position. Some of them even came from elegant homes. Some are the wives and daughters of clergymen, physicians, lawyers, inventors. Some are themselves teachers, trained nurses, musicians, writers. In the homes of some of them children are being brought up as children are being brought up in only the very best white homes in the land. Among those present was a dear, cultured old lady, the mother of seven children, all of whom do her credit and some of whom have acquired an almost national reputation. It seems almost an insult to these ladies to write such things about them. Yet I write them, because, while most of us have had an opportunity to see negro life at its worst, I fear that very few have seen it at its best.
The women who attended this convention are, I take it, for the most part religious women, but with them religion is no mere sentiment or emotion—no mere intellectual conviction even—but a strong ethical impulse. Their religion consists not so much in singing of the joys of the future world as in working to make this present world better.
The meetings were business-like, and parliamentary law was carefully observed. The speeches were clear and to the point. There was no striving after effect, no superfluous ornamentation, no indulging in rhetoric for rhetoric's sake; and yet there were occasional genuine and fitting poetic outbursts. Noble emotion found noble expression. The language was the fitting vehicle for the thought. Indeed, there were some addresses so eloquent that they would have electrified an assembly of white college women, and have given the speakers places of honor among them forever.
The delivery was good, because the speakers were in earnest—threw themselves into what they had to say, with no thought of delivery. Not only were the speeches clear, eloquent, and well delivered, but they exhibited much breadth of thought such breadth of thought—as can belong only to great-minded persons; generally, too, only to persons who have come in contact with "many men of many minds." There was a singular absence of provincialism.
The speakers showed themselves very ready-witted. There
