There is no time to tell all the strong words this woman said, because it must be told that Mrs. Beecher Hooker tried to speak and failed. Alas! for the Beechers. She said that Christ had come to deliver woman. She had entered into this movement because undefiled, pure religion was to be found there, I assure you. Few of us know the burden which Christianity brings. Let us take hold and work together. At this moment she said so many earnest faces gazing at her made it impossible to go on, and she withdrew her beautiful face, suffused with the pure Beecher blood, the sweetest picture the family has had the honor to present for many days.
Miss Olympia Brown came to the rescue. It was like shifting a panorama; Olympia is beyond criticism in some respects. Her face glows with enthusiasm; she talks because she is in earnest, and not for effect. She was followed by Miss Couzins, who could not be compared with Olympia, and yet the former won the applause. But men’s boots were heard in the uproar. Phœbe is pretty, and the rest followed. The hall was crowded with the best and strongest audience that ever greeted the woman suffrage movement in Washington.
THE LADIES PLEAD THEIR CAUSE AT THE CAPITOL.
At a proper fashionable hour this morning the women delegates began slowly to gather in the moderately sized room occupied by the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. Last of all came the most prominent delegates. Mrs. Stanton went to a side table and laid down her dainty little bonnet and shook out her curls. Then she took her seat at the head of the table. Susan B. stood next, then Mrs. Beecher Hooker, Pauline Davis, Josephine Griffing, Phœbe Couzins and Mrs. Wright. The usual buzz of conversation was carried on whisperingly, for the dignity of the Senate chamber extended to that floor. The small audience was of the most exclusive and aristocratic kind. The factory girl had been sent off North early in the morning, lest her roar should alarm the Congressional doves. In the awful stillness might have been seen wall flowers, to whose fragrance a whole nation can testify. Grace Greenwood was there, in a lovely winter costume; but there is no time to describe the attractive beauties of the scene.