The universities, colleges and all great institutions of learning of this and other lands refused, until quite recently, to recognize woman as a human being possessing a mind in need of training, and therefore excluded her from their privileges, and the order of Odd-Fellows partook of the same spirit and excluded the better half of the human race from its lodge-rooms. Man had ever been a selfish, conceited, cowardly tyrant from the day in which our father Adam disgraced his sex by taking without question the forbidden fruit; and, after eating it, crying with selfish, pusillanimous cowardice: "The woman thou gavest to be with me gave me of the tree and I did eat," and he has always sought to make and keep woman an inferior, dependent, submissive slave. To this end he has striven to keep her in ignorance, exclude her from all the avenues of knowledge, and then, because she did not possess the knowledge that he had forbidden her, proclaimed throughout the world that she was mentally inferior to man, and in consequence unfit to be admitted to the various institutions and associations in which men sought to improve their minds. The object of Odd-Fellowship is to improve and elevate the character of man, to enlighten his mind and enlarge the sphere of his affections, and of course woman, as being mentally weak and naturally inferior to man, was excluded from its sacred precincts. Now, however, things are changed; nearly all educational institutions worthy of mention admit women, and the Rebekah of today, emulating the Rebekah of old, will be hand in hand with her brothers in all good works. She will accompany him on his errands of mercy, watch beside the bedside of anguish, foregoing pleasure to follow in the path of duty. I would have every man know--who has a wife--that "mutual benefit from harmonious partnership work" is an axiom in as full a sense as "in union there is strength."