and the locomotive, and the watch, and I sometimes
think, looking at these machines and their performances,
that they too ought to vote.

But Mr. Evarts approached the close of his oration with these
words--and may they not be prophetic--may not the orator have
spoken with a deeper meaning than he knew?

With these proud possessions of the past, with powers
matured, with principles settled, with habits formed, the
nation passes as it were from preparatory growth to
responsible development of character and the steady
performance of duty. What labors await it, what trials shall
attend it, what triumphs for human nature, what glory for
itself, are prepared for this people in the coming century,
we may not assume to foretell.

Whether the wise (?) legislators see it or not--whether the
undercurrent that is beating to the shore speaks with an
utterance that is comprehensible to their heavy apprehensions or
not, the coming century has in preparation for the country a
truer humanity, a better justice of which the protest and
declaration of the fathers pouring its vital current down through
the departed century, and surging on into the future, is, to the
seeing eye, the sure forerunner, the seed-time, of which the
approaching harvest will bring a better fruition for women--and
they who scoff now will be compelled to rejoice hereafter. But as
Mr. Evarts remarked in his allusions to future centennials:

By the mere circumstance of this periodicity our generation
will be in the minds, in the hearts, on the lips of our
countrymen at the next centennial commemoration in
comparison with their own character and condition and with
the great founders of the nation. What shall they say of us?
How shall they estimate the part we bear in the unbroken
line of the nation's progress? And so on, in the long reach
of time, forever and forever, our place in the secular roll
of the ages must always bring us into observation and
criticism.

Shall it then be recorded of us that the demand and the protest
of the women were not made in vain? Shall it be told to future
generations that the cry for justice, the effort to sunder the
shackles with which woman has