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WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 18, 1910

THE PRESIDENT, MRS. PHILIP N. MOORE, IN THE CHAIR.

The meeting of Wednesday evening, May 18, closed the Tenth Biennial Convention. It was the "President's Evening." The subject was "Twenty Years of Retrospect and Action." There were addresses, and music was given by the Scottish Rite Choir, John Yoakley, Director, accompanied by piano, violin and 'cello. Resolutions of thanks for courtesies extended were passed. A beautiful flag was presented to the General Federation by the Cincinnati Woman's Club; a Rookwood vase was presented to Mrs. Moore in a farewell address by the chairman of the Citizens' Committee; stereopticon pictures of presidents were also presented. "America" was sung by the audience in closing.

YESTERDAY-THE MAGIC MOTTO, UNITY IN

DIVERSITY.

MRS. MARY E. MUMFORD, PENNSYLVANIA.

DEAR FRIENDS-Both Old and New: You have assigned to me a very pleasant though somewhat difficult task, to tell the story of twenty crowded years in twenty minutes. I am quite aware also that to accept this place on the evening's program is to make an honest confession of age, since it is only the aged who are prone to or are permitted to reminisce And they must guard well the tongue lest they become not reminiscent, but garrulous. I trust the presiding officer will not allow me to exceed my time limit, not for your sakes, but for mine own lest I should fail of my pet ambition, which is to have written on my tombstone: "She never bored anybody." You have doubtless read in a recent Atlantic, Mrs. Deland's delightful story of the wife whose husband said to her: "Women cannot argue. They always become at once so personal." To

which she replied with spirit, "I don't." But I make no disclaimer, I intend to be frankly and warmly personal in my recollections of those who projected and developed our great Federation.

Since, then, I am cast to play for you the role of a "woman with a past" (using a figure borrowed from a friend) let me omit farther preface and get down to my story.

As you all know, it was Sorosis that did it-and this was quite natural since Sorosis has always been "doing" something —she was scarcely out of pinafores when she began to have convictions and to express them, too, on great upsetting topics like the need of dress reform-and while she still wore braids adown her back she planned great banquets where brainy women were wont to gather and to which she also invited men-aye, and compelled them to keep silence while she did all the talking. She even allowed newspaper reporters at her feasts in consequence of which she "got herself talked about." But conscious of her own integrity, she laughed at scare headlines, and went on her way rejoicing.

Now, of course, such a precocious maiden as this one could not come up to her twentieth birthday without seeking to make of it a more than ordinary occasion. So she said as usual "Go to-we must do something."

Then up spoke a well-beloved member of her ranks, that grand woman whose brain was fine as gold, whose heart was true as steel, "Jennie June" (we call her by her sweet summer name tonight), and she counselled that Sorosis could do no finer or worthier thing than to assemble for her celebration that fine flower of the women of this country, who had shown that they had brains and constructive ability enough to form themselves into women's clubs.

So Sorosis sent out her cards of greeting and invitation summoning ninety-seven clubs, all she could discover in the length and breadth of the land, to come and assist in her celebration. I fully believe future chronicles will relate that that was the greatest birthday in the history of the world.

Now, there were divers clubs living in quiet seclusion along the Atlantic seaboard. Claiming the same year of birth as Sorosis was the New England Woman's Club of Boston. This was organized on a very high plane of culture and philan

thropy, including in its membership a few nice old men, a sort of guarantee of perfect respectability. It was in deference to this male element, I suppose, that they had among their stated gatherings a monthly feast at which creature comforts were dispensed, baked beans and brown bread, of course, and a very superior quality of escalloped oysters.

Copying this form of organization Philadelphia had also formed its Woman's Club. Solid wooden shutters protected it from the outer world, and the uninitiated might not soil its immaculate white marble steps.

Husbands and brothers were permitted at the monthly teas, but they seldom came. The viands dispensed did not greatly tempt the grosser sex. To have its name mentioned in the daily paper would give a dislocating shudder to the backbone of a club, such as these.

Into these strongholds of conservatism came the startling invitation from Sorosis, all done up in glittering white and gold as I remember it, bristling with the spirit of the outside world, suggesting that women might meet in the open, and hold public discussions, or set forth their opinions at banquets, luncheons, receptions or dinners. That there was a fluttering in the dove-cotes you may well believe. Should we participate in the doings of this flighty sister of ours? Might we not be chronicled in the daily papers as standing for progressive ideas we did not approve?

Boston, no doubt, took counsel of her saints, recalled that Ralph Waldo Emerson had once confessed to a weakness for pie, and that Margaret Fuller had a woman's natural fondness for pretty clothes-and as the staunch Julia Ward Howe had come safely through a youth spent in New York City, concluded that she might be relied upon to withstand the blandishments of Sorosis. They sent her as their delegate. From our New Century Club we sent a very conservative worlding, and a "dyed-in-the-wool" Quaker, whose ancestors had paddled up the Delaware with William Penn. Now, if we half expected these delegates of ours to come home loaded with captious criticism, or depreciation of their hostess' ambition, we were doomed to disappointment. The great idea which had been conceived in the alert brain of our sister club, and which was big with importance to the women of our country, so dominated their

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thoughts that they brought to us only this stirring message: "The Clubs of the whole United States are to be federated. If we would keep step with the onward march of events, we must join in the procession."

What happened to Boston was never fully understood, but you know the old saying: "You can always tell a Boston woman-but you cannot tell her much."

Maybe Sorosis told her too much for she hesitated, though happily for all of us not for long, and what the Federation idea can do backed up by the brain and heart of New England we all felt as we passed through that wonderful Biennial in Boston two years ago.

Happily it fell to my lot to be a delegate to the first meeting of the Federation, held in New York, April 23rd to 25th, 1890.

Looking back through the haze of twenty years, I ask myself what are the impressions which still abide with me of that initial meeting, and of these I reckon as most important the revelation we club women from all parts of the United States were to each other. As one and another appeared upon the platform to give her club report we nudged the neighbor next to us with surprised delight-"Isn't she clever?" "What wit!" "How graceful!" "What sound common sense!" Today feminine ability does not surprise us. We expect it of club women, but in that earlier day each one gave us a new and peculiar joy. It was a notable gathering. There was Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst from far off California, whose sweet Madonna face presaged perhaps the great work she was to do for motherhood a little later on.

Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods of Massachusetts, alert resourceful, suggestive, who first proposed the gift of the loving cup presented to Sorosis at the close of the convention.

May Wright Sewall, of Indiana, elegant in dress and bearing, polished in diction, clever in debate, fertile in resource.

Mrs. Harriet Robinson of Malden, Massachusetts, staunch, practical, who tried to keep us up to the little we had ever learned of parliamentary law and practice. We swallowed her decisons with open-mouthed wonder that one small head could carry all she knew.

The whole convention fell at the feet of two charming

Southerners, Miss Temple and Mrs. McKinney, of Tennessee, who gave us the first evidence of the power the gracious and practical Southern woman is to be in the work falling to the united womanhood of this great reconstructed country. To those of us who had been through the bitterness of the Civil War, the sound of those soft Southern voices gave us a thrill of assurance. Now, we knew truly that "Tennessee was in the Union," and brooding over all our deliberations was the beautiful president of Sorosis, Mrs. Ella Dietz Glynes, who eyes had the gentle serious look of a child who has wandered in from a dream world somewhere; whose elegance and charm of voice and manner made of that ugly stage a very drawingroom of grace and refinement. From her lips fell quite unconsciously the words now graven on the hearts of a million federated women. As she closed her little speech on taking the chair, she said, "We look for unity, but unity in diversity, and we pledge ourselves to work for a common cause, the cause of women throughout the world."

Our second source of surprise was in the great amount of work which had been accomplished since the birthday party of the year before. The Advisory Committee appointed then, had canvassed every state in the Union searching out the Women's Clubs, and had even penetrated foreign lands. As a consequence of its correspondence, sixty clubs representing seventeen states had united to form the nucleus of the new organization. The Committee had held thirteen meetings and were able to present the draft of a Constitution. We have tinkered that old instrument almost beyond recognition; its a never ending delight to a club woman to fuss with by-laws and rules; but on reviewing the old formulas and the new, one is interested to see how fully the spirit and practice of the first draft are found in the rulings which govern us today.

From this modest beginning the Federation has trodden its way gloriously, but it has had its slippery places, its hills of difficulty, its lions in the path. Scarcely was the young organization started on her course than a sister society, the National Council of Women besought her to come and nestle under her wing. But the Federation found a Washington in her first president, who counselled that she "make no entangling alliances," but work out her own salvation albeit it might

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