| OPPOSITE PAGE | |
| East Entrance of Executive Mansion | [Frontispiece] |
| Adams, Abigail | [23] |
| Adams, Louisa Catherine | [39] |
| Cleveland, Frances Folsom | [103] |
| Fillmore, Abigail | [67] |
| Garfield, Lucretia Rudolph | [95] |
| Grant, Julia Dent | [87] |
| Harrison, Anna Symmes | [51] |
| Harrison, Caroline Scott | [107] |
| Hayes, Lucy Ware Webb | [91] |
| Jackson, Rachel Donelson | [43] |
| Johnson, Eliza McCardle | [83] |
| Lane, Harriet | [75] |
| Lincoln, Mary Todd | [79] |
| Madison, Dorothy Paine | [31] |
| McElroy, Mary Arthur | [99] |
| McKinley, Ida Saxton | [111] |
| Monroe, Elizabeth Kortright | [35] |
| Pierce, Jane Appleton | [71] |
| Polk, Sarah Childress | [59] |
| Randolph, Martha Jefferson | [27] |
| Roosevelt, Edith Kermit Carow | [115] |
| Taylor, Margaret Smith | [63] |
| Tyler, Letitia Christian | [55] |
| Van Buren, Angelica | [47] |
| Washington, Martha | [19] |
| Blue Room | [125] |
| East Room | [121] |
| The Library | [130] |
| State Dining Room | [126] |
INTRODUCTION
America stands to-day among the greatest and most progressive of the nations of the earth; and as the law of nations from earliest times has been the decline and fall of one, as another rises to prëeminence, it would seem that this great land of ours is fast soaring towards the highest pinnacle of national attainment.
If a nation is great, it is made so by the men who make and enforce its laws, who fill its positions of trust, who manipulate its finances, and who prove worthy citizens of the land of their birth or adoption.
And who are responsible for the men?
Are not the women, the wives and mothers of the nation, the bearers of this great burden of responsibility?
No nation has ever risen, or can rise above the level of its women, and in no other country is this truth more obviously demonstrated than in our own beloved and favored land.
Reasoning thus, we find that the American woman not only holds a high position of trust, but it is conceded by all who know her, that she fills it worthily, and is capable of meeting the varied demands upon her with rare tact and skill.
There are no women in the world to-day who are more truly the cynosure of all eyes, than are our own. They stand in the glare of public life in the highest circles of their own land, and are closely allied to royalty abroad, participating in, or presiding at, many of the functions of almost every foreign court, and everywhere the homage which is their due is freely accorded them.