Fur off, fur off, we hear the melodious swash of its waves on its green banks—­we see fur off the gleam of its white, glory-lit mountain-tops.

Men have gin their strength and their lives for this ideal, this vision of glory and freedom.

Wimmen have took their jewels from their bosom, and gin ’em to this cause of Human Right.  Gin ’em with breakin’ hearts, and white lips that tried to smile, as the last kiss of lover and son, husband and brother, rested on ’em.

Yes, men and wimmen both have seen that Ideal Land, that New Land of Liberty and Love.  They have apprehended it with finer senses than comprehension—­have seen it with the clearer light of the soul’s eyes.

Some green boughs from its high palms have been washed out on the swellin’ waves that lay between us and that Land, and floated to our feet.  Sometimes, when the air wuz very still and hushed, and a Presence seemed broodin’ on the rapt listnin’ earth, we have looked fur, fur up into the clear depths of blue above us, and we have ketched the distant glimpse of birds of strange plumage onknown to this Old World.  Fur off, fur off their silvery wings have floated, a-comin’ from the West, from the land that lays beyend the sunset’s golden glory.

Some of the light of that New Country has shone on us in inspired eyes, some of its strange language has been hearn by us from inspired lips.

But oh! the wide, pathless sea that lays between us and that land of full Fruition and Glory and Freedom.

Shall we set down on the shores of our Old World, and give up the hope and glory of the New?  Shall we listen to the jeers and sneers of them that tell us that there hain’t any such country as that we look for—­that it is impossible, that it is aginst all the laws of Nater—­that it don’t exist, and never can, only in our crazed brains?

No, we will man the boat, though the waves dash high, and the skies are dark—­we will man and woman the life-boat—­side by side will the two great forces stand, the Motherhood and the Fatherhood, Love and Justice, the hope and strength of Humanity shall stand at the hellum.  The wind is a-comin’ up; it is only a light breeze now, but it shall rise to a strong power that shall waft us on to the New Land of Justice and Purity and Liberty—­for all that our souls long for.

But we have got to shet our eyes to the outward world that presses round us closter than the streets of Genoa did round Columbus.  We have got to see things invisible, trust in things to come—­sail onwards through the doubts, and the darkness, and the dangers round us, not heeding the jeers and sneers of a gainsayin’ world.

Will we be discouraged and drove back by the powers of darkness? by the things seen and the things onseen?

No, the man and the woman side by side will sail on through them rough waves.  The wind is a-comin’ up fresh and free that shall spread the sails and waft the life-boat into the Land of Promise.