Ladies, there is a propriety in your crossing the seas to hold the first council in America, for it was in this new untrammeled land of freedom, free birth, free thought and free speech that the first outspoken notes were given, the first concerted action taken toward the release of woman, the enlightenment of man as a lawmaker, and the attention of the world directed to the injustice, unwisdom and folly of the code under which it lived. It was here that the first hard blows were struck. It was here the paths were marked out that have been trodden with bleeding feet for half a century, until at length the blows no longer rebound and the hands of the grateful, loving womanhood of the world struggle for a place to scatter roses in the paths which erstwhile were flint and thorns; and an admiring world of women and men alike breathe in tones of respect, gratitude and love the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Miss Anthony, I am glad to stand beside you while I tell these women from the other side of the world who has brought them here. This, ladies of Europe, is your great prototype--this the woman who has trodden the trackless fields of the pioneer till the thorns are buried in roses; this, the woman who has lived to hear the hisses turn to dulcet strains of music; the woman who has dared to plead for every good cause under heaven, who opened her door to the fleeing slave and claimed the outcast for a brother; the woman beloved of her own country and honored in all countries. Although a slow lesson to learn it has always proved that the grandeur of a nation was shown by the respect paid to woman. The brightest garlands of Spain, linked with immortelles, twine about the name of Isabella. The highest glory of England today is not that she placed her crown on the brow of her trusted and beloved new monarch, a man whom the nations of the earth welcome to their galaxy of rulers, but that she lays her mantle of fifty years' rule through war and peace and progress such as never was known before, upon the grave of a woman--that mantle on which no stain has ever rested and on which the sunlight of happiness is shadowed and dimmed only by the tears of a sorrowing nation, as it is reverently borne to its honored rest. England, thank God you had no Salic law! America has none, and, Miss Anthony, the path which you have trodden through these oft painful years leads to that goal; and, though your eyes will have opened upon the blessed light of the heaven beyond, verily there may be some standing here who shall not taste death until these things come.