THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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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; measure, 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.