874
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 fillup 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, w'hen 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 w 7 as 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.