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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
of gold and silver, fields and pastures wide and warm, silent cities where two armies sleep, and, more than all, hosts of imperial living men and women, sons and daughters of the King. Above the tumult of the tempest, the storm of battle, the noisy clamor of creeds, we hear them today pleading, not so much “ to tunnel the mountain or ride the sea,” but to fill this fair earth with benedictions.
The Neibelungen hoard, the source of Teutonic woes, lies drowned in the deep Rhine until the Judgment Day. It was a curse. Our gold, obedient to the heavenly vision, builds a world of grand proportion, filled with richer music than that of cathedral psalm. So, as we listen, the electric flash reveals a vision, and we look out to see outlined against the Exposition sky the gracious figure of Columbia, equally enthroned on her right her eldest daughter Jamestown, robed in pensive gray, the light of hope on her brow, the sweet serenity of faith in her eye. On the left the second sister, Plymouth, robed in tender blue, high-born resolve on her fine face and in her eye the courage that meets death with a smile for love or duty’s sake. Blue and gray! forever one as in the sunset sky. The voice we hear is strong and tender. What does she say, this fair Columbian maiden to her New England sister? Listen !
“Unfashioned was the earth,
The stars unset,
Ungiven was the air,
The sea not yet,
When in God’s purposes One small decree Fastened eternally My soul to thee.”