what an immense uplifting power is present when an intelligent man in an influential position joins his personal and political force to his wife's personal and social force in the endeavor to accomplish an object dear to both.
It is a pity not to register here, however inadequately, some outline of many figures that rise to form a part of the picture of Colorado in 1876-7. When liberty shall have been achieved, and all citizens shall be comfortably enjoying its direct and indirect blessings, this book should be found to have preserved in the amber of its pages the names of those who bravely wrought for freedom in that earlier time. Would that one might indeed summon them all by a roll-call! But they will not answer— they say only: "Let our work stand for us, be its out-come small or great."
To Dr. Alida C. Avery, however, whatever the outcome, a weighty obligation is due from all past, present and future laborers in this cause in Colorado. She it was who set at work and kept at work the interplay of ideas and efforts which accomplished what was done. Through her personal acquaintance with the immortals at the East, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Henry B. Blackwell, she drew them to Colorado during the campaign about to be described, and with them came others. Mrs. M. W. Campbell and her husband reappeared to do faithful service, and then came also Miss Lelia Patridge of Philadelphia, a young, graceful, and effective speaker,—so the local papers constantly describe her, and then came, in the person of Miss Matilda Hindman of Pittsburg Pa., one of the' ablest women of the whole campaign. Gentle, persuasive, womanly, she was at the same time armed at all points with fact, argument, and illustration, and her zeal was only equaled by her power of sustained labor.
Many of these same qualities belong to Mrs. M. F. Shields, of Colorado Springs, one of the committee on constitutional work in the campaign of 1876, and an ardent, unceasing, unselfish laborer in the church, in suffrage and temperance, for more than ten years. She did not lecture, but "talked "; talked to five hundred men at a time as if they were her own sons, and only needed to be shown they were conniving at injustice, in order to turn about and do the right thing.. This same element of "motherliness "it was, which gained her the respectful attention of an audience of the roughest and most ignorant Cornish miners up in Caribou, who would listen to no other woman speaking upon the subject. When the members of the famous constitutional committee were considering the suffrage petition, prior to making their report, Judge Stone of Pueblo, tried to persuade the Spanish-speaking member that to grant the franchise to women would be to be false to his party, as those women were all Democrats. But Senor Vigil replied that he had been talking through his interpreter to the "nice old lady, who smiled so much "(meaning Mrs. Shields), and he knew what they asked was all right, and he should vote for it.
Of the men who were willing to obey Paul's entreaty to "help those women," must be named in the front rank David M. Richards of Denver, a pioneer of '59, and as brave and generous and true a heart as ever beat
