and real democracy in this land; a
Government emphatically of the people, for the people, and by the
people.

Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH was then introduced, and said: Ladies and
gentlemen, I am not generally in favor of compromises, but I come
before you to-night to propose a compromise. I had written a
speech for the occasion, and--a--I assure you it was a very good
speech. As I am compassionate, however, if you will take my word
for it that it is a very good speech I will not inflict it upon
you.

These remarks brought such thunders of applause, that in response
to the manifest desire of the audience, Mrs. Burleigh again came
forward, and delivered a highly interesting and eloquent address
upon the general subject of woman's improvement, under the
epigrammatic title of "Woman's Right to be a Woman." An extract
or two will show the spirit with which she treats the question.

"I appeal to every true man before me if he has not looked into
the faces of well-dressed men so sensual and brutal in their
expression, that he would sooner a hundredfold see a sister or
daughter laid in her grave than entrusted to the guardianship of
such a man. Will you not give to every woman the power to
maintain the integrity of her womanhood--the ownership of
herself? What means the right of the drunkard's wife to be a
woman? It means the power to protect herself from his drunken
hate and his more frightful drunken love. It means that she be
armed with a vote to repress the horrid traffic that has made her
husband a brute, or, failing to save him, that she escape with
untarnished honor from his polluting arms. What signifies the
right to be a woman to her who must endure the daily contact of a
social villain, if it be not to have all human virtue as her ally
when she snaps the tie that binds her to him, and vindicates the
Divine validity of marriage by breaking the fetters of the fatal
sham? What is involved in the right of the Magdalen to be a woman
redeemed and disenthralled from the bondage of sin? What but the
entire reconstruction of society with purity for a law and
charity for the executive; with more of the divine mother in man,
more of manly courage and self-respecting dignity in woman; in
both more reverence for humanity and a more abiding faith in the