Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/22



America is changing beneath our eyes. Yesterday's books of impressionalistic views concerning her are antiquated; descriptions of ten years ago are hopelessly out of date; between the writing of a book descriptive of America's national psychology and its publication half the conclusions should be changed. The only way, therefore, to really interpret America is through a study of the biographies of those who have lived and wrought and made America what she is.

From the biographies of America's strenuous sons the world would seem to conceive of America as a nation definitely organized for one purpose, straining every nerve and sinew to attain that end, until "business," the foreign critic tells us, is the all-absorbing interest, by the side of which nothing else counts at all. But, interwoven with the history of this nation joyously set out on the commercial conquest of the world, is the life of America's splendid womanhood—not always as the foreign eulogist would extol her for her physical superiority—but the American womanhood working in peace and quietness whether through the fierce energy of the pioneer mother or, later in our history, supplementing now by the subtlety of nature and now by gift of grace, man's material or martial labor for the country's welfare. In speaking of the higher existence above our industrial energy some one has said, "in America the women alone live," and certainly no better vision