VOLUME VI. ADDRESS ALL LETTERS TO } ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS ss — aS iy AMY yD NOVEMBER, 1906. SN Mh v2 PRINTED AT LINCOLN, NEBRASKA NUMBER 11. FRANCES E. WILLARD A Tribute to American Women a Delivered by Hon. Albert J. Beveridge in the United States senate, February 17, 1905, on the ocasion of the unveiling of the Willard statue in the U. S. Capitol. From the beginning woman has per- sonified the world’s ideals. When his- tory began its record it found her al- ready the chosen bride of Art. The things that minister to mankind’s good have, from the very first, by the general judgment, been made feminine—the ships that bear us through storm to port; the seasons that bring variety, sureease of toil and life’s renewal; the earth itself, which, through all time and in all speech, has been the universal mother. The Graces were women, and the Muses, too. Always her influence has glorified the world, until her beati- tude becomes divine in Mary, Mother of God. : Mark how the noblest conceptions of. the human mind have always been pre- sented in form of woman. Take Lib- erty; take Justice; take all the holy aspirations, all the sacred realities? Each glorious ideal has, to the common thought, been feminine. The sculptors of the olden time made every immortal idéa @ daughter of the gods. Even Wisdom was a woman in the early con- cept of the race, and the unknown genius of the youthful world wrought Triumph itself into woman’s form in that masterpiece of all the ages—The Winged Victory. Over the lives and destinies of men the ancients placed Clotho, Lachesis, and Atrophos forever spinning, twisting, severing the strands of human. fate. In literature of all time woman has been. Mercy’s messenger, handmaid of tenderness, creator and preserver of hu- man happiness. Name Shakespeare— Miranda and Imogen, Rosalind, Perdita and-Cordelia appear; name Burns—the prayer “To Mary in Heaven” gives to the general heart that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin; name the Book of Books—Rachel and the women of the Bible, in beauty, walk before us, and in the words of Ruth we hear the ultimate formula of wo- man’s eternal fidelity and faith. So we see that through all time wo- man has typified the true, the beau- tiful, and the good on earth. And now lilinois, near the very heart. of the world’s great Republic and at the dawn of the twentieth century, chooses woman herself as the ideal of that commonwealth and of this period ; for the character of Frances E. Willard is womanhood’s apotheosis. And she was American. She was the child of our American prairies, daugh- ter of an American home, had strength and gentleness, simplicity and vision. Not from the complex lives that wealth and luxury force upon their unfortunate children; not from the sharpening and hardening process of the city’s social and business grind; not from any of civilization’s artificial- ities, come those whom God appoints to lead mankind toward the light. Moses dwelt alone on the summit of mystery and human solitude. The Master abode in the wilderness, and s And so she | @ e @ O @® there the power descended on Him with which He put aside the tempter. In the forests the father of our country learned ‘liberty’s lesson from Nature, liberty’s mother; and from the valleys and the heights, the fields and pouring streams, got understanding of the pos- sibilities of this land, a knowledge of its uses, a perception of its people’s des- tiny. We cannot imagine Abraham Lin- coln coming to us from a palace. No! FRANCES E. We can understand him only as he réally was—man of the people and the soil, thinking with the people’s mind the grand and simple truths, feeling with the people’s heart an infinite com- passion for and fellowship with all the race. So, Mr. President, all the saints and heroes of this world have come, fresh and strong from the source of things, by abuses unspoiled and unweakened by faise refinements. And so came Frances E. Willard, the American wo- man. The wide, free fields were the playgrounds of her childhood. The great primeval woods impressed her unfolding soul with their vast and vital calmness. Association with her neigh- bors was scant and difficult, and home meant to her all that the poets have sung of it, and more. It was a refuge and a shrine, a dwelling and a place of joy, a spot where peace and love and safety and all unselfishness reigned with a sovereignty unchallenged. And so this child of our forests and our plains, this daughter of that finest of eivilization’s advance guard—the Amer- ican pioneers—early received into her very soul that conception of the home to. which as the apostle of universal womanhood, her whole life was dedi- cated. : To make the homes of the millions pure, to render sweet and strong those human relations which constitute. the WILLARD. family—this was her mission and her work. And there cannot be a wiser method of mankind’s upliftment than this, no better way to make a nation noble and enduring; for “the hearth- stone is the foundation whereon the state is built. The family is the social and natural — unit. Spencer wrote learnedly of “the individual and the state’; put he wrote words merely. The individual is not the important factor in nature or the nation. Nature destroys the individual. Nature cares only for the pair; knows in some form nothing but the family. And so by the deep reasoning of nature itself Frances Willard’s work was justified. But her’s was no philosopher’s creed. She got her inspiration from a higher source than human thinking. In her life’s work we see restored to earth that faith which, whenever man has let it work its miracle, has wrought victory here and immortality hereafter. Such was the faith of Joan, the in- spired maid of France; such that of Columbus, sailing westward through the dark; such the exalted belief of those good missionaries who first in- vaded our American wilderness to light with their own lives on civilization’s altar the sacred fire that never dies. The story of Frances Willard’s faith in the conquest of evil by the good seems ineredible to us who demand a map of all our future before we take a step. For Frances E. Willard knew no questioning. ‘ithe Master’s message was at once her guaranty and her com- mand. The Bible was to her, in very truth, divine. What immeasurable and increasing influence that one book has wielded over the minds of men and the destiny of the world! If it be the word of God, as we profoundly believe, surely it comes to human ears with all the dignity and peace and power that His word should command. If it be the word of man, then even the doubter must admit that the ancient Hebrews had miraculous skill to cast a spell across millenniums which, strengthen- ing with the years, spreads wider today than ever and embraces the future as far as even the eye of imagination can behold. Not all invention or all states- manship or all of literature have so touched and bettered human life as this one book. And it was the Bible that gave Frances E. Willard her mis- sion, her strength, her hope, her argu- ment and her inspiration. Thus prepared and thus equipped she went out into the world and to her work. No method can measure what she did. ~The half million of women ‘whom she’ brought into organized co- operation in’ the Women’s Christian Temperance Union is but a suggestion of the real results of her activities. In- deed, the highest benefits her life be- stowed were as intangible as air and as full of life. She made purer the moral atmosphere of a continent—al- most of a world. She rendered the life of a nation cleaner, the mind of a peo- ple saner. Millions of homes today are happier for her; millions of wives and mothers bless her; and countless chil- ‘dren have grown into strong, upright and beautiful maturity, who, but for the work of Frances E. Willard, might have been forever soiled and weakened. Mother of all mothers, sister of all wives, to every child the lover, Frances E. Willard sacrificed her own life to the happiness of her sisters. For after all, she knew that with all her gifts and all the halo of her God-sent mis- sion, nevertheless the humblest mother was yet greater far than she. But it was needful that she should so conse- crate her strength and length of years. For how shall the service of utter un- selfishness be achieved save in the utter sacrifice ot self? So Frances E. Willard gave up her life and all the rights and glories of it that all of her sisters might lead fuller, richer, happier, sweeter lives themselves. So, Mr. President, by placing her statue in the hall of our national im- mortals, a great commonwealth today - forever commemorates the services of this American woman to all humanity. And the representatives of the Ameri- can people-—the greatest people in this world—in Cor-ress formally assembled today are paying tribute to the little frontier American maid who heard and heeded the voices that came to her from the unseen world, and, obeying their counsels, became the first woman of her generation, the. most beloved character of -her time, and, under God, a benefactress of her race. Se e v2