lute, substantial woman of forty or fifty,
exhibiting no signs of age or weariness. Her hair is dark, her head
well formed, her face has an expression of masculine strength. If
she were a man you would guess that she was a schoolmaster, or a
quiet clergyman, or perhaps a business man and deacon. She pays no
special attention to feminine graces, but is not ungraceful or
unwomanly. In speaking her manner is self-possessed without ranting
or unpleasant demonstrations, her tones slightly monotonous. Long
experience has taught her a candid, kindly, sensible way of
presenting her views, which wins the good will of her hearers
whether they accept them or not. She said in part:

"How different is this from the assemblages that used to greet us
who twenty years ago commenced to agitate the enfranchisement of
woman. We begin to see the time, which we shall gladly welcome,
when we shall not be needed at the front of the battle. Of late
years, the country has been occupied in discussing the claim of man
to hold property in his fellow-man, and has decided the question in
the negative. Still another form of slavery remains to be disposed
of; the old idea yet prevails that woman is owned and possessed by
man, to be clothed and fed and cared for by his generosity. All the
wrongs, arrogances and antagonisms of modern society grow out of
this false condition of the relations between man and woman. The
present agitation rises from a demand of the soul of woman for the
right to own and possess herself. It is said that as a rule man
does sufficiently provide for woman, and that she ought to remain
content. The great facts of the world are at war with this
assumption.

"For example, I see in the New York Herald 1,200 advertisements of
people wanting work. Upon examination, 500 of them come from women
and 300 more are from boarding-house keepers; and we may therefore
say that eight of the twelve hundred advertisements are from women
compelled to rely upon their own energies to gain their food and
clothing. Every morning from 6 to 7 o'clock you may see on the
Bowery and other great north and south avenues of New York, troops
of young girls and women, with careworn or crime-stained faces,
carrying their poor lunch half-concealed beneath a scanty shawl. If
the facts were in accordance with the common th