R. E. LAWSON, WASHINGTON, D. C.

The time has come when woman no longer accepts the hearthstone as the
circumscribed arena of her activities. Amid the busy whirl of this
nineteenth century we behold her stepping with well-shod feet boldly
across the threshold where hitherto her ambitions have been smothered
or held in check by social customs and prejudice, taking her place in
the various avocations which bring to mankind peace and happiness,
through an honest dollar for its equivalent in honest toil.

If we will notice the index finger in the plane of human advancement
and limit its progress to the strides made in civilization within the
last forty years, it will be readily acknowledged that the woman
movement during these years has made no insignificant ripple in the
tide of human achievements. There is scarcely a profession which has
not felt the impress of her presence; scarcely a moral reform, from
the antislavery cause of the past to the great temperance movement of
to-day, which has not received her sanction and hearty support.

Wherever she has gone forth she has acquitted herself creditably, and
successfully lived down all attempts to ridicule and cast opprobrium
upon her adventure. This forward march, which has been likened to a
great tidal wave, has carried in its course higher education for
woman, including her entrance to the medical, legal, and clerical
professions, the position as trustee on school boards in various
sections, the restoration to married women of a right to their own
property, and various other reforms tending to broaden her sphere,
increase her activities, and heighten her self-respect.

Side by side with this uniform impulse on the part of woman to know
and to be known in life's arena have come to its twin sister the
progress and unprecedented achievements of the Negro in America. The
school may instruct and the Church may teach, but the home is an
institution older than the Church and antedates the school, the place
where the children should be trained for useful citizenship on earth
and hope of holy communion in heaven.

Our hands have ever been firm upon the rudder, guiding and governing
the education of our youth for years of future usefulness.

I take it that we, as colored women, must regard ourselves as a
peculiar people in these advanced movements. We cannot afford to be
swept along in the current of daily happenings without thoughtfully
comparing our status and conditions