degree the power to impress upon her audience the feeling that the old lady from "Kaintuck" is before them, not only to say things for their amusement, but also to impress upon them those great truths which have presented themselves to her mind during the fifty years of her married life. "Zekle's Wife" is a keen, shrewd, warm-hearted, lovable old woman, without education or culture, yet with an innate sense of refinement and a touching undercurrent of desire "not to be too hard on Zekle." As she tells her story, which she informs us is a true one from real life, she engages the attention and wins the sympathy of all her hearers, and frequent bursts of applause evidence the satisfaction of the audience.
The convention proper opened on Tuesday morning with the appointment of various committees,[1] and reports[2] from the different States filled up most of the time during the day. May Wright Sewall said:
Women must learn that power gives power; that intelligence alone can appreciate or be influenced by intelligence; that justice alone is moved by appeals based on justice. More than anything in the course of suffrage labor does the Nebraska campaign justify the primary method of this National Association. We have a right to expect that each legislature will be composed of the picked men of the State. We have a right to believe that as the intelligence, wisdom and justice of the picked men of the nation are superior to the same qualities in the mass of men, so is the fitness of national and State legislators to consider the demands for the ballot.
Mrs. Mills of Washington sang, as a solo, "Barbara Fritchie," in excellent style. Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (wife of Francis Miller, esq., late assistant attorney for the District of Columbia) spoke with the greatest ease and most remarkable command of language. She is in every sense a strong woman. She said that, born and reared as she was in a Virginia town noted for its intense conservatism, where she had seen a woman stripped to the waist and brutally beaten by order of the law (her skin happened to be of a dark color) whose only crime was that of alleged impertinence, and that impertinence provoked by improper conduct on the part of a young man; that, reared in such a cradle as this, still, through the blessing of a good home, she had learned to deeply appreciate the noble efforts of women who dared to tread new paths, to break their own way through the dense forest of prejudice and ignorance. Man cannot represent woman. If woman breaks any law of man, of nature, or of God, she alone must suffer the penalty. "This fact seems to me," said Mrs. Miller, "to settle the whole question."
Miss Anthony read the following letter from Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, who, she said, had the honor of being an advocate of this cause, in addition to being governor of Massachusetts:
- ↑ Committee on Resolutions, composed of Lillie Devereux Blake of New York city, Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis, Harriet R. Shattuck of Boston, May Wright Sewall of Indianapolis, and Ellen H. Sheldon of the District of Columbia.
- ↑ Mrs. Spofford, the treasurer, reported that $5,000 were spent in Nebraska in the endeavor to carry the amendment in that State.
