THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.

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•and at Louisville the Jennie Casseday Infirmary stands a monument to her labors. “ They also serve who only stand and wait.” She worked while she waited.

Mrs. John M. Clay, daughter-in-law ot Henry Clay, was left a widow two years ago with the broad acres of Ashland on her hands, and the green pastures of blooded horses as a heritage. Diligently the turf-men put their heads together and picked out the sires and dams and foals they meant to buy at the coming sale. But Mrs. Clay held her farm intact and manages it herself. She is besides a writer of ability, not only of novels, but gets out the annual pedigree catalogue of stock with the ■accuracy of a man and the dainty binding of a woman’s artistic taste.

Mrs. Cornelia Bush was our first woman State Librarian, and a woman has held the office ever since. Miss Belle Bennett represents her family in this generation by her work for church and school extension. She has traveled hundreds of miles and has collected many thousands of dollars. The Scarrett memorial at Kansas City, and the march of religion and education in the mountains of Kentucky, bear testimony to her labors and those of her deceased sister. Miss Laura White, of Ashland, Ky., and Miss Joe Carter, of the Kentucky parlor in your Woman’s Building, have taken studies in architecture. Miss Enid Yandell is a sculptor, and our school of wood­carving is crowded with proficients. Mrs. Mary Cecil Cantrill, Kentucky’s World’s Eair commissioner, was born to the self-indulgence of wealth, yet she has long sought the active walk of intellectual pre-eminence. Miss Jean W. Faulkner, another com­missioner, a beautiful, bright girl, is descended from a heroic ancestry. Her grand­mother, Mrs. Jane Kavanaugh Walker, is now a hale, active woman of four-score years, all her life remarkable for advanced ideas and strong will. In the bringing up of her large family, in church, and throughout her region, she wields authority and influence. First the wife of Gen. John Faulkner, the sturdy blood of the two pioneers flows in Miss Faulkner’s veins. She carries the reflection of the heroism which dis­tinguished her grandfather on the battle-field, and which nerved him to sit calmly down and have an arm amputated without a groan before the day of anaesthetics. Her father was a gallant officer in the late war, and through her mother she inherits the fluent tongue of the Joshua Bell family. The aged grandmother, Mrs. Walker, claims also as her grandchild the Estelle Walker just referred to as the winner in Calculus; and her descendants comprise a veritable rosebud garden of girls who are working their way as teachers in the schools. Miss Ida Symmes and Mrs. Sue Phillips Brown, two more of our commissioners at the Columbian Fair, have worthily shown their claim to confidence and enterprise. Miss Mattie Lee Todd, while yet a young and handsome girl, was appointed to the position of postmaster in her native town, and shouldering the burden of a family debt, as well as the arduous duties of her office, has discharged all obligations and stands today triumphant at her post. Mary Anderson raised the drama to a plane of personal purity hitherto denied by critics to women actors. Her mighty genius attuned the gamut of fiery human emo­tions, yet “ Our Mary” came forth unscathed. Mrs. Milton Barlow has invented some clever cooking utensils, and her daughter, Miss Florence Barlow, is not only a self- supporting artist, but is the first Kentucky woman to venture into the real estate busi­ness. I have found it convenient thus far to pursue the line of woman’s development by connecting the past with the present by tracing ancestral characteristics through generations of improved conditions on to pursuits both within the gates and without the gates of woman. But there is an era to which I must go back. I would I might faithfully portray life in Kentucky during the long interval between that brave girl’s petition for enlightenment and the possibilities of the present. We did not call our farms plantations. Broad acres stretched on every side and negroes tilled the soil. Mansions of brick and stone loomed up, guarded and tended by well trained serving men and women of the antebellum time. Children clung to their black mammies with a love that has no exact parallel in history; and here let me say that many a white nursling owes health, happiness and fine disposition to the good influence of black mammy. The work of the colored woman* was not alone the drudgery of the house.