Midianites, the live
stock is thus summarized: "Five thousand sheep, threescore and twelve
thousand beeves, threescore and one thousand asses, and thirty-two
thousand women and women-children," which Moses said the warriors might
keep for themselves. What a pity a Stead had not been there, to protect
the child-women of the Midianites and rebuke the Lord's chosen people as
they deserved! In placing the women after the sheep, the beeves, and the
asses, we have a fair idea of their comparative importance in the scale
of being, among the Jewish warriors. No wonder the right reverend
bishops and clergy of the Methodist Church, who believe in the divine
origin and authority of the Pentateuch, exclude women from their great
convocations in the American Republic in the nineteenth century. In view
of the fact that our children are taught to reverence the book as of
divine origin, I think we have a right to ask that, in the next
revision, all such passages be expurgated, and to that end learned,
competent women must have an equal place on the revising committee.

Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas came, in February, to spend a few days with
us. She was greatly shocked with many texts in the Old Testament, to
which we called her attention, and said: "Here is an insidious influence
against the elevation of women, which but few of us have ever taken into
consideration." She had just returned from a flying visit to America;
having made two voyages across the Atlantic and traveled three thousand
miles across the continent in two months, and this at the age of
sixty-eight years. She was enthusiastic in her praises of the women she
met in the United States. As her name was already on the committee to
prepare "The Woman's Bible," we had her hearty approval of the
undertaking.

In October Hattie went to London, to attend a meeting to form a Woman's
Liberal Federation. Mrs. Gladstone presided. The speeches made were
simply absurd, asking women to organize themselves to help the Liberal
party, which had steadily denied to them the political rights they had
demanded for twenty years. Professor Stuart capped the climax of insult
when he urged as "one great advantage in getting women to canvass for
the Liberal party was that they would give their services free." The
Liberals saw what enthusiasm the Primrose Dames had roused for the Tory
party, really carrying the election, and they determined to utilize a
similar force in their ranks. But the whole