sacrifice other than a pure offering.

We are said to be a "few disaffected, embittered women, met for
the purpose of giving vent to petty personal spleen and domestic
discontent." I repel the charge; and I call upon every woman here
to repel the charge. If we have personal wrongs, here is not the
place for redress. If we have private griefs (and what human
heart, in a large sense, is without them?), we do not come here
to recount them. The grave will lay its cold honors over the
hearts of all here present, before the good we ask for our kind
will be realized to the world. We shall pass onward to other
spheres of existence, but I trust the seed we shall here plant
will ripen to a glorious harvest. We "see the end from the
beginning," and rejoice in spirit. We care not that we shall not
reach the fruits of our toil, for we know in times to come it
will be seen to be a glorious work.

Bitterness is the child of wrong; if any one of our number has
become embittered (which, God forbid!), it is because social
wrong has so penetrated to the inner life that we are crucified
thereby, and taste the gall and vinegar with the Divine Master.
All who take their stand against false institutions, are in some
sense embittered. The conviction of wrong has wrought mightily in
them. Their large hearts took in the whole sense of human woe,
and bled for those who had become brutalized by its weight, and
they spoke as never man spoke in his own individualism, but as
the embodied race will speak, when the full time shall come. Thus
Huss and Wickliffe and Luther spoke, and the men of '76.

No woman has come here to talk over private griefs, and detail
the small coin of personal anecdote; and yet did woman speak of
the wrongs, which unjust legislation; the wrongs which corrupt
public opinion; the wrongs which false social aspects have
fastened upon us; wrongs which she hides beneath smiles, and
conceals with womanly endurance; did she give voice to all this,
her smiles would seem hollow and her endurance pitiable.

I hope this Convention will be an acting Convention. Let us
pledge ourselves to the support of a paper in which our views
shall be fairly presented to the world. At our last Convention in
Worcester, I presented a prospectus for such a paper, which I