FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS

FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERSFAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERSBELVA A. LOCKWOOD • SUSAN B. ANTHONYFRANCES WILLARD • MARY A. LIVERMORE • JULIA WARD HOWEELIZABETH C. STANTON • ANNA DICKINSON(‡ decoration)JULIA WARD HOWE.AUTHOR OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.”ON Beacon Street, Boston, in an old-fashioned home, lives a woman mingling the twilight of her eventful life with the evening of the closing century, who has been a potent factor in its progress and developments. In her unpretentious little home have sat and talked the greatest men of America, and many of the European celebrities who have visited this country. Even the casual visitor to the home of this aged woman feels in the atmosphere of the place, with its mementoes of great men and women, some indefinable flavor, like a lingering perfume which tells him there has been high thinking and noble speech within the walls which surround him.This noted poet, author, and philanthropist was born in New York City on May 27, 1819. Her father was Samuel Ward, and she numbers among her ancestors the famous General Marion, of South Carolina; Governor Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island; and Roger Williams, the apostle of religious tolerance. F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, is the son of her sister, who marriedMr.Crawford, the artist.Mrs.Howe’s mother died when she was only five years of age, and her father five years later. But he had been a prosperous banker and provided to give her every advantage of a liberal education, which provision was carried out—her instructions including music, German, Greek, and French. She began to write verses while very young.In 1843 Miss Ward was married to Doctor Samuel G. Howe. They went abroad on their wedding tour, spending a year in the Old World. Again, in 1850, she went to Europe, passing the winter in Rome with her two youngest children. The next year she returned to Boston, and in 1852 and 1853 published her first volume of poems, entitled “Passion Flowers,” which attracted much attention. At the same time her “Words for the Hour, a Drama in Blank Verse,” was produced in a leading theatre in New York and also in Boston. Her interest in the anti-slavery question began in 1851. In 1857 she visited Havana, and published her observations in a book, entitled “A Trip to Cuba,” which so vigorously attacked the degrading institutions of the Spanish rule that its sale has since been prohibited on that island. In 1861 appeared her famous “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the chorus “John Brown’s Body,etc.,” which was published in her third volume, entitled “Later Lyrics.” The song and chorus at once became known throughout the country and was sung everywhere. In 1867Mrs.Howe and her husbandvisited Greece, and won the gratitude of that nation by aiding them in the effort they were making for national independence. Her book “From Oak to Olive” was written after her visit to Athens. In 1868Mrs.Howe joined the Woman Suffrage Movement, and the next year, before the Legislature in Boston, made her first speech urging its principles; and from that time forward has been officially connected with the movement.Mrs.Howe visited England in 1872, where she lectured in favor of arbitration as the means of settling national and international disputes. At the same time she held, in London, a series of Sunday-evening services, devoted to Christian missionary work. During the same year she attended, as a delegate, the Congress for Prison Reform, held in London. On her return to the United States she organized or instituted the Woman’s Peace Festival, which still meets every year on the twenty-second of June.Since her husband’s death, in 1876,Mrs.Howe has preached, lectured and traveled much in all parts of the United States, the most popular of her lectures being “Is Polite Society, Polite?” “Greece Revisited,” and “Reminiscences of Longfellow and Emerson.” In 1878Mrs.Howe made another journey abroad, and spent over two years in travel in England, France, Italy, and Palestine. She was one of the presiding officers of the Woman’s Rights Congress, which met at Paris, and she lectured in that city and in Athens on the work of the various women’s associations in America. She has served as President in the Association of Advancement for Women for several years, and, notwithstanding her advanced age, retains her connection with this organization, and is an earnest promoter of their interest. She has formed a number of social Women’s Clubs, having for their object, mental improvement, in which the members study Latin, French, German, literature, botany, political economy and many other branches. She has been a profound student of philosophy, and has written numerous essays on philosophical themes.Mrs.Howe’s three living daughters, all of whom are married, have been followers of her theories concerning woman’s freedom. One of them,Mrs.Laura Richards, is a well-known writer of stories for children, some of them being classics of their kind. “Captain January” is her best-known book.Mrs.Maud Howe Elliot, the third daughter, is a successful lecturer and also a novelist.Mrs.Florence Howe Hall, another daughter ofMrs.Howe, is a writer of acknowledged ability on social topics.BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.MINE eye hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;His truth is marching on.I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,His day is marching on.I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel;“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;”Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,Since God is marching on.He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!Our God is marching on.In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,While God is marching on.OUR COUNTRY.ON primal rocks she wrote her name,Her towers were reared on holy graves,The golden seed that bore her cameSwift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.The Forest bowed his solemn crest,And open flung his sylvan doors;Meek Rivers led the appointed GuestTo clasp the wide-embracing shores;Till, fold by fold, the broidered LandTo swell her virgin vestments grew,While Sages, strong in heart and hand,Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.O Exile of the wrath of Kings!O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!The refuge of divinest things,Their record must abide in thee.First in the glories of thy frontLet the crown-jewel Truth be found:Thy right hand fling with generous wontLove’s happy chain to furthest bound.Let Justice with the faultless scalesHold fast the worship of thy sons,Thy commerce spread her shining sailsWhere no dark tide of rapine runs.So link thy ways to those of God,So follow firm the heavenly laws,That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.O Land, the measure of our prayers,Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!Be thine the blessing of the years,The gift of faith, the crown of song.THE UNSPEAKABLE PANG.(FROM “A TRIP TO CUBA, 1860.”)WHO are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin, with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite bloodless, and to every offer of good cheer, their “No, thank you,” is as faintly uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of dangerous defiance to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves the roast beef offers at the same time a slice of fat; this is too much; a panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous and complete....To what but to Dante’s Inferno can we liken this steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are those sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but thealti guairehearsed by the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,—“Nice mutton-chop, sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?” Cries, of “No, no!” resound, and the wretched turn again and groan. Thephilanthropist has lost the movement of the age,—keeled up in an upper♦berth, convulsively embracing a blanket—what conservative more immovable than he? The great man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours. But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself as if like Farinata—“averse l’inferno in gran dispetto,”“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.”♦‘birth’ replaced with ‘berth’Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch away.... But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters.(‡ decoration)

FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERSBELVA A. LOCKWOOD • SUSAN B. ANTHONYFRANCES WILLARD • MARY A. LIVERMORE • JULIA WARD HOWEELIZABETH C. STANTON • ANNA DICKINSON

BELVA A. LOCKWOOD • SUSAN B. ANTHONYFRANCES WILLARD • MARY A. LIVERMORE • JULIA WARD HOWEELIZABETH C. STANTON • ANNA DICKINSON

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AUTHOR OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.”

ON Beacon Street, Boston, in an old-fashioned home, lives a woman mingling the twilight of her eventful life with the evening of the closing century, who has been a potent factor in its progress and developments. In her unpretentious little home have sat and talked the greatest men of America, and many of the European celebrities who have visited this country. Even the casual visitor to the home of this aged woman feels in the atmosphere of the place, with its mementoes of great men and women, some indefinable flavor, like a lingering perfume which tells him there has been high thinking and noble speech within the walls which surround him.

This noted poet, author, and philanthropist was born in New York City on May 27, 1819. Her father was Samuel Ward, and she numbers among her ancestors the famous General Marion, of South Carolina; Governor Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island; and Roger Williams, the apostle of religious tolerance. F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, is the son of her sister, who marriedMr.Crawford, the artist.Mrs.Howe’s mother died when she was only five years of age, and her father five years later. But he had been a prosperous banker and provided to give her every advantage of a liberal education, which provision was carried out—her instructions including music, German, Greek, and French. She began to write verses while very young.

In 1843 Miss Ward was married to Doctor Samuel G. Howe. They went abroad on their wedding tour, spending a year in the Old World. Again, in 1850, she went to Europe, passing the winter in Rome with her two youngest children. The next year she returned to Boston, and in 1852 and 1853 published her first volume of poems, entitled “Passion Flowers,” which attracted much attention. At the same time her “Words for the Hour, a Drama in Blank Verse,” was produced in a leading theatre in New York and also in Boston. Her interest in the anti-slavery question began in 1851. In 1857 she visited Havana, and published her observations in a book, entitled “A Trip to Cuba,” which so vigorously attacked the degrading institutions of the Spanish rule that its sale has since been prohibited on that island. In 1861 appeared her famous “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the chorus “John Brown’s Body,etc.,” which was published in her third volume, entitled “Later Lyrics.” The song and chorus at once became known throughout the country and was sung everywhere. In 1867Mrs.Howe and her husbandvisited Greece, and won the gratitude of that nation by aiding them in the effort they were making for national independence. Her book “From Oak to Olive” was written after her visit to Athens. In 1868Mrs.Howe joined the Woman Suffrage Movement, and the next year, before the Legislature in Boston, made her first speech urging its principles; and from that time forward has been officially connected with the movement.

Mrs.Howe visited England in 1872, where she lectured in favor of arbitration as the means of settling national and international disputes. At the same time she held, in London, a series of Sunday-evening services, devoted to Christian missionary work. During the same year she attended, as a delegate, the Congress for Prison Reform, held in London. On her return to the United States she organized or instituted the Woman’s Peace Festival, which still meets every year on the twenty-second of June.

Since her husband’s death, in 1876,Mrs.Howe has preached, lectured and traveled much in all parts of the United States, the most popular of her lectures being “Is Polite Society, Polite?” “Greece Revisited,” and “Reminiscences of Longfellow and Emerson.” In 1878Mrs.Howe made another journey abroad, and spent over two years in travel in England, France, Italy, and Palestine. She was one of the presiding officers of the Woman’s Rights Congress, which met at Paris, and she lectured in that city and in Athens on the work of the various women’s associations in America. She has served as President in the Association of Advancement for Women for several years, and, notwithstanding her advanced age, retains her connection with this organization, and is an earnest promoter of their interest. She has formed a number of social Women’s Clubs, having for their object, mental improvement, in which the members study Latin, French, German, literature, botany, political economy and many other branches. She has been a profound student of philosophy, and has written numerous essays on philosophical themes.

Mrs.Howe’s three living daughters, all of whom are married, have been followers of her theories concerning woman’s freedom. One of them,Mrs.Laura Richards, is a well-known writer of stories for children, some of them being classics of their kind. “Captain January” is her best-known book.Mrs.Maud Howe Elliot, the third daughter, is a successful lecturer and also a novelist.Mrs.Florence Howe Hall, another daughter ofMrs.Howe, is a writer of acknowledged ability on social topics.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

MINE eye hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;His truth is marching on.I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,His day is marching on.I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel;“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;”Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,Since God is marching on.He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!Our God is marching on.In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,While God is marching on.

INE eye hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored:

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel;

“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;”

Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

OUR COUNTRY.

ON primal rocks she wrote her name,Her towers were reared on holy graves,The golden seed that bore her cameSwift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.The Forest bowed his solemn crest,And open flung his sylvan doors;Meek Rivers led the appointed GuestTo clasp the wide-embracing shores;Till, fold by fold, the broidered LandTo swell her virgin vestments grew,While Sages, strong in heart and hand,Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.O Exile of the wrath of Kings!O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!The refuge of divinest things,Their record must abide in thee.First in the glories of thy frontLet the crown-jewel Truth be found:Thy right hand fling with generous wontLove’s happy chain to furthest bound.Let Justice with the faultless scalesHold fast the worship of thy sons,Thy commerce spread her shining sailsWhere no dark tide of rapine runs.So link thy ways to those of God,So follow firm the heavenly laws,That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.O Land, the measure of our prayers,Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!Be thine the blessing of the years,The gift of faith, the crown of song.

N primal rocks she wrote her name,

Her towers were reared on holy graves,

The golden seed that bore her came

Swift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.

The Forest bowed his solemn crest,

And open flung his sylvan doors;

Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest

To clasp the wide-embracing shores;

Till, fold by fold, the broidered Land

To swell her virgin vestments grew,

While Sages, strong in heart and hand,

Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.

O Exile of the wrath of Kings!

O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!

The refuge of divinest things,

Their record must abide in thee.

First in the glories of thy front

Let the crown-jewel Truth be found:

Thy right hand fling with generous wont

Love’s happy chain to furthest bound.

Let Justice with the faultless scales

Hold fast the worship of thy sons,

Thy commerce spread her shining sails

Where no dark tide of rapine runs.

So link thy ways to those of God,

So follow firm the heavenly laws,

That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,

And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.

O Land, the measure of our prayers,

Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!

Be thine the blessing of the years,

The gift of faith, the crown of song.

THE UNSPEAKABLE PANG.

(FROM “A TRIP TO CUBA, 1860.”)

WHO are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin, with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite bloodless, and to every offer of good cheer, their “No, thank you,” is as faintly uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of dangerous defiance to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves the roast beef offers at the same time a slice of fat; this is too much; a panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous and complete....To what but to Dante’s Inferno can we liken this steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are those sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but thealti guairehearsed by the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,—“Nice mutton-chop, sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?” Cries, of “No, no!” resound, and the wretched turn again and groan. Thephilanthropist has lost the movement of the age,—keeled up in an upper♦berth, convulsively embracing a blanket—what conservative more immovable than he? The great man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours. But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself as if like Farinata—“averse l’inferno in gran dispetto,”“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.”♦‘birth’ replaced with ‘berth’Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch away.... But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters.

To what but to Dante’s Inferno can we liken this steamboat-cabin, with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are those sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but thealti guairehearsed by the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,—“Nice mutton-chop, sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?” Cries, of “No, no!” resound, and the wretched turn again and groan. Thephilanthropist has lost the movement of the age,—keeled up in an upper♦berth, convulsively embracing a blanket—what conservative more immovable than he? The great man of the party refrains from his large theories, which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin somewhere and end nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons yours. But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself as if like Farinata—

“averse l’inferno in gran dispetto,”

“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.”

♦‘birth’ replaced with ‘berth’

Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to chaos, and fearing to launch away.... But all things have an end, and most things have two. After the third day, a new development manifests itself. Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suffered to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge features and voices,—the luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of recognition,—the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors for pickled oysters.

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(‡ decoration)MRS.MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE.FAMOUS SCHOLAR, TEACHER, ARMY NURSE, EDITRESS, LECTURER, ABOLITIONIST AND WOMAN’S SUFFRAGIST.IT seems almost incredible,” says a writer, “that a woman now so famous made mud pies in her childhood, was often sent supperless to bed, and was frequently bounced down into a kitchen chair with an emphasis that caused her to see stars.” When a young girl, struggling to support herself, she took in shop-work, made shirts, and subsequently learned the trade of a dressmaker, at which she worked for twenty-five cents a day. At eighteen she ran away from home like a boy, and spent three eventful years on a Southern plantation—years full of comedy and tragedy, and packed with thrilling experiences. Here were nearly five hundred slaves, with whom, and with their white masters, she was brought face to face daily. Here she witnessed scenes as tragic as any described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Her description of the whipping of negro Matt, the cooper; his agonizing but unavailing plea for mercy; her subsequent visit alone to his cabin, when she entreated him to “run away, Matt, I’ll help you,” and his lonely death, will bring tears to the eyes of every reader.Mrs.Livermore was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and was born in Boston, December 19, 1821. Notwithstanding the above reference to her early experiences,Mrs.Livermore had and improved all the advantages of the time for a thorough education. She graduated from the public schools of Boston at the age of fourteen, receiving a medal for good scholarship, and afterwards completed a four years’ course in the seminary at Charleston,Mass., in two years, and was elected a member of the faculty as a teacher of Latin and French. While performing these duties she continued the study of Greek and metaphysics under private tutors, and at the age of eighteen, as above suggested, she left home and went South to take charge of a family school on a plantation in Southern Virginia, remaining there nearly thee years. Her experiences in the South made her a most radical abolitionist, and on her return North she actively seconded every movement for the freedom of the slaves. She opened a select school for young ladies from fourteen to twenty years, at Duxbury,Mass., but relinquished it in 1845 on her marriage toDr.D. P. Livermore, a Universalist minister, in Falls River,Mass.She made a most excellent minister’s wife, organizing literary clubs among the membership, and wrote many hymns and songs for church and Sunday-school books. She was also an active temperance worker, organizing a cold-waterarmy of 1500 boys and girls, whom she delighted with temperance stories which she wrote and read to them. These stories were published in 1844 under the title of the “Children’s Army.” In 1857 she removed with her husband to Chicago, whereMr.Livermore became the editor of the Universalist organ for the Northwest, with his wife as assistant editor. During her husband’s absence in his church work she had charge of the entire establishment, paper, printing office and publishing house included, and wrote for every department of the paper except the theological, at the same time furnishing stories and sketches to Eastern publications, and was also active and untiring in Sunday-school, church and charitable work. At the convention in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated, she was the only woman reporter who had a place among the hundred or more of men. During the Civil War she made her name famous by resigning all positions, save that on her husband’s paper, even securing a governess for her children, and devoting herself entirely to the work of relief and assistance to the soldiers through the United States Sanitary Commission. She organized Soldiers’ Aid Societies, delivered public addresses, wrote circulars, bulletins and reports, and made trips to the front with sanitary stores, giving personal attention to the distribution of the same, and bringing back numbers of invalid soldiers, accompanying many of them in person to their homes. She organized and conducted Sanitary Fairs, detailed nurses for the hospitals and accompanied them to their posts, and at the close of the war published her reminiscences, entitled “My Story of the War,” which is regarded as the most complete record of the hospital and sanitary work in the Northern army during this great fratricidal struggle.Returning home after the warMrs.Livermore became an ardent supporter of the Woman’s Suffrage movement as the best means not only of improving the condition of women, but with the broad, philanthropic idea of giving them a greater opportunity for doing good. Before the war she had opposed the placing of the ballot in the hands of women, but her experiences in the army taught her differently. She arranged for the first Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Chicago, elicited the aid of the leading clergymen of the city, and secured the attendance of the most prominent advocates of the cause from various parts of the country. The association was duly organized withMrs.Livermore as its first president. “The Agitator,” a Woman’s Suffragist paper, was started by her in 1869 at her own expense and risk, in which she espoused the temperance cause, as well as woman’s suffrage. In 1870 she became the editor of the “Woman’s Journal” of Boston, and the family removed to Melrose, Massachusetts.Mrs.Livermore, however, retained the editorship but two years, resigning it, in 1872, that she might give her more undivided time to the lecture field.During the last quarter century she has been heard in the lyceum courses of this country, visiting almost every State in the Union, and also lecturing at many points in Europe. The volume “What Shall We Do with Our Daughters and Other Lectures,” published in 1883, and a subsequent of the same character comprise her most important published discourses. The charm ofMrs.Livermore’s manner and the eloquence of her delivery have been equalled by few modern speakers. “At her feet,” writes one of her eulogists, “millions of people have sat and listened in admiration and wonder. The richand poor, the high and low, the learned and unlearned, have been alike thrilled and moved by her burning words. She has swayed brilliant audiences of fashion; has spoken in State prisons, jails and penitentiaries; to audiences composed of outcasts; and to audiences numbering thousands of children. With untold wealth of mental resources, and a brain teeming with soul-stirring thoughts, these lectures overflow with grand principles; while the extraordinary scenes, thrilling stories, and remarkable facts given in them illustrate those principles with great clearness and force. Throughout her public speeches, whatever the theme, the listener never tires, but is rather uplifted by the ‘golden thoughts’ and ‘living truths’ that enrich them from beginning to end.”During this period her pen was not idle. Her articles have appeared in the “North American Review,” the “Arena,” the “Chautauquan,” “Independent,” “Youth’s Companion,” “Christian Advocate,” “Woman’s Journal” and other high-class periodicals. She is identified with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, for ten years being president of the Massachusetts branch of that organization. She is also president of the American Woman’s Suffrage Association, of the Beneficent Society of the New England Conservatory of Music, and was the first president for two years of the Woman’s Congress.Mrs.Livermore, notwithstanding her advanced age, keeps steadily at work with voice, pen and influence. After she was seventy-five years of age, at the earnest request of many prominent friends and admirers throughout the United States, she wrote her autobiography, a large volume of over 700 pages, issued in 1897.We cannot better close this article than by quoting, fromMrs.Livermore herself, a retrospective paragraph with a prospective closing which is beautiful to witness in one standing, as she now does, in the twilight of a long and eventful career: “I cannot say that I would gladly accept the permission to run my earthly race once more from beginning to end. I am afraid it would prove wearisome—‘a twice-told tale.’ And so while rejoicing in the gains of the past and in the bright outlook into the future, I prefer to go forward into the larger life that beckons me further on, where I am sure it will be better than here. And when the summons comes, although the world has dealt kindly with me, I shall not be sorry to lift the latch and step out into ‘that other chamber of the King, larger than this and lovelier.’”USEFULWOMEN.¹(FROM “WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DAUGHTERS,” 1883. LECTURES ON“Superfluous Women.”)¹Copyright, Lee & Shepard, Boston,Mass.ROSA BONHEUR has achieved world-wide fame and pecuniary independence as one of the most skilful painters of animals; the boldness and independence of her own character inspiring her pencil, and her faithfulness to nature giving great force to her work. The whole civilized world does homage to her genius; and, during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, the Crown Prince of Prussia gave orders that her studio and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared and respected.Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, and brilliantly accomplished, gave herself to the study of hospitals, and of institutions for the diseased, helpless, and infirm. Appreciating the work of the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt the needof an institution which should be its counterpart in the Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military hospitals all over Europe, studied with the Sisters of Charity in Paris their system of nursing and hospital management, and went into training as a nurse in the House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. For ten years she served an apprenticeship, preparing for the great work of her life. Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea, when through incompetence, and utter disregard of sanitary laws, the rate of mortality in the English hospitals surpassed that of the fiercest battles. Horror and indignation were felt throughout England. Miss Nightingale offered her services to the government with a corps of trained nurses, was accepted, and went to Constantinople.The disorder, the want—while storehouses were bursting with the needed hospital supplies—the incompetence, the uncleanliness, the suffering and death created general dismay. Unappalled by the shocking chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at Scutari to be broken open, when want gave place to abundance; and soon her executive skill and rare knowledge transformed the hospitals into models of order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, sometimes standing twenty hours in succession giving directions, and refusing to leave her post, even when she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly overworked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, winning the love of the roughest soldiers; and, as she walked the wards, men too weak to speak plucked her gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her shadow as it fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own vitality in this work, and returned to England an invalid for life. But not an idle invalid, for from her sick-room there have gone plans for the improvement of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by her busy brain and pen.Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, was his constant helper and faithful assistant, in this character receiving a salary from the king. In addition she found time to make her own independent observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulæ, and clusters of stars, and receiving from the Royal Society a gold medal in recognition of her work.Charlotte Bronté’s portion in life was pain and toil and sorrow. Her experience was a long struggle with every unkindness of fate, and she lacked every advantage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force of character and undismayed persistence triumphed over all hindrances. She put heart and conscience into books that held the literary world in fascination. In them she rent the shams of society by her keen analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, shorn of every illusion, and then beautified it by unflinching loyalty to duty, and unwavering fidelity to conscience. The publication of “Jane Eyre” marked an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten.(‡ decoration)

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FAMOUS SCHOLAR, TEACHER, ARMY NURSE, EDITRESS, LECTURER, ABOLITIONIST AND WOMAN’S SUFFRAGIST.

IT seems almost incredible,” says a writer, “that a woman now so famous made mud pies in her childhood, was often sent supperless to bed, and was frequently bounced down into a kitchen chair with an emphasis that caused her to see stars.” When a young girl, struggling to support herself, she took in shop-work, made shirts, and subsequently learned the trade of a dressmaker, at which she worked for twenty-five cents a day. At eighteen she ran away from home like a boy, and spent three eventful years on a Southern plantation—years full of comedy and tragedy, and packed with thrilling experiences. Here were nearly five hundred slaves, with whom, and with their white masters, she was brought face to face daily. Here she witnessed scenes as tragic as any described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Her description of the whipping of negro Matt, the cooper; his agonizing but unavailing plea for mercy; her subsequent visit alone to his cabin, when she entreated him to “run away, Matt, I’ll help you,” and his lonely death, will bring tears to the eyes of every reader.

Mrs.Livermore was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and was born in Boston, December 19, 1821. Notwithstanding the above reference to her early experiences,Mrs.Livermore had and improved all the advantages of the time for a thorough education. She graduated from the public schools of Boston at the age of fourteen, receiving a medal for good scholarship, and afterwards completed a four years’ course in the seminary at Charleston,Mass., in two years, and was elected a member of the faculty as a teacher of Latin and French. While performing these duties she continued the study of Greek and metaphysics under private tutors, and at the age of eighteen, as above suggested, she left home and went South to take charge of a family school on a plantation in Southern Virginia, remaining there nearly thee years. Her experiences in the South made her a most radical abolitionist, and on her return North she actively seconded every movement for the freedom of the slaves. She opened a select school for young ladies from fourteen to twenty years, at Duxbury,Mass., but relinquished it in 1845 on her marriage toDr.D. P. Livermore, a Universalist minister, in Falls River,Mass.She made a most excellent minister’s wife, organizing literary clubs among the membership, and wrote many hymns and songs for church and Sunday-school books. She was also an active temperance worker, organizing a cold-waterarmy of 1500 boys and girls, whom she delighted with temperance stories which she wrote and read to them. These stories were published in 1844 under the title of the “Children’s Army.” In 1857 she removed with her husband to Chicago, whereMr.Livermore became the editor of the Universalist organ for the Northwest, with his wife as assistant editor. During her husband’s absence in his church work she had charge of the entire establishment, paper, printing office and publishing house included, and wrote for every department of the paper except the theological, at the same time furnishing stories and sketches to Eastern publications, and was also active and untiring in Sunday-school, church and charitable work. At the convention in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was nominated, she was the only woman reporter who had a place among the hundred or more of men. During the Civil War she made her name famous by resigning all positions, save that on her husband’s paper, even securing a governess for her children, and devoting herself entirely to the work of relief and assistance to the soldiers through the United States Sanitary Commission. She organized Soldiers’ Aid Societies, delivered public addresses, wrote circulars, bulletins and reports, and made trips to the front with sanitary stores, giving personal attention to the distribution of the same, and bringing back numbers of invalid soldiers, accompanying many of them in person to their homes. She organized and conducted Sanitary Fairs, detailed nurses for the hospitals and accompanied them to their posts, and at the close of the war published her reminiscences, entitled “My Story of the War,” which is regarded as the most complete record of the hospital and sanitary work in the Northern army during this great fratricidal struggle.

Returning home after the warMrs.Livermore became an ardent supporter of the Woman’s Suffrage movement as the best means not only of improving the condition of women, but with the broad, philanthropic idea of giving them a greater opportunity for doing good. Before the war she had opposed the placing of the ballot in the hands of women, but her experiences in the army taught her differently. She arranged for the first Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Chicago, elicited the aid of the leading clergymen of the city, and secured the attendance of the most prominent advocates of the cause from various parts of the country. The association was duly organized withMrs.Livermore as its first president. “The Agitator,” a Woman’s Suffragist paper, was started by her in 1869 at her own expense and risk, in which she espoused the temperance cause, as well as woman’s suffrage. In 1870 she became the editor of the “Woman’s Journal” of Boston, and the family removed to Melrose, Massachusetts.Mrs.Livermore, however, retained the editorship but two years, resigning it, in 1872, that she might give her more undivided time to the lecture field.

During the last quarter century she has been heard in the lyceum courses of this country, visiting almost every State in the Union, and also lecturing at many points in Europe. The volume “What Shall We Do with Our Daughters and Other Lectures,” published in 1883, and a subsequent of the same character comprise her most important published discourses. The charm ofMrs.Livermore’s manner and the eloquence of her delivery have been equalled by few modern speakers. “At her feet,” writes one of her eulogists, “millions of people have sat and listened in admiration and wonder. The richand poor, the high and low, the learned and unlearned, have been alike thrilled and moved by her burning words. She has swayed brilliant audiences of fashion; has spoken in State prisons, jails and penitentiaries; to audiences composed of outcasts; and to audiences numbering thousands of children. With untold wealth of mental resources, and a brain teeming with soul-stirring thoughts, these lectures overflow with grand principles; while the extraordinary scenes, thrilling stories, and remarkable facts given in them illustrate those principles with great clearness and force. Throughout her public speeches, whatever the theme, the listener never tires, but is rather uplifted by the ‘golden thoughts’ and ‘living truths’ that enrich them from beginning to end.”

During this period her pen was not idle. Her articles have appeared in the “North American Review,” the “Arena,” the “Chautauquan,” “Independent,” “Youth’s Companion,” “Christian Advocate,” “Woman’s Journal” and other high-class periodicals. She is identified with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, for ten years being president of the Massachusetts branch of that organization. She is also president of the American Woman’s Suffrage Association, of the Beneficent Society of the New England Conservatory of Music, and was the first president for two years of the Woman’s Congress.Mrs.Livermore, notwithstanding her advanced age, keeps steadily at work with voice, pen and influence. After she was seventy-five years of age, at the earnest request of many prominent friends and admirers throughout the United States, she wrote her autobiography, a large volume of over 700 pages, issued in 1897.

We cannot better close this article than by quoting, fromMrs.Livermore herself, a retrospective paragraph with a prospective closing which is beautiful to witness in one standing, as she now does, in the twilight of a long and eventful career: “I cannot say that I would gladly accept the permission to run my earthly race once more from beginning to end. I am afraid it would prove wearisome—‘a twice-told tale.’ And so while rejoicing in the gains of the past and in the bright outlook into the future, I prefer to go forward into the larger life that beckons me further on, where I am sure it will be better than here. And when the summons comes, although the world has dealt kindly with me, I shall not be sorry to lift the latch and step out into ‘that other chamber of the King, larger than this and lovelier.’”

USEFULWOMEN.¹

(FROM “WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DAUGHTERS,” 1883. LECTURES ON“Superfluous Women.”)

¹Copyright, Lee & Shepard, Boston,Mass.

ROSA BONHEUR has achieved world-wide fame and pecuniary independence as one of the most skilful painters of animals; the boldness and independence of her own character inspiring her pencil, and her faithfulness to nature giving great force to her work. The whole civilized world does homage to her genius; and, during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, the Crown Prince of Prussia gave orders that her studio and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared and respected.Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, and brilliantly accomplished, gave herself to the study of hospitals, and of institutions for the diseased, helpless, and infirm. Appreciating the work of the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt the needof an institution which should be its counterpart in the Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military hospitals all over Europe, studied with the Sisters of Charity in Paris their system of nursing and hospital management, and went into training as a nurse in the House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. For ten years she served an apprenticeship, preparing for the great work of her life. Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea, when through incompetence, and utter disregard of sanitary laws, the rate of mortality in the English hospitals surpassed that of the fiercest battles. Horror and indignation were felt throughout England. Miss Nightingale offered her services to the government with a corps of trained nurses, was accepted, and went to Constantinople.The disorder, the want—while storehouses were bursting with the needed hospital supplies—the incompetence, the uncleanliness, the suffering and death created general dismay. Unappalled by the shocking chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at Scutari to be broken open, when want gave place to abundance; and soon her executive skill and rare knowledge transformed the hospitals into models of order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, sometimes standing twenty hours in succession giving directions, and refusing to leave her post, even when she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly overworked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, winning the love of the roughest soldiers; and, as she walked the wards, men too weak to speak plucked her gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her shadow as it fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own vitality in this work, and returned to England an invalid for life. But not an idle invalid, for from her sick-room there have gone plans for the improvement of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by her busy brain and pen.Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, was his constant helper and faithful assistant, in this character receiving a salary from the king. In addition she found time to make her own independent observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulæ, and clusters of stars, and receiving from the Royal Society a gold medal in recognition of her work.Charlotte Bronté’s portion in life was pain and toil and sorrow. Her experience was a long struggle with every unkindness of fate, and she lacked every advantage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force of character and undismayed persistence triumphed over all hindrances. She put heart and conscience into books that held the literary world in fascination. In them she rent the shams of society by her keen analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, shorn of every illusion, and then beautified it by unflinching loyalty to duty, and unwavering fidelity to conscience. The publication of “Jane Eyre” marked an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten.

Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, and brilliantly accomplished, gave herself to the study of hospitals, and of institutions for the diseased, helpless, and infirm. Appreciating the work of the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt the needof an institution which should be its counterpart in the Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military hospitals all over Europe, studied with the Sisters of Charity in Paris their system of nursing and hospital management, and went into training as a nurse in the House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. For ten years she served an apprenticeship, preparing for the great work of her life. Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea, when through incompetence, and utter disregard of sanitary laws, the rate of mortality in the English hospitals surpassed that of the fiercest battles. Horror and indignation were felt throughout England. Miss Nightingale offered her services to the government with a corps of trained nurses, was accepted, and went to Constantinople.

The disorder, the want—while storehouses were bursting with the needed hospital supplies—the incompetence, the uncleanliness, the suffering and death created general dismay. Unappalled by the shocking chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at Scutari to be broken open, when want gave place to abundance; and soon her executive skill and rare knowledge transformed the hospitals into models of order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, sometimes standing twenty hours in succession giving directions, and refusing to leave her post, even when she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly overworked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, winning the love of the roughest soldiers; and, as she walked the wards, men too weak to speak plucked her gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her shadow as it fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own vitality in this work, and returned to England an invalid for life. But not an idle invalid, for from her sick-room there have gone plans for the improvement of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by her busy brain and pen.

Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, was his constant helper and faithful assistant, in this character receiving a salary from the king. In addition she found time to make her own independent observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulæ, and clusters of stars, and receiving from the Royal Society a gold medal in recognition of her work.

Charlotte Bronté’s portion in life was pain and toil and sorrow. Her experience was a long struggle with every unkindness of fate, and she lacked every advantage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force of character and undismayed persistence triumphed over all hindrances. She put heart and conscience into books that held the literary world in fascination. In them she rent the shams of society by her keen analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, shorn of every illusion, and then beautified it by unflinching loyalty to duty, and unwavering fidelity to conscience. The publication of “Jane Eyre” marked an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten.

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(‡ decoration)BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD.FIRST WOMAN LAWYER BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.FOR heroic perseverance, strength of intellect, dignity and power of mind, logic and eloquence,—and withal true womanliness of character, the sisterhood of the world perhaps could present no counterpart in any single woman, of any age, to Belva A. Lockwood. Had she devoted her life to literature the profoundness of her writings must have impressed the world. The fragments of her speeches which remain are worthy to live. She has had one idea in life—to enfranchise woman—and while earning her living in a profession, for recognition in which she had to fight and conquer the United States, she has, from every advanced step, held back the helping hand to her more timid sisters. If her ideal is ever realized, she will live in future history as one of the emancipators and greatest benefactors of her sex.Belva Ann Bennett was born in Niagara County, New York, October 24, 1830, on her father’s farm. Her early education was received at a district school and in the academy of her native town. At fourteen years of age she began to teach in summer, attending school in winter. At eighteen she married a young farmer, Uriah H. McNall, who died in 1853, leaving one daughter. The young widow entered Genesee College in Lima, New York, the same year, from which she graduated with the degree ofA. B.four years later. She was immediately elected to a position in the Lockport Academy, where she manifested her progressive principles by introducing declamation and gymnastics for young ladies, conducting the classes herself. This was in addition to her duties as professor of higher mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and botany. Four years later she became proprietor of McNall Seminary in Oswego, New York, which she conducted until the close of the Civil War, at which time she removed to Washington,D. C., and in March, 1868, marriedRev.Ezekiel Lockwood, a Baptist minister and chaplain during the war.Dr.Lockwood died in 1877. At this late dateMrs.Lockwood resumed her studies, entering the Syracuse University at New York, from which she graduated with the degree ofA. M.She had previous to this studied law in Washington, graduating from the National University Law School with the degree ofD. C. L.in May, 1873. In the same year she was admitted to practice in the highest court of the District, and in 1875 applied for admission to the Court of Claims, which was refused; first, on the ground that she was a woman, and afterwards that she was a married woman. In 1876 she applied for admission to the Supreme Court of the United States. This was denied her because there was no English precedent. Itwas in vain that she pleaded that Queens Eleanor and Elizabeth had both been supreme chancellors of the realm, that Countess Ann had sat with the judges on the bench at the Assizes of Appleby. Finally she drafted a bill and secured its introduction into both houses of Congress, which was passed in 1879, admitting women to the Court, by which means she accomplished her purpose, and since that time she has enjoyed an active and lucrative practice, being privileged to appear before any Court in the United States. Nine other women have since been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court under the above Act.Among the services whichMrs.Lockwood has rendered her sex may be mentioned the bill passed by Congress in 1870, giving to the women employees of the government, of whom there are many thousands, the same pay as men receive for similar work. She also secured the passage of a bill appropriating $50,000 for the aid of sailors and mariners. She has frequently appeared before congressional committees in the cause of women, her arguments always looking to the final enfranchisement of woman. An extract from one of these addresses succeeds this article.Mrs.Lockwood is also an intense advocate of temperance and labor reform.When President Garfield died in 1881, he was considering her application for appointment as minister to Brazil. In 1884 and again in 1888, she was nominated for President of the United States by the Equal Rights Party of San Francisco, California, and though knowing that her candidacy would only subject her to the ridicule of the masses, it afforded an opportunity for the preaching of her theory of woman suffrage, and she accepted the nomination, and made a canvass that awakened the people of the United States to no small consideration of the subject. The popularity given her by these several movements has called her largely to the lecture platform and into newspaper correspondence during the last fifteen years. She was a delegate to the International Congress of Peace in Paris, and made one of the opening speeches, and presented a paper in the French language on “International Arbitration,” which was well received. In 1890 she was again a delegate to the same convention in London, and her paper there on “Disarmament” was widely commented upon. Even at this late date her thirst for knowledge again evinced itself, for she remained in London to take a course of University Extension lectures at Oxford. In 1891 she was again a delegate to the Peace Congress at Rome, where her influence was equally as conspicuous as before.Of late yearsMrs.Lockwood, in addition to her law practice, has acted as assistant editor of the “Peacemaker,” a Philadelphia magazine, all the time pursuing her studies and contributing no small modicum of encouragement, both by her pen and lectures, to the furtherance of the University Extension idea. It may be said, however, that her interest and labor in all forward movements are mainly due to her confidence in the aid they will contribute toward the final enfranchisement of woman.ADDRESS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES WASHINGTON, IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE.GENTLEMEN of the Committee: We come before you to-day, not with any studied eloquence, far-fetched erudition, or new theories for the metamorphosis of our government, or the overthrow of our social economy and relations, but we come, asking for our whole commonwealth, for the fathers who begat us, and the brothers at our side—for the mothers who bore us, and the sisters who go hand in hand with us; for the orphan and the widow unprotected; for the wretched inebriate and the outcast Magdalene; for the beggars who throng our streets and the inmates of our jails and asylums—for these we ask you that we too may have a hand and a voice, a share in this matter which so nearly concerns not only our temporal but even our eternal salvation. We ask you that we may have an interest that shall awaken from its apathy fully one-half of the moral and intellectual resources of the country, fully one-half of its productive interest—an interest which contains in the germ the physical power and vital force of the whole nation. Weakness cannot beget power, ignorance cannot beget wisdom, disease cannot produce health. Look at our women of to-day, with their enfeebled bodies, dwarfed intellects, laxness of moral force, without enough of healthy stimulus to incite to action, and compare them with our grandmothers of the Revolution and the Martha Washington school. Here you find a woman who dared to control her own affairs; who superintended a farm of six hundred acres; giving personal instructions to the workmen, writing her own bills and receipts, and setting an example of industry and frugality to the neighboring women who called to see her.I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove what I wish to prove to-day, the countless numbers of women who have participated creditably in government from the days of our Saviour until the present time. You know that Victoria rules in England; and the adoration of the English heart to-day for its Queen, found expression but a few weeks since in one of our popular lecture halls, when the audience, composed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of Elizabeth, “good Queen Bess,” as she has been called, gave to England her prestige—the proud pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the nations of the earth. IsabellaI.of Spain, the patron saint of America, without whose generosity our country to-day might have been a wilderness, was never nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, after the refusal of the crowned authority of England, the disapproval of the wise men of her own kingdom, she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “I undertake it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.” Maria Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins of government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, found herself equal to the emergency, brought order out of chaos, and prosperity to her kingdom. Christine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the zenith of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in the late disastrous revolution, assumed the regency of the Empire in defiance of her ministry, and, when forced to flee, covered her flight with a shrewdness that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. Florence Nightingale brought order and efficiency into the hospitals of the Crimea, and Clara Barton, with her clear head and generous heart, has lifted up the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possible for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to you Catharine, of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia; or revert to the earliest forms of government when the family and the church were lawgivers; remind you of Lydia, the seller of purple and fine linen, who ruled her own household, called to the church; of Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and left to control the church at Ephesus, after they had been banished from Rome by the decree of Claudius; or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known fact that women have been sent as ministers and ambassadors, the latter a power fuller than our country grants, to treat on important State matters between the crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they have represented the person of the monarch or emperor himself. France, since the beginning of the reign of LouisXIV., through the period of the ascendency of NapoleonI.down to the reign of NapoleonIII.,has employed women in diplomacy. Instances may be found recorded in a work entitled “Napoleon and His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our own consular works. The late Empress of France has been said to be especially gifted in this respect. It has been the custom of Russia for the past century, and still continues to be, to send women on diplomatic errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is done by households, a woman is often sent to represent the family.Women are now writing a large proportion of the books and newspapers of the country, are editing newspapers and commanding ships. They are admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the higher order of colleges, and are knocking at Amherst and Yale. Yea, more, they are admitted to the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming and Utah; admitted to the practice of medicine everywhere, and more recently to consultation. One hundred women preachers are already ordained and are preaching throughout the land. Women are elected as engrossing and enrolling clerks in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin, Missouri and Indiana; appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine, Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, as in New York andSt.Louis. They are filling as school teachers three-fourths of the schools of the land.This is more than true of our own city. Shall we not then have women school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers.Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the government departments. They are all eligible, since the passage of the Arnell bill, to the highest clerkships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the highest executive power in the land. “The power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate to confirm, has never been questioned by our highest courts. Being bonded officers, they must necessarily qualify before a judicial officer.”And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws and Judiciary, whatever may be your report on these bills for justice and equality to women, committed to your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you have mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be affected by your decision. They may be amply provided for to-day, and be beggared to-morrow. Remember that “life is short and time is fleeting,” but principles never die. You hold in your hands a power and an opportunity to-day to render yourselves immortal—an opportunity that comes but once in a lifetime. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you! Shall this appeal be in vain? I hold in my hands the names of hundreds of men and women of our city pledged to this work, and they will not relax their efforts until it is accomplished.“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;The eternal years of God are hers;But♦Error, wounded, writhes in painAnd dies amid her worshippers.”♦‘Errror’ replaced with ‘Error’(‡ decoration)

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FIRST WOMAN LAWYER BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.

FOR heroic perseverance, strength of intellect, dignity and power of mind, logic and eloquence,—and withal true womanliness of character, the sisterhood of the world perhaps could present no counterpart in any single woman, of any age, to Belva A. Lockwood. Had she devoted her life to literature the profoundness of her writings must have impressed the world. The fragments of her speeches which remain are worthy to live. She has had one idea in life—to enfranchise woman—and while earning her living in a profession, for recognition in which she had to fight and conquer the United States, she has, from every advanced step, held back the helping hand to her more timid sisters. If her ideal is ever realized, she will live in future history as one of the emancipators and greatest benefactors of her sex.

Belva Ann Bennett was born in Niagara County, New York, October 24, 1830, on her father’s farm. Her early education was received at a district school and in the academy of her native town. At fourteen years of age she began to teach in summer, attending school in winter. At eighteen she married a young farmer, Uriah H. McNall, who died in 1853, leaving one daughter. The young widow entered Genesee College in Lima, New York, the same year, from which she graduated with the degree ofA. B.four years later. She was immediately elected to a position in the Lockport Academy, where she manifested her progressive principles by introducing declamation and gymnastics for young ladies, conducting the classes herself. This was in addition to her duties as professor of higher mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and botany. Four years later she became proprietor of McNall Seminary in Oswego, New York, which she conducted until the close of the Civil War, at which time she removed to Washington,D. C., and in March, 1868, marriedRev.Ezekiel Lockwood, a Baptist minister and chaplain during the war.Dr.Lockwood died in 1877. At this late dateMrs.Lockwood resumed her studies, entering the Syracuse University at New York, from which she graduated with the degree ofA. M.She had previous to this studied law in Washington, graduating from the National University Law School with the degree ofD. C. L.in May, 1873. In the same year she was admitted to practice in the highest court of the District, and in 1875 applied for admission to the Court of Claims, which was refused; first, on the ground that she was a woman, and afterwards that she was a married woman. In 1876 she applied for admission to the Supreme Court of the United States. This was denied her because there was no English precedent. Itwas in vain that she pleaded that Queens Eleanor and Elizabeth had both been supreme chancellors of the realm, that Countess Ann had sat with the judges on the bench at the Assizes of Appleby. Finally she drafted a bill and secured its introduction into both houses of Congress, which was passed in 1879, admitting women to the Court, by which means she accomplished her purpose, and since that time she has enjoyed an active and lucrative practice, being privileged to appear before any Court in the United States. Nine other women have since been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court under the above Act.

Among the services whichMrs.Lockwood has rendered her sex may be mentioned the bill passed by Congress in 1870, giving to the women employees of the government, of whom there are many thousands, the same pay as men receive for similar work. She also secured the passage of a bill appropriating $50,000 for the aid of sailors and mariners. She has frequently appeared before congressional committees in the cause of women, her arguments always looking to the final enfranchisement of woman. An extract from one of these addresses succeeds this article.Mrs.Lockwood is also an intense advocate of temperance and labor reform.

When President Garfield died in 1881, he was considering her application for appointment as minister to Brazil. In 1884 and again in 1888, she was nominated for President of the United States by the Equal Rights Party of San Francisco, California, and though knowing that her candidacy would only subject her to the ridicule of the masses, it afforded an opportunity for the preaching of her theory of woman suffrage, and she accepted the nomination, and made a canvass that awakened the people of the United States to no small consideration of the subject. The popularity given her by these several movements has called her largely to the lecture platform and into newspaper correspondence during the last fifteen years. She was a delegate to the International Congress of Peace in Paris, and made one of the opening speeches, and presented a paper in the French language on “International Arbitration,” which was well received. In 1890 she was again a delegate to the same convention in London, and her paper there on “Disarmament” was widely commented upon. Even at this late date her thirst for knowledge again evinced itself, for she remained in London to take a course of University Extension lectures at Oxford. In 1891 she was again a delegate to the Peace Congress at Rome, where her influence was equally as conspicuous as before.

Of late yearsMrs.Lockwood, in addition to her law practice, has acted as assistant editor of the “Peacemaker,” a Philadelphia magazine, all the time pursuing her studies and contributing no small modicum of encouragement, both by her pen and lectures, to the furtherance of the University Extension idea. It may be said, however, that her interest and labor in all forward movements are mainly due to her confidence in the aid they will contribute toward the final enfranchisement of woman.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES WASHINGTON, IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE.

GENTLEMEN of the Committee: We come before you to-day, not with any studied eloquence, far-fetched erudition, or new theories for the metamorphosis of our government, or the overthrow of our social economy and relations, but we come, asking for our whole commonwealth, for the fathers who begat us, and the brothers at our side—for the mothers who bore us, and the sisters who go hand in hand with us; for the orphan and the widow unprotected; for the wretched inebriate and the outcast Magdalene; for the beggars who throng our streets and the inmates of our jails and asylums—for these we ask you that we too may have a hand and a voice, a share in this matter which so nearly concerns not only our temporal but even our eternal salvation. We ask you that we may have an interest that shall awaken from its apathy fully one-half of the moral and intellectual resources of the country, fully one-half of its productive interest—an interest which contains in the germ the physical power and vital force of the whole nation. Weakness cannot beget power, ignorance cannot beget wisdom, disease cannot produce health. Look at our women of to-day, with their enfeebled bodies, dwarfed intellects, laxness of moral force, without enough of healthy stimulus to incite to action, and compare them with our grandmothers of the Revolution and the Martha Washington school. Here you find a woman who dared to control her own affairs; who superintended a farm of six hundred acres; giving personal instructions to the workmen, writing her own bills and receipts, and setting an example of industry and frugality to the neighboring women who called to see her.I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove what I wish to prove to-day, the countless numbers of women who have participated creditably in government from the days of our Saviour until the present time. You know that Victoria rules in England; and the adoration of the English heart to-day for its Queen, found expression but a few weeks since in one of our popular lecture halls, when the audience, composed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of Elizabeth, “good Queen Bess,” as she has been called, gave to England her prestige—the proud pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the nations of the earth. IsabellaI.of Spain, the patron saint of America, without whose generosity our country to-day might have been a wilderness, was never nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, after the refusal of the crowned authority of England, the disapproval of the wise men of her own kingdom, she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “I undertake it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.” Maria Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins of government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, found herself equal to the emergency, brought order out of chaos, and prosperity to her kingdom. Christine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the zenith of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in the late disastrous revolution, assumed the regency of the Empire in defiance of her ministry, and, when forced to flee, covered her flight with a shrewdness that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. Florence Nightingale brought order and efficiency into the hospitals of the Crimea, and Clara Barton, with her clear head and generous heart, has lifted up the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possible for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to you Catharine, of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia; or revert to the earliest forms of government when the family and the church were lawgivers; remind you of Lydia, the seller of purple and fine linen, who ruled her own household, called to the church; of Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and left to control the church at Ephesus, after they had been banished from Rome by the decree of Claudius; or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known fact that women have been sent as ministers and ambassadors, the latter a power fuller than our country grants, to treat on important State matters between the crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they have represented the person of the monarch or emperor himself. France, since the beginning of the reign of LouisXIV., through the period of the ascendency of NapoleonI.down to the reign of NapoleonIII.,has employed women in diplomacy. Instances may be found recorded in a work entitled “Napoleon and His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our own consular works. The late Empress of France has been said to be especially gifted in this respect. It has been the custom of Russia for the past century, and still continues to be, to send women on diplomatic errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is done by households, a woman is often sent to represent the family.Women are now writing a large proportion of the books and newspapers of the country, are editing newspapers and commanding ships. They are admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the higher order of colleges, and are knocking at Amherst and Yale. Yea, more, they are admitted to the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming and Utah; admitted to the practice of medicine everywhere, and more recently to consultation. One hundred women preachers are already ordained and are preaching throughout the land. Women are elected as engrossing and enrolling clerks in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin, Missouri and Indiana; appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine, Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, as in New York andSt.Louis. They are filling as school teachers three-fourths of the schools of the land.This is more than true of our own city. Shall we not then have women school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers.Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the government departments. They are all eligible, since the passage of the Arnell bill, to the highest clerkships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the highest executive power in the land. “The power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate to confirm, has never been questioned by our highest courts. Being bonded officers, they must necessarily qualify before a judicial officer.”And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws and Judiciary, whatever may be your report on these bills for justice and equality to women, committed to your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you have mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be affected by your decision. They may be amply provided for to-day, and be beggared to-morrow. Remember that “life is short and time is fleeting,” but principles never die. You hold in your hands a power and an opportunity to-day to render yourselves immortal—an opportunity that comes but once in a lifetime. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you! Shall this appeal be in vain? I hold in my hands the names of hundreds of men and women of our city pledged to this work, and they will not relax their efforts until it is accomplished.“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;The eternal years of God are hers;But♦Error, wounded, writhes in painAnd dies amid her worshippers.”♦‘Errror’ replaced with ‘Error’

I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove what I wish to prove to-day, the countless numbers of women who have participated creditably in government from the days of our Saviour until the present time. You know that Victoria rules in England; and the adoration of the English heart to-day for its Queen, found expression but a few weeks since in one of our popular lecture halls, when the audience, composed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of Elizabeth, “good Queen Bess,” as she has been called, gave to England her prestige—the proud pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the nations of the earth. IsabellaI.of Spain, the patron saint of America, without whose generosity our country to-day might have been a wilderness, was never nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, after the refusal of the crowned authority of England, the disapproval of the wise men of her own kingdom, she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “I undertake it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds.” Maria Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins of government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, found herself equal to the emergency, brought order out of chaos, and prosperity to her kingdom. Christine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the zenith of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in the late disastrous revolution, assumed the regency of the Empire in defiance of her ministry, and, when forced to flee, covered her flight with a shrewdness that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. Florence Nightingale brought order and efficiency into the hospitals of the Crimea, and Clara Barton, with her clear head and generous heart, has lifted up the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possible for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to you Catharine, of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire the wisdom of Solomon; or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia; or revert to the earliest forms of government when the family and the church were lawgivers; remind you of Lydia, the seller of purple and fine linen, who ruled her own household, called to the church; of Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and left to control the church at Ephesus, after they had been banished from Rome by the decree of Claudius; or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known fact that women have been sent as ministers and ambassadors, the latter a power fuller than our country grants, to treat on important State matters between the crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they have represented the person of the monarch or emperor himself. France, since the beginning of the reign of LouisXIV., through the period of the ascendency of NapoleonI.down to the reign of NapoleonIII.,has employed women in diplomacy. Instances may be found recorded in a work entitled “Napoleon and His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our own consular works. The late Empress of France has been said to be especially gifted in this respect. It has been the custom of Russia for the past century, and still continues to be, to send women on diplomatic errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is done by households, a woman is often sent to represent the family.

Women are now writing a large proportion of the books and newspapers of the country, are editing newspapers and commanding ships. They are admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the higher order of colleges, and are knocking at Amherst and Yale. Yea, more, they are admitted to the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming and Utah; admitted to the practice of medicine everywhere, and more recently to consultation. One hundred women preachers are already ordained and are preaching throughout the land. Women are elected as engrossing and enrolling clerks in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin, Missouri and Indiana; appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine, Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, as in New York andSt.Louis. They are filling as school teachers three-fourths of the schools of the land.

This is more than true of our own city. Shall we not then have women school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers.

Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the government departments. They are all eligible, since the passage of the Arnell bill, to the highest clerkships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the highest executive power in the land. “The power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate to confirm, has never been questioned by our highest courts. Being bonded officers, they must necessarily qualify before a judicial officer.”

And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws and Judiciary, whatever may be your report on these bills for justice and equality to women, committed to your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you have mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be affected by your decision. They may be amply provided for to-day, and be beggared to-morrow. Remember that “life is short and time is fleeting,” but principles never die. You hold in your hands a power and an opportunity to-day to render yourselves immortal—an opportunity that comes but once in a lifetime. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you! Shall this appeal be in vain? I hold in my hands the names of hundreds of men and women of our city pledged to this work, and they will not relax their efforts until it is accomplished.

“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;The eternal years of God are hers;But♦Error, wounded, writhes in painAnd dies amid her worshippers.”

“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;

The eternal years of God are hers;

But♦Error, wounded, writhes in pain

And dies amid her worshippers.”

♦‘Errror’ replaced with ‘Error’

(‡ decoration)

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