ctly to express the eagerness
with which I hope for it, and the confidence with which I
expect it. It will come, as other right things come, because
it is right. But those forces which "make for righteousness"
make haste slowly. Do we not often trip up ourselves in our
pilgrimage toward truth, by attributing our own sense of
hunger and hurry and heat to the fullness and leisure and
calm in which the object of our passionate search moves
forward to meet us? There is something very significant to
the student of progress, in the history of the forerunners
of revolutions. Their eager confidence in their own
immediate success, their pathetic bewilderment at the
mystery of their apparent failures, are rich with suggestion
to any one who means work for an unpopular cause. No reform
marches evenly to its consummation. If it does not meet
apparent overthrow, it must step at times with the
uneasiness of what George Eliot would call its "growing
pains." But growing pains are not death-throes. In the name
of growth and decay let us be exact in our diagnosis!

I have fallen into this train of thought, because there
seems to have been a concerted and deliberate attempt, this
past year, on the part of certain of those opposed to the
thorough elevation of women, to assert that our influence is
distinctly losing ground. Irresponsible assertion is the
last refuge of the force whose arguments have fallen off in
the fray, and "unconscious annihilation" is as yet a very
agreeable condition. It might be replied, in the language of
the hymn-book:

"If this be death,
'Tis sweet to die!"

Perhaps to the onlookers this has not been one of our fast
years. No one actually engaged in the struggle to improve
the condition of women can for an instant doubt that it has
been a strong one. A silent, sure awakening of women to
their own needs is taking place on every hand; and it is
becoming evident that until the masses of women are thus
awakened, the movement to enfranchise them must not
anticipate any very vivid successes. Let us be content if
our strength runs fo