essentially unlike in race and to a great extent unlike in character, not, however, unlike in sex, as in this instance, and puts them into comparison one with the other. I advise the younger members of the Free Religious Association to consider carefully the likeness and the contrast between these two founders of the Association, they certainly held that position far more than I did, and they continued to occupy it. They were not so afraid of a new sect, I suppose, as I was, and they were present at most of the meetings. They held various offices and continued to serve until the end.

Now consider these cases. Their names are known all over the world, I suppose the name of Mrs. Howe, as it happens, more widely than Colonel Higginson's, because she visited other parts of the world more than he did. Then, she had the distinction not only of being born in a community essentially unlike this Boston community in some of its social characteristics, but she had adopted before she heard of it that excellent maxim of Emerson's, "Hitch your wagon to a star." So she united her vehicle, which was rather of the winged description, to the starry chariot of Dr. Howe. That was a distinction and an advantage to Mrs. Howe, because it connected her with a person equally renowned and I suppose in fact Dr. Howe may hereafter be found to surpass the renown even of his wife, because he did those things that nobody else did.

If you want to be distinguished I will give you this advice: Do something important for mankind that nobody else did, and that very few persons ever thought of. You will then succeed. [Laughter.] That was precisely what Howe did, and the renown which attached to him naturally attached to all those persons connected with him. Mrs. Howe, apart from her own culture and her own graces, when she first visited the countries of Europe, had the great advantage of being associated with Dr. Howe. But she had a character of her own, a genius of her own, which proceeded to develop itself entirely apart from any connection she might have formed by race or by religion, or by any other ties such as affect humanity.

Colonel Higginson was of a distinctly different race. Many persons have attempted to describe the New England Puritan. John Quincy Adams in his old age tried to describe the New England Yankee. He pointed out some of the traits, but he did not succeed in drawing the full picture, and I do not know that anybody has. But whatever the traits of the New England Puritan are or may be, you will find the roots of them in the early character and later history of Colonel Higginson. He could not escape, if he chose, from the influence of heredity and environment. These are two long words; they were not in existence in my boyhood, but I have learned them. [Laughter.] With that impulse towards freedom in all directions which Colonel Higginson had, and which he manifested from the time I first saw him, which is more than sixty years ago, a few years before I saw Mrs. Howe, - he continued to manifest these impulses towards freedom; but they were connected with a certain reticence. He never seemed to go quite so far as his rope would let him. He was always held back by something.

Now Mrs. Howe was held back, of course, by the customs of society, by a certain reserve native to women, which kept her always on the line of grace. She was ever moving forward, but always moving gracefully forward. Perhaps we might say the same of Colonel Higginson; he seldom got in advance of the procession, but he was always to be found in the working-ranks.

If we speak of their religious nature, I suppose we must admit, as we do with reference to women in general, that Mrs. Howe was by nature a more religious person than most men that I have ever had the good fortune or the bad fortune to look upon. She was naturally and essentially religious, as all mothers must be and she was very much a mother and a grandmother and a great-grandmother. Higginson had that intellectual religion which is perhaps as peculiar to us as any other New England trait. Religion is here, but it is so associated, so mingled, with the intellectual and reasoning faculty, that it is rather hard for a worshiper in the Orient, or a faithful Christian of the Eastern countries, to appreciate

it. What we regard as piety they regard as disaffection, and their devotion to the Infinite expresses itself in postures and in terms which would look very strange in New England.

Now, here were the advantages, here were the disadvantages, of these two persons. They moved side by side after they came together, which, I suppose, was about the time that Mrs. Howe returned from her first European trip in 1844; and they kept together pretty well through the rest of their lives. Of course Mrs. Howe, being the older and moving in a somewhat wider sphere, had more experiences, and expressed herself, I suppose, on rather more subjects, both publicly and privately, than did Colonel Higginson. But they had that amplitude of talent, and that extensive and delicate knowledge of language, which enabled them to say what they had to say, to be heard and to be understood, sometimes to be reproached for what they said and for what they did, wherever they appeared. They therefore escaped some of the great misfortunes of aged humanity. They retained the possession of their mental faculties, they retained the power of addressing and interesting their fellow creatures, and they retained and will hold, whatever defects or inconsistencies we may find in them hereafter, the respect of the persons and the devotion of friends who stood by them for the last sixty years. [Applause.]

PRESIDENT WENDTE.- Mr. Sanborn's remark about his fear of sects makes me think of one which a certain wellintentioned but ungrammatical woman made to Starr King many years ago. She went to him in a gush of enthusiasm and said, "Oh, Mr. King, I want to tell you how much we all feel ourselves obliged to you. I think you have done more to break down the partition wall between the sectses than any man that I know of." [Laughter.]

This afternoon we are going to break down once more these partition walls. I cannot think that any tribute to Mrs. Howe would be quite adequate unless a woman's voice should blend in it, and therefore I am going to ask one of her admirers and friends, Rev. Mrs. Florence Crooker, to add a word concerning Mrs. Howe. [Applause.]

REMARKS OF

REV. FLORENCE KOLLOCK CROOKER

Mr. President and Friends:

It gives me supreme pleasure to be present in this splendid assembly of men and women like unto her in thought and feeling and aspiration, and to pay my loving tribute to one to whom I and all other women are under such deep and lasting obligations.

Many of you will recall that splendid period in the life of Boston when, side by side with some of its greatest literary men, there was a group of equally distinguished women. am thinking of Ednah D. Cheney, of Lucy Stone, of Louisa M. Alcott, of the great-souled Mary A. Livermore, and of the centre of that brilliant galaxy, Julia Ward Howe. In that group of women there were distinguishing characteristics on the part of each which made us often feel that every one of those great souls heard the one clear call" and responded generously to it. We think of the books written. for the young and read by the old. We think of the form of "passive resistance" exemplified by another. We think of still another who long, long ago went out as a brave young college woman from Oberlin - Lucy Stone with a package of "tacts" in one pocket and a roll of announcements in the other and placed them here and there in preparation for her plea for the political equality of womanhood. We remember with gratitude that broad-minded reformer and ardent. philanthropist, America's greatest woman orator, nay, more than this: the greatest woman orator of all the world, I

claim, Mary A. Livermore. Both of these latter were women of exceptionally broad sympathies, but in the main each followed the one clear call.

When, however, we come to the wonderful woman of whom we are thinking this afternoon, we seem to find centred in her the genius, the humanity, and the gifts of all these others combined. So varied were her gifts, so broad her sympathies, that it was impossible for her to limit herself to any one line of work or thought. During her literary career Boston had its Emerson and its Lowell, its Whittier and its Longfellow, and they were proud to welcome the young poetess to their number. The reformer sought her aid, and the American slave, and later the Greek and the Armenian had her sympathy and her co-operation. There was not a cry of distress in all the length and breadth of this broad land, or of any land, to which her sympathetic heart did not respond; and, seizing her pen and lifting up her beautiful voice, she sent forth her eloquent encouragement and her words of wise counsel.

As a woman I have thought how like she was to the old, old leader who for forty years led his people through the wilderness and over the sands of the desert, teaching them the way to the larger life which should be theirs, and then, with the promised land in view, folded his arms and went away. I have thought that we too had a Moses we women of America in Mrs. Howe. We had in her a leader who, for fifty years, kept her seal of approval upon every reform, every movement that tended to the enlargement of woman's life. And in these varied activities she found the enrichment of her life, and, better than all else, the wider usefulness of her life. She has led the world on and on for half a century, and it is not strange that within the last ten years women have made a marvelous stride forward in everything that tends to the enlargement and the betterment of womanhood. Our Moses! God bless and sanctify her memory! [Applause.]