THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

703

in the crater of Etna, would write the name of my beloved (the laborious, patient peasant women) upon the skies, that it might compel the gaze of the whole world.

Can you wonder, with this great opportunity, the Congress of all nations, drawing to its close, each nerve is stretched to snapping, the flesh is forgotten, each heartstring is vibrating in the agonizing desire to make all these voices reach your ears through my one frail organ? They are crying to you for your friendship, for your patronage. It means to them their homes, their children, their all. They are not begging; they offer you their work, the product of honest manual toil which is being driven from the market by machines which can never be weary or hungry or ill, which can never die, but also have no souls to lose through the temptations of misery.

The frail fingers of these women and children are competing with iron rods and steam power, and yet have courage; for the laces, the homespuns into which are entwined their dreams, their prayers, their songs and their tears, are unsurpassed. What I am striving for I can never accomplish. But you can do it if you only will.

The storekeepers tell me if there was a demand for Italian goods they would place them in stock. They say to me: Create the demand, we will do the rest. I entreat you to ask in the shops for Italian laces, Italian silks, Italian homespuns. Fashion will obey your summons, such is your power. I can speak, but yours is the nobler part, you can act. Act, only act; the modest Italian women of the people in their far-off country homes will feel the benefit. Their loving, unforgetting prayers have borne me up in my hours of trial; their dear, blotted letters come to me across the waters full of confiding faith and longing to know what I am doing for them in my father- land. Poor, ignorant darlings, because they love me they think me omnipotent. To you I confide their* future. It is safe if you grant my prayer, though it hangs upon a frail shred of lace.

God grant that you may never again set eyes upon a piece of lace, however mean, without being reminded of what you can do for the hardworking women of the people in Italy.