pathies, the discussion of
knotty club questions, the affirmation by others of what have become
club convictions, and mutual congratulations on club successes.

This is not all that a federation of clubs can accomplish, but it is
enough for a starting point. It is the kindly, providential,
sympathetic way in which we are always led from the smaller to the
larger field of work. Just before descending from a crest in the
Sierras into the valley of the Yosemite, you come suddenly upon a
wonderful view; it is called "Inspiration Point," and it is like an
open door, a revelation of the infinite, a promise in one gleam of
transcendent beauty, of all the separate and divisible splendors that
are to follow.

This spirit of enlargement beckons us and leads us to the formation of
the Federated Union of Clubs, and we cannot do better than follow its
guidance. We all need, clubs as well as individuals, encouragement and
counsel; we need to enlarge our knowledge of what other clubs are
doing, of their extent, of their objects, of their ambitions. Above
all, we need to enlarge our sympathies, to cultivate sympathy by
knowledge; for our prejudices are born of ignorance, and we rarely
dislike what we intimately know. As Charles Lamb said: "How can I
dislike a man if I know him? Do we ever dislike anything if we know it
very well?" With the growth of clubs the purely personal
characteristics of them will disappear, or at least be subordinated to
larger aims; and it is in the prosecution of these larger aims that
the federation will find its reasons for existence.

There is a vast work for clubs to do throughout the country in the
investigation of moral and social questions, in the reformation of
abuses, in the cultivation of best influences;--not the influence of
class or clique or party, but a wide, liberalizing, educational
influence which works for true goodness, for cleanliness, for order,
for equal opportunities, for the recognition of God in man and nature,
in whatever stage of unfolding the Divine in us may happen to be. It
is in the last twenty-five years that village-improvement societies,
first instigated by a woman--Miss Sallie Goodrich of Stockbridge,
Mass.--have created a transformation in whole townships, and so
enhanced the value of property as to drive out the original
inhabitants and change farming communities into fashionable summer
resorts. This result is of doubtful value. But every woman's club,
especially in th