gthened from week to week with
the amazing assurances they read in the _Signal_, to the effect that
Jordan County was coming out of the dark ages: "Men as well as women are
impatient to see their wives and mothers and daughters exercise the
inalienable right of every freeborn American Citizen!" And so on and so
forth.

"Who are the men?" asked every man.

Echo answered:

"Who?"

No one believed there were any such cowardly males among them, but they
could not prove it. The men were growing more and more silent, partly
through anxiety and partly with grim confidence that no way could be
found to force this issue of suffrage on the voters of the county. The
women remained maliciously silent on this point. If they had any plan,
not the most ingratiating persuasions from their nearest mankind could
induce them to reveal it.

The lives of most women on remote farms are tragic beyond belief. They
appear natural and commonplace only because the victims are trained in
endurance, not in the vocabulary of expression. There are thousands of
farmers' wives in every rural community who endure hardships undreamed
of in the sweatshops of commerce. There are no laws to protect them from
long hours, nor any to protect their children. They average sixteen
hours a day, while the hardest working man takes at least two hours at
noon in which to rest. They may complain of backache, of rheumatism, of
any number of stitches in their sides, but they never complain of the
long, long day's work. On the contrary, if the worst comes to worst,
especially during the harvest season, they think they will get up an
hour earlier the next morning and maybe "get through" what they have to
do.

When one of them dies of the strain, she just dies. The obituary notice
of her as the wife of so-and-so never tells how she just "gave out,"
having borne eight children and having done the cooking, washing,
ironing, and sewing for the family, besides "helping in the fields."

It was to these women that Selah came with her definite plans for better
conditions for them and their children. She brought them the refreshment
of social intercourse, and united them in a secret common cause. It was
difficult to accomplish against the order and very nature of their
lives. Sometimes she failed.

One day she called at a little farmhouse hidden away from the public
road in one of the mountain coves. There were no children about, no
noisy cackling of cocks and hens, no