, for it can not expand under bolts
and bars; and yet, amid all blighting, crushing
circumstances--confined within the narrowest possible limits,
trampled upon by prejudice and injustice, from her education and
position forced to occupy herself almost exclusively with the
most trivial affairs--in spite of all these difficulties, her
intellect is as good as his. The few bright meteors in man's
intellectual horizon could well be matched by woman, were she
allowed to occupy the same elevated position. There is no need of
naming the De Staels, the Rolands, the Somervilles, the
Wollstonecrofts, the Sigourneys, the Wrights, the Martineaus, the
Hemanses, the Fullers, Jagellos, and many more of modern as well
as ancient times, to prove her mental powers, her patriotism, her
self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of humanity, and the
eloquence that gushes from her pen, or from her tongue. These
things are too well known to require repetition. And do you ask
for fortitude, energy, and perseverance? Then look at woman under
suffering, reverse of fortune, and affliction, when the strength
and power of man have sunk to the lowest ebb, when his mind is
overwhelmed by the dark waters of despair. She, like the tender
ivy plant bent yet unbroken by the storms of life, not only
upholds her own hopeful courage, but clings around the
tempest-fallen oak, to speak hope to his faltering spirit, and
shelter him from the returning blast of the storm.

In looking over the speeches of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Abby Kelly
Foster, Clarina Howard Nichols, Antoinette Brown, and Lucy Stone, and
the well-digested reports by Paulina Wright Davis on Education, Abby
Price on Industry, and William Henry Channing on the Social Relations,
comprising the whole range of woman's rights and duties, we feel that
the report of one of these meetings settles the question of woman's
capacity to reason. At every session of this two days' Convention
Brinley Hall was so crowded at an early hour that hundreds were unable
to gain admittance. Accordingly, the last evening it was proposed to
adjourn to the City Hall; and even that spacious auditorium was
crowded long before the hour for assembling. It may be said with
truth, that in the whole history of the woman suffrage movement there
never was at one time more able and eloquent men and women on our
platform, a