e practical business of getting up meetings, raising funds,
etc., and have fairly learned how to stand and walk alone, it may
perhaps be safe to raise man to an entire equality with
ourselves, hoping, however, that he will modestly permit the
women to continue the work they have so successfully begun. I
would suggest, therefore, that after the business of the past
year be disposed of, this objectionable feature of our
Constitution be brought under consideration.

Our experience thus far as a Society has been most encouraging.
We number over two thousand members. We have four agents who have
traveled in various parts of the State, and I need not say what
is well known to all present, that their labors thus far have
given entire satisfaction to the Society and the public. I was
surprised and rejoiced to find that women, without the least
preparation or experience, who had never raised their voices in
public one year ago, should with so much self-reliance, dignity,
and force, enter at once such a field of labor, and so ably
perform the work. In the metropolis of our country, in the
capital of our State, before our Legislature, and in the country
school-house, they have been alike earnest and faithful to the
truth. In behalf of our Society, I thank you for your unwearied
labors during the past year. In the name of humanity, I bid you
go on and devote yourselves humbly to the cause you have
espoused. The noble of your sex everywhere rejoice in your
success, and feel in themselves a new impulse to struggle upward
and onward; and the deep, though silent gratitude that ascends to
Heaven from the wretched outcast, the wives, the mothers, and the
daughters of brutal drunkards, is well known to all who have
listened to their tales of woe, their bitter experience, the
dark, sad passages of their tragic lives.

I hope this, our first year, is prophetic of a happy future of
strong, united, and energetic action among the women of our
State. If we are sincere and earnest in our love of this cause,
in our devotion to truth, in our desire for the happiness of the
race, we shall ever lose sight of self; each soul will, in a
measure, forget its own individual interests in proclaiming great
principles of justice and right. It is only a true, a deep, and
abi