World, to the glowing colors of the New. The difference between them has been often figured to my fancy by that between the mystic, melancholy sunsets behind Rome's sad Campagna, and their brilliant pageantry as they light up the west from the prairies of my own Illinois. I see what is noblest in the manhood of America rallying like St. George of old, to fight the Dragon, while firm and brave rings out their manly war cry, claiming "Fair play for the weaker" in life's solemn fight. Do you wonder if this contrast set me thinking about the New World's Chivalry? or if, the more I studied the movements of this matchless age, the more clearly I saw that it can give a Roland for an Oliver, till History calls off its last heroic name?

The Knights of the Old Chivalry gave woman the empty husk of flattery; those of the New, offer instead, the wholesome kernel of just criticism; the Knights of the Old Chivalry drank our health in flowing bumpers; those of the New invite us to sit down beside them at the banquet of truth.

"By my lady's bright eyes," was the watch-word of the Old; "Fair play for the weaker," is the manly war cry of the New! Talk about the Chivalry of Ancient Days! Go to, ye medieval ages, and learn what that word meaneth! Behold the sunny afternoon of this nineteenth century of grace, wherein we have the spectacle, not of lances tilted to defend the prestige of my "lady's beauty," by swaggering knights who could not write their names, but of the noblest men of the world's foremost race, placing upon the brows of those most dear to them, above the wreath of Venus, the helmet of Minerva, and leading into broader paths of knowledge and achievement, the fair divinities who preside over their homes.

No picture dawns upon me so refulgent as this Home that yet shall be the gift of this Better Age to the New America, in which a three-fold tie shall bind the husband to his wife, the father to his daughter, the mother to her son. Religion and affection-as heretofore in all true homes-shall form two of the strands in this magic three-fold tie; the third this age is weaving, and it is intellectual sympathy, than which no purer or more enduring bond survived the curse of Eden!

Whoever has not thought thus far, has failed to fathom the profoundest significance, or to rise to the height of the noblest

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inspiration, which our new ideas of woman's privilege infallibly involve.

Those far-off lands of which I told you, made me very sad. I had not known what a wide world it is, and how full of misery. Walking in the market-place of proud Berlin, where dogs and women were fastened side by side to carts laden with country merchandise; riding along unfrequented Italian roads where I encountered at one end of the plow a cow and a woman yoked together, while at the other a man presided, whip in hand; or watching from the car window as we whirled along from Alexandria to Cairo, women building railway embankments under the overseer's lash, how often have tears blurred these grievous scenes, as I felt how helpless one frail arm must be to right such wrongs. Sometimes it seemed sweetly mysterious to me, but I understand it now, that always when my heart was aching over the measureless woes of women in almost every land beyond the seas, a voice would whisper to me: Not to these, but to the dear girls of your home shall you be sent, and some day the broader channels of their lives shall send streams of healing even to these far-off shores." Do not think my purpose idle, in sketching sombre scenes from lands afar, or evoking in your hearing the jangle of sweet bells, for the foundation of the faith that is within me rests on no theory of "rights" or "wrongs," but is a plain deduction from my contrast of woman's lot in the Old world and the New. Shall we not learn a lesson of unutterable gratitude from this contrast of our affluent lives with those which, under sunnier skies than ours, and in more genial climes, are yet so shadowed and dwarfed ? Thinking of them and us, how often do I murmur to myself an adaptation of the Laureate's noble lines that has sung itself out of my own heart and brain:

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

Whose thralldom dates from days of yore;

Ring out false laws from shore to shore,

Ring in redress to all mankind!

Ring out the contest of the twain

Whom thou for noblest love didst make,

Ring in the day that shall awake

Their life-harp to a sweeter strain !

590

Organized Womanhood.

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.

The greatest movement ever undertaken by women is the outgrowth of that unparalleled International Council held in Washington, March 25 to April 1, 1888, of which Susan B. Anthony was the central figure. By her invitation I made five speeches there, and through her generous partiality was chosen president of this national federation of women, when the office would naturally have gone to her. A more unique and wonderful book has not been published in America than the stenographic story of that Washington meeting. Send 90 cents to Woman's Journal Office, Boston, for a copy to read and lend.

The purpose of the National Council is thus stated in its constitution:

We, women of the United States, sincerely believing that the best good of our homes and nation will be advanced by our own greater unity of thought, sympathy, and purpose, and that an organized movement of women will best conserve the highest good of the family and the state, do hereby band ourselves together in a confederation of workers committed to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and injustice, and to the application of the golden rule to society, custom and law.

We have just sent out our first call to the organized womanhood of the land, hoping to enlist them in this effort for solidarity among women workers as a preliminary to the universal solidarity sought by the International Council of which Mrs. Millicent Fawcett, of England, is the leader.

We should have our representatives constantly at the state capitals and ask unitedly for the things that have heretofore been asked for only by separate societies. Laws for the better protection of women; for the teaching of hygiene in all grades of the public schools, with especial reference to alcoholics and other

narcotics; for compulsory education; also for appropriations in aid of industrial schools for girls, and other institutions to which our philanthropic women are devoted-we must together strive for these.

Locally, a Woman's League should, in the interest of that "mothering" which is the central idea of our new movement, seek to secure for women admission to all school committees, library associations, and boards intrusted with the care of defective, dependent and delinquent classes; all professional and business associations; all colleges and professional schools that have not yet set before us an open door of ingress; and each local league should have the power to call in the united influence of its own state league, or of the National Council, if its own influence did not suffice.

In the development of this movement I am confident that it will impart to women such a sense of strength and courage that their corporate self-respect will so increase that such theatrical bills as we now see displayed will not be permitted for an hour, without our potent protest; and the exhibition of women's forms. and faces in the saloons and cigar stores, which women's selfrespect will never let them enter, and the disgraceful literature now for sale on so many public news stands, will not be tolerated by the womanhood of any town or city.

An anatomical museum" that I often pass, bears the words, "Gentlemen only admitted." Why do women tolerate this flaunting assumption that men are expected to derive pleasure from beholding objects that they would not for a moment permit their wives to see? Some day women will not, and then these base exhibitions will cease, for women will purify every place they enter, and they will enter every place on the round earth. To develop this great quality of corporate, as well as individual, self-respect, I believe no single study would do more than that of Frances Power Cobbe's noble book on "The Duties of Women." It ought to be in the hands of every woman who has taken for her motto, "Heart within, and God o'erhead," and surely it ought to be in the hands of every one who has not this high aim, while I am certain that every man who lives would be a nobler husband, son, and citizen of the great world, if he would give this book his thoughtful study.

592

Women are Snowflakes.

The following extracts from my addresses at the wonderful meeting in Washington will show the trend of thought on some of the subjects presented:

We only wish to turn all the bullets into printers' type; we only wish the war to be a war of words, for words are wings; they are full of lightning. Every brain the open furrow, every word the seed cast in, and you have humanity brought to a different plane; but you can't do it alone; you can't do it unless you come along together; it is easier to climb up taking hold of hands.

Somebody who has studied these things a great deal said to me: "You can tell a harmonious and organizing nature, because the involuntary position of the hands will be like that" (folded together).

See a little, lonesome, stray snowflake come down through the air; it falls and melts and is no more. Now see others come along talking in that noiseless, gossiping way together, and as they come down more and more they have evidently got something on their minds. After awhile these are joined by others, and, their organized attack will make a drift thirty feet high that will stop a fifty-ton engine.

Now, women are the snowflakes. And the organized attack is against this old, hoary-headed, materialistic, conservative way of doing things. And the mighty breeze that shall set them flying is the new sense of sisterhood, and it will bring in all that is good, and true and pure. It has been the curse of humanity in the past that half the wisdom, more than half the purity, and more than half the gentleness did not find any organic expression. Now it is getting expression, and we are here not only to see it and sit by, twirling our thumbs and watching it come, but we are here to put in all our mighty force to make it come. Each woman that has just sat here and lent a kind attention has helped it. Each one who has gone away and spoken a kind word has helped it. Each one that has lifted an aspiration toward the great Heart that holds the world has helped it.

The highest power of organization for women is that it brings them out; it translates them from the passive into the active voice; the dear, modest, clinging things didn't think they could do anything, and, lo and behold! they found out they could. They come to you with a quiver of the lip, and look at you so hopeful and expectant, and wonder if they could do something; and a year or two after, you hear them with a deep voice and perfect equipose telling their dearest thought to a great audience, or you see them in the silent charities, carrying out their noblest purpose toward humanity.

I will tell you how it is with me: I go like a bee into the gardens of thought; I love to listen to all the voices, and I go buzzing around under the bonnets of the prettiest flowers and the most fragrant, just like this bee, and when it is a lovely life and a sweet life, like the lives of those who have spoken to us to-day, it seems to me I get a lot of honey; but I have a won