"To the student of history, or to him who can read the signs of the times, there was such a profound significance in this occasion as makes one shrink from dwelling too much upon the external details. Yet as a pageant only it was a most inspiring sight, and one truly worthy of a queen. Indeed as we run the mind back over the pages of history, what queen came to a more triumphant throne in the hearts of a grateful people? What woman ever before sat silver-crowned, canopied with flowers, surrounded not by servile followers but by men and women who brought to her court the grandest service they had wrought, their best thought crystallized in speech and song. Greater than any triumphal procession that ever marked a royal passage through a kingdom was it to know that in a score or more of cities, in many a village church on that same night festive fires were lighted, and the throng kept holiday, bringing for tribute not gold and gems but noblest aspirations, truest gratitude, and highest ideals for the nation and the race.
"The great meeting was but one link in a chain; yet with its thousands of welcoming faces, with its eloquence of words, with its offering of sweetest song from the children of a race that once was bound but now is free, with its pictured glimpses of the old time and the new flashing out upon the night, with the home voices offering welcome and gratitude and love, with numberless greetings, from the great, true, brave souls of many lands, it was indeed a wonderful tribute, worthy of the great warm heart of a nation that offered it, and worthy of the woman so revered.
"It seemed fitting that Mme. Antoinette Sterling, who, twenty years ago, took her wonderful voice away to England, where it won for her a unique place in the hearts of the nation, should, on returning to her country, give her first service to the womanhood of her native land. 'I am coming a week earlier,' so she had written, 'that my first work in my own beloved America may be done for women. I am coming as a woman and not as an artist, and because I so glory in that which the women of my country have achieved.'
So when she sang out of her heart, 'O rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him!' no marvel that it seemed to lift all listening hearts to a recognition of the divine secret and source of power for all work.
"One charming feature of the entertainment was a series of pictures called 'Then and Now,' each illustrating the change in woman's condition during the last fifty years. And after this, upon the dimness there shone out, one after another, the names of noble women like Mary Lyon, Maria Mitchell, Emma Willard, and many others who have passed away. Upon the shadows and the silence broke Mme. Sterling's voice in Tennyson's 'Crossing the Bar.' And when this was over, as with one voice, the whole audience sang softly 'Auld Lang Syne.'
"And last but not least should be mentioned the greetings that poured in a shower of telegrams and letters from every section of the country, and many from over the sea. These expressions, not only of personal congratulation for Mrs. Stanton, but utterances of gladness for the progress in woman's life and thought, for the conditions, already so much better than in the past, and for the hope for the future, would make of themselves a most interesting and wonderful chapter. Among them may be mentioned letters from Lord and Lady Aberdeen, from Lady Henry Somerset and Frances E. Willard, from Canon Wilberforce, and many others, including an address from thirty members of the family of John Bright, headed by his brother, the Right Honorable Jacob Bright; a beautifully engrossed address, on parchment, from the National Woman Suffrage Society of Scotland, an address from the London Women's Franchise League, and a cablegram from the Bristol Women's Liberal Association; a letter from the Women's Rights Society of Finland, signed by its president, Baroness Gripenberg of Helsingfors; telegrams from the California Suffrage Pioneers; and others from the Chicago Woman's Club, from the Toledo and Ohio Woman's Suffrage Society, from the son of the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing, and a telegram and letter from citizens and societies of Seneca Falls, New York, accompanied with flowers and many handsome pieces of silver from the different societies. There were also letters from the Hon. Oscar S. Strauss, ex-minister to Turkey, Miss Ellen Terry, and scores of others. An address was received from the Women's Association of Utah, accompanied by a beautiful onyx and silver ballot box; and from the Shaker women of Mount Lebanon came an ode; a solid silver loving cup from the New York City Suffrage League, presented on the platform with a few appropriate words by its President, Mrs. Devereux Blake.
"Hundreds of organizations and societies, both in this country and abroad, wished to have their names placed on record as in sympathy with the movement.
