twice and then retire for life disgusted. We ask suffrage for women because they are different from men. Not better nor wiser on the whole, but better and wiser in certain respects. They are more temperate, more chaste, more economical. Their presence will appeal to the self-respect of men. Thus both will be improved, and politics will be redeemed and purified.
The second session of this Convention was held in Brooklyn, in Plymouth Church. At this meeting the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone read her annual report, and then the delegates from the different States gave accounts of the cause in all parts of the Union, as carried on by means of the State societies. At the opening of the afternoon session Col. Higginson read the following letters:
My Dear Mrs. Stone:—My regret at not being able to attend the meetings of the American Suffrage Association this year, is not consoled by the pleasure of expressing, by letter, my warmest sympathy with their objects; but, if we can not do the thing we would, we must do the next best thing to it.
To say that I believe in womanhood suffrage with my whole head and heart, is very imperfectly to express the eagerness with which I hope for it, and the confidence with which I expect it. It will come, as other right things come, because it is right. But those forces which "make for righteousness" make haste slowly. Do we not often trip up ourselves in our pilgrimage toward truth, by attributing our own sense of hunger and hurry and heat to the fullness and leisure and calm in which the object of our passionate search moves forward to meet us? There is something very significant to the student of progress, in the history of the forerunners of revolutions. Their eager confidence in their own immediate success, their pathetic bewilderment at the mystery of their apparent failures, are rich with suggestion to any one who means work for an unpopular cause. No reform marches evenly to its consummation. If it does not meet apparent overthrow, it must step at times with the uneasiness of what George Eliot would call its "growing pains." But growing pains are not death-throes. In the name of growth and decay let us be exact in our diagnosis!
I have fallen into this train of thought, because there seems to have been a concerted and deliberate attempt, this past year, on the part of certain of those opposed to the thorough elevation of women, to assert that our influence is distinctly losing ground. Irresponsible assertion is the last refuge of the force whose arguments have fallen off in the fray, and "unconscious annihilation" is as yet a very agreeable condition. It might be replied, in the language of the hymn-book:
"If this be death,
'Tis sweet to die!"
Perhaps to the onlookers this has not been one of our fast years. No one actually engaged in the struggle to improve the condition of women can for an instant doubt that it has been a strong one. A silent, sure awakening of women to their own needs is taking place on every hand; and it is becoming evident that until the masses of women are thus awakened, the movement to enfranchise them must not anticipate any very vivid successes. Let us be content if our strength runs for a time to the making of muscle, not to the trial of speed.
Dear Mrs. Stone:—I am so busy just now proving "woman's right to labor," that I have no time to help prove "woman's right to vote."
When I read your note aloud to the family, asking "What shall I say to Mrs. Stone?" a voice from the transcendental mist which usually surrounds my honored father instantly replied, "Tell her you are ready to follow her as leader, sure that you could not have a better one." My brave old mother, with the ardor of many unquenchable Mays shining in her face, cried out, "Tell her I am seventy three, but I mean to go to the polls before I die, even if my three daughters have to carry me." And two little men, already mus-