to come forward and take our part in the world's work. If
they had not blazed the trees and pioneered the way, we should not have
dared to come. If there is one single drop of chivalric blood in woman's
veins, it ought to bring a tinge of pride to the face that Susan B.
Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Howe and these
other grand women, our leaders and our foremothers, are here for us to
greet; that they, who heard so much that was not agreeable, may hear an
occasional pleasant word while they are alive." Very few of the speakers
failed to express their deep feeling of personal obligation and the
indebtedness of all women to the early labors of Miss Anthony and the
other pioneers.

In her letter to the Union Signal, Miss Willard gave this bit of
description: "The central figure of the council was Susan B. Anthony, in
her black dress and pretty red silk shawl, with her gray-brown hair
smoothly combed over a regal head, worthy of any statesman. Her mingled
good-nature and firmness, her unselfish purpose and keen perception of
the right thing to do, endeared her alike to those whom she admonished
and those whom she praised. In her sixty-ninth year, dear 'Susan B.'
seems not over fifty-five. She has a wonderful constitution, and the
prodigies of work she has accomplished have forever put to rout the
ignorant notion that women lack physical endurance."

In the year of preliminary work for this great council, the thought came
many times to May Wright Sewall that it ought to result in something
more than one brief convention, and she conceived the idea of a
permanent International and also a permanent National Council of Women.
During the week in Washington she presented her plan to a large number
of the leaders who regarded it with approval. Miss Anthony, chairman of
the meeting, by request, appointed a committee of fifteen who reported
in favor of permanent councils, and Miss Willard presented an outline of
constitutions. After a number of meetings of the delegates the councils
were officially formed, March 31, 1888, "to include the organized
working forces of the world's womanhood," in the belief that "such a
federation will increase the world's sum total of womanly courage,
efficiency and esprit de corps, widen the horizon, correct the tendency
of an exaggerated impression of one's own work as compared with that of
others, and put the wisdom and experience of each at the service of
all." A simple for