of women, the marriage laws, etc. The work of the National
Council of Women was presented by the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer (R.
I.); the report of the affiliated Friends' Equal Rights Association by
Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman (N. Y.), its president.

The Sunday afternoon services in the church were conducted by the Rev.
Anna Garlin Spencer, assisted by the Rev. Olympia Brown and the Rev.
Anna Howard Shaw.[21] Mrs. Spencer first defined the ideal of womanly
character held by the older poets and philosophers, quoting Milton's
line describing Adam and Eve: "He for God only; she for God in him,"
and the expression used by the hard, old father of Tennyson's
"Princess": "Man to command and woman to obey." She then expressed the
modern ideal as that of devotion to the same essentials but different
in expression. "Woman is not called to a new kingdom but to a larger
occupancy of that which has been hers from the beginning. The woman
with the child in her arms was the beginning of the family; the hearth
fire and the altar fire grew from this; the elder child teaching the
younger was the beginning of the school. We are making over all these
inherited traditions and inherited tendencies and socializing them....
The ideal woman is no longer a far-away Madonna with her feet on the
clouds; she is as divine but she is human. What means the humanizing
of religion and the passing of harsh, old creeds but that a greater,
more human, more womanly influence is felt in all the relations of
life."

Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee on Presidential suffrage,
said in his report: "This is the open door for woman suffrage in every
State in the Union. Any Legislature at any session by a majority vote
of both Houses, either separately or in joint session, without any
change of State constitution, can empower women to help select the
presidential electors on the same terms as male citizens. The power is
absolute and unqualified. Let women in every State petition their
Legislature to enable women to take part in this most important form
of suffrage known to the American people. It is objected to our demand
for woman suffrage that women do not want it and will not exercise it
if granted. This is now the only method of testing women's wish to
take part in their government. If by a general exercise of the right
they show their public spirit, the Legislature by submitting an
amendment to the State constitution can afterwards extend suffrage to
its c