for in many heathen nations women were once selected to preside
at their most sacred altars."

Miss Mary F. Eastman (Mass), in an impressive address, said:

I asked a friend what phase of the subject I should talk about
to-night. She answered, "The despair of it.".. Can you conceive
what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to
the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of
our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing
as that "we, the people," should mean women as well as men; that
our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?...

Men tell us that they speak for us. There is no companionship of
women as equals permitted in the State. A man can not represent a
woman's opinion. It was in inspiration that magnificent
Declaration of Independence was framed. Men builded better than
they knew; they were at the highest perception of principles; but
after declaring this magnificent principle they went back on
it....

Although I hold the attitude of a petitioner, I come not with the
sense that men have any right to give. Our forefathers erected
barriers which exclude women. I want to press it into the
consciousness of the legislator and of the individual citizen
that he is personally responsible for the continuance of this
injustice. We ask that men take down the barriers. We do not come
to pledge that we will be a unit on temperance or virtue or high
living, but we want the right to speak for ourselves, as men
speak for themselves.

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) spoke strongly on A Case in
Point. Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, of St. Louis, devoted her
remarks chiefly to a caustic criticism of Senator George G. Vest, who
had recently declared himself uncompromisingly opposed to woman
suffrage. He was made the target of a number of spicy remarks, and
some of the newspaper correspondents insisted that the presence of the
suffrage convention in the city was responsible for the Senator's
severe illness, which followed immediately afterwards. Mrs.
Meriwether's son, Lee, paid a handsome tribute to "strong-minded
mothers".

Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck (Mass.) addressed the convention on The
Basis of Our Claim, the right of every individual to make his
personality felt in the Government. Madame Clara Neymann (N. Y.) gave
a scholarly paper on Germ