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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 vin­dicate her worthiness. Before that bar which at one time recognized her individual­ism, 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 her­self must create a demand for her talents, by a broader education, by giving less atten­tion to petty details of life and more attention to those of vital importance, by out­growing 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 liveli­hood 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, there­fore, 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 him­self. 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 cus­toms 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 free­dom 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.