respect it when it is brilliant, and it may greatly elevate her in our opinion-nay, worse, it may also serve to fix our attentions where we already love, but it is not that which fires our hearts and inflames our passions."

As in the half-opened rosebud, at once displaying and concealing its beauty, there is a fascination wanting to the fullblown flower, so in a certain undefinable but exalted reserve of woman lurks the finest resource of the race-the inspiration and the reward of our labor. What a beautiful truth is embodied in the Rabbinical application of the Psalmist's words! "The glory of the king's daughter is within his palace." Woman's title to power comes not from self-consciousness and mannish assertion. Nature secures it. Authority radiates from her like light from a star. She breathes queenliness, and commands in proportion as she is womanly, and masculine strength bows loyally to her sway. But she bears a veiled scepter, and with every man of fine nature it is indeed rendered irresistible by that subtle and tender concealment. Beautiful in the spirit of self-abandonment, in the strength of her mighty love, acting the highest philosophy of self-renunciation, woman pours the fervent tide of all her trustful nature into the stronger and deeper current of a true and manly heart. Man loves only what pleases him. The heart makes itself heard above the claims of work, above the intellect, demanding for life a recompense, a goal.

Firstly, in a woman, let us have a pure, earnest, loving heart; then, passing over her mind, let her form and features be as graceful as possible. Men want mind and heart-women heart and person. A beautiful person is far from being indifferent at the same time in a man; in the same manner an intelligent and highly cultured mind is an ornament and a treasure of precious worth in a woman. It is only mentioned as subordinate, just as in a piece of music the feelings and senses are perhaps to be more touched than the faculties pertaining to the understanding or the intellect.

With us Americans there is a respect for woman such as is found in no other country and among no other people. In the

absence of the ancient caste and throne, womanhood is our pet aristocracy. A deep and religious reverence for woman is infused into the whole system of our institutions and manners; not by artificial and insulting restrictions, but by a manly and volutary homage, by all the sanctions of opinion and all the obligations of religion. With us the words of Ruskin are fully realized: "She wields the power of the scepter and shield, the power of the royal hand that heals in touching, the throne that is founded on the rock of justice and descended from only by the steps of mercy: Rex et Regina, Roi et Reine -queen to your lover, queen to your husband and children, queen you must always be."

The true and full recognition of the dignity and worth of woman is to be found especially in the conjugal relation as it exists in our country-a relation that is essentially the ideal state, the crown of womanhood, and the only sphere that affords adequate competence, happiness, unlimited influence, and unbounded resources for the free exercise and supreme cultivation of her highest and most blessed faculties and attributes. The man of our time and country wants in his wife an intelligent companion, a moral helpmate, an equal "taken from his side," and not a plaything or a slave to follow behind. She takes complete possession of the home life, and, recognizing that she has what we lack, let her excel us, enlighten us, encourage us.

Woman in the United States is what elsewhere she is allowed to be only when she has a coronet upon her brow or scepter of power in her hand. She is not only a supreme power in the silence of the home, but she has come to a degree of knowledge and breadth of intellect, to an influence and grandeur, an authority and eminence, such as the Greeks would have rejected as impracticable and the Romans struggled in vain to obtain. In her progress to this proud eminence the American woman has triumphed and withstood, in all her softer features, that destructive influence of wealth and luxury which corrupted her illustrious prototype, the Roman matron, losing none of her charms and retaining all of her virtues: demonstrating that

a woman may be childlike as well as impassioned, tender as well as strong; that she may glow with all love's fire, and yet be delicately obedient to the lightest whisper of honor.

It is not necessary for families of unmarried girls to loiter wearily on into old age, waiting for some one to invite them to take up the duties of life. Our girls are no longer taught that all instincts and ambitions must be crushed that seek outside the seclusion of home life spheres in which their lives may become useful or significant; but they are encouraged to make a life for themselves, that they may become a source of strength and sweetness to their surroundings. And if in this attempt a few mistake their way and fall into mere singularity, it is only a misfortune incident to all pioneers.

Silently, slowly, but irresistibly, an enduring principle has, by Divine ordinance, made its way into man's social and political existence, by the decree that elevated one-half of the human race to its just individual sphere of duty and responsibility and spiritual equality with the other half. When the dignity of her equal birthright was thus divinely proclaimed, woman as the helpmeet and companion of man-no longer the mere toy of passion, or the unequal and degraded victim of polygamywas assigned to her just and original place in the law of creation: then, and not until then, the names of wife, mother, and daughter began to bear their true significance, and the tie of marriage was placed above all others. Upon this equal union the institution of the family is founded. Home and its relations, the care and education of her children, endowed the wife and mother with powers, duties, and responsibilities but little known before. Increased confidence was followed by increased affection and respect, and the assured legitimacy of offspring induced industry and the acquisition of property, from the sense of reliance upon its transmission and inheritance.

The typical American wife and mother is worthy to have applied to her the old formal term, with all of its sweet original significance, "spinster," as it told how the clothing of the entire household came from the active industry and economy of

woman; and still more of the Saxon phrase, "Freodowebbe," the weaver of peace, expressing the subtle influence distilled by gentleness and love and trust, which color the web of life with the hues of heaven.

Louisville, Ky.

BOYD WINCHESTER.

THE

II. THE FUTURE OF THE WOMAN'S Club.

HE amazing fact is that women's clubs ever came into being. Civilization awaits the first daring path-breaker, and those who follow in the beaten road marvel that it took so long for the first dauntless one to mark it out.

That woman-the weak, the despised, the priest-ridden; believed to be the original sinner, the ruin of the human race; an unclean thing, a beast of burden, unworthy of education; forbidden perusal of the Scriptures, veiled in a harem, burned upon her husband's funeral pyre, considered cursed in giving birth to mankind (or, in medieval times, worshiped for her maternity, yet still man's inferior, his chattel, his toy); at best and last, esteemed merely for motherhood—that this being should timidly venture forth into the arena of intellectual and civil life, gently wrest from man, one by one, his preëmpted prerogatives, and persuasively, insidiously, assume his education and professions: this is the marvel of the ages!

A century ago a "liberal education" was by no means "the birthright of every American citizen." In the early days of even our new country, girls picked up crumbs of learning upon half-holidays when the schoolroom was not needed by their brothers, or not at all. Fifty years ago women's colleges were almost unknown; thirty years ago co-education was a venture; scarcely half a century ago the first faltering woman's organization was born.

The school is mother to the club, as the college is to university extension. Those fortunate enough to be educated wish to keep their intellectual activities in practise, and those not so

situated desire a post-youthful education. The first women's clubs were timid affectations. They were but a step removed from afternoon teas; yet in that step lay all the embryonic genius of feminine organization. The first club, then, was an extended tea-party; the twentieth-century club is an organic factor in social life, federated for the progress of the world. The first "lady speaker" was a frightened apology; the modern woman is an orator and a parliamentarian.

The first woman's literary society on record in America was founded by the noble pioneer, Lucinda Stone, Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1852. A Philadelphia society, the New England Woman's Club of Boston, and Sorosis of New York followed in 1868; the last two are the first famous ones. Mrs. Stone, the mother of women's clubs, lived to see their marvelous progeny; for they have multiplied like the fish of the sea, until to-day they encompass the earth, and are too numerous perhaps to attain the highest degree of effectiveness. (Some New England towns with a small proportion of educated women boast as many as nineteen women's clubs!)

The growth of America's clubs since the Ladies' Literary Association of Kalamazoo, in 1852, has been phenomenal. Every village has its attempt at a club, more or less imposing, while every city swarms with societies, in which the same women are apt to be duplicated and reduplicated. The National Federation has 3,358 clubs, including a membership of 220,000, and of course but a portion of the existing clubs are federated. Besides the federation of literary clubs, there is the National Council of Women, the broadest conception thus far embodied, as its scope is nothing less than the union of all national bodies of women, of which there are in this country about one hundred. Already the National Council comprises about twenty-four organizations, each of which is national (such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union), of which the Federation of 4,000 clubs, should it join, would be but one. The Council of the United States numbers over 1,000,000 women. There are now fifteen countries that have National Councils of Women modeled upon our own, and all of these, in