om copies
on her file, will illustrate the vast scope of her correspondence and
her peculiarly trenchant mode of expression. To one who wanted a
testimonial from her that she might show in vindication of certain
accusations, she wrote:

I went through all the fire of charges of stealing, and of every
other crime in the whole calendar, twenty-five years ago--charges
made, too, by people of vastly more influence than any of the women
who are talking and writing today about you. I never made a public
denial of one of them, through all the years of the bitterest kind
of persecution, and believe I was greatly the gainer by working
right on and ignoring them. It will be the mistake of your life if
you go into print in your own defence. Your denial will reach a new
set of people and start them to talking, while the ones who read
the original charges will never see the refutation of them.

To one of the newly-enfranchised women of Utah:

The one word I should have to say to the women throughout your
State would be, not so much to try to get women elected to the
offices as to get the best persons, whether men or women. Naturally
there will be a far less number of women than of men capable of
holding office, from the very fact of their long disfranchisement.
I do hope your women therefore will set a good example not only for
Utah, but also for the States where they are not enfranchised;
namely, that of proving it is not the spoils of office they are
after. I think the women of Wyoming always have been wonderfully
judicious in not being anxious to hold offices themselves, but
mightily anxious as to what men hold them. It will be considered a
strong objection to woman suffrage if the vast majority of your
women should prove themselves mere partisans.

To a New York cousin: "Your little birthday present, the Book of
Proverbs, came duly. Solomon's wise sayings, however, don't help me very
much in my work of trying to persuade men to do justice to women. These
men and their progenitors for generations back have read Solomon over
and over again, and learned nothing therefrom of fair play for woman,
and I fear generations to come will continue to read to as little
purpose. At any rate, I propose to peg away in accordance with my own
sense of wisdom rather than Solomon's. All those old fellows were very
good for their ti