e emotions over printed sheets. Then it was that
the Woman's Club lifted a modest finger at the passing car of progress,
and unobtrusively boarded it.

Fairport was conservative, as always, but she had no mind to be left
behind in the march of feminine fashion. She did not rush to extremes,
but she had women's clubs in 1881. The chief of these were the Ladies'
Literary Club and the Spinsters' Alliance. Both clubs tackled the same
great themes of ethics and art, and allotted a winter to the literature
of a nation, except in the case of Greek and Roman literatures, which
were not considered able to occupy a whole winter apiece, so they were
studied in company. The club possessed a proper complement of officers,
and their meetings went from house to house. They were conducted with
artless simplicity, in a pleasant, conversational manner, but with due
regard to polite forms; and only at a moment of excitement was the chair
addressed by her Christian name.

Naturally, the women's clubs were deeply stirred by the first great
World's Fair in America. But the whole West was moved. It turned to art
with a joyous ardor, the excited happiness of a child that finds a new
beauty in the world. Why had we not thought of the artistic regeneration
of our sordid life before? Never mind, we would make amends for lost
time by spending more money! In very truth the years following the
Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty,
almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and
the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of
art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical
taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best
conquered, together. Our architecture, our furniture, our household
surroundings were metamorphosed as by enchantment. And the feature of
mark in it all was the unparalleled diffusion of the new faith. Not the
great cities only; the towns, the villages, the hamlets, caught fire.

Of course, Fairport went to Philadelphia; and Fairport was converted. It
followed, at once that the women's clubs of the place should serve most
zealously at the altar; and nothing could be more inevitable than that
in course of time there should be a concrete manifestation of zeal.
Hence the memorable Art Museum, the fame of which to this day will
revive, when there is a meeting of the solid and gray-haired matrons who
were the light-fo