s only equaled by her
power of sustained labor.

Many of these same qualities belong to Mrs. M. F. Shields, of
Colorado Springs, one of the committee on constitutional work in
the campaign of 1876, and an ardent, unceasing, unselfish laborer
in the church, in suffrage and temperance, for more than ten
years. She did not lecture, but "talked"; talked to five hundred
men at a time as if they were her own sons, and only needed to be
shown they were conniving at injustice, in order to turn about
and do the right thing. This same element of "motherliness" it
was, which gained her the respectful attention of an audience of
the roughest and most ignorant Cornish miners up in Caribou, who
would listen to no other woman speaking upon the subject. When
the members of the famous constitutional committee were
considering the suffrage petition, prior to making their report,
Judge Stone of Pueblo, tried to persuade the Spanish-speaking
member that to grant the franchise to women would be to be false
to his party, as those women were all Democrats. But Senor Vigil
replied that he had been talking through his interpreter to the
"nice old lady, who smiled so much" (meaning Mrs. Shields), and
he knew what they asked was all right, and he should vote for it.

Of the men who were willing to obey Paul's entreaty to "help
those women," must be named in the front rank David M. Richards
of Denver, a pioneer of '59, and as brave and generous and true a
heart as ever beat in time to the pulse of progress, Rev. B. F.
Crary, a true apostolic helper, Mr. Henry C. Dillon, a young
western Raleigh for knightly chivalry, Hon. J. B. Belford, member
of congress then and now, Judge H. P. H. Bromwell, who needs no
commendation from the historian, as his eloquent minority report
speaks adequately for him; these, and very many more, both men
and women, have, as the French say, "deserved well of the State
and of their generation."

And it was once more to the aid of these men and women that the
East sent reinforcements as soon as the winter of 1877 was well
ushered in. An annual convention was announced for January 15, in
Denver. When the bitter cold evening came it seemed doubtful if
any great number of persons would be present, but the large
Lawrence street Methodist Churc