every man has a neighbor who is put under treatment by some other party,
and who is constantly attacking all who will listen to his provoking and
pestilent counter-statements. All the common school education of the United
States does not equal the education of election day; and as in some States
elections are held very often, this popular university seems to be kept in
session almost the whole year round. The consequence is a remarkable
average popular knowledge of political affairs,--a training which American
women now miss, but which will come to them with the ballot.

And in still another way there will be an education coming to woman from
the right of suffrage. It will come from her own sex, proceeding from
highest to lowest. We often hear it said that after enfranchisement the
more educated women will not vote, while the ignorant will. But Mrs. Howe
admirably pointed out, at a Philadelphia convention, that the moment women
have the ballot it will become the pressing duty of the more educated
women, even in self-protection, to train the rest The very fact of the
danger will be a stimulus to duty, with women, as it already is with men.

It has always seemed to me rather childish, in a man of superior education,
or talent, or wealth, to complain that when election day comes he has no
more votes than the man who plants his potatoes or puts in his coal The
truth is that under the most thorough system of universal suffrage the man
of wealth or talent or natural leadership has still a disproportionate
influence, still casts a hundred votes where the poor or ignorant or feeble
man throws but one. Even the outrages of New York elections turned out to
be caused by the fact that the leading rogues had used their brains and
energy, while the men of character had not. When it came to the point, it
was found that a few caricatures by Nast and a few columns of figures in
the "Times" were more than a match for all the repeaters of the ring. It is
always so. Andrew Johnson, with all the patronage of the nation, had not
the influence of "Nasby" with his one newspaper. The whole Chinese question
was perceptibly and instantly modified when Harte wrote "The Heathen
Chinee."

These things being so, it indicates feebleness or dyspepsia when an
educated man is heard whining, about election time, with his fears of
ignorant voting. It is his business to enlighten and control that
ignorance. With a voice and a pen at his command, with a town