the honorable gentlemen asked how they could be certain that any number of women in the United States desired the ballot. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony recounted their experience at conventions, the numerous signatures to petitions, the many demonstrations here and in England in favor of woman suffrage, but reminded the gentleman that no such separate expression is required from the unwashed, unkempt immigrants upon whom the government makes haste to confer unqualified suffrage, nor from the southern negroes, who are provided for by the XV. Amendment.
The hearing ended about noon, followed by very cordial shaking hands and pleasant chat. I do not know if the ladies were invited to "call again." but am quite sure that Miss Anthony's parting salutation was an "au revoir." There was some quiet by-play as the audience dispersed, a little interchange of knowing nods and condescending smiles, as if to say, "we can keep these absurd pretensions at bay while we live, and after us the deluge." I have no doubt that to some persons it appears an extravagant joke for women to aspire to political equality with the negro. King George thought it a very good joke when his upstart colonists steeped their tea in the salt water of Boston harbor, but the laugh was on their side in the long run. History has no precedents for the elevation of woman to a civic status, but we are making precedents every day in our conduct of popular government. In Athens where woman was both worshiped and degraded the protectress of the city was a feminine ideal whose glorious image crowned the Parthenon with consummate beauty. In America, where woman is beloved and respected as nowhere else in the world if she is only true to the ideals of private and public virtue if she seeks power only as a means for the highest good of the race, the old fable of the Pellas Athense may become real, and the nation acknowledge with grateful joy, that the fathers "builded better than they knew," when they placed the figure of a woman on the dome of their Capitol at Washington.
The second Washington Convention assembled at 10 o'clock, January 19th, 1870, in Lincoln Hall. Mrs. Stanton called the assemblage to order and invited the Rev. Samuel J. May to open the convention with prayer. Letters were read from John Stuart Mill, Robert Purvis, Clara Barton, and others. Miss Barton appealed to her soldier friends in behalf of woman's right of suffrage thus:
Brothers, when you were weak, and I was strong, I toiled for you. Now you are strong, and I am weak because of my work for you, I ask your aid. I ask the ballot for myself and my sex, and as I stood by you, I pray you stand by me and mine.
Mr. Purvis closed his eloquent letter with these sentiments:
