the pilot was joking, but when he produced the
metropolitan journals to verify his statements, we listened to the
reading and what he had to say with profound astonishment. The second
week in March, 1888, will be memorable in the history of storms in the
vicinity of New York. The snow was ten feet deep in some places, and the
side streets impassable either for carriages or sleighs. I hoped the
city would be looking its best, for the first impression on my foreign
friends, but it never looked worse, with huge piles of snow everywhere
covered with black dust.

I started for Washington at three o'clock, the day after our arrival,
reached there at ten o'clock, and found my beloved friends, Miss Anthony
and Mrs. Spofford, with open arms and warm hearts to receive me. As the
vessel was delayed two days, our friends naturally thought we, too, had
encountered a blizzard, but we had felt nothing of it; on the contrary
the last days were the most pleasant of the voyage.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.

Pursuant to the idea of the feasibility and need of an International
Council of Women, mentioned in a preceding chapter, it was decided to
celebrate the fourth decade of the woman suffrage movement in the United
States by calling together such a council. At its nineteenth annual
convention, held in January, 1887, the National Woman Suffrage
Association resolved to assume the entire responsibility of holding a
council, and to extend an invitation, for that purpose, to all
associations of women in the trades, professions, and reforms, as well
as those advocating political rights. Early in June, 1887, a call was
issued for such a council to convene under the auspices of the National
Woman Suffrage Association at Washington, D. C, on March 25, 1888. The
grand assemblage of women, coming from all the countries of the
civilized globe, proved that the call for such a council was opportune,
while the order and dignity of the proceedings proved the women worthy
the occasion. No one doubts now the wisdom of that initiative step nor
the added power women have gained over popular thought through the
International Council.

As the proceedings of the contention were fully and graphically reported
in the _Woman's Tribune_ at that time, and as its reports were afterward
published in book form, revised and corrected by Miss Anthony, Miss
Foster, and myself, I will merely say that our most sanguine
expectations as t