her death, "I have
been trying all my life to get a thorough knowledge of the masculine
nature, but my woman's plummet will not reach to the bottom of that
chaotic pit of selfishness and principle, expedience and firmness
for the right, brutality and tenderness, gullibility and devilish
shrewdness, which I have tried to sound. Only one thing is clear--we
women cannot do without what we have sometimes, alas! sneered at as THE
CHIVELRY OF THE SEX. The question of our rights is as clear to me as
ever; but we must find a plan to get them without being forced to share,
or even to SEE, all that men do in their political lives. We have
only beheld some Principle riding aloft, not the mud through which her
chariot wheels are dragged. The ways must be swept before we can walk in
them--but how and by whom shall this be done?"

For my part, _I_ can't say, and I wish somebody would tell me.

Well--after seeing our State, which we used to be proud of, delivered
over for two years to the control of a party whose policy was so
repugnant to all our feelings of loyalty, we endeavored to procure, at
least a qualification of intelligence for voters. Of course, we didn't
get it: the exclusion from suffrage of all who were unable to read and
write might have turned the scales again, and given us the State. After
our boys came back from the war, we might have succeeded--but their
votes were over-balanced by those of the servant-girls, every one of
whom turned out, making a whole holiday of the election.

I thought, last fall, that my Maria, who is German, would have voted
with us. I stayed at home and did the work myself, on purpose that she
might hear the oration of Carl Schurz; but old Hammer, who keeps the
lager-beer saloon in the upper end of Burroak, gave a supper and a
dance to all the German girls and their beaux, after the meeting, and
so managed to secure nine out of ten of their votes for Seymour. Maria
proposed going away a week before election, up into Decatur County,
where, she said, some relations, just arrived from Bavaria, had settled.
I was obliged to let her go, or lose her altogether, but I was comforted
by the thought that if her vote were lost for Grant, at least it could
not be given to Seymour. After the election was over, and Decatur
County, which we had always managed to carry hitherto, went against
us, the whole matter was explained. About five hundred girls, we were
informed, had been COLONIZED in private famili