When a soul that has worn out its frail body in the work of the world
crosses the threshold of eternity, the darkness that gathers around
our hearts has in it a relief of light. Nature has suffered no
violence; the power of the body has been exhausted in good service,
and the tired spirit is set free from the encasement that can no
longer serve it. A fond look backward, a hopeful look forward, and the
portals close with our benediction.
"A life that dares send
A challenge to the end,
And, when it comes, say
'Welcome, friend,'"
inspires the wish that we may so fill the measure of our days with
usefulness.
The departure of such a spirit would be fittingly commemorated by the
grand marches of Chopin and Beethoven, or the majestic requiems of
Mozart, rather than by our simple words. And yet they are our hearts'
testimony to her in whose name we are assembled and, let us hope, made
worthy. To us who believe that life reels not back from the white
charger of Death towards the gulf of inanity and oblivion, there is a
vivid realization that our words may be spoken to the conscious
spirit; and we desire that, in the sacred name of truth, and with the
love that comprehends and overcomes, we may speak simply as "soul to
soul."
One of the most beautiful lessons I have learned of death is that
after the departure of a friend, or even of an acquaintance, our
memories retain and cherish their best and noblest qualities and
deeds. We repeat their finest words and recount their generous works.
The sunshine falls clear on their virtues, and the shadow lies kindly
on their faults. It exalts our nature that our minds elect only the
lovely and beautiful characteristics of the lost friend. This sublime
power in us breaks the force of the bitter criticism of the obituary,
the eulogy, and the epitaph--that they are false notes in a hymn of
praise. And to us yet living, there is sweet comfort in the thought
that our best and higher selves shall remain with those we love and
honor. And so shall the good we do live after us. These purified
remembrances are links of the chain that binds the humblest to the
highest.
In my early womanhood I knew our honored president, a fair, happy,
healthy, active English woman; and she appeared to me (sobered by the
loss of most of my family) to rejoice in a fulness of life. We were
maidens, and her interests and activities were in domestic and social
life. I have not lost the fresh memory of her in those days.
She was our president for ten years, and afterwards our honorary
president. The activity of her life has made the deepest impression
upon me. Every member of our association and of sister associations
will agree with me, that never a woman brought a more cheerful and
willing spirit to her official duties than did she. She rejoiced in
her place, delighted in her privilege, and fully enjoyed the
recognition and good fellowship of other clubs. This cheerful service,
rendered for years, made her widely known in the club world. She
responded to personal influence and suggestions made directly to her.
She was most receptive to practical ideas, and adopted methods
readily, and her liberal service brought to her just recompense.
For years it required sacrifice on her part to attend the regular
meetings of Sorosis, for she had daily occupation, and a lost day must
be redeemed. But when an officer she made the sacrifice cheerfully.
She was social and hospitable. Freely her house was given to us for
lectures, receptions to distinguished guests and business meetings.
For years the Positivists held their meetings at her home. She found
her pleasure in pleasing, and in helping others gave herself joy. She
loved her work for clubs, and you will remember that she had several
business enterprises connected with them, during the years that she
was an active clubwoman.
I was in this country while she was preparing her history of clubs
(not the history of Sorosis), and she brought the interest and
enthusiasm of a young woman to the work; with a satisfied pride she
showed me the material she had collected for the history. Nothing else
to her mind was more important, or to be thought of until that was
accomplished. I believe that her usefulness to clubs has been
commensurate with the interest and gratification she had in the
service.
During the years of our acquaintance our intercourse was genial and
concordant, and the results of our early work in Sorosis cannot equal
the sweet satisfaction that came with its performance.
In the early life of the club many of us were young mothers, and our
domestic duties had strong claims upon us, and one prominent thought
in connection with the formation of Sorosis was that the attention of
a large class of thinking women, directed in concert towards important
domestic and social questions, could be secured; and, while the
character of the club should be pre-eminently social, we hoped to
quietly bring in important reforms, or at least some effective action
on these questions, and, above all, to secure an intelligent social
intercourse without increasing our domestic duties and responsibilities.
Have we not accomplished this?
As the smallest consoling thought is greater than the most eloquent
expression of sorrow, so do we find some consolation in the fact that
fate was kind to our friend, and led her away when she could no longer
enjoy life, and that she went while with us whose hearts were warm
with an active sympathy and tender helpfulness.
Our kind purpose to her name lifts our acts above criticism, and
fortifies them by our love and worthiness of intention. Let us live to
live forever--so shall we never fear death; let our warm human love be
the prophet of a union for greater benefits; and let us have faith in
the love that lives in human bosoms still:
"Lives to renovate our earth
From the bondage of its birth,
And the long arrears of ill."
Address by the Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Vice-President of the Woman's
Press Club of New York City
I am requested to speak of the excellent work done by its departed
president, in and for the Woman's Press Club of New York City. To
others is assigned the testimony in reference to the career and work
of our departed president as a press woman, and her place in
literature.
We are not here to analyze her character, or to chronicle her work.
Nor are we here to dwell on those biographical details which belong to
the pen rather than the voice; to the book and the reader rather than
the address and the hearer. We are here to testify our regard for one
whose busy pen is laid aside, but whose example of industry we may
well imitate; though in the journalistic field the women of to-day
will never have opportunity to emulate her perseverance and
fearlessness, since her entrance in times long gone by on this
untrodden path bore an important part in opening the way and obtaining
results for women with whom the pen to-day is a power.
Mrs. Croly was the founder of this club in 1889, and for twelve years
and to the day of her death, its only president. It started (as she
tells us in the large quarto volume relating to clubs--which was the
closing, if not the crowning, effort of her busy pen) with an
invitation sent out by herself in November, 1889, to forty women, a
number of whom were then engaged upon the press in New York City, to
meet at her residence, and consider the advisability of forming a
Woman's Press Club. It was eminently fitting that one who had been
stirred in former years by the absence of social recognition in
journalism as within woman's province, on the part of the men of the
press, and moved to take a prominent part in the formation of Sorosis,
should organize a club of women writers--women journalists
especially--which should be known everywhere as distinctly a Woman's
Press Club.
The response to her call was most gratifying. Her ability as an
organizer, and her social qualities which could attract and hold women
together in strong bonds of mutual esteem and fellowship, were again
evident, and on November 19, 1889, the organization was effected and a
provisional constitution adopted.
At first the literary features of the new club were considered
secondary to the social and beneficiary, but gradually they grew to
their present importance.
In its early days, like most clubs this one was migratory, and its
work incidental. Gradually it came to have a more permanent home, and
its monthly programmes which, as Mrs. Croly herself stated, "are more
in the form of a symposium than of a question for debate," came to be
so attractive and varied, and in every way so excellent, that they are
often declared to be unsurpassed in interest by any woman's club. This
was a matter of exceeding satisfaction to its founder, who saw the
club grow from its membership of fifty-two to two hundred. She was
never weary of recounting its successes, literary, musical, artistic
and social. The Press Club was her joy and pride from its organization
to the very day when she last met with its members, devoting on that
day her failing strength to a cause that was beyond expression dear to
her heart. I think I shall only be saying very feebly what the members
of the club, especially those who have been members from its
organization, now feel--that they regard her presence with them on the
recent day of installation of new officers as a benediction, though
they little knew that in her feebleness she was bidding them a loving
farewell. When the news of her departure reached them it was received
with surprise and deep sorrow. By prompt action the officers at once
came together, and immediate measures were taken for appropriate
expression of the Press Club's loyalty and love.
Its members are here to-day not only to express their own high regard
for their departed founder and president, but also to unite with
Sorosis, the London Pioneer Club, and other clubs in the State
Federation, who, by their presence, speech, or song, indicate the
sympathy they have with those who will hold in fadeless remembrance
their ascended president, who has learned ere this, that
"Life is ever Lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own."
As members of the club she, who has now passed into the eternal light,
founded may we seek earnestly to walk in the light of Truth, strenuous
for that more than royal liberty of conscience, which means liberty
under righteous law and seeking for the Unity which obeys the Golden
Rule, and thus binds heart to heart. So shall the Woman's Press Club
of New York City truly honor the memory of its founder and first
president, Jane Cunningham Croly.