college boys and girls with them, and the speakers held the crowd
of boys for several hours. The next day a delegation of students
walked with them for miles. At all of the other university towns
they were received with the same enthusiasm. At the University of
Pennsylvania they were detained hours for speeches in the
grounds. At Baltimore they were received by Cardinal Gibbons in
his mansion, an extraordinary courtesy, as they were not
Catholics.

The "hikers" reached Hyattsville, four miles from Washington, the
evening of February 27 and spent the night there. The next
morning, escorted by a delegation of suffragists from the city,
they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. The streets had been
thronged for several hours with a cosmopolitan crowd, from the
highest to the lowest. At the headquarters of the Congressional
Committee of the National American Suffrage Association, across
from the Treasury building, "General" Jones was presented with
flowers and disbanded her army. Fourteen had walked the entire
distance from New York--295 miles with some detours--and two had
walked from Philadelphia.[126]

A message to President Taft, similar to the one which had been
sent by the New York officers to Governor Sulzer, had been
entrusted by the board of the National Suffrage Association to
the pilgrims, who expected to march in a body to the White House
to deliver it. Before they reached Washington they were notified
that the board itself would present it to the incoming President
Wilson at a later date. Miss Florence Allen, the well known Ohio
lawyer, who had been marching for several days, returned to New
York, to try to obtain the recall of this decision but was
unsuccessful. Afterwards the board informed "General" Jones that
they would go together to the White House but all had separated,
the psychological moment had passed and the message was never
presented.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION. The legislature of New York meets annually and
from 1854 to 1917 a woman suffrage measure was presented only to be
rejected, with two exceptions. The first was in 1880, when the
Legislature undertook to give women the right to vote at school
meetings, but the law was ineffective and this great privilege was
confined to women in villages and country districts. The charters of
a number of thi