A letter to Miss Blackwell from Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, then past 80 years of age, expressing her regret at not being able to attend the convention, closed: "It is not for lack of interest in our great cause or indifference to the dear western women with whom I was associated so many years ago and who, like myself, have grown gray in the work for women.... God bless you all and give you an ennobling season together, harmonious and uplifting in its results. Remember me in love to the old friends and pledge my affectionate regard to the new friends with whom I will try to keep step here on the Massachusetts coast. Yours with a thousand good wishes." A telegram of greeting was sent to Mrs. Stanton and others to Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey of New Jersey, Mrs. Jane H. Spofford of Maine and Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon, all pioneer workers for the cause. Miss Laura Clay (Ky.) gave a strong, logical address on Counterparts, "the dualism of the race," in which she said: Any social system founded on a theory designed for the elevation of one sex alone, regardless of the other, is altogether false and delusive to the expectations built upon it, for the human race is dual and heredity keeps the stock common from which both men and women spring. Since the common stock is improved and invigorated by the acquired qualities of individuals, without regard to sex, it is to the advantage of both that all possibilities of development shall be extended to both sexes. In animals acquired qualities can be imparted to the stock only by parenthood; in the human family they are imparted even more widely and permanently through the influence of ideas. All that woman has lost by social systems which denied to her education and the free expression of her genius in literature, art or statesmanship, has been lost to man also, because it has diminished the inheritable riches of the nature from which he draws his existence. He has been less, though unhampered by the shackles which bound her, because she was less. The world is not more called upon to rejoice in the triumphs of his genius in freedom than to mourn over the wasted possibilities of hers in bonds....