Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But the world was not standing idle, especially the woman's world. The example of Oberlin had been widely followed. The liberal education of women had become an assured fact, not only in America, but in England. The Blue Stocking and the strong minded woman were no longer the scarecrows with which to frighten young girls into smothering at birth all intellectual aspirations. The mind and soul of womanhood were getting leave to expand. . Then came a thought to some grand women to hold a Woman's Congress, to discuss great questions. Some sneered, but those who witnessed its inauguration saw in it much hope for the future. The subjects proposed for discussion, the manner of treatment, the clear understanding of principles, astonished many who had looked down with patronizing toleration upon the mental inferiority of the "weaker sex." These women had minds, and these minds had received a good degree of discipline which told upon character just as thoroughly as upon the characters of men. Now, ante-dating this, had been the claim made for the equal rights of women, under a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people," and in the midst of the grand demonstration at Cleveland, when the American Woman's Suffrage Association was formed, had come a message from the far distant Territory of Wyoming that the women there had been enfranchised. Thus, as in the anti-slavery cause, the hand of Providence had moved in regular sequence over the dial of time. Probabilities were demonstrated. Education had proved the full humanity of the negro, so it had also proved the full humanity of woman, and God calls for our best. Following this development of the colored man had come the call to show his interest in the rights of himself and family by standing shoulder to shoul...