USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 12
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Bear in mind that it is difficult at this late day to find room for large settlements, even in small holdings, directly along the established railroad lines. If you would grow up with the country you must first establish yourselves on its frontier.
I have at this moment in mind many places where dceded lands, held at reasona- ble prices on easy terms, can be bought in the Pacific Northwest for just such homes.
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I also know of whole townships on the still farther frontier where irrigation lends the magic of its power to such marvels of production as are never seen elsewhere. These lands are from twenty to eighty, and even one hundred miles away, at present, from railroads. But many thousands of acres are there awaiting possession, where many hundreds of ideal home sites could be secured, contiguous to inexhaustible summer range for stock; where alfalfa yields prodigious returns from irrigation for winter's feed for stock; where a farm of forty acres or less would make an independent home. In these places chickens thrive like magic on sunflowers bigger than dinner-plates; hogs grow fat on barley, harvested by themselves, after having thriven to maturity on alfalfa, also of their own harvestings; small fruits, cereals and vegetables yield enormously. The air is as pure as ether, and the scenery is as grand as Heaven. Here can be grown in inexhaustible quantities the sugar beet, the mangel-wurzel, and all the other staples on which man and beast do thrive, except, perhaps, your Indian corn, for which the delicious air of night is too cool to permit its superabundant growth. Adjacent mines abound in all directions, awaiting the toil and money of man for their development.
Again, I think of evergreen forests, humid skies and fruit-bearing vales, hard by the sunset seas. But many of these are also away from present lines of railroad, though not more than twenty, thirty, or at most one hundred miles away. Think of it! Only one hundred miles! Why, we of the Pacific Coast went two thousand and three thousand miles away from railroads to get our start!
Oh those primitive times! How, amid all these scenes of wonder, do I love to pause and live over again the far-off days when everybody in my great bailiwick knew everybody else; when there were no extremes of wealth or want, but everybody had enough and to spare. Families living hundreds of miles apart made annual visits to each other's homes at convenient seasons. Their vehicles were the same battered, creaking ships of the desert, their teams the same old oxen, grown fat and festive, that, half starved and footsore, had brought them across the continent in the bygone years.
Anon, the railroad era dawned upon the land. The shout of its coming was heard in the air, and songs like this floated out upon the breeze:
From the land of the distant East I come, A railway abroad, and I love to roam, In my lengthening, winding way, On my ballast of rock and my ribs of pine, And my sinews of steel that glitter and shine,
While my workmen sap and sow and mine, As steadily, day by day, They tunnel the mountains and climb the ridges, And span the culverts and rivet the bridges, And waken the echoes afar and anear With the shout of triumph and song of cheer.
The State of Oregon, or what is left of it since it married off its three territorial daughters, Washington, Montana and Idaho, to state governments, contains in round numbers an area of 95,275 square miles. Washington, the eldest of Oregon's "three stately graces," possesses about an equal area. Montana comes next, with skirts nearly as ample, and Idaho sits proudly at the eastward gates, holding aloft, as shown on the maps, the rough similitude of a huge arm-chair on her mountains' summits, inviting you to come and be seated.
There is much mountainous country throughout the Pacific Northwest -- so much that the pure air of heaven, playing at random among the heights, frightens away the cyclones of the flats and sends them howling over the Kansas prairies and the great plains of Texas, leaving our rock-ribbed vales in smiling security. Tornadoes, drought and pestilence, from the same cause, escape us.
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The trend of the main mountain ranges is north and south, with innumerable spurs reaching out in all directions, breaking the country into diversified valleys, well watered and fertile. Every cercal known to agriculture, every fruit and flower of the temperate zones, and many products of semi-torrid climes, find congenial homes in different por- tions of this broad domain. Every mineral known to man abounds within our borders. Our forests are gigantic and inexhaustible, our rivers are big and deep and rapid, and our creeks and rills and lakes no man can number.
But don't come to a new country wholly empty-handed, expecting the few who are on the ground ahead of you to furnish you with remunerative employment. Come prepared to take care of yourselves till you can have time to raise a crop. Come pre- pared to help each other, just as did the carly pioneers, just as all must do who leave the mark of success upon the age in which they struggle.
" The world belongs to those who take it, Not to those who sit and wait."
Once, when I was twenty years younger than now, though not a whit less enthu- siastic, as I was journeying westward across the continent by rail, I perpetrated some stanzas with which to please my friends at home; and now I will conclude the address by their recital here:
Ho! for the bracing and breczing Pacific, As surging and heaving he rolleth for aye; Ho for the land where bold rocks bid us welcome, And grandeur and beauty hold rivaling sway! Yes; ho! for the West, for the blest land of promise, Where mountains all white bathe their brows in the sky; While down their steep sides the cold torrent comes dashing, And cagles scream out from their eyries on high.
I have seen the bright East where the restless Atlantic Forever and ever wails out his deep moan, And I've stood in the shade of the dark Alleghanics, Or listened, all rapt, to Niagara's groan. Again, I have sailed through grand scenes on the Hudson, Steamed down the Fall River through Long Island Sound; The Ohio I've viewed, and the weird Susquehanna, Or skirted the Lake Shore when West I was bound.
I've sniffed the bland breeze of the broad Mississippi, And dreamed in the midst of his valley so great, Have crossed and re-crossed the bold turbid Missouri, As he bears toward the Gulf Stream his steam-guided freight; And I've bathed my hot forchead in soft limpid moonbeams, That shimmered me o'er with their glow and their gold, In the haunts where the loved of my youth gave glad welcome, And memory recalled cach dear voice as of old.
But though scenes such as these oft allured, pleased and charmed me, Euterpe came out with her harp or my lyre; Yet when I again reached thy prairies, Nebraska, To sing she began me at once to inspire. And, as westward we sped, o'er the broad, rolling pampas, Or slowly ascended the mountains all wild, Or dashed through the gorges and under the snowsheds, The Nine with crude numbers my senses beguiled.
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Colorado's wild steeps, and the rocks of Wyoming, Their lone stunted pine trees and steep palisades, And afar to the west the cold, bleak Rocky Mountains, At whose feet the wild buffalo feeds in the glades, Have each in their turn burst sublime on my vision,. While deserts all desolate gazed at the sky, And away to the south rose the snow-crested Wasatch, Bald, bleak and majestic, broad rolling and high.
I have stood where dead cities of sandstone columnar, Loom up in their grandeur, all solemn and still, And mused o'er the elements' wars of the Ages That shaped them in symmetry wild at their will. I have rolled down the bowlders and waked the weird echoes, Where serpents affrighted, have writhed in their rage, And watched the fleet antelope bound o'er the desert
Through vast beds of cacti and grease-wood and sage.
I have sailed on the breast of the Deseret Dead Sea, And bathed in its waters all tranquil and clear; Have gazed on the mountains and valleys of Humboldt, Strange, primitive, awful, sad, silent and sere. I have climbed and reclimbed the steep, wind-worn Sierras, Peered in their deep gorges all dark and obscure, Dreamed under the shadows of giant Sequoias,
Or talked with wild Indians, reserved and demure.
I have trusted my bark on the billows of Ocean, And watched them roll up and recede from the shore, And have anchored within thy fine bay, San Francisco, Where the Golden Gate husheth the Ocean's deep roar. But not till I reached thy broad bosom, Columbia, Where ever, forever, thou roll'st to the sea, Did I feel that I'd found the full acme of grandeur, Where song could run riot, or fancy go free.
Then my Pegasus changed his quick pen to a gallop, Euterpe's wind harp waked ÆEolian strains, And the Nine in their rapture sang odes to the mountains, That preside over Oregon's forests and plains. Hoary Hood called aloud to the three virgin Sisters, Who blushed with the roseate glow of the morn; St. Helen and Ranier from over the border Scowled and clouded their brows in pretension of scorn.
The Dalles of Columbia, set up on their edges, Swirled through the deep gorges as onward they rolled, Or over huge bowlders of basalt went dashing, Dispersed into spray ere their story was told. To the north and the south and the west rose the fir trees, With proportions colossal and graceful and tall, Dark green in their hue, with a tinge of deep purple, Casting shadows sometimes o'er the earth like a pall.
Bold headlands keep guard o'er the Oregon River, Whose dashings are heard far away o'er the main, As roaring and foaming and rushing forever,
He struggles with Ocean some 'vantage to gain.
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White cities sit smiling beside the Columbia,
Where, though land-walled, the breeze of the sea she inhales, While wind-worn Umatilla and gale-torn Wallula
Keep sentinel watch o'er her broad eastern vales.
Then ho! for the bracing and breezy Pacific, Whose waves lave the Occident ever and aye! I care naught for the grandeur of Asia and Europe, For my far Western home greets me gladly to-day Yes, ho! for the west, for the blest land of promise, Where mountains, all green, bathe their brows in the sky; While down the tall snow-peaks wild torrents come dashing, And cagles scream out from their eyries on high.
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COMMISSIONERS-AT-LARGE OF THE BOARD OF LADY MANAGERS.
1. MRS. JOHN J. BAGLEY,
2. MISS ELLEN A. FORD,
Michigan.
New York.
3. MRS. ROSINE RYAN. 4. MRS. MARY S. HARRISON, 5. MRS. D. F. VERDENAL,
Texas.
Montana.
New York.
6. MRS. MARY CECIL CANTRILL, Kentucky.
7. MRS. MARY. S. LOCKWOOD, District of Columbia.
1. 7,
GEORGE MEREDITH'S NOVELS. By MISS MARGARET WINDEYER.
It would be a difficult task to criticise George Meredith's novels in such a manner as would seem to his admirers adequate to their marvels, and as would not seem extravagant to those readers who have not had time to study these books, or who have not given their keenest sensibilities to the understanding of them. Abie reviewers of England and America have given their doughty opinions upon them in phrases of lit- erary worth, and with a wealth of diction which is not at my command. So to criticise is not my intention, but merely to draw your attention to Meredith's com- prehension of the intuitions, idiosyncrasies and sensi- bilities of women, and to his knowledge of the diffi- culties of their environment, which stand between them and their perfect development. It might be questioned whether he always has pity for women; I think he always has, and paints them with a master hand. As it may enable you to recall as to whether you have read any of Meredith's books or not, I will give a list of them: "Evan Harrington," "Harry Richmond," "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," "Vit- toria," "Rhoda Flemming," "Beauchamp's Career," "The Egotist,""Diana of the Crossways," "The Shav- ing of Shagpat," "One of Our Conquerors," and "The MISS MARGARET WINDEYER. Tragic Comedians." In these books there are such instances of the insight and self-denial, the tenderness and devotion and faithfulness of women, that they should be more read by women than they are, and, besides this, they are enriched with a humor that is fascinating in its variety; for instance, "The phantom half-crown, flickering in one eye of the anticipatory waiter," or, "Dacier has a veritable thirst for hopeful views of the world, and no spiritual distillery of his own." "To see insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing is your anecdotal gentleman's annoyance." "A woman's 'never' fell far short of outstripping the sturdy pedestrian Time to Redworth's mind." "A rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of fact."
One of the Scotch reviewers, J. M. Barrie, I think, says that a course of Mere- dith's novels should commence with "Rhoda Flemming;" but I do not agree with him. Though less intricate in its relationships, it is so painful a lesson upon the danger of family pride that some readers would not read other books by an author who pro- duced so dismal an impression. In this book we have before us Mrs. Margaret Lovell,
Miss Margaret Windeyer is a native of New South Wales, Australia. She was born in 1866 at Sydney. Her parents are Sir William Charles Windeyer, LL. D., Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and Mary Elizabeth Windeyer, daughter of Rev. R. T. Bolton. She was educated at home and afterward attended university classes by H. C. L. Anderson, M. A., at Miss Hooper's school, and passed junior public examination in five subjects in 1882. She has traveled in Europe, Canada and the United States. Miss Windeyer was honorable secretary Department Educational in the Exhibition of Woman's Industries held in Sydney in 1888; honorable secretary Woman's Literary Society, August, 1890, to August, 1892; hon- orable secretary Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, December, 1891, till March, 1893; representative New South Wales, World's Congress of Representative Women, Chicago, 1893, and was honorable commissioner for New South Wales at the World's Columbian Exposition. In religious faith she is a Unitarian. Her postoffice address is Roslyn Gar- dens, Sydney, N. S. W.
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who belongs to that company of women at whose head stands Becky Sharp. "Boys adored her. These are moths. But more, the birds of the air, nay, grave owls (who stand in this metaphor for bewhiskered experience ) thronged, dashing at the appari- tion of terrible splendour." Mrs. Fryar Gunnett, the Countess of Saldar and Mrs. Marsett, Lady Blandish and Lady Grace Halley are all different species of the siren genus of woman. Rhoda and Dahlia Flemming are sisters. Dahlia falls into the toils of Edward Blanscove, and Rhoda, to save her sister's reputation, she says, but really to save and spare her own and her father's name, arranges a marriage between Dahlia and Nicholas Sedgett. After the marriage has taken place it is then discovered that Sedgett has a wife elsewhere. Poor, broken-hearted Dahlia, doubly wronged, will not marry Blanscove when he urges it. "There was but one answer for him, and when he ceased to charge her with unforgiveness, he came to the strange conclusion that, beyond our calling a woman a saint for rhetorical purposes and esteeming her as one for pictorial, it is indeed possible, as he had slightly descried in this woman's presence, both to think her saintly and to have the sentiment inspired by the over- carthly in her person. Her voice, her simple words of writing, her gentle resolve, all issuing of a capacity to suffer evil and pardon it, conveyed that character to a mind not soft for receiving such impressions."
" The Tragic Comedians" contains a highly dramatic love story. Alvan is the hero, the incidents taken from the life of Ferdinand Laysalle. The lesson it teaches is that one should accept what is nearest to perfection within our reach, and not lose by striving for the unattainable that joy, beauty and honor which comes to our hand. Alvan would not accept his bride unless she came to him dowered with the sanction of her parents to her marriage, and she, her mind narrowed and cramped by conven- tional surroundings, lacks the power to seize the highest happiness offered to her. When we contemplate Alvan's scorn of Julia's want of moral courage, the thought that women are what men have made them seems borne in upon one's mind. Men have not sought in woman straightforwardness and moral courage. They have decried both. They have rather desired them to be "educated for the market, to be timorous, consequently secretive, etc." So when to a woman of fertile brain there comes an opportunity for the exercise of power, it is perhaps exerted by finesse, by dexterous underhand play, and then are women held up to scorn as not having the honesty of men-so the world says. " Men create by stoppage a volcano, and are then amazed at its eruptiveness."
"Diana of the Crossways" is the story of a beautiful, clever, generous, high- spirited girl, who at nineteen is an orphan. She acquires that difficult position known as social success, and finds, to quote our author, that "there are men with whom it is an instinct to pull down the standard of the sex by a bully-like imposition of sheer physical ascendency whenever they see it flying with an air of gallant independence." Then Sir Lukin, the husband of Diana's friend, Lady Dunstane, by his behavior in what he terms " a momentary aberration," closes for her the house that should be her home. We learn how Diana concluded that in marriage was her only safety, and here the reader will find passages surcharged with weighty ideas, and we are brought face to face with that man of men, Thomas Redworth, who has waited to tell Diana that he loves her until he shall be able to give her a home which shall be a worthy setting for such a jewel. Mr. Warwich, "the gentlemanly official" whom Diana married, after two years of wedded life tries to obtain a divorce from her, with Lord Dannisbrough in the position of defendant. The hearing of the case resulted in that the plaintiff was adjudged not to have proven his charge. About a year after this Diana mects Percy Dacier, Lord Dannisbrough's nephew, at the Italian Lakes, and a pronounced friendship results. Six months after, he and she keep watch by the mortal remains of his uncle. Then their friendship is remarked, and we come to the stage where they agree to unite their fates. Her trunks are packed; the tickets for Paris are taken; he waits at the station for her; she does not come, because her friend, Emma Dunstane, has sent for her in the extremity of illness. The author says that
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afterward, on the safe side of the abyss, it wore a gruesome look to his cool blood. A year after, Diana and Percy are friends again. How she betrays a political secret; how cruel, yet how comprehensible, is Dacier's conduct, the reader will learn in chap- ters full of charm. The last is called the " nuptial chapter," and relates how a barely willing woman was led to bloom with the nuptial sentiment.
Meredith portrays the modern villain unsparingly, "men who are not free from the common masculine craze to scale fortresses for the sake of lowering flags." He gives some noted and titled examples, and in treatment of such characters we find these words: "Men appear to be capable of friendship with women only for as long as we keep out of pulling distance of that line where friendship ceases. They may step on it; we must hold back a league."
"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" I do not advise many women to read, as it is likely to produce a sense of helplessness, with which will come hopelessness, which we must avoid. But in the main, from reading Meredith's sermon-novels, there comes the wish not to leave the world, but to set it straight. The light of every soul burns upward. Of course, most of them are candles in the wind; and then Meredith says: "The less ignorant I become, the more considerate I am for the ignorance of others. I love them for it;" which speech is the essence of the charity "that suffereth long and is kind," the pity which is akin to love. The author who wrote, " The something sovereignly characteristic that aspires in Diana enchained him. With her, or, rather, with his thought of her soul, he understood the right union of woman and man, from the roots to the flowering heights of that rare graft. She gave him comprehension of the meaning of love, a word in many mouths not often explained. With her wound in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify a new start in our existence, a finer shoot of the tree planted in good, gross earth, the senses running their live sap, and the minds companioned, and the spirits made one by the whole-natured conjunction," must of necessity be able to write a love-passage with tenderness and grace, so I quote the following: " It was not in him to stop or to moderate the force of his eyes. She met them with the slender unbendingness that was her own, a feminine of inspirited manhood. There was no soft expression, only the direct shot of light on both sides, conveying as much as is borne from sun to earth, from earth to sun." Passages such as these lend interest to the life-loves of Evan Harrington and Rose Joselyn, Beau- champ and Renée, Richard Feverel and Lucy, Rhoda Flemming and Robert Eccles.
There is such painting of nature in Meredith's novels that we behold the scenes he describes instead of dimly imagining them, and the metaphors he employs have always a quaint conceit, which makes his style so peculiarly his own. This picture of a sunrise from "One of Our Conquerors:" "Now was the cloak of night, worn thread- bare and gray, astir for the heraldingof golden day visibly ready to show its warmer throbs. The gentle waves were just a stronger gray than the sky, perforce of an inter- fusion that shifted gradations; they were silken, in places oily gray," may be fitly hung beside the sunset picture in "Diana of the Crossways:" "The sunset began to deepen. Emma gazed into the depths of the waves of crimson, where brilliancy of color came out of central heaven, preternaturally near our earth, till one shade less brilliant seemed an ebbing away to boundless remoteness."
In "The Egotist," Sir Willoughby is the central figure, who, in his lofty conceit, rejoices in the knowledge that Lætitia Dale pines for love of him. The vicissitudes of his love affairs make a charming book, in which wit is ever sparkling, and although the keynote of woman's subjection is sounded, there is no undertone of tragedy. "One of Our Conquerors" is remarkable for its complete presentation of the Mere- dithan style, and the lessons to be learned from the characters are profound; existing relations between men and women are diagnosed thoroughly, and one comes from the reading with a longing to leave the world a little better than he found it. Metaphors, similes, analysis, all the fraternity of old lamps for lighting our abysmal darkness, are scattered through the pages of this book. I shall close this paper, so unworthy of this interesting subject, with Meredith's own words: "The banished of Eden had to put
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on metaphors, and the common use of them has helped largely to civilize us. The sluggish in intellect detest them, but our civilization is not much indebted to that major portion."
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
By MRS. WHITON STONE.
It is the world's high noon-Meridian height Of the great Sun of Progress, in whose light
The continents are bathed-blazing, as sign That Thought is principle of Life divine; That Thought is God, and God in thought must shine; That from the heavens, its primal source, Has lit the Past, and on its matchless course Has shone with ever gathering force,
Until, in this consummate hour,
The Thought of all the Centuries has burst to splendid flower.
MRS. WHITON STONE.
Upon this central spot we stand, Encircled with immensity, Nay-by infinity- Transfixed with wonder at the grand
Discoveries of human souls-the plans conceived, The mighty deeds achieved;
The engine's lightning speed-electric speech-
The flashing fires that far off shores can reach;
The current, that in such mysterious way
Connects today with the whole world's today; The science, art and music, all expressed In genius of the East, and genius of the West,
And soaring higher than Olympian ways,
Working great problems out in rounded days,
Our modern Sapphos sing to Heaven, nobler than Lesbian lays.
Oh, thou great Sun of Progress! All thy glow
Is but as shadow in the light we know Will flood the coming ages-Thought will grow,
And souls a larger stature gain,
And truths divine diviner truths attain;
The things today, that we have known,
Perchance, shall all have been outgrown
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