through her mission had acquired instinctive knowledge of their needs;
and so when the affront was put upon her by her male colleagues of the
press she conceived the idea of a club for women. It should be one
that would manage its own affairs, represent as far as possible the
active interests of women, and create a bond of fellowship between
them, which many women as well as men thought at that time would be
impossible of accomplishment. Mrs. Croly wrote in her "History of
Clubs" thirty years later: "At this period no one of those connected
with the undertaking had ever heard of a woman's club, or of any
secular organization composed entirely of women for the purpose of
bringing all kinds of women together to work out their objects in
their own way." And then again: "When the history of the nineteenth
century comes to be written women will appear as organizers and
leaders of great organized movements among their own sex for the first
time in the history of the world."

"The originator specially disavowed any specific object, only asking
for a representative woman's organization based on perfectly equal
terms in which women might acquire methods, learn how to work together
for general objects, not for charity or a propaganda."

"This declaration of principles was the cause of much abusive
criticism, as well as failure to obtain aid and sympathy. Had Sorosis
started to _do_ any one thing, from building an asylum for aged and
indigent 'females' to supplying the natives of Timbuctoo with pocket
handkerchiefs, it would have found a public already made. But its
attitude was frankly ignorant and inquiring. It laid no claims to
wisdom or knowledge that could be of any use to anybody. It simply
felt the stirring of an intense desire that women should come
together--all together, not from one church, or one neighborhood, or
one walk of life, but from all quarters, and take counsel together,
find the cause of separations and failures, of ignorance and
wrong-doing, and try to discover better ways, more intelligent
methods."

Under this banner Sorosis was launched. Alice Cary was its first
president. The story of Sorosis from the beginning is a very
interesting one; from the view-point of the press its doings and
sayings and business affairs generally have always afforded
subject-matter for comment and conjecture. Of its early days Mrs.
Croly wrote: "The social events of the first year were memorable, for
they were the first o