e as a family,
men and women, each ready to do his or her share of the talk. We
stand here to speak neither for one nor the other, but for that
great movement which is to sweep through the land and arouse one
sex to its rights and the other to its duties. Not to arouse man
against woman, but in favor of the civilization which is to come.
It is more than twenty years since the Woman Suffrage Association
came up in an organized form. We entered into this movement with
no ideas of immediate success. We had behind us only a few years
of agitation after long centuries of prejudice and distrust.
Look through the long record of the great reforms of the world,
and what a series of delays and discouragements you find! It is a
history of defeats before victories. Men sometimes come to us
with sympathy because we have been defeated in this Legislature
or that convention. Sympathy! We thank heaven that it had got
there to be defeated; that we are strong enough to be in a
minority! Defeat is victory afterward. We have been defeated
again and again, and again, and each time we find ourselves
growing stronger.

Miss MARY F. EASTMAN, in an able address, stated the progress of
the movement in different States, and insisted on the right of
women to the exercise of the franchise, as a consequence of the
Declaration of Independence. The elective franchise was the
greatest blessing enjoyed by a free people, and the inability of
any class to exercise it indicated a description of servitude.
She said that the person was trying to erase God's finger mark
upon the human soul who would prevent anybody, man or woman, from
following natural bent and ability in any avocation. In the
founding of Harvard and other early colleges, some provision was
made for the education of Indians, but none for women. Already at
Yale and West Point colored men have a fair chance, not yet the
women. Miss Eastman thought that suffrage was the highway to all
other reforms.

Mrs. LUCY STONE said: _Mr. President, Fellow-workers, Ladies, and
Gentlemen:_--Our cause is half won when we find that people are
willing to hear it, as you seem to be willing to hear it now. One
of the best things we can have in meetings like this is to create
a discontent that women are not permitted to enjoy all