July 8.

Barbara, My Dear:

Behold me, Delight Dennison of Verner College and nowhere, with a manner befitting the ladies of Cranford. Fortified with a pair of tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles. They make me look heaps older. Swathed in a linen waist with choking collar. “Young ladies, young ladies,” shrills the principal of this school, “teachers should never wear low collars in the school room.” Perish the thought that once I broke a record at hurdle jumping.

For ten days I have patiently wiped the nose of Little Italy. I have extracted yards of raffia from the blouse of thieving Young Poland. One hundred times have I demanded that Rosalie keep in line. Forty times a day I have showed Yetta which is her right foot.

Can you imagine me? But last night was worst of all. If only you could have beheld 0072me! Perched on two yielding boards that had once encased Brown's Naphtha soap and protested ominously at call to further duty. Waving a yellow banner. Speaking, yes actually speaking at a suffrage street meeting.

Open not your arms in welcome; lift not your voice in thanksgiving. All who suffer are not suffragettes. My anti-principles are as firmly embedded as when you first began to tug at them back in our freshmen days.

But such things have I seen in Canton, this State, that I would mount the house-tops to shout them forth. And by stepping no higher than a soap-box suffragists can get an audience. Ergo, I stepped.

It's the result of my daily promenade through the factory section of Canton toward my place of toil. There are some sights to which one may become accustomed, but I do not number among them a dead pig, a very dead pig. Each morning I have talked to myself about that pig. I have spent valuable time assuring myself that I could pass it with my head averted. But my nostrils have defied my most stern commands.

This afternoon I came down the street. I 0083saw the four familiar saloons on the corners. Swarming in the filth were hundreds of children—covered with mud and slime—and little else. On the corner the pig. I hesitated. Then a fight erupting from one of the saloons sent me flying toward a street car and the safety of my hideous pay-as-you-enter boarding-house.

If you had seen that picture you would not wonder that as the cars swung up the beautiful shaded avenue I shook from head to foot. Suddenly a clear, low voice spoke my name. For the first time I realized that the other half of my seat was in the possession of Mrs. Morton, the Mrs. Morton, main topic of my last epistle to you. Babs, she's just as fascinating as I imagined.

It took me a minute to swallow my amazement that she had even noticed me at the opposite end of the boarding-house table. Then I was telling her what I had seen, with a wealth of detail which you have been spared. We talked on and on and were at the end of the car-line before we thought to get off. It was a refreshed person who responded eagerly to her suggestion of walking back.

While we were still out in the fields, she startled me by remarking: “Some of us hope to make conditions better by giving women the suffrage.”

To my utter dismay she continued, “We are to have a street meeting to-night. Will you help?” I smiled as I thought how I've ridiculed your interest in the “Caws.” But I would agree to a balloon ascension if that would arouse the people of Canton.

One of the women at the meeting told me that Mrs. Morton is the suffrage leader for the district. It seems that the men of the state are to vote in November on sharing with the women the ballot-box, or whatever it is that votes are put in. I should think they would mobilize an army for its protection if the way Mrs. Morton swept me up on that soap-box is evidence of her methods.

“Just tell what you saw. I'll point out the changes women would make,” and she shoved me forward. At first I could only see faces and faces and more faces.

Finally I got started and I talked for hours. Mrs. Morton said just ten minutes, but I never did believe in wrist-watch time. The crowd 0105appeared to listen. I am not sure about the impression that I made. The woman who appeared most intent sidled up after the meeting. With profuse apologies she pointed to Mrs. Morton's young face and whispered, “Please won't you tell me how you got your hair so white?”

Don't reproach me for taking advantage of your precious suffragists. I promise to turn back into a proper school-ma'mish person when the first bell rings to-morrow morning. I am trying hard to make good at this vacation school work, with a strong hope of a regular position in the fall. I realize may propensity for getting into scrapes, as well as you, oh, long-suffering roommate. If I had been ignorant, I would have been enlightened by the private little commencement address Dean Stanton offered me with this position.

Please understand that my coming to that castle you call a camp is out of the question. Ask your ducky parent to make no further suggestions about transportation. A few privileges are denied even a millionaire. I will not come again until I can pay my own railroad fare.

Don't think that because I've had no family for sixteen years I do not realize how much you miss your mother. No career lures me away from you. Bread is not growing butter these days and the world has become so sordid that one has to work a little, even for the staff of life. I must get started on earning the necessities, or I will become one of those detestable, dried-up, wizened perennials, everlastingly adorning the Martin board. That is a future I refuse to contemplate. But I promise most solemnly to cram the mail bag full of Delight.

July 12.

Dear Oasis in Time of Trouble:

I am discharged from the Canton school department. This morning I received a polite notice that the number of pupils does not justify so many teachers. Those on trial will be dropped in favor of the regular staff.

There's an African in the paling somewhere. The school where I've been teaching is really over-crowded and I've heard the same of several others. Moreover I cannot find that any other teachers are leaving. I wish I knew the 0127real reason. It might help me in my next position—if I get one.

I have interviewed innumerable men and I could live well the remainder of my life on the sale of the red tape I have unwound. Not one scrap of information can I get.

I waver between offering my valuable services to a box factory, a department store and my landlady who needs a new waitress.

Yours in the doleful doldrums, Delight.

July 15.

To Miss Barbara Martin,

Pride's Landing, North River Postoffice, Long Lake:

Enclosed please find check, signed John Dillingham Martin. Delight.

July 19.

After refusing your fashionable life preserver, generous but misguided friend, I hesitate to inform you that as I came up for the last time I grasped gratefully a rope flung to me by Mrs. Morton.

She has been suffragetting elsewhere and 0138only returned to Canton last evening. She knocked at my door as I was packing my trunk for parts unknown. I may as well admit, humbling though it be, that my services were declined by all of the possibilities I mentioned and several others.

There was nothing for it but to tell the truth. She suggested what seems to me an impossibility, that my dismissal from the school department is the result of participating in the suffrage meeting. I know she only demanded to share the responsibility so as to make it easy for me to accept her offer. To-wit: one-half of the apartment an obliging friend with a country home has loaned her until November. Plus one job. The said job to consist in going from door to door to get enrollments for the suffragists. My personal convictions are not included in the bargain. The salary is infinitesimal, but what is a matter of salary between enemies. I remain, An Ardent Anti-Canvasser for the Suffragists. Let us hope not for long. Delight.

July 22.

Barbara Dear:

Your three letters would wring admissions from prouder person than I. Yes, I did need the check badly. I had just $5 in my pocketbook. But I have made up my mind to live on my own. Missionaries never have much of this world's goods to leave behind. The tiny inheritance left me by my missionary parents hardly lasted for the college education, which my mother stipulated I should have. I mean to justify her confidence that with that equipment I can earn my own living. Don't worry about me, please. There's a strong prejudice against letting the children of missionaries and ministers starve. If you really want to give away some of the money your mother left you, why not endow a scholarship at Verner and make possible for others such days as we had there.

My job is doing nicely, thank you. You should see me with my shiny black bag bulging with suffrage enrollment slips, toiling up the front steps of Canton homes. The first day was the hardest.

That night I dreamed that it was election 01510day. A huge ballot box champed long yellow fangs at me and in a terrible voice demanded slips and more slips. When I had no more to give, it shouted, “Now I will swallow you.”

At my first stop this morning I found my way up the steps barred by a man lounging lazily with a vile-smelling pipe for companion.

“Get away, get away,” he shouted, jumping to his feet and waving his pipe madly in the air. “I've been a Republican for twenty years and I've been offered $1,000 to change my party, but I'll never do it. Votes for women. Huh, I guess not. Take your old tracts away. Won't read ‘em. Never read anything about you. Don't want to now.”

A quiet little woman slipped into the alleyway as I went back to the family in the rear. “Don't mind him,” she whispered comfortingly, “course he don't want the papers. He can't read or write.”

I wish that you might see the apartment. It is very attractive, simply furnished and comfortable. It is another responsibility of course, but you have to be cooped up in a real boarding-house to realize the joy of having a home, even one pro tem. You wouldn't appreciate 01611what a pleasure it is for me to get a glass of ice water without starting out on a scouting expedition for the nearest soda fountain.

By the way, Mrs. Morton is not satisfied with the explanation for my discharge as a canton school teacher. She could never prove it, but she's quite determined that the power behind the deed was Big Tim Jordan. Big Tim is the black spider who spins most of canton's political web and devours the major part of the spoils. He is an avowed enemy of the suffragists. Somehow the thought of him as an ally is not wholly pleasing. Delight.

Saturday.

To the Lady Who Lives by a Lake and Torments Her Friends in the Torrid Zone:

Don't dare to mention canoe again. Likewise bathing suit, fishing pole, tennis racquet, cool nights. Canton is no place in which to receive such news with equanimity. I've never been so hot in all my life, not even in Canton, China. Canton, this State, has brought back many memories of my birthplace. I wish I could remember more about my trip to this country. It 01712must have been eventful. Think of the Norwegian wife of the Belgian minister to China for chaperone. And for traveling companions three Persian girls she was bringing here to school. At the time I thought the trip an absurd piece of business easily avoided if my parents had ordered me delivered from the factory to the United States, where I could welcome them on their return.

You regret your four years away from her at college, now that your mother is gone. Think of all the vacations and letters and the visits from your mother. I broke the tenth commandment all to bits that first year at Verner when she used to come once a month to see you.

My strongest memory of my mother is a picture of her waving gay farewells to a tiny girl on the deck of a big steamer. I wonder if they had any thought of danger, those brave parents of mine, when they went back to their posts to fall among the first Boxer victims?

I should be able to rise above the difficulties of a little job like mine. What if it seems hot and I think I get tired and people often appear rude.

It is strange how combative I feel when I encounter another anti-suffragist like myself. To-day I offered an enrollment slip to a man seated on a porch with his feet comfortably disposed on the rail.

“I guess not,” he snapped. “What I think is if females stayed to home and tended to their dish-washing they'd have enough to do.”

I asked to speak to the woman who washes his dishes and he replied, “She's downtown. I ain't in work just now, and she's got a job cleaning offices.”

When I found he had two grown daughters working in department stores keeping him home in comfort, I had to hurry away. I didn't want to disgrace the suffragists.

A little further down the street I found a capable woman confessing to much suffrage interest, but unwilling to promise help. A small girl with a loose tooth absorbed most of her attention. Finally I got the child on my lap to look at my suffrage button. With the gift of it for a bribe, she let me tie a bit of string to the tooth. I got the tooth and the woman for a committee. Yours Belligerently, Delight.

July 27.

Barbara Dear:

This is the story of an unhappy day. The ice man cost me an hour of sleep that I thought was necessary to my comfort. I had to say ten times, “It is a pleasure to have this apartment.” Conviction was completely routed when a button flew off my shoe.

I had forgotten to order butter. I burned the last bit of bread trying to make toast, sweep the living-room and answer the telephone all at the same time.

By noon the hunger thought was rampant. I sacrificed ten cents carfare and a precious half-hour to go downtown to a good restaurant. After a perfectly unnecessary glance in my pocketbook, I decided on a lettuce sandwich and a glass of milk. That left twenty cents for a cool, sweet desert. When I had demolished the sandwich to the last crumb, the waitress announced that my much-anticipated desert was “out.” Her manner gave no promise of its speedy return. Too late then for anything filling. More arguing with my inwards to prove that a slender slice of cake would fill the yawning cavity.

To-night I faced the prospect of another suffrage speech. Mrs. Morton is out in the country separating wily politicians from their opinions on suffrage. She telephoned that she couldn't get back and asked me to take her place. Of course I couldn't refuse, and besides I had thought of a lot of things I wanted to say.

The audience was a club of Italian voters at one of the city settlements. I tried to use very simple words. Imagine the blow when I heard one of the men ask, “Mist Armstrong, da lady she talka about da antis. Whose aunties she mean?”

I looked at the gentleman addressed, the leader of the club, Professor William Miller Armstrong, letters innumerable, professor of economy and political science in the Amos Danbury College of Canton. When the scowl he had worn all evening melted in a grin, I discovered Bill Armstrong.

Did I ever tell you about him? A little freckle-faced boy who put apples and ginger cookies in the fence-corner for me, when I told him I was starved at Miss Wright's school. I actually made him believe me a prisoner in a 02116sort of orphan asylum. Oh my days of mourning when I found out that he was only on a visit to the people across the street.

He wouldn't climb a fence now. He's tall and broad-shouldered and the most serious-looking individual you ever beheld. His chin is the firmest thing and his eyes bore a hole right through you. Isn't it a pity that friendly little boys grow up into such undesirable citizens?

He insisted on taking me home. It was a most unpleasant ride, a fitting climax to the day. We disagreed on every conceivable point. He didn't quite dare to express his views on woman suffrage, but something within me says he has intentions.

Your expurgated epistle did not deserve such a lengthy reply. Go ahead and tinkle your mandolin by the lake and then write me about it, if that is all you have to say. But for goodness’ sake, write! Remember one can feel the isolation of a mountain top suffrage organizing, as well as sitting in a camp.

With apologies, Delight.

Thursday.

Hail and Farewell!

This is merely to forward the round robin from the D.D.’s with my contribution appended. Imagine Freda writing agreeably about going out to South Africa to be married. That girl wouldn't eat an olive at college for fear of harming her complexion. And Edith Barnes exulting over an offer to cut up frogs in a high school next year, when she said she would take in back-stairs to scrub before she would teach.

I rather think my own little bombshell will be the greatest surprise of all. Have you read it yet? If not, do so now and prepare to gloat. There it is in black and white. I am a suffragist. I thought it took a tremendous upheaval, a sort of getting-the-power effect. One morning I woke up to the effect that I didn't need conversion.

Mrs. Morton seems to think I have vindicated her judgment. She said she knew all the time I couldn't work for suffrage and not become a believer in it. Otherwise she would never have offered me the position. Own up 02318now, were you conspirator No. 2, with all those deft little comments in your letters?

I feel like an object lesson. Delight.

July 30.

Barbara Dear:

Ease your mind. This glittering hotels stationary does not mean that I have eloped to get a voter. It's the result of a thrilling new game that Mrs. Morton and I originated today. Its name is Politician, politician, who's got the politician?

For three day's we've trudged over the city, heading deputations to politicians. The Republican and Democratic parties have state conferences this month and we wanted to learn how the delegates will vote on a resolution to endorse woman suffrage.

Our last three appointments were for this morning with men who have heretofore evaded us. I was late in leaving the apartment. A lumber wagon spilled over the car-track as I got on the car. As a consequence I raced through mud puddles and under dripping awnings. Breathless, crimson, disheveled, I stumbled 02419up the stairs to our man's office, powdering my nose as I went.

No best parlor ever held more uncomfortable-looking people. The men swung their hoats between their knees and talked to each other in low tones. The women huddled together, straightening their Sunday-go-to-meeting bonnets and exchanging conscious smiles. All this preparation and no delegate. We waited half an hour and it was time for the second appointment. Mrs. Morton and I washed downstairs leaving an aroused committee demanding of each other who should be spokesman.

At the second office we found plenty of committee and again no delegate. We waited in hour and a half. Here was a man who had said he would listen to no voice but that of his constituents. Gradually the constituents melted away. One minister had a funeral sermon to prepare. A woman had left bread to rise. A politician had “to see some other men.” Several women who had gotten up at sunrise to come from small towns could wait no longer. The chorus dwindled to an octette; the octette to a quartette. Finally Mrs. Morton and I 02520were left alone. It was time for the third appointment.

We hadn't much hope of that man. His countrymen are not usually considered in favor of votes for women. As we rounded up our little committee, I murmured, “Surely he won't be in.”

The first two meetings were in luxurious book-lined offices. Here we entered a dingy little store and found our man serving behind his counter.

“Stand by you? Of course. Vote for you? Well, it depends on how you word it.” We looked at each other in despair with the thought of more polite words and no definite promise.

“If you tell them you captured the committeeman from the third, it will be all right,” he added with a twinkle in his eye. We went out laughing and heading for a telephone, forgot we had had no luncheon.

The first man had been reported unwilling to express an opinion. He must have regretted it many times. For we secured ten women, each of whom promised to see him herself and 02621get ten others to telephone or see him this afternoon.

Nothing had been heard from our second elusive gentleman. Back we went to his office and there we sat until 6 o'clock, just half an hour before the time for the convention train to start.

“I wish we could go down on the train,” I burst out, as the stenographer with a sigh of relief locked the door behind us.

Mrs. Morton radiated one big smile. We collided with a very fat man getting out of the elevator and almost knocked down a messenger boy as we jumped for the street car.

Late as we were, our man was later. He ran through the station and was shoved up the train steps just behind us. With a surly nod to the joking men who almost filled the car, he made for a seat up in front. We were close at his heels.

“Mr. Morgan,” began Mrs. Morton as the train moved out of the yards, “our state legislative committee wrote us that you would not listen to them on votes for women. You wanted to hear only the voice of your constituents. A number of them kept an appointment 02722made by you for this morning. You were not there.”

“Couldn't make it. Accident,” he rumbled.

“We want to know where you stand. In fact we want to know so much that we have taken the liberty of following you.”

“Much more important things. Want to think about them. Can't go anywhere without being button-holed by a woman.”

“We have only our indirect influence. We do what we can,” sighed Mrs. Morton, a twinkle in her eye belying the modesty of her tone.

“Had to spend lots of money last election. Have to spend twice as much if women vote.”

“Don't say anything that can be used against you,” urged Mrs. Morton in anxious tones.

“Got nothing to say.”

“But your constituents,” began Mrs. Morton.

“There are constituents, and constituents,” he interrupted savagely.

“Mr. Morgan,” said Mrs. Morton with little pink spots coming in her cheeks. “I should think any man would be proud of such 02823constituents as—” and she named over a dozen of the men with us this morning.

“Are they suffragists?” he gasped.

“They certainly are. Now will you tell us what you mean to do? A definite answer, whether you stand for or against the submission of a suffrage referendum in this state. And we will stop bothering you.”

“What I think is, the people should decide this thing. I believe in its being put up to ‘em. Don't thank me. I believe that way because I know you'll get snowed under. Mean to help do it and so will any man of sense.”

Uncomfortably conscious of an increasing audience we betook ourselves and our jubilation to the car forward and got off the train at the first stopping-place.

The clerk in the hotel here at Arkwright scrutinized us carefully. I wonder if he would have given us this nice room if he had known that all day we've been pursuing politicians.

I've been half asleep for the last twenty minutes. I'd better finish the business if I'm ever to get up for a 5:15 train in the morning. Delight.

August 1.

My very best advice, oh, most perfect employment agency, is for Mary Robson not to mix her jobs. I realize how a born and bred suffragist longs to get into this campaign. Furthermore I understand how unsupportable it is that I, so recently a rampant anti, should be plunged into the thick of the fray while she plays the part of a bystander. But if she is dependent on that private school position, tell her not to speak on street corners. There is plenty of good solid suffrage work to be done when she dines with gilt-edged trustees, or takes in the ice, or calls on prospective patrons. If she protest your advice, write her the fate of one Delight Dennison. One of the older teachers told me yesterday that it was really my speaking at the suffrage meeting which caused my discharge. She said word has been passed among all the teachers to keep out of suffrage if they wanted to hold their positions.

By the way, are you getting jobs for all the Verner ‘15s?

You wonder how well my arrangements here are working out. How can you cast 03025asparagus on my beautiful disposition. As if I couldn't live peacefully with a hyena. And Mrs. Morton, I call her Lucia now, is anything but that. She is a reasonable individual. I am beginning to believe that the cause of much seeming friction is because consideration does not flourish where there is not reasonableness.

We want entirely different breakfasts. Lucia's idea of cleaning is to have a tremendous upheaval every so often and I prefer keeping the apartment tidy from day to day. She likes to read herself to sleep at night and I never can sleep while I see the reflection of a light. We have heaps of differences, but both of us make concessions.

On one thing we are agreed. We regard the apartment as a haven of refuge. Nothing disturbing is to mar our few hours there each night. Therefore the advent of Professor Armstrong last evening seemed to me anything but pleasing. If I had dreamed of his coming I would have told Lucia to say I was out. When I heard his voice it was too late.

I couldn't have managed a flight anyway for I'd been washing my hair. No matter what 03126the characteristics assigned to her species by the public,a suffrage organizer does occasionally have an eye to the niceties of life. Although that may be too grand a word to apply to the sodden mass which was then stringing down my back. If girls had to appear in public with their hair undried, do you think there would ever be any marriages.?

Lucia bravely undertook to amuse the dragon. I expected to see him fell her with one fiery breath and make a meal of her body. Consequently I danced frantically about the back porch, rubbing with one hand and fanning madly with the other.

Finally I achieved a passable dryness and went to the rescue with the pitcher of lemonade to quench the flames.

It almost took my breath away to see those two seated in amiable discussion of the Canton schools. A volunteer committee has discovered some unspeakable unsanitary conditions in the buildings and a large leakage in the appropriation for their upkeep.

One school is next to a slaughter-house, where pigs are killed every day. Another is in an abandoned flour mill with inadequate fire 03227protection. One school has its various classes housed in seven different buildings. Worst of All the oldest building in Canton is used as an annex for kindergarten children. The only heat comes from a coal stove in the center room.

None of these statements can be gotten into a Canton paper. No minister dares tell them in his pulpit. Not one usual way of arousing public opinion is open.

While I meekly busied myself pouring the lemonade, I heard Professor Armstrong propose a mass meeting. He even offered to help with it.

I was puzzling over his attitude as I cleared away the glasses after his departure.

“We never once said votes for women,” I mused sitting down on the arm of the sleepy-hollow chair. Then I descended into its depths to laugh until I cried.

I emerged for a minute in response to Lucia's question. “I've just thought,” I managed to gurgle, “you're so nice and frilly and feminine. Professor Armstrong never suspected you of being a suffrage leader. He's 03328encouraging you to work in your own womanly way—to set me a good example.”

Hoping you are doing the same. Delight.

Monday.

Barbara Dear:

Is the raft still anchored in front of the camp? I've been thinking this evening of my first visit there when your father pushed me off the raft to make me try to swim. He doesn't believe in wasting any time when he undertakes a task, that father of yours. Perhaps that's what has made him a millionaire. I had more chance to learn to swim that day, than I've had becoming familiar with this suffrage business. At least there are not many ways you can try to swim. But oh the endless blunders I can make in suffrage!

Tonight I'm overwhelmed with shame as I realize that I have been making a perfect idiot of myself. Always when I raise my voice on a street corner I think I am falling into a bottomless pit. Still I persist. The public manifests no inclination to acquire my opinions through invasion of my own respectable drawingroom. 03429But it will listen to a street-corner curiosity as long as her voice holds out.

My first speech was without preparation. I've continued the same way, chatting in a friendly fashion and describing things I've seen during the day which women will be likely to change. I have never minded men interrupting with questions and I really like the sticky children who clamber over the soap-box.

I should undoubtedly have gone on indefinitely making myself ridiculous. But this evening, being through earlier than usual, I walked over to Lucia's corner. What a difference! There she stood, gracious, winning, well-poised, but with her crowd at arm's length. No retorts. No disturbers to punish amid bursts of laughter from her audience. Surely they were more convinced by her logical arguments than by my homely little adaptations of suffrage principles to washing dishes and digging ditches.

I can't waste any time repenting. I have to save my energies for a complete reform. I will make good at this thing though I lose every shred of pride. It is now almost two 03530o'clock but I would not go to bed until I had mapped out a logical speech with meat in it.

I'll have to end with a prayer to be kept from my mistakes like the one of the little five-year-old girl in the apartment downstairs. I wish you might see her. Elizabeth is the most adorable embodiment of perpetual motion you ever beheld. She has been resisting unsuccessfully a strange parental disposition to pour bad-tasting medicine down her throat. Last evening she rolled her big blue eyes heaven-ward and added to her prayer, “God bless mother and father and Uncle George and grandmother and everybody and keep Elizabeth from taking her tonic.” So say I. Delight.

Wednesday, 22.

Thank you, most understanding of mortals. The pictures are great, especially the sunset one looking up the lake. I have put on my dresser the one of the raft with all of you girls on it. When I am tempted to go out in the garden and eat worms, it will remind me that somebody loves me. It will also call to mind a 03631few lessons I have learned about the art of suffrage-speaking.

My attempt at a comprehensive, logical outline failed completely. No one wanted to hear my speech. Those who stopped for a minute were restless, made comments and soon melted away.

Finally in desperation I told the story of a little girl who went to have dinner with a great man. All during the meal she was anxious to speak. The great man silenced her. When dessert was served, he asked, “Now little girl what do you want to say?”

She replied, “Pleased sir, it's too late now. I wanted to tell you there was a worm on your lettuce, but you ate it.”

As I told the story I realized that my voice had been patronizing like the man. I began to talk simply about things women want to remedy before it is too late. The crowd grew and grew.

The speech was the christening, for the most fascinating, feminine soap-box any suffragist ever owned. I'm tired of borrowing uncertain soap-boxes, alias berry-crates, broken-backed chairs and whatever else is handy, even to 03732porch steps. Likewise I'm weary of having to thank gallant gentlemen for returning the borrowed articles. I have painted a substantial soap-box bright yellow with “Votes for Women” on the side. When not in use as an elevator, the box hangs by a strap around my neck and holds the literature to be distributed at my meeting.

Our mass meeting about the schools is scheduled for tomorrow evening. A committee of women was told last week that the city council has no more money for schools. Yesterday the council voted $10,000 for a new cover for the elephant at the Park Zoo, $5,000 for a locker house for the golfers on the Park meadow and $8,000 for a pipe organ in the new high school. This morning I called up one principal and found that last year in his school alone 253 children were in classrooms in the basement. And no plans have been made for the enlargement of that school or any of the others.

Your dear, absurd letter did help to offset the glowing accounts from the girls of their stay at the camp. I am glad they are to be there for another week. But as for me, I am 03833fascinated with this opportunity to be of some service. If I could join you this minute I honesty believe I would choose to stick by the job. Don't fret yourself any more picturing Casabianca. It's really only Delight.

August 6.

Dear Babs:

I've been in jail. By special invitation of Big Tim. He suggested thirty days. I only stayed there hours and 5,000 persons have been yelling themselves hoarse over my escape. It was more thrilling than any football game I ever saw.

For a week I've racked my brains for a startling scheme. Something to bring the public clamoring for admission to the school mass meeting last evening. Wednesday night on the street car I saw a funny poem advertising soap and the idea came.

Ten women were willing to carry it out; ten courageous human billboards. All day long they rode in the street cars, holding before them signs of complaint against the school conditions and announcements of this evening's 03934meeting. Some of their adventures were remarkable, but none equalled mine.

It was my old propensity for getting into scrapes that did it. I didn't recognize it as such. I looked out the six o'clock homegoing crowds. Why stay on a crowded car and be observed by a few? It seemed much more sensible to walk down Main Street where I could show my sign to hundreds.

Before I had gone a block I was surrounded. My progress was somewhat hampered. Not so much that I felt the need of assistance by the burly policeman who forced his way toward me. However, I've learned to smile at policemen. I offered a most winning one and started through the avenue he had made.

His hand descended on my shoulder. I looked up miles to his face and heard voice like a clap of thunder, “You're under arrest, miss.”

The crowd seemed to think it a joke. So did I until I caught a glimpse of Big Tim's face. It was in his automobile that we went to the station and he was the chief figure in the hasty trial which followed.

A violation of the traffic law the judge pronounced 04035it and he ended with a demand for five hundred dollars cash bail.

I protested that I couldn't get such a sum after banking hours. Two policemen marched me down a long corridor to the filthiest spot I have ever seen. They called it a cell.

I began to think more clearly. Even Boss Jordan could scarcely expect to have me sent to the penitentiary, but his idea of cash bail would keep me from informing the mass meeting of some idiosyncrasies of Canton's delightful government. I had asked that Lucia be informed of my arrest. In the midst of my musings a grinning policeman presented Mrs. Morton's regrets. She was too busy arranging the mass meeting to come to the jail. He shoved an unspeakable tray through the door, turned the key with much unnecessary grating I thought and departed.

I groaned. Could such a message be sent anywhere but in modern America? I looked at the awful tray and tried to remember all I had read about forcible feeding of the English militants.

Would they keep me long? Would Professor Armstrong deem it his duty to come and 04136read to me on visitors’ afternoons? The newspapers print such thrilling pictures of prisoners clinging to their bars on such occasions. I was just deciding what to do in case they tried to substitute prison clothing for mine, when the cell door opened.

Another hearing. But with Big Tim absent and the judge much perturbed.

An efficient male person insisted that the judge need not delay over accepting the money. Then I saw the money. More money than I had known there was in all the world, piled high before my eyes on an automobile rug. Three men in plain clothes chuckled over the heap and half a dozen policemen looked as though they wished they might.

“Have her before the court at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon,” thee judge said, and I saw free.

The efficient person proved to be Mr. Kirtling, Canton's biggest lawyer. His three companions finally tore themselves away from their amused contemplation of the money and we rode in Mr. Kirtling's automobile to the meeting.

On the way he explained that the story of 04237the women billboards spread like fire. An hour before the meeting the hall was packed. Lucia knew better than to allow my predicament to distract her attention from the meeting. She went ahead with the preparations and opened the programme by telling of my arrest. There was an outpouring of pockets. The collection baskets yielded more than $500.

Never again do I expect to see such enthusiasm as greeted my appearance. Never again will I speak to such a responsive audience. In fact my speech was a feeble accompaniment to the cheering.

Altogether I call it a fortunate happening. I've acquired a fairly intimate knowledge of Canton's jail with which to adorn my street speeches. The mass meeting was a huge success. Sympathy has been created for us. Best of all, when its service as bail is over, the collection will provide sinews of war for the suffragists.

The most surprising thing about the whole occurrence was Professor Armstrong's attitude. I thought he considered jail the proper place for all suffragists.

After the meeting I felt wound up for eight 04338days at least. It didn't seem that four walls could possibly hold such exuberance. I stood in the door wondering where I could go to make another speech.

“You're coming with me, if you please,” said a voice behind me and Professor Armstrong swept me off the curb toward his roadster.

“But Mrs. Morton—”I began. “Mrs. Morton knows all about it,” he cut in. I was so tired that I couldn't resist. Then it struck me so funny that I laughed. Professor Armstrong kidnapping a suffragist.

He looked at me sternly and asked, “Did you have any dinner?”

“No-o-o,” I managed to stammer. He stopped before a drug store, disappeared within and came back with hot chocolate and crackers. He stood over me like a granite rock until I got that food down. Then without a word he drove out into the country. He didn't speak. I wouldn't. The wind swept into my face with the most soothing sensation. I must have fallen asleep. The first thing I knew we were stopping before the apartment. He left me at the door with a terse, “Goodnight.”

Perhaps it was an unconventional proceeding. but the roadster provides no seat for a chaperone. And remember applauded that man's Catherine wheels when we were both less than twelve years old. Don't imagine we talk about those days. He's the most stiffly formal soul I've ever encountered.

Want me to telegraph you the result of my trial this afternoon? I get a day off to go to it.

Your ex-convict friend, Delight.

August 10.

To acknowledge two telegrams from John Dillingham Martin, one telegram and three letters from Miss Barbara Martin.

I didn't let you know about the trial because I've been very busy. Besides I thought you realized it was a joke. If I had bee in jail I expect that telegram from your father to Judge Smith would have freed me. But you know I am struggling for equal rights and not special privileges.

As I have intimated, my name is cleared and I am a free woman. I had obstructed traffic. I had created disturbance. My good intentions 04540were on doubt. But the judge seemed to think I had suffered sufficiently.

He looked small and insignificant in the daylight. With its benches packed with women waving yellow banners, the court-room lost all formidability. It seemed like a ridiculous dream.

I've been receiving messages of sympathy ever since. As rapidly as possible I've turned them into pledges. Our greatest need is a central headquarters where women can meet and plans be made for the work. I really think this episode is going to bring us rent-free a ground-floor store on the main street. It would make aa splendid headquarters.

I am sure the best service I could renders suffrage would be to get arrested every day.

My dear, I never expect to read a book again. But if you are sure it would give me material for speeches send it along. I'll try to get in a few minutes on a train or a street-car. Lucia carries a little roll of crocheting on all her travels. Her fingers fly while she plans her speeches. As the conductor called her station the other day she dropped her crocheting into her bag. Then she dipped into the 04641bag for some change and brought out the crochet hook neatly run through her finger. It took some to detach it, but she was finally freed and made three speeches that evening.

Can you guarantee the book to be more safe? Delight.

Thursday.

My Dear Barbara:

The first lesson I've learned about street-speaking is that nothing gains the favor of the crowd so quickly as to have the speaker put down a heckler.

Tonight I was asked if women would not vote for the best-looking man. I replied that I thought that a better reason than to vote for a candidate because he is a Republican or a Democrat. Directly across the street hung two political banners, one for the present congressman, a candidate of Big Tim's; the other for the opposition candidate. Pointing to the two pictures I said it would be difficult to choose, all candidates look so well on the advertisements.

When the crowd finished laughing I repeated a congressman’ statement—if women will vote for the best-looking man he understands the real source of the opposition of politicians to woman suffrage.

The laughter seemed to be increasing instead of subsiding. Suddenly a much-embarrassed man was fairly hurled at me from the back of the crowd.

“Get a good look at his, miss,” someone shouted. “Don't look as good as his picture? Does he get your vote?”

I am not sure which of us was more confused. I recognized Mr. Gilbert, the good government candidate.

I plucked up courage to say it wouldn't be fair to choose without giving the other man at least a chance. With that for a beginning I talked about fair chances for women until the crowd was quiet and I could take up may little collection for the cause and depart in peace.

To my surprise Mr. Gilbert waited until after the meeting and asked if he might walk home with me. It seems that Mrs. Morton is a friend of his and is much interested in this year's election.

I gleaned from their conversation that electioneering is starting unusually early, due to the launching of Mr. Gilbert's boom and the formation of a Good Government League to work for him.

Lucia's knowledge of politics is something wonderful. She seems to know the leaning of every hay-stack in the county. Two hundred and fifty-four tiny townships as well as Canton make the county a big proposition to handle and the congressional division lines would cause any honest picture puzzle to disintegrate. Even I could see that Lucia's suggestions were valuable.

“Armstrong will be mighty glad to get those ideas,” Mr. Gilbert said as he rose to go. “You know he's really running the Good Government League. Marshall's name counts for a great deal as president but he's not doing much actual work.” Imagine Professor Armstrong electioneering! I should think he would freeze up all the voters.

Mr. Gilbert urged Lucia to say that we would go with him and Professor Armstrong on Sunday for an all-day motor trip. He was persuasive about the beauties of the 04944ride and how much more work we could accomplish after a day of rest. I was trying to shake my head at Lucia, when she made us both laugh by saying that she had intended for some time to pay the Concord women a visit. If he wanted to take his trip in that direction we would go along and investigate the town's suffrage activities.

Imagine a pleasure trip with Professor Armstrong! Lend me your prayers. Delight.

August 26.

Monday morning and I am alive to salute you. Many thanks for any efforts on my behalf.

We started out yesterday morning pleasantly disposed in Mr. Gilbert's car. Before we had gone a mile from Canton poor Professor Armstrong found his seat pretty uncomfortable.

When Lucia began to unwrap a mysterious big roll, Mr. Gilbert seemed to know what was coming. “You'll find the hammer in the side pocket,” he suggested. “Want me to stop here?”

He brought the car to a stop before a big shed evidently used to shelter the farm wagons during service at the little church next door. From her bag Lucia produced tacks and little squares of cardboard. Both she and Mr. Gilbert jumped for the barn.

It was my first experience with roadside posters and I was surprised when big votes for women signs appeared all over the barn walls.

Mr. Gilbert came back to the car for a tiny pot and brush and called cheerfully, “They won't get these off in a hurry. I brought along some shellac.”

I thought to myself that he must have put up roadside posters before, but Lucia came back to the car looking as innocent as could be. Mr. Gilbert swung himself up and started the purring engine.

A mile further. “It's your turn now,” said Lucia sweetly. She handed me the posters. Without a word Mr. Gilbert shoved the shellac at Professor Armstrong.

In absolute silence we waded across a field waist-high with grain. He wanted to hurry, which was disconcerting. Not having been long a suffragist, I didn't want to disrupt any 05146family, even one of field mice. I should have preferred to sacrifice haste to see where I was stepping. But it was not to be.

Of course I had to hit my thumb instead of the nail. Professor Armstrong took the hammer. If the blows he dealt those nails were any expression of his thoughts, he certainly could have been arrested.

Once I looked back and I am certain that those in two in the car were shaking with laughter. However with the same easy nonchalance they proceeded with their little ride and tie game all the way to Concord, leaving a glory of blue and gold posters behind us.

We found that like the women of many other towns the Concordians had suffered a relapse.

The women in the small towns and villages of this state can vote on school and tax questions and they display an aggravating indifference to the wrongs of the women in Canton. Lucia certainly can read a lecture and have her audience repentant at her knees before she reaches the third paragraph.

We had chicken and cherry pie at a dear little green and white hotel and drove back 05247through any number of drowsy little villages, closing in the Sunday afternoon heat. Why do Sunday afternoons seem warmer than those of other days? Delight.

August 19.

Barbara Dear:

The headquarters are ours. Not just any kind of a room, once our highest aim. A headquarters de luxe, light, airy, big display windows, main street. And no rent to pay.

Lucia is attending a conference of state workers and I've discovered that opening a headquarters does not mean wearing a pretty gown and pouring tea. There's preliminary bout with scrubbing brushes and mops from which I've come off victorious.

I had some capable assistants. This is how I got them. Tuesday evening I propped my soap-box up against a lamp-post in the worst little tumble-down neighborhood you could imagine. The men were the most unruly lot I've yet encountered. Several said if their wives thought themselves as good as they were and tried to vote, they would throw them into 05348the street. One man made particularly savage threats against his wife. She was in a little group of women who stood up for me, literally and figuratively. I found out later that the man is chronically out of a job, utterly dependent on his wife for support. After cleaning another woman's house that day, she got his dinner, cleaned her house, peeled a bushel of peaches and was going home after the meeting to can them.

Those women offered to come and help me clean the headquarters. We had to start at 5 o'clock as they all had a day of other work before them. I was a pretty sight at eleven o'clock when Mr. Gilbert sauntered by and saw me washing windows. I don't consider myself unduly vain, but I was mortified. If he had only walked by! But he had to stop and laugh. Then he stuck his head in the door and asked if he might help.

Men are all the same. Since I first stepped on a soap-box I've been hearing a great deal about angels. It's funny no one ever thought to call me one before. Now a great many expect me to damage my wings or get my crown askew or muddy my feet in the dirty 05449mire of politics—although what there can be miry about the exercise of the sovereign right of citizenship I cannot see.

One man told me that he liked to think of his wife picking flowers. A pretty sentiment. His wife's days are really spent in sweeping, cooking beef-steak and washing his children. Along with many other women, she has been obliged to put up her pedestal for rent. Like me, Delight.

Friday.

I crave thy forgiveness, oh, Personification of Patience! Even if my shoulders and arms did seem full of prickles I need not have been so disagreeable. I did not deserve that perfectly good letter nor the pine pillow. How did you get it so soft? Are you thinking of going into the business? Would you like a recommendation addressed to suffrage organizers?

This morning a man appeared with mop and pail at the headquarters. He declared he had been hired to do all the window-washing. He professed not to know his employer but the course Mr. Gilbert sent him.

I don't want the windows washed immediately. I have filled them with posters and suffrage clippings. I am dressing some dolls to put underneath as a display of the occupations of women—not including window-washing.

Canton suffragists have ransacked their garrets and sent some really fine old furniture. Our supplies and novelties for sale are in a fascinating mahogany secretary. We've one good desk and two tables beside some plain chairs which we have bought.

Next week we are to have a tea for all the women who have helped, scrub women and society women alike. The most beautiful part of the suffrage movement is the democracy which it creates among women.

After my street meeting last evening I almost ran into Professor Armstrong. Under the circumstances I think I am justified in saying he hoped for the meeting. He had the most disreputable bit of kitten fur you ever saw. A tiny mite of a young kitten he had rescued from some tormenting boys. His boarding house lady will not tolerate animals, so that my offer of shelter was eagerly accepted.

That man is one constant surprise. He fed the kitten warm milk, put it to sleep on a soft cushion and had to be fairly pushed out of the door.

We found it a home with Elizabeth, our little neighbor downstairs. She put her tiny face down to the kitten as it lay sleeping on the cushion and announced that she would name it “Anti-Suffragist.” When I asked her why, she said that name was for when its eyes were shut. When they were open she would call it Suffragist. Delight.

August 21.

Dear Barbara:

Today has been like a rainbow, sparkling, colorful and leading to a pot of gold, tiny but none the less of worth. I expected no such treasure trove in Rosebank. Indeed I gloomed all the way at the prospect of another indoor suffrage speech. Perhaps because I have had more experience with street corners, I like them better. There is as much difference between the two as there is between chocolate pudding and lemonade.

I made myself cheer up by thinking of the women I would meet. Organized as a club in the early days of Susan B. Anthony's protest for the rights of women, their courageous faces would be my inspirations.

Rosebank—and I felt as though I had escaped from prison. No high building to close one in, no dusty, dirty streets, no deadly, motionless air. The whole wide world beckoning me down the avenues of trees. Beds of brilliant flowers glowing in the bright sunshine. Best of all, such quantities of lifegiving air.

I fairly danced up the walk to the meeting and landed in a graveyard. The women themselves would have served for tombstones. Where was the vivid personality that had sent them forth on the great adventure fifty years ago? I took off my new hat. It's a smart one for all my clothes have been crisped up to do honor to the suffrage cause. The antis think us such dowds. You know how my hair always curls around my ears. I thought of those women with their wispy locks pulled back into hard, sleek knobs. I didn't spare the brush nor my head. With a fairly plastered 05853down effect, I went into the meeting, looking the combined age of my audience.

They introduced me all around the rooms. Such grave, unsmiling glances appraised me. Limp hands were extended. “Pleased to meet you,” was murmured in my ear. I almost bolted out the front door.

Roll call was the first evidence of informality. The names were all without prefix. First to answer was “Betty Derby.” Betty sat next to me and had confessed that she is 90. She told me that when she was a little girl, her father said to her, “When you are old enough to vote women will have the right.”

No enthusiasm greeted my remarks. Raising my voice in response to the strained look on the faces of the poor old dears, my spirits went correspondingly down.

While the friendly spirit was not shown as in the city, I learned that you can count on country people. These blessed women proposed to send each week to Canton a box of home-made goodies, butter, eggs and vegetables. It will be an added attraction for the Canton headquarters, make a neat profit for 05954the treasury and prove at the same time that suffragists are capable housewives. Incidentally we'll be following the money-making ways of our grandmothers. Oh, the church carpets that have been laid over suppers and fairs costing money and energy four times their proceeds! All because women are not allowed to be direct givers, any more than direct participants in government.

So fascinating were the plans that I missed the 5 o'clock train. I paced in front of the little station with the prospect of a two-hours’ wait, when Mr. Gilbert appeared in his car from a campaign trip.

My shout nearly roused the town. As it halted him, I didn't care. I climbed into the car, which he has dubbed Sulphite, it does such unexpected things. I told him about my prospective pot of gold. He seemed more interested in the real box of honey, cakes and cookies which the women had presented to me. We had sandwiches and ginger ale against a possible famine and about half-way to Canton we spread our little feast in a hay field. We lingered until the sun went down. It's pleasure to talk once more with a man who does not 06055combat in words or attitude every statement I make.

It was after 9 o,clock when we arrived home. Lucia was entertaining Professor Armstrong. He was in one of his most difficult moods. Lucia must have caught the infection. For the first time I have seen her almost cross. I am becoming a real spinster. I fly to bring in the cat and put out the cream bottle. Delight.

August 24.

Barbara Dear:

Do you remember Betsy Burr in the class ahead of us? How she was usually late to classes because she stopped to pick up pins or to walk over cracks? Once she stayed away from a class play because she saw the moon over her wrong shoulder and was sure the hall would burn up.

I sat next to her for a whole term in French conversation. She was always having a premonition about losing a locket on a Wednesday or hearing of death on a Friday.

I wish now I'd cultivated premonitions along with irregular verbs. I must be a very obtuse 06156person, for this day seemed to me singularly inviting. I never even felt the brush of the wings of approaching calamity. I had to be hit right in the face.

With my little bag in hand and my hopes very high, I started off on a suffrage organizing trip. I lost the bag on the street car. That is, some one took it from a pile of luggage on the back platform and left me theirs.

The police opened the one left for me. It contained no such things as a respectable maiden lady should have been carrying around, but shirts and collars and pipes and things, all jumbled in the worst heap. I longed to put them to rights.

The man who took my bag walked into the police station while his still lay open.

“Could we possibly get the train?” I asked, when we had made an exchange.

“Just four minutes,” responded one of the policemen briskly. “Just one way. Mind riding in the patrol wagon?”

“I would do more than that to catch the train,” I declared. We got in. There was no chance to be formal. We were hanging on for our lives, being thrown against each other 06257every minute. We drove up to the station with a clatter. I dashed for the steps, tripped on my bag and rolled straight at the feet of Professor Armstrong. He picked me up. A policeman hopped off the front seat and grabbed my bag. In an instant we were surrounded. I know the crowd thought I was being sent down to the state prison.

“It must be hard to believe, but I haven't been arrested again,” I gasped at Professor Armstrong.

“And he? Innocent, too?” asked Professor Armstrong, still clutching my arm.

I turned quickly. “Why he—” There was no he. That “arrested again” had sent him flying to the opposite end of the station, where he stood feeling for his watch.

I know that I am not at any time beautiful and stringy hair, hat on one side and dusty skirt wouldn't improve the Venus herself. Why do I always have to make such a spectacle of myself?

Professor Armstrong was there to meet a new mathematics teacher, he said. I wish you could have seen the immaculate yellow-haired person he greeted. They walked away companionably 06358as the train bore me off to more work. I feel that she has the instincts of a woman in the home. Between classes they can exchange anti-suffrage treatises.

It's strange how lonesome one can be even in a whirl of suffrage organizing. That reminds me how alone you felt the first few weeks at camp. Now you hate to think of closing in up and returning to the city. How a quiet place grows on one. Does your father spend much time there now? When he comes does he bring his new secretary?

Hoping for a prompt reply to these important questions. Delight.

Friday.

Dear Barbara:

Everyone who has come into the headquarters today has been chuckling over a joke I played yesterday. Perhaps because I had more to do than four people should attempt. I had a bad attack of wanderlust. I compromised with myself by indulging in a little diversion that I thought might benefit the suffrage cause.

The Canton public library requires the signature of man taxpayer on a borrower's petition, a regulation which has annoyed others than the suffragists. This morning I presented myself at the library and asked to take out a card. When a reference was requested, I mentioned Mrs. McKim, the late Mr. McKim having been one of the institution's chief benefactors. As I expected, the attendant, while somewhat confused, insisted that the rules require a man taxpayer to sign the application in person.

An hour later I returned to the library accompanied by my reference, Mrs. McKim's coachman, and a bootblack with great difficulty boosted him up the steps. A negro, with only one leg and one arm, blind, illiterate, but a man. And taxpayer by virtue of owning a little stack on the edge of the town. The attendant was inclined to temporize, but I said, “Here is my man taxpayer ready to make his mark.”

The newspapers this morning suggested a possible change in the rules of the library.

One of those at the headquarters most Keenly to enjoy my joke, is a small boy who 06560has appointed himself my errand boy-in-chief. Jack has been wearing a votes-for-women button for months with so proud an air that his friends have wanted buttons too. Then he says, “It's quite easy. You have these yellow slips signed by persons believing in suffrage and I will give you a button.”

His pocket money has gone rapidly for buttons, but he saved enough to make a dollar subscription that he may “feel free to come to the suffrage meetings.” Every delivery man, every one who goes to do any work at his house is approached on the suffrage question.

Father, mother and boy are working together in that family with a new, common interest. Yet they tell us that giving women the vote will disrupt the home.

Speaking of disrupting the home, I wonder why it is that every street-corner meeting objector tells us to go home and wash our dishes.

How long does it take the women in their homes to them? Most of the girls I've met in suffrage work would make big sacrifices to get dishes to wash. We've had here this last week a state organizer, clever, one of the best 06661suffrage speakers I've heard. It was my daily task to drag that girl away from the windows where children's clothing was displayed.

Is she to mount her soap-box and say, “Men and women, I want a home?” Because she says, “I want a vote,” they think her a curious animal, undomesticated, wholly unfit for taming to live in a house as other human beings do.

I didn't know there were so many problems in the world. I wish you were here. I remember what a shark at math you always were. How I hated it. Delight.

Sunday.

To the Lost and Found Department:

Can you ascertain the whereabouts of one Barbara Martin, erstwhile confidant and best friend of Delight Dennison? She had disappeared without a word. Mercy me. A week and no letters from you. I'll not plague you any more about the new secretary. Please continue telling me about you nice talks with him.

My rare moments for thinking have been devoted to wondering what I shall do after the 06762suffrage campaign. It's out of the question for me to leave here when school opens, even if I had a chance at a position. I must stay by the suffrage cause until after election day, November 2d.

Two months as a suffrage organizer have made me believe that I can do anything. I ought surely to find some kind of a job after running a headquarters, making seven speeches a day, putting up bill-posters, keeping straight the tickets for outings at two beaches and one moving picture benefit, finding work for willing aids without initiative, setting panes of glass shattered by unbelievers and running a weekly supper for business women canvassers at a cost of fifteen cents a piece to them and a profit to the suffrage treasury.

The hardest part of the day is when I drag myself up the veranda steps at night. Swinging in the Gloucester hammock is sure to be the feminine young matron who reigns in the lower apartment. Her frilly clothes emphasize my bedraggled condition. She has two new crochet patterns I yearn to try and a delectable daughter I want to kidnap. I prepare 06863my night meal, wash the dishes and summon sufficient courage to run down the steps, as though going out to make a suffrage speech were the end to which I have conserved looks and brains all day. Then I hear her telling the big patient man, who evidently adores her, how overworked she is.

Her small daughter, Elizabeth, pays me a visit each Sunday afternoon. I hope the faithfulness of her calls is not due alone to the sweets she finds in the library table drawer.

Today she asked Professor Armstrong if cannibals go to heaven. When he expressed doubt, she said, “But my Sunday school teacher says missionaries go to heaven and cannibals eat missionaries. I don't see how they get out of it.”

“That's the way your friends, the antis, are going to get the vote,” I snapped at Professor Armstrong. He had dropped in for a few minutes to deliver a lengthy article by a learned gentleman. The first paragraph proved conclusively that women have no brains at all. I never can see how persons with a strong belief in the general unworthiness of women can so cheerfully entrust to them the 06964care of the most precious things in the world, home and children.

The other evening I heard a woman talk for an hour on how votes for women will corrupt the home, degrade women and exterminate children. She finished sweetly and earnestly. “But, gentlemen, if women are given the ballot, we who are opposed will consider it a sacred duty and obligation which we will undertake to the best of our ability.”

Rash statements are by no means confined to the antis. I was invited to speak at a picnic the other afternoon. The woman who introduced me talked for exactly one hour, concluding to the scattered remains of audience, “I expect I have now converted you. I have said all there is to say on woman suffrage and I feel repaid for I know I have illuminated you.” Delight.

August 30.

Dear Barbara:

Big Tim is showing his hand against us again. Today the mayor announced that the one woman on the list of inspectors of shops and markets will be replaced by a man.

The woman is efficient, we've investigated that. The man has been a good book-keeper, but we cannot discover that he knows how to keep ice-boxes clean. Aside from the question of who can best do the work, the suffragists feel that it is an attack on women. The headquarters telephone has rung all day. Indignant women have brought us newspapers containing an interview with the mayor. Among other foolish statements he says that women's political activities are unfitting them for domestic duties.

Lucia has told everyone that we will make some demonstration, calling attention to women's superior equipment for home tasks. Somehow she makes them all believe that we will strike back effectively. I'm sure she hasn't an idea how.

Would that I had her magnetism. In a board meeting she can make other women suggest what she wants and they do not. She can keep the most ill-assorted persons working amicably together and she can get the most work out of women through their loyalty to her.

She brought home from a country trip this 07166week a new story. In one of the towns a man told her he didn't believe in woman suffrage because if women voted they would have cremation. Lucia discovered that one woman in that town believed in cremation. She also happened to believe in suffrage. The week before she had had her husband's body cremated. Lucia declared that the man's tone implied that if women had the vote they would start out the next day to cremate all the men, dead or alive.

This afternoon I went to an anti-suffrage meeting. The speaker made the statement that for every woman and man is voting. When she finished, I asked her who goes to the polls for fatherless, husbandless, brotherless me. Quite seriously she replied, “My dear, I do not know where he is, but somewhere a man is voting for you.”

I am looking for him. Delight.

September 1.

Barbara Dear:

We've issued a challenge. The mayor of Canton is invited to send an anti-suffragist to 07267meet me in a biscuit-baking contest. The show will take place two weeks from today in the headquarters window. That is our answer to the mayor of Canton. The public is invited to attend. We mean the whole city to know that suffragists are good cooks.

Issuing the challenge was our one big event today. Everything else was upset by the rain. Never before have I realized what a catastrophe a nice, gentle rain can be. When you have given two days to arranging a chain of street meetings for important out-of-town speakers and the rain arrives with the automobiles to transport them, it's a sad blow.

Tonight I couldn't feel as sorry as I should, for Lucia was the most deliciously amusing sight, hanging out of the headquarters door, gazing first at the dripping sky and then at the automobiles. Back and forth from door to cars she ordered the helpers and supplies with every change in the aspect of the weather.

The rain persisted and we had to come home with our work for nothing. Mr. Gilbert had foreseen the need for consolation. We found him waiting at the apartment with a box of 07368sweets under on arm and roses under the other.

It's nice to be treated like a human being again. I haven't seen a rose outside of a garden or a florist's window since I became a suffrage organizer. I've looked and looked in the glass to see if the bloom is wearing off and I am becoming horrid and masculine. I can't see that I am one bit less feminine that when they chose me for the clinging vine parts in the college plays.

By the way, speaking of clinging vines, I sent Sue a pair of candlesticks for a wedding present. If you get any details about the wedding please pass them on. Her letters are about as coherent as may first speech on suffrage. Delight.

Tuesday.

If you hear pistol shots before you finish reading this, do not be alarmed, my dear. I am enacting the lady villainess part in a thrilling three-reeler. At present I am in ambuscade behind the tallest desk in the headquarters. Every time there is a sound I expect a 07469man's head to rise over the top. When the door opens little shivers chase down my spine. Momentarily I expect to be cornered by Daredevil Harry, or the Hero of Canton, flanked by the entire detective force. When I am unable to disclose the whereabouts of the abducted one I know they will string me up by the hands or blister the soles of my feet.

The missing man, for whose fate I am supposed to be responsible, was scheduled to-day to tell a men's luncheon club why women should not vote. He has a political record. Likewise he was careless in putting certain statements on paper. Copies of these were quickly forthcoming and were distributed to the luncheon guests by our friends in the club.

We secured invitations for the gallery. When the meeting opened the president faced a battery of suffragists, armed with note-books and pencils.

The speaker had gotten wind of our preparations. He didn't appear. One man suggested that as the speaker had failed, one of the women be called upon to tell why women should vote. This brought some applause, but the president frowned and put a motion to adjourn.

As the men rose we pelted them with suffrage boutonnieres. They reached for them like children for sweets.

Suffrage favors worn away from an anti meeting was too good copy to be lost even by newspapers censored by Mr. Tim Jordan. They've all commented on the occurrence. Several suggest dire fates that might have be-fallen the missing man. One has a cartoon of him bound and gagged in our headquarters and being forcibly fed with suffrage arguments.

Interest in our biscuit-making contest has grown out of all proportion to the importance of the event. The mayor refused to notice our challenge, so we've opened it to the public. Any woman who does not believe in equal suffrage is invited to pit her biscuit-making ability against mine. It has been repeated to us that Boss Tim has threatened that the event will not come off. That's ridiculous. I will bake, opponent or no opponent. Delight.

September 8.

Barbara Dear:

Big Tim's threat that our biscuit-baking 07671contest will not take place at the headquarters is not so unfounded as it seemed. Today the owner served notice on us to vacate.

Sitting at the headquarters would not make them any more our property. So we started off on a trip we had planned to a country town. We meant not to mention them, but we looked, talked and acted headquarters. As if the day had not started badly enough, we encountered more than our usual share of rebuffs in Mercersville. One woman, arms akimbo in the doorway of the dirtiest house I ever saw, told me that I might better be at home, instead of gadding about the streets. City women in her opinion knew nothing. Her grand climax was, “They don't even know when water boils.”

We finally got our literature distributed and tacked up posters announcing the evening meeting. There was no train back to Canton after 6 o'clock, but Mr. Gilbert had promised to come out in his automobile and collect us about 9 o'clock.

We talked on the post office steps to a fair-sized group of men. A few women peered timidly from behind trees with the air of lost 07772souls ready to take wing at the slightest effort for capture. Lucia found two women ready to help. After the meeting she went with them to outline their work. I guarded the post office steps against the coming of Mr. Gilbert.

As I sat there grateful for the quiet peace of the night a wispy little creature darted across the street and demanded that I come and sit in her house. I have campaigned enough in country towns to realize how many persons are shut away from ordinary pleasures. I never refuse to entertain them even at midnight after a speech.

The windows of the little house were tightly closed. The room into which I was ushered was not only close and damp, but smelled strongly of the table. I could not drag my eyes away from the kerosene lamp on the center table about which flies were falling in little heaps on the family Bible, a blue vase and a post card album. At first I paid little attention to the droning conversation of the woman and an old man in the corner.

Suddenly I was electrified to hear the old 07873man say, “Sister, let us have a season of prayer.”

Immediately the woman dropped to her knees and there was nothing for me but to follow. And then he asked me to lead in prayer.

I managed to gasp that I would prefer to be last. Fortunately, before my turn, my hopes were realized, and Mr. Gilbert and Lucia arrived in the guidance of a small boy I had left on watch.

I have listened to great divines. I have been in churchly places imbued with the sanctity of generations of prayer and in those newer buildings where the unspoken right desire brings Truth close. But never have I experienced greater fish and hope than that which filled the homely little room. I do not know what the old man said, but I know that there went forth a refreshed, encouraged— Delight.

Friday.

Life is no empty dream for me, Miss B. Martin. You may array yourself in white and sit by the shore of a lake to invite your soul. 07974I haven't even a bowing acquaintance with mine. Today I looked at one of our “Suffrage First” buttons and wondered if the time would ever come when it might be first and leave time for something else. Now it's first, last and all the time.

We've been camping today on the trail of Mr. Stevens, the owner of our headquarters building, to find out if our notice to vacate is absolutely final. We've had men and women and even children trying to get by his telephone girl. A committee of women waited seven hours in his office. We plan to picket tomorrow. His office and his house will be guarded every hour in the day. If he steps his foot outside he will be caught.

The newspapers are printing the story. I've been told that men are betting on the chances of our having the biscuit-making contest next Wednesday.

A laundress told me today she doesn't believe in votes for women. The women she works for “are uppish enough now and goodness only knows what they would be like if they got a vote.” Last week one of her employers swept into the headquarters, held up 08075her lorgnette and was sure we couldn't realize the crime of getting votes for all “those poor, ignorant women in the lower part of town.”

Fast on the heels of the dictum of any laundress friend came an exasperating incident. Professor Armstrong has been predicting all manner of evil to befall me at a street meeting. As often as possible he interposes his manly form between me and his idea of danger.

This evening a man lead a sheepish-looking individual up to the soap-box and said, “He wants to know if you are married?”

The crowd, always uncertain, resolved itself into jeering integers. I said sharply, “Ask him if his intentions are serious.” The audience was with me in a minute. But the man was not silenced.

To my astonishment out of the darkness behind me Professor Armstrong loomed up. For a minute my heart was in my somewhat inadequate pumps for fear he meant to knock the man down. He took advantage of my surprise to assist my desert from the soapbox.

As we went down the street I squared my 08176shoulders to meet his reproaches. You never can be sure of that man, even in his being disagreeable. He was so gentle that I wonder if he can be right. Is suffrage robbing me of my womanliness?

What do you think? Delight.

September 11.

Dear Barbara:

The birch-bark basket arrived in beautiful condition. It's a work of art, my dear, and must have taken you perfect ages. Indeed, I do appreciate it. The flowers were well protected by the moss and ferns and should last some time. It's mighty nice of you to say it is intended as proof that I'm still a worthy recipient of flowers. I'll try to think so. Sometimes I wish you were here to do battle for me with William Miller Armstrong, professor. He has such an aggravating manner of disarming me before the conflict opens.

After seeing my first picket seated this morning on Mr. Stevens’ front steps to waylay that unkind dispossessor of nice suffrage tenants, I walked around the corner toward 08277the street car. A few doors down the street stood a limousine with a fat, conspicuous S on the door. I walked a little closer. The door stood invitingly open. The chauffeur, his back to me, was evidently ready to start the car.

Without a second's consideration, I slipped inside the crouched down between the seats. In a second I was berating myself for my foolishness. It couldn't be Mr. Stevens’ car. Some strange man would appear. I might even be arrested again.

Perhaps it would be proved I was stealing the car and I would be sent to jail. At this melancholy point I cautiously raised my head to see if I could slip out unobserved. I quickly ducked again. A panting man burst into the car and slammed the door. We whirled down the street.

“Servants’ door,” I thought, as the man sank down on a seat mopping his forehead. The choleric gentleman could be none other than Mr. Stevens. Instantly he saw me and grabbed for the speaking tube.

“Goo-o-od morning,” I stammered. “I haven't any bombs with me today. It's an 08378unusually safe moment to settle this question. Of course, you could have me dragged out of the car.” I paused consideringly and looked out of the window. We were already on Main Street and I never saw so many people on a Canton street before.

Mr. Stevens took one look at the audience which would be assembled in a moment. He swallowed something which certainly began with a D and snapped, “We will be at my office in five minutes. It won't take me that many seconds to tell you that I disapprove of this whole suffrage business. I'm a widower. I have three women servants. If women were enfranchised my servants would outvote me.”

I looked at him pityingly. Poor man, he was so accustomed to being outvoted by his chauffeur and gardner and furnace man that it never occurred to him that his protestations should begin at home.

“Of course, if you are opposed to suffrage you wouldn't want to give us your store,” I conceded, “and yet you did promise it for two months. Isn't that so?”

“Yes, before I thought much about it,” he admitted.

“And now that you and Mr. Jordan have talked it over and decided on such a simple way of getting out of it by letting us do the getting out,” I began on a chance. He simply wilted. So I went on. “Some of your friends are going to be annoyed at this eviction. Your building has been idle for a long time, too, Mr. Stevens. Do you think there would be any objection to our paying rent for it?”

“Agent's name, Green. Rent, $125 a month. If you're there after Tuesday you'll pay the entire two month's rent,” and Mr. Stevens took his determined way from the automobile to his office door. I shall never forget the expression on the chauffeur's face as I stepped out behind him.

I'll write again when I find that $250. Delight.

Tuesday.

Good morning. Have you seen an angel? I have. He walked into the headquarters today. Not a whiterobed spectre with a harp and halo, but a nice, trusting man willing to back to most uncertain project in the world.

He was not prepossessing. When he insisted 08580on a confidential chat, I assumed a haughty and uncommunicative manner. He asked such impertinent questions about our plans for keeping the headquarters. Finally in desperation I said we were hunting for a person with $200. When one was found, I would tell what we intended to do.

The man opened a worn bill-fold, extracted two bills from a good-sized pile, laid them on the desk and said quietly, “Tell me.”

I just gazed at that money and two perfectly silly tears started down my cheeks.

The man laughed such a nice laugh. He said, “Perhaps you'll be more willing to talk to me, when I tell you I bet $100 to $200 with Tim Jordan last evening that you'd be baking those biscuits here tomorrow. I haven't had a mother since I was a pretty small shaver. Got my start right here in the Canton orphan asylum. Even when I had mother we went hungry pretty often. She could make good biscuits. Remembered all my life. If you can make good biscuits, young woman, I'm ready to back you. Got a score to settle against Tim anyway. Gets kind of cocksure some times from having things too much his 08681own way. Like to slip one over on him now and then. Good joke to have his money keep the place for your.”

“If biscuits are what you want, I'll bake enough to feed every orphan in the Canton asylum,” I promised rashly.

“If you do, it'll be the best bargain I ever got,” the man declared.

We had $65 in a melting pot, which is the name for a copper kettle in which women sacrifice money and keepsakes. Fifty dollars of that with Boss Tim's $200 is now in the hands of the agent for the building.

No one has accepted the challenge to bake with the tomorrow. There's been so much difficulty already that I know some super-cook will appear to make my poor attempts resemble dog-biscuits. I've a most fetching cap and apron, but some silver-haired motherly person will be sure to capture the sympathy of the crowd. Delight.

Wednesday.

Dear Barbara:

The antis defaulted. The victory is ours.

We schedule our biscuit-baking contest today for 12:30 o'clock because of the noon crowds on the streets. When no one appeared to take up our challenge, we telephoned the mayor's office. He had started the whole thing by declaring that political interest was unfitting women for home-makers. Had he no pride in proving his statement? His secretary informed us that the mayor is not concerned with any of our activities.

We telephoned the house of every anti suffragist we could call to mind. None would accept our cordial invitation.

The sidewalk before the headquarters window was jammed with people. To keep them from becoming impatient I opened the door and standing on a chair made a suffrage speech, interlarded with the latest reports from the telephone.

The humor of the crowd was tickled by the situation. With each failure to get a competitor their comments were more friendly to us.

The small boys ran toward every woman who came down the street. The crowd would edge around. Then a sigh of disappointment would rise when she walked by.

Finally I called, “Is there any woman within sound of my voice who does not believe that women should vote and who would like to prove that she can make better biscuits than a suffragist?

A few jokers pushed forward candidates, but none of them would accept the position. I mounted the window platform to my nice white table. Its array of cooking utensils and shiny stove the electric people had lent for the occasion. In my lace cap and apron I felt so thoroughly feminine that my hands shook. But street speaking has been good training. Gradually I began to smile and make little wordless jokes with the crowd.

It was mighty hard work. I baked just a few biscuits at a time, mixing each lot fresh, so that the constantly changing audience might view the entire process. Every time I took a pan out of the oven I trembled for fear the biscuits might be flat or burned or some other calamity might befall.

As I mopped the perspiration from my forehead I thought of Elizabeth's latest saying. She startled her Catholic mother by exclaiming, 08984“I'm Presbyterian.” Then she added, “I'm so hot. I'm Presbyterian all over.”

By 3 o'clock plates of delicately-browned biscuits were piled in the window. Each new panful was greeted with cheers. People kept coming in to ask if they might buy the biscuit. We were obliged to say they were to be sent to the orphan asylum. That added to the enthusiasm.

Suddenly I caught sight of our “angel” on the edge of the crowd. I pointed to the big pile of biscuits and asked,”Enough?” He nodded. We packed up the biscuits and the show was over.

We proved that suffragist can cook. We won our fight to keep the headquarters. And from a small boy's joke we got inspiration for a telling bit of new propaganda.

On my side of the window was hung a sign, “Suffragist”. Over the duplicate stove and table at the other side was a sign, “Anti Suffragist.” Some small boy soaped beneath that sign the words, “Not at home.”

Hereafter any woman not home when a suffrage canvasser calls will find on her return the following card:

Woman's place is the Home.

Where were you today?

Shopping?

Politics controls conditions under which products are made and sold.

Moving Picture Show?

Politics controls the laws governing amusement places.

Your Children's School?

Politics controls all public institutions. You pay the taxes.

Earning your own living?

Politics controls the laws regulating hours and wages.

Votes for Women. Delight.

September 19.

I've heard the song of the red-hots, the one and only pure orangeade, “Zeta, the wild girl who eats ‘em alive,” the armless and legless wonder, “Little Salva, all muscle, not a bone in her body;” Milly, the fat lady, and all the other poor creatures who ought to be in some quiet place away from inquisitive eyes instead of on a country fair circuit.

But a country fair is a good place to advertise suffrage. You can reach all the oldest inhabitants and likewise all the youngest. For three days I have plodded from end to end of the fair grounds talking votes for women until I feel like a phonograph record, scratched and battered and marred and altogether out of tune.

The suffragists have been going to fairs in this state forever. At least it must seem so to them. The woman who decorated our booth said in mournful tones, “I have put the tacks in just this places for fourteen years. Most of the times I've had it to do alone.” She twitched the end of the bunting as she spoke and I was not quite sure but that she would have preferred dispensing with my assistance and enjoying her martyrdom in peace.

We handed out bales of literature from that booth. Rows of women lined both sides tagging the passersby with little yellow cards, reading, “Votes for Women.”

Lots of politicians were tagged. Mr. Gilbert brought up the unwilling ones like lambs to the slaughter. I am sure that once they were out of sight they put the tags in their pockets. Mr. 09287Gilbert wore his all during the fair. I hope it will not cost him votes. His opponent was there, a shifty-eyed, rotund gentleman. He didn't look fit to be trusted with a tenpenny nail, little less the interests of this congressional district.

We didn't stay all day in our booth. Not by any means. We thought of a fresh bit of advertising every other minute. We managed to attach suffrage to everything that was done. In fact we did so many stunts that by night of the first day the concessionaires sent a committee to the fair management demanding that we stop because no one patronized them when they could watch us without paying anything.

To you, oh, uninitiated one, I will say that the biggest thing on the fair grounds is the grandstands! There thousands of persons watch the horse races, the hurdle jumpers, the cask tumblers, the greased pig catchers.

On suffrage day we had important speakers between the heats of the races. On anti-suffrage day Lucia wandered over to the judges’ stand, found them in good humor and secured another chance for us to speak.

“But we have no speaker,” I began. Lucia 09388wasted no words. She grabbed me by the shoulders, started me toward one end of the grand-stand and took the other herself.

Shaking from head to foot I faced all the people in the whole world. For one terrible moment I thought that my voice had oozed out of my boots and was running away. I felt obliged to pursue it. Then a man jeered. Immediately I started the story of a small boy whose music teacher asked if he had washed his hands and ears as she requested. He replied that “he had, the ones next to her.” With that beginning it was easy to advocate women's inclination to wash all over for the larger housekeeping in city, state and nation.

The Amos Danbury College had an educational exhibit in charge of Professor Armstrong. The last evening I trailed out of the fair grounds in a desolate-looking white suit, dented hat, no gloves and my arms full of suffrage supplies. Ends of yellow bunting trailed in the dust as dispiritedly as I felt.

In the door of the anti-suffrage tent stood Professor Armstrong talking with one of the women. I must have looked very tired for they invited me to sit down and rest. I'd been 09489talking all day to farmers. I don't know what there is about farmers, but most of them base their opposition to woman suffrage on the Bible. I have to cudgel my brains for texts as telling as theirs. As I straightened up and walked by the tent I flung my answer over my shoulder, “I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

Then I stopped to laugh at the huge sign which suffrage sympathizers had hung on their tent next to the antis. The sign read, “The antis say home is woman's sphere. Then what are the antis doing here? Delight.

October 1.

Dear Babs:

An irate woman has just descended upon the headquarters with dire threats for Lucia. She fortunately was absent. The woman's husband had received one of the postals sent to all enrolled men asking them to register and vote for woman suffrage. To make the cards more effective Lucia's name was signed with a rubber stamp. I doubt if the poor man 09590ever sees his card, for woman brandished it in my face, calling upon heaven to strike the woman who was pursuing her husband.

At the height of her harangue Mr. Gilbert appeared in the doorway. He was so suave and pleasant that he soon had the woman smiling and in his automobile. She wasn't at all concerned as to what her husband might think, seeing her driving home with the reform candidate for Congress.

At a street meeting the other night a man told me that men didn't want women to vote because they preferred to put their protecting arms about them and shield them from all harm. But other men have chivalry that seems to extend even to suffragists.

An overdose of protection caused much annoyance to an ardent canvasser last evening. She's not been married long and at present is anxiously entertaining her new sister-in-law. The guest does not share her new enthusiasm for suffrage, and she thinks it frightful that Marcia should be going to strange doors asking unknown people how they feel about votes for women.

Last evening she persuaded Marcia's husband 09691band to accompany her. Those two idiots, wearing dinner clothes, and in an automobile, “protected” Marcia through a poor little street. They attracted so much attention she had to stop her canvassing.

Marcia's husband and sister have the same view of the value of their friends’ votes and the corresponding worthlessness of those of less fortunate folk, as a woman in a small town where I spoke last week. She wrote that there was little use of my coming. All the men in her town would vote for suffrage. I have become wary. I went. I argued with a big crowd of men on a street corner. After the meeting she said with a sniff, “Those men don't count for anything. They are not at all representative of our town.” Delight

October 9.

So “Mr. John Dillingham Martin and Miss Barbara Martin closed their camp and returned to their town house.” Even the Canton Intelligencer chronicles it. Thanks for the samples of chintz. The rose for your rooms is Lovely. Are your lamps the same tint? The 09792blue for my own particular guest room is a delicate attention and one much appreciated. If I come soon to occupy it would you let me sleep for two weeks straight and not call me for anything?

I don't seem able to get a quarter enough sleep these days. The worst of it is I have an unaccountable habit of going plumb to sleep when I'm making a suffrage speech. My mouth keeps right on issuing sounds. If I only didn't awaken at such inopportune moments! Last night I returned to myself quickly and found myself in the middle of a story. I had a horrible suspicion I had already told the story. I finished up in the lamest kind of a way, feeling that I had said every word before. Professor Armstrong declared that I hadn't. If I ever campaign again I'm going to learn one speech and say it over and over. That's the only safe way.

My speech last evening was at Island Beach near Canton. We had a suffrage outing there. The management gave us a share in the proceeds of the tickets sold. All day long we made speeches, distributed literature and solicited enrollments. I'm going to be willing for the 09893rest of my life to sit in a chimney corner and never speak. Don't you know some nice old man, who wants a dumb housekeeper?

I promised myself that after the heat of the day I would give myself the little treat of five rides on the merry-go-round. When we finally got there the man was locking up the animals for the night.

Professor Armstrong told me to dump my flags and literature where I stood. He went over to the proprietor, slipped something in his hand and swung me up on the merry-go-round. It began to move so quickly that he got on way behind me. I lurched for a kangaroo. Pretty quickly I wished I had gotten an animal with shorter sides. In reaching down for the stirrup I lost one of my pumps. I finished the ride with my toes curled up under me.

I hope that no staid anti-suffragist saw that pile of yellow flags dumped on the ground and the two of us cavorting on that carrousel. We came home in Professor Armstrong's automobile. Somehow the joy of making an anti car do suffrage business is wearing thin.

Please take a nap for me. Delight

October 14.

Do you realize, my dear, there is less than three weeks to complete the conversion of Canton? As the campaign progresses a tremendous feeling of responsibility overwhelms me. When I take time to go to a country town, the audience is small and I think of the big crowd in the city. When I speak in Canton I wish I were out in the clean, wholesome country converting voters beyond the purchasing power of $2.

Last evening a man asked me if women will sell their votes for $2. It seems ridiculous to defend women to that man. I just said, “I don't know. What is the usual price?”

This evening Lucia and I were relayed in automobiles between four towns. We spoke first at a chicken pie supper where the woman who asked the blessing implored the Creator to “take care of us as thou always hast did.” We finished at 9 o'clock at an ice cream social in Ivydale.

Ivydale is Mr. Gilbert's home town. His mother invited us to stay all night. Lucia goes back to the city in the morning and Mr. Gilbert 10095is to drive me to a grange picnic, where we have both been asked to speak.

I have gone as a stranger into enough houses in this campaign to appreciate a real home, such as the Gilberts'. You approach it by a brick path between rows of brilliant dahlias and cosmos. The hospitable door opens between white columns on a huge veranda and the house is white with green blinds. Just the kind I've hoped to live in some day.

The rooms are spacious with a comforting atmosphere of permanence and repose. The polished old mahogany reflected the welcome of the woodfire, a welcome which was more really expressed by the charming woman whose home it is.

Over the couch where her life is spent waved one of our votes-for-women flags. “Richard brought it home from your meeting,” she said. “I told him if I had a vote he should have it.”

We had the most delicious supper on individual tables. As we consumed quantities of chicken salad, even reserved Lucia gossiped about the houses where we have almost perished for food and water. While we longed for their home cooking, our hostesses evidently felt 10196they had nothing fine enough to tempt our fastidious appetites. They have sent us to execrable hotels. One hospitable soul fed our chauffeur fresh-laid eggs, new bread and home-made apple pie. Because she felt us superior to her cooking we were given a choice of “steak, pork chops or ham,” in a sticky restaurant back of an ice cream parlor.

I slipped away early to give Lucia a chance with what I am sure is her family to be. I am writing at the desk in the darling room which is mine for the night. It has a most attractive old-fashioned mahogany high-boy and dressing table and a big puffy four-poster bed.

But the bed looks very wide and high and the room seems pretty big. Houses with big pillars are awfully nice and a woodfire is my idea of perfect contentment, but I do think you need a family to enjoy them.

Now that I have this letter written, I almost think I'll take it with me to bed. Delight.

October 16.

Dear Barbara:

Isn't it strange how a single incident will 10297make you feel that you know someone very well? My trip with Mr. Gilbert to the grange picnic was the wildest experience I've had in this votes-for-women business. It was enough to test the temper and durability of any human.

The rain came down in such torrents all night that it seemed it must stop in the morning. So we started at 5 o'clock as we had planned. When I went down stairs I found breakfast ready to cook on the electric appliance on the table. While Mr. Gilbert made the coffee, I toasted the bread and bacon and kept a watchful eye on the eggs. It was the last bit of food we had until 5 o'clock that night.

Before we fairly got out of Ivydale we had skidded half-a-dozen times. I wondered what the enterprising newspapers would make out of the candidate for congressman and a suffrage organizer coming a cropper together.

Once off the state road things were much morse. We skidded badly. Twice the car almost turned turtle. Once we went within a foot of the edge of a ravine. On hills it seemed as if nothing could save us from crashing backward. The rain covered the windshield, so that 10398we had to leave it down. Of course we were drenched. When Mr. Gilbert had to tie ropes about the wheels to aid the brakes, I decided that I might as well get out and help. I couldn't get any wetter. But as I waded in mud above my shoe-tops, my appearance as a neat and tidy suffragist was somewhat marred.

Finally the car decided to attempt an orchard fence and fetched up in the ditch. There we stuck. It would take hours to pull us out. Already it was 2 o'clock and we had ten miles more. Along came a big farm wagon with the picnic ice cream. We were glad enough to climb in, leaving word in the first town to send a rescue party out for the automobile.

At 4:30 o'clock we arrived at the picnic, sodden, starving, and spoke to the few who had braved the storm. It was a poor substitute for the friendly conversation with which we had hoped to ingratiate ourselves. But we had arrived.

After consuming much food we started back on the farm wagon. The weather had cleared. We found the car ready to behave and we tried to be cheerful, although an occasional sneeze would obtrude itself.

Ten miles from Canton we had our first blow-out. Eight miles further we had a puncture, and just within view of the city line we came upon a bit of road mending. The car settled into the mud. Every revolution of the engine, instead of forcing the automobile out, ground it further into the crushed stone.

I sat on a pile of stone and laughed until I cried. To be sure there wasn't much to laugh about. By this time we were again hungry. Our clothes had dried a little, but we were chilled and decidedly uncomfortable.

While Mr. Gilbert tried to jack up the car I went for help. In the nearest farm house a woman was lying asleep on a couch by an open window. Pound as hard as I could, I couldn't rouse her.

Back I went grumbling. “Probably waiting for some lout of a husband and the lamp in the window is to guide his wavering way.” I dragged along a piece of the erring gentleman's front walk, which I thought might help the wheels out.

An hour of heaving and tugging buried us further. The wood was splintered and scattered in every direction. We both went back 105100to waken the house and telephone for help. When we got the sleeping woman to the door “she” proved to be a man. The two men pulled down a piece of fence and with the boards for levers got the car back into the read. I shivered every time the farmer stepped on a piece of his front walk. He did not seem to recognize his property. Perhaps the bill Mr. Gilbert shoved into his hand help to impair his eyesight.

We arrived home after midnight. In all that time of discomfort I never heard a cross or impatient word. There was no foolish gallantry about it. I bore my share of helping. Which was more comfortable than if I had been in theory sheltered and protected, and, suffering equally had been supposed to smile away the cares of the head of the expedition. It's only the siren who succeeds at that sort of thing. On such a basis the home woman is always losing out. What a world this will be when men and women together meet what effects them both, together conquering defeats and together winning the victory!

I tried to tell this to Lucia while she made hot chocolate, but she put her finger in the 106101fire and said, “Rot,” which I suppose was meant for me. Of course she doesn't need me to expatiate on the charms of her young man. This morning she insisted on my staying in bed, which is the reason for my long communication to you.

Mr. Gilbert must have seen Professor Armstrong, for this morning, a nosegay of old-fashioned flowers arrived to remain me of the sweetness of my well-chaperoned ancestors.

I am glad I am not an ancestor. Delight

October 19.

How I wish that you were here, Babs! I want to talk to you. One glance at the toll rates decided me on writing instead. Do you mind being taken as an antidote for sleeplessness? If I get all mixed up, you will know that you are taking effect. But no normal dose will settle the seething ferment which my mind is in at the present moment.

The trouble started at a political rally. Lucia was talking on the need for equal suffrage to protect the rights of women and children.

Suddenly Boss Tim interrupted, “And how many children have you, Mrs. Morton?”

There was a deathly stillness after she answered, “None now.” When she finished her speech the audience endeavored to make amends by an outburst of enthusiasm. On the way home I told her that I could see how working for a cause blunted one's moral standards. I had actually been delighted to see her carry the day, even with an implied untruth.

“But what I said is true,” she answered. Then for the first time she told me about her life before I knew her.

An orphan, she was brought up by her only near relative, an uncle, who idolized and shielded her. When she was eighteen years old, she was married to a man fifteen years her senior. As they came out of the church, three creditors stepped up to attach her income for her husband's debts.

Two months later her uncle died. All the property he left her, according to the law of her state, passed into her husband's management. Child labor is almost universal in that part of the country and her uncle had early aroused her opposition to it. In the factory 108103from which most of his income came, he made it a rule never to employ a child. Immediately after her uncle's death her husband discharged men who had been in the factory for years. With a new manager, her exploited the work of boys and girls, many of them not ten years old.

The coming of her own boy made her an even more ardent champion of other children. But her protests were ignored. Theoretically the men of her family in that section of the country would shoot such a man as her husband before breakfast and he acquitted before luncheon. Actually she lived through five years of torture. Her husband seemed more and more under the influence of liquor. Their home and the factory went to pay for his debts and speculations. When conditions seemed intolerable an epidemic swept the town and the graves of husband and boy were part of the toll.

It is wonderful to live through such an experience without losing one's perspective. And that is what Lucia has succeeded in doing.

Never have I heard her utter a word of complaint against men and man-made laws. Last 109104evening there were no recriminations against the man she married. These were just her tests, her attitude seemed to say, which she had to conquer for her own soul's strength.

But she began immediately to talk of her determination to work for the rest of her life for an equal status for men and women. After this campaign she means to start elsewhere. She said she was sure I could find work to do too, “Although,” she ended, “it is not likely that you will want to devote the rest of your life to suffrage, as I mean to do.”

And I had though that she and Mr. Gilbert —oh how mixed up things do get in this world. I think with more and more longing of that blue room. Do nightie and tooth-brush go with it? I might be tempted to get on a train some day and just come. Delight.

October 20

My Dear Babs:

Lucia drilling a small army of marchers in our headquarters is a sight to be remembered. Commands fill the air: “Left-right. Keep in step. Even abreast. Left, right. You are not 110105keeping arms’ length apart. That's better. Keep your lines even.”

To add to the confusion there is always a side line of women pricking their fingers over big votes-for-women banners, making daisy wreaths and sashes, hats and costumes for our big parade on Saturday,

That is, we hope we are to have a big parade. But many women are afraid to march. Others have opposition at home. Several business women have been told they will lose their positions not only by marching, but even if they watch the parade.

Last evening I greased the machinery which makes a mass meeting seem to run itself. Five thousand people packed themselves into the seats and aisle and gallery intended to hold 4,000. As the people poured in, the girls who had stood for hours on the street corners distributing hand-bills for the meeting forgot their feet.

Early in the rush a little chap about as big as a minute and surely not a day over eight years old, swaggered through the door. “Is gentlemen allowed in here?” he asked.

“Surely,” I replied.

“Come on,” he called with an imperative swing of his arm. There appeared in the doorway a diminutive companion. Those blessed infants, hands in pockets, marched down the aisle to front seats where they sat glued until the end of the speeches.

One man speaker didn't arrive at all. Another tool a later train than he had stated. So with our line all formed for the stage, we were still running around in circles after speakers. The band was late in beginning to play, the red-five was not nearly so red nor the cannon so loud as they should have been for the price, according to the audience. All the people who came late and had to take back seats had bee discriminated against, they said.

The antis had a meeting to-night. I told Professor Armstrong to be thoroughly consistent he should go there. But he came to ours and in the sagging moment at its conclusion he invited me to the haunts of good hot food. That I went was bad for both my digestion and my temper. He insisted upon considering all the humorous sides of the main speaker as conclusive proof of the trivial manner in which women treat weighty topics.

The day had been bad enough, anyway, what with having my heart wrung every time I looked at Lucia and wondering how things will be made right between her and Mr. Gilbert.

Why must people waste time dallying with that delusion, unhappiness? Delight.

October 21.

Gracious me, is this a walking encyclopedia with which I correspond? Send me a key to your last letter. I promised not to mention Secretary again. But if mine were the task of investigating your little excursion into sociology, I should certainly suspect that energetic young assistant of your father's. Were those really your own opinions, or his?

Sometimes I wonder if my own brain will ever again be any use for thinking purposes. If I am committed to an institution will you send me pieces of patch-work?

My latest exploit in behalf of the suffrage cause is a trucking party. We gave it last evening in honor of the president of the Housewives’ Union. She wanted her conversion to suffrage made public. It was.

With an organization of 2,000 women, she 113108has been trying for four years to get the Canton city fathers to adopt a sanitary code. This year the women curtailed their purposed law to a single sentence, requiring the covering of food offered for sale in shops and factories.

Which seems a sensible little request of reasonable interest even to a man. One most ignorant of household affairs should at least rebel at having some thorough marketer pinch the chops he is later to eat. Or of permitting some little urchin, who buys a penny's worth of cinnamon drops, to put a grimy finger on the cakes destined for his table.

In the factory section last week I entered a shop where vermin crawled on the counter. The decaying food sent forth a reek which should have penetrated to the most aristocratic home in Canton. The recital of these conditions seems to make no impression on Canton's law-makers.

Hence the arrival in the suffrage camp of the Housewives’ Union president, who has for long sojourned with the antis.

To celebrate her conversion we hired a big motor truck. We hung it with lighted lanterns, festoons of yellow cheese-cloth and suffrage 114109slogans. Perched precariously on camp chairs in the truck sat prominent suffragists, a real test of their belief; for the weather was decidedly chilly.

We took a cornet player and for three hours we paraded the main street, with a solo and a speech at every corner. The principal speaker got quite cross with me, for I had assumed the responsibility of paying for the truck. The collection money came slower than I have ever seen it. I told stories until the hat came back to me. Then I would look at the money with a scornful air and declare that we would take another collection. My stories wore pretty thin, along with the patience of the principal speaker.

At one stopping-place a ward captain drove up in her automobile. She had with her her brother, the youngest of the family. There are four sisters, all suffragists. He will cast his first vote this November and against suffrage. I told him it seemed too bad for him to be the only representative of so many women and to be voting against something they very much want. His play was, “I may not be able to vote this year. I have a house party engagement 115110for the first week-end in November. If election day falls on Saturday, I won't be in town.” Delight.

Saturday.

“This has been such a success. Why didn't you have another earlier?” That was the cheerful remark which fell like a lash upon our exhaustion to-day after the parade. I am sure the speaker will turn into an anti-suffragist, for Lucia turned away without answering and I sat dow on heap of banners and laughed until they had to bring me a glass of water.

The speaker was such a beautifully-gowned woman, brown and rosy from her summer in the country. She drove her automobile to headquarters in the last five minutes of mad preparation. Nothing left in the way of deco rations suited her. After haggling for three of the precious minutes, she turned to me with, “There's nothing to be so flurried about. Why aren't you more calm?”

It requires some thought to realize calmness after six hours of stretching arms to canopy automobiles with bunting. Perching doves of peace over women who are squabbling as to 116111who shall sit before and who shall sit behind. Plastering an automobile with “Our mothers want the vote,” while convincing the woman in charge that the public might not appreciate her philanthropic intention of substituting for fluffy little girls whose mothers own automobiles squad of orphans to whom the ride would be a treat.

It did seem a bit ironical to ask Lucia, the calm and dignified, to keep cool after her struggle with the feminine vanity of the marchers.

In order that the parade might present a uniform appearance and be as beautiful as possible, we asked the women to wear white frocks and hats alike. We thought the hats in quantity. Now I know the feelings of the scales girl, who assures a coy customer that “It looks perfectly sweet on you. Yes, the flower belongs on the side. No, I don't think it would look better turned up further in the back. No, you can't wear the flower on the right side. All the hats are to be alike with the trimming at the left. No, you can't turn the hat back to front. Yes, it really looks lovely on you.”

To-day was hardest of all. No matter how clearly parade is organized on paper, the 117112actuality is chaos. Finally every daisy wreath was in place. The decorated automobiles were in line. The women were divided into sections with the symbols of their occupations from the brooms and shiny pans of the housewives to the caps and gowns of the college professors. Over all fluttered yellow silk flags on gilded staffs wreathed with daisies, glistening in the sunshine like pure gold.

It was vanity that brought down the final crushing blow. As the last decorated car started off to take its place in line, I grabbed my smudged skirt, turned and almost collided with Wyoming. Her big state shield lay in the dirt and she was sobbing forlornly.

“You lead the line of enfranchised states and they go first. Hurry, hurry,” I exclaimed, as I pushed her toward the street.

Then I realized that she was saying over and over. “I won't, I won't”

Afraid? No, indeed. She came in a dark skirt and Columbia on the leading float loaned her the white skirt she had worn downtown. It was an inch or so longer that Wyoming was accustomed to wearing. She absolutely refused to go into the parade. There was nothing for 118113me to do but grab her state sash and shield and go forth with my head high, trying to forget the grease and mud on may own skirt.

There are words to tell story of effort that makes a parade. To most of the onlookers it was just a beautiful big demonstration. But they all grasped the essential fact, the suffragists have not horns. They are sane, sensible, normal human beings just like other human beings.

The women who marched to show their faith in cause, to them the honor and the glory. Their dignity was worthy of the name of womanhood, eyes straight ahead, faces shining as though they beheld the Grail. It was spirit of the crusades. Delight.

October 26.

“Vote yes.”

That is a greeting which a street cleaner near the headquarters sings out at us each day.

Yesterday a western governor, who came to make a speech for us, heard the old fellow's cheery hail. “Its remarkable how many votes a man like that can get for you, “he said.

He told me the story of a man who wrote to 119114ask him for some legal information. The governor went to some trouble to answer him accurately and promptly forgot the man until a closely-contested election was in sight. Looking over some of the small towns in the state, he happened to remember the man who had questioned him. The governor wrote and asked his help in the election. Nothing was heard from the town until the morning after election. Into the gloom of what seemed sure defeat drifted a bright yellow telegram. This is what it said: “Dear Sir, Burnham cast 67 votes yesterday. You got the 67. Yours truly, Bill Frost.”

“The best of it was,” added the governor, “I learned that the town had always cast a majority for the other party and that Bill Frost was an affiliated member of the opposition. I've never seen Bill Frost, but I've always treasured that telegram.”

Our opposition is projecting into the campaign some vile literature. Much of it is not credited with a source. I am sure it would cause the honest, sincere anti-suffragist to blush. One youth evidently fed up with it told me yesterday that he will vote against 120115woman suffrage because “voting would take away the feminism of women.”

May it do so, if feminism is what the antis think it. Delight.

october 30.

My Dear Barbara:

Richard Gilbert just stopped at the headquarters to tell me that Lucia, with her hands tied behind her back, could go down to Tammany Hall and instruct the wiliest little class of politicians ever graduated from that historic institution. I am sure he was thinking what a splendid congressman's wife she would make.

The praise was merited. Lucia has suggested a marvelous use for some material kindly furnished Mr. Gilbert by his opponent. That pleasant gentleman had a statement in the newspapers, claiming that two women had visited saloons canvassing for Mr. Gilbert.

We are all sure that the statement is false. But Lucia told Mr. Gilbert to buy up the editions containing it. Monday morning automobile parties will start out every country road. The Canton saloons will be visited as well.

Copies of the paper will be distributed and the proprietors asked if they want a congressman who thinks their places of business unfit for women to enter.

Little did I think I would be teaching school again on Canton. Two hundred and fifty women have to-day received their certificates, meaning that for one week they have been regular attendants at my School for Women Watchers at the Polls. I will venture to say that they have absorbed more election law than the men who have been serving for years at $5 per day.

Those who are to stay inside the polling places have practised for hours what to do if a man tries to vote without having registered. The women who came to the school limousines and the women who walked to save carfare have become very friendly in the drills to detect voters repeating under assumed names. There have been classes, too,for the women who are to stand outside the polls and distribute literature. They are ready now to answer every objection and feel confident of maintaining a dignified and pleasant attitude in all contingencies.

The timid souls fearful of their protection at the polls were all encouraged yesterday. A farmer from Rosebank called me up over the telephone and said, “Waal, naow, Miss Dennison, I want to know if any of you ladies is coming to the polls up here. Because you knaow the boys allus votes in a barn and we thought as haow if any of you was coming we'd clean up a bit.”

Our hands are full for Monday. We are to close the campaign with a marathon. At 10 o'clock in the morning in the heart of the business district we will begin a series of speeches to be kept up continuously until midnight.

Professor Armstrong tells me we are not playing the game according to rule. He said, “Don't you know that every politician is supposed to get drunk on Saturday night and sleep until election morning?”

Time for the women to take a hand elections, isn't it? Delight.

October 31.

Barbara Dear:

I hope that mantle of consistency will fall upon me, when a kind government hands me 123118the right to vote. For nearly four months I've talked fourteen hours a day of the eight-hour day that women would vote for themselves along with a few other advantages.

Work day and night though we may, talk until our throats seem ready split and our brains are scrambled, there is only the slightest dent on the putty-like mass of the public indifference. Days like this one make it hard for me to refrain from writing to you what none of us has said out loud. It's going to take more than one suffrage campaign to carry this state.

Mr. Gilbert asked Lucia and me to ride with him this afternoon. He said if our consciences troubled we could talk votes for women to the farmers along the way.

I meant to let Lucia go alone with him. She declared that she wouldn't go gallivanting on her day off. She intended to stay luxuriously in bed, making up lists of unpledged voters. She was determined that I could do nothing to help and that I should go with Mr. Gilbert. We left her arranging for a relay of messenger boys to take her lists to women who will telephone to-day and to-morrow to the straddlers on the fence.

Just beyond the city line we met Professor Armstrong off for a tramp. He generously sacrificed his own inclinations to a deluded notion that we needed chaperoning.

Votes for women has been the beacon of my existence for months. In his campaign for congress, Mr. Gilbert, and Professor Armstrong as well, have traveled up and down the district, treating each vote as a million-dollar jewel. Along our way to-day we were told by men that they hadn't even bothered to register so that they could vote. The average man “never voted and never intends to. Doesn't make any difference which party is in, things go the same.”

Several men said they “didn't hold with this foolishness of women voting, anyhow.” Two men didn't even know that the question of giving women the vote is to be submitted on election day. One told me that if his wife had a ballot she wouldn't bring a pail of water. Another said his wife “didn't need to go to no voting booth to learn to cook.”

We stopped at an unpainted shack, spread like a crazy-quilt over a high rise of ground, sun-blistered, not a growing thing in sight. I 125120watched a poor drab creature drag water wearily from the pump to the lean-to. The husband slouched over the fence and shouted at me, “In these parts they just make pets of the women. What do you want coming here and putting ideas into their heads? Perhaps my wife wants to vote. She'd better not let me hear her say so.”

Nature did her best for atonement. The air was cool and the sunshine turned all that it touched to bright gold. The sky was ever so blue with great fleecy clouds hovering near like a painted canvass. We rustled through leaves and now and then one fluttered into the automobile. After standing it as long as I could I demanded to be allowed to scuff through the leaves. We tramped through one corner of a woods, collecting cones for Mrs. Gilbert's fire-place, and arms full of fir branches which will last all winter. Best of all, we built a tiny fire of our own. To me there is no smell to compare with the pungent odor of burning leaves. We added cones and bits of spruce, ate our picnic supper over the fire and carefully stamped it out.

With all its disappointments, it was still a 126121golden day to be remembered next winter when I am grubbing in some dingy corner cooped up with other self-supporting young females. Delight.

Election Morning.

Oh for two minutes of the mother I can scarcely remember! Sorrow has never filled me with such a poignant desire for her, as does the happiness I wish I might whisper now in her ear. I have told you all the little happenings of these months since we left college. Tonight I am writing you the greatest event of all my life.

I couldn't go to bed, even if there were time. As I have to start my watchers to the polls in two hours, I shall sit here by the window and tell you all about it. Every few minutes my hands drop in my lap and I sit and dream away astounding stretches of time. The man in the moon winks at me, “Suffrage will win to-day.” The stars seem to dance around, but perhaps that is because I feel so funny inside.

The Marathon is the most successful thing we've done. That doesn't keep me awake. Thousands of persons heard us. Hundreds 127122stood before the automobile all day. To-night I kept a good-sized audience in a drizzling rain while the election parade passed a block away. But it is not pride that gives me quivery thrills.

All morning a poor little male creature with a pink necktie gave out anti-suffrage literature to our perfectly good audience. “Look at these women,” he kept saying. “Women should be shielded and protected. But these suffragists think they can go anywhere.” When I made my closing speech to-night I pointed out that my would-be protector is not as tall as my shoulder. No country would accept one of his physique for war duty. Nor would I as lieve trust to his right arms as my own in time of need.

The women he represented, he said, would not come out on Canton street corners and degrade themselves as the suffragists were doing.

“How degrade themselves, gentleman?” I asked. “By contact with you? I don't feel in the least degraded. I have not seen the American man whose presence on a street corner I need to fear. If street speaking has done nothing else, it has taught American women that American men can be trusted on street corners as well as in drawing-rooms.”

Then happened the most wonderful thing in the world. As a type of the American man who thinks that American women should vote, I introduced Professor William Miller Armstrong, professor of economy and political science in the Amos Danbury College of Canton.

“Mine is an old-fashioned conversion,” he smiled down at the crowd, as though he had always made street speeches. “Because I stood by the traditions of women's place in the world, I have closed my ears to the call of progress. I have heard suffrage lectures before, but I asked to talk to you to-night, because all my convictions were swept away only this morning as I listened to one of your speakers.”

He looked over the heads of the crowd right into my eyes. I felt my heart turn right over.

I have no idea what nonsense I said, as I tossed to the crowd all that was left of our supply of flags and banners. I only knew that after it was all over, I was forcibly separated from the empty-basket from which I had handed out 3,000 pieces of literature during the day. Somehow my face was unscrewed from its set smile. My lips that were puckered 129124to say, “Can't I give you some of our literature?” were straightened back. But that happened on a dark corner while I hung door-knobs with votes-for-women tags to greet the voters this morning. The least said about its method of accomplishment the better. I don't want anyone else to lose confidence in the dignity of a college professor.

The stars still twinkle their message of cheer. The man in the moon still winks, though wanly. I start for the polls. Delight.

Election Night.

Barbara, My Dear:

We might win our preliminary skirmishes with Big Tim. Even before the polls were opened this morning, our hearts told us that our victories had been of little moment. Big Tim was bringing up the heavy artillery.

To-night we returned to the suffrage headquarters, knowing that our campaign was lost for the time. We had learned a big lesson, Americanization, inculcation of civic ideals, better understanding of each other. Our work is cut out for us. The next time there shall be 130125aroused an intelligent to the Big Tims of the state.

We told each other these things with never a word of the loss we knew was certain. Lucia was standing on a chair pledging us all to the new fight. We cheered her with tears running down our cheeks. I do not know why we cried, certainly not because we were sad.

I was sending a telegram to the state headquarters, “Ready to start again to-morrow.” Suddenly Mr. Gilbert appeared in the door.

Lucia shoved at me the paper from which she was reading returns. As I jumped up on her chair, I saw her go to him and put her hands in his. I knew she was telling him how sorry she was that he had gone to defeat with us.

As I began to call reports from the towns, I saw them go out the door. I knew that all was well with them. Defeat had won what victory never could have gained.

You heard so much about my professor when I thought we could never establish a friendly foundation for our house of love. I want you to know him for the splendid person he is. Therefore, I am doubly glad to be coming to the blue room, but not to sleep. How many 131126initials do you think I can embroider between now and the day before Thanksgiving? And could you find it convenient to be a bridesmaid that day? Delight.

Gift of NAWSA, Nov. 1, 1938 OK1881 .N257 sec. VII. no. 36 Rare BK Coll