builded by woman's hands, but because it is to glorify those who before were unknown as well as those who are writ in Immortality. It is because it holds above and beyond every individual the great idea for which those men stood before the world, the love of liberty. It is that for which the United States stands, in this our great republic, liberty without license. (Applause) This, therefore, is a temple dedicated to that sentiment. This is the temple where from will emanate, we hope and believe, through all the coming days, the real unsullied spirit of true and unselfish Americanism! But above and beyond all our natural pride-because we are human, and we cannot help being very proud, Mr. Vice-President, and all these distinguished men, our guests of today, that we think you are a little proud of us, too, because you have come to be with us, thus to show your appreciation!—we are gratified because we have done what we started out to do. As the poet says the Master will demand not "What ha'e ye thought, or what ha'e ye felt, but what ha'e ye done, says He."

This is what we have done! And now you will permit me to say a word as to the business part of the erection of this hall. It will be brief. In the early days we thought of rearing in some far-off day a memorial worth $100,000. To-day, when we are eighteen years old— in the blushing charm of young maturity—we dedicate a building worth half a million. The sums necessary have come into this coffer, and the project whereby the money was raised to complete this building, absolutely and entirely through the efforts of woman. This auditorium, in its chaste, simple but superb beauty, will seat about 2,000. Here let me stop to express my great regret that the creator of this design, our architect, Mr. Edward P. Casey, cannot be with us. His letter of greeting, or rather his telegram of regret, has just been sent me, and I think we should send him greetings from this great gathering, thanking him for the beauty he has made lasting before our eyes. The museum upon that side (indicating) is fireproof and will hold priceless relics. The library on that side (indicating) is, as you see, filled with stacks for the receipt of individual records. Above this floor the board rooms and other rooms necessary for our offices-which offices we are now obliged to rent at a heavy expense-will very shortly be ready for full occupancy. Upon the third floor is the biggest kitchen and the finest range you have ever seen. (Laughter and applause) You see we have not outgrown our femininity. Yesterday, just before going to the church Daughters of the American Revolution service, I went up to inspect the range and it was being "tried out." There was the biggest fire and the hottest kitchen I have ever even imagined. But I stood my ground. I remembered Molly Pitcher and Molly Varnum and various other heroines of the Revolution and said: "I will do my modern part." (Laughter) The range is in working order, ladies. If anything goes wrong it is because your President General is not there to cook the edibles; otherwise, all is well. (Laughter and applause)

Eventually, we will have a little roof garden above our memorial portico, upon which the dining hall will open. I say dining hall advisedly; the apartment is too large for a simple dining room; it is an imposing, fine dining hall. On that floor also is the room devoted to the work of the Children of the American Revolution (applause) another evidence that we are women. The monoliths, which for so long a time have engaged the hope and attention of the Society (for when I came to the presidency the discussion was "Shall it be a monolith or shall it not?" "To be or not to be a monolith." Out-Hamlet-ed Hamlet) we hoped to have two to show you; instead we have seven. The monoliths are to be thirteen in number given by the Thirteen Original States-the thirteen Colonial States-which have given each $2,000 to pay for the erection of a monolith in memory of the Revolutionary soldiers and heroines of such states. I am proud and happy to say that in nearly every State the legislatures have had the wisdom and kindliness and the generosity and the foresight to appropriate that sum. In a few States the Daughters of the American Revolution became very independent and said to the legislatures "We can do without you," if you please and thus raised their own individual $2,000. And I am happily able to report this morning that the full sums for these monoliths is now paid in or assured. (Applause) The front portico is finished, save for its columns, which will be drum columns. (I am trying to impress you, as I have been trying for four years, with my architectural knowledge, hence these technical terms) I have learned the meaning of drum columns and they will be reared eventually upon the North portico as well as the front entrance and porte-cochere.

With the known reputation of contractors for not living up to their contracts, I wish to pay our builders the compliment of stating that they have done somewhat better in that respect than many others, having come nearer the fulfillment of the contract than might have been the case. I think it is because of the constant feminine influence that has been brought to bear upon them. (Laughter)

And now will you let me say one personal word—because the four years in which I have served you as President General have gone like a "watch in the night." When I was elected president general I thought the term of two years looked long, but it passed rapidly. You re-elected me in a manner so touching to me that it will ever remain one of the best and tenderest memories of my life. And now that second term has gone, and I stand before you but for a little while longer as your president general. It is very hard for me to say goodbye to you, not only because I love your service and love the work, but I love you. (Applause) It is impossible for any woman to have given as have I very much more than a third of her whole life to the service of an organization, and to that one organization alone, and not love it with a love passing knowledge and expression. I have given to you all that I am, body, soul, mind, energy; whatever God has given

to me I have given to you, be it much or little. (Great applause, Congress rising) You have repaid me in full measure, running over. The love, the devotion, the great broadmindedness of the women over whom I have presided have made my own life as broad as the world and my love as deep as the ocean. I can only thank you from the bottom of a heart and a soul stirred to utterances too inadequate. I said to the National Board on Saturday that I felt like Washington saying farewell to his Generals and that I understood he wept when they embraced him, and I told them what I now tell you, if you will embrace me when I leave I will certainly promise to weep! (Laughter) Daughters, I am about to make a sad confession, and I am making it to you because, after all, "Pity is akin to love" and I want to keep your love, so I am trying to stir your pity. I have grown gray in your service! (Laughter) I femininely hope that you don't see it, but it is true. I believe that for every block of white marble there is a white hair growing. I thought I was very old when I joined this organization nearly nineteen years ago, and now, from this vantage point, think I was very young; but in all those years you have been, as you know, my single thought.

Now once more before we separate, for I may be seen here never again in this corporeal body on this platform, though I hope many many times I will gather with you as a member of our great Society (applause) for I shall come from year to year to show that after you have given me your honors, I can serve you privately as well as publicity. (Applause) I take this occasion to thank the Sons of the American Revolution for the magnificent support they have given me, not only in my administration, but in bringing that administration into being. But I cannot dwell longer on the fact that I am presiding at this Congress for the last time, simply because I feel it too deeply to talk about it. I wish each one of us to say, today, that this shall be the grandest Congress ever held, not only because we have done that which has never been attempted or achieved before, in the history of the nations of the world, but because women have undertaken as their right and privilege the perpetuation of an ideal; for when all is said and done we cannot give away the privilege of keeping alive the fires which burn in lambent lustre on the altar of the ideal. Men have ideals. I know it. I am an admirer of my co-sons. But it is for us women to keep them bright and burnished as the women of old did the armor of their knights. And we stand today as an outward visible sign of what women can do who have the inward spiritual grace of patriotic love, for the perpetuation of the ideals "which made and preserved us a nation." (Applause)

I am now about to retire from you as your president general, but I cannot do so without one more expression of the keenest, profoundest appreciation of the single individual loyalty given me as well as the great concentrated mass of support; and I would further say that while I grieve beyond words to leave, I believe it is better so. I be

lieve when a woman has exercised every power within her for four years, that it is better for her organization and in a degree for herself to repose a little. You cannot know, as I do, what it means, to have carried this building, literally, in your hands and on your shoulders and in your heart; to have watched its completion step by step, in the course of every stone erected, in the course of every laurel wreath moulded, in every light that springs like a star from those electroliers today, your president general's very life and vitality have gone up to help light them! It has been in a way an almost superhuman exertion, but all I ask of you, in going, is that you do not forget me! (Cries of "We will never forget you.")

"I

I can only quote or paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson who said: "Glad that I've lived and gladly die. I lay me down with a will." I say to you: "I am glad that I've worked. I am glad to rest. I lay this gavel down with a will!" Without sacrilege I say to you: have finished the work thou gavest me to do. Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace" and love. (Great and prolonged applause, Congress rising.)

THE PRESIDENT GENERAL. I have great pride and pleasure in presenting to you the incumbent of one of the greatest offices in the history of the world; but first of all one who, in the old days, I used to know and love in New York as "My Congressman,"-Now he is my, and our, Vice-President of the United States. (Applause)

VICE-PRESIDENT SHERMAN. Madam President General, Daughters, and you, Mr. Ambassador, to whom I desire to address my first word, speaking as I have a right to do but as most of you (addressing audience) will not be privileged to do, and so I undertake to speak for you all in expressing our appreciation of the courtesy of the Ambassador from our friendly sister republic, in gracing this occasion with his presence. (Applause) I am not here to make an address, but I do want to congratulate your President General upon the beauty, the patriotism, the symmetry and the loveliness of the address to you Daughters which she has just completed. (Applause) I am here rather speaking for our Government. To you, one and all, welcome to the capital city of Washington! Washington, the immaculate, Washington, the beautiful; to whose beauty God has added at this lovely Easter time a new dress. It must be in honor of your coming! (Applause) I welcome you, Ladies, first, for yourselves—and that is a good deal. (Laughter) I welcome you, then, for your Order, and I welcome you more than all for the objects for which that Order was organized. (Great applause.)

Patriotism and heroism it is your object to commemorate-as I understand the objects of your Order—and they are noble objects, too. Little did our ancestors who transformed Boston Harbor into a teapot (laughter) anticipate what would be the ultimate result of their so doing; little did the men who fought in the Revolution appreciate what the Government for which they were laying the founda

tion would be. Little did they think that a hundred or a hundred and a quarter years hence there would be gathered here on the banks of the Potomac, then an untrod wilderness, such an aggregation of intelligence and of beauty and of wealth and of patriotism as is gathered here today in this matchless Hall which will hereafter be your home. I congratulate you upon it. I congratulate you that there is in your heart the pulse-beat which impels you to do what you can to keep before the eyes of the coming generations all that is noblest and all that is best in the deeds of our ancestors. We have progressed wondrously, magnificently, stupendously. We need not go back to the Revolutionary times-aye, not even back to the Civil War, to appreciate with what wondrous strides has this great Republic of ours pressed forward. (Applause) In little more than four decades our population has almost trebled and our national wealth increased many fold-aye, increased have we in wealth and in population and in influence until today, occupying as we do less than seven per cent. of the surface of the earth, peopled by barely five per cent. of all the people in Christendom, we exert an influence both commercially, educationally, in every way, equal to one-half of all the people of all the rest of the world. (Applause) And it is your object to emphasize in the thought of those of today the great deeds of those who made this present possible-made this present possible by heroism, by hardship, by endurance, a century ago.

The possibilities of this country are beyond description, and there never has been a time when we have been better prepared for an enlarged destiny than we are to-day; because there never has been a time when the people have been more imbued with patriotism, with enthusiasm, and there never has been a time when they have been better educated and better qualified to carry on the enlarged destiny. As we have surpassed all competitors in commercial influence, so I believe will we surpass them all in the arts and in the sciences. We are great because we have equal part with the Italians in the glory of Angelo; we have an equal part with the Spaniards in the discoveries of Columbus-aye, too, we have equal part with the Hollanders in the splendor of Rembrandt, and with the French in the heroics of Napoleon; we have equal part with the Germans in the sublimity of Beethoven, and with the English in the magnificence of Shakespeare. We are a composite of all that is greatest and best of all the people in the world and therefore it is that we have built up here upon the American Continent a people, the best the world has ever seen-and the best alone is good enough for America. (Applause)

I am getting away from what I said. I said I was simply going to bid you welcome, and then attend to other duties. (Laughter) This is a duty, being here this morning, but it is a pleasure as well as a duty, I assure you. I trust, my lady friends, that all the deliberations of your body may be pleasant. (Applause) I trust that the result will be acquiesced in by all. (Laughter) Evidently, you think I am rather