It is said everything is undergoing a constant change, but until the chime bells ring in the eternal morning mother love will live on, the same unchanging devotion.  Several years ago I stood on Portland Heights, Oregon, in the evening, and saw Mount Hood in its snow-capped majesty, when the stars seemed to be set as jewels in its crown.  If you ask me by what force that giant was lifted from the level of the sea till its dome touched the sky, I cannot answer you, but I know it stands there, a towering sentinel to traveler on land and sailor on the sea.  So mother love, which no one can solve, exists as unchanging as the love of God; broad enough and strong enough to meet all the changing conditions of time.

While I did not make this lecture to include the suffrage question, I cannot turn away from the new woman without a word about the ballot for women.  It is no longer a question of right, but whether or not men will grant the right.  This I believe men will do when the sentiment of women is strong enough to force the issue.  “Taxation without representation” is no less a tyranny to women than to men.  I was the guest of a wealthy widow, who paid more taxes than any man in the county, yet a foreigner, who had been in this country less than three years, who had not a dollar of property nor a patriotic impulse, laid down the hoe in the garden, and going to the polls, voted additional tax upon the woman he worked for; and the saloon influence upon her two boys, while she had no voice in what taxes her property, or what might tax her heart by the ruin of a son.  There being no question about woman’s right to the ballot, there should be no hesitation on man’s part in bestowing the right.

I now turn from the new woman to the old man.  I do not mean the man old in years; for him I have only words of honor and praise.  I mean the man set in old ways and habits that neutralizes the progress and wastes the forces of the republic.  At the door of this old man lie the causes of commercial disturbances, depression in trade and recurring panics more than in the causes stressed by partisans for political effect.

We should never have hard times in this country.  We live in the best land beneath the sky.  It has been well said:  “This is God’s last best effort for man.”  We have soil rich enough to grass and grain the world.  Our vast domain is inlaid with gold, silver, iron and lead of boundless worth.  Deep in the bosom of Columbia are fountains of gas and oil, sufficient to light and heat our homes for a century to come.  Within these healthful lines of latitude is room enough not only to house all the peoples of the earth, but to sty all the pigs, stable all the horses, and corral all the cattle of the world.