702

THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

gallery containing the best foreign models for simple objects and a book in which all could inscribe their names and the number of the object they wished to copy. We had a band, a speech from the senator of the district, a distribution of prizes, when each worthy peasant, man or woman, was called by name and the class of his production and reason of his choice announced. He answered and mounted the old stone steps of the castle terrace with a proud heart to receive his two or three dollars award; or the prizes were graded according to the importance of the exhibit, and the man whose farm was in the best agricultural and economic condition received decidedly more than the man who had grown an exceptionally fine cabbage.

Last evening I received a letter announcing that my lace school had just been awarded the gold medal at the National Italian Exhibition of agricultural industries at Cesena.

And whence this amelioration? First, because the seeing what others could do inspired a healthy emulation and a desire to outstrip those of the neighboring villages in the percentage of prizes carried off by the home community. Secondly, because we had judiciously used it to acquaint the peasants with fresh means of emolument. Among others we had taught six girls in a fortnight how to make a simple bobbin lace; and as they w r orked merrily before their astonished neighbors who stood densely packed before them, they inspired all the girls with a desire to learn the dainty lace art and the children asked us to open schools. When the fathers saw that the girls were wisely directed and never kept from doing their field work, from caring for and leading the cattle to pasture, or from washing with their mothers at the brook, they willingly sent them to the school. When they saw that their little maids became neat, respectful, contented, and brought home pretty stories to enliven the evenings in the stable and the bright silver coins to swell the family hoard —then the whole country side was converted. For the cheapness of the cotton goods has discouraged the women from weaving and they waste their leisure hours in crocheting and tatting and gossip.

The priests and the heads of the households begin to appreciate that while it in no way interferes with their usual laborious tasks, it adds to the financial resources of the family.

Among our lacemakers we have hunched-backs and lame and deformed bodies of every kind, and some that have spent thirty years on rude beds of pain. The lace children, like the sunbeams, have penetrated everywhere and taught them the easy twists and delicate turns by which their unlovely fingers could evolve the soft white lace. Think of the ignorant mind, as dark, as squalid, as miserable as the roof chamber to which this useless member of a busy household was banished, where it was left alone to solitary repinings, filled suddenly with the inspiring thought that in its decrepitude it could earn as much and be as useful to the family as the blooming maidens out in the fields. Think of the room now filled with the pleasant clatter of the bobbins, the pleasant chatter of the children who have come to work beside their aunty and tell her what their dear maestra said of her work when they carried it in on last pay-day. Watch the women and children trudging through ice and snow for many a weary mile to learn the new art. See them yielding to the education of the heart, and spending their modest earnings to help their mothers or some dear invalid to a simple comfort they w 7 ould not have dreamed of getting for them a few months before. Hearken to the terrific roar of the vast ocean of thirty million Italian voices behind them, asking if I have fulfilled the mission on which I came.

In the silent watches of the night it awakens me to wonder if I am doing my best; to search for what means remains as yet untried to touch your hearts.

Above the roar in machinery hall, above the sharp crack of the fireworks, above the music of the bands, above the applause of the multitude, above the thunder of the storms in this White City, I hear it.

Like Heine, I would snatch the tallest pine from the mountains, and dipping it