Out of the peaceful, still waters below: no longer stay possible there. The _vis vitae_ overruling the _vis inertia_, we take up the line of march. Fold the napkin away from your eyes, O daughter of the ages, and behold, there lies your road--a throng already pressing their way where you thought you were alone. Upward, as well by the universal as by the special law of the case. Many a tearful eye turned backward to the land we are leaving--land beloved by woman, though stained with oppression, darkened by slavery, impoverished by lack of action, dwarfed in its proportions, devious in many of its loveliest lines--some of its sweetest paths leading those who set feet of innocent trust in them down to hell at last; beloved despite all, because the heart of the traveller is tender and loving; cherished, because her repressed soul is timid and doubting. We have lacked light, freedom, space for action and growth, yet are there pleasant places there. All these are now before us. Dry your tears, O tender souls, suppress your sighs, stifle your groans. Let us press forward in courage and hope. Forty years, it may be, in the wilderness, but deliverance at last. The gentle cloud will be over us by day, the path of duty will shine as a fire upon us by night. Farewell, then, Africa, land of despot and victim; farewell, Asia, land of satrap and slave; farewell, Europe, land of monarch and subject: welcome, broad, varied, exhaustless New World, spreading inviting fields before longing eyes that falter while they gaze. Whither? Two thoughts naturally result from this new attitude: first, to go straight to the kingdom already laid out and well beaten into paths by man; second, to be so polite when arrived there as to accept him, his life, power, work, as standards to which it were wisest that we conform ourselves with all expedient haste, and thus blot out as speedily as may be the woman world--let its existence be remembered only as an evil escaped, a humiliation left behind forever. Has not its narrowness shamed us, its poverty of action cramped and starved the capacities we begin to feel unfolding in us--has not its peace made us seem cowards while we lingered in it, and will not its imperishable purity bear transplantation, and bloom in perennial beauty on the wider fields to which we are hastening?