156 THIRTIETH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



Tuesday Evening. 



President Pierce. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the pleas- 

 ure of presenting to you, this evening-, Mrs. Mary A. Smith 

 of Morrisville, President of the Woman's Auxiliary of the 

 Vermont Dairyman's Association. 



Mrs. Smith. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentleman. — It is 

 with pleasure to greet you tonight and in behalf of the Wom- 

 an's Auxiliary of the Vermont Dairyman's Association, I bid 

 you welcome. 



Standing, as we do tonight, in the twilight of the century 

 we can scarce refrain from meditating upon the changes that 

 have come to us in these last few years that go to make up 

 the era of time that is called the nineteenth century. 



We are none of us old. The frosts of time may have 

 touched our hair, our hearing may be a little dull, our step 

 less elastic, but associations we have formed in these valleys 

 and on these hillsides have attuned our hearts to the melody, 

 " we are still young." But young though we are, most of us 

 can remember when there were no gatherings like the present 

 for improvement and education. Most of us can remember 

 when the sphere of woman was bounded by the four walls of 

 her home. Most of us can remember when the church with its 

 mid-week prayer meeting and here and there an Odd Fellows' 

 lodge or Free Masons' lodge constituted about all the socie- 

 ties there were. Now any one of our churches with organized 

 detachments will furnish a meeting for every evening of the 

 week. 



All kinds of labor are organized into sections and look after 

 their own interests ; and those of us who are not permitted to 

 take part in the matter, have thought a great many times that 

 our political system, free and simple though it may seem, 

 was run on a sort of organized plan, a sort of Ferris wheel, 

 that dropped off a man just at the right time without any re- 

 gard for the consequences. To just what extent our efforts 

 should be organized is a debatable question. Certain it is 

 that Dairymen's Associations have done a good work in this 

 and other states ; and the Woman's Auxiliary is endeavoring 

 to further this work by bringing to your attention from time 

 to time subjects that are of interest, not only to the dairy- 

 woman but to the dairyman and his family and to the stran- 

 ger within his gates. 



Some people claim that the civil war was responsible for 

 the discovery by women of the great possibilities for her intel- 



