224 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



and use every means to get the people to attend and 

 learn the object. You surely can always find volunteers 

 to deliver an address, that will tend to lighten the weary 

 toil of industry, and give an hour of instruction and 

 amusement to an audience of farmers. But, above all 

 things, let me urge this solemn fact upon your notice, 

 that as you hope to prosper, you must interest the female 

 portion of society. No cause can prosper without them. 

 You have only to look at the political history of this 

 country for a few years past to be convinced of that 

 fact. It was the slander and abuse heaped upon the 

 wife of Andrew Jackson, that enlisted female influence 

 in his favor and placed him in the Presidential chair. 

 It was because Martin Van Buren was a very good sort 

 of a "ladies' man" that placed him there. And no good 

 democrat will dare to doubt that it was female influence 

 alone that elected him who had scarcely reached the 

 pinnacle of glory, before the Great Leveler of all men, 

 laid him as low as the most humble among us. 



And without that same kind of influence, your Society 

 might as well cease vain efforts, for I repeat, you cannot 

 succeed. Secure her aid and your cause will triumph. 

 Can you not offer sufficient inducements to them to secure 

 their attendance at the meetings of your Society? 



If the premature frostiness of age had not fixed a 

 forbiding aspect upon me, 1 I would venture to suggest 

 that the very name of your Society should act as a 

 talisman upon the minds of the younger portion to in- 

 duce them to come forth. They too, may here find 

 inducements to form such a "union," as no society can 

 exist without. 



I think, that if you would make your meetings popular, 

 that your speaker and his subject should be selected as 

 well to instruct and amuse the fairer portion of creation, 

 as those who style themselves "lords," and too often 

 "lord it" over the weaker class of their fellow creatures. 



1 Solon Robinson had red hair which turned white before he was 

 thirty. At the time of this address he was thirty-seven. 



