USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > Official report of the centennial celebration of the founding of the city of Cleveland and the settlement of the Western Reserve > Part 18
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"Women's Clubs" was the subject of an interesting sketch by Mrs. B. F. Taylor, who spoke as follows:
118
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
Every age has had its heroes and statesmen, its philosophers and poets, its brave men and fair women, but a long perspective of years is required to enable them to be viewed in their true proportions.
The man of Mount Vernon walked in disguise among the men of his age. He was criticized and vilified.
Lincoln and Grant grow grander as the receding years bear us farther away from them.
There seems to be an unwritten law compelling us to bury the disagreeable, forget the uncomfortable, carry on the sunshine and leave the shadows to oblivion.
We of the Western Reserve, during the past year have been looking backwards, scanning the history of the wonderful development of art and beauty, where so recently was a wilderness. The energy and courage of the men and women who cheerfully en- dured the hardships of pioneer life that they might bequeath to their children abun- dant comfort and luxury have been the theme of song and story. We have woven a web of romance around the bare bitter facts of daily privation and toil without stint, until we see little save the light from the great open fires, and hear only the hearty greeting as the latchstring is pulled and neighbor or stranger receives a true High- land welcome.
If there was a " Bright side to prison life in Libby," there must have been a sil- ver lining to the clouds and darkness that often brooded over the new settlement of the Western Reserve.
We talk of the " good old times," but we do not wish to return to them except in memory. Almost the only thing we fancy we are in love with is the old time. Age does not command the respect it did in the years that are gone. We sneer at the very old as the forty youngsters sneered who made a supper for the bears; and yet we all want to be old. We disclaim it, but we are deluded. Life is a beautiful gift, and it is not strange, perhaps, that about half the world is trying to get rich by keeping the other half alive a great while. This ambition to emulate Methuselah has risen to a national passion. As a nation we passed our one hundredth milestone twenty years ago, as a city we have just reached it. We have grown great and grand; we have exulted centennially, and yet one hundred is not old for a mud turtle, and it is young for an oak.
They tell of the violets that opened their blue eyes upon the field of Inkerman; of the corn that flaunted its silken tassels on the ground of Waterloo. I can tell you of a flower more wonderful than these- a flower that springs sweet and pure from the earth that produces seemingly nothing but graves; a flower whose leaves are for the healing of the heavy-hearted, whose blossoms are balm for whatever brows are bleed- ing with the pressure of calamity's thorny crown. It is the flower Charity, and it has developed in grand proportions during the century we are just leaving.
The women of to-day are no less tender and sympathetic because they wear silk instead of linsey. Since the worms spin for them, and steam does their knitting and weaving, they have more time to devote to the cultivation of this wonderful plant, and it blossoms out in myriad forms of love, and it teaches the grand lesson of univer- sal brotherhood.
Women have, in these later days, banded together in organizations that they may be stronger to do and to dare; and these are referred to under the general head of "clubs."
In the good old times clubs were the property of those who were supposed to be able to wield them, and in pioneer life were sometimes used literally and figuratively to keep the wolf from the door. Later club rooms, where wining and dining were the chief employments, were frequented by gentlemen of leisure, but the doors were never open to woman.
Now, the monosyllable is used by women when naming the organizations where they meet for study, or social recreation, or to devise ways and means to brighten the life, or lift the burden for the weak or the oppressed. But the word has a broader meaning still. The lexicon tells us it means "a uniting for a common purpose," so any number of people who are working for a common cause may be said to constitute a club. Taking the word in this sense, then, this Centennial Commission has un- consciously formed the ideal club where men and women have worked together to commemorate the deeds of those who made this greater Cleveland possible.
The pioneers among women's clubs in Cleveland are the " Conversational," and the "Art and History.""They are limited in number and literary in character. The "Fortnightly," with its six hundred members, is doing much to cultivate a taste for classic music. "Sorosis," with her ten departments and three hundred members, brings brightness and some degree of culture within the reach of many who long for a
WOMAN'S DAY.
glimpse of those Elysian fields from which they have hitherto been debarred by cir- cumstance or environment. The "Woman's Press Club" sends out good literature, and its members are welcomed as representative women the world over.
The "Daughters of the American Revolution," and the " Woman's Relief Corps" not only help the needy, striving to obtain justice for those who are unable to secure it for themselves, but they inculcate a true and holy patriotism, fervent love of country, reverence for our nation's laws, and a new devotion to our nation's flag.
He but poorly measures the patriotism of woman's nature who deems her an in- different spectator of the successes and the perils of her dear native land. No man can adequately appreciate the part she takes for the nation's good, when, in the sacred privacy of home, or in her clubs, she lends her voice and her influence in favor of order, law, humanity and right.
The good and abiding results of this Centennial movement cannot be set down in figures. The treasurer will never reckon into his grand total the generous sentiment, the friendly feeling, the unity of purpose; the thought that we have done something to commemorate the work, and perpetuate the memory of those who did so much for us; the thought that we are heirs to one inheritance, children of one country, and of one God.
The Centennial Ode, by Miss Hannah Alice Foster, was then read. This ode was awarded a prize in a public competition. It was as follows:
CLEVELAND.
1.
Rose flourished long, grew old, then fell asleep,
The hundred-gated city of the Nile;
But not of her, deep sepulchered the while
Forgotten centuries her records keep; Nor Venice, smiling still with studied grace
Into the mirror that reflects her face; Nor once imperial Rome, whose name and fame
So ruled the world-old pomp and power and pride ;
Not those to-day. With warmer, quicker tide
Our pulses thrill. On sacred altars flame
Pure patriot fires of love and loyalty,
While ready hands the stars and stripes outfling,
And "Cleveland," past, and present and to be- Aye, "Greater Cleveland"-her proud sons and daughters sing.
11.
The happy birds her christening carol trilled;
Through swaying boughs of green the sunshine smiled,
When zephyrs whispered, " Lo, the newborn child;"
Sweet sylvan blossoms all the wide wood filled With fragrant welcome. Swift and bold, In measured undertone, the river told His glad, strange story to the list'ning lake;
The bright waves heard, and, dancing with delight,
Put on their mantles blue and caps of white, And shoreward sped, to kiss, for her sweet sake,
The pebbly beach, baptized for peerless feet ; The giant trees joined hands and round her stood;
The clouds a rainbow wore, her eyes to greet ;
Her horoscope was clear- - all signs and auguries good.
.
120
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
111.
Her prophecy of greatness grew to power; "Give place!" rode forth upon the waves of sound, And forest monarchs bowed them to the ground; Wild beasts to deepest shade, with growl and glower, Vile reptiles and dread savages withdrew
Before a force invincible and new ;
For brawn, brain, will and courage wrought for her, With tireless patience struck those sturdy blows Which rung with victory. Low-roofed cabins rose,
And they whom toil nor danger could deter, Rude thresholds crossed; from flints struck living fires, Whose healthful flames across a century leap, Disclosing hearthstones guarded by brave sires, Where noble, blessed mothers sang their babes to sleep.
IV.
Not all the gush of joy that rings From marriage bells, The low, mysterious melody which tells
The rhythmic story of lone captive shells, The whir of swift, bright wings, The zephyr's love-song, slumbrous hum of bees,
Or morning chorus in the apple trees,
V.
Not sweetest symphonies allied In rapturous strain, Clear-keyed or muffled as soft summer rain, Can thrill and charm, in pleasure and in pain, And in the soul abide, Like mother's voice, that scaled the gate sword-crossed, And tells us Eden is not wholly lost.
VI.
Environment small meaning held To her whose breast Pillowed her child; beneath that homespun vest What constant heart-beats led away to rest! What mother-love impelled That tenderness of touch and tone and eye, And taught her tongue its simple lullaby?
VII.
" Rock-a-by; behind the trees The sun is slowly creeping; "Tis time the little honey bees And pretty birds were sleeping. Now go to sleep, my baby dear; The wolf's away, there's naught to fear; The old bear's busy making her bed,
121
WOMAN'S DAY.
The owl has a dreadful cold in his head,
The cricket is chirping with all his might, ' Good-night, little baby-good-night, good-night.'
VIII.
" Away, away to dreamland fair, And mother'll watch thy waking, The while she hastens to prepare And put the corn-cake baking; To bring the water from the brook,
And hang the kettle on the hook,
O'er glowing coals the venison fry,
For father'll be coming, by-and-by,
Too tired and hungry to play 'Bo-peep,
So go to sleep, darling-to sleep-to sleep.
1X. " There-by-a-by; sleep long and well, For milking time is nearing; Yes-'tinkle, tinkle,' goes the bell- The cows are in the clearing. To-night old Brindle is ahead --- She knows her calf is in the shed,
Her very own that she cannot see.
Poor Brindle! Poor bossy! O dearie me!
But shelter and love and dreams of delight-
All, all for mother's sweet baby to-night."
x.
That pioneer baby more vigorous may be, Because of good training and diet With bean-porridge ladle. Soon left his log cradle To join in the trundle-bed riot,
XI.
Where feet, hands and faces disputed all spaces, Though every newcomer made gladder, Till skill in resources divided the forces, And raised-not the vision-made-ladder,
XII.
Of Biblical story, from earthland to glory, But one to the low attie leading, Where "chink in" and rafter caught legend and laughter, As happiest childhood was speeding.
Equipped for stern duty, how courage and beauty Went forth on that yesterday morning, And smiling or weeping, they sowed for our reaping. They wrought for this birthday's adorning.
1 22
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
XIV.
Brave hearts! seeking ever, with dauntless endeavor, Life's utmost-from fame nothing questing; By ways rough and dreary, they toiled till o'er weary- Speak low! they are quietly resting.
XV.
No rest surpasses Their dreamless quietude beneath the grasses. What grand life workers they ! From rosy dawn to last faint gleam of day
No truce to ease they bore, for pleasure's sake, But on through the gloaming, facing the light,
With toil-hardened hands, how they beat back the night And beckoned the morn, that looked her surprise
On the staked-out-city beside the lake- Which Moses Cleaveland "believed" would make A village of quite respectable size ! But he had no thought-when he broke the ground-
Of a century plant with a bloom like this;
And he never dreamed it was his to found
For the Buckeye State her metropolis!
XVI.
But she, the sometime child And buxom beauty of a western wild, Called courage to her side,
And faith, which shade and silence glorified,
And from the winds which made the old woods quake, Lulled waves to sleep or kissed them wide awake; Such vital ozone drew, That year by year, she grew and grew, Until so tall upon the heights she stands, With fair, far-reaching hands; To pretty hamlets dazed with doubt, And all the region round about, Proclaiming, in tones that are almost commands, " The latchstring is out!"
XVII.
So fast and great hath grown This civic marvel that we call our own! Whose countless forces beat Anvils which answer to hammer and heat, Where masterful purpose in gentle guise Presses the button of enterprise, And canny roll call keeps, Speaks space away and interprets the skies! But wills-and obedient lightning leaps, The sunshine smiles and "X rays" glow, Revealing what only the gods might know One hundred years ago.
123
WOMAN'S DAY.
XVIII.
What does it mean, good people, This rapturous chime of heart and steeple ? And what do we here, This mid-summer month of Centennial year? And why is our beautiful flag unfurled-
Our dear old flag that won and holds
The National heart in its silken folds? It says to the world :
" American freemen ne'er questioned its cost, But the highest price for this banner paid, Whose stars never set, whose stripes never fade, Whose standard is fixed neath the dead line of frost."
XIX.
One April day, in sorrow's sable dressed, Sore stricken, dazed by grief's afflictive blow, Was Cleveland made illustrious in her woe! Beloved Lincoln was her silent guest, His cruel conflicts o'er, his victories won, Here Garfield sleeps-Ohio's cherished son! Here, in enduring marble, are enrolled The names of men who gave ungrudgingly Their service and their lives to keep us free. Repeat the story oft-it grows not old! And ever let those hero records be
The city's sacred trust-her precious legacy.
XX.
Our Cleveland! Freeborn greatness needs no crown, Her gracious hand no sceptre, her good name No court-commissioned laureate to proclaim ; Her deeds, no linking to old-time renown. And not with soulless rites or wreaths of bay, Do we, her loyal daughters, come to-day. For whom we love is theme of pen and tongue. Majestic matron, type of womanhood In all things beautiful and true and good. (Despite her gathering years, she still is young.) This "Woman's Day" with grateful hearts we bring First fruits of best endeavor. Her sweet grace For us hath touched full many a hidden spring And opened long-shut doors of potency and place.
XXI.
Fair city of our pride, Look forth! How speedeth the incoming tide: Rich-freighted waves That bring thee growing prestige, wealth and power Which shadowy years to be cannot conceal, And faith's prophetic flash lights half reveal ;
1 2.4
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
What pure white radiance clings to spire and tower!
From church and school thy sciences and arts,
Professions, industries, and busy marts
Draw life-supplies. O, guard those "upper springs!" So shall the sinews of thy strength be fed To grasp and hold success. So by the wings
Of blest ideals, through far centuries led,
March on! march on! God's highlands are ahead!
The future calleth thee to noblest fame-
Rise, Greater Cleveland, answer to thy name! -
At 2: 30 o'clock the subject changed to " Education," Mrs. Lydia Hoyt Farmer, the Cleveland authoress, presiding. In taking charge of the meeting, Mrs. Farmer spoke of the advantages which the present day afforded to woman, saying :
She may soar aloft through the realm of science, and wield the pen in that of literature. She may depict the beauties of nature on canvas, and break the shackles of evil through her beneficent influence. She may dip with her delicate fingers into the intricacies of trade and commerce. The college doors are now wide open to her. The libraries of the country are stored with the jewels of her genius. The American girl of 1896 combines the peculiar grace of the girl of the Revolution, the demure fascination of the Puritan maid, and the dazzling light of her own accomplishments and intelligence. Follow her from the parlor to the kitchen, the cooking school to the lecture room, the sick room to the art gallery, the Bible class to the reading club, the chit-chat club to the gymnasium and the swimming school. Broad is her develop- ment - mental, moral and physical. As she spins away on her high wheel of attain- ments, it would take the greatest prophet the world has ever known to forecast what she may do in the future.
Mrs. May Wright Sewall, ex-president of the National Council of Women of the United States, one of the distinguished speakers of the day, then devoted some time to the discussion of " Domestic Effects of Higher Education of Women." In the course of an instructive address, she said :
It has been charged that in the best families where education among women is more common, there has been decadence as to the size of the family. By this is meant American families of English descent. I do not think this point is well taken, except that the average age at which women marry has been raised by something like seven years. It has been shown by statistics that thirty-five per cent of the babies in the United States die before reaching the age of five years. It would be interesting to know what the per cent is in families where the mothers have had a college edu- cation. I believe women of education know better how to take care of their children, and that the percentage of death is less. Higher education makes women grasp prac- tical household problems in a practical way, and to take domestic affairs out of the realm of gossip and place it in that of scientific research. The ignorant woman looks upon exorbitant plumber's bills, smoky chimneys, and damp cellars as ills existing simply to be endured with complaining or silently, according to the disposition of the woman. The educated woman seeks to find some way to overcome these dif- ficulties.
Very often when people of means are asked if they intend to send their daughters to college they reply: " No, our daughter need not carn her living. We can support her, and, besides, we expect her to marry." That used to be the idea more generally than now. Education was to lift a girl outside the alternative of starvation or a hus- band. I should think the men would not like the insinuation. It implies that an ignorant woman is good enough for a wife. Even to this day there is surprise in many quarters when a rich girl goes to college, and it is attributed either to a fad, or else to the wisdom of her parents in placing her where, if the evil of poverty should attack her, she will have a safeguard.
"There is another side to it, the best side, and that which is becoming more and
125
WOMAN'S DAY.
more recognized. Education means more than a mere defense against the ills of pov- erty. People who see no further reason, than the one of providing against a rainy day, simply have a false conception of life and its meaning. That false conception is not confined to being a restraint to the higher education among women. In times past it has worked equal harm to men. In dividing the work of the world, society has permitted the men to look out for the temporal, and women for the eternal interest of the race. Rich women often devote themselves exclusively to religion and make it their life work. Theirs is the business to find heaven for themselves and for the men, as far as the men will permit it. What application has this to my subject, do you say ? One that is direct. If society relegates to woman the most important work in life, it acknowledges that she is fit for any sphere, and has the right to fit herself for any sphere.
Women have one thing to guard against. In the present day when it is the prov- ince of women to improve themselves, many of them who have not had the opportu- nity of a college or university career associate themselves in literary clubs. I am an. ardent advocate of such clubs and believe that where they turn out one woman who mixes education and information, and thinks them one and the same thing, they turn out nine women who constantly improve themselves.
But women must not think their clubs are substitutes for colleges and universities, and that courses of reading take the place of scholastic training. To so believe is a vast mistake. There is a wide difference between education and general informa- tion, and it requires thorough scholastic training to fit a woman or a man for a course of systematic reading that is in itself a higher education. Education is not only a means to an end, but it is an end itself. That end is intellectual liberty. A thor- oughly educated woman should be and is a better housekeeper, a more companionable wife, and a more inspiring mother, than an ignorant woman possibly could be.
At the conclusion of Mrs. Sewall's address, Mrs. Florence Hyde Briggs sang a vocal selection. The hour for the consideration of the " Past, Present and Future," then arrived, being the last hour of the day. Miss Caroline Baldwin Babcock, of Hudson, presided. Miss Cora Cohen, the contralto of the Temple Quartette, sang an interesting ballad, one in vogue one hundred years ago, " The Beggar Girl." Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, of Warren, spoke eloquently on the topic, "Our Ancestors - the Heroes and Heroines of the Western Reserve." She said :
During this Centennial time so much has been said of the heroes of the Western Reserve that I shall devote the time allotted to me to the heroines. Did you ever look at the written history of Ohio to see what is recorded of the part women took in it? There are pages devoted to soil, to wood, to streams, to cows, to battles, to religion, but scarcely a word to women. You might think men sent their wives to the Old World to live in luxury and splendor while they settled the country. Women had not had higher education, were not educated and were not supposed to be able to write history, and so the men wrote the history and naturally they wrote of things they themselves knew. If the fact had been reversed our history would have been just as one-sided, because both man and woman must have a place and voice together in all things before all things are perfect.
Fortunately, we get a history which is not written; a history we reason out. We know that America and Ohio were settled and made prosperous because of the "home; " and we know, and everybody knows, that it is woman that makes the home.
Men build great bridges so wonderful that as we look at the network of wires and pile of stone, it seems we must be dreaming. Men weave cables and connect the old and new worlds, and gather the lightning from the clouds for their use, but they can- not make a home. They can buy a house and furnish it and live in it, but no one ever thinks of it as a home. The home of this country is its strength, and woman is the strength of the home.
The foremothers of the Reserve were nearly under the restraint of children; the forefather was absolute monarch of the family. As there are some gentle monarchs, so there were some gentle forefathers, and so there were some foremothers who were semi-independent, but as a rule the law was administered. Now if the wise Creator had intended this to be the mode of procedure, he would have given the forefather a greater amount of brains; but nobody nowadays believes that the foremother was not an equal naturally with the forefather.
二:
Sroot
11.
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126
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
The foremothers, as a rule, were short-lived. Most every forefather had two wives. The great length of hours of work and the worry was the cause of this. I heard a gentleman say of his mother, a woman who came to this country when it was a wilderness, that he never remembered, as a child or young man, of going to bed without hearing his mother at work, nor of getting up in the morning without having heard her ahead of him. The foremother's life was one eternal grind. She made cheese on a tub on the floor until her back nearly broke. She had no cistern, but washed in the water she caught in barrels or brought from the. creek; or she took her linen to the creek and cleansed it there. Fortunately for the foremother she had plenty of grass, so that when water was scarce the sun helped her to whiten and sweeten the linen. There seemed never to be a season which was not crowded full. With sugar making, candle making, lard rendering, soap making, berry, apple and pumpkin drying. Their only recreation was a quilting bee, or common visiting, and if we had to take our recreation that way we would never take it. If it was a common visit, our foremother, with her knitting or her sewing. started barefooted, carrying her shoes and cap; her cap, because she could not wear it under her sunbonnet, her shoes, because she did not like to wear them out. As a rule the forefather did not think he could spare the foremother a horse to ride or drive, and she trudged along across the pasture or through the woody path as the case might be. Before she reached the house of the hostess she put on her shoes. Why there is an old elm tree in front of the residence of Mrs. Harmon Austin, and in the days of our foremothers there was a little stream flowing by, and here it was that the foremothers of Howland and Bazetta stopped to put on their shoes every Sunday morning on their way to church. But when the foremother went visiting, she usually helped to get the meal and do up the dishes, and then she and her hostess sat down with their work and discussed pickles and men's shirts, feather beds and sugar-cured hams, with, I have no doubt, the ways of some of the women of the vicinity. If it were a quilting, there were hosts of foremothers there, and they enjoyed it. There seems to be a kind of sadness in the fact that the recreation of the foremothers was what we think the hardest work in the world. It is my belief that quilts would have been superseded by blankets and comforters long before they were, if it had not been for the sociability. When I think that our foremother, a few times a year, took her shoes and her cap and walked to the house of a friend and worked for that friend all day and called that recreation, it seems pitiful. No wonder women died. The only time they did not work was Sun- day, and then they went to church in the morning, carried their dinners and stayed all day. Just think of listening four hours to a sermon that pointed most surely to a punishment hereafter. Of course the foremother would not admit it if she were here now, but I have often thought it was the half hours nooning with the lunch and the gossip that helped out those Sundays. And in those little meeting houses the men sat on one side and the women on the other. I went to church once with my grandmother at the center of Nelson. I remember the ride; I remember just how they hitched our horse in the shed; and how the congregation rose up and faced the choir and sang, "O, Come, Come Away from Labor now Reposing," an appropriate hymn, and I knew it, and I sang. But what I remember most is when we got into the church, grandfather turned to the left and grandmother to the right, and I was left to choose, and instead of choosing I stopped and argued that they must sit together, but without avail, so I chose grandmother of course, and once in five or ten minutes, to grand- mother's discomfort, I motioned to grandfather to come over and just as often asked grandmother why he could not, and I remember she said it was wicked for men and women to sit together in church. I was not five years old and I may not have re- membered right, but that's the impression I always carried, and from that day until four years ago, I never knew why men sat on one side of the church and the women on the other; but in searching the Congressional library for some facts in church history, I learned that men sat by themselves that their minds might be free to think of God and the future state, instead of wives and sweethearts, just as if God was not in the wife and sweetheart. Is it not wonderful that every law, civil and ecclesiastic. was in our foremothers' days made for the forefather ? No church or State seemed to think the foremother needed protection. It never seemed to occur to the forefather that the way to worship God was at the side of the wife, and that the virtue in this direction was not in removing temptation, but in overcoming it, or that her mind might be polluted if she sat near him.
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