is as full
of beautiful possibilities as a perfect harp, and she realizes that all the
harmonies of the universe are in herself, while her own soul plays upon
magic strings the unwritten anthems of love. She is the apostle of the
true, the beautiful, the good, commissioned to complete all that the twelve
have left undone. Hers is the mission of missions--the highest of all--to
make the body not the prison, but the palace of the soul, with the brain
for its great white throne.

When she comes like the south wind into the cold haunts of sin and sorrow,
her words are smiles and her smiles are the sunlight which heals the
stricken soul. Her hand is tender--but steel tempered with holy resolve,
and as one whom her love had glorified once said--she is soft and gentle,
but you could no more turn her from her course than winter could stop the
coming of spring. She has long learned with patience, and to-day she knows
many things dear to the soul far better than her teachers. In olden times
the Jews claimed to be the conservators of the world's morals--they treated
woman as a chattel, and said that because she was created after man, she
was created solely for man. Too many still are Jews who never called
Abraham "Father," while the Jews themselves have long acknowledged woman as
man's proper helpmeet. In those days women had few lawful claims and no one
to urge them. True, there were Miriam and Esther, but they sang and
sacrificed for their people, not for their sex.

To-day there are ten thousand Esthers, and Miriams by the million, who sing
best by singing most for their own sex. They are demanding the right to
help make the laws, or at least to help enforce the laws upon which depends
the welfare of their husbands, their children, and themselves. Why should
our selfish self longer remain deaf to their cry? The date is no longer
B.C. Might no longer makes right, and in this fair land at least fear has
ceased to kiss the iron heel of wrong. Why then should we continue to
demand woman's love and woman's help while we recklessly promise as lover
and candidate what we never fulfil as husband and office-holder? In our
secret heart our better self is shamed and dishonored, and appeals from
Philip drunk to Philip sober, but has not yet the moral strength and
courage to prosecute the appeal. But the east is rosy, and the sunlight
cannot long be delayed. Woman must not and will not be disheartened by a
thousand denials or a million of