and errand and place for them; but Heaven forbid that
they should all become exceptional.

Once more, work for these things that are behind, and underlie;
believing that woman's place is behind and within, not of
repression, but of power; and that if she do not fill this place
it will be empty; there will be no main spring. Meanwhile she will
get her rights as she rises to them, and her defenses where she
needs them; everything that helps, defends, uplifts the woman
uplifts man and the whole fabric, and man has begun to find it
out. If he "will give the suffrage if women want it," as is said,
why shall he not as well give them the things that they want
suffrage for and that they are capable of representing? Believe
me, this work, and the representation which grows out of it,
can no longer be done if we attempt the handling of political
machinery--the making of platforms, the judging of candidates, the
measuring and disputation of party plans and issues, and all the
tortuous following up of public and personal political history.

Do you say, men have their individual work in the world, and all
this beside and of it, and that therefore we may? Exactly here
comes in again the law of the interior. Their work is "of
it"--falls in the way. They rub against it as they go along. Men
meet each other in the business thoroughfares, at the offices and
the street corners; we are in the dear depths of home. We are with
the little ones, of whom is not this kingdom, but the kingdom of
heaven, which we, through them, may help to come. This is just
where we must abandon our work, if we attempt the doing of theirs.
And here is where our prestige will desert us, whenever great
cause calls us to speak from out our seclusions, and show men,
from our insights and our place, the occasion and desire that look
unto their rule. They will not listen then; they will remand us to
the ballot-box.

"Inside politics" is a good word. That is just where woman ought
to be, as she ought to be inside everything, insisting upon and
implanting the truth and right that are to conquer. And she can
not be inside and outside both. She can not do the mothering
and the home-making, the watching and ministry, the earning and
maintaining hold and privilege and motive influence behind and
through the acts of men--and al