhibits in
the Woman's Building have become mere incidents, and do not at all represent the
great thought which lie behind them. That we have been successful in creating an
organization throughout theworld,and in interesting the governments of the world in
the condition and position of their women, is of incalculable benefit. A community of
interests has been created among women in every part of the world, such as has never
heretofore existed, and women delegated by their respective governments have visited
the fair, and carefully studied not only our country and our customs, but those of
every other part of the world, as evidenced by their exhibits and by their peoples who
have come to the Exposition in great numbers. The attention of all has been drawn
to the Woman's Building, to the purposes for which it was erected, to the wonderful
co-operation secured, and as a result the claims of the weaker sex have been treated
with more respectful consideration than has ever before been accorded them. In the
great commingling of races and interests ideas have been rapidly diffused, and many
supposedly fixed conditions have been modified or changed. The board is to be con-
gratulated upon the results achieved.
I can say freely for myself, and I think most of the members of the board can
say with me, that our three years of work together have been years of charming and
profitable intercourse and agreeable associations. Many firm friendships have been
formed which are for life. I. personally, have seen only the sweet side of eve.ry nature,
and my associates have treated me with too much kindness, with absolute self-forget-
fulness and a devotion that was chivalric in its nature. Our board, on all questions of
importance, as is shown by our records, stands practically as a unit, and has always
done so. I feel sure that there has rarely been such a number of co-workers brought
together from widely varying surroundings and influences who have worked together
as harmoniously as have our members, and that all rumors to the contrary are figments
of the imagination, although we have been pained by reading in the papers distorted
and unrecognizable rumors of discord and confusion among our members.
The closing of this building, which has been the main field of our labors, from
which, during the summer, such a helpful influence has constantly gone forth, which
has been the scene of so many gatherings, both grave and gay, and which has always
been a center of interest and of hospitality for women, can but fill us with sadness.
Here we have welcomed and listened to the great thinkers of our own and other
countries, and to musicians from every clime; here we have welcomed guests both
distinguished and humble, among the most pleasant gatherings being the popular
Saturday afternoon receptions, when all were made welcome and we were overwhelmed
by discovering the number of our friends, and the warmth of their kindly feeling. It
824 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
was the proudest moment of my life when I was told last Saturday, with a heartfelt
hand-shake, and with accents of deepest sincerity, by one of our visitors, that seeing
me had given her more pleasure than anything at the fair, except the Ferris wheel.
The ties which have bound us together have been tightly drawn during these six
months now past, and we have felt constantly sustained by the earnestness and
enthusiasm manifested; and now, when the time has come to leave it, and we look at
the fair proportions and stately interior of these halls and of the building we have so
long occupied, the knowledge that they are soon to be handed over to destruction
cruelly grieves us.
When our palace in the White City shall have vanished like a dream, when grass
and flowers cover the spot where it now stands, may its memory and influence still
remain as a benediction to those who have wrought within its walls.
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