here is a movement on foot to
thrust the ballot, gentlemen, into their unsteady hands! My God! My God!
where is your gallantry and courage? Where is your manhood that you
think of giving these gentle creatures your work to do, and lose what a
hundred to one Yankees could not take from you?"

He looked about him with terrific scorn.

"I did not think that I should ever again appear in their dear defence.
I'm an old man, my glory has departed. You shee before you--you
shee--before--you----"

He lifted his hand to his forehead as if suddenly he was dazed, sunken
into the dream of years. His knees bent, he would have fallen. Selah
sprang swiftly forward, placed his arm over her shoulder, and supported
him. He sank slowly into the chair she had just vacated. She made sure
swiftly from long experience that he had only reached the coma of a
familiar state. Then she went back to the front of the stage and began
to speak.

The Colonel looked up vaguely, saw her standing there as one remembers a
vision in a dream.

"That's it, Selah, my love! Give 'em 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,'"
he murmured, as his head sank upon his breast.

"You have listened to the brave speech of a brave gentleman, my
friends," she began, "and I would not if I could subtract one lovely
word from that lovely tribute to the men and women and order to which he
belongs. What he has said is the truth, raised to the eloquence of a
martial soul. Until the present time we women, as he told you, have
figured chiefly in religion, poetry, and romance. We have been that
part of the imaginations of men which creates creeds, poetry, windmills,
and fiction. We have no reputation for any other form of existence. We
have been purely imaginary beings living in physical bodies for just
men. Our character is a legend invented by men; it could never fit a
real human being. Yet we have accepted it, and tried to believe in it.
You have indeed kept us, but we have not lived at all except for you. We
are not the authors of a single standard governing our lives. Do you
understand what that means, you men who live only according to your own
will and purpose?"

They listened to her in silence. They studied her in amazement. But we
do not applaud an accusing angel, and they did not applaud Selah, who
stood so elegantly fair and tall, a slim figure with earnest dark eyes
bent in passionate appeal upon their faces.

"It was men," she went on, "who divided women into three