Man is King and Woman Courtier.

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No man would be seen with a woman with the faintest taint or tinge of tobacco about her; no man would allow himself to enter into marriage with a woman of known habits of drinking or impurity; it is n't thinkable. When I see women coming out before men, or when I know they do I do not see them, they are not women with whom I am socially acquaintedrevealing the sacredness of the pure symbol and badge of their womanly nature, coming out dressed so improperly that the joke, the jest, and jibe, are uttered in the dressing-room where young men smoke cigars and hobnob together, I could weep my life out that a woman thus appears, borrowing that style from women the hem of whose garments she would be ashamed to touch. Let us have self-respect. Let us be clothed with the raiment of purity that ought to guard the virgin, the mother and the wife.

When we assemble socially and allow scenes to be put before us that are indecorous and shameful, we have passed away from the purity and selfrespect that must and shall characterize the women of the future. Oh, friends, these things are deep in every thoughtful woman's heart! Girls come and ask me, "Would you dance round dances?" Dear little sister, no; don't dance a round dance. The women of the future will not do it. I walked the aisles of the picture galleries of Europe. I saw the men in those great historic paintings, with their ear-rings, and their fingers covered with rings, their necks bedecked with ruffles, their forms dressed in all the hues that the peacock and rainbow could supply. They were nothing but an exhibition of sycophants, a collection of courtiers. That was the time when King Louis XIV. said: "The state, it is I!"

Woman is courtier and man is king to-day, in the sacred realm of government. But when a woman shall be able to say to the state, "I am part of you, just as much as anything that breathes"; when she shall say, "I am part of society; I am part of industrial values, I am part of everything that a man values; everything that a man's brain loves to think about in philosophy, in philanthropy, in history, or science," then the calm equipoise of human forces shall come; and for that I would like to live; for that I would like to speak. Persons who know more about it than I, tell me that women who give their lives to shame, women who are on the street-corners with their invitations at night, are women who have, from the very look of the face and configuration of the head, the symbols and emblems of no selfrespect. The superior, queenly woman is the one who has most self-respect, who sees its application to everything around her, and who makes every man feel that he would as soon die as offer her an insult.

The Arabs love to say of a pure man that he is "a brother of girls." The brotherly man will come forward to meet and respond to the sisterly woman. When we are not toys, when we are not dolls, when we stand before them royal, crowned with heart of love and brain of fire, then shall come the new day. I ignore nothing that has been said. I am in hearty sympathy with all. But, in my own thought, this is the key-note that must be struck. God grant that we may be so loving and so gentle in it all, that there shall be no vanity, no pride. Evermore the grandest natures are the humblest.

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Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant.

Let me speak a word of hope. I have heard this statement from a woman who has just come from Germany, a woman for years a student in the universities. She says the professors' wives tell her that the new science has developed this thought, and that professors are saying to their young men: "If you want a scintillating brain, if you want magnificent power of imagination, conserve every force, be as chaste as your sister is, and put your power into the brain that throbs on like an untired engine." I do not know how you feel, but I want to take by the hand this woman who has spoken so nobly to us, this sweet-faced and sweet-voiced English woman, Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant, who, last night when all of us were asleep, went out into the holiness of moonlight and saw that our capital was not so bad as London; this woman who went to see the little girl that had n't been taught and had n't been helped, and who came from her country home and was getting entangled in the meshes of this great Babylon. God bless you, Mrs. Chant, you are welcome to America. I thought, while you were speaking, of what our Whittier said of our two countries: "Unknown to other rivalries than of the mild humanities and gracious interchange of good."

We women are clasping hands. We do not know how much it means. I have sought this woman from over the water. I wanted her to come here with her large experience in work. I have not seen so many sorrowful girls as she has, and don't know how to reach them, only in a general way; and I have asked her if she will stay and teach us, and she says she will. Are you not glad? So understand that the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union is going to keep Mrs. Chant here and send her about with her sweet evangelism. Now I think, dear friends, that we have certainly this morning boxed the compass of the woman movement, for we have talked purely and sacredly together of the White Cross and the White Shield.

No department of work was ever developed so rapidly as this. The women's hearts were ready for it. White Cross and White Shield pledges and literature, leaflets for mothers' meetings, indeed, for every phase of the Social Purity work, are ordered in constantly increasing numbers. The White Shield work is especially for women.. Industrial homes for women are being founded by the state in response to our petitions, and a movement is now on foot to establish homes for adults who are physically, mentally or morally incapable, by reason of irremediable defects. We believe that the harm this large class (including hereditary drunkards) does to society makes it an unquestionable economy to detain them in institutions for the purpose, and render them selfsupporting. "Do thyself no harm" would then be a motto alike applicable to these unfortunates and to the state.

It is hoped that this cause will be presented carefully and

"In the Beauty of the Lilies."

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wisely to all bodies of Christian, educational, and philanthropic workers in every part of the land. This will best be done under the auspices of the state or local superintendent of the department in person or by letter; or often, better still, by some delegate who has a right to the floor and will present and support a suitable resolution of sympathy and coöperation.

White Cross work contemplates a direct appeal to the chivalry of men that they shall join this holy crusade by a personal pledge of purity and helpfulness: that boys shall early learn the sacred meaning of the White Cross and that the generous knights of this newest and most noble chivalry shall lead Humanity's sweet and solemn song.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WORLD'S W. C. T. U.

White light includes all the prismatic colors, so the white ribbon stands for all phases of reform, and there is no phase which the drink curse has not rendered necessary. Our emblem holds within itself the colors of all nations and stands for universal purity and patriotism, universal prohibition and philanthropy, and universal peace. For "hearts are near, though hands are far," and women's hands and hearts all round the world will be united by our snowy badge ere another generation passes out of sight. There is now no speech or language where its voice is not heard.

One secret of the success that has from the first attended our great society, is that it always goes on "lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes."

When I was organizing on the Pacific Coast in 1883, I saw the opium curse in San Francisco alongside the alcoholic curse, introduced the W. C. T. U. into British Columbia, was urged to visit the Sandwich Islands, go to Japan and China, and was so impressed by the outreaching of other nations toward our society and their need of us, that I proposed in my annual address at Detroit, "the appointment of a commission to report the next year plans for the organization of a World's W. C. T. U." This was done, and the general officers of our national society have from that time to the present been leaders in this enterprise. We proceeded at once to send out Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt, who started a work in the Sandwich Islands which promises to revolutionize sentiment, and make that country in favor of our principles and methods. Mrs. Dr. Whitney, of Honolulu, is president of the white ribbon societies there.

Mrs. Leavitt was supplied with money for her voyage to Australia by the temperance friends at the Sandwich Islands,

"Our White Ribbon Stanley."

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and left for New Zealand in January, 1884. She there traversed a territory as great as from Maine to Florida, and from the Alleghany Mountains to the sea, forming ten good, strong unions, with Mrs. Judge Ward, of Christchurch, at their head. She then crossed one thousand one hundred and thirty miles of sea to reach the continent of Australia, where she steadily worked on in the Provinces of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania (formerly called Van Diemen's Land), and remained until the next autumn, when she started for Japan.

We must remember that Australia is one half as large as South America, being about two thousand, six hundred miles long, by two thousand in width. Like New Zealand, it is settled by English people, and governed partly by officers sent to represent the British Crown, partly by local legislatures. It is a strange and beautiful country, with climate, flora and fauna. unlike those of any other part of the world. It seems like the best kind of a fairy story that our W. C. T. U. should be acclimated there, for Mrs. Leavitt writes, "These people are thorough; when they take the white ribbon, they take it to keep and to wear."

Perhaps they might teach us a lesson in this silent preaching of temperance by the "little badge of snow." Mrs. Leavitt's letters in The Union Signal have kept our great constituency informed of all her movements.

In Japan her success was so great that a leading missionary wrote home to his church paper, declaring that what Commodore Perry's visit was to the commerce, Mrs. Leavitt's has been to the women of Japan. She thoroughly established the W. C. T. U. in that bright morning-land of enthusiasm and hope; worked to the same end in the less fertile soil of China and of India; traversed Ceylon, which has, thus far, sent more names to the World's petition than any other country; was received in Madagascar with enthusiasm, and has now plunged into Africa. She is our white ribbon Stanley, not one whit less persistent and valorous than the great explorer. In one more year this intrepid Boston woman will have reached the golden number, seven, in her triumphal march, and will, I trust, receive such a reception as has not yet been accorded to a returning traveler-not even to a successful politician! We have never heard a criticism on her