Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/281

ognize in this the only radical cure. . . . . No statement could better define this movement than Tennyson's beautiful stanzas:

The woman's cause is man's; they sink or rise
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free,
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall man grow?
The woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse.

Yet in the long years, liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man:
He gain in sweetness and in moral height —
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind.

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Self-reverent each, and reverencing each;
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other, as are those who love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to man;
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm;
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.

And we who are privileged with the poet to foresee this better Eden; we who have

The Future grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time, —

adopting the victorious cry of the Crusaders, "God wills it!" may listen to hear above the present din and discord, the stern mandate of His laws, bidding the world "Onward! onward!" and catch the rhythmical reply of all its movements, "We advance."

Mrs. Severance then read an appropriate poem from the pen of Mrs. Sarah Nowell, in which she eulogizes Florence Nightingale, Rosa Bonheur, Harriet Hosmer, and asserts the equality of man and woman in the creation.

Dr. Harriot K. Hunt made some pointed remarks on the education of woman.

The Rev. James Freeman Clarke was then introduced. Le said:

I understand the cause advocated on this platform to be an unpopular one. It is a feeble cause, a misunderstood cause, a misrepresented cause. Hence, it seems to me, if any one is asked to say anything in behalf of it, and if he really believes it is a good cause, he should speak; and so I have come. Certainly any interest which concerns one-half the human race is an important one. Every man, no matter how stern, hard, and unrelenting he may have become in the bitter strife and struggle of the world, every man was once a little infant, cradled on a mother's knee, and tak-