Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/20

14 Hence it is that the women of Oregon, inheriting the best attained by the womanhood of time, possessing this beautiful home and standing on the threshold to greet the incoming civilization,—are facing a new opportunity that in magnitude, in possibilities, exceeds any before placed in the keeping of a company of women.

Language is inadequate to express crises in history; words are weak to reveal a supreme moment in the development of a noble epic. And so now how shall I utter the thoughts that arise as I try to define this crisis, this supreme historical moment?

What peculiar responsibility is given into the keeping of the women of our day and region? It is this: It is an opportunity to aid in establishing standards of social character and attainment in the making of a great State from its infancy to its maturity. A woman in Massachusetts or Ohio to-day touches a fractional part of State history; a woman in Oregon to-day is herself part of a transfiguration. Whenever in history has there been so rapid and so vast a growth as will take place in the Northwest in the next fifty years? A seer standing on our Pacific shores, looking into the faces of our Western children, might well prophesy:

A civilization now in its beginnings will pass through youth to middle age in a lifetime and the young men and women about us will guide it to its maturity. No ruins are here. The work is one of construction. It is a responsibility to tear down errors of the past and to put in their places new ideals. It is a greater responsibility to hold