Miscellany Printed Matter Woman's Era, 1894 [*Colored Woman's League invited to send delegates to the national council of women Feb. 17-March 2 1895*] ENLARGED NUMBER. TWENTY PAGES. [*Page 4*] The Woman's Era VOL. I. NO. 8. BOSTON, MASS., NOV., 1894 PRICE 10 CENTS. THE WOMAN'S ERA. THE WOMAN'S ERA, the organ of the Woman's Era Club, and devoted to the interests of the Women's Clubs, Leagues and Societies throughout the country. Published monthly, in Boston, by JOSEPHINE ST. P. RUFFIN, FLORIDA R. RIDLEY, Editors and Publishers. 103 Charles Street. SUBSCRIPTIONS. Per Annum - - - - - $1.00 Single Copies, - - - - .10 Club Rates, one hundred copies, - - - - 7.00 Subscriptions Payable in Advance. NEW DEPARTMENTS. Conducted by Mrs. W. E. Matthews, New York; Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Washington; Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, Chicago; Mrs. J. Silome Yates, Kansas City; Elizabeth P. Ensley, Denver; Alice Ruth Moore, New Orleans. NOTES AND COMMENTS. All loyal club women will patronize our advertisers, and so help to make our paper a valuable advertising medium. We are happy to be able to personally endorse nearly all the advertisers. In this connection, we would like to call especial attention to some of our advertisements. Mrs. Casneau makes and furnishes materials for a walking or visiting dress for $23.00. This hardly needs comment. A stylish, well-made cloth dress at $23.00 is a bargain, as the average woman must know. Harvey, on Temple Place, trims hats and bonnets for 50 cents; makes and trims for $1.00. This is something for the economical woman, who wishes to dress well, to know. Libby's millinery rooms, on Temple Place, are well known, as is also the beauty and style of the bonnets and hats which come from there. A unique department of the business is the making of bonnets through mail orders. If a description of hair, eyes and complexion is furnished, satisfactory head wear is guaranteed. At Roberts', 578 Washington street, can be had fifty kinds of candy for 12 cents per pound. This is something for women who get up sales, fairs, etc., to remember. [*Page 4*] Ray, on Chatham Row, sells a prepared icing which is so good it is called "Perfect Icing." What an advantage to have an icing which does not spoil or foment, all prepared for use. Ray also has a splendid complexion soap, "Mealine," which we can personally recommend. It is what few perfumed soaps seem to be—pure and efficacious. H. W. Berry, 646 Washington street, is agent for all the first-class pianos, Steinways, Chickerings, Kranich & Bach, H. F. Miller, etc., which he sells on easy terms; and if slightly used, at great reduction. Choosing a piano is an important matter, and it is well to know of a place to go where you can make no mistake. Baldwin & Dorsey, real estate agents, 555 Main street, Cambridge, are doing business of which we ought to be proud. They have a well- equipped office, command all kinds of property in this city and suburbs, place mortgages, loan money, and build houses. They are young men of good business ability. It is an advantage which we hope our readers will embrace, to have the use of such an office as this. West End day at the World's Food Fair was one of the most successful of the month. The demonstrative lecture in the Home Department was by Mrs. Carrie Dearborn on "Chafing Dish Dainties." Nearly four hundred ladies were in attendance, closely following the preparations of devilled chestnuts, cheese foudu, and that last piece de resistance—oyster rare-bit. The hygienic lunch, which followed the lecture, had been prepared in an Aladdin oven. The banquet table display was that for a bachelor's dinner. Why cannot the Domestic Science committee get up a course of lectures for the W. E. C.? Old methods in cooking, which considered only the palate, are becoming obsolete; nowadays, no cook is a cook unless she knows how to cook economically and healthfully, as well as palatably. 2 THE WOMAN'S ERA NEW YORK Greeting. VICTORIA EARLE, EDITOR In entering upon the Work of associate editor of the ERA, I do so with a firm faith in the power, responsibility and unlimited scope of a woman's work, and its ennobling influence, when rightly placed and practically supported. I am proud to be associated with the splendid array of womanly women who will labor in the future for the success of this woman's venture, THE ERA, and with deep emotions of anxiety and hope, look to the women of my section to stand by me and hold up my hands. I beg their interest; I desire their support and sympathy. With it lies success ; without it, failure and all its attendant humiliation, There is a great work to be done, but no one woman, or no ten women can carry the weight of this great undertaking-the successful establishment of a woman's high-class paper-without the progressive masses with them. My experience in the past has taught me that women can stand together, when drawn together but something pure and noble, and I know that the one demand of the women of my section journalistically, is matter that shall appeal to the noblest sentiments and the most exalted ideals. I pledge my pen to all such as will aid in making this column the forum of discussion for all that shall interest, encourage and develop the highest type woman and the purest class of matter. CEDAR HILL AND ITS MASTER A SKETCH OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS IN HIS HOME After a pleasant drive through the capitol grounds, and through the Capitol grounds, and through the wide tree-bordered streets and avenues of the city, we crossed a bridge spanning the eastern portion of the Potomac, and threaded our way through the modest village of Anacostia,--historic, as containing "Cedar Hill" the "Home of the Hon. Frederick Douglass". Long before the wide hospitable portals were reached the house could be seen nesting, as it were, in slumberous quiet'neath great sighing trees. It sets north and south, planned after the typical southern fashion of more than a generation ago; a two-story and garret brick house painted white, green window blinds, a bay-window in the centre of the second story, two more at the eastern side of the large drawing room. A wide, old-fashioned piazza runs the entire length of the front, the centre of which is decorated by open lattice-work, and the whole supported by four large white, columns; wide steps running the limit of the piazza, which is fitted up with hammock, rustic seat and rockers--the very picture of repose, comfort, and all that is peaceful. The trees about seem to mark and emphasize the most attractive individuality of the place--retirement ' mid soft, shadowy lovliness, the silent dispenser rest,---"rest to the weary." So irresistible is the soothing atmosphere that one instinctively feels the charm of silence and meditative environment ere he has passed beyond the wide entrance of the spacious old mansion; but when in the imposing presence of its white-haired master everything seems absorbed by the stirring, fiery personality of a most wonderful man; not only wonderful among a class of people, but all men of the earth regardless of creed or condition--he stands a living monument of the possibilities of man, a monument to the cause and principles that strong men have died for. The heart holds no nobler, no more truly great, none more worth universal love and venerated esteem than this gentle-voiced, kindly-mannered, uncrowned king, whose reign and the kingdom is the hearts of millions of men. There's a splendid slope on the western side of the house where he delights in standing, and well he might, for it has no equal in all the district, It commands an interrupted view of the city of Washington from an altitude of 133 feet, the gleaming waters of the placid Potomac shimmering between. From this point the great white dome of the capitol can be seen and, close by, the beautiful structure, designed and now in course of building for the Congressional Library, of the pure white marble in strong contrast to the Capitol. It is crowned with a massive golden dome--like the sun and silver of youth and age together they stand surrounded by every condition of human life and progress; and still, beyond to the west, the great Washington monument towers over 550 feet mid-air. A clear morning, the scene unfolds before the observers on Cedar Hill like a dream city born of inspiration, and established by enchantment : and peculiarly impressive it all is when Fredrick Douglass stands there with uncovered head, his fine white hair blowing with the breeze, his massive form erect, standing bold relief with his beloved trees as a back-ground. THE WOMAN'S ERA. 3 Marvelous changes of time and state. time-honored gradations of earthly power, inspired touch of Poesy and Romance, when compared with the meed of his experience, pale into feebleness, for no character known to authentic history has encompassed more of the extremes of life that his and will in time prove, if it has not already proven, the beautiful source of inspiration to not only the emotional muse of poetry, but the firey realms of heroic tragedy as well. His course from the beginning stands forth as America's great epic. Who has conquered and vanquished greater foes and obstacles, single-handed, than he? Nobely he wears the weight of three-score and ten years of active usefulness, his vision clear, and his step as active as most men twenty years younger. The great parts he has played in the most tragic scenes of American life have not, as one might have supposed, left him shorn of the faculty of enjoying quiet; not so; he has emerged from din of battle grateful for the quiet meditative silence of his beloved home. His home life is simple and altogether free from restraint. The world of good people is made welcome at his portals, character and worth being the passports required. No distinctions are made socially ; it is man and women, regardless of color, pas condition or inheritance, and daily there are pictures seen and enacted here rarely met with beyond the limits of the grand stage. I call to mind one gem-like evening when, in the ordinary course of neighbors dropping in, a beautiful golden-haired maiden presided at the piano ; and among the company were two elderly gentlemen, father and son and the latter an artist great merit,--Messer, I think, its the name of the elder, like Mr. Douglass, is a performer on the violin, After considerable music, vocal and instrumental, with a kindly twinkle in his eyes, the elder Mr.Messer passed to Mr. Douglass' side with his mellow-toned instrument, and awakened the familiar strains of "Ault Lang Syne". Bending low, with his eyes fixed upon the "Sage of Anacostia," his whitened hair in picturesque harmony with Mr. Douglass' snowy locks, as the sweet, familiar tones vibrated on the air, about the words were sung with thrilling effect by "Our Douglass," the picture they made was worthy a painters brush. Few eyes in the room were undimmed with tears when the music ceased : but such is of ordinary occurrence at Cedar Hill. I have said his home life is simple, it is. He rises very early, and before breakfast it is his habit to stroll about his grounds, which consist in all about sixteen acres of undulating land, partly under cultivation, raising sufficient fruit and vegetables for the family use, and flowers for the dainty decoration of table parlors. I felt very proud, on my first morning stroll, to be rewarded by a cluster of white southern lilies culled and presented me by y honored and revered host, whose mind and heart has caused lilies of thought and resolution to spring into rich growth in every clime where'er civilization extends. He breakfasts with the family at 7 A.M., after which he retires to a quaint retreat in the rear of the mansion, a tiny structure looking more like a fine "mi lady" doll house than anything else : it is Mr. Douglass' "sanctum sanctorum," however, known as the "Growlery" (from Dickens). It is almost covered with vines and embowered by tall lilac shrubs. The Growlery is sufficiently removed from the house to insure absolute quiet : it contains, besides a comfortable lounge, a brick hearth and modern grate for winter use, a tall desk, where Mr. Douglass does his writing standing--there's just room enough for the books and papers of immediate necessity, and himself, and, what is dearer to him than strangers can at first understand his croquet set. To say that he is an ardent admirer of the game is to express it mildly--he is more-- an enthusiast and as everyone is aware who knows, even slightly, the domestic side of his nature, that he is an expert player. After spending the morning in his Growlery (as if he ever needed a place in which to growl!) he emerges in answer to the midday dinner-bell, after which he watches the sun gradually recede from his croquet lawn, and so soon as it is sufficiently shady, and the work dress of blue is replaced by a fine white flannel, he is ready for his game. The ladies of the house are all good players, Mrs. Douglass and Miss Fog particularly so. Frequently such men as the Hon. John R. Lynch, Mr. Bailey, President of the Capitol Savings Bank. Mr. Robt. Terrell and many others, find relaxation from business cares in this absorbing diversion. Mr. Douglass's grandson, Joseph Douglass, the gifted violinist, is spoken of as a most excellent shot; Mrs. Robt Terrell and Mrs. Lewis Douglass are particularly noted not only for their skill but for certain charming qualities, which tend to enliven and make wonderfully entertaining the game, even for losers. It is very amusing to watch a contest between Mr. Douglass and the above mentioned gentlemen, they are all so 4 THE WOMAN'S ERA serious. They do not regard their host's career in their contests; they play seriously to win. But Mr. Douglass rarely misses an aim, and his superior skill is best evidenced by his unerring field shots. To watch his lively interest in following the game and the course of a ball, his field being large, one could easily fancy him a score younger than his own figures testify; his vitality is a constant source of happy amazement to all who enjoy the privilege of either taking sides with or against him. As a rule the tea-bell ends the contests, and after a light repast the evening is given over to the most pleasurable diversion offering itself--sometimes quiet chat, in which reminiscences take the lead, a game of checkers or music. Just before retiring, after "good night" had been said to guests in general, 'tis his regular custom to smoke one segar, sitting in a big rocker on the piazza, listening to the murmuring sound of insect life, or wandering up and down the grounds watching with quick interest the myriads of twinkling lights, that mark the pathway of the gently gliding Potomac and stretching around and through the city beyond; and now that skill and science has succeeded in illuminating the headdress of the Goddess of Liberty on the Capitol, it is indeed an uplifting picture. The family habits are about the same day after day; the most notable changes being the guests that journey over long distances eager to stand in the presence of Frederick Douglass; and the tide is largely like that one, known to poesy, that goes on forever. Men of affairs, women too, come for guidance; and minds, restless with the fires of ambition, journey here for inspiration, and to all he is, in the purest sense, sire, brother, and Pythian friend. Though his voice may not often be heard from the public rostrum, yet, watchful and alert, he dwells upon his beloved Hill living the theory of manhood he advocated in the very beginning of his struggles for freedom--that manhood, womanhood, in its truest sense is not, cannot be, confined to caste, race or nation. "We ask not for his lineage, We ask not for his name; If manliness be in his heart, He noble birth may claim. We ask not from what land he came, Nor where his youth was nursed; If from the stream, it matters not, The spot from whence it burst." VICTORIA EARLE WASHINGTON MARY CHURCH TERRELL. Prologue. To one and all we bow, And solemnly do vow To do our level best, But you must do the rest. Though critics laugh and rail We'll neither quake nor quail. No poet Keats are we, As you can plainly see. And if we entertain, In sad or mirthful strain, Sufficient is the meed, To know that we succeed. Prospectus. The news found on the page devoted to the Nation's Capital will be social, literary, philosophical and otherwise, particularly the latter, when the others fail. Not so much social as to make those of a literary turn of mind wish there was no such thing as society; not so much literary as to make those of a social nature sigh, with Solomon that "Of making many books there is no end;" and much study is a weariness of the flesh; not so much philosophy as to impress the reader with the hopeless ignorance of the writer. So much for good intentions, which pave the way to success, as well as to other places of which we have all heard. We shall not be slaves to the grammar of the English language--what there is of it. We shall say "we," when it suits our purpose, and "I" when occasion requires, rules for the agreement of the pronoun to the contrary, notwithstanding. The fashion to ruthlessly ignore rules and principles of English Grammar was inaugurated by a certain Saxon Gamaliel, prominent in school circles here, when he boldly declared "It is me" to be both correct and elegant. It is natural, then, that we lesser lights, following in the light of the leader, feel encouraged to commit manifold infractions of grammatical rules, not sanctioned outside of our progressive literary circles. * * * Washington schemes reserve the right to be as impracticable as they are illogical. Living in a city whose atmosphere is surcharged with THE WOMAN'S ERA 5 the virulent germs of congressional theory, we object to having any plan or project that may hereafter appear subjected to the cold, hard test of logic or common sense. * * * Miss Ida A. Gibbs, a graduate of the classical course of Oberlin College, has recently been appointed teacher in the High School here. * * * The first colored woman who received the degree of A.B. in the United States was Miss Mary J. Patterson, who graduated from Oberlin College in '62. The schools of the district have sustained an irreparable loss in the death of Miss Patterson, who, for twenty-five years, rendered valuable service as a teacher. When Oberlin College opened its doors to women, she was courageous, indeed, who dared to brave public opinion by taking what was commonly called the gentleman's course, on the principle that it belonged exclusively to the lord of creation, and no women need apply. Only young women of the loftiest ambition and the keenest thirst for knowledge presented themselves as candidates for the degree of A.B. Miss Patterson was among the first to prove to the world that Greek and the higher mathematics could be mastered not only by young women of the favored race, but by their sisters of the oppressed race as well. Nothing better reveals the fine spirit, the resolute will, and the strongly intellectuality of Miss Patterson than her decision to take and complete the classical course at that period. * * * [*(*] The Colored Woman's League has been invited to send delegates to the National Council of Women of the United States, to convene here from Feb. 17 to March 2, 1895. One spokesman will be elected to bring greetings from the League to the Council. Only national organizations are invited to participate in the meetings, on account of the large number of societies of which the Council is composed. [*(*] Such an invitation from such an important body as the Council furnishes another proof of the advantage of a national organization of colored women. [*)*] If they are to become an important factor in solving the knotty problems of race and sex, they must get a hearing, and play a conspicuous part in all deliberations which look toward that end. Let them unite themselves into one grand national organization which shall extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and from Maine to the Gulf. [*)*] Mrs. A.J. Cooper, Mrs. Grimke and Mr. John Wesley Cromwell read papers on Negro Folk Music at the last meeting of the Washington Folk Lore Society, although it has been cordially invited to do so, because it sees fit to work alone. While they plod alone, they will also profit alone, when the results of their researches are given to the public. This is by no means a bad idea. With Rev. Alex. Crummell as president, Mrs. A. J. Cooper as corresponding secretary, and Miss Clara Smith as recording secretary, the success of the society is assured. * * * The reception given by the Misses Welsh to Miss Blanche Songo of Philadelphia and Miss McKinley of Columbia, S.C., was a brilliant success from all points of view. Nothing could have been daintier and sweeter than the ladies who graced the occasion, and nothing more courtly and chivalrous than the gentlemen in attendance. * * * Mr. Gerrett S. Wormly, Jr., grandson of Wormley of hotel fame, recently wedded Miss Rebecca Webster. By the way, speaking of brides and grooms, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Downing, recently married in Brooklyn, are spending part of their honeymoon in our city, and are the recipients of much social attention. * * * A mending bureau has been started here with every prospect of success. Mending of all kinds is done with neatness and dispatch. What a boon such a bureau must be to our friends, the bachelors! But--will it encourage them to prolong their single blessedness? If so, can the mending bureau really be encouraged and countenanced by benevolent beings? Verily, there's no rose without some thorn on this mundane sphere. * * * "What do you think of our Washington men admire most and can tolerate least in a woman?" asked a young lady of an inquiring turn of mind, not long since. "Now, that's hard to tell," said a wise sister some years her senior. "I believe beauty is the surest road to success," said a friend who overheard the conversation. "By no means," said the wiseacre to whom the first question was propounded; "there are more exceptions to the rule of beauty than can be found in an English spelling-book." "Is it intelligence?" persisted the young lady, more anxious and more interrogative than ever. "Just the faintest suspicion of that; just enough to be a witty and able to see the point of a stray joke which the hero of the hour sees fit to perpetrate," continued the Minerva of the group. "The young men seem to forgive a lack of brain more easily than they can the absence of other qualities," she continued; "no, no child, don't give too much time to the cultivation of the brain, if you want to be a reigning belle here. Spend your extra time and money in adorning the person, and let your mind take care of itself, if you want the men to admire you. Be known as a power in the world of fashion. Always be fin de siecle in the matter of hats, gowns and all the appointments of dress, and the victory is yours. There are several cases to prove the point. There was Miss" -- But here the interesting conversation on the peculiarities of the Washington beaux was interrupted by one of the very species upon whom so much philosophy and logic had been brought to bear. This conversation set me to thinking. I wonder what the Washington men really admire most and can tolerate least in a woman? Will someone answer this weighty question? "How can young women enjoy foot-ball so much?" queried a friend of a college graduate, not long since. "To me it seems a brutal sport, in spite of the sanction given it by English and American universities. It gives me a chill to hear a young woman rhapsodize over the game, for it seems incongruous with womanly delicacy. Yes, I know some very fine women enthuse over the game, but if they are sound on other points, I explain this little weakness by ascribing it to a mental obliquity in the first stage of development!" "It is a fad to rave over foot-ball," explained a young co-ed in a tone of horror and disgust. "If you can not thrill over center-rushes, half-backs and touch-downs, you label yourself a relic of the candle and bird-cage crinoline period." "It is a brutal sport," persisted the first speaker, just as firm and as far from conversion to the new regime as ever. "Harvard is to be congratulated upon having a sensible president, who discourages foot-ball, as it is now played, and is doing his utmost to have the brutality and barbarity eliminated from it." Read our advertisements. Louisiana Alice Ruth Moore, Editor How few of us, In all the world's great ceaseless struggling strife, Go to our work with gladsome, buoyant step, And love it for its sake, whate'er it be. Because it is a labor, or, mayhap, Some sweet, peculiar art of God's own gift, And not the promise of the world's slow smile Of recognition, or of Mammon's gilded grasp, Alas, how few, in inspiration's dazzling flash, Or spiritual sense of worlds beyond the dome Of circling blue around this weary earth, Can bask, and how the God given grace Of geuius' fire that flows and permeates The virgin mind alone, the soul in which The love of earth hath tainted not, The love of art, and art alone. After many years of waiting, the colored women of New Orleans have at last organized a Woman's Club. New Orleans has her Portia Club, her Quarantes and Geographic, but their doors are opened only to the more favored sisters. For a long while there were faint hints of a following in this line, but it was not until the 6th of October that nineteen women, old and young met in the basement of the Tulane Ave. Baptist church to discuss the plans for a woman's club. The gathering, as a whole, seemed ripe for the movement, and without further parley, the organization was effected, and officers elected as follows: Mrs. Sylvanie F. Williams, president; Mrs. Odalie Morse-Jackson, vice-president; Mrs. Hattie Jackson-Moore, secretary; Miss H. V. Feger, treasurer. A committee composed of Mrs. M. A. Williams, Miss Arabella Kennedy, Miss Clara J. Isabelle, and Miss Alice Ruth Moore, was appointed to draw up a constitution. The club met on the 17th again, with a much increased membership, and adopted the name of the Phyllis Wheatley Club, adopted the constitution, and declared the Woman's Era its official organ. Mrs. Williams outlined the work of the club as follows: It should be divided into a certain number of committees on different subjects, each committee to be devoted exclusively to its line of work, the general work to be arranged and outlined by the executive committee. As they now stand, the committees are: Executive, Mrs. M. A. Williams, Miss Arabella Kennedy, Mrs. Annie Whittaker. Temperance, Miss Emma Rose Williams, chairman. Hospitals, Miss Adele J. Townsend, chairman. Literature, Miss Elvise Bibb, chairman. History and Law, Miss Emma Maria Williams, chairman. Newspaper and Current Events, Miss Alice Ruth Moore, chairman. Philanthropy, Prisons, etc., Mrs. M. C. Tumer, chairman. Anti-Pugilistic, Anti-Cigarette, Miss Arabella Kennedy, chairman. Health vs. Filth, Mrs. Alice B. Clarke, chairman. Free Night Schools, Mrs. S. A. Gates, chairman. Self-help, Miss Maria M. Wicker, chairman. Social Purity, Mrs. Mena McNeal, chairman. But for the twelfth committee, and, in some respects, the most important, Suffrage, the brave mortal has not yet been found to stand at its mast-head. The Colored Teachers' League of New Orleans is not a woman's affair, by any means. No, it is redeemed from the flatness and general unprofitableness of a gathering in petticoats by three real, live, flesh-and-blood, healthy men, principals in the public schools. After a three months' vacation, the League began its winter session on the 20th, and held the annual election of officers, Mrs. S. A. Gates being elected president; vice-president, Miss Emma V. Lopez; secretary, Miss Sarah Allen; assistant-secretary, Miss Clara M. Holland; treasurer, Mrs. F. E. Chester. There is a growing up in this city a musical circle as interesting and as absorbing as any that ever clustered about the confines of a rare old town, with a conservatory in the distance, and the melodious chime of cathedral bells, and violin tones quivering in the fragrant air. While music has always found its home here, music of the sweetest and rarest kind, yet it is only lately that a real atmosphere of the scientific study of the art has found its way among us; and now it has progressed so rapidly and so completely that for many of the gayest votaries of society, there is nothing so supremely important as the alternation of lesson and study. Orchestras and quartettes and trios, violins, cornets, violas, violoncellos, mandolins, men and women, boys and girls, enthusiastically push our city forward as one of the great musical centres of the south. For two months it hasn't rained here, and New Orleans is very warm and thirsty. Her clothes look gray and her linen is yellow from being washed in bad and insufficient water. Her face is breaking out in pimples from drinking and bathing in unaccustomed river water. The big cisterns stand dry and empty and cracked. The heated, stifling air chokes with its blinding, suffocating whirls and eddies of smoke. The sky hangs blue, brightly, dazzlingly blue overhead, and the sun, as he sinks to rest, is buried in clouds of dust vapors, and New Orleans chokes and coughs and gasps, and execrates the Public Works Commissions. Houses are barred tightly, dungeon-like, to keep out the insidious dust. The teeth grit upon mouthfuls of it. The universal prayer and cry is rain, rain! Down in Frenchtown, pilgrimages and nouvenas are made to St. Avegne, and candles burned at the altar of the gracious saint. The children kill spiders and drown many a hapless snail in order to induce rain, and even tie the old red rag around the cistern faucet and dance the rain-song, but in vain. In school, the 9.30 bell has rung, and three or four boys struggle in, warm from running to school, tired and listless-looking. But how can one reprimand them for tardiness, when the invariable answer will be: "Well, teacher, wha' fo' I come to school late? Wha' I go do? Ma mere, she wash and de cistern empty. Den I got tote water, eh? I run fast, but no use. You call me up." Or a note from the mother: To Teacher (Mrs. ____ Dr Mrs: Plese oxcose my son Emile. I need him home this monin to tote de l'eau. From His Mother. In one of our newspaper offices here, an enthusiastic young McKinleyite--girl, of course--has decorated the Protectionist's picture with red ink, in profusion, about the coat, neck, cheeks, and nose; the bright, bright blue of the editorial pencil adorns his eyes and cravat, and stuck sundry green card-board mascot bows about the corners of the picture; and written under it all, in letters of blue and red, tipsily askew, thus: O R E U N XT P E R SIDENT. She says she "didn't go to do it, but they came that way." The Claremont, Va., Institute.--The W. E. C. Cannot Endorse It. A short time ago it came to the knowledge of the Woman's Era Club that the institute at Claremont, Va., Rev. John J. Smallwood, president, needed assistance. With the view of giving what aid it could, the Club instituted inquiries as to the condition of this school. At its last regular meeting, the Club decided that, unless some very damaging disclosures recently made, as to the moral conduct of the school, are explained away, they can neither aid nor endorse that, nor any other educational work projected and carried on by John J. Smallwood. THE WOMAN'S ERA. --ADVERTISE-- IN THE WOMAN'S ERA THE ONLY PAPER IN AMERICA PUBLISHED IN THE INTEREST OF WOMEN'S CLUBS ---- The WOMAN'S ERA, as the organ of the colored women's clubs, has a large circulation in many of the large cities, notably Boston, New Bedford, Providence, New York, Chicago, Washington and Kansas City. The Literary, Musical and Domestic Departments are under the control of competent writers and critics. With its large circulation among women, and particularly among women of the refined and educated classes, it offers peculiar advantages to advertisers of household articles, wearing apparel, books, magazines, musical instruments, and so forth. Its rates are exceedingly liberal. Try it, and you will not regret it. ---- EDITORIAL A Word to the A.A.W. --- The A.A.W. (Association for the Advancement of Women) holds its twenty-second congress October 31st, November 1st and 2nd, at Knoxville, Tenn. The deliberations of this body are always of great importance to women. With Julia Ward Howe as its president, and the representative women of America composing its body, it has grown to be one of the greatest factors of the day in the development and progress of woman. The association stands now in an enviable position; it sees its labors crowned with much success, and very little standing in the way of future efforts; it sees--as we all see--the almost boundless possibilities of the American white woman ; it sees the especial consideration which she enjoys in this country, anything being possible to her except the act of voting, and her growing influence now almost unlimited. Realizing, as it must, all this, we want to say a word to the A.A.W. on the responsibility of the white woman for the wrongs and outrages done the black race in this country. Most of these have been and are of a nature that little more than a word from a white woman would have effectually stopped numberless acts of annoyance, injustice, and even outrage. Think of the refined, sensitive colored girls who have been literally thrown out of first-class cars in the south without a protest, when a protest would have been so effectual; think of the ambitious, noble-minded women of the south who are shut out from every elevating influence in the shape of lectures, libraries, etc.; think of the lynchings incited by white women, and not one ever prevented by them. Policy and expediency are supposed to be unknown to bodies of women in their deliberations, and from this man has raised one of his chief arguments against woman suffrage. In spite of this, it has been one of woman's strong points that she has put right before expediency, and we would suggest to the A.A.W. that they cast aside policy and expediency, and boldly face this race question. It is a question which they can not longer evade. We thoroughly believe that it is the women of America--black and white--who are to solve this race problem, and we do not ignore the duty of the black women in the matter. They must arouse, educate and advance themselves; they are to exert that influence through the homes, the schools and the churches that will build up an intelligent, industrious and moral people. Their duty is plan and must be done. But the white woman has a duty in the matter also; she must see to it that no obstructions are placed in the way of a weak, struggling people; she must no longer consent to be passive. We call upon her to take her stand. -- The National Council of Women --- The National Council of Women, which convenes in Washington, D.C., in February, has invited the Colored Women's League of Washington to be represented at the Convention. The Washington League, with broad-minded courtesy, has made its committee so large as to be able to include delegates from other colored women's leagues, and has invited such leagues to send delegates. Unfortunately, a majority of the members of the Women's Era Club of Boston did not see the advantages of being so represented, and voted not to send a delegate. In spite of this fact, which we regret very much, we hope to see the colored women of all sections represented by their best women at the coming council. In any event, Washington is prepared to ably represent the race. Again the Convention -- With our new departure, we again bring forward our suggestion of a convention. We hope our readers will open the matter again with renewed interest, and that the summer of '95 will see a great congress of the colored women of America. The Woman's Leagues are opening the season with new enthusiasm and energy. They are inaugurating their work along their own especial lines, and the year is full of promise. It is hoped that the clubs will not fail of a coming together at the close of the season, with all that means of helpfulness, inspiration, and broadening. Let us all work together to bring it about. We, as a race, have been so cramped that we women have unavoidably grown narrow and selfish to an extent. It is for this reason we pray for a convention, with its widening effect on the mental, moral and physical vision. --- St. Thomas Celebration --- The centennial celebration of St. Thomas P. E. Church, in Philadelphia, in October, was an event of great interest and importance. After one hundred years, the church is still in a most flourishing condition. A celebration of this kind stamps us completely American. Think of this, and the talk of naturalized foreigners of sending us back to Africa "where we belong!" --- As the editor of this paper has been unable to attend the Congress of the A.A.W., now in session at Knoxville, Tenn., as was her intention, she has sent, as a substitute, a large number of ERAs to be distributed among the delegates. ___ The Association of Educators of Colored Youth will hold their next congress in London, Eng., and will arrange tours on the continent of Europe. This is an excellent idea, and we have no doubt that it will be a brilliant success. Aside from the value of having so fine a body of colored people conduct their deliberations among the friendly English, there will be many colored people to take advantage of a European tour with congenial company. It is a splendid thing in every way. ___ In introducing our associates to our readers, we need hardly to say a word. They speak for themselves. We are proud to present to our people such an array of fine women and writers. With such a force, the possibilities of the ERA are unlimited in the way of intellectual tone and strength, and only limited to the extent that people are willing to support the paper. There is yet to be found the person who will not acknowledge that the ERA is a necessity, and a necessity well met; there is yet to be found the person who, knowing of it, is not anxious to read it, even if she does not buy it. The ERA should be twice its present size--everything warrants it--except its financial returns. A thousand new subscribers--two hundred from each of the cities directly represented in the paper--would warrant a larger paper. Only this number in a country where a million women read the paper! We believe our women are loyal; when individually appealed to, they have given us enthusiastic support; but they need to be aroused. No other paper in America does for our women just what the ERA does; no other paper is so entirely their medium. Let them realize this and do their duty like, no, not like men, but like women. Do not be content to subscribe yourself, but urge your friends to subscribe. ____ Miss Baldwin, whose offer of a home, for a girl while studying, was made through these columns last month, has received and is still receiving numbers of letters from worthy girls. It is Miss Baldwin's desire to secure a girl of more than ordinary promise, one who would b especially responsive to the especial advantages to be obtained here in New England; for such a girl as this, Miss Baldwin would so use her influence that nothing need stand in the way of her protegee's intellectual advancement, not even the doors of Radcliffe College. While choosing, Miss Baldwin receives many eloquent letters. It has occurred to us, while reading letters from girls well-endorsed as to character, capability and industriousness, that there might be many families in the north who would be glad to receive in their midst such girls, and who, in exchange for the companionship and services such a girl could give, would give her a good home while going to school. It is quite as well to state in this connection that the offer made by Miss Baldwin is entirely one-sided; all she asks or desires in return is the intellectual progress of her protegee. It is the desire of this paper to be a medium 10 THE WOMAN'S ERA. between people who could be mutually helpful. We will be glad to find homes for good girls and girls for good homes. Anyone desiring either are invited to correspond with us on the matter. Where You Can Get the Era. THE WOMAN'S ERA can always be had at the following places: BOSTON. 103 Charles St. Miss Stewart, 37 Buckingham St. Car Station, corner Charles and Cambridge Sts. Reed's, Cambridge St. Crawford's, Phillips St. Miss Grandison, 17 Hovey Ave., Cambridge. NEW YORK. Mrs. Victoria Matthews, 9 Murray St. PHILADELPHIA. Church Supply Co., 254 South Eleventh St. WASHINGTON. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, 1936 4th St. The Colored American, 906 E St. CHICAGO. Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, 377 42nd St. DENVER. Mrs. Elizabeth P. Ensley, 1755 Ogden Ave. KANSAS CITY, MO. Mrs. J. Silome Yates, 3116 E. 19th St. NEW ORLEANS. Miss Alice Ruth Moore, 55 Palmyra St. ST. JOHN, N. B. Mrs. Whetsel. Mr. Richings has been heard from in England, where he is supplementing Miss Wells' work in behalf of the colored people of America, with his illustrated lecture. At the close of a recent lecture given in Pembroke Chapel, Liverpool, a cordial vote of thanks was passed to Mr. Richings for his interesting lecture, general agreement being expressed with him in the great progress made by the colored people. The Domestic Science committees of the women's clubs should be made up of some of the brightest, most up-to-date members. Their opportunities for helpfulness are greater than all others. SOCIAL NOTES NEW YORK. "Such a time I always have hat hunting!" "Do you? You poor thing! Where do you go?" "Everywhere, anywhere," the most tired-looking "poor thing" wearily drawled on a car making for 14th st. "I am sure I wish we didn't have to wear hats." "Why don't you let Leon buy and make them?" "Leon -- make -- my hats!" she gasped. "Mine are specimens," she gurgled. "Oh, how lovely! A dream thought! Oh, you sweet! I am younger immediately." The car stopped and the "poor thing" and the "sweet" disappeared. Matchless woman! who'd ever have thought of calling a hat a "dream thought?" Splendid woman! As they passed from my gaze I could see billowy lace lightly resting on raven tresses, held in place by a gleaming comblet. Ah, my masters, strange things go to make up dreams. A bright ray of light has fallen aslant the great Downing patronymic, and all society is busily engaged in recherche anticipations of the event. The bride that is to be is one of the sweetest little maidens in all the "city of churches," and "gallant Frank," as the boys call him at times, is a prime favorite. When the 17th arrives, brilliants will flash and sparkle and soft silks will lend elegance to a scene that happy hearts and beautiful faces will make one to be long remembered. 'Tis a real love match. Judging by thoughts culled from many sources, the school question is still reckoned among explosives. Speaking of the school question, according to the Brooklyn member of the board, our young girls will have to be cooks and scullions in the future, unless colored schools are nurtured. It is understood on good authority that the schools known as Mrs. Garnet's and Mr. Reason's are to be consolidated on one count. It is a pity, for Mrs. Garnet tried so hard to get Miss Eato made principal as successor to the late Charles L. Reason. There is not a teacher in our midst more deserving of such promotion than Miss Eato, from many points of view. She is one whom New Yorkers -- Knickerbockers -- are truly proud of; she is THE WOMAN'S ERA. 11 the essence of cultured constancy and a most unswerving adherent to duty. Her presence, while strong and reliant, is one of the most restful known to me. Counsellor Stewart wore rather a concerned expression when Mr. Braxton finally concluded the transactions that made him counsellor for St. Philips corporation. It's a good move. Mr. Stewart has demonstrated many times that he possesses the ability that St. Philips needs, and the vestrymen have proved their race royalty by securing his services. Such procedure will inevitably vanquish the so-called race problem. The saddest event to chronicle is the death of Mrs. Chas. Boyd, nee Delia Washington. "Leaves have their time to fall, And flowers wither at the north wind's breath, And stars to set, and all Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O death!" The bereaved family have the sympathy of hosts of friends. Messrs. V. A. Montgomery and "our" Harry Burleigh go to Philadelphia on the 18th to take part in the Bergen concert. St. Philips Guild is by far the most dignified body of men in the public gaze just now. Its ever genial master, J. J. Atwell, has been sent as a delegate to the Episcopal Convention sitting in Philadelphia, having the courtly vice-Guild Master, F. H. Carmand, to preside and deliver the address on the 18th. The Centennial celebration at St. Thomas P. E. church in Philadelphia bids fair to assume most interesting proportions. All Gotham is waiting to hear all about St. Philips' choir; the boys are working hard and Mr. Kenney looks a little "oldish," but of course they'll do finely. A special car will take them over. Among those who will accompany them will be Messrs. Mars, Braxton, Smith, Barrows, Ray, Anthony, Attwell, Burleigh, Gray, Mrs. Annie Dias, Mesdames Francis Attwell, Hymen Dorsey, Miss Imogen Howard, Mrs. F. H. Carmand and son Frankie. Victoria Earle also journeyed to the Quaker City. The venerable-looking Frederick Barbadoes passed through Gotham a few days ago, looking as frisky as ever, on his way in search of matter for a book. This column will endeavor to secure a first volume. The Woman's Loyal Union seem to be up and doing; they are not only flooding New York and Brooklyn with petitions for the enactment of the Blair Joint Resolution, but will manage for the benefit of their treasury a large reception on the 13th of November, at Lyric Hall, at which ex-minister John Durham and Mrs. Fanny Jackson Coppin will make addresses. They deserve the patronage of the people. The Woman's Loyal Union have succeeded in stirring up the preachers of this city and were the inspiration that led to the organization of a preacher's meeting. They will manage a grand union meeting for the purpose of endorsing the Woman's Loyal Union efforts in arousing the people to the necessity of acting at once on the Blair Joint Resolution. The pastor of Bethel Church is one of the brainiest men in town. In a quiet way he is talking and some of the biggest men in his church are quaking. Truly the breath of reform is abroad. Bethel's progressive minds have decided to have a "Brooklyn Literary Union." They will associate Victoria Earle, T. T. Fortune, T. McCantz Stewart, L. H. Latimer, J. C. Carter, and many others. Quite a tally-ho. One of the prettiest girls in town is the black- eyed miss who occasionally officiates at the organ at St. Bartholomew's mission; in fact, she has most beautiful eyes. How funny! Our Bob's chum eats his weeds instead of smoking them. Its too costly a luxury for most of us. Sometime in the future we will all give a party for ANNO DOMINO 1894. BOSTON. The B. M. C. of the I. O. O. F. made quite a big ripple in Boston's social life; besides those large affairs given in honor of the convention there have been numerous small functions incidental to the presence of distinguished people in the city. The grand ball at Music Hall was a crush, and consequently a success of the biggest kind; the hall was packed, the costumes exceedingly fine, the music and supper good. Among the attractive ladies here because of the convention, were Mrs. Van Dusen (who accompanied her husband) and Miss Dickson of Erie, Pa. These ladies were taken in charge by Mrs. E. E. Brown and Mrs. J. H. Lewis, who devoted themselves to showing the people and sights of Boston to the visitors. 12 THE WOMAN'S ERA During the week Mrs. U. A. Ridley gave a reception, Mrs. Joseph Lee a dinner, and Mrs. P. A. Glover a dance in honor of Miss Mollie Durham and the Hon. John S. Durham of Philadelphia. The week following Mrs. E. E. Brown gave a card party for Mrs. Van Dusen and Miss Dickson. Dr. and Mrs. Grant's "at homes" bring together a goodly number of friends on Monday nights. Mrs. B. R. Wilson gave a dinner on the 13th which was delightful in every way; the exquisite silver, china and glass received by her as wedding gifts set the table off to perfection. Mrs. Harriet Bell of New York made a short visit to Boston the latter part of October, the guest of Mrs. Ransom. The friends of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Terry are daily expecting to be called upon for congratulations. Dr. Milton Brown went on to Baltimore to take the examinations necessary for admission to practice in that city. --------- Kansas City. Madame Watson Griffin is doing for Kansas City's vocal talent what Prof. Lee has done in an instrumental line. Both are possessed of excellent professional merit and are meeting with great success. The members of the Attucks Club entertained their lady friends on the 17th ult. in their new parlors, corner of Sixth and Charlotte. The Rev. Marshall of St. Augustine's Mission will be ordained at Grace Church, Nov. 21st. Miss Anna H. Jones, of Lincoln High School, has received a call to occupy a position in the High School of Washington, D.C. Miss Rice, the new supervisor or teacher of drawing is giving complete satisfaction. Miss Frances Willard, during her recent talk in Philadelphia, made an urgent plea for funds to be used in the work of organizing colored women of the South in the interests of temperance and social purity. J.S.Y. -------- Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, our Chicago editor, has been seriously ill, but she has rallied to send us the timely article published in this number. Illinois Fannie Barrier Williams, Editor. Women in Politics ----- American women are beginning to see the end of their years of struggle for equality of suffrage. The arguments are nearly in and the signs of a favorable verdict are everywhere apparent to those who understand the trend of things. Fragmentary suffrage, now possessed by women in nearly all states of the union, carries with it the triumph of the principal contended for, and its extension to complete and national suffrage is as logically certain as any thing can be. Just how soon the complete enfranchisement of women will be realized depends largely upon the use we make of our present gains. The false reasoning of the opposition having been overcome, we have now to fight only the prejudices in opposition. When the opposing man sees women actually voting, and looks in vain for the evils predicted, his prejudices will yield and he will gladly join the forces that are fast making for their complete emancipation. Nothing in the whole social progress of humanity is more interesting and more suggestive of the persistency of rightness than the steady gain of womankind in those larger relationships of human life and civilization, in which the stronger, as well as the gentler virtues, are tending to increase her importance. Are women ready to assume the responsibilities of this new recognition of their worth? This question is of immense importance to colored women. For the first time in our history we are to receive public attention and have our womanly worth tested by the high standards of important public duties. Must we begin our political duties with no better or higher conceptions of our citizenship than that shown by our men when they were first enfranchised? Are we to bring any refinement of individuality to the ballot box? Shall we learn our politics from spoilsmen and bigoted partisans, or shall we learn it from the school of patriotism and an enlightened self-interest? If our enfranchisement means only a few more votes added to the republican and democratic sides, respectively, of political issues, there certainly has been no gain for the cause of principle in American politics. If our enfranchisement is to contribute nothing to the corrective forces of independence in American THE WOMAN'S ERA. 13 politics, there will be much disappointment among those who believed that the cause of temperance, municipal reform and better education would be more surely advanced when the finer virtues of women became a part of the political forces of the country. Our women in Chicago are now, for the first time, getting a taste of politics. By virtue of a recent act of wholesome generosity of our legislators, women are permitted to vote for trustees of the state university. Two women have been duly nominated on the republican and democratic tickets respectively for this office. Fortunately, the nominees are equally meritorious candidates. Although the offices to be filled are purely nonpartisan, our newly fledged suffragists are ranging themselves eagerly in the democratic and republican camps and are campaigning for their respective sides on purely party grounds. So far the campaign speeches and methods have not been elevated in the least degree above the dead level of partisanship. Our own women, too, have gone into the fight with a party zeal that would be satisfactory to the most exacting "boss." Without wishing to discredit the good motives of our women, or to criticise captiously their conduct in the campaign, I believe this new opportunity for self-help and advancement ought not to be lost sight of in our thirst for public favors, or in our eagerness to help any grand old "party." We ought not to put ourselves in the humiliating position of being loved only for the votes we have. The sincerity of white women, who have heretofore so scorned our ambitions and held themselves aloof from us in all our struggles for advancement, should be, to a degree, questioned. It would be much more to our credit if we would seek, by all possible uses of our franchise, to force these ambitious women candidates and women party managers to relent their cruel opposition to our girls and women in the matter of employment and the enjoyment of civil privileges. We should never forget that the exclusion of colored women and girls from nearly all places of respectable employment is due mostly to the meanness of American women, and in every way that we can check this unkindness by the force of our franchise should be religiously done. If, however, we burden our hearts and minds solely with the anxiety for the success of a party ticket for party reasons, we shall be guilty of the same folly and neglect of self-interest that have made colored men for the past twenty years vote persistently more for the special interests of white men than for the peculiar interests of the colored race. There is no good reason why our women should not be made to feel sufficiently independent not only to make their peculiar interests a motive in the exercise of the franchise, but also to array themselves, when possible, on the side of the best, whether that best be inside or outside of party lines. Much more ought to be expected of colored women in 1894 in the exercise of their suffrage than was expected of the colored men who first voted under the 15th Amendment. It is now a good time in woman's clubs and organizations of all kinds for women to prepare themselves, by the best lessons of citizenship, to exert a wholesome influence in the politics of the future. The importance of the suffrage, as a means to complete emancipation from the impositions of prejudice should be eagerly taught, and brought home to the conscience of our women everywhere. It is more than probable that issues of immeasurable importance to the weal of our country, and requiring for their adjustment a larger amount of intelligent patriotism than has yet been exacted from the American conscience, will make demands on us by the time universal suffrage becomes one of the organic laws of the land. COLORADO Elizabeth Piper Ensley, Editor. What Equal Suffrage has done for Colorado. Among the many objections met with, during our suffrage campaign, were the best women would not vote, only the bad exercise the right, and that women would not purify politics. None of these arguments have proven true. The best women have been the ones most interested. They have formed themselves into different clubs and are the indefatigable workers in the political party with which they affiliate. During the special canvas for registration it wsa found that only one out of twenty immoral women was willing to register. Since then they have been waited upon by our most corrupt politicians and urged to register and vote in order to defeat the better class of voters. This can have no effect. The good women are in the majority. Before the opening of the present political campaign the Equal Suffrage Association formed a Campaign for Good Government Committee with 14 The WOMAN'S ERA. auxiliaries throughout the state. This committee is composed of six women from each of the four political parties. They were divided into three committees; one, a press committee of sixteen to furnish articles relating to their work for every paper in the state; the other two consist of four members each, one for primaries, the other for conventions. The duty of the former was to urge all women to attend the primaries; that of the latter, to see that important resolutions were introduced into the conventions of all the parties. The first work of this committee was to draw up resolutions demanding tat the age of consent be raised from sixteen to eighteen years, favouring the Initiative and Referendum, so successful in Switzerland, and that, resolving themselves into a committee of the whole, they use every effort to arouse public sentiment to the great need of civil service reform. These resolutions were passed by the E.S.A., and endorsed by all labor organizations, as well as by the women's clubs. The first successful result attained in the interest of good government will benefit a large number of people. Our city charter is a most intricate one. Some of the officials are appointed by the governor, some by the mayor, while others are elected by popular vote. Thus state, and therefore party politics, are brought into our city government. The present board of public works is composed of men of one party, while the boards of aldermen and supervisors are of two other parties. According to the charter the board of public works has the authority to employ labor for public improvements. During the great financial depression, when so many men were out of employment, it was suggested to the board of public works that a much needed sewer be built, thus giving work to hundreds of men having families dependent on them - especially since three hundred thousand dollars of the city improvement appropriation remained in the bank. These men began work late in August, but did not receive a cent of money due them until the 16th of October, owing to the fact that the supervisors and aldermen refused to allow the warrants tendered the men to be cashed. They declared that the city charter did not sustain the board of public works in the carrying on of public improvements. This, too, in direct defiance of the decision rendered by the courts. As soon as the campaign for good government committee received an intimation of the existing state of affairs, a committee was appointed to wait upon the board of public works and ascertain the exact truth of the matter. From what the ladies learned, they believed the action to be dictated by a wholly partisan spirit, and therefore to be condemned. A mass indignation meeting was called. Our largest hall was packed. The women pleaded eloquently for the wronged, and a resolution was adopted providing for the payment of the Delgany Street sewer employees. After the supervisors readily adopted the resolution. Only the concurrent vote of the aldermen was now needed to enable the treasurer to cash the warrants. A special meeting was called for that purpose at which the resolution was unanimously adopted. When the women crowded around the city clerk to get his approval many of the men to whom the money was due awaited in the lobby. It was a touching sight to witness their joy as they surrounded the women on their way out. They felt that it was all owing to the influence of these good women that their pay was not longer withheld from them. The women are among the most effective of the campaign speakers. All the political parties have acknowledged their worth and ability by nominating them on the several tickets as representatives to the legislature, superintendent of public instruction, and even as lieutenant governor. An ardent suffragist, whose work during the campaign brought her much in contact with the city officials, says that, in contrasting the deference paid to women now with the indifference then shown, she is constrained to exclaim: "Look here upon this picture, and on this." For the Investigation of Acts of Unlawful Violence. The Woman's Loyal Union of N. Y. and Brooklyn, are energetically pushing this petition to Congress for the enactment of the Blair Resolution. The Woman's Era Club of Boston will help on the good work by sending an independent one from New England. McKenzie, the optician, near the Infirmary on Charles street, examines your eyes and fit glasses. He is centrally situated for all club members, and always willing to give advice and information. THE WOMAN'S ERA. 15 MISSOURI. JOSEPHINE SILMOE YATES, EDITOR. TO-DAY. Today, the princely child of yesterday, Emerges from the parent's regal brow, For action fully armed, in rich array, Like Pallas from the head of Zeus great. Apollo bows before his royal face, And floods of light dispersed o'er hill and vale. The land is bathed in majesty and grace By him who sits enthroned by right divine. How beautiful, in light and joyous mood, Art thou, O day! but when thy god-like breast Is stirred by passion's dire and angry brood, Then terrible art thou with wrath divine. How beautiful, in light and joyous mood, Art thou, O day! but when thy god-like breast Is stirred, by passion's dire and angry brood, Then terrible art thou with wrath divine. And yet to make a year and sphere repay, The seer sees all sorts of days it takes. Let us, therefore, rejoice in light today, Or, light denied, rejoice in life itself. For while we idly weep, or wish, or wait, The day declines; across the massive brow A pallid shadow steals; we are too late! Behold the dying day is father of tomorrow. Modern Education as Influenced by the Reformation. Three stages of intellectual development swept along with the reformation and were coincident with its progress. Humanism, grounded upon the study of the classics, came first as a natural result of the revival of learning; realism, or the education of the mind through the eye and hand, succeeded; while naturalism, or an attempt to develop first the body, then the character; lastly, the mind grew out of realism, and modern education is tacitly understood to be an unconscious compromise of these three aims. Humanism had gained something of a foothold in German universities by the middle of the fifteenth century, but the professors, although they waged continual war with the more ignorant and intolerant of the clergy, failed to see the greatness of the mother tongue as an instrument of culture; like the schoolmen they work solely in Latin, making no effort to fix the German language by unifying its dialects, and giving little or no attention to popular literature. The literature of an age expressed quite accurately the high-water mark of its education, and a glance at the history of this art in Germany, during the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries inclusive, is sufficient to reveal a great literary depression, the causes of which are numerous. It was a period of transitions in language, of religious disturbance, of discontent among the masses, yet in a low stage of development. There was, however, a bright side to this dark picture,- a mental activity which was preparing the way for a higher development, not only of the entire German nation, but of all the nations influenced by its civilization; and while Luther was kindling the fires of the reformation by the publication of these, sermons and tracts, the scholarly Erasmus and Von Hutten were writing polished satires exposing the abuses of the church, the vices of the clergy and the greed of monastic orders. Albert Durer, the greatest German painter of his time, was publishing treatises on art which have stood the test of the centuries; Paracelsus, in the German language, was lecturing on chemistry and medicine; later, Gerhardt and Fleming were writing poems which placed them in the front rank among lyrists. Dramatic art, encouraged both by Luther and the Jesuists, made considerable progress during the period of the reformation, although the plays were still coarse and offensive at a time when English audiences were appreciating the beauties of Shakespeare's masterpieces. Maximillian I. interested himself in popular literature to a certain extent, but his tastes inclined him more especially toward the court romances of early mediæval days. In the teaching profession the humanists were still overshadowed by the schoolmen, the leading educators of the period, and they (the schoolmen) devoted themselves and their pupils to the most unprofitable questions of metaphysics and theology. The seven years' course of study, which represented the high aims of the best part of the middle ages, was a noble plan of education, but the church considered no form of knowledge as worthy of recognition which did not directly contribute to its aggrandizement, hence the course had been limited and formalized until only the husk remained. Methods of teaching had been corrupted, memory was substituted for thought. The renaissance, however, which appeared in Europe as the forerunner and a leading cause of the reformation, wrought a change in both subject and method. Pupils were now brought face to face 16 THE WOMAN'S ERA. with Virgil and Horace, Plato and Cicero, and with classic models from all departments of art; but this great intellectual revival was not fully developed in German, when that religious movement invaded northern Europe which separated the culture of the reformation from that of the church; and we who are accustomed to look upon Protestantism as the key to independence and originality of thought, as an expression itself of the highest intelligence, can hardly realize the primary results of the separation, the loss in philosophic and artistic culture which the iconoclastic and insurrectionary spirit, attending the reformation in the early years of its development, occasioned in those countries most deeply affected by its onward march. Those who broke with the church had to create a philosophy, educational forms, and a culture of their own. As the mind, no longer in thraldom, for the church had assumed absolute control of the intellect, began to assert itself, the loss was more than sustained, -- by the principles of Bacon, Des Cartes and Kant, by the discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, and by the hosts of brilliant thinkers who, in spite of the warfare so long and so bitterly waged between science and religion, did originate and establish a new philosophy, a new education, a new culture. The instruction which Luther received in the Latin school at Mansfield, in the Francisan school at Madgeburg, the High School of Erfurt and lastly, in the Augustinian convent of Erfurt, was identical with the training of the age; Aristotelian philosophy, classics and theology forming the bulk of the course, and these subjects taught in a narrow and spiritless manner; but with this knowledge as a foundation Luther became the commanding spirit, no less in literature and education than in religion. The composition of poetry and music was a recreation in which he indulged during moments of leisure, yet who questions whether the soul of a poet rang through the thrilling lines of -- "Ein feste Burg ist Iunser Gott, Ein gutes Wehr und Waffen; Er hilft uns frey ans aller Noth, Die uns jetzt hat betroffen, etc Luther, generally speaking, cared little for the form of his composition as compared with the effect it produced, although his greatest literary achievement, the translation of the Bible into German, was attended by such simplicity of style and perfect comprehension of the numerous German dialects, that for the first time in the history of the Germanic people they possessed a common speech; and to this Augustinian monk Germany owes the most essential of all the conditions of a truly national life and literature -- a common vehicle of thought, intelligent and commanding. Education, previous to the reformation as conducted by Luther, was entirely under the control of the church; the church trained its children to fill the ranks of Catholicism, and Luther soon recognized that the success of his religious reforms depended largely upon the organization of schools for the people, in which the principles underlying his position might be taught, and thus popularized; and the study of the mother tongue through the German Bible, which, published in the complete form in 1541, represented the work of the best years of his life, accompanied by the singing of those stirring hymns, contributed by Gerhardt, Luther, Fleming and others, was in itself a new education, and created a mutual interest in instruction and religion, in knowledge and faith. The reformer especially emphasized the value of the primary school, and so influenced the genius of the primary school, and so influenced the genius of modern education, by the methods which he advocated in that direction, that for three hundred years Protestant nations have moulded universal opinion in matters of primary instruction. He severely criticized the schools of the period, which were mainly designed for the favored few; complains of the brutality of the teachers, who, he says, "Behaved toward their pupils as if they were thieves." According to Luther's testimony, he himself, was beaten fifteen times in one afternoon. Aiming at a practical solution of the difficulties surrounding the cause of popular education, in 1524, he addressed a forcible manifesto to the municipal authorities of all the German towns, appealing to the highest considerations of virtue and religion in behalf of public instruction. He would have the state support its schools on the same principle that it supports a standing army; he would make education compulsory, since military service is such, and for the former, the reasons are higher and stronger. The divorcement of education from the control of the church, and the public work, he found an able assistant in Melanchthon, who was a brilliant humanist, an influential teacher, and a successful writer of school books. Melanchthon's appointment in 1518 as a professor of Greek in the University of Wittenberg marks an epoch of German university education. Scholastic methods of teaching were summarily dropped, Wittenberg became the national school, and from this time, the revival of letters, as influenced by the reformation, began to assert itself on German soil. Aug. 9 - 1939 Dear Molly, In the first place, I want to thank you for your wonderful life - and letting me read it all. It has meant that Nettie has come in every day and read it to me. There are several suggestions I would make. Shall I give them to Dorothy Swift, who is to be here this week, I understand, or shall I send them to you? In the first place, Molly, I agree with all the previous "readers" that it should be cut. What would you think about this idea? Putting all the long letters, which you quote in your manuscript, either as notes or in an appendix at the end of the book. Of course, you will want to have an index which will add to the length of the book, but will make it much more valuable. With many thanks for your life, and for reading it. I am yours always, Helen W. Martin (N.S.L) 75 Elmwood Place Oberlin, Ohio THE WOMAN'S ERA. 17 FREE! Another Splendid Premium Offer! The first premium offered last March having been won the publishers of the Era take pleasure in announcing another which, if possible, surpasses the first. READ! FIRST PREMIUM. For the boy or girl, man or woman who in the next 3 months brings in the largest number of paid up subscribers (over one hundred in number) we will give a course in Mr. Eastman's School of Carving and Modelling. N.B.--This course taken at its full value is worth two hundred dollars; it extends over a term of nine months, and at the end of that time pupils are prepared to become teachers of the art. No more valuable premium could be offered; in return for a little energy a splendid trade is given and a position to teach almost assured, or if teaching is not preferred and the premium winner prefers actual work, good and paying positions are assured. SECOND PREMIUM. To the one bringing in the next largest number of subscribers, half a term at the above school will be given. THIRD PREMIUM. To the one bringing in the third highest number of subscribers a New World Type-writer will be given. FOURTH PREMIUM. To the four boys or girls (beginners in music) bringing in each ten subscribers in the next three months, a year's course in the Boston Training School of Music will be given. Do not pass this over lightly. The Woman's Era makes a specialty of preparing openings for young colored people; it realizes the difficulties they encounter in obtaining such openings and is prepared to do well by ambitious, earnest and determined young people. Don't complain of lack of chances if you let such as these pass you by. All contestants not receiving premiums will be allowed twenty-five percent on all paid in yearly subscriptions received. The time allowed is short, but people who are in earnest act at once. For further particulars, address THE WOMAN'S ERA, 103 Charles Street, Boston. School of Modelling and Carving. TEACHERS AND CRAFTSMEN TRAINED IN THE FOLLOWING INDUSTRIAL ARTS. MODELLING for Stone and Plaster. MODELLING for Metals, etc. CASTING for Stucco and Metals. FIGURE CUTTING in Piece and Mould. STONE CARVING, Buildings, Monuments and Ecclesiastical Works. WOOD CARVING, for Metals, Internal and External Decoration. PUPILS PREPARED to teach the above in one term of nine months. CRAFTSMEN PUSHED in special branches and situations secured upon completion of term; or work secured while studying. For terms apply to CLAVENGER A. EASTMAN, St. Augustine's Trade Schools, Corner Cambridge and Grove Sts., Boston. GEORGE L. RUFFIN, LESSONS IN SINGING Lamperti Method. After October 1st, 103 Charles Street. Dates for Cecilia Wage Earners' Concerts, are Nov. 27, Jan. 16, Mar. 17, May 1. TICKETS, 25 and 15c. Apply for tickets on week before each Concert, at above address. Help in Choosing a School. The publishers of the Woman's Era will, on application of any of its subscribers, send catalogues and all information easily obtainable, concerning any academy, college, normal, music, or art school in New England, on receipt of stamped and directed envelope. Address, Woman's Era, 103 Charles St. EDGAR P. BENJAMIN, Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law Room 22, 34 SCHOOL STREET, BOSTON. 18 THE WOMAN'S ERA. TRY A PERFECT ICING FOR YOUR CAKES, &c. Will not spoil or foment in heat or cold, covered or exposed to the air. PERFECT ICING never dries out or crumbles, all other Icings draw the moisture from the cake and dry it up. A PERFECT ICING will keep your cake from drying out. PERFECT ICING should be put on in a very thin coating, like a varnish; it will give your cakes a beautiful gloss as well as flavor. Can be cut soon as put on by dipping your knife in cold water. A 25c Jar of PERFECT ICING will go further than 25 cents in Egg and Sugar Icing as you use it, is more healthful, and gives a superior flavor. PERFECT ICINGS are put in Screw Top Jars, also in Mason quarts, and in wooden pails of 25 lbs. each. DIRECTIONS. Remove the top, set the Jar in a moderate oven or warm place, until the contents are thin enough to spread. Take your knife, stir it up and spread on a cold cake, just as thin as possible. Set your jar away to use again. Ask Your Grocer for PERFECT ICING. Almond, Coffee, Wild Grape, Orange, Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate, Pistash. PREPARED ONLY BY A. H. PELOUBET & CO., New York. See our Trade Mark A. H. P. is on every Label. PERFECT ICINGS used in making Sherbets or Water Ices, Ice Creams, Sauces, Home Confections, &c. Will give their rich flavors and save work. B. P. RAY, Agent 2 Chatham Row, BOSTON, MASS. THE CELEBRATED Witch-Hazel Velvet Cream Does not contain corrosive sublimate, lead, arsenic, mercury, or any poison. As a toilet article for tan, sunburn, moth, freckles, etc., its excellence cannot be too well recommended Put up in 60c and $1.00 Sizes, sent postpaid on receipt of Price. AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE For Sale by Druggists and Dealers in Toilet Supplies All corespondence should be addressed to the New England Agents, W. F. & J. S. KINGSBERY RANDOLPH, MASS. The Kranich & Bach Pianos Again took only Gold Medal at last Mechanics' Fair for their unequalled patent Upright and Grands. Also Silver medal on Mehlin & Sons, and Stultz & Bauer Pianos. Also slightly used Steinway Grand for $400, Steinway Square $250, H. F. Miller $250, McPhail $190, nearly new Haynes Bros. Upright $325, new Ivers & Pond $225, H. F. Miller Parlor Grand $400, and fifty Square Pianos from $50 to $200. Organs from $30 to $100. TERMS EASY. H. W. BERRY 646 Washington Street, Boston Over Pray & Sons' Carpet Store. Material furnished and a Stylish Walking or Visiting Dress made to order for $23.00, warranted to fit perfectly and finished in the best manner. Ladies can select material from any of the large dry goods houses, I will buy and be responsible for a hand- some gown, at this extremely low figure. MRS. A. A. CASNEAU Near Hammond St. 9 Greenwich St.. Boston. ATTENTION LADIES. Our Dress and Garment making is perfect; Prices reasonable; Fit, Style, and Finish unsurpassed. Millinery: Hats and Bonnets made and Trimmed, 50c. to $1.00 Our Millinery and Dress Cutting Schools are the best in the world. Young Ladies should come at once and learn HARVEY, 29 Temple Place, Boston. E. A. LIBBY Importer of RICH PARIS MILLINERY Mourning a Specialty. Orders taken at your home. 19 Temple Place, Boston. H. B. McDERMOTT & CO. Dealers in and Manufacturers of ALL KINDS OF WHALEBONE. Dress and Corset Bone constantly on hand or Made to order. Bone by the Ounce a Specialty 673 Washington St., Boston Opposite Beach Street.4 THE NEW WORLD TYPEWRITER. Price, $15.00. A useful and elegant present for ladies and gentlemen. Over 100,000 in use. Perfectly simple, practical and durable. No $100 machine can do better work. Writes 77 characters. Capitals and small letters Never gets out of order. Perfect alignment always. No instruction required. SEND FOR ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE The Typewriter Improvement Co. 4 K Post Office Square, BOSTON, Mass. Agents wanted DR. GEORGE LANG. Hair and Scalp Specialist, 28 Temple Place, Boston, Mass. Hours, 9 to 4. Rooms 6 and 7. 50 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CANDY AT 12c Per Lb. All others charge from 20c. to 40c. for the Same Article. J. W. ROBERTS, 578 Washington St., Cor. Hayward Place [*Page 5*] HOLIDAY NUMBER. TWENTY-FOUR PAGES. The Woman's Era. VOL. I. NO. 9. BOSTON, MASS., DEC., 1894 PRICE 10 CENTS. THE WOMAN'S ERA. THE WOMAN'S ERA, the organ of the Woman's Era Club, and devoted to the interests of the Women's Clubs, Leagues and Societies throughout the country. Published monthly, in Boston, by JOSEPHINE ST. P. RUFFIN, FLORIDA R. RIDLEY, Editors and Publishers. 103 Charles Street. SUBSCRIPTIONS. Per Annum, $1.00 Single Copies, .10 Club Rates, one hundred copies, 7.00 Subscriptions Payable in Advance. NEW DEPARTMENTS. Conducted by Mrs. W. E. Matthews, New York; Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Washington; Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, Chicago; Mrs. J. Silome Yates, Kansas City; Elizabeth P. Ensley, Denver; Alice Ruth Moore, New Orleans. NOTES AND COMMENTS. An apology is due Miss Smith and our readers that regular instalment of "College Settlements" did not appear in the last issue. The matter, although set up and corrected, was left out for some of the peculiar reasons printers always have ready. What do you think of the ERA; is it not worth a dollar a year to you? Read what Mrs. Maples of Tennessee says about it. Oh, for ten thousand women like her! There are several million of us who really cannot afford to be without the paper, but if ten thousand would send us in a dollar apiece in the next twelve months we would be willing to send the paper gratis to a few of the many who are anxious to read it, but hesitate to subscribe for fear someday will grow rich in consequence. We are pained to learn that there is a possibility of a discontinuance of Anno Domini's social notes after the opening of the new year. Anno Domini is a shy young thing who, under the attention he has attracted to himself, begins to quail. If subscribers are of our mind, they will refuse to accept a resignation. Let us hear from you, friends. Shall Anno Domini be allowed to withdraw? Address letters to this office. "From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol," the autobiography of Hon. John M. Langston, superbly illustrated as it is, will make a significant and acceptable holiday gift. Read the announcement in these columns. So much of our paper is now given up to news from different sections, that much of local interest is crowded out. It is for want of space that we give so short a notice of the placing of a memorial tablet to Wendell Phillips on the building on Essex street, erected on the site of the house for forty years occupied by him. At the opening exercises of the Suffrage Fair, Monday evening, Dec. 3, (a full account of which is crowded out of this issue) after Miss Frances Willard's eloquent plea for the recognition of the rights of all human beings, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, who presided, took occasion to call attention to the gross violation of the principles of rights, which are supposed to govern all women's clubs, as exemplified in the action of the Chicago Women's Club in rejecting a name offered for membership solely on account of color. Miss Willard replied that she was a member of the Chicago Women's Club, but as yet knew nothing about the matter complained of, but if, upon investigation, she finds that her club has, as reported, "rejected an able, refined, highly cultured woman solely on account of her color," then she, Miss Willard, will place her light face beside that darker one and walk out of the club with her. And the typical Boston audience applauded. biased facts, public opinion will [??] and enforce it." We rejoice to know that. New England will send an independent [???] to Congress. We wish other sections would do likewise, until every part of this great country shall The Christian Educator publishes letters from different colleges on the mental ability and moral standing of colored students attending the same. The only really hearty letter comes from Wellesley College, in which the only two colored grad- 2 THE WOMAN'S ERA. uates are spoken of as young women of more than average ability and high moral character. By these two Miss Ella Smith and Dr. Rice are meant. Where does Miss Lowther come in? Statistics of this kind are of no earthly value. In this day and time no one is absolutely sure as to who is white. Color is a matter of chance, and what of the accuracy of statistics which put one child with one race and the other child of the same parents with another race! Among the new inventions that are destined to help make house-keeping easier and safer is that of Fiber Carpet, made from a vegetable substance. It easily takes the most beautiful coloring, and while it resembles straw matting in looks, it has a compactness and a resistant quality, that, added to a freedom from odor, makes it far superior to that old-time favorite; tough, cleanly and pleasing to the eye, it fills a long-felt want for a sanitary carpet. Read the advertisement, and when you go down to see the tablet set into the building erected on the site of the old home of Wendell Phillips, go inside and see these beautiful floor coverings. SOCIAL NOTES. Boston. Boston is anticipate a small whirl of pleasure at Christmas time. Miss Marion Shadd of Washington will spend the holidays with Mr. and Mrs. B. R. Wilson of Rutland Square. Miss Ella Smith will be accompanied on a visit to her home at Newport by Messrs. George W. Cook and Wyatt Archer and possibly Miss Bessie Cook. After the Mary street reunion, the whole party will probably take a trip to Boston. Miss Bessie Mitchell and Anna Wilson came up from New Bedford the latter part of October and made a flutter in the younger set. A Saturday night party at Mrs. J. H. Lewis', several theater parties and a host of callers combined towards giving the young ladies a "large" time. [?] from her last and most serious attack of illness. She is no able to go out and will accompany her sister, Mrs. Paige, when the latter returns to Virginia. Although Mrs. Paige's call to Boston was a sudden and serious one, since the improvement in her sister's health she has been enabled to visit many of her old friends. Mrs. Paige is accompanied by her eldest son, Clifton. Miss Maud Cuney is travelling in Mexico. When last heard from she was at the Hotel Iturbide, Monterey, and enthusiastic over the beauties of the place, climate, etc. The party, which consists of Mrs. Cuney, Miss Cuney, Mr. Stephen Cuney and Mr. Ellis, are travelling especially for the health of Mrs. Cuney. They intend visiting most of the cities of Mexico, and as Mrs. Cuney's health is steadily improving, they are thoroughly enjoying every moment of the time. Theo, the youngest daughter of Dr. Grant, is most happily placed at boarding school. She is now an inmate of Mr. Allen's famous school at Newton. There is no training quite equal to that of a first class boarding-school and the child who has the advantage of it is indeed fortunate. While Mr. Allen has always maintained the highest standard in his school and has been patronized by the first people of this and other countries, he has never made any sacrifices of principles to do this. From the first he has accepted colored pupils, has brought them into the home department, where they have associated on the closest terms with children of wealth and high-standing. The result has been that his school has prospered, and proved that it is best to do the right thing and the rest will take care of itself. New York. Victoria Earle, Editor. Everybody, that was approached directly concerning the November issue of the Era, was enthusiastic in its praise. "A splendid number!" was echoed and re-echoed. A gentleman of large experience and fairly cultivated mind said, "Really, it is the finest thing in the way of a paper or journal the race has ever put forth, and should meet with instant success. For my part, I am ready to say that if the women can do such things as that, the men ought to sell out, transfer their books, etc., over to the women, and a great change would come over to us. Why, the excellence of this edition will have its effect; it will stir the men to either shut up shop, or do better generally than they have done for the past twenty years." Many say, "When the new year comes in I THE WOMAN'S ERA. 3 will subscribe." These things are very encouraging, but "A fair exchange is no robbery." If the masses want a good, clean, wholesome sheet, one that can be fittingly laid where it shall be available to every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldest, can be with pride placed on the circulating files in our libraries, can be offered, as exchanges, with the most favored journals, let them reflect over a few homely facts, that the burden of this venture makes justifiable and necessary. The women who edit this paper, without a single exception, do their work gratuitously. Because the people admire, but do not subscribe promptly--and in a cold, matter-of-fact, business manner, business principles should govern the subscribing of a paper, just the same as anything else worthy of support--the mental life of our people is not placed in a favorable light by a single strong annalist of today, and the only reason for a certain backwardness is the lack of that kind of support which would naturally lead to the fuller and more perfect development of our literary productions. Owing to the reputation that woman has for talking plain, particularly when there's none to talk back, I confess I am taking the advantage, but a consciousness steals over me, imparting the thought that the ends sought after will constitute my apology. Beginning with the January issue, this column will be assisted by a splendid array of talent, among which may be mentioned with pride our sweet-voiced poetess, H. Cordelia Ray, whose gentle, retiring nature has kept her like a sweet little rivulet, ministering to those nearest and dreading, with ever increasing strength, the gaze of this hurly-burly world of ours; whose one role of living and judging is, I sometimes think, the one given in our school books for addition and subtraction. Another gentle woman, whose life is a synonym for the pure and wholesome; in literature, her writings teem with a love for the beautiful, a reverence for the good, and sympathetic encouragement for the struggles of all developing minds. a writer who instinctively lives the theory that while environment has much to do with mind cultivation, yet the individual holds the supreme power. It is the will to do, the will to be, that rules in the realm of mind culture. To know her teaches that there is such a thing as smiling, when a smile will uplift or cheer a fainting companion, even though a sepulchre is hidden deep down within the heart, sacred to the memory of joys of long ago, accounted sorrows now. I speak of her whose writings have long been a pleasure to a large circle here, known to the world as "Petite Reine." The versatile "Reintals," the grave and experienced "Watchman," and, as time goes on, others will contribute. I speak advisedly, for even now there is a movement on foot to establish a club, or circle of anonymous writers, which shall consist of a few choice spirits who will have as their object the success of real merit, unaided by accidental popularity, etc.--a good move. We can afford to rejoice over such a departure, because too much "noblesse oblige" is likely to sap originality and deferential independence of thought, as well as speech. The Woman's Loyal Union was greatly encouraged by the news contained in last issue, as to the attitude of New England on the Blair Joint Resolution. If every section would take hold as the good New Englanders are doing, a petition would go to congress that would amaze not only ourselves, but the whole country. In the next issue of the Era we will give a history of the movement from the beginning. Some people are inclined to see nothing practical in this petition; the same people saw nothing practical in the petition for an investigation into the slums of large cities, nor the one calling for light as to tenement house construction, and the one which resulted in the exposure of the thousands of petty gambling dives. The results of these investigations have silenced all pessimists concerning them, and we predict the same conclusion when the Blair Joint Resolution shall be enacted and the committee regularly appointed, as was the illustrious Klu Klux Klan committee, before whom all facts concerning mob law shall be laid, and thereby given to the country at large. Then we will see, as Mr. Blair has said, "The people having the unbiased facts, public opinion will see a remedy and enforce it." We rejoice to know that New England will send an independent petition to Congress. We wish other sections would do likewise, until every part of this great country shall have been heard from. The W.L.U. have in hand now returns from 14 states, and three hundred and fifty names from the Dominion of Canada. 4 THE WOMAN'S ERA. SOCIAL NEWS. NEW YORK It is now quite decided that Mr. Charles Lansing will lead Miss Kate White to the altar on Christmas Day. All society is looking forward to the event with a pleasant flutter of anticipation. It is expected that the affair will be a most elaborate one from every point of view. As the leading lady of Brooklyn, much is expected of her, so far as the wedding gown is concerned. I have it on good authority that it will be simply perfect. As usual, the church will be exquisitely festooned in honor of the Christmas celebration; that of itself will make it an ideal time for a marriage ceremony. Mr. Lansing owns a number of dwellings, but will take his bride to his homestead, to dwell with his father and mother, and it is said that the preparations going on there for the future mistress are elegant, bordering upon luxury. Leadership falls now to the winsome -- but, oh, so whim-ful -- Miss Katie Smith ; or that delightful elf, Miss Mena Downing. Strange how these things go. A little while back, and everything pointed to Miss Evangeline Walker, so far as leadership is concerned, but she is now tremendously interested in experimenting in the housewifely arts. Ah, well, such is life. From all outward appearances, this season bids fair to be a most brilliant one, and it would be a delight to contemplate these things but for the decadence of old time manners and customs. Years ago, maidens were not considered stupid or dull who were shy and what some people call prim. They possessed a sweet prudishness that made one really feel that they were made up of tender blossoms and sparkling dewdrops. Oh, they were so bewitchingly dainty, so delightfully " skeery." I remember offering my arm to a delicate little creature once, during a lull in the music, and with the utmost nonchalance piloting her to an obscure corner. Never will I forget the indignant question that sprang into her eyes, as she divined -- or thought she did -- my meaning. But I came out ahead, as we always do. "Oh," I said, " I fancied I observed a door here leading to -- supper !" See the point? The dear girls of today would prefer the quiet tete-a-tete to even the dance. Watch the floor and you'll find more married people dancing than any one else. And now that I come to think of it, that is the secret of the girls knowing how stupid the chappies are. They expect too much of them, because a fellow does not dare talk to more than one in a set -- for the other girls will hear every word. It's hard, but the boys all have to play dude, and lisp : " Ah ! I weally cawn't say, you know !" " Deah me ! I've staid with you quite a twelfth, you know ; perfectly ill bred, you know." It is rumored that Rob's chum, young Jackson, is fairly deluged with " Sunny-side" and " Climax," and the worst of it is, it is charged to poor Anno Domini. Come to think of it, there was something in the last issue about the boy "eating his weed," or something like it. It's all in a lifetime. There's a most amusing story that savors a little of the old time " pig in the bag" series. One of the vestrymen introduced a minister as a lecturer to St. Philips Guild, and her spent the hour admitting that Afro-Americans were much in the dark as to the employment of pure air, etc. To say that the house stood aghast, is to say but little. The Woman's Loyal Union started out to see if women stand by women any better than men do, or to put it more plainly, to see which is the most successful, the ones that depend upon man for a following, or the ones that count upon women first, last and always. I think the latter came in losers. I don't know for sure. At any rate, the W. L. U. gave an entertainment, and, while the most exclusive of New York and Brooklyn society life patronized the affair, yet there was room for many more. The hall was beautifully decorated with flags and potted plants, palms and fresh-cut chrysanthemums being most noticeable. Counsellor Stu- art, in his usual hearty, brilliant manner, said a great many bright and sound things on that occasion that New Yorkers ought to remember. " These women are aiming to accomplish a splendid work, a practical work -- one that deserves the individual support of every man and woman anxious for genuine race development. The mea- sure they are working for has within its scope the refutation of the vile slanders against us as a humane moral people." The Hon. John S. Durham followed, and made a strong point by asking, " Will the people sympathize with so grave an undertaking? " He complimented the women by saying their methods appealed to reason, and not sentiment mainly, and were bound to succeed in the end." THE WOMAN'S ERA. 5 The leader of this courageous body, the sad-eyed "Victoria Earle," was called "Anno Domini '94," in my presence, too. Thanks awfully for the compliment. Speaking of the president of the powerful W. L. U., several have noticed that she wears invariably a pair of hearts at her throat, and a tiny blue one on the index finger of the left hand. I wonder why. As usual, Harry Burleigh was the lion of the occasion. He sang, in the absence of a member, with the Guild Quartette, and later charmed the house with two of his favorite numbers. And while such as "our Rob and his chums," Messrs. Attwell, Day, Peterson, Charleton, Durham, Grazette, Thomas, and such old veterans as W. Russell Johnson, Tom McKeel, Dorsey Webster, and a whole one of the sweetest girls in the lot- and there were so many lovely creatures out that night! One, a very interesting looking widow, with the cynosure of all eyes. Mrs. Matthews, our "Victoria Earle," upon whom I shall, in all probability, make an ERA New Year's call, possibly confess, etc., etc., has the reputation of being one of the most enthusiastic women in town, earnest, and to a remarkable degree, a believer in her own sex, and a woman destined to succeed in what she sets out to do. She's a credit to her sex, and the Queen Bee in our town. She has stirred our best women as no other woman has done, in my time, at least. It was a fitting compliment to her as a woman that such women as Mrs. S. J. S. Garnet, Mrs. C. A. Attwell, Mrs. F. H. Carmand, Mrs. J. Pegram Williams, Mrs. Jerome B. Peterson, Miss Annie L. Dias, Mrs. E. Dorsey, Mrs. Broughton, Miss Edie Braxton, Miss Katie White, Mrs. A. D. Lee, Mrs. Beauvere, Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Jarrot, Mrs. J. E. Garner, Mrs. J. S. Poliine, Mrs. Maxwell and Mrs. A. Rich gathered around her. The King's Daughter's "Willing Workers" Circle, Mrs. White, president, are practising a drama, to be given some time before Easter. To this circle belongs the honor, I understand, of placing the first colored woman in the management of Brooklyn Colored Home. Mrs. Anna Rich, a sister of "Victoria Earle." The St. Mark boys are planning a great surprise for the Guild lads. They are secretly drilling a quartette to throw into the shade Messrs. Attwell, Jackson, Williams and Medocer. Harry Burleigh has been mentioned as a possible instructor. His charming little pupil, Miss Lavina Jones, was in splendid voice at the W. L. U. concert. She did very well- looked real cute standing 'mid the palms; so did bewitching Miss Sadie Evans, all bedecked in rare old lace and cream white satin. She is the merriest girl I know. She was very saucy to ANNO DOMINI 1894. WASHINGTON. MARY CHURCH TERRELL, EDITOR. Miss Jennie Hilyer, sister of Mr. A. F. Hilyer, one of the most useful and popular citizens with whom Washington is blessed, has been called from Provident Hospital, Chicago, to take charge of the nurses in the surgical department of Freedman's Hospital. * * * Musical Washington now carols pæans of rejoicing because Mrs. Alice Strange Davis has returned to her former home and has again taken up her residence among us. Baltimore has our heartfelt sympathy at the loss of such an artist as Mrs. Davis. * * * The social festivities of the season were inaugurated by the reception recently given by Mrs. A. F. Hilyer, whose assistants were Mesdames Lawson, Davis, Williams, Terrell, and Misses Mickie Cook, Bessie Cook, Essie Tucker and Annie Wilder. The costumes of the ladies, the delicacies served by such charming young women, and the aimiability of the hostess, all went to make the occasion enjoyable in the extreme. * * * About thirty young women are availing themselves of a course in nursing which Freedman's Hospital now offers. They are obliged to remain in the hospital eighteen months before receiving a diploma. Two hours a day they are off duty and about once in two weeks have a whole afternoon to themselves. Besides enjoying the benefit received from actual experience in nursing the sick, they are permitted to assist at the clinics, where much valuable information is acquired. In addition to giving instruction free of charge, the authorities pay the nurses a small sum monthly for their services. With such an opportunity and with such encouragement, it is no wonder that so many of our women are choosing the avocation for which they are by nature so admirably fitted. In deciding to become a professional nurse a young 6 THE WOMAN'S ERA woman not only selects a calling which is both dignified and lucrative, but one which calls forth all those virtues essential to the highest and best womanhood. *** "Why do the Washington schoolmarms look so young?" asked a gentleman from a neighboring city not many moons ago. It would have been impossible to reply had a suitable answer been on the tongue's end. Without waiting for any solution of this interesting problem in ethnological physiognomy, our friend went into one of a series of paroxysms after another over the youthful appearance, the charming manners, the amiable disposition and the fetching costumes of the typical Washington schoolmarm. He insisted that the older they grow, the younger and more charming they become, - and was a man of good judgment and excellent test. When it was possible to get a word in edgewise, a thoughtful friend, noted for his penetration, ventured to solve the mystery of our schoolmarm's eternal youth and beauty as follows: "Our teacher's work is lighter than anywhere else in the country, thanks to our school system, which is about as near perfection as a human institution can hope to be. Outside the schoolroom the teach is not overburdened with work, although nowhere in the country are teachers more solicitous for their pupils' welfare and more punctilious about their duties to them. The Washington schoolmarm is not harassed by the divers vexations of spirit to which many of her unfortunate sisters are elsewhere subjected. For instance, her position in the schools is secure as long as she deports herself properly, and she knows it. She is, therefore, not obliged to pull wires and 'crook the pregnant hinges of the knee' to retain it, a rule which, I regret to state, does not pertain everywhere. When there is the inclination, she can attend a lecture, hear an opera, go to the theatre, or divert herself in the variety of ways for which the Nation's Capital is famous. Besides, our teachers are well paid; can, therefore, afford to take good care of themselves and dress well. No wonder we have the most charming schoolmarms in the world, " said their able champion and logician, drawing himself up with pride and glowing with enthusiasm, as though he were individually responsible for the delightful condition of affairs on which he had expatiated with such evident satisfaction and knowledge. *** The Colorado women came nobly to the rescue of the republican party in the last election. This is a fair sample of what women will do for the country when they are no longer put on the level with idiots and criminals. Wyoming and Colorado are the only states advanced, and just enough to permit all of her citizens to vote at state elections without regard to sex. *** It is safe to predict that a few years hence it will be difficult for colored women to find employment here as cooks or housekeepers. Public sentiment is waxing so strong against them that unless a change sets in their favor, comparatively few will be able in the future to find employment as servants. A glance at the advertising columns of the daily papers, in which the demand for white help is so explicit and great, is sufficient to convince one that the situation here for women laborers of the race is becoming very serious. It is the fad now for the wealthier classes to employ skilled cooks, to whom they pay large prices, and those skilled cooks are almost without exception white. In the south, where colored help has always been preferred, even when white help was just as available and serviceable, it is growing quite common to employ white servants to the exclusion of the colored. There is constant friction between the employed and the employer all over the country and along all lines, regardless of race or sex, but the loudest complaint here at the present is directed against colored domestics. This is one of the most serious problems that confronts us, since the women wage earners of the race contribute as much at least to its support as the men, and when the women fail to find employment in domestic service many a family will suffer and much of the revenue enjoyed will be cut off. *** In view of the fact that white help is supplanting the colored, is it not sensible and charitable for the thoughtful men and women of the race to attempt to devise ways and means of improving this alarming condition of affairs? Since clubs and societies are formed to further all sorts of interests and projects, why not organize a society, the duty of whose members will be to meet the laboring classes, and impress upon them the necessity of making themselves skilled workmen in every sense of the word? There is a society here, headed by Mrs. Logan and other prominent women, whose object is the improvement of domestics. THE WOMAN'S ERA 7 They teach the girls and women how to perform their duties skillfully and systematically, so as to lighten their labor and make their services more desirable and indispensable to those who employ them. Is it not possible for the thinking women among us to establish schools in which our girls may be educated to be first-class servants? It is a work in which those who have the welfare of the laboring classes at heart must soon engage. Obliged to combat a bitter, unreasonable prejudice, the working colored women of the future must be well equipped and reliable indeed to stem the tide of disfavor which has against them, here at least. *** "What are you doing with yourself nowadays?" asked one well-known woman of another. "Well, I'm taking a course in English literature and dabbling a little into the history of Russia. Since the death of the czar has turned the attention of the world to his interesting country, it has suddenly dawned upon me that I am absolutely ignorant of its present government, its people, and its past history." "Taking a course in English literature and studying Russian history!" exclaimed her friend in amazement. "What becomes of your house, your children and your sewing? I've neither chick nor child, and I haven't one minute to spare after the monotonous household affairs have been dispatched. From morning till night I am equipped with a kitchen utensil, a broom or a dust-cloth, and if, by some lucky chance, I can conscientiously lay them aside, in comes a friend or an acquaintance, and away go plans and time for mental improvement. I am just like everyone else and find it impossible to get good help, so that I have about as much time to study when I do my own work as I do when I have a hindering assistant. There is no one in the house except my husband and myself, the work is light, but by the time the little things have been attended to I am either too tired or too worried to study. Now you have a house full of children, do most of your sewing, and are a perfect model of a housekeeper, with no better help than I have. How in the world do you find time for English literature and Russian history?" "How I manage to save a few minutes for mental improvement is not difficult to explain," replied the friend. "I have a certain time in which to do my various duties. In other words, I systematize my work, for in the long run it is much more satisfactory to map out a schedule of work and go by it, though the heavens fall, than to attack things 'a la haphazard.' It may seem a little like self-imposed servitude and self-tyranny at first, but the good results soon justify its adoption. Just try a schedule once, and then revert to the old go-as-you-please method of doing a duty today, if you feel like, leaving it alone if you don't, consuming one hour to accomplish something today which will require three hours tomorrow, and thus getting yourself wound up in a knot of unfinished duties tangled with those that are to come, and you will soon see the folly of this desultory, slip-shod way of doing business. But you asked me how I found time to meddle with the affairs of the Russians and attend to my own business as well. I simply arrange my work so as to leave a certain amount of time each day for study, and whether I feel like it or not I go at it religiously, unless I am positively ill." "What do you do if you are interrupted by visitors?" "That is the most serious difficulty which confronts me and the only kind of interruption against which I can make no provision. In the first place, I usually set apart for study that time in the morning or afternoon when visitors rarely come, but if they do I accept the inevitable and promise to make for lost time as soon as possible." "By the way, did you ever think how much time would be saved if we did not run in upon our friends at all sorts of unseasonable hours, just because it suited our convenience? Men will not entertain callers in business hours. If a friend comes in whom they are really glad to see, they greet him cordially, pass the time of day, and excuse themselves on the plea of pressing business matters. No offense is meant and none is taken. What a blessing it would be if we women could understand each other so thoroughly. So often I have heard my friends bemoaning their fate, because the day set apart for doing some special work was hopelessly destroyed by unreasonable though not unwelcome visitors." "Don't you enjoy the visits of your friends?" asked her companion, considerably piqued and disconcerted by the conversation on unseasonable visits. "Certainly I do," was the reply. "No one enjoys visiting and being visited by friends more than I do; I only plead for seasonable visits and a little insight or tact to discern when it is right to consume a friend's time and when it is kind to leave her alone. Personally I have noth- 8 THE WOMAN'S ERA ing to complain, of as I am rarely prevented from doing my duty by visitors, and expect to find in the future, as I have in the past, time to brush the cobwebs from my brain if I cannot luxuriously furnish it with a multitude and variety of facts." _____________ REMINISCENCES ___________ Defending a fugitive. By Thomas B. Hilton There are many now living that distinctly remember Constable Reed, and also remember him as a man of good courage, but a little inclined to be too officious and domineering. It was Reed who was selected to go to California and bring back a noted desperado, in which case he showed a great deal of intrepidity and bravery. It was Reed who came to arrest Big Dick, but the latter took him and carried him to the Court House, much to his mortification, at the same time surrendering himself. Reed, however, in his later years, has been heard to refer good-naturedly to this episode. It was generally conceded that whatever he set out to do was generally done, even to the capture of a poor fugitive slave. It has been said, however, by those who knew him best, that he was not prejudiced against the colored people, and that, under the same circumstances, he would capture a white man equally as quick. But it was an attempt on his part to capture one of the former that we are about to relate. On the very spot where the Twelfth Baptist Church now stands, and the adjacent territory, extending in a northeasterly direction and bounded on three sides by the rear walls of brick houses, was a settlement consisting of dingy, shabby-looking houses, most of which were known as "ten-footers," that were scattered promiscuously over the entire area. There was no recognized passage through this region, but a way known as "Black Dog Alley" (a name given it on account of numerous curs, in reality of all colors, that, infested the place, and by which the stranger, whom they seemed to instinctively know, was sure to be beset upon entrance and determinedly followed until his return and exit), which windings were understood only by those familiar with the locality, was the sole avenue. Neither was this habitation lighted by night, and one having occasion to be within its borders after nightfall might imagine himself in some part of Pluto's dark realm. In fact, the whole appearance of the place was as uninviting as it was irregular, and one in which people generally never cared to venture too far, either by day or night. It was in one of those dark, sunburnt-looking hovels that the incident occurred to which we are about to allude. It seemed to be suspected by Reed's movements that he was after a fugitive slave who had come to Boston and was known to be stopping somewhere in that part of the West End to which reference has been made; and their surmises proved to be well founded, for the fugitive had been tracked to Boston, and it was given into Reed's hands to find and arrest him. He seemed to have been successful in gaining a knowledge of his whereabouts and no doubt thought he was sure of securing his victim. One day that officer appeared before one of those hovels before described and demanded admission. But a voice from within demanded the immediate withdrawal of the officer, as he could rest assured that the door would not be opened. This only incensed the latter, who threatened to burst open the door if his demand was not immediately complied with; but in turn was warned by the same voice that if his threat was carried out he would be sure to regret it. This only increased the anger of the intruding officer, who, sure enough, commenced to use his legs and feet as battering rams, and being stout and rugged, it was not long before the wood-work around the lock began to weaken, and soon breaking away, the door swung upon its hinges, and Reed started to enter, but suddenly halted, for before him stood a ferocious-looking colored man armed with an ax, which he poised in his hands, who, in fierce tones told the officer that if he stepped his foot inside the door his head would be severed from his body. As we have said, Reed hesitated; for the look of unmistakable meaning in the eyes of the colored man seemed to bring him to his senses and to a realizing sense of the situation. He felt in his heart that there was a danger, but he had come there to arrest a fugitive slave that had there found a shelter, and yet he shrank from the undertaking. But should he retreat? It was no doubt when this thought came to his mind that Reed's courage and determination came back. Such a thing should never be said, for if so, his reputation was gone forever. And seeming either to determine within himself that he would not believe that the man would dare after all to carry out his threat, or that he might successfully cope with him (for Reed was no coward), he made a movement THE WOMAN'S ERA 9 to take the forbidden step. But if this was his reasoning, and such it evidently seemed to be, it proved a poor reed to lean upon; for, quick as lightning, the ax was swung aloft, flashed as it turned in the air, and came down. The head was gone; but not by decapitation, for Reed saw the movement and dodged quick enough to save his life and his head also. But he was not to go unscathed, for the keen blade of the ax struck the fleshy part of the arm near the shoulder, which had raised for protection, inflicting a severe flesh wound, and found a lodgment in the frame of the door. As quick as before, the ax was again uplifted, as if this time to make sure his aim. But Reed had had enough of such experience, and with a quickness for which he had never been accredited, he had eluded the descending blow and was well outside the door, and standing at a respectful distance began to vow vengeance on his would-be headsman; he finally went away declaring that he would return and arrest them both. In due time, a warrant was indeed served upon the colored man, who, now that the fugitive had made his escape (who, while the scene at the door was being enacted, had, with the aid of the defender's wife, got out of the house by a back window and had been conducted to a place of safety) readily and without resistance gave himself up, and the next morning was arraigned before the court. But upon examination it was found that Reed had unlawfully proceeded without a warrant, and the judge, taking the ground that man's house was his castle and that the colored man was justified in doing as he did under the circumstances, and considering, perhaps, that Reed needed a lesson on the unlawful exercise of authority, the man was acquitted. The circumstances and trial of this case were published in the Boston newspapers and are still remembered by a number among us. One old gentleman, doing business in Boston some years ago, told the writer that he knew of the affair soon after its occurrence, and distinctly remembers reading the account of the trial in his paper, The Times, the next day. ------------ From the Virginia Baptist. ------------ "We have received the enlarged edition of the WOMAN'S ERA, a monthly published at Boston, Mass., with Josephine St. P. Ruffin and Florida R. Ridley, editors. It is certainly a magnificent publication. It has 20 pages of excellently printed and splendid reading matter on good book paper. Several new departments have been added, conducted by Mrs. W. E. Matthews, New York; Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Washington; Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, Chicago; Mrs. J. Silome Yates, Kansas City, Mo,; Elizabeth P. Ensley, Denver, Col., and Alice Ruth Moore, New Orleans. It is devoted to the interest of the women's clubs, leagues and societies throughout the country. The present number contains an article on "Cedar Hill and Its Master," which is indeed a masterpiece of word-painting. It signed "Victoria Earle." It is certainly a magnificent sheet. Only one thing, fair digresses, give us a Virginia page, with Mrs. Rosa D. Dowser of this city in charge." We would gladly have a Virginia page. Hampton, Norfolk and surrounding towns were among the first to send in subscriptions and endorsements in any number. The ERA owes much to the intelligent interest of Mrs. R. G. L. Paige, Mrs. Geo. J. Davis and other ladies of eastern Virginia. ------------- Memorial to Wendell Phillips ------------- Few places in America have more history connected with them than Boston. More than this, history is continually being made here. Unfortunately, the growth of the city demands the demolition, partial or total, of many of the landmarks and historical spots, and in many instances the changes are such that the tablets are the only things that mark the spots. It is a pity that, with new Boston spreading in all directions, old Boston cannot be left intact. The old house on Essex street, in which Wendell Phillips lived for forty years, has succumbed to the business demands of the city, and that the associations connected with the spot might not wholly be forgotten, and as a memorial to Boston's famous son and great orator, a tablet to the memory of Wendell Phillips was placed upon the building, with fitting exercises, on Nov. 20. Among those who spoke were William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. C. G. Ames, Ex-Mayor Green, Clement G. Morgan and Julius C. Chappelle. Owing to the threatening weather and the understanding that the exercises would take place in the open air, few ladies were present. So when Mr. Garrison called for some woman to speak, unfortunately there was no response, and this opportunity for the women to pay tribute to the staunch friend and advocate of the rights of both sexes and all races was lost. 10 THE WOMAN'S ERA ---- ADVERTISE ---- IN THE Woman's Era THE ONLY PAPER IN AMERICA PUBLISHED IN THE INTEREST OF WOMEN'S CLUBS. ------------- The WOMAN'S ERA, as the organ of the colored women's clubs, has a large circulation in many of the large cities, notably Boston, New Bedford, Providence, New York, Chicago, Washington and Kansas City. The Literary, Musical and Domestic Departments are under the control of competent writers and critics. With its large circulation among women of the refined and educated classes, it offers peculiar advantages to advertisers of household articles, wearing apparel, books, magazines, musical instruments, and so forth. Its rates are exceeding liberal. Try it, and you will not regret it -------------------------- EDITORIAL -------------- Two candidates for school committee were presented by the colored people of Boston for nomination by the Republican party, neither one of whom was accepted, - Dr. George F. Grant and Mr. G. W. Forbes. The failure is to be regretted. An able, wide-awake representative on the school board is our due and means more than appears at first blush. In presenting a candidate colored men should not be indifferent to the women voters; they hold a tremendous power over school matters. By the way, the papers, in referring to Dr. Grant, speak of him as having been born in the South; according to our understanding Dr. Grant was born in New York State, where the home of his father was one of the well-known stations of the under-ground railway. ------------------ It is enough to make one's blood boil and to keep one in a perpetual fighting mood to see not only how law and justice are violated, but rules of honor and courtesy perverted by Caucasians in dealing with the negro. "You call yourself a Christian, and sell a house in a first-class neighborhood to colored people." This is the reproach of an estimable Brooklyn lady! "You a Harvard graduate and instructor and do a thing like this!" said an indignant white man to a fellow when he found that his house had been sold to colored people. Not only are colored people to be kept out of all desirable trades, employments, homes and business places, but anyone who assists the poor wretch to anything desirable is to be denounced. The difficulty which colored people experience in obtaining property in Boston is an astonishing revelation to outsiders. Houses are put upon the market with the almost universal instruction, "Under no consideration to be sold to darkies." Occasionally there are individuals anxious to realize money who will sell at a great advance to colored people; then, too, when nobody else will buy colored people will be welcomed. The position is absurd. No other class of venders say who shall and shall not buy their wares. A real estate agent advertises for a purchaser, does not intimate that anything is necessary but the requisite amount of cash and then reserves to himself the right to refuse and perhaps insult a colored man if he chance to apply. However, people get what they want, a fact which sellers of houses will begin to realize by-and-by; in the meantime, don't let them in their blind anger put things in a wrong light. A Christian and a gentleman, a Harvard graduate and instructor can do such a thing as sell a house to colored people without any loss to honor or discredit to their standing. On the contrary, the discredit is with any Christian or gentleman or Harvard graduate who draws the line simply because of color. ---------------------- Hon. Robert Treat Paine has recently been reading a paper on the causes and preventatives of poverty and pauperism. This gentleman has made a reputation of his own for charitable work. He looks at charitable work philosopically and gives it much thought and time. He looks at charitable work philosopically and gives it much thought and time. He is deeply interested in the prevention of pauperism, believes in the elevation of the home life, providing clean, cheap and healthy tenements for the poor. He is prime mover in building associations by which poor men are enabled to get in possession of comfortable and pretty homes by easy payments. In his work the honorable gentleman talks much about "the poor," but do not be misled, he means the "white poor" or the "poor whites." He builds hundreds of houses, which are intended as godsends for poor men, and then closes them irrevocably to any poor colored men who may apply. The poor white working men THE WOMAN'S ERA 11 must have their prejudices catered to. They are poor, it is true, but they must not be made to suffer the humiliation of living beside a colored man, even though he be respectable. Treat Paine stands high in the church, high in charitable works, and yet he likes such a position as this, a position which is both cowardly and dishonorable. Public men must be prepared for public criticism, and if there be followers of this gentleman who think is making a record as a beneficent Christian, it is just as well for them to know there are others who think differently. Colored people get much abuse because they take much. It is time for them to strike back and use their journals for that purpose. If we must "kick" let us kick to some purpose and where it will be felt. ------------------------------------ MISSOURI. Josephine Silome Yates, Editor ----------------------------------- Modern Education as Influenced by the Reformation ----------------- CONCLUDED. Although Luther placed such stress upon a German translation of the Bible, he did not think it wise at that time to take the more aggressive step of introducing German into the new schools. He recommends mathematics and the study of nature, while he does not consider either as all-essential. His passion is for history and the historians, and for music, which he considers a civilizing influence and conducive to that joyousness, and abundance of which he so much approved in the school room. We find the germ of the graded school in his divisions, and of the normal school in his plan of keeping the best of the pupils for a longer time at school. To them he gives special instructors, and opens libraries for their use. Favorably inclined toward the higher education of women and the co-education of the sexes, Luther apparently anticipated at least two of the snags and scarecrows of modern education, and disposed of them with a liberality of sentiment which would have done credit to a reformer of the nineteenth century. The influence of his favorite master, the humanist, Trutivettie, and of Tauler, the mystic, are traceable in his educational and religious beliefs. His own efforts toward the materialization of ideals rapidly gained the attention of the public, but the interruption occasioned by the Thirty Years' War, his own death in 1546, and other events before and after, incident to the Reformation, made it impossible for him to directly impress his personality upon the schools of his time. Luther, Melanchthon and Erasmus formulated theories for Protestant education, while others, as the brilliant Sturm of Strasburg, put them to practical use. Living between the years 1550 and 1589, an enthusiastic humanist, Sturm's work was especially along the line of higher education. In his course of ten, or at the least, nine years, seven were to be spent in acquiring more pure idiomatic Latin, and the remainder in the acquisition of an elegant Latin style. As rector of Strasburg high school for a period of forty-five years, during which time thousands of pupils passed under his instruction, and from nearly every European country, he, more than Luther or Melanchthon, moulded the form of Protestant schools, directed the educational thought of the times, and developed the scheme upon which the great classical schools of England and other Protestant countries were based. Thus it was that Cicero to such an extent moulded the character and conduct of an English statesman, who felt that "A false quantity in a Latin quotation was really a greater crime than a slip in logical argument." Erasmus, the scholar of the Reformation, exerted a most salutary effect upon the educational spirit of the age by calling the attention of teachers to the amenities of polite society, and to attractive methods of producing culture in pupil. Take in its entirety, humanism, as taught in the Protestant schools, if narrow, was not a poor equipment for active life. William Pitt, at twenty-two chancellor of the exchequer, at twenty-four prime minister of England, was a product of this method of training; but it is said of Pitt upon authority, that he was not only a first-rate humanist, but also "An excellent mathematician, a keen observer, an admirable orator, a close reasoner, a profound student of history, and a political economist far in advance of his times. In the history of popular education, as influenced by the Reformation, it is important to realize the existence of two parallel streams of thought, the religious idea, or Hebraism, as embodied in Luther, the purely educational, or Hellenism, as fairly represented by Erasmus. The 12 THE WOMAN'S ERA religious feature, as imposed by Luther, we still find, to a greater or less extent, in our denominational schools and in such public schools as still retain some form of religious exercise. If there are but two great talents in our modern civilization, Hebraism and Hellenism, it is safe to state that the Reformation has indelibly stamped the general principles of the former upon our educational systems; while the whole tendency of modern civilization toward Hellenism is so overmastering that there is little danger of its being overshadowed. Neither can the influence of the early Protestant schools be accurately estimated without sounding the depths of that great counter-current, which was rapidly thrown into prominence and used by opponents of the reform measures to serve the double purpose of stemming the tide of the Revolution, either by the conquest of new provinces for the church, through missions, or by preserving the old through the control of the church. Organized by Loyola, the Society of Jesus was formally consecrated by Paul IV. in 1540, and grew with such rapidity that by 1710, the Jesuits controlled 612 colleges and a large number of universities. Upon its roll of honor were found some of the most illustrious names of the period - Bossuet, Des Cartes and Moliere. Voltaire received his training from the Jesuits, but he says of them, "They taught me nothing but Latin and nonsense." Authorities differ as to the educational value of the Jesuit schools. Bacon and Des Cartes sincerely believed in their superiority. Leibuitz regarded them as below mediocrity, but in spite of adverse opinion, they maintained an educational supremacy until the end of the eighteenth century, and according to Brittanica, represent in America today a large percentage of the whole number of educational institutions, both in the United States and Canada. Unlike the Protestant reformers, the Jesuits ignored primary instruction, and thus far no exposition of the principles underlying their methods of instruction have been found. Like the humanists, and to a still greater extent, they reverenced the study of Latin, and covered their districts with Latin schools. They appealed to the memory as the basis upon which to found their system; and the sole merit of their teachers, as seen through the experience of the centuries, seems to have been the stamp of aestheticism which they fixed upon modern education and their ingenious attempts, for whatever purpose, to individualize their pupils. In our own system, we have not yet decided whether it is better to turn out job-lot mediocrity or to individualize or specialize. The Jansenists, rivals of the Jesuits, possessed whatever of merit there may have been in the latter, and, in addition, sought to introduce the study of the mother tongue, the training of the reason and judgment. Looked upon with disfavor, their schools were soon suppressed by the Jesuits; but the contest for supremacy, which, from the initial point, began to be waged in those countries where Catholicism and Protestantism co-exist, still continues, assuming various phases, according to the political and religious character of the country in question, and universally affecting civilization to a far greater extent than can be estimated by the casual observer. Thus has the humanistic system of Protestant education, as originated by Luther, been limited in extent, and otherwise changed by the influence of the streams that have impregnated it. Humanism itself, training the pupil more especially for school than for life, gradually gave place to that realism and naturalism that necessarily follow in the wake of utilitarian ideas and today form the most important features of our educational system. Naturalism in Germany was ably fostered by Katich and Comenius, and both were largely influenced by the Lutheran movement. Katich defined a few valuable pedagogical laws and endeavored to establish the mother tongue as a part of the curriculum; but it was Comenius who determined that gradation of schools which forms the basis of modern instruction, who not only defined laws in the art of teaching which are still in use, but also substituted the knowledge of things for the study of Greek and Latin roots, and thus produced a race of original investigators. The mother-school of Comenius prepared the way for Froebel and the kindergarten, while from his plan of nature study, we develop the science lessons of primary and elementary schools. Thus at every step we find modern education linked with the genius of the Reformation. Compayre writes in his "History of Pedagogy," "Every system of philosophy contains in germ a special system of education." Yes, and it is no less true that the destiny of the human race is controlled by educational forces extending backward to the creation of the universe, onward THE WOMAN'S ERA 13 and onward in ever-widening circles, through unknown evolutions, into infinity. Environed today more closely by the philosophic circles of Bacon, Des Cartes, and Kant than by the principles of Luther's methods, we feel the force of a greater scope of horizon and call it the "new education," but the unprejudiced mind will freely admit that its data were made possible of conception, of interpretation, or realization because of that spirit of absolute intellectual freedom which the processes of the Reformation contributed to modern civilization. ------------------------ Volume I. No 8, of the WOMAN'S ERA has reached our office. We were particularly struck with its admirable makeup and scholarly articles and trust that it has come to stay. The editors are ladies of culture and refinement, worthy representatives of their race. The ERA should meet with great success among our people - Kansas City Messenger. Mrs. Carrie Dearborn of Boston has completed a very successful course of lectures on cooking in connection with the Pure Food Exhibit at the Third Regiment Armory, corner of Twelfth and Troost. The Married Women's Club of Kansas City, Kansas, is doing excellent work. Lovers of higher literary criticism should not fail to read Frederic Harrison's article in the Forum. Among the great writers thus far subjected to his keen analytical processes may be found Carlyle, Macauley, Thackeray, and others. The Greenwood Literary and Philosophical Club, founded and named in honor of Kansas City's distinguished Superintendent of Schools, has the History of German Literature under discussion for the year. The programme arranged by Professor Greenwood, and neatly printed, shows the subject and the writer of each paper, the reading of which is followed by extemporaneous discussion. A veritable "feast of reason and flow of the soul," mingled with the greatest liberality of thought and feeling. No invidious distinction of race, sex or creed are known in the discussions or assignment of papers, and, knowing whereof we speak, we dare to assert that even broad-minded New England does not posses a club where human beings meet as such on a more purely intellectual basis than this same Greenwood Club. The Missouri State Teachers' Association will hold its annual session in Sedalia, Mo., during the last week in December. The Author's Interstate Literary Association of Missouri, Kansas and Iowa, will convene in Atchison, Kansas, at about the same time. J. S. Yates ------------------------------------------------- LOUISIANA Alice Ruthe Moore, Editor. ------------------------------- "Who dares stand forth," the monarch cried, "Amid this throng, and dare to give Their aid, and bid this wretch to live? I pledge my faith, and crown beside, A woful sight, a sorry sight, This outcast from all God-Given grace. What, ho! In all no friendly face, No helping hand to stay his plight. St. Peter's name be pledged for aye, The man's accursed, that is true; But, ho, he suffers. None of you Will mercy show, or pity sigh?" Strong men drew back, and lordly train Did slowly file from the monarch's look, Whose lip curled scorn. but from a nook A voice cried out, "Though he has slain That which I loved best on earth, Yet will I tend him till he dies; I can be brave." A woman's eyes Gazed back from there. Christmas and all its joys is upon us. Many happy returns of the day. In the November Ladies Home Journal there is a symposium of noted women on the question of the best age for women. As a local critic caustically remarks, "all being over thirty, the opinion is unanimous on the average of twenty-five to forty." Leaving aside the dry, hackneyed statistics which show us that Cleopatra was in her prime at forty, that Elizabeth and the Russian Catherine charmed all beholders at forty-five, that Helen of Troy was well advanced in age when the famous siege begun, still, reason compels almost anyone to admit that only after the touch of years has pressed woman's forehead is she of any solid, sound, practical opinions; for with the fire of genius, which burns all unchecked and untended in youth, there should be united the tenderness and forbearance and patience, which comes from years; the gentle dignity, which comes from mingling in the world; the complete realizations of one's own power and failings, which comes from 14 THE WOMAN'S ERA measuring and comparing other intellects with one's own; then there is, indeed, "a perfect woman, nobly planned." Miss Neal Gertrude Hawkins, the pretty songbird from Kentucky, with Miss Eva Frazier, a gifted reader, and Prof. Morris, the musician of the company, delighted New Orleans one night. But now the public is all on the qui vive, eagerly, anxiously awaiting Flora Batson, who is so well liked here. Her advance agent is now in the city perfecting arrangements. Speaking of nervous prostration, and the almost universal grip it has upon the women of America, Rebecca Harding Davis suggests that most of the fatigue and worry and prostration of women is caused, not by the amount of work they do, or the crowding of their lives, but by the fuss they make about it. The continually recurring cry, "I have not the time," which besets us at every fresh allusion to any plan, is raised, if you will notice, by those who have the least to do, for should you visit their homes you might often find them sitting for hours with idle hands folded in their laps. Depend upon it, it is only the lazy ones who "haven't the time" to do little ends of favors. The churches are in the lead now. On the 26th of November the Masonic lodges held forth an entertainment at Union Chapel on Brenville St. The students' Orchestra played, of course; how could it have been a successful entertainment if Prof. Nicherson had not stood before his earnest girls and waved his baton as they made "those little stringed wooden things" speak the heart's language? And then on the 19th the ladies of St. Luke held a cute little "Brownie" social, which gave everyone lots of fun and netted some dollars for the church fund. It was left for the Central Church to celebrate Thanksgiving, holding a two nights' feast under the auspices of the Christian Endeavor societies. Now for the Christmas trees! Wordsworth's idea, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," which has long been considered as the ultra development of an unconventional intellect, can be put to shame by some of childhood's theories. Very few little people will realize or will believe that the soul "knows its haunts no more." No, they think, not clearly and concisely, nor perhaps know what it is they do think, that somehow, someway they will return. As a little one expressed it, "All the men that died in the war, they come back and be'd other people;" and no amount of coaxing or threatening or cross-questioning could make say aught of her idea save that "she always thought so." Like Topsy, "it jest growed." Here is a theme for Darwinian theorists, for psychological investigators. Do our every-day ideas come to us the result of study, of association, of inspiration, or of pre-natal impressions? Do the unformed thoughts of childhood remain with us, growing more complete with the years, or do they vanish and are replaced by the newer and grosser ones of the world as it comes when we are old? Debating societies, take up your weapons! -------------------------------------------------------- PENNSYLVANIA Dora J. Cole, Editor ------------------------------------------- Philadelphia An interesting and noteworthy organization is the Educational Club of this city. It has been in existence for three years. It is composed of about thirty young women and girls who meet for real earnest study. Miss Fanny Somerville deserves the credit of inaugurating the club and keeping the thorough and practical work in smooth running order. Two comfortable parlors are rented for the use of the girls and evening classes are held. There is instruction given in the English branches, bookkeeping, German and literature. This winter a class in current topics has been started. The girls are encouraged to talk and ask questions about events of interest that are going on all the time. History-making events we call them. Great interest is shown in this class and the girls eagerly listen and show an intelligent appreciation of their leader's efforts to interest them in the best of current news. An interesting sermon, book, or magazine article often furnishes the topic. Miss M. G. Jones last winter conducted a successful course in literature. Dr. Rebecca Cole has taught the German class for two years. The services of the teachers are gratuitous, thus making it possible for the club to pay the rent and buy necessary books at a comparatively small cost to each member. This is the kind of work that helps make our women ready for the opportunities that are opening for them. This is the "woman's century," it is said, and although colored women come last in the American scheme of life, it behooves the girls of our race to equip themselves so as to act their parts worthily. In lighter vein we turn to listen to the joy bells ringing for the marriage of a sweet Philadelphia THE WOMAN'S ERA 15 maiden. Mr. Jno. F. Cook, Jr., of Washington, was wed with Miss Elizabeth Abele on Dec. 4, 1894. The happy pair are to live in Idaho, where the groom is at present engaged in business. With truth it may be exclaimed: "A sweeter creature ne'er drew breath Than my son's wife - Elizabeth." After several year's work and thought the labors of Mrs. Fanny Jackson Coppin have taken practical shape in the outward visible sign of a Women's Exchange, which opened about Dec. 1. A house has been secured and furnished, where samples of millinery, dressmaking, art needlework and cooking will be shown. There will be classes taught in each of the above branches by colored women, graduates of the Industrial School already established and connected with Mrs. Coppin's school, the Institute for Colored Youth. The upper rooms of the house are to be used as dormitories for pupils who come from a distance to study in these schools. Philadelphia owes much to the energy and ability of this accomplished woman. She is always planning and spending herself and her means to improve the condition of her race. We feel a certain amount of pride in the fact that the papers of two of our townswomen, at the recent Conference of Colored Workers held in that city, were so good and showed so comprehensive a knowledge of church work, that these ladies were sent as delegates to the National Missionary Council which met in Hartford, Conn. Bishop Coleman, of Delaware, was at St. Thomas' Church when these papers were read, and he considered them of such special excellence that he proposed that the ladies be sent to Hartford to read their contributions there. Dr. Matlack, who was also present, seconded the suggestion, and both gentlemen showed their interest by offering to defray the expenses of the trip. Miss Lucretia Miller, of St. Thomas, wrote on "Woman's Work in the Parish." Miss Ella Shepherd, of the Church of the Crucifixion, took for her theme, "Woman as a Teacher in the Sunday School." These ladies were the only colored delegates. Have you just a little more space to hear about a musical and Shakesperian recital held recently? The occasion was very much enjoyed by a select and appreciative audience. Mr. R. Henri Strange showed his versatility in widely contrasted selections from Shakespeare, being especially happy in his rendition of scenes from Hamlet. Miss Scudder of Newark, N. J., is a pianist of great merit. She is young, and a brilliant future may be predicted for her. Mr. Henry Jackson of Brooklyn evoked much enthusiasm by his sympathetic and mellow voice, which, by the way, is in the lower register very similar to the delightful quality of Boston's favorite, Mr. George Ruffin. But the real interest of the occasion to many of the beaux and belles who were present was the appearance of Mr. Leon Ashleigh Gray, the Beau Brummel of New York society. The sweet and clear tenor voice, the immaculate toilet, the tasteful - bouquet, I must say for the boutonniere is too small - were altogether too much for some of the ladies, for I heard one little dear exclaim, "Oh, isn't he just too lovely!" ------------------------------------------------ ILLINOIS Fannie Barrier Williams, Editor. -------------------------------------- A Word of Tribute to John Brown. ------------- Though the eternal harmonies were ours, Dazzling vistas, unclouded skies Though o'er a pathway strewn with flowers, We tread the path where honor lies; We still must find our highest living Through the gate where heroes depart - The only way to heaven's thanksgiving, 'Tis the harvest home of the heart. Soon will the silence of night come down; O, heart of mine! look above, The light that gleams from a martyr's crown Is transfigured into love. A few years ago the Prudence Crandall Club of this city undertook to awaken interest in the study of the abolition heroes. the club was so far successful that memorial services in honor of the great prophets of forty years ago have been regularly held on the first Sunday in January each year. The character of these services has been of an unusually high order, and have from year to year been looked forward to as an occasion of inspiration and reconsecration to the high ideals of the men and women who have glorified American history. This year the John Brown League is making large preparations to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the execution of our sainted hero. Three winter's ago, Mrs. John Jones of this city called to the attention of the younger generation that John Brown was pre-eminently deserving of a day of affectionate remembrance and tributes of honor in our calendar of celebrities. The service held in her hospitable home was one of the most notable of meetings in the inspirations felt by all present. It was the rare privilege of herself and her late estimable husband to have furnished home and shelter and succor to the indomitable hero whenever he was in Chicago. The memories of that meeting, held at the hearth-stone where John Brown was so abundantly and gratefully welcomed by the gentle graciousness of his surviving friend and helper, have suggested the memorial services now being arranged for. 16 THE WOMAN'S ERA In view of these suggestions and memories I cannot refrain from adding my word of tribute to the hero of Ossawatomie. This day, hallowed by John Brown's triumphant death, is a fitting occasion for all lovers of liberty in America to renew their vows of devotion on the altars of praise and thanksgiving. John Brown was only a man. He was without honor or any of the trappings of greatness, yet to understand and fully know the significance of that homely name requires the perspective of a century of history and a study of all the open and secret forces of American civilization. The soul of John Brown was the magnet that drew all the forces of opposing interests to the stupendous crisis of 1861. It is Emerson who says that God offers to each mind the choice between repose and truth. If your choice is repose then you are satisfied with the first religious creed, the first philosophy or the first politics that comes your way. Your pleasures and griefs are all conventional. To be comfortable and let alone is the motive of your life. The great demands of truth, of liberty and justice annoy you. You stand for the dead weight of inertia in all human progress. On the other hand, you who desire truth from the free and bountiful hand of the Almighty become a part of the dynamics of progress in humanity. Truth means restlessness and an uncompromising hate of wrong. It means reformation and the force of virtue in human affairs. He who chooses truth as a life motive is always and at all places a candidate for truth at whatever cost. To such an one nothing is sacred or holy that is not illumined by the pure white light of truth. The sum total of all our religion and our faith in God and man and government is our unyielding loyalty to all revelations of truth. The supremacy in human history of such names as Savanarola, Luther, Cromwell, Washington and Lincoln are but so many evidences of truth exalted in human character. It was the heroic search to realize his own conception of truth that guided Columbus through mists of doubt and the perils of untried waters to the blessed haven of a new continent. The same thing made Dante magnificent in exile and the black hero, Toussaint L'Overteur, greater than Napoleon. The choice of truth means the choice of conflict, of sacrifice, and perchance of death, for it has been decreed from the beginning of man that there shall be no greatness for mankind except by heroic effort and endurance for truth's sake. By right of the extraordinary strength of his personality and by virtue of what he himself did and caused a whole nation to do, John Brown is for all time an eminent example of those who become strong and great by choice of truth. John Brown came into the world at a period that became illustrious for its unequalled number of great men. While his contemporaries became eminent in literature, statesmanship and oratory, John Brown was still a man of the woods and unknown and unheeded. He literally walked through these states of the Union seeing many things and pondering them in his heart. He saw the glory of his country reflected from the majesty of its mountains and from the peace and beauty of its valleys. He communed with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and felt proud of them all as part of the heritage of freedom. But, alas! there was to all of his senses a discordant element. There was a shadow of evil over all that was fair and bright and promising. He saw his countrymen everywhere serving the cause of liberty with one hand and the cause of oppression with the other. Everywhere he heard his countrymen exulting in liberty, yet justifying bondage. He heard the statesman of his day equally eloquent on the theme of the Declaration of Independence and the codes of slavery. He saw the arrogant power of slavery defying all that was hallowed in religion, precious in democracy, and authoritative in law. He saw the nation's supreme oracle of justice sink to the lowest depths of injustice in the Dred Scot decision. His soul was heavy with grief because of the unutterable shame of his country as written in the fugitive slave law. He saw the Missouri Compromise swept away by the same fiendish spirit of slavery. In fact, he saw freedom as a progressive force in the republic "banished to brutish beasts," and the opposite of all that was nobly fought for and nobly writ in law and the nation's heart aggressive, ascendant and triumphant. But what could John Brown do to stay this full tide of evil? Was he not poor, uneducated and unrelated to the men and women of power, and far removed from the forces that make and unmake governments? And then again were not such men as Whittier, Phillips, Douglass, Garrison and Sumner doing all that was possible to be done? Everywhere the righteous were praying for abolition, and was it not written by the hand of God that the power of the righteous always prevailed? John Brown may have asked himself all of these questions, but to every such question was the answer— Courage! He felt the exalted precept of Phillips, that in the cause of right the terms minority and majority were meaningless. He did not deprecate the gentle forces of prayer, eloquence and literature that were so powerfully arrayed against slavery, yet he saw that all these things were like casting pearls before swine in their inefficiency to overthrow the power of slavery. With marvelous insight John Brown saw that American slavery in its violent subversion of all laws and rights, and in its aggressive sovereignty over all the forces of government, was nothing less than a state of open war against the union. THE WOMAN'S ERA 17 If the American people could but see this and feel this as he did, the path of duty would be easy. The need of the hour was not the spirit of peace and conciliation, but rather the spirit militant to dare and do the bloody work of war. "To arms, to arms," for the rescue of American liberty, was the one call needed as a fitting challenge to the leaguers forces of oppression. It is to the glory of John Brown that he gave this first alarm and with superlative heroism first led the forces of warfare in Kansas and Virginia against the invasions of slavery. With the military eye of a great general John Brown saw that Kansas was the picketline of freedom. The fell purpose of slavery, to trample into the dust the letter and spirit of the Missouri Compromise, and to invade the virgin soil of liberty and to extend its foul conquest over every inch of territory in the Northwest covered by the American flag, was to John Brown and his followers the very culmination of treasonable aggression against the republic. Who now could hesitate to unsheath the sword of war? Alas, for the cause of freedom! Alas, for the prophecies of Plymouth Rock and of '76 if now, in its hour of peril on the free soil of Kansas, liberty could find no champion to flash the sword of resistance against the dire encroachments of the slave power! I will not attempt to retell the oft repeated stories of the eventful tragedies enacted on the soil of Kansas. If you were not a part of it, or have never read it, you have missed one of the most instructive and dramatic chapters of American history. Here was the storm-center of the nation's first alarm. In the history of it all John Brown's righteous soul breathes in every chapter. Take the name of John Brown out of the history of "Bloody Kansas" and the grand meaning of it all shrinks into a mere guerrilla warfare. John Brown's warfare for loyalty and freedom in Kansas was a profound object-lesson for all America. It furnished to all christendom in a most dramatic way the dire meaning of American slavery. It brought into startling contrast the two civilizations of America and bondage under the name of the Union. What an awful absurdity was this from 1856 to 1859! How all history now rings with praises to John Brown for empasizing that absurdity in Kansas and Virginia. Men of great piety and unerring grasp of the deeper meaning of things begin now to speak more and more confidently of the suggestive kinship between Calvary and the hills of Virginia. Can the souls of men be freed by a single death? Can the limbs of man be unchained and his soul take the wings of liberty by a single death? Can the great universe of mankind catch glimpses of immortality in the hallowed glow of all that is pure, beautiful and good, in a single death? Thanks to the human soul and its capacity for infinite goodness, Calvary and Virginia can give an answering "yes" to these exalted questionings of the human heart. COLORADO Elizabeth Piper Ensley, Editor Election Day. Then, if ever, came perfect day. The clear atmosphere brought the mountains into bold relief. A glance at their strong outline, striking fearlessly against the cloudless sky, would fill any soul with inspiration. What wonder, then, that the women of Colorado stepped forth on the morning of the 6th of November, with enthusiasm unbounded, to exercise for the first time the crowning act of citizenship. Conscious of being critically watched by forty-two states, they were especially anxious that the result of this experiment should prove conclusively that women would vote. At seven o'clock, when the polls opened, half of those in line were women. It was interesting to note the different voters; young girls who looked to be scarcely twenty-one standing in line with white-haired matrons. All nationalities were represented. It is said that such rapid voting was never before witnessed in Denver. It was also the most quiet. In nearly all the precincts the heaviest vote was polled during the morning. In one of the largest precincts, at two o'clock, P.M., 550 out of 675 votes which belonged to that department, had been polled. At one of the polling places a woman was on hand at half past five o'clock, declaring that she was there to cast the first ballot. The women not only voted, but they worked zealously and untiringly, many of them beginning before daylight. Women of all parties took an active part, but the Republican women seemed rather the most enthusiastic. They were most systematically organized and had worked the field thoroughly. All voted, those who had protested against the ballot thrust upon them and those who had hitherto taken no interest in politics. They electioneered, they drove from house to house bringing voters to the polls. The women generally followed the instructions of the party leaders and voted the prepared slate, through fear of losing their votes if they scratched their tickets. The credulity of woman was played upon to the utmost. It is known, however, that some women were independent enough not to mark the party emblem. The Republicans were triumphant; they won by a handsome majority. In Arapahoe county no other party could claim anything. This was probably due to the determination to defeat Gov. Waite, against whom there is a strong sentiment, not only among the opposing factions, but in his own party. Voters from all ranks were induced to join the Republicans in order to elect Mr. McIntire over Gov. Waite. Lessons learned from the election and campaign preceding it: 1. Women will study politics. Proven by the great number of political study clubs formed during the past year. A populist woman, who stumped the state, says, "Politics was the theme of discussion morning, noon and night. The women talked politics over their sewing, their dish-washing, and during their social calls. Politics has made them read and think more, and in new and different lines. Some of the women are getting these economic questions drilled into their heads in a way that would astonish you, and when the mothers understand these things it is going to make a 18 THE WOMAN'S ERA vast difference, for they will teach them to the children." 2. Women will vote. The women of Colorado have demonstrated that conclusively. 3. They will generally vote straight. This fact was shown by the Republican women, though it may be that in this instance they believed it necessary to do so in the interest of law and order. 4. There should be thorough and systematic organization of the women of all parties. The good government committee will now take steps to strengthen its force and organize more thoroughly for the municipal election in the spring. The first important work of the women will be to see that the party emblem in the Australian ballot is done away with, thus insuring a truly secret ballot, and therefore more independent voting. The readers of the ERA will be interested to know what special part the colored women have taken in the election. Most of them have done admirable work in the interest of the Republican party. They also formed clubs of their own and heroically helped their brothers to elect a representative to the legislature, although the majority of those brothers voted against woman's enfranchisement. They made good campaign speeches. Mrs. Olden is deserving of especial mention. She was one of the fourteen delegates sent from the colored Republican club to the county convention held last summer. She suggested that they ask for representation in the state convention, but was discouraged by her too-timid brothers, on the ground that there was no use asking for what they would not get. But this courageous little woman persisted. The outcome of it was that Mrs. Olden was unanimously elected third Vice-President of the Republican State League of Colorado. She has done most excellent work for the party. Mrs. Olden is a graduate of Fisk University. On the eve of election in November, '93, she came to Denver from Tennessee at the head of a small colony of people who longed for the free air of the mountains. They sought a dwelling place where free speech would not be denied them. The colored women of Denver have recognized the worth of Mrs. Olden by making her president of their league lately organized, and about which I will tell you later. -------------------------------------------------------------- THE COLLEGE SETTLEMENTS. ------------ Paper No. 3. ----------------- ELLA LAVINIA SMITH ----------------- Other American Settlements include the one in Philadelphia opened in April, 1892, in connection with work already begun by the St. Mary Street Library Association; Denison House, Boston, opened Jan. 1, 1893; Andover House, Boston, opened in Jan., 1892; the Neighborhood Guild, founded by Dr. Stanton Cost in New York City, and opened in 1887; the University Settlement in Philadelphia, opened in Jan., 1893; East Side House, New York, opened early in 1891; the Epworth League Settlement, Boston, founded in 1892, and Hull House, Chicago, opened in Sept., 1889. Of the Philadelphia Settlement Miss Hannah Fox said, in the Third Annual Report of the College Settlement Association, "The situation offered differed from the New York situation, in being on a side street in a shiftless neighborhood, among a less provident class of people, most of them being colored. . . . The comfort of the house is greatly enhanced by the Starr Garden, which adjoins it. This garden is now owned by the City Park Association, and is opened daily under the care of a guardian, for the free use of the people, and is always placed at our disposal. . . . There is an admission fee to all classes where anything like a trade is taught, as it is not felt advisable to give, all things involving a sacrifice being more truly valued. What the young boys and girls in the St. Mary's street neighborhood need most of all is work - good, steady, intelligent work. It is not lack of money which is the poverty we most deplore, but lack of self-hood, that self-hood which comes from work and makes it a blessing even though it be a bitter struggle for existence." Denison House, Boston, named for Edward Denison, whose pioneer work in London has already been noticed, is in a neighborhood largely Irish, though Jews, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and Armenians are also to be found there. Drunkenness with its attendant evils abounds, and the young people have but few quiet and respectable meeting places. Already, however, in the short time that the house has been opened, the residents have gained confidence and sympathy of many of their neighbors, and have come to understand, in some measure, the forces at work in the community for good and for evil. The work of Denison House will probably be especially along the lines of University and College Extension, and the organization of labor, and though but little that is definite can now be said, yet much is hoped for the future, because of the good foundation already laid. ------------------------------------ All loyal club women will patronize our advertisers, so help to make our paper a valuable advertising medium. We are happy to be able to personally endorse nearly all the advertisers. In this connection, we would like to call especial attention to some of our advertisements. THE WOMAN'S ERA 19 A Loyal Woman. ------------- The following is an extract from a most welcome and interesting letter from Mrs. Sylvia Maples of Knoxville, Tenn. Oh, for a host of her kind! "The WOMAN'S ERA is a much-needed issue in a much-needed hour, and if every woman of our race felt its need as I do, they would never know rest until they see it in the homes of all our people. "The Ladies' Home Journal" is the intellectual, social and political medium of the women, and of the white woman, more especially so. It does not in a single particular touch our interests and our peculiar race wants, yet we help with our one dollar a year to make it what it is - the most widely popular paper upon the globe. One more month, and this year is gone from us. Now if we would but deny ourselves (and to many, as with myself, it would mean denial) the Home Journal or some other pleasure or luxury, we could give that one dollar in the forthcoming year to our own representative, the ERA. ------------------------------------------------- LITERATURE NOTES. ------------------ MEDORA W. GOULD. ------------------- And so our dear Dr. Holmes did __________ "live to be The last leaf on the tree." Among the many beautiful lessons to be drawn from the life of our beloved poet, is none of more prominence than that of the economy of time. For it will be remembered, that that by which he has endeared himself to countless numbers was accomplished in his spare moments. Although Dr. Holmes was undoubtedly a great and gifted poet as well as an entertaining storyteller in his prose writings, it seems as if both of these gifts are subordinate to his own charming personality. It is neither the poet nor the prose writer that we have grown to love, or whom we mourn for now, but is the man himself. In the "Autocrat" he has portrayed himself so faithfully that we can almost claim a personal acquaintance with him, and in his death feel the loss of a beloved friend. A convenient reference book on American literature, designed either for young people, or those whose school days are past, is "American Authors" by Mildred Rutherford. It contains numerous half-tone portraits, and a special feature is the test questions at the end of each chapter. "The Aim of Life" by Philip Moxom is a volume of addresses designed as an aid to young people in the development of noble characters. A book that interesting as well as instructive is Dr. Trumbull's "Studies in Oriental Social Life." It is particularly valuable as an aid in the Bible, for many of the things that are difficult to understand in Bible history can be readily comprehended when we have some knowledge of the social customs and inner life of the people. It is written of the Orient as it is today, but that part of the world has changed very little since the Bible was written. "In the King's Country" is a delightfully entertaining story for girls. It is a story of Christian Endeavor and decidedly elevating and inspiring. "The Sherburn Cousins" is a still later book from her pen. Miss Finley, the author of the charming, "Elsie" books, has written another, which is a story of the Worlds Fair as it appeared to Elsie. "The Work of the Afro-American Woman" is a daintily bound volume whose author is Mrs. N. F. Mosell, the wife of Dr. Mosell of Philadelphia. Mrs. Mosell's very commendable object in writing this book was to do for the women of her own race what had already been done for other women more favorably circumstanced. She has gathered together much valuable information and presents it to her readers in a clear, bright and entertaining manner, and no one can read the little volume without feeling a deeper interest in the progress of his race, and gaining much inspiration for nobler and better work in the future. The plan of the book is quite comprehensive, containing reference the to work of our women in whatever lines in which they have achieved success, and is interspersed with interesting personal notes. Considerable space is devoted to the great works in which Miss Ida B. Wells is engaged. It is a pleasure to note that Mrs. Mosell has not omitted to mention that great army of workers, the home-makers, whom it would be impossible to call by name, but to whom as a race we owe far more for our advancement and improvement than we do to a few teachers and scribblers here and there. It is to the mothers, to those wives and mothers, who, by their refinement and influence for upright living elevate the character of the homes, that the race owes its real progress and advancement. Hall Caine, the author of "The Deemster," "The Bondman," and other equally engrossing novels, has 20 THE WOMAN'S ERA. written another called "The Mahdi," which lovers of this most admirable writer will eagerly welcome. It promises a tale of love and heroism. "The Manxman" is considered by deep thinkers to be by far the best novel published recently, in spite of the popularity of "Trilby" and others. In fact, it is declared by some to be the best book we have had since the publication of "Adam Bede." Paine is at his best in the delineation of his masculine characters, and one's sympathy for the misfortune of his heroes is mingled with a deep admiration for their manliness and nobleness of soul. The sale of Du Maurier's "Trilby" is said to have reached one hundred thousand copies. It is rumored that F. Marion Crawford is to make his home in America, possibly either at New York or Washington. We can look forward to some rare stories of American life, if he treats us as well when with us as he has done other people when among them. ---------------------------------- THE CHICAGO WOMAN'S CLUB REJECT MRS. WILLIAMS. --------------- At the urgent solicitation of friends - members of the Woman's Club of Chicago - Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams allowed her name to be offered for membership to that organization. For three years Mrs. Williams filled nearly all the offices, including that of vice-president and secretary of the Illinois Woman's Alliance, a central body composed of all the women's clubs. She is chairman of the committee on state schools for dependent children. She held a representative position on the World's Fair Board and took a prominent part in the parliament of religions. Her paper read at the gathering on "What can Religion do to advance the condition of the Negro?" together with her portrait, appears in the Rev. Dr. Barrow's work, "The World's Parliament of Religion." As a lecturer, Mrs. Williams is in great demand. And yet, although thus well equipped to help on the work the Woman's clubs are formed to do, the modicum of negro blood in her veins outweighed her eminent fitness, and club principle made a weak surrender to personal prejudice, and her name was rejected. However, Mrs. Williams is philosophical and brave, and after the first sting of the affront put upon her is over, will recall with amused contempt the hysterical antics of her former associates in work, in the efforts to prevent the club giving legitimate recognition to the helpful work she had long been doing as an individual. Mrs. Williams can wait; there are greater things in store for her than a mere membership in a club of narrow-minded women - and even that will come to her soon. There is no limit now to the possibilities of a woman endowed like Fannie Barrier Williams, and soon there will be no hindrance. ------------------------------ For St. Monica's Benefit ----------------- The first doll exhibition ever given in Boston was held in the parlors of the Brunswick Hotel, Wednesday, Nov. 21st, for St. Monica's home for sick women. Every country that has a characteristic costume was represented. The tiniest dolls in the exhibit were a pair of Japanese twins, perfect dolls, not over two inches long. The affair was a great success in every way. ---------------------- One of the best preparations of its kind is the Witch Hazel Velvet Cream, for which W. F. and J. I Kingsbury, Randolph, Mass., are agents. Anyone who received a sample at the World's Food Fair can testify to its efficacy in whitening and softening the skin. Besides this, it is recommended as containing no lead, arsenic, mercury, or any other poison, and can be applied in cases of abrasion or skin disease. It is for sale by all druggists. -------------------------------- How the seasons glide by! Only a little while ago and 'twas summer; then golden autumn, with its wreath of red and russet tones, passed as in review; now the season of general rejoicing and family reunion - Thanksgiving - has come and gone, bringing rich memories, many tinged with sadness of other days. Of all days in the year, there's none upon which we notice more naturally "an empty chair," ofttimes through a film of tears, or with more cordial welcome add another to the board. To one and all we wish a merry and bountiful feast, flavored by all that is generous and kind, graced by acts as well as words divine. THE WOMAN'S ERA. 21 FREE! Another Splendid Premium Offer! The first premium offered last March having been won the publishers of the ERA take pleasure in announcing another which, if possible, sur- passes the first. READ! FIRST PREMIUM. For the boy or girl, man or woman who in the next 3 months brings in the largest number of paid up subscribers (over one hundred in number) we will give a course in Mr. Eastman's School of Carving and Modelling. N. B. - this course taken at its full value is worth two hundred dollars; it extends over a term of nine months, and at the end of that time pupils are prepared to become teachers of the art. No more valuable premium could be offered; in return for a little energy a splendid trade is given and a position to teach almost assured, or if teaching is not preferred and the premium winner prefers actual work, good and paying positions are assured. SECOND PREMIUM. To the one bringing in the next largest number of subscribers, half a term at the above school will be given. THIRD PREMIUM. To the one bring in the third highest number of subscribers a New World Type-writer will be given. FOURTH PREMIUM To the four boys or girls (beginners in music) bringing in each ten subscribers in the next three months, a year's course in the Boston Training School of Music will be given. Do not pass this over lightly. The WOMAN'S ERA makes a specialty of preparing openings for young colored people; it realizes the difficulties they encounter in obtaining such openings and is prepared to do well by ambitious, earnest and determined young people. Don't complain of lack of chances if you let such as these pass you by. All contestants not receiving premiums will be allowed twenty-five per cent on all paid in yearly subscriptions received. The time allowed is short, but people who are in earnest act at once. For further particulars, address THE WOMAN'S ERA, 103 Charles Street, Boston School of Modelling And Carving. ------------------- TEACHERS AND CRAFTSMEN TRAINED IN THE FOLLOWING INDUSTRIAL ARTS. ---------- MODELLING for Stone and Plaster. MODELLING for Metals, etc. CASTING for Stucco and Metals. FIGURE CUTTING in Piece and Mould. STONE CARVING, Buildings, Monuments and Ecclesiastical Works. WOOD CARVING, for Metals, Internal and External Decoration. PUPILS PREPARED to teach the above in one term of nine months. CRAFTSMEN PUSHED in special branches and situations secured upon completion of term; or work secured while studying. For terms apply to CLAVENGER A. EASTMAN, St. Augustine's Trade Schools, Corner Cambridge and Grove Sts., Boston -------------------------------------------------------------------------- GEORGE L. RUFFIN, LESSONS IN SINGING. Lampterti Method. After October 1st, 103 Charles Street. Dates for Cecilia Wage Earners' Concerts, are Nov. 27, Jan. 16, Mar. 17, May 1. Tickets, 25 and 15c. Apply for Tickets one week before each Concert, at above address. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help in Choosing a School. ------------------ The publishers of the WOMAN'S ERA will, on application of any of its subscribers, send catalogues and all informations easily obtainable, concerning any academy, college, normal, music, or art school in New England, on receipt of a stamped and directed envelope. Address, WOMAN'S ERA, 103 Charles St. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDGAR P. BENJAMIN, Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law Room 22 34 School Street, Boston. 22 THE WOMAN'S ERA. TRY A PERFECT ICING FOR YOUR CAKES, &c. Will not spoil or foment in heat or cold, covered or exposed to the air. PERFECT ICING never dries out or crumbles, all other Icings draw the moisture from the cake and dry it up. A PERFECT ICING will keep your cake from drying up. PERFECT ICING should be put on in a very thin coating, like a varnish; it will give your cakes a beautiful gloss as well as flavor. Can be cut soon as put on by dipping your knife in cold water. A 25c Jar of PERFECT ICING will go further than 25 cents in Egg and Sugar Icing as you use it, is more healthful, and gives a superior flavor. PERFECT ICINGS are put in Screw Top Jars, also in Mason quarts, and in wooden pails of 25 lbs. each. DIRECTIONS. Remove the top, set the Jar in a moderate oven or warm place, until the contents are thin enough to spread. Take your knife, stir it up and spread on a cold cake, just as thin as possible. Set your jar away to use again. Ask Your Grocer for PERFECT ICING. Almond, Coffee, Wild Grape, Orange, Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate, Pistash. PREPARED ONLY BY A. H. PELOUBET & CO., New York. See our Trade Mark A. H. P. is on every Label. PERFECT ICINGS used in making Sherbets or Water Ices, Ice Creams, Sauces, Home Confections, &c. Will give their rich flavors and save work. B. P. RAY, Agent 2 Chatham Row, BOSTON, MASS. THE CELEBRATED Witch-Hazel Velvet Cream Does not contain corrosive sublimate, lead, arsenic, mercury, or any poison. As a toilet article for tan, sunburn, moth, freckles, etc., its excellence cannot be too well recommended Put up in 60c and $1.00 Sizes, sent postpaid on receipt of Price. AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE For Sale by Druggists and Dealers in Toilet Supplies. All corespondence should be addressed to the New England Agents, W. F. & J. S. KINGSBERY RANDOLPH, MASS. The Kranich & Bach Pianos Again took only Gold Medal at last Mechanics' Fair for their unequalled patent Upright and Grands. Also Silver medal on Mehlin & Sons, and Stultz & Bauer Pianos. Also slightly used Steinway Grand for $400, Steinway Squar $250, H. F. Miller $250, McPhall $190, nearly new Haynes Bros. Upright $325 new Ivers & Pond $225, H. F. Miller Parlor Grand $400, and fifty Square Piano's from $50 to $200. Organs from $30 to $100 TERMS EASY. H. W. BERRY, 646 Washington Street, BOSTON. Over Pray & Sons' Carpet Store. Material furnished and a Stylish Walking or Visiting Dress made to order for $23.00, warranted to fit perfectly and finished in the best manner. Ladies can select material from any of the large dry goods houses, I will buy and be responsible for a handsome gown, at this extremely low figure. MRS. A. A. CASNEAU, Near Hammond St. 9 Greenwich St., Boston. ATTENTION LADIES. Our Dress and Garment making is perfect; Prices reasonable; Fit, style and Finish unsurpassed. Millinery: Hats and Bonnets made and Trimmed, 50c. to $1.00. Our Millinery and Dress Cutting Schools are the best in the world. Young Ladies should come at once and learn. HARVEY, 29 Temple Place, Boston E.A. LIBBY, New goods received by steamer every week. We never have an opening, Always ready to show goods. MILLINERY The old reliable house retains the same stand, 19 Temple Place, Boston. H.B. McDERMOTT & CO. Dealers in and Manufacturers of ALL KINDS OF WHALEBONE. Dress and Corset Bone constantly on hand or Made to order. Bone by the Ounce a Specialty. 673 Washington St.. Boston. Opposite Beach Street. THE NEW WORLD TYPEWRITER. Price, $15.00 A useful and elegant present for ladies and gentlemen. Over 100,000 in use. Perfectly simple, practical and durable. No $100 machine can do better work. Writes 77 characters, Capitals and small letters. Never gets out of order. Perfect alignment always. No instruction required. SEND FOR ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE. The Typewriter Improvement Co. 4 K Post Office Square, BOSTON, Mass. Agents Wanted. DR. GEORGE LANG. Hair and Scalp Specialist, 28 Temple Place, Boston, Mass. Hours, 9 to 4. Rooms 6 and 7. MADAM CLOUD, BUSINESS AND HEALTH MEDIUM, No. 7 Charles St., near Beacon, Boston, Mass. Office hours 9 to 11 a.m., 3 to 10 p.m. THE WOMAN'S ERA 23 ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, ALTANTA, GA. REV. HORACE BUMSTEAD, D.D. President. THIS Institution trains and sends out a superior class of teachers and leaders for work among the Freedom of the South. It solicits the attendance of intelligen and earnest young men and women, and contributions from those who are willing to help towards their education. Write to the President. BOSTON TRAINING SCHOOL OF MUSIC (INCORPORATED.) Vocal and Instrumental Music, Harmony, Theory and Composition. Pupils thoroughly Prepared for Teaching and Public Performance. Central Location. CATALOGUE FREE. GEORGE H. HOWARD, A.M. Director, Music Hall Building, Boston, Mass. A.G. McKENZIE OPTICIAN. ARTIFICIAL EYES A SPECIALTY 156 CHARLES ST., BOSTON. THREE DOORS FROM EYE INFIRMARY. TELEPHONE, 219-3 TREMONT. BOSTON Condensed Milk Co's Plain condensed (unsweetened) Milk is the best known food for infants. Best article in the world for a cup of coffee. Sold in jars at the office, 2½ Park Sq., Boston Delivered three times per week. ENDORSEMENT. I have used the plain condensed milk and found it worked like a miracle in transforming my weak, puny baby into a strong, plump one, after all other foods had failed. MRS. McGILL, 10 Lindall Place, Boston. 500 AGENTS Wanted To Sell our New Race Book By Hon. J.M. Langston [Ex U.S. Representative from Va.] FROM THE VIRGINIA PLANTATION TO THE NATIONS CAPITOL THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of the Silver Tongued Colored Orator and polished Scholar. Superbly Illustrated Teaches that Self reliance is the Secret of Success. No Race library complete without it SURE TO SELL. A great chance to make money. Don't miss it. For Circulars and Terms to Agents, write to the American Publishing Co., Hartford, Conn. Cincinnati, or Boston. Mention this Paper. PRIVATE BOARD. MRS. ELIZABETH E. COOLEY will accommodate a few select boarders. Transient or permanent, AT 62 PHILLIPS ST., BOSTON. THE AMERICAN WRINGER CO BRANCH STORE, 13 & 15 BROADWAY EXTENSION, Boston, Mass. Manufacturers of Clothes Wringers. All kinds of Wringers and Sweepers repaired. Orders by mail promptly attended to. LESSONS BY MAIL. Instructions in English Composition, Grammar, Use of Capitals, Punctuation, Formation of Sentences, etc. Address, Miss M.W. GOULD, Box 165 Readville, Mass. What is this A.P.A.? What its Plans? Who its Candidates? What its Principles? Where can we join? For full information, send 2-ct. stamp for —or ask your newsdealer for—or send 50 cts. for 3 mos. trial subscription A.P.A. principles—THE AMERICAN CITIZEN, 7 Bromfield St., Boston. 24 THE WOMAN'S ERA. "The best of all Medicines is --- none." The Natural Method OF - - - Curing Obesity. Dr. Albert Reeder's Institute of Curative Movements Franklin Savings Bank Building, 5 Park Square, Boston. Office in charge of lady assistants. Hours 10 to 12 a. m., 2 to 4 p. m. HOUSEKEEPERS SHOULD SEE THE NEW Fibre Carpet. A Soft, Pliable, Odorless Matting, Warm in Winter, Cool in Summer. An Ideal Sanitary Chamber Carpet For ALL THE YEAR ROUND. Sews together and turns under. Does not break or require binding. No odors or germs of disease. Insects do not trouble it. Heavy furniture does not break it. Double faced -- double wear. Artistic colors -- stylish designs. We cordially invite inspection. HODGES FIBRE CARPET CO. Manufacturers and Patentees, 50 Essex St. (cor. Chauncy) Boston, Mass. Santa Claus' Headquarters. Tons of Candies. Tons of New Nuts. Raisins, Currants, Citron, Figs, Dates, etc. Cut prices on Flour. bargains every day at C. F. SMITH'S CASH GROCERY, 112-114 Cambridge St., Boston. INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS. EASTERN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, OF BOSTON, Street Railway Builders and Contractors for Public Works. ESTIMATES MADE FOR A COMPLETE UNDERGROUND SYSTEM. GEO.S. BARNES, President. STANLEY RUFFIN, Sec'y and Treas. 34 School Street, Boston. BUTLER R. WILSON, ATTORNEY and COUNSELLOR AT LAW, NOTARY PUBLIC, 34 School Street, (Room 33,) BOSTON. Robert L. Carter, M. D. PHYSICIAN & SURGEON, No. 722 Kempton Street, NEW BEDFORD. Diseases of Women a Specialty. Telephone 329-4. Frank S. Murphy Grocer. 61 Charles Street cor. Mt. Vernon St. Boston, Mass. THE WOMAN'S ERA 19 ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, ALTANTA, GA. REV. HORACE BUMSTEAD, D. D. President. THIS Institution trains and sends out a superior class of teachers and leaders for work among the Freedom of the South. It solicits the attendance of intelligen and earnest young men and women, and contributions from those who are willing to help towards their education. Write to the President. BOSTON TRAINING SCHOOL OF MUSIC (INCORPORATED.) Vocal and Instrumental Music, Harmony, Theory and Composition. Pupils thoroughly Prepared for Teaching and Public Performance. Central Location. CATALOGUE FREE. GEORGE H. HOWARD, A. M., Director, Music Hall Building, - - Boston, Mass. A. G. McKENZIE OPTICIAN ARTIFICIAL EYES A SPECIALTY 157 CHARLES ST., BOSTON. THREE DOORS FROM EYE INFIRMARY. TELEPHONE, 219-3 TREMONT. BOSTON Condensed Milk Co's Plain condensed (unsweetened) Milk is the best known food for infants. Best article in the world for a cup of coffee. Sold in jars at the office, 2 1/2 Park Sq., Boston Delivered three times per week. ENDORSEMENT. I have used the plain condensed milk and found it worked like a miracle in transforming my weak, puny baby into a strong, plump one, after all other foods had failed. MRS. McGILL, 10 Lindall Place, Boston. PRIVATE BOARD. MRS. ELIZABETH E. COOLEY will accommodate a few select boarders. Transient or permanent, AT 62 PHILLIPS ST., BOSTON For Every Kind of PRINTING Go to Chas. Alexander, Publisher of THE MONTHLY REVIEW, 36 Columbus Avenue, BOSTON. THE AMERICAN WRINGER CO. BRANCH STORE, 13 & 15 BROADWAY EXTENSION, Boston, Mass. Manufacturers of Clothes Wringers. All kinds of Wringers and Sweepers repaired. Orders by mail promptly attended to. LESSONS BY MAIL. Instructions in English Composition, Grammar, Use of Capitals, Punctuation, Formation of Sentences, etc. Address, Miss M. W. GOULD, Box 165. Readville, Mass. Robert L. Carter, M. D. PHYSICIAN & SURGEON, No. 722 Kempton Street, NEW BEDFORD. Diseases of Women a Specialty. Telephone 329-4. What is this A. P. A ? What its Plans? Who its Candidates? What its Principles? Where can we join? For full information, send 2-ct. stamp for --or ask your newsdealer for--or send 50 cts. for 3 mos. trial subscription of--the paper which advocates straight A. P. A. principles--THE AMERICAN CITIZEN, 7 Bromfield St., Boston. 20 THE WOMAN'S ERA. DO YOU WANT TO OWN YOUR OWN HOME? THEN READ THIS! IF YOU WANT TO BUY A HOUSE IN CAMBRIDGE, SOMERVILLE, ... DORCHESTER OR EVERETT... IT WILL PAY YOU TO CALL ON BALDWIN & DORSEY, Real Estate, Mortgage and Insurance Brokers, They make a specialty of property in the suburbs. They furnish purchase money at low rates of interest. They will lend you money to build a house on your own land. Stop! Pay no more Rent! Begin now to buy your own home! BALDWIN & DORSEY, Real Estate, Mortgages and Insurance, 555 MAIN STREET, CAMBRIDGEPORT. INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS. EASTERN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, OF BOSTON, Street Railway Builders and Contractors for Public Works. ESTIMATES MADE FOR A COMPLETE UNDERGROUND SYSTEM. GEO. S. BARNES, President. STANLEY RUFFIN, Sec'y and Treas. 34 School Street, Boston. BUTLER R. WILSON, ATTORNEY and COUNSELLOR AT LAW, NOTARY PUBLIC, 34 School Street, (Room 33, ) BOSTON. D.A. NEWCOMB & SON. DEALER IN Fresh, Salt and Smoked Fish. Fresh opened Oysters and Clams. 194 Cambridge St., Boston, Mass. Orders called for and delivered promptly. Frank S. Murphy GROCER 61 Charles street cor. Mt. Vernon St. BOSTON , MAss. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.