THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

37

She is much too free, in her precincts and polls,

For safety to Liberty’s cause,

When foreigners all are granted a vote Before they know aught of her laws.

Not faiths, nor creeds, are our greatest needs,

Which ofttimes engender a strife;

But the reaching out of the helping hand To the Jean Valjeans of life.

Earth’s pitiful, sad and dejected ones Call daily to us for our care,

The lowly and fallen need lifting up,

True charity’s deed is so rare.

SEVENTH PERIOD.

Today is a time to be proud of, my friends,

For ’tis filled with promises rare,

In it are glimpses of coming joys,

In them may we all have a share.

Grand women are found now in high honored seats,

In the home, in the pulpit, the bar,

In the doctor’s gig—what a magical change Since that school-door went slightly ajar?

Columbia’s women are found at the front,

Where the youth of our nation are taught,

In the church, on the press, in the temperance cause,

Or with Charity’s blessings fraught.

As America honors her natal time,

Of her four hundred years today,.

Her women stand side by side with her men In her nationalistic display.

As Columbia’s women we’ve stretched out kindly hands To our sisters from over the main;

We have welcomed them all, from court or from cot,

Or from ancient Palace of Spain.

And we’ve room for still more on our prairies so broad, Come from South land, and North Sea so cold! From mountain and plain and island, to greet Miss Columbia! four hundred years old.

Many names are enrolled this Columbian time In our national record book,

But three stand forth with electric light,—

Mesdames Palmer, Henrotin and Cooke.

They stood at the helm, amid all the storms,

’Till “our ship” at its anchorage lay—

Let Columbia’s women give them homage due In this“ Woman’s Building” today.

And others stand in a golden rank;

We would take you all by the hand,

But to number in name—’twere as easy to count The grains of the sea-beach strand.