Selma on her part reciprocated by a reference to the course of lectures on "Culture and Higher Education," which she had resolved to deliver before the Benham Institute during the winter. In these lectures she meant to emphasize the importance of unfettered individuality, and to comment adversely on the tendencies hostile to this fundamental principle of progress which she had observed in New York and from which Benham itself did not appear to her to be entirely exempt. After delivering these lectures in Benham she intended to repeat them in various parts of the State, and in some of the large cities elsewhere, under the auspices of the Confederated Sisterhood of Women's Clubs of America, the Sorosis which Mrs. Earle had established on a firm basis, and of which at present she was second vice-president. As a token of sympathy with this undertaking, Mr. Lyons offered to procure her a free pass on the railroads over which she would be obliged to travel. This pleased Selma greatly, for she had always regarded free passes as a sign of mysterious and enviable importance.
Two months later Selma, as secretary of the sub-committee of the Institute selected to oppose before the legislature the bill to create an appointed school board, had further occasion to confer with Mr. Lyons. He agreed to be the active counsel, and approved of the plan that a delegation of women should journey to the capital, two hours and a half by rail, and add the moral support of their presence at the hearing before the legislative committee.
The expedition was another gratification to Selma--who had become possessed of her free pass. She felt that in visiting the state-house and thus taking an active part in the work of legislation she was beginning to fulfil the larger destiny for which she was qualified. Side by side with Mrs. Earle at the head of a delegation of twenty Benham women she marched augustly into the committee chamber. The contending factions sat on opposite sides of the room. Through its middle ran a long table occupied by the Committee on Education to which the bill had been referred. Among the dozen or fifteen persons who appeared in support of the bill Selma perceived Mrs. Hallett Taylor, whom she had not seen since her return. She was disappointed to observe that Mrs. Taylor's clothes, though unostentatious, were in the latest fashion. She had hoped to find her dowdy or unenlightened, and to be able to look down on her from the heights of her own New York experience.