against.

If voting is to be the chief power in woman's hands, or even a
power of half the moment that is contended for it, it will grow to
be the motive and end, the all-absorbing object, with women that
it is with men.

The gubernatorial canvass, the presidential year, these will
interrupt and clog all home business, suspend decisions, paralyze
plans, as they do with men, or else we shall not be much, as
thorough politicians, after all. And if we talk of mending all
that, of putting politics in their right place, and governing
by pure principle instead of party trick, and stumping and
electioneering, we go back in effect to the acknowledgment that
only in the interior work, and behind politics, can women do
better things at all; which, precisely, was to be demonstrated.

Think, simply, of election day for women.

Would it be so invariably easy a thing for a home-keeper to do,
at the one opportunity of the year, or the four years, on a
particular day, her duty in this matter? It is easy to say that it
takes no more time than a hundred other things that some do; but
setting apart all the argument that previous time and strength
must have been spent in properly qualifying, how many of
the hundred other things are done now without interruption,
postponement, hindrance, through domestic contingencies? or are
there a hundred other things done when the home contingencies are
really met by a woman? A woman's life is not like a man's. That
a man's life may be--that he may transact his out-door business;
keep his hours and appointments; may cast his vote on election
day; may represent wife and children in all wherein the community
cares for, or might injure him and them--the woman, some woman,
must be at the home post, that the home order may go on, from
which he derives that command of time, and freedom from hindering
necessities, which leave him to his work. And so, as the old
proverb says, while man's work is from sun to sun--made definite,
a matter to which he can go forth, and from which he can come
in--a woman's work, of keeping the place of the forthgoing and
incoming, is never done, from the very nature and ceaseless
importance of it.

Must she go to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant
or no servant, strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If