ay, going to their Southern graves, for very few of them
ever returned.

More troops were called for, and two companies formed in St. Cloud.
While they waited under marching orders, they and the citizens were
aroused at two o'clock one morning by the cry from the east side of the
river of, "Indians, Indians." A boat was sent over and brought a
white-lipped messenger, with the news of the Sioux massacre at Ft.
Ridgley.

CHAPTER XLVI.

PLATFORMS.

My first public speech was the revelation of a talent hidden in a
napkin, and I set about putting it to usury. I wrote a lecture--"Women
and Politics"--as a reason for my anomalous position and a justification
of those men who had endorsed my right to be a political leader, and
gave sketches of women in sacred and profane history who had been so
endorsed by brave and wise men.

The lecture gave an account of the wrongs heaped upon women by slavery,
as a reason why women were then called upon for special activity, and I
never failed to "bring down the house" by describing the scene in which
the tall Kentuckian proposed to the tall Pennsylvanian that he should
horsewhip an old woman one hundred and two times, to compel her to earn
two hundred dollars with which his mightiness might purchase Havana
cigars, gold chains, etc., or to elicit signs of shame by relating the
fact of the United States government proposing to withdraw diplomatic
relations with Austria for whipping Hungarian women for political
offenses, while woman-whipping was the principal industry of our
American chivalry.

I stated that men had sought to divide this world into two
fields--religion and politics. In the first, they were content that
their mothers and wives should dwell with them, but in the second, no
kid slipper was ever to be set. Horace Mann had warned women to stand
back, saying: "Politics is a stygian pool." I insisted that politics
had reached this condition through the permit given to Satan to turn all
the waste water of his mills into that pool; that this grant must be
rescinded and the pool drained at all hazards. Indeed the emergency was
such that even women might handle shovels.

Chicago had once been in a swamp, but the City Fathers had lifted it six
feet. Politicians must "raise the grade," must lift their politics the
height of a man, and make them a habitation for men, not reptiles. At
this an audience would burst into uproarous applause.

As for the grand division, no surv