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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

tering and we must get out of the way, the stone still standing, before the full dawn of the twentieth century is here. Ever since woman began to think for herself, ever since woman took life in her own hands, the dawning of a great light has flooded this world. We are the mothers of men. Show me the mothers of a country and I will tell you of its sons.

The destiny of the world today lies in the hearts and brains of its women. This world can not travel upward faster than the feet of its women are climbing the paths of progress. Put us back if possible, veil us in harems, take from us all knowledge, make us beasts of burden, teach us we have no souls or brains, and this earth goes back to the Dark Ages. The nineteenth century is closing over a world arising from bondage. It is the sublimest closing of any century the world has ever beheld. The nations of the earth have seen and are still looking at that luminous writing in the heavens, “ the truth shall make you free,” and for the first time are gathering to them­selves the true significance of liberty. The freedom that endures comes not with the clash of arms and din of battles. The victory that is lasting is not gained on bloody battle-fields or by the selfish arbitration of scheming men. Blood and battles may be a means to an end, but the liberty of the sons of God must be in the soul$ of men, must be the very blood of that soul’s life, and thus far in the history of this world it has never been fully known. The dying light of the nineteenth century beholds it in the dawning rays of the twentieth, because the mothers of men are, for the first time, putting on the beautiful garments of liberty. We need, and the world needs, our political freedom. Even our social and religious liberty is worthless without political liberty. Let us this morning dedicate ourselves anew to our labor for woman, and go forth with braver souls, cleaner brains and more resolute purpose to our work for these years.

I would have the women of our country so aroused to the greatness of the work and the few years that are left us in this century; so filled with zeal, determination and enthusiasm that the Congress of the United States and our legislatures may know and understand that our freedom must be fully granted to us by 1900, so that the twentieth century shall dawn on a “ government of the people, for the people and by the peo­ple.” Now it is a government of the men, for the men, and by the men. God bless the men.

It is the evening of the nineteenth century, but its twilight is clearer than its morning. I look back and I see each year improvement and advancement. I see woman gathering up her soul and personality and claiming them as her own against all odds and the world. I see her now asking that that personality be felt in her nation. I see old prejudices giving way. All reforms for the elevation of humanity have the great woman heart in them. Have I been too radical? Would you have me more conservative? What is conservatism? It is the dying faith of a closing century. What is fanaticism? It is the dawning light of a new era. Yes, my friends, a new era for the world will dawn with the twentieth century. I look forward to that time with beating heart and bated breath. I lean forward to it with an impatient eagerness. I catch the first faint rays of that beautiful morning. In the East the star has appeared and soon the full dawn of the twentieth century will be upon us. I see a race of men, strong, brave and true, because the mothers of men are free, and because they gave to their sons the pure blood of liberty.

Hail, then, twentieth century, and hasten on thy coming! Go to thy grave, oh, nineteenth century! A century that will stand out for all time as an epoch that buried slavery and ushered in liberty. A century that had a Lincoln who wrote his name among the stars as a lover of the free. A century that saw enfranchised the colored race and woman. A century that had its peerless Wendell Phillips, its dauntless William Lloyd Garrison, its indomitable Sumner and its irrepressible Seward. A century that had its brilliant Chase, its eloquent Frederick Douglass, its commanding and uncon­querable Gerrit Smith and its glorious old John Brown. A century that has known its Greeley, its Garfield and its Grant. A century that has had its great statesmen,