Poems written for the occasion were contributed by Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Ellery Channing, and Rev. Charles T. Brooks. Of these exercises I will only say that, although my husband's life was well known to me, I listened almost with amazement to the summing up of its deeds of merit. It seemed almost impossible that so much good could be soberly said of any man, and yet I knew that it was all said truthfully and in grave earnest.
My husband's beloved pupil, Laura Bridgman, was seated upon the platform, where a friend interpreted the proceedings to her in the finger language. The music, which was of a high order, was furnished by the pupils of the institution for the blind at South Boston.
The occasion was one never to be forgotten. As I review it after an interval of many years, I find that the impression made upon me at the time does not diminish. I still wonder at the showing of such a solid power of work, such untiring industry, such prophetic foresight and intuition, so grand a trust in human nature. These gifts were well-nigh put out of sight by a singularly modest estimate of self. Truly, this was a knight of God's own order. I cannot but doubt whether he left his peer on earth.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
I sometimes feel as if words could not express the comfort and instruction which have come to me in the later years of my life from two sources. One of these has been the better acquaintance with my own sex; the other, the experience of the power resulting from associated action in behalf of worthy objects.
During the first two thirds of my life I looked to the masculine ideal of character as the only true one. I sought its inspiration, and referred my merits and demerits to its judicial verdict. In an unexpected hour a new light came to me, showing me a world of thought and of character quite beyond the limits within which I had hitherto been content to abide. The new domain now made clear to me was that of true womanhood,—woman no longer in her ancillary relation to her opposite, man, but in her direct relation to the divine plan and purpose, as a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility. This discovery was like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world, or of a new testament to the old ordinances.
"Oh, had I earlier known the power, the nobility, the intelligence which lie within the range of true womanhood, I had surely lived more wisely and to better purpose." Such were my reflections; yet I must think that the great Lord of all reserved this new revelation as the crown of a wonderful period of the world's emancipation and progress.
It did not come to me all at once. In my attempts at philosophizing I at length reached the conclusion that woman must be the moral and spiritual equivalent of man. How, otherwise, could she be entrusted with the awful and inevitable responsibilities of maternity? The quasi-adoration that true lovers feel, was it an illusion partly of sense, partly of imagination? or did it symbolize a sacred truth?
While my mind was engaged with these questions, the civil war came to an end, leaving the slave not only emancipated, but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. The women of the North had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face?