Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/807

Rh We don't come together here to ignore oppositions, but to reconcile them. Oppositions are divinely appointed. I do believe that their distance can not be increased with safety to the economy of the world. But love is the tropical equator. His fiery currents are able to quicken and vivify the whole globe. They circulate equally at the arctic and antarctic extremities. The work that we are doing in common is not unfavorably affected by oppositions. The poles are God's anointed and stand firm; but opposition has quickened the currents of love until it has melted the social ice at the extremities for us, and even the snows which very prematurely, I do assure you, begin to fall upon the heads of some of us. I have been speaking and writing on this subject for a year and a half, and I find the subject always getting outside of my efforts much more rapidly than my efforts are able to get outside of it. At every new meeting I find the speech of the last meeting much too small. Whether the question grows or the speech shrinks I do not know, but I am inclined to think the former. I never knew any member of my nursery to require so much letting out, expanding, as this question. From all of this I am inclined to think that we have set our hands to a great work, to a long and hard labor, to a reform of human society; to a reduplication of human power and well-being.....

Mrs., more widely known as "Grace Greenwood," stated that she had believed in woman suffrage since she was old enough to believe in anything that was right and to denounce anything that was wrong. She was not counted among the extremists. Indeed, she claimed the right only for three classes of persons, namely, single women who have property of their own, married women, and all such other women as may desire it. I am willing that a property qualification should be exacted. Require, if you will, that each woman voter shall possess a gold watch, and keep it wound and up to time—a clothes wringer and a sewing machine; that she shall be able to concoct a pudding, sew on a button, and, at a pinch, keep a boarding-house and support a husband respectably....

The read the reply which he had prepared to the letter of Mr. Tilton as follows:

May 11, 1870.

To Theodore Tilton, President of the Woman Suffrage Society Meeting in Apollo Hall: Dear Sir: Your letter of congratulation was received with great pleasure by the mass Convention assembled in Steinway Hall, under the auspices of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and I am instructed by their unanimous vote to express their gratification, and to reciprocate your sentiments of cordial good-will. In this great work upon which you have entered—the enfranchisement of woman—we have a common aim and interest, and we shall rejoice at any success which is achieved by your zeal and fidelity.

I am, very truly, yours,

Mrs., of New Jersey, read a report from the executive committee of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association.

Col. T. W. spoke as follows: Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen—I was thinking during the brilliant speech of Mrs. Lippincott, what an awful reflection the existence of that woman was upon the Government of the country in which we live—that she should reside in sight of the Capitol of Washington and never get nearer the interior of that building than the reporter's desk. Fancy a House of Representatives in which she should have an opportunity of talking to her fellow-delegates as she has talked to