THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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James P. Eagle, has not only shown great ability and tact, but a remarkable degree of executive power and steady perseverance to arrange for, and preside at, all these addresses, every forenoon, for so many months? Her beauty and grace and kindly manners to all her speakers have added greatly to the charm of these Congresses in the Woman’s Building.
I wish there was time to speak of Mrs. Palmer’s secretary and her assistant secretary, Mrs. Helen M. Parker, in whose home I had the pleasure of stopping for a few weeks, and who, as you know, has been elected treasurer, at our last convention, of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. It would be impossible in my limited time to tell you about the many gifted women in that organization. We have our lecturers, like Mrs. Mary Lathrop, whom you all know, and Rev. Annie Shaw; we have our superintendents, like Mrs. Mary H. Hunt.
We also have missionaries, like our all-round-the-world missionary, Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt, who has had in connection with her addresses the services of two hundred and twenty-nine interpreters, in forty-seven languages. She has carried our white ribbon around the globe. And secretaries like Miss Anna A. Gordon; and state presidents like Mrs. Clara Hoffman, so well known here; and sergeants-at-arms like Mrs. Cornelia B. Forbes, of Connecticut, to keep our great national conventions in order; and organizers like Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell; and preachers like Miss Greenwood, of New York; and elocutionists like Miss Eva Shonts, who read on this platform, and who is called by Miss Willard our white ribbon elocutionist. I wish I had time to speak of such women as Pundita Ramabai, the student and teacher of the young widows of India, and of the heroic women who have gone out to heathen lands to carry the glad tidings of the Gospel to their sisters, and of the grand women at home whose plans and gifts have created such an organization that they can now disburse annually, for the work and support of these missionaries, one million five hundred thousand dollars. I need not tell you about the president of our National Council of Women, Mrs. May Wright Sewell, for many of you have heard her brilliant and learned addresses in this assembly hall; nor of Miss Elizabeth B. Sheldon, who decorated our Connecticut room in this building with such delicate taste and fine harmony of color; nor of Miss Hosmer, the sculptor, for you have seen her exquisite statues and busts, and you know that her statue of Queen Isabella has been secured for the Californian World’s Fair and will find a home in San Francisco. Neither do I need to speak to you of my countrywoman, Lady Aberdeen, for you have seen her exhibit here of the industries of the Irish women, and you have heard what she is doing for women in Great Britain at the head of the Woman’s Liberal Federation. Few men have spoken out so freely against social wrongs as Mrs. Josephine Butler of England, and Dr. Kate Bushnell of this country. From the days of Madam Roland women have never been without their champions like Florence Nightingale, and Mrs. Browning, our delightful poet. Time would fail us to speak of our women journalists, like Mrs. Flank Leslie and Alice Stone Black- well; our women ministers, like Rev. Olympia Brown and Dr. Augusta J. Chapine who, as chairman of Women’s Religious Congresses, discovered that seventeen denominations have ordained women to the ministry; our discoverers, like Mrs. French Sheldon, F\ R. G. S., who went unattended by a single white person through the wilds of Africa; and our temple builders, like Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, of Chicago, whose “Woman’s Temple” is the finest office building in the world, and the architect of this beautiful Woman’s Building, which is a monument to the brain and work of woman. But we must stop mentioning names, for the gifted, all-sided women of our land are legion. Many of them are unknown to the great public, and do their work quietly in their own church or town or home, and many of them have voluntarily become the rounds of the ladders on which their brothers and sons and husbands have climbed to fame. But many of them do their work in the eye of the world. Some of them are geniuses—none of them are angels—all of them are peers of men. Among them are inventors, lawyers, architects,physicians, painters, engineers, astronomers, editors, edu-