THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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A kindergarten is also sustained in each of these schools, and private kindergar­tens 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 build­ings which are a credit to the enterprise of her citizens. Ellensburgh has, in connec­tion 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 parliament­ary 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 every­thing 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,