mselves to the public service, society is robbed of needed
guardians for the special wants of the weak and unfortunate. There
should be, in the secular world, certain orders corresponding in a
measure to the grand sisterhoods of the Catholic Church, to the members
of which, as freely as to men, all offices, civic and ecclesiastical,
should be open." That this ideal will be realized may be inferred from
the fact that exceptional women have, in all ages, been leaders in great
projects of charity and reform, and that now many stand waiting only the
sanction of their century, ready for wide altruistic labors.

The world has ever had its vestal virgins, its holy women, mothers of
ideas rather than of men; its Marys, as well as its Marthas, who, rather
than be busy housewives, preferred to sit at the feet of divine wisdom,
and ponder the mysteries of the unknown. All hail to Maria Mitchell,
Harriet Hosmer, Charlotte Cushman, Alice and Phoebe Gary, Louisa Alcott,
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Frances Willard, and Clara Barton! All honor to
the noble women who have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual and
moral needs of mankind!

Susan B. Anthony was of sturdy New England stock, and it was at the foot
of Old Greylock, South Adams, Mass., that she gave forth her first
rebellious cry. There the baby steps were taken, and at the village
school the first stitches were learned, and the A B C duly mastered.
When five winters had passed over Susan's head, there came a time of
great domestic commotion, and, in her small way, the child seized the
idea that permanence is not the rule of life. The family moved to
Battenville, N.Y., where Mr. Anthony became one of the wealthiest men in
Washington County. Susan can still recall the stately coldness of the
great house--how large the bare rooms, with their yellow-painted floors,
seemed, in contrast with her own diminutiveness, and the outlook of the
schoolroom where for so many years, with her brothers and sisters, she
pursued her studies under private tutors.

Mr. Anthony was a stern Hicksite Quaker. In Susan's early life he
objected on principle to all forms of frivolous amusement, such as
music, dancing, or novel reading, while games and even pictures were
regarded as meaningless luxuries. Such puritanical convictions might
have easily degenerated into mere cant; but underlying all was a broad
and firm basis of wholesome respect for individual freedom and a brave
adherence to truth. He w