Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/483

446 to manage all the financial and administrative affairs of the National Society, with a clear head and a firm hand, yet undoubtedly the most distinctive thing about her administration has been her own personality—that subtle combination of the patrician and the idealist, which has enabled her to infuse into the organization so much of her own spirit of refinement, strength and moral fervor.

In nearly all of her speeches, she somewhere and somehow manages to strike the same clear and fearless note of noble aspiration, high purpose, fearless independence and invincible resolve. In her address at the opening session of the nineteenth Continental Congress occurs the following passage which is a fair sample of her literary style and of her conception of the mission of the "Daughters."

"The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution had its genesis in the sentiment of 'noblesse oblige.' It is our proud title to distinction that we trace our ancestry back, not to forbears distinguished for the arrogance of wealth, or the supercilious vanity that is based upon a supposed aristocratic blueness in our blood—but one and all of us trace our lineage back to faithful men and women whose splendid distinction it was to have served their country in their time, at the sacrifice of all that was most precious from the material standpoint of life. Ours is an aristocracy of service. It is no light responsibility to have become, as we have undertaken to make ourselves, the ambassadors in this twentieth century, of the ruling spirits of the colonies of the last half of the eighteenth century—the time that tried men out and called them to cement with their blood a union of new-born states, setting up for the whole modern world, so startling a conception of political freedom, religious tolerance and social justice."

The Daughters of the American Revolution have since their inception, some twenty-two years ago, selected worthy and