and power and the whirlwinds of opposing wrath--as on
the green, native soil, the home of the early labors of its
sainted citizen, Frances D. Gage. Dear, noble, precious Aunt
Fanny, with the soul so pure and white, the heart so warm, the
sympathies so quick and ready, the sensitive, shrinking modesty
of self, the courage that scoffed at fear when the needs of
others were plead; the friend of the bondman and oppressed, who
knew no sect, sex, race or color, but toiled on for freedom and
humanity till the glorious summons came! If only five minutes of
her clarion voice could ring out in that meeting--McGregor on his
native heath--"'twere worth a thousand men." I pray you, dear
friend, whose voice will reach and be heard, try to point out to
the younger and later workers of the grand, old State the broad
stubble swath of the scythe and the deep blazing of the sturdy
axe of this glorious pioneer of theirs--the grandest of them
all--whose sleeping dust is an honor to Ohio.

It is nothing that I am not there; it is much that you will be,
who carry back the memories of your girlhood, your school-life,
your earliest labors, to lay them on this freely-proffered altar,
in a spot where then there was no room for the tired foot, nor
scarce safety for the head. The occasion points with unerring
finger to the hands on the dial of thirty years in the future. We
need not to see it then, for it is given us to foresee it now.
God's blessing on this work and on the meeting, and on all who
may compose it![145]

Henry B. Blackwell said in his address:

In equal suffrage lies our only hope of a representative
government. Women are one-half of our citizens with rights to
protect and wrongs to remedy. They are a distinct class in
society, differing from men in character, position and interest.
Every class that votes makes itself felt in the government. Women
will change the quality of government when they vote. They are
more peaceable, temperate, chaste, economical and law-abiding
than men; less controlled by physical appetite and passion; more
influenced by humane and religious considerations. They will
superadd to the more harsh and aggressive masculine qualities
those feminine qualities in which they are superior to men. And
these qualities are precisely what o