rifle brought to their scant tables; they lying in cemeteries now, would give you benediction.

For love of Rebecca Cromwell Rouse, founder of women's work here, forming in 1830 and sustaining the Ladies' Union Prayer Meeting, then the Noah Society, in the name of the Female Reform Company, Mrs. Samuel E. Williamson, secretary; and of the Martha Washington and Dorcas, from which, assisted by Mrs. Stillman, came our earliest charity, the Cleveland Protestant Orphan Asylum; all these would express gladness at sight of you. One representative of the Martha Washington and Dorcas remains with us-Mrs. J. A. Harris, whose heart swells with joy to see this Centennial day!

From the bosom of the Soldiers' Aid Society of Northern Ohio, centering in Cleveland, I bid you welcome, they who took unwearied charge of the boys in blue-dying to make men free- those care worn women, Mrs. Rouse, Mary Clark Maynard, Ellen Terry Johnson, Sarah Mahan, Susan Melhinch, Mrs. Peter Thatcher, and their associates. Of these, Ellen Terry Johnson survives to send you personal greeting from Hartford, Conn., and Mrs. Thatcher is on this platform.

On behalf of the great organizations which came afterward-the Women's Christian Association, and Sarah Fitch, whose name is a household word; of the bands of holy women of the temperance crusade, who thought it all joy to go even into the saloons to save the lost-of these, Jennie Duty has but lately passed into the skies, and Mrs. M. C. Worthington yet lives at more than three-score and ten to bless the city by her beneficence.

The noble thousands of women in educational work; the grand givers of a hundred years, who have made the highest culture possible for us - Flora Stone Mather, Eliza Clark, and other true-hearted women, the scores of bright, intellectual members of latter day clubs-all of them would gladly take you by the hand.

With the voice of thousands upon thousands of our number who labor in shops, stores, offices and factories-yes, all the working girls and wage-earners who would gladly sit with you in these chairs w we bless your coming.

Our Executive Board of the Woman's Department of the Cleveland Commission, representative as they are in art, literature and philanthropy, some of them striving for the Centennial because they are children of the pioneers - the women of the churches, loyal to Him whom we serve-these singers and players upon instrumentsthe grand Banquet Committee, who have prepared a splendid "feast of reason and flow of soul in the Grays' Armory this evening - women of all nationalities, everywhere throughout this great city-give you the freedom of Cleveland on these our festal days, the threshold of a new century!

Mrs. A. A. F. Johnston, dean of the Womans' Department of Oberlin College, responded as follows:

Mrs. President:

In behalf of the women of the Western Reserve I wish to thank you, and through you the women of Cleveland, for the invitation that has opened to us this festal occasion. I wish also to thank you for the hearty and gracious welcome with which you greet us. It is fitting that we meet together on this memorable day that emphasizes a century of growth and progress, for the relations existing between your beautiful city and the favored region known as the Western Reserve have always been intimate and vital. Cleveland might well be called the capital of the Western Reserve. Here in your growing city the early settler found a steady and open market for his farm product. Here also he supplied himself with agricultural implements and household

necessities.

Not all the thought of the early settlers was spent upon the clearing of farms and the building of homes. They understood very well that individual prosperity is based upon public prosperity. They laid carefully and well the lines that made for public good. They organized township government, built churches and established schools. And in all this early work, which had in it the promise of our present progress, the women of the Western Reserve stood by the side of their noble husbands. You, Mrs. President, have welcomed us to-day in the name of the first woman that settled in Cleveland, in the name of the long line of women that have helped to make your city illustrious. I respond in the name of these heroic women, who, leaving their New England homes of comfort and luxury, faced the weariness and dangers of a long journey and the hardships and privations of frontier life. I doubt if any burden seemed more grievous to them than the loneliness of their isolated homes. But they never murmured. They had the strength and courage that comes from strong con

victions. They believed they were called to such a time as this. The history of their lives never has been written. Like most heroic living, it never can be written. But on days like, this we reach back through sympathy and feel the inspiration of their lives.

I respond also in the name of the oldest daughters of the Reserve, some of whom are with us to-day. Their memory goes back to the log house, with its glowing hearth and hospitable latchstring that was always out. They remember, too, the little brown schoolhouse on the hillside. They may not have had all the appliances of the modern schools, but one thing may be said in favor of that primitive schoolhouse: individuality was left to the child, and room was given him in which to grow, and the Fairchilds, the Wades, the Garfields and the Algers, who thumbed Webster's spelling book and Adams' arithınetic, were found later in life able to carry the burdens of society and state gracefully and well.

It would be interesting, if there were time, to trace how many of the movements which have been made for the civilization of our State and our Republic had their beginning on the Western Reserve. Take, as an example, education. The first teachers' institute in our State was held on the Western Reserve; the first normal school, so far as I can find. in the United States was opened at Kirtland. It is true that Columbus had the first graded school, but to accomplish that work she sent to the Western Reserve for Dr. Asa D. Lord, then principal of the Western Reserve Seminary, a normal school at Kirtland. The schools of Columbus, as graded by Dr. Lord, were an object lesson for all the West. And through this movement a tremendous impulse was given to the efficiency of our public school system. This work accomplished. Dr. Lord was made superintendent of our State Institution for the Blind, which he soon raised to the first rank among our benevolent institutions. His last great work was as superintendent of the institution for the blind at Batavia, N. Y. And here I am reminded, if I wished an example in proof of my statement, that the women of the Western Reserve co-operated with their husbands, among the thousands of examples that might be cited, I could find none more worthy than Mrs. Lord.

Mrs. Lord has taught more blind children than any man or woman, and when, upon their leaving school she has urged them to habits of economy and thrift, she has found them too timid to invest their small savings in a public bank, but they were only too thankful to entrust note, knowing that the interest would always be

We hear much in these days of the higher education of women. A few weeks ago I attended in your city the annual meeting of the Ohio branch of the College Alumnæ Association. There were present representatives from Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, Cornell, Oberlin, Ann Arbor and Wisconsin University, all rejoicing in degrees which we carried with inherited assurance. Degrees from grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and possibly degrees that came over in the Mayflower, and still so late as 1840 there was not a woman in the world who held a degree earned through a college course. It was a little college on the Western Reserve, at that time shaded by the primeval forests, that first honored itself by opening its doors to women. The world scoffed, but the example spread, and to-day the college that will not confer a degree upon woman is an exception, and must give good reasons to an exacting public.

A few days ago the Prince of Wales, as regent, opened a new college in Wales. In the dedicatory exercises he announced "that this college shall be opened to men and women alike. All the privileges granted to one shall be granted to the other, and both men and women shall be found upon its executive board." To emphasize his statement he conferred two honorary degrees, one of Doctor of Music upon the Princess of

Wales, the other, Doctor of Laws, upon Mr. Gladstone. I doubt if the Prince of Wales knew that the liberality of the new college was the culmination of the movement begun upon the Western Reserve. It is said that "Westward the star of empire makes its way." In this event we have proof that the empire of thought may move eastward.

Mrs. President, I know that vain glorying is foolish, but it is not foolish to count one's mercies, and he who is born upon the Western Reserve, educated upon the Western Reserve, and is so fortunate as to find his life's work upon the Western Reserve, may rightfully feel that heaven smiles upon him and that the lines have fallen to him in pleasant places.

At 10 o'clock a number of brief papers under the general head of "Philanthropy" were read, Mrs. D. P. Eells presiding. The first of these was by Mrs. F. A. Arter, on the Young Women's Christian Association. She spoke of the separate work of all the institutions under the control of the parent organization, and outlined in brief the history of the organization, from the time of its inception as the Women's Christian Association past the comparatively recent date at which the organization separated into the Young Women's Christian Association and the Day Nursery and Free Kindergarten Association, to the present. The work of the Retreat, the Eliza Jennings Home, the Boarding Home, and the Home for Aged Women, as well as the work at the headquarters of the organization and about the city, was fully set forth. Mrs. Arter, in conclusion, expressed the hope that the work of the noble pioneer women might be well carried on by their

successors.

Mrs. Arter said the Boarding Home was established in 1869, the Home for Aged Women in 1876, the Eliza Jennings Home in 1887, and the Retreat in 1872. In the last named institution 1,500 young women were known to have been converted and saved. Miss Sarah Fitch wanted an endowment for the institution, and as the outcome of this wish on her part, the money for the Fitch memorial was being solicited and was partly raised. In 1882 the Women's Christian Association received the Day Nursery and Kindergarten Association and in 1886 the Educational and Industrial Union. In 1893 the Day Nursery and Kindergarten Association went into a separate organization, and the Educational and Industrial Union formed a closer connection with the parent organization as the Young Women's Christian Association. The report spoke of the good quarters now occupied by the association, recounted the fact that the association employed a woman with a badge to visit depots and direct arriving young women to respectable lodgings. Mrs. Arter spoke also of the classes in bookkeeping, music, French, German, and cooking. The visitor of the association made in one year 196 visits, by which she reached 2,386 young women, inviting them to the classes and entertainments of the institution. The association has a library of 500 volumes, and reading rooms; gives a lunch to business women, and maintains an employment bureau and business agency. It has an enrolled membership of 1,100.

Mrs. L. A. Russell presented a sketch of the Circle of Mercy, as follows:

The Circle of Mercy is one of the youngest organizations represented here to-day. In February, 1892, it began its work with five members. In June of that year its mem