which, could clarify an atmosphere when mere knowledge of the "Rules
of Order" would have failed. She had spiritual vision, and by it she
knew the soul of the club; no amount of dissension could shake her
faith in its ultimate good, and in times of crisis she presided with a
serenity only accountable in the fact that she viewed from the
mountain summit what her associates saw only from the housetop. What
years of development she enjoyed long before the club idea possessed
her, endowing her with wisdom and mental breadth, and what
associations that urged and demanded that she become a student of
sociology! The seeds of thought planted in those early days of
journalistic experience, inclusive of what she terms the "Positivist
Episode," blossomed in her later, more mature years, and all the
harvest she brought and applied to the organization of women. To the
casual observer an organized body of women differed in no particular
form from any ordinary assembly of women. What it was to her one can
only realize by a careful perusal of her writings on club formation,
and the moral awakening that sounded the bugle note of progress when
women began to organize.

Once it came to the hearing of this gentle apostle of development,
that she had been said to represent a cult. The occasion was a
reception given in her honor by one of her clubs on her seventieth
birthday. There had been speeches and congratulations, and the scene
was one of general rejoicing. "Oh, she is the leader of a cult,"
whispered a guest, and the remark was repeated to Mrs. Croly. She
received it with a sorry smile of regret that any one should so
misinterpret the significance of the scene. As if the narrow and
exclusive word "cult" could be applied to an assembly that stood for
organization and human development, which, in her prophetic vision,
only needed time to unite races, and ultimately to extend around the