-'/"' 
 
 
 W*f 3m- 
 
 H)*-/^ifT; 

 
 BRI LLI ANTS 
 
 FROM 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD.
 
 FRANCES 
 
 WILLARD 
 
 Born. 1839 Died, 1898 
 
 RILLIANTS 
 
 Selected from 
 the Writings of 
 
 FR A N CES 
 
 E. Ng N 
 
 WILLARD 
 
 By ALICE L. WILLIAMS 
 
 H. M. CALDWELL CO. 
 
 New York (Si Boston
 
 Copyright, 1893 
 BY SAMUEL E. CASSINO
 
 BRILLIANTS 
 
 FROM 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 WE have no more need to be afraid of the 
 step just ahead of us than \ve have to be 
 afraid of the one just behind us. 
 
 * * * 
 
 God accounts nothing slight that brings a 
 tear to any eye. a stinging flash to any cheek, 
 or a chill to the heart of any creature He has 
 thought fit to make and to endow with body, 
 
 brain, and soul. 
 
 * * * 
 
 If it be true that we have need to say, 
 " God help us when we think ourselves 
 ii 
 
 1624546
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 strong," I believe that the opposite is 
 equally true ; nay, that \ve need Him most 
 when most distrusting our own capabilities. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The new movement for the study of the 
 Bible, as the finest of English classics, intro- 
 ducing it into colleges and seminaries of 
 the highest grade, is full of possibilities for 
 Christian progress and development. The 
 marvel is that Christian scholars should ever 
 have permitted the heathen classics to out- 
 rank the psalms of David, the visions of 
 Isaiah, and the wonderful philosophy of the 
 four Gospels. But something else needs to 
 be done on the same line, and must become 
 universal before we can fairly call ourselves 
 other than a practically pagan republic. 
 This is the teaching of those principles of 
 ethics that are found in the Scriptures and 
 questioned by no sane mind, whether Jew or 
 Gentile, Catholic or Protestant. No general 
 movement toward making our great public 
 school system an ethical system has yet been 
 inaugurated, except by the Woman's Chris- 
 12
 
 FRANCES E. IVILLAKD. 
 
 tian Temperance Union ; and this kingdom 
 of heaven has come to the children of the 
 land, as its wont is, "not by observation," 
 but so quietly that our people hardly know 
 the good thing that has happened to them. 
 
 The effort of good women everywhere 
 should be to secure the introduction of a 
 text-book of right living one that should 
 teach the reasons for the social code of good 
 manners, every particular of which is based 
 on the Golden Rule, and those refinements 
 of behavior which involve the utmost kind- 
 ness to the animal creation, including the 
 organization of Hands of Mercy in all our 
 public schools. 
 
 All this is sure to come, and that right 
 speedily, as a consequence of the awakened 
 interest of women everywhere in the subject 
 of education, and their increasing power 
 along these lines. The time will come 
 when it will be told as a relic of our primitive 
 barbarism that children were taught the list 
 of prepositions and the names of the rivers of 
 Thibet, but were not taught the wonderful 
 13
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 laws on which their own bodily happiness is 
 based, and the humanities by which they 
 could live in peace and good-will with those 
 about them. 
 
 The time will come when, whatever we do 
 not teach, we shall teach ethics as the founda- 
 tion of every form of culture, and the " faith 
 that makes faithful -1 in every relation of life 
 will become a thing of knowledge to the 
 child of the then truly Christian republic. 
 For we can never teach these things and 
 leave out Christ as the central figure, and 
 His philosophy as the central fact of our 
 system of education. At the same time our 
 teaching must be as far removed from any- 
 thing sectarian or involving the statement of 
 a creed, as the North Star is from the 
 Southern Cross. There will be no trouble 
 in those days about opening school with 
 such extracts from the Bible as have been 
 agreed upon by men and women of all faiths, 
 and the repetition of the Lord's Prayer with 
 its universal benignities will be a matter of 
 course. It is for the Woman's Christian
 
 Temperance Union to work on quietly to 
 this end, without haste, without rest. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Woman, like man. should be freely per- 
 mitted to do whatever she can do well. 
 
 * * * 
 
 What the world most needs is mothering, 
 and most of all in the spirit's natural home, 
 the church, and on the Sabbath day. It 
 needs the tender sweetness of the alto voice, 
 the jubilant good-will of the soprano, in ser- 
 mon as in psalm ; tenor and bass become 
 monotonous at last, and the full diapason of 
 power and inspiration is impossible except 
 we listen to the full chorus of humanity. God 
 hasten that great chorus, in church and state 
 alike, with its deep-hearted love and its 
 
 celestial hope ! 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is not uncharitable to judge an act as 
 
 good or bad, but we should be very slow to 
 
 judge the actor bad. Only by rising to the 
 
 sublime sense of our sacred sisterhood with 
 
 '5
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 every woman tliat breathes, be she good or 
 bad, foreign or native, bond or free, shall we 
 find our individual pettiness covered and 
 flooded out of sight by the most inexorable 
 force of all the universe, the force of Love. 
 
 If I could have my wish for all of us, it 
 would be that in our measure we might merit 
 what was said of that seraphic woman, 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It is an ideal 
 that we shall all delight to share : 
 
 " Persons were never her theme, unless 
 public characters were under discussion, or 
 friends were to be praised, which kind office 
 she frequently took upon herself. One never 
 dreamed of frivolities in her presence, and 
 gossip felt itself out of place. Books and 
 humanity, great deeds, and, above all, 
 politics, which include all the grand questions 
 of the day, were foremost in her thoughts, 
 and, therefore, oftenest on her lips. I speak 
 not of religion, for with her everything was 
 religion. Her Christianity was not confined 
 to the church and rubric ; it meant civiliza- 
 tion." 
 
 16
 
 FKAXCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 Envy and jealousy light the intensest fires * 
 that ever burn in human hearts; gossip and 
 scandal are the smoke emitted by them. If, 
 as has been said, these passions could, like 
 some modern chimneys, be consumers of 
 their own smoke, a purer and a better atmos- 
 phere would then prevail. 
 
 In all the battle of opinion that rages, and 
 must rage until a better equilibrium is reached 
 in this great nation, be it ours, beloved 
 sisters, to remember that " When either side 
 grows warm in argument, the wiser man 
 gives over first." 
 
 Good-breeding has been called " the 
 apotheosis of self-restraint." But the higher 
 evolution is not to need restraining, but to 
 have that inward quietness which, when God 
 giveth it, " who then can make trouble?" 
 All strife in manner, word, and deed, grows 
 out of worldliness ; and to this there is but 
 just one antidote, and that is Other Worldli- 
 ness. 
 
 One look into the silent heavens, and all 
 our earthy jargons seem unworthy ; one 
 17
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 deep tone of the forest's mystical /Eolian, 
 and our deeper hearts respond in tenderness ; 
 one solemn strain out of the sea's unutterable 
 anthem, and the soul hears in it that 
 "something greater" that speaks to the 
 heart alone. 
 
 All true souls know that this is true. 
 " Let my soul calm itself, O God, in Thee" 
 sings the stoimy spirit of St. Augustine. 
 ' Live without father and mother, but not 
 without God,"' cries Count Tolstoi from 
 Russia, that centre of the world's unrest. 
 
 " We should fill the hours with the sweetest 
 things, 
 
 If we had but a day. 
 We should drink alone at the purest springs, 
 
 In our upward way. 
 
 We should love with a lifetime's love in an 
 hour, 
 
 If the hours were but few," 
 
 are the sweet lines of our own Mary Lowe 
 Dickinson. 
 
 And these are the words of a great but 
 18
 
 FKAXCI'.S /-:. WJLLARD. 
 
 unnamed saint: " The strongest Christians 
 are those who, from daily habit, hasten with 
 everything to God." 1 
 
 Our Woman's Christian Temperance 
 Union is a school, not founded in that 
 thought, or for that purpose, but sure to 
 fit us for the sacred duties of patriots in 
 the realm that lies just beyond the horizon 
 of the coming century. 
 
 Here we try our wings, that yonder our 
 flight may be strong and steady. Here we 
 prove our capacity for great deeds ; there we 
 shall perform them. Here we make our 
 experience and pass our novitiate, that yonder 
 we may calmly take our places and prove to 
 the world that what it needed most was 
 " two heads in counsel," as well as " two 
 beside the hearth." When that day comes, 
 the nation shall no longer miss, as now, the 
 influence of half its wisdom, more than half 
 its purity, and nearly all its gentleness, in 
 courts of justice and halls of legislation. 
 19
 
 HKILLIAXTS FROM 
 
 Then shall one code of morals and that 
 the highest govern both men and women ; 
 
 O *^ 
 
 then shall the Sabbath be respected, the 
 rights of the poor be recognized, the liquor 
 traffic banished, and the home protected 
 from all its foes. 
 
 Born of such a visitation of God's Spirit as 
 the world has not known since tongues of 
 fire sat upon the wondering group at Pente- 
 cost, cradled in a faith high as the hope of a 
 saint, and deep as the depths of a drunkard's 
 despair, and baptized in the beauty of 
 holiness, the Crusade determined the ulti- 
 mate goal of its teachable child, the Woman's 
 Christian Temperance Union, which has one 
 steadfast aim, and that none other than the 
 regnancy of Christ, not in form, but in fact; 
 not in substance, but in essence ; not eccle- 
 siastically, but truly in the hearts of men. 
 To this end its methods are varied, changing, 
 manifold : but its unwavering faith these 
 words express: "Not by might, nor by 
 power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts." 
 
 20
 
 s 
 
 A little boy came to his father and laid his 
 hand upon his knee, looking up wistfully. 
 " Do you want a penny, child?" The sweet 
 face glowed, and the answer came, " No, 
 papa: only you." So it is with the child of 
 (iod: he does not want the good things of 
 the world one-millionth part so much as he 
 wants to know his Father's love. This is a 
 true test for each of us, and by it we may 
 know whether we are really in the faith. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Let me give you the sweet words my 
 mother used to speak as the talismanic charm 
 to still my turbulent spirit in girlhood days : 
 "Hath any wronged thee? Be bravely re-' 
 venged. Slight it, and the work's begun. 
 Forgive it, and 'tis finished." 
 
 * * * 
 
 Let me give you also De Tocqueville's 
 words for a motto : " Life is neither a pleas- 
 ure nor a pain. It is serious business, to be 
 entered on with courage and in a spirit of 
 self-sacrifice." 
 
 21
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 Crossing the ocean once our captain said, 
 " There is an iceberg somewhere near. I 
 know it by the mercury's falling and many 
 other indications." We had no inkling of it ; 
 but he tacked the ship always with the ice- 
 berg in mind, though not in view. At last 
 the sun came out, the fog dispersed, and we 
 saw the spectral invader from the Arctic seas 
 gleaming, savage, portentous. The captain 
 told us what its fate would be. It would 
 soon enter the Gulf Stream, and, faring on, 
 would be invisibly honeycombed through and 
 through, though still making a formidable 
 appearance above the water-line. But it 
 would grow gradually less, and at last in a 
 whirling motion would disappear in a vortex 
 of its creation. Since then it has come to 
 me many times that from the Arctic seas of 
 unwritten ages, when victorious warriors made 
 themselves drunk, using the skulls of the 
 vanquished as their goblets, the liquor traffic 
 has been moving down upon us, not less cold, 
 stern, and deathlike than the iceberg that I 
 saw. But out of sight beneath the water-
 
 FA'A<VCF.S E. IVfLLARD 
 
 line, it is honeycombed already, for there is 
 a Gulf Stream in history that carries summer 
 to every shore it visits. It sets from the 
 warm heart of Christ ; it flows from the 
 Bible's open page ; and by its mild and steady 
 power this whitened monster of a savage age 
 has become disintegrated far more deeply 
 than we think. It is even now tottering to 
 its fall, and shall ere many generations dis- 
 appear under the steady resistless stream of 
 love toward God and love to man caused by 
 the gospel's rising wave on every island on 
 every coast. 
 
 Our strongest foundation in the temperance 
 reform is the training of the people to know 
 the sacredness of that " thus saith science'' 
 which is but an echo of the Bible's " thus 
 saith the Lord.'' Be it our happy task always 
 with voice and pen to applaud every scientific 
 discovery, to appreciate every scientific mind, 
 to welcome as friends all those who are in- 
 vestigating nature, for each and every one of 
 them, whether he knows it or not, is a servant 
 23
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 of the Most High, and a pioneer who has 
 struck out into the forest of ignorance and 
 superstition to blaze the trees that the great 
 army of mankind may march along the 
 broader and the safer path. The two guard- 
 ian angels of humanity are Science and Faith. 
 
 " They dwell apart, that radiant pair, 
 
 In different garbs appear, 
 And while the voice of man they share, 
 Have separate altars here 
 
 A golden lamp the one displays, 
 
 A light still clear and keen ; 
 The other walks 'neath starry rays, 
 
 With sometimes clouds between. 
 
 The voice of one enjoins the wise 
 To pause and wait and prove ; 
 
 The other lifts expectant eyes, 
 And only murmurs Love. 
 
 Both teachers of celestial birth, 
 
 To each be credence given ; 
 To Science that interprets earth, 
 
 To Faith the seer of heaven." 
 24
 
 FRANCES E. IVfLLAKD. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, who is to our century 
 what Francis Bacon was to the sixteenth, 
 repudiates over and over again the charge of 
 materialism. He has recently said: "It is 
 impossible to give more emphatic denial or 
 to assign more conclusive proof than I have 
 repeatedly done in rebutting this charge. My 
 antagonists must continue to vilify me as 
 they please. I cannot prevent it. Practi- 
 cally they say it is convenient to call you a 
 materialist, and you shall be a materialist 
 whether you like it or not." 
 
 Perhaps these are the strongest utterances 
 of 1891 against the flood tide of that crude 
 opinion that would rule out of the universe 
 the power behind all other powers whom we 
 call God. It should cause us to be thankful 
 and take courage that one whose intellect has 
 come nearer than almost any other to encir- 
 cling the mighty realm of thought thus far 
 attained by man, deems himself wounded 
 and slandered by the intimation that he has 
 not seen and felt the power of that endless 
 life from which all our lives have sprung. 
 25
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 Questions about our attitude toward differ- 
 ent creeds are often asked me, and I have no 
 answer better than the one that you perhaps 
 have noticed this year floating in the great 
 (iulf Stream of the daily press : " Our creed 
 is Jesus Christ. Any belief in Him the 
 smallest being assumed better than any 
 belief about Him the greatest or, for that 
 matter, about anything else." There are many 
 denominations, but the different branches 
 bear the self-same fruit ; they all draw life 
 from the same hidden root, which we seeking 
 
 it know as life. 
 
 * * * 
 
 These are days in which "the stars in 
 their courses fight against Sisera." The 
 progress of science revealing the rationale 
 of the irrepressible conflict between man and 
 alcohol ; the progress of invention, putting 
 the public more and more at the mercy of 
 men who handle ocean greyhounds and can- 
 non-ball express trains, telegraph keys, and 
 telephone transmitters, self-loading pistols 
 and self-unloading dynamite ; the progress of 
 '26
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 philanthropy, unsealing new fountains of good- 
 will in human hearts all these forces of God 
 work for us while we sleep, with a power 
 vastly more pervasive than any that we set 
 going when we wake. The slow, steady lift 
 of evolution, bearing every atom nearer to 
 the stars, carries on the crest of its measure- 
 less waves our sacred cause of a clear brain. 
 The widening wonder of Christ's gospel, 
 which to my mind includes all that is worthy 
 of mention in this world, whether wrought 
 out by hand or head or heart, is in itself the 
 central sun of temperance reform, of which 
 our work is but a bright adventurous ray. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The Knights of Labor have a glorious 
 motto: "That is the most perfect govern- 
 ment in which an injury to one is the concern 
 of all." That idea must be worked out into 
 custom and law, and we will help to do it ; but 
 that idea has sobriety and prohibition at its 
 
 There are two doors now open that I 
 27
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 would, had I the power, lock before sunset : 
 first, the mouth of the moderate drinker, 
 by enlarging his scientific knowledge and 
 mellowing his heart in wiser love to God 
 and man ; and next, the door that shuts every 
 brewery, distillery, and grog-shop. The key 
 that would do this is prohibition by law, pro- 
 hibition by politics, and prohibition by 
 woman's ballot may we soon grasp it in 
 our firm and steady hands ! We can do 
 this ; we propose to do it ; we will do it. 
 Well has it been said by that heroic leader, 
 Ellice Hopkins, of England, "I cannot" is 
 a lie on lips that say, I " believe in the Holy 
 Ghost." The king is the man that can, and 
 they are kings in character who, as the com- 
 bat deepens, still cry, "On, ye brave." 
 
 * * * 
 
 Understand this first, last, and always : 
 The world wants the best thing. It wants 
 
 your best. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Men explore continents because they are 
 physically strong, but by as much as a sun- 
 28 '
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 beam is more potent than a bar of iron or a 
 wedge of gold, is it greater to explore the 
 continent that lies environed by every brain 
 and breast, the wonderful land that we call 
 human nature, with its wild plains of passion, 
 and its well-tilled valleys of peace ; its 
 jungles of cruelty and its gardens of sweet- 
 ness ; its rough ore of purpose and its 
 finished gems of culture ; its gurgling brooks 
 of youth and its calm rivers of maturity; its 
 hills of talent and mountain peaks of char- 
 acter, touched with the snow of unsullied 
 purity and glorious with eternal sunshine 
 from God's presence, while, " poured 'round 
 all," is "old ocean's melancholy waste" of 
 impenetrable mystery. 
 
 Who would mould iron, or carve granite, 
 using the coarse and evanescent materials 
 of the outer world, when, within this magic 
 world of the undying soul, she might work 
 with her own sweet will, felling the forests of 
 prejudice, draining the marshes of ignorance, 
 mining the glittering gems of thought, and 
 quarrying the pure gold of affection? For 
 29
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 my part, I believe the steady head of the 
 world, when clarified from alcohol and nico- 
 tine, will perceive that its supreme achieve- 
 ments are in the continent of philanthropy, 
 in the fertile valleys of human nature, not in 
 the coarse mud-embankments and roaring 
 sluiceways of our present material civilization. 
 Then let us glorify the vocation of mother- 
 hood above all other, for the only Queen that 
 shall survive is the mother on her rocking- 
 chair throne, with a curly-headed subject 
 kneeling by her side, a soft hand on its pure 
 forehead, and its sweet voice saying, " Now I 
 lay me down to sleep." But that mother 
 must be regnant over all earthly powers, even 
 the divine one that dares invoke another 
 life ; she must be God ? s and her own, a free 
 woman to whom shall never come the annun- 
 ciation of her highest office and ministry save 
 from the deepest intuitions of her nature 
 responding to the voice of a love so pure that 
 it is patient and bides its time until the hand- 
 maid of the Lord shall say: "Be it unto 
 me even asthou wilt." 
 3
 
 /'A'.-LYCKS /:. WILLAKD. 
 
 I do not see any way out for this country, 
 which f.innot very well go back on its 
 position as to manhood suffrage except to 
 improve the quality of th^ voting by admitting 
 its intelligent women, and barring out the 
 ignorant women, thus putting a premium 
 upon knowledge and character as conditions 
 of the voter. It is my opinion that if matters 
 go on as they have done for the next ten or 
 twenty years, the best manhood of the land 
 will come to the women imploring them to 
 accept the franchise and deliver the country. 
 Last year half a million foreigners of the 
 baser sort immigrated hither. We cannot 
 indefinitely stand such a strain as that, and 
 in no way can we bring the American element 
 into our governmental life except by intro- 
 ducing the women. Such a test as I intimate 
 would bar out the ignorant colored woman 
 and foreigners, and place the balance of 
 power in the hands of the abler classes 
 mentally and morally among the men and 
 women of the republic. 
 
 This would be done in no spirit of un- 
 31
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 friendliness toward the classes debarred, but 
 only to give them the highest possible 
 motive for improving their minds namely, 
 the promise of participation in the govern- 
 ment and in order that when thus improved 
 we may have a decent government for their 
 participation and development. 
 
 I am proud to belong to the Universal 
 Peace Union and the Massachusetts Society 
 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and 
 to echo every word uttered by Frances Power 
 Cobbe, of England, and George T. Angell 
 of America, those brave defenders of the 
 gentle faith that " Nothing is inexorable but 
 love," and that we are 
 
 " Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.'' 
 
 My shepherd collie, " Prohibition "' (" Hib- 
 bie," for short, and " Hib," for shorter), is a 
 perpetual gospel to me, as he reaches out his 
 shaggy paw with a \\ise look in his eyes that 
 32
 
 FRANCES E. WHJ.ARH. 
 
 seem to say, " Have patience with me, and it 
 shall grow to be a hand.' 1 
 * * * 
 
 Life has but one problem to solve : how 
 self may be driven from the throne and love 
 placed there in its stead. Practically worked 
 out, this problem is to substitute for the old 
 motto, " Each for himself, and the Devil take 
 the hindmost," this truer one, " Each for the 
 other, that there may be no hindmost for the 
 Devil to take." 
 
 How shall life in its purpose and environ- 
 ment most completely lend itself to love? 
 All sincere reformers are to-day occupied with 
 this supreme inquiry. 
 
 For myself, I have become convinced that 
 while the indwelling of God's spirit by its 
 transforming power can alone meet and mel- 
 low our hearts so that the selfishness will 
 thaw out, and the glow of love replace its 
 Arctic cold, the best practical application of 
 a loving heart will come through Christian 
 socialism ; co-operation driving out competi- 
 tion, community of goods replacing the wage 
 33
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 system, and " all ye are brethren '' becoming 
 the watchword of a holier, happier time. 
 When I recite the Creed these days, it means 
 vastly more to me in every way than it did 
 ten years ago ; but no shining sentence in it 
 has gained a brighter glow than the words, 
 " I believe in the communion of saints." I 
 now think that this refers to the purer days 
 of Christ's early church, when, as the New 
 Testament so simply and beautifully says, 
 "They had all things in common.'' There 
 were then no rich, no poor, but all dwelt 
 together in unity of the spirit and the bond 
 of peace. I believe this condition of things 
 is as sure to return as Christ is true, and I 
 urge my sisters to pray and study much this 
 living question, warm with the love of God 
 
 and of humanity. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is not learning, nor eloquence, nor gen- 
 erosity, nor insight, nor the tidal rush of 
 impassioned feeling which will most effectually 
 turn the dark places in men's hearts to light, 
 but that enkindling and transforming temper 
 34
 
 FRANCES E. IVILLARD. 
 
 which forever sees in humanity not that which 
 is bad and hateful, but that which is lovable 
 and improvable, which can both discern and 
 effectually spjak to that nobler longing of 
 the soul which is the indestructible image 
 of its maker. It is this this enduring belief 
 in the redeemable qualities of the vilest 
 manhood which is the most potent spell 
 in the ministry of Christ. 
 
 The highest genius predicts the most uni- 
 versal sympathy. A shut-up soul and a 
 shut-up oyster are nearer the same level than 
 the soul believes. One can be exclusive on 
 small intellectual capital, but only broad, far- 
 sighted minds can be inclusive. 
 
 What we call lack of charity is usually lack 
 of perception. If we knew more, we should 
 love better. The divine mind knows all and 
 loves all. From human nature's ever vocal 
 Gerizim sounds the beatitude, " Blessed are 
 the inclusive, for they shall be included," and 
 from the Mount Ebal of its malediction sounds 
 35
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 the doom, " Cursed are the exclusive, for 
 they shall be excluded." 
 
 * * * 
 
 The will is the kingbolt of the faculties, 
 the keystone in the arch of character, the 
 engine that trains after it the remainder of 
 what we suppose ourselves to be. 
 
 " Act as if God were, and you shall know 
 He is." We must begin by doing, that is 
 the changeless law. Do His will, and you 
 shall know of the doctrine. A river is not 
 judged by its shoals, but by its current ; and 
 in like manner a life is not judged by its 
 eddies of temptation, but by its tendency, its 
 direction, its goal. If our life is headed 
 toward God and immortality, people will 
 know it, we shall know it, God will know it ; 
 and we must not be discouraged by any 
 instance on our part of failure : if we fall, we 
 must just get up and try again. We are 
 not here to float the float of faith, but to 
 fight the fight of faith. 
 36
 
 FRANCES E. IVILLAKD. 
 
 The will is the final factor of our life. We 
 cannot make the weak excuse that we are 
 unable to believe it is our business to be- 
 lieve the best things we have ever heard and 
 known, the tilings from which the best 
 character has been evolved. Scientists, 
 inventors, explorers, all go forward by a 
 working hypothesis ; they lay down a certain 
 plan of supposition, and fill that in by action. 
 The architect goes by his working-plan in 
 building ; and the Christian goes by his in 
 building that noblest of all edifices, char- 
 acter. 
 
 To my mind the whole primer of Christian 
 living may be condensed into these words : 
 " Act as if God were, and you shall know He 
 is." If force is the nearest approach we 
 make to God in the material universe, may 
 not force of will approach Him closest in the 
 spiritual realm? The difference between a 
 man and a mollusk is that one has resolute 
 aim, and the other, for all we know, has 
 aimless revery. 
 
 The German poet, Hoffman, pitifully said 
 37
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 with his last breath. " We must then think 
 of God also." Happy is he who early 
 determines not to put God among the " al- 
 sos," but to make Him the keystone of the 
 
 arch. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Why is there so little political enthusiasm? 
 Because a great people can be stirred only by 
 a great cause. Tennyson said that every 
 horse on the highway nowadays pounded out 
 by its very trot the word, li IYop-er-ty, prop- 
 er-ty, prop-er-ty. 11 In our own land commer- 
 cialism has held its dollars so close to the 
 average voter's eyes that he seems absolutely 
 hypnotized. Xo wonder the campaign inter- 
 ests chiefly those who have or want office. 
 Meanwhile the liquor power stands at the 
 middle of the seesaw, and adds the balance 
 of its campaign subscription wherever in 
 either of the two parties its local interests 
 lead it to deem investments most advan- 
 tageous to its ascendency. . . . Let us do our 
 best to brighten the turbid stream of politics, 
 to plant along its banks sweet flowers and 
 33
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARH. 
 
 trees whose leaves shall be for the healing of 
 the nations. Women are slowly and surely 
 coming to their own. Their own is to work 
 side by side with men everywhere, for the 
 place in which a pure woman may not work, 
 no man should ever enter. In the illimitable 
 future I see a long avenue, stately and fair, 
 in which through every line of life the two 
 shall go together, blessing and blessed. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Whenever human society finds out that all 
 of its affairs are really affairs of the family, 
 it will learn that they should be managed not 
 by one sex, but by two. The segregation of 
 the sexes is an offence against nature's first 
 law. The great work of the coming century 
 is the career open to all that are capable, even 
 if they are women. We make no limitations 
 other than those imposed by nature, which 
 are much too inexorable to need re-enforcing 
 by man-made legislation. We do not ask 
 that women should do what they cannot do. 
 If they cannot, that ends the controversy. 
 But there must be no a priori masculine de- 
 39
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 cision as to what women can or can not do. 
 They must be allowed to put their capacity 
 to the test, nor must the gate of the testing- 
 house in state or in church be barred against 
 the entry of any candidate for trial, even if 
 she be a woman. What we want is the recog- 
 nition of the fact that there should be no 
 more discrimination against a sex than there 
 is against a sect. ... It is not good for man 
 to be alone in church and in state any more 
 than in the family. Man deteriorates when 
 deprived of the constant alliance and co-oper- 
 ation of woman. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It is not enough that women should be 
 home-makers, but they must make the world 
 itself a larger home. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I object to the fatuity that sets the woman 
 who would " mother' 1 a state, a nation, or a 
 race over against the one who mothers her 
 own offspring, as if the former lacked the 
 motherly nature and character. Any one 
 broad-minded enough to inquire into the ex- 
 40
 
 FRANCES P.. WfLLAKD. 
 
 perience of history, and cosmopolitan enough 
 to generalize therefrom, knows that there is 
 no real antagonism between women nobly 
 famous and women heroically obscure. 
 
 The two hands are a picture of the con- 
 tending forces of capital and labor. The 
 left, less skilled, more choice, seryed often 
 by its fellows, and decked with rings ; the 
 right, forceful, ingenious, busy, unadorned. 
 Only by bringing them together can harmony 
 be had and a full day's toil accomplished. 
 If they contend, they work each other's ruin; 
 if they combine, they reach each one its ut- 
 most. Met for work and clasped in prayer, 
 these hands of capital and labor shall bring 
 that social compact which it is their office to 
 develop and defend up to its best estate. 
 Fighting each other, they will but mar and 
 finally destroy the social fabric and the 
 left hand of capital will first give way under 
 the pitiless blows of labor's strong right 
 hand. 
 
 4*
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 The word co-education constantly takes a 
 wider meaning. As related to the education 
 of young women, it is a fact accomplished, 
 but the co-education of mind and hand is 
 now a living issue among leaders. The words 
 of the wise thinkers are becoming the works 
 of the practical doers. Carlyle said long 
 ago that "the idle man is a monster." 
 Rousseau declared that " rich or poor, strong 
 or weak, every idle citizen is a knave." It 
 will hardly be another generation until all 
 education will be based upon the training of 
 the hand, and not to know some useful trade 
 or art will be to confess one's self below the 
 pauper line in intellect. There are few ob- 
 jects more pitiful than the graduate from col- 
 lege who can turn his hand to no useful 
 pursuit. The cunning of the human hand 
 has wrought all the marvels of material civ- 
 ilization ; by it man is more widely separated 
 from the brutes than by any other member. 
 In a high sense these words of a great phi- 
 losopher must appeal to all. In order "to 
 know the truth it is necessary to do the 
 42
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 truth.' 1 Balance of character, which is its 
 highest culmination, cannot be adequately 
 reached until mind, heart, and hand, that 
 splendid trinity, become co-ordinate, and 
 move as smoothly as the \\heels of the great 
 
 Corliss engine. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Some regard it as a misfortune that this has 
 been a year unparalleled in our country in re- 
 spect to strikes, lockouts, riots, indeed, of 
 every symptom that can confirm the truth of 
 a mighty and growing unrest in the will and 
 purpose of the masses. To me these symp- 
 toms are most hopeful. If disease is in 
 the body politic, by all means let it come to 
 the surface. The poorest physician among us 
 knows that no outward application can cure 
 the difficulty ; only a blood medicine will reach 
 it, for the difficulty is organic and deep-seated 
 as nature itself. The failure of severe meas- 
 ures is the precursor of more gentle and 
 reasonable treatment of the disease. . . . 
 It is a most hopeful fact that the president of 
 one of our largest consolidated railway qom- 
 43
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 binations declares that only by profit-sharing 
 can strikes be prevented : the employee must 
 feel that he owns part of the road, that he 
 may own all that he will by steadfast industry. 
 
 * * * 
 
 There are two sides to the question, " What 
 constitutes this brotherhood of man of which 
 we speak so much ? " The progress of science 
 develops every year moie clearly the signifi- 
 cant fact that all men are brothers whether 
 they will or not, if not for weal, then for 
 woe. . . . God has said it, not by any 
 arbitrary decree, for this He never does, so 
 far as our studies of nature indicate, but in 
 the constitution and course of things He has 
 said, " All ye are brethren." Only by making 
 this the major premise of our lives can we 
 attain true happiness : the sooner we find it 
 out, the better for us ; the sooner we learn 
 that it is true, the sooner we clasp hands in 
 concerted purpose and endeavor to enact 
 brotherhood upon earth, the more shall we 
 be made in the image of man, rather than 
 show forth the lineaments of serpents and of 
 44
 
 FRAXCKS K. IV I L LARD. 
 
 beasts ; for the hiss of the snake and the teeth 
 of the hyena are not more savage, relentless, 
 and cruel than those laws and customs by 
 which the greater number are steadily ground 
 under the heel of the lesser, and a human 
 being becomes the cheapest thmg on earth, 
 the least desired, and the worst cared for. 
 
 In the old pastures by the river I was wont 
 to watch the beautiful green grub filling it- 
 self with food from the hazel twig, to which 
 it was attached, and cradling itself for the 
 mysterious change by which it should become 
 ethereal instead of cumbersome. It used to 
 come to me then in the dim thought of child- 
 hood, that when the grub shelled out the 
 fascinating little airship of the skies, another 
 grub crawling along the bough of my pretty 
 hazel bushes would not even know what had 
 occurred, but so far as its dull intelligence 
 could take in anything, would be sure to re- 
 gard its disrupted comrade as having met 
 with some great calamity, for the grub's eyes 
 45
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 are too heavy to see the bright, ethereal 
 butterfly; perhaps, indeed, the change was 
 looked upon as a disaster when its first birth- 
 pangs and its last came on the dead larva. 
 
 We have a right to think that so it may be 
 nay, it must be as between the soul and 
 body. It is far more conformable to reason 
 that a viewless and beautiful being should 
 rise from the ruins of the human form than 
 from the ruins of the grub. Suppose a 
 man should build a ship and freight it with 
 the rarest works of art, and in the very 
 building and the freighting should plan to 
 convey the ship out into mid-ocean and 
 there scuttle it with all its contents. Here 
 is the human body, in itself an admirable 
 piece of mechanism, the most delicate and 
 wonderful of which we know ; it is like a 
 splendid ship, but its cargo incomparably out- 
 runs the value of itself, for it is made up of 
 love, hope, veneration, imagination "and all 
 the largest of man's unconquerable mind." 
 Why should its maker scuttle such a ship 
 with such a freightage? He who believes 
 46
 
 FRANCES E. WTLLARD. 
 
 that this is done is capable of a credulity that 
 far outruns the compass of our faith. 
 
 * * * 
 
 We are explorers sailing on the seas un- 
 known ; the new world is what we seek ; the 
 kingdom of heaven among men. The white- 
 ribbon ship has all sails set ; its prow points 
 toward the untracked sea. We seek a land 
 fit for the planting of our Saviour's cross. 
 Columbus, harassed by his men, was the pro- 
 totype of all adventurous souls hindered by 
 the scruples of the timid and prejudices of 
 the conservative. Well has the poet of the 
 Sierras put the contrast, and in parting let 
 me give my final message in his words : 
 
 Behind him lay the gray Azores, 
 Behind, the gates of Hercules; 
 Before him not the ghost of shores, 
 Before him only shoreless seas. 
 The good mate said: " Now must we pray, 
 For lo ! the very stars are gone ; 
 Brave Admiral, speak : what shall I say?" 
 " Why, say, 4 Sail on, sail on, and on.'" 
 47
 
 BRILLIANTS FROM 
 
 " My men grow mutinous day by day ; 
 My men grow ghastly, wan, and weak." 
 The stout mate thought of home ; a spray 
 Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
 " What shall I speak, brave Admiral, say, 
 If we sight naught but seas at dawn ? " 
 " Why, you shall say at break of day, 
 ' Sail on, sail on, sail on, and on.'"' 
 
 They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, 
 Until at last the scared mate said : 
 " Why, now not even God would know 
 Should I and all my men fall dead ; 
 These very winds forget their way, 
 For God from these dread seas is gone. 
 Now speak, brave Admiral ; speak and say." 
 He said : " Sail on, sail on, and on. " 
 
 They sailed and sailed. Then spake the 
 
 mate : 
 
 " This mad sea shows its teeth to-night. 
 He curls his lip, he lies in wait, 
 With lifted face, as if to bite ; 
 48
 
 FKANCES K. WILLARD. 
 
 Brave Admiral, say but one good word 
 What shall we do when hope is gone?" 
 The words leaped as a leaping sword : 
 "Sail on, sail on, sail on, and on." 
 
 Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck, 
 And peered through darkness. Ah, that 
 
 night 
 
 Of all dark nights ! And then a speck 
 A light, a light, a light, a light! 
 It grew : a starlit flag unfurled ! 
 It grew to be Time's burst of dawn ; 
 He gained a world ! he gave that world 
 Its greatest watchword, " On ! and on!" 
 49
 
 
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