Mrs. Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Cady Stanton, and Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing.

Washington, January 19, 1871.

Stirring events are shaking the national capital. Scarcely have the colored lights of the country folded their tents and stolen away from their convention before Washington is visited by another dazzling meteoric shower. To-day, the great national woman’s rights convention has met and occupies its position upon the world’s stage. Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, seems to be the central figure around which this planetary system of women revolve. As early as 10 o’clock a. m. a great number of the so-called weaker sex were seen hurrying along toward Carroll Hall, the place designated for the meeting. It was observed by all that these early comers were not those sisters of the community who wear silk and satin, and who fare sumptuously every day. They seemed to come from the even plain of society; they seemed to be the wives and daughters of the thrifty tradesmen and well-to-do mechanics. Some of them came in timidly, and took seats near the door, while others marched in boldly, being handsomely flanked or guarded by the “lords of creation.” Curiosity and suppressed mirthfulness characterized the appearance of the latter; at the same time these men had provided themselves with newspapers, into which they could plunge whenever it should seem the most convenient thing to do.

In a little side room at the right hand of the platform were gathered a handful of combustibles of sufficient strength and tenacity of purpose to move the world, if, like Archimedes, they had only a point upon which to place the fulcrum. This fulcrum appeared to them to be the ballot. Before the patience of the medium-sized audience was entirely exhausted, Senator Pomeroy filed out of the side room, followed by the venerable Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, and a host of lesser lights; some few of the latter shining on the platform by reflection alone.

As it may be possible that some of the readers of the Republican have never seen Pomeroy, a brief description of the man so long identified with this movement may not be out of place. It must first be acknowledged that he stood alone on the platform with this handful of pioneer women by his side. We mean by this that no other Congressmen were gathered there. Though Senator Pomeroy has not advanced to the snows of age, he has outlived the fiery turbulence of manhood. Nature did not cast him in her finest mould, but she gave him breadth of shoulder, and a brow broad and capacious enough for Jupiter; a brown eye, which twinkles as steadily as a fixed star; a good-sized American nose, and a mouth which has ever been devoted to the cause of the gentler sex, and which any woman of taste would approve. Senator Pomeroy called the meeting to order, and then remarked, “While one plants and another sows, it is God who giveth the increase.”

Prayer followed by the Rev. Dr. Gray, who committed the sad mistake of alluding to the scripture verse which says that woman was made of the rib of a man. As soon as the prayer was finished, a Mrs. Davis, of Philadelphia, undertook to take exception to the prayer, but Mrs. Lucretia Mott said though the audience might differ in the theological views, she questioned the good taste of discussing the subject at this convention. This was oil to the troubled waters, and peace followed forthwith. A very mother in Israel seemed this venerable woman, now advanced beyond her eightieth year. As she appeared before the audience in her prim Quaker garb, her voice, pure and distinct as the notes of a bell, seemed more like the tones of a spirit issuing from some crumbling ruin than that of a representative woman on the world’s stage to-day. Those who remember Thaddeus Stevens in his last days will recall a striking resemblance, both mental and physical, between these two individuals of a past generation, both belonging to the same State of the Union. Miss Anna Dickinson is very much like Mrs. Mott, and it may be well to remember that only the Quaker element, which centuries ago made it just as proper for the women to speak in public as the men, could produce two such marvels of oratory.

Following in the wake of Mrs. Lucretia Mott, up rose the brilliant Mrs. Cady Stanton, of the Revolution, one of the most beautiful and socially gifted women of the day; also a very firebrand in the camp of the enemy. What the poet says about roses in the snow finds a living embodiment in Mrs. Stanton. Have you never seen the heavens aglow with purple and gold before the sunset? And who would exchange these mellow beams for the pale, weak morning rays, or the sultry, stifling noon? Now add a voice of rare melody, sweet, persuasive, and enchanting as a flute, and you see a woman as potent in her way as Queen Elizabeth; an intellectual princess “to the manor born,” and who is fated to fill a niche in the history of our Republic. And now, reader, you see before you a woman stern, solid, aggressive. Her whole personnel is suggestive of the power of nature, strength, force. You can not help but feel that the good Dame Nature for once made a blunder. She put a man’s head on a woman’s shoulders; the massive brain and square brow, the large gray eyes that are set at cross purposes with each other, the clear cut, thinly chiseled lips, that, when brought together, seem to have the firm grip of a vise; a woman to command; a woman to suffer and die for opinion’s sake. Reader, you see Susan B. Anthony. You see the woman who would go to the edge of a fiery caldron, or a Democratic convention, to accomplish a purpose. If there is a pillar of strength among woman, upon which the weak, the degraded, the down-trodden can lean, it must be upon Miss Susan B. Anthony. If every State in the Union were blessed with two such women, the existing factions between the sexes would suddenly expire. Miss Anthony is a fine public speaker, choosing her words daintily from the pure Anglo-Saxon, and her voice is just the kind an orator would desire.

Another woman arises to address the audience. It is Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, so long identified with the Freedmen’s Bureau. A fine-faced, sweet-voiced, elegant woman. You feel that she is thoroughly in earnest. You seem to know that she is the last one who would seek notoriety. You feel that you are listening to a woman who has to fight the battle of life for herself and little ones alone. In the depths of your heart you realize that it is such as she who breathe the breath of life into this unpopular cause; and her well-chosen words sink into your soul like dew in the honeyed corolla of a flower. If space would admit, other pictures might be added, but these shall be reserved for another day.

Olivia.