ies, thus gaining a livelihood. Some of her patrons threatened
that if she persisted in bringing such people[185] to that town and
affiliated with them, they would no longer patronize her. "Very
well" she replied, "I shall maintain my principles, and if you
break up my classes I can go back to the sea-shore and dig clams
for a living as I have done before." Tradition says the lecture
course was a success. She continued her classes and the neighbors
danced as ever to her music.

Gail Hamilton, who resides in Maine at least half her time, is one
of the most brilliant and pungent American writers. In denouncing
the follies and failures of her sex, her critical pen has
indirectly aided the suffrage movement by arousing thought upon all
phases of the question as to what are the rights and duties of
woman, though she stoutly maintains that she is opposed to woman's
enfranchisement.

In Portland there has always been a circle of noble men and women,
steadfast friends alike of the anti-slavery, temperance and woman
suffrage movements. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Dennett, Miss.
Charlotte A. Thomas and Mrs. Ellen French Foster are worthy of
mention. That untiring reformer, the Hon. Neal Dow, has clearly
seen and declared in the later years of his labors, that suffrage
for women is the short path to the advancement of prohibition.

The Hon. Thomas B. Reed has done us great service in congress as
leader of the Republican party in the House, and member of the
Judiciary Committee. His report,[186] in 1884, on the submission of
the sixteenth amendment has had an extended influence. It is an
able argument, and as a keen piece of irony it is worthy the pen of
a Dean Swift. In the Senate we have a fast friend in William P.
Frye, who has always voted favorably in both houses on all
questions regarding the interests of woman. In 1878, in presenting
Miss Willard's petition of 30,000 for woman's right to vote on the
temperance question, he made an able speech recommending the
measure.[187]

And in closing, the name of Maine's venerable statesman, Hannibal
Hamlin, so long honored by his State in a succession of official
positions from year to year, must not be forgotten. As chairman of
the Committee on the District of Columbia in 1870 he presided at
the first hearing of the National Woman Suffrage Association,
listened with respect and courtesy, and at the close introduced the
ladies to each member of the committee, and said "he ha