report of your club meeting, and feels that the enthusiasm manifested there must be contagious.' Miss PEET, Chairman of Beloit, says: 'I have the pleasure to report to you that our preparatory meeting yesterday was a success. We met in Temperance Hall, entering the door beneath a fine transparency-1776, CENTENNIAL, 1876. The hall was decorated with flags and portraits of our national heroes, mottoes, etc.' Miss PEET adds an enthusiastic account of their organization, fifty-two names being affixed to the constitution, and limits her number of members to one hundred, before gentlemen were invited to join, and her final estimate is at least five hundred members of the Beloit Club. A grand opening is announced for the 10th of May, in the Opera House, at which the State Executive Committee is invited, and they, with the Commissioner, will participate in the exercises of that occasion. Mrs. GRAY of Darlington, says: 'I am well pleased that the women of the State Committee should select me as Chairman of Darlington. Since the conception of this magnificent enterprise, I have hoped to attend, and have been looking about to discover what of the useful and beautiful we have in La Fayette county,' and then goes on to mention mineralogical and botanical specimens which she thinks can be artistically arranged for the Exhibition. A letter from Mrs. LYNDE to the Chairman of the Executive Committee, says: 'I wish you would come in and see us and give us a little of the courage and enthusiasm of which you have so much.' These are but a few of our recent letters. Almost every mail brings us several, and we are kept very busy answering questions, making suggestions, securing able, energetic and enthusiastic women to take hold with us and make this labor one of pleasure and love. We trust that before the 10th of May, the time when the State Committee are invited to Beloit, the city of Madison will be alive and ready to swell the current of Centennial enthusiasm. It will be seen that the State Centennial Chairman and Committee are fully employed in state work, for which the State Social Club is their circulating medium. Its doings are sure to stimulate social interest throughout the state. While we feel in the closest sympathy with the same cause in our own city we cannot be held responsible for city interest or city work.

"There is a city organization, able, willing, earnest, to inaugurate and aid. All that Madison people will, shall be done; and we trust their efforts will be seconded and their hearts encouraged by sympathy and effort on the part of our citizens. We learn that the 'Red, White and Blue Club' of Madison, with appropriate emblems and badges, will soon unfurl their colors to the popular breeze, and the capital city will give the key note which will be caught up and reechoed to the farthest limits of Wisconsin.

"Let us be ready one and all, for the 99th 4th of July, and let its patriotic

enthusiasm swell until it culminates at Philadelphia, one hundred years from the day when our Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.

"April 30, 1875."

"Mrs. J. G. THORP, "Chairman State Centennial Committee.

Succeeding the report, it was announced that Col. WILLIAM F. VILAS would read a paper prepared by our own State Executive Chairman. This was listened to with deep attention, and the round of applause which followed when the Colonel's sonorous voice ceased, sufficiently attested the appreciation with which it was received. It should meet the eye of every woman in the land, that she may rejoice in the prophetic vision of the good time coming.

Many gentlemen as well as ladies, remarkable for conservative views, expressed decided approbation of the paper, as well as admiration for the themes suggested.

Women of Wisconsin: Those of us who are actively engaged in Centennial work throughout the state desire that generous and kindly interpretations be awarded us in connection with this enterprise, as we have not the benefit of experience or precedents to aid us.

Personal and social relations, as well as accepted conventionalities, sink into comparative insignificance in the presence of this grand national idea, whose labors are those of love.

The aims it contemplates are broad enough to dissipate every threatening cloud of social, political or local prejudice.

Freedom from these and kindred sentiments, it is our first effort to attain, that the restrictions and embarrassments which are incident to their existence may be avoided.

Let us, as women of our beloved state and nation, not as city, church or neighborhood women, consider the relation we individually bear to this, our common cause, in grateful tribute to our common country. Aye more: let us launch out upon this broad current of patriotic enthusiasm, trusting to the God of Nations for the wisdom of our counsels and the worth of our inspirations.

We are now, for the first time invited—rather than impelled by necessity, as in the past-to aid in a national movement.

Let us not give a reluctant or tardy response, for there is a deeper, more tender meaning, than we at first recognize in its voice.

We shall find no barriers of opposition or prejudice in our way, unless we create them by our weakness and perversity.

We did not hesitate or shrink, when appeals were made to our sympathies and efforts, from the suffering and the dying, though they came from the battle field and the crowded hospital.

The strength of womanhood as expressed in national ways, has hitherto been as the strength of martyrdom, aroused by her devotion to an imperiled cause.

American women have suffered and accomplished for their country as spontaneously and naturally as they are ever wont to do for their families and friends, because their services were needed. They are still needed to save, to hold and to aid in uplifting all that is valuable in our national civilization.

It has not been our mission to plan campaigns, to fight battles, or to wear the laurels of victory. It has been our experience to bear in suffering, to rear through sacrifice and to yield in agony, the men who wrought these noble deeds. It has been too often our sad duty to go with these dear ones to the portals of the unseen, and to point beyond, with a faith that takes hold upon immortality.

To turn back in sorrow and desolation and quietly take up the burdens of dismembered households, or help eke out maimed and decrepid lives for those who have been our strength and pride.

All this has been patiently and honorably borne, with meagre compensation and limited appreciation; proving that it is stimulus, not capacity, that is lacking to bring women to a proper estimate of their dignity and duty.

What they cannot or will not do for themselves by effort or influence, they must endure to see illy done.

Enough perhaps has been said in reference to the general objects and the preparation of articles for the Women's Department of the Centennial Exhibition.

We now wish to call attention to a higher object, namely, the improvement of the domestic and social condition of American women, which we conceive to be included in the general idea. We would not ignore responsibility, as we desire to escape penalty in this regard.

The laws of God are unerring in their operation, and are not hindered or modified by our recognition or rejection. Therefore, if women have made it conventional and suitable for lack of better stimulus, to spend the larger portion of their time in dress and pleasure, dissipating physical and mental forces in these pursuits, it is reasonable to expect that God will bring them to healthier aims, through the discipline of suffering.

The too frequent exhibition of enfeebled energies and demoralized character is bringing the earnest of our sex to the point of serious deliberation. The balance of conviction is gradually turning in wiser directions. The natural timidity of woman makes her averse to change and fearful of extremes. That modesty which is her crown of glory and excellence is often under the influence of wrong standards and unjust interpretations, made to represent her weakness and unworthiness. This, we can quietly overcome, as we cordially embrace opportunities which include the necessity of well concerted action for their success.

We need to learn primary lessons, as we are all unskilled, because inexperienced workers in public affairs. The preparation work incident to an honorable representation at our Centennial furnishes common ground for every woman in our nation who has a desire to aid in its commemoration.

Its labors conduce to the highest interest of home and social life, giving impulse to mental, moral and æsthetic culture, by calling for their best practical results.

It is not enough that we exhibit works of art, culinary skill and handiwork. Our excellence is acknowledged in these departments, and we have daily evidence of all the appreciation we can conveniently appropriate in some of them!

We need more to test our skill in other ways, and to this end, we need mutual aid and encouragement.

We need the aid of combined influence to dissipate the power of false standards, in the foremost ranks of which apppears the destructive tyranny of Fashion. Here, we all stand convicted, to a greater or less extent, wasting time, strength and ability worthy a better service.

What we gain in superabundance of decoration, we lose in healthful, physical beauty and still more in the desecration of mental and spiritual powers, whose worth and endurance are to our finite conceptions immeasurable.

It is universally acknowledged that the demands of the toilet are out of all reasonable proportion, while it is also understood that this is in obedience to the mandates of what is called "good society." The axiom that "it is better to be out of the world, than out of the fashion," is received as a primary article in our domestic codes. The avenues of relief from this despotism are closely barred by custom and prejudice, until it seems that nothing less than a tidal wave of national inspiration can bear us upward and onward to brighter fields, where lie the undiscovered treasures of feminine accomplishments, destined for coming generations.

We have gone from the struggles and hardships of revolutionary days to the opposite extreme of luxury and dissipation. Let us pause and think how we can

gain a new starting point within the circle of the next revolving century, which shall secure to us a grateful remembrance from the women of the next Centennial. In the light of what we might be, and are not, there is more to hope for, than to fear, from change. The feminine side of life is, as yet, to a great extent undeveloped, and the steps to its attainment must be gradual and carefully taken. Whatever women are called upon to do and to be, it is their privilege to do and be as women. This position once well understood and established, it will be found that there is no sphere of life where the aid and influence of woman is not needed to make that sphere rounded and complete.

Beauty, in all its varied developments, is an essential element of womanly character, to be indulged and enjoyed in ways distinctively feminine. To be cherished as the outgrowth of her most delicate and refined instincts. We need not ignore beauty, to secure convenience and utility in dress.

Ascetic severity and plainness are as uncomely and unattractive in the household, as would be an untinted rose, or an unpainted lily in the parterre. Natural conditions of earth, air, moisture and sunshine, unfold the wonders of leaf, bud and blossom.

Obedience to natural, instead of arbitrary and conventional laws, tints the budding, unfolding and ripening years of womanhood, with the inimitible beauty and freshness of health, and crowns her autumn years with the fruitage of noble deeds. No such compensations come to us in the channels which Fashion has opened to the households of our land. Disease, disability and frivolity inevitably follow in the train of her influences.

The queens of the Bois de Boulogne, as they are recognized day by day in their carriages of state upon this favorite drive, are the representative women of the world in the realm of Fashion. Holding and wielding the purse strings of royalty and diplomacy, assiduously served by modistes of artistic merit; it is more than weakness, it is stupidity, for women in the midst of earnest life-bearing the relations which God has established and blessed-to imitate, or receive from their hands ever so remotely, standards for use or decoration.

Why should not our country-women be known by a simpler, more natural and more beautiful style, worthy the name of an American dress.

If we shrink from the idea, it is not because there is not merit in the conception, but because of the absurdities which have from time to time been set afloat, it would seem, for the purpose of creating a sensation, and blocking the wheels of healthful reform.

Influential women in our large literary and commercial cities are taking the lead, in their efforts to give wiser impulse and better tone in this respect.