TO INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAIN
“For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime;
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.”
—Milton.
Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,
How can death claim you?
Many he leads down the long halls of silence
Burdened with years,
Those who have known sorrow
And are weary with forgetting,
The young who have tasted only gladness
And who go with wistful eyes,
Never to see the sharp breaking of illusion.
For these—
We who remain and are lonely
Find consolation, saying
“They have won the white vistas of quietness.”
But for you—
The words of my grief will not form
In a pattern of resignation.
The syllables of rebellion
Are quivering upon my lips!
You belonged to life—
To the struggling actuality of earth;
You were our Hortensia and flung
Her challenge to the world—
Our world still strangely Roman—
“Does justice scorn a woman?”
Oh! Between her words and yours the centuries seem
Like little pauses in an ancient song,
For in the hour of war’s discordant triumph
You both demanded “Peace”!
184And I, remembering how the faces of many women
Turned toward you with passionate expectation,
How can I find consolation?
Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,
Can death still claim you?
When in the whitening winter of our grief
Your smile with all the radiance of spring,
When from the long halls of silence
The memory of your voice comes joyously back
To the ears of our desolation—
Your voice that held a challenge and a caress.
You have gone—
Yet you are ours eternally!
Your gallant youth,
Your glorious self-sacrifice—all ours!
Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,
Death cannot claim you!
Ruth Fitch.
The Suffragist, December 30, 1916.

The most poignant event—and perhaps the most beautiful in all the history of the Congressional union—took place on Christmas Day of this year, the memorial service in memory of Inez Milholland.

Inez Milholland was one of the human sacrifices offered on the altar of woman’s liberty. She died that other women might be free.

In the recent campaign, she had spoken in Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and California. In her memorial address, Maud Younger said:

The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she would take a train at two in the morning, to arrive at eight; and then a train at midnight, to arrive at five in the morning. She would come away from audiences and droop as a flower. The hours between were hours of exhaustion and suffering. She would ride in the trains gazing from the windows, listless, almost lifeless, until one spoke; then again the sweet smile, the sudden interest, the quick sympathy. The courage of her was marvelous.

Inez Milholland.
In the Washington Parade, March 3, 1913.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing.

185At a great mass-meeting at Los Angeles, in October, she was saying—in answer to the President’s words, “The tide is rising to meet the moon; you will not have long to wait,”—“How long must women wait for liberty?” On the word liberty, she fell fainting to the floor. Within a month, she was dead.

That Christmas Day, Statuary Hall in the Capitol of the United States was transformed. The air was full of the smells of the forest. Greens made a background—partially concealing the semi-circle of statues—at the rear; laurel and cedar banked the dais in front; somber velvet curtains fell about its sides. Every one of the chairs which filled the big central space supported a flag of purple, white, and gold. Between the pillars of the balcony hung a continuous frieze; pennants of purple, white, and gold—the tri-color of these feminist crusaders.

The audience assembled in the solemn quiet proper to such an occasion, noiselessly took their seats in the semi-circle below and the gallery above. The organ played Ave Maria. Then again, a solemn silence fell.

Suddenly the stillness was invaded by a sound—music, very faint and far-away. It grew louder and louder. It was the sound of singing. It came nearer and nearer. It was the voices of boys. Presently the beginning of a long line of boy choristers, who had wound through the marble hallway, appeared in the doorway. They marched into the hall chanting:
“Forward, out of error,
Leave behind the night,
Forward through the darkness,
Forward into light.”

Behind came Mary Morgan in white, carrying a golden banner with the above words inscribed on it. This was a duplicate of the banner that Inez Milholland bore in the first Suffrage parade in New York. Behind the golden banner came a great procession of young women wearing 186straight surplices; the first division in purple, the next in white, the last in gold, carrying high standards which bore the tri-color. Before each division came another young girl in white, carrying a golden banner—lettered.

One banner said:
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS THAT HELAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR A FRIEND

Another banner said:
WITHOUT EXTINCTION IS LIBERTY, WITHOUT RETROGRADE IS EQUALITY

The last banner said:
AS HE DIED TO MAKE MEN HOLY LET US DIE TO MAKE MEN FREE

These white-clad girls stood in groups on both sides of the laurel-covered dais against the shadowy background of the curtains. The standard-bearers in the purple, the white, the gold, formed a semi-circle of brilliant color which lined the hall and merged with the purple, white, and gold frieze above them. They stood during the service, their tri-colored banners at rest.

There followed music. The choristers sang: Forward Be Our Watchword. The Mendelssohn Quartet sang: Love Divine and Thou Whose Almighty Word. Elizabeth Howry sang first All Through the Night and, immediately after, Henchel’s ringing triumphant Morning Song. It is an acoustic effect of Statuary Hall that the music seems to come from above. That effect added immeasurably to the solemnity of this occasion.

Tribute speeches followed, Anne Martin introducing the speakers. Mrs. William Kent read two resolutions: one prepared under the direction of Zona Gale, the other by Florence Brewer Boeckel. Maud Younger delivered a beautiful memorial address.

187“And so ever through the West, she went,” Miss Younger said in part, “through the West that drew her, the West that loved her, until she came to the end of the West. There where the sun goes down in glory in the vast Pacific, her life went out in glory in the shining cause of freedom.... They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as she flashed through her last burning mission, flashed through to her death, a falling star in the western heavens.... With new devotion we go forth, inspired by her sacrifice to the end that this sacrifice be not in vain, but that dying she shall bring to pass that which living she could not achieve, full freedom for women, full democracy for the nation....”

At the end the quartet sang, Before the Heavens Were Spread Abroad. Then the procession re-formed, and marched out again as it had come, a slow-moving band of color which gradually disappeared; a river of music which gradually died to a thread, to a sigh ... to nothing.... As before the white-surpliced choristers headed the procession, chanting the recessional, For All the Saints. Their banners lowered, the girl standard-bearers—first those in floating gold, then those in drifting white, then those ............