Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/384

Rh Third—To petition the General Assembly for the necessary legislation to secure school suffrage to women.

The arguments in the various hearings before the legislature with the majority and minority reports, are the same as many already published, in fact nothing new can be said on the question. As none of the women in this State, by trying to vote, or resisting taxation, have tested the justice of their laws, they have no supreme-court decisions to record.

Honorable mention should be made of Dr. William F. Channing, who has stood for many years in Providence the noblest representative of liberal thought. He is a worthy son of that great leader of reform in New England, Rev. William Ellery Channing. In him the advocates of woman's rights have always found a steadfast friend. He sees that this is the fundamental reform; that it is the key to the problems of labor, temperance, social purity and the coöperative home. Those who have had the good fortune of a personal acquaintance with Dr. Channing have felt the sense of dignity and self-respect that the delicate courtesy and sincere reference of a noble man must always give to woman. Though Mrs. Channing has not been an active participant in the popular reforms, having led a rather retired life, yet her sympathies have been with her husband in all his endeavors to benefit mankind. She has given the influence of her name to the suffrage movement, and extended the most generous hospitalities to the speakers at the annual conventions. Their charming daughters, Mary and Grace, fully respond to the humanitarian sentiments of their parents, constituting a happy family united in life's purposes and ambitions.

The New York Evening Post of September, 1875, gives the following of one of Rhode Island's brave women, but the State has not as yet, thought it worth while to honor her in any fitting manner:

Yesterday noon Miss Ida Lewis again distinguished herself by rescuing a man who was in danger of drowning in the lower Newport harbor. Miss Lewis first came into prominence in 1866, when she saved the life of a soldier who had set out for a sail in a light skiff. It was one of the coldest and most blustering days ever known in this latitude, yet a girl but 25 years old, impelled by the noblest spirit of humanity, ventured to the assistance of a man who had brought himself into a sorry plight through sheer fool-hardiness. One day, during the autumn