us this afternoon. Fancy the life, the new interest, the animation that will come into those desolate debates in Congress whenever she sets her foot as Senator or Representative within those halls, and the rest of the women come after her. If she was there, she might perhaps be met by the old objection, that, whatever her words may be, she did not have the physical force to sustain them. The composition of our delegates in both houses of Congress is not, as a general rule, so formidable as to lead one to suppose that they were particularly sent there for their muscle. Bring before you the array of the men whom you send to represent the nation. See how absurd it is to suppose that they were chosen for anything but their intellect. Hear this lady talk, and when you compare what you have heard with the debates in Congress, it does not seem to me that even intellect was the main consideration.
I believe that no man ever made use of that hackneyed argument, that women couldn't vote because they couldn't discharge military duty, unless there was in that man something that needed the teaching of womanhood to make him do his military duty, and do it well. I never heard that argument made that I do not suspect that there is something amiss in that man's lungs, or his liver, or at any rate his brain. The military duties of the nation have nothing to do with the elective franchise. Every soldier who comes back from military service finds the way to the polls blocked up by dozens of men who, at the time of the draft, suddenly developed lamenesses, either of limbs, or of excuses; men who wanted to see if there wasn't some wound or trouble by which they could be relieved from the obvious necessity. You recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning, who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the husband to hide himself effectively—a reliance in which she was not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her household furniture and save it from the flames. To finish up she dragged out a great roll of carpet. Had anybody sat down on that roll of carpet they would have heard the ready scream of her brave but suffering husband. If that man was like multitudes of men, if he were a man like Horace Greeley in his opinions, the moment the carpet was unrolled, the carpet knight would step out, and his first remark to his wife would probably be, "My dear, you can now return to the kitchen. I will do the voting, because I have the physical strength to stand by the Government."
Woman, in time of war, has her mission, as man has his. It is idle to talk about her "sphere"—as her sphere is generally interpreted. Even in the most disastrous war, the mission of woman is plainly to be discerned in deeds of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Women have worked themselves literally to death through the toils and exposures of war. Of all the semblances of argument that can be brought against the right of woman to the suffrage—of all the figments of the brain that men devise, there is nothing idler than to object to this right on the ground that suffrage and bearing arms should go together. In times of war the women of our country did aid and comfort and bless our suffering armies, and hundreds of returned soldiers owe their restoration to health and life to the ministering labors and