In July, 1881, sitting under the trees, Miss Anthony and I read and discussed Wendell Phillips’ magnificent speech before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College.  This society had often talked of inviting him, but was afraid of his radical utterances.  At last, hoping that years might have modified his opinions and somewhat softened his speech, an invitation was given.  The elite of Boston, the presidents and college professors from far and near, were there.  A great audience of the wise, the learned, the distinguished in State and Church assembled.  Such a conservative audience, it was supposed, would surely hold this radical in check.  Alas! they were all doomed, for once, to hear the naked truth, on every vital question of the day.  Thinking this might be his only opportunity to rouse some liberal thought in conservative minds, he struck the keynote of every reform; defended labor strikes, the Nihilists of Russia, prohibition, woman suffrage, and demanded reformation in our prisons, courts of justice, and halls of legislation.  On the woman question, he said: 

“Social science affirms that woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization.  From its twilight in Greece, through the Italian worship of the Virgin, the dreams of chivalry, the justice of the civil law, and the equality of French society, we trace her gradual recognition, while our common law, as Lord Brougham confessed, was, with relation to women, the opprobrium of the age of Christianity.  For forty years earnest men and women, working noiselessly, have washed away the opprobrium, the statute books of thirty States have been remodeled, and woman stands, to-day, almost face to face with her last claim—­the ballot.  It has been a weary and thankless, though successful struggle.  But if there be any refuge from that ghastly curse, the vice of great cities, before which social science stands palsied and dumb, it is in this more equal recognition of women.

“If, in this critical battle for universal suffrage, our fathers’ noblest legacy to us and the greatest trust God leaves in our hands, there be any weapon, which, once taken from the armory, will make victory certain, it will be as it has been in art, literature, and society, summoning woman into the political arena.  The literary class, until within half a dozen years, has taken no note of this great uprising; only to fling every obstacle in its way.

“The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of Tacitus in his ‘Germany,’ which reads, ’In all grave matters they consult their women.’  Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus from the valley of the Mississippi will answer to him of the Seven Hills:  ‘In all grave questions, we consult our women.’

“If the Alps, piled in cold and