It is not yet twenty-one years since a great daily in New York said that if a society composed wholly of women could hold together one year, a great many men would have to revise their opinion of women. The remark was made apropos of the formation of the first women's clubs in this country, and was echoed on all sides publicly and privately. It is only significant now as showing the isolated position of women, and the general impression which prevailed that they could not and would not work together, except, perhaps, for some common cause, religious or philanthropic, which for the time being absorbed their energies and made them lose sight of their personal jealousies and animosities. Why women should have been believed to be antagonistic to women it is hard to say. This idea seems to have been cultivated assiduously by men, and women have echoed it; for it cannot be denied that the new fellowship that has come with the century and with the awakening of women to the life which is theirs--the life of friendship, of sympathy, of enlargement, of interest in affairs, of common kinship with all that exists in a beautiful world--has in it something of the nature of a surprise. Is it possible that women may have a life of their own, may learn to know and honor each other, may find solace in companionship, and lose sight of small troubles in larger aims? These questions have been answered by thousands of women, answered with tears, after the manner of women, but tears of joyful recognition of the new day which has dawned for them;--a day of larger opportunities, a day which comes after a night of ages; for the woman is for the first time finding her own place in the world. Heretofore she was only welcome if the man wanted her, and if he no longer wanted her she was again cast out. But she is now learning that the world exists for her also; that she is one half the human race; that life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever is good are as desirable for her as for the man, and as necessary in order to put her in _rapport_ with the eternal springs of all life and its varied forms of activity. The first impulse of the awakened woman is to unite herself with other women; her next to learn that which she does not know in regard to art, literature, peoples, races; the countries she has never visited, the kinsmen and kinswomen she has never seen, and the degree in which their progress has kept pace with or gone beyond her own. This knowledge comes to her through her club or literary society.