rd to have us ignore them.

As statesmen, walking on the shore piled high with the
"drift-wood of kings," the wrecks of nations and governments, you
have discovered the one word emblazoned as an epitaph on each and
every one, "Luxury, luxury, luxury!" You have hitherto placed a
premium upon woman's idleness, helplessness, dependence. The
children of most of our fashionable women are being educated by
foreign nurses. How can you expect them to develop into patriotic
American statesmen? For the sake of country I plead--for the sake
of a responsible, exalted womanhood; for the sake of a purer
womanhood; for home and truth, and native land. As a daughter,
with holiest, tenderest, most grateful memories clinging to the
almost sacred name of father; as a wife, receiving constant
encouragement, support, and cooeperation from one who has revealed
to her the genuine nobility of true manhood; as a mother, whose
heart still thrills at the first greeting from her little son;
and as a sister, watching with intense interest the entrance of a
brother into the great world of work, I could not be half so
loyal to woman's cause were it not a synonym for the equal rights
of humanity--a diviner justice for all!

With one practical question I rest my case. The world objected to
woman's entrance into literature, the pulpit, the lyceum, the
college, the school. What has she wrought? Our wisest thinkers
and historians assert that literature has been purified. Poets
and judges at international collegiate contests award to woman's
thought the highest prize. Miss Lucia Peabody received upon the
occasion of her second election to the Boston school board the
highest vote ever polled for any candidate. Since woman has
proved faithful over a few things, need you fear to summon her to
your side to assist you in executing the will of the nation? And
now, yielding to none in intense love of womanhood; standing here
beneath the very dome of the national capitol overshadowed by the
old flag; with the blood of the revolutionary patriots coursing
through my veins; as a native-born, tax-paying American citizen,
I ask equality before the law.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Committee_: In
appearing before you to ask for a sixteenth amendment to the
United Sta