self; sometimes we see it reflected in another’s success (as the eaglet, among the flock of geese, first learned that he could fly, when he recognized a mate in the heaven-soaring eagle, whose shadow frightened all the geese away); sometimes we come upon our heritage unwittingly, as Diana found Endymion, but always it is there, be sure of that, and “let no man take thy crown.” As iron filings fall into line around a magnet, so make your opportunities cluster close about your magic gift. In a land so generous as ours, this can be done, by every woman who reads these lines. A sharpened perception of their own possibilities is far more needed by “our girls” than better means for education. But how was it in the past? If there is one thought which, for humanity’s sake, grieves me as no other can, it is this thought of God’s endowment bestowed upon us each, so that we might in some especial manner gladden and bless the world, by bestowing upon it our best; the thought of his patience all through the years, as he has gone on hewing out the myriad souls of a wayward race, that they might be lively stones in the temple of use and of achievement, and side by side with this, the thought of our individual blindness, our failure to discern the riches of brain, heart and hand, with which we were endowed. But most of all, I think about the gentle women who have lived, and died, and made no sign of their best gifts, but whose achievements of voice and pen, of brush and chisel, of noble statesmanship and great-hearted philanthropy, might have blessed and soothed our race through these six thousand years. There is a stern old gentleman of my acquaintance, who, if he had heard what I have felt called upon to say, would have entered his demurrer, in this fashion: “That’s all fol-de-rol, my friend; a mere rhetorical flourish. If women could have done all this, why didn’t they, pray tell? If it’s in it’s in, and will come out, but what’s wanting can’t be numbered. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes with your vague generalities. I went to the Centennial; I saw Machinery Hall, and what’s more for my argument (and less for yours), I saw the ‘Woman’s Pavilion,’ too.”