ny mere error.

In Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer we have seen two types of the New
England woman as leaders of men. The former was perhaps more of a power,
the latter of an influence; but each was complement to the other, not in
task but in type. It needs no wonderful discernment to see in these
women the rise and florescence of the New England spirit which has come
down to our own day and has permeated and informed the whole American
genius of femininity. Through their descendants--in some cases unworthy
of their ancestors, whom they deserted or even betrayed the blood of
Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Dyer is with us; but that is of less moment
than the survival of their spirit, of the independence of the American
woman when convinced of right, of her steadfastness in following her
impulses, undeterred by sneers or even bodily perils. Though they were
not directly of the Puritan mothers, not directly of the stock which has
most numerically survived, the names of Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer
are deserving of honorable memorial as among the first founders of the
feminine republic of America.

They were pioneers also. Anne Hutchinson was the first woman preacher of
whom we have record on these our shores, and she was the first of the
many religious "prophetesses" who were to rise up and for a time draw
men and women to them because of their personality rather than from any
merit in their tenets. It was probably far less that which Mrs.
Hutchinson preached than that which she was that brought to her meetings
those "seventy or eighty" devoted women who looked upon her as one
inspired. Mary Dyer had no following, was, like Him she preached,
"despised and rejected of men"; but she was in a sense the protomartyr
among women in our country, and she kindled a flame which in another
guise rose to a gigantic conflagration when the time came for women to
speak fearlessly and openly their thoughts concerning great matters.

That our picture may know some completeness, however, it is needful to
glance at the effect of these women and others like them upon the female
world of New England. While Anne Hutchinson in some sense stood alone of
her sex, Mary Dyer was only one of a great number of devoted men and
women, merely singled out by her fate for enduring memory. The women of
the Quakers, driven by the Spirit, went through the land preaching, in
defiance of all the laws that were fulminated against them. We must not
be too sudden or vi