The notes of the great god Pan, so "piercingly sweet by the river"--a
far cry and a weary way from Pan to Handel and Beethoven; yet during
all that time music has been the joy and the consolation of
peoples,--all except the Quakers.

If Poetry is the prophet of the future, music expresses all
emotions,--love, joy, fear, above all, aspiration. Music is
essentially religious, and has inspired the most perfect forms of
emotional composition we know.

I take off my hat to the new man--that is, I would if I wore one, but
I wear a bonnet, and pin it on with long, sharp-pointed things which
if they were not used voluntarily would be considered instruments of
torture. Think of the man who is testing the force of dynamite--who is
holding lightning bolts in his hand and forcing them to do the work
which he has planned for them, who is taking the altitude of the
mountains in Mars in his observatory in the air at midnight,--think of
these men stopping to swear while they ran the murderous little weapon
through six thicknesses of buckram, lining, velvet, lace, feathers,
ribbon and hair--to fasten on their bonnets!




Letter to the New York Woman's Press Club


October, 1900.

My dear Friends and Fellow-Members: