Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/485

448 enterprises. The result will be that the society will be saved a considerable amount annually which is to go into the treasury to take up the notes due on the Memorial Hall.

This Valhalla is in an especial way dear to Mrs. Scott, as her sister, Mrs. Adlai Stevenson, who was second and fourth president-general of the Daughters, was the first to crystallize the endeavor to collect funds for its erection. It is unique among the magnificient halls which the national Capital or the country at large possesses. It is the largest and most costly monument ever erected by women in this land or any other, in this era or any past one. It is besides, the first grand monument erected to all heroes who helped to gain American independence, men and women alike. The insignia of the society, the distaff, is pregnant with memories of the noble women who were the ancestresses of those who from the motives of purest patriotism erected the noble memorial. The history and achievements of the Daughters of the American Revolution are written in this hall in letters of bronze and marble. It is a Corinthian temple built of white Vermont marble with a wonderful colonnade, thirteen majestic pillars, typical of the thirteen states which formed the first American union and given by the Daughters from each of these historic commonwealths. Magnificent among the stately buildings which are its near neighbors, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Bureau of American Republics, the Memorial Continental Hall is an achievement of which every woman in the land may be proud, because it is the result of the conservation of the vital forces obtainable when worthy women are leagued together.

The interior of the hall has been the object of loving solicitude from the day the foundation stone was laid. It is a rare combination of delicate and graceful symmetry combined with every practical consideration. Over each door and in the ornamental niches may be seen busts of heroes, gifts of states,