professors from far and near, were there. A great audience of the wise,
the learned, the distinguished in State and Church assembled. Such a
conservative audience, it was supposed, would surely hold this radical
in check. Alas! they were all doomed, for once, to hear the naked truth,
on every vital question of the day. Thinking this might be his only
opportunity to rouse some liberal thought in conservative minds, he
struck the keynote of every reform; defended labor strikes, the
Nihilists of Russia, prohibition, woman suffrage, and demanded
reformation in our prisons, courts of justice, and halls of legislation.
On the woman question, he said:

"Social science affirms that woman's place in society marks the
level of civilization. From its twilight in Greece, through the
Italian worship of the Virgin, the dreams of chivalry, the justice
of the civil law, and the equality of French society, we trace her
gradual recognition, while our common law, as Lord Brougham
confessed, was, with relation to women, the opprobrium of the age
of Christianity. For forty years earnest men and women, working
noiselessly, have washed away the opprobrium, the statute books of
thirty States have been remodeled, and woman stands, to-day, almost
face to face with her last claim--the ballot. It has been a weary
and thankless, though successful struggle. But if there be any
refuge from that ghastly curse, the vice of great cities, before
which social science stands palsied and dumb, it is in this more
equal recognition of women.

"If, in this critical battle for universal suffrage, our fathers'
noblest legacy to us and the greatest trust God leaves in our
hands, there be any weapon, which, once taken from the armory, will
make victory certain, it will be as it has been in art, literature,
and society, summoning woman into the political arena. The literary
class, until within half a dozen years, has taken no note of this
great uprising; only to fling every obstacle in its way.

"The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of
Tacitus in his 'Germany,' which reads, 'In all grave matters they
consult their women.' Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has
flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under
its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second
Tacitus