fisheries and the civil-service question. If they do not speak, it is
naturally assumed that they will forever after hold their peace. Let us see
how that matter stands.

It is said that the greatest mechanical skill in America is to be found
among professional burglars who come here from England. Suppose one of
these men were in prison, and we were to stand outside and taunt him
through the window: "Here is a locomotive engine: why do you not mend or
manage it? Here is a steam printing-press: if you know anything, set it up
for me! You a mechanic, when you have not proved that you understand any of
these things? Nonsense!"

But Jack Sheppard, if he condescended to answer us at all, would coolly
say, "Wait a while, till I have finished my present job. Being in prison,
my first business is to get out of prison. Wait till I have picked this
lock, and mined this wall; wait till I have made a saw out of a
watch-spring, and a ladder out of a pair of blankets. Let me do my first
task, and get out of limbo, and then see if your little printing-presses
and locomotives are too puzzling for my fingers."

Politically speaking, woman is in jail, and her first act of skill must be
in getting through the wall. For her there is no tariff question, no
problem of the fisheries. She will come to that by and by, if you please;
but for the present her statesmanship must be employed nearer home. The
"civil-service reform" in which she is most concerned is a reform which
shall bring her in contact with the civil service. Her political creed, for
the present, is limited to that of Sterne's starling in the cage,--"I can't
get out." If she is supposed to have any common-sense at all, she will best
show it by beginning at the point where she is, instead of at the point
where somebody else is. She would indeed be as foolish as these editors
think her if she now spent her brains upon the tariff question, which she
cannot reach, instead of upon her own enfranchisement, which she is
gradually reaching.

The woman-suffrage movement in America, in all its stages and subdivisions,
has been the work of woman. No doubt men have helped in it: much of the
talking has been done by them, and they have furnished many of the printed
documents. But the energy, the methods, the unwearied purpose, of the
movement, have come from women: they have led in all councils; they have
established the newspapers, got up the conventions, addressed the
legislatures, and