THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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man is a person, she had right and duty to interpret her own nature and grow according to 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 comfort. 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 helping 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 Shakespeare, 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 indignation 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, these 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 greathearted 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.