Campbell.--Well, didn't you

Mrs. Somers.-Don't interrupt! (Reading :) "Which would compel them, at the cost of serious sacrifices, to contend at the polls with the ignorant classes, who would be sure to exercise the right if conferred."

--

Campbell. That was your own argument, Amy. They're almost your own words.

Mrs. Somers.-That isn't what I object to. (Reading:) "Mr. Campbell then referred in a more humorous strain to the argument, frequently used by the suffragists, that every taxpayer should have the right to vote. He said that he objected to this, because it implied that non-taxpayers should not have the right to vote, which would deprive of the suffrage a large body of adoptive citizens, who voted at all the elections with great promptness and assiduity. He thought the exemption of women from some duties required of men by the State fairly offset the loss of the ballot in their case, and that until we were prepared to send ladies to battle we ought not to oblige them to go to the polls. ing ensued between Mr. Campbell and Mr. Willington, on the part of the suffragists, the latter gentleman affirming that in great crises of the world's history women had shown as much courage as men, and the former contending that this did not at all affect his position, since the courage of women was in high degree a moral courage, which was not evoked by the ordinary conditions of peace or war, but required the imminence of some extraordinary, some vital, emergency."

Some skirmish

Campbell.-Well, what do you object to in all

that?

Mrs. Somers (tossing the paper on the table and confronting him with her head lifted and her hands clasped

upon her left side).-Everything! It is an insult to

women.

Campbell.-Woman, you mean. I don't think women would mind it. Who's been talking to you, Amy?

Mrs. Somers.-Nobody. It doesn't matter who's been talking to me. That is not the question.

Campbell.-It's the question I asked.

Mrs. Somers. It isn't the question I asked. I wish simply to know what you mean by that speech.

Campbell.-I wish you knew how pretty you look in that dress. (Mrs. Somers involuntarily glances down at the skirt of it on either side, and rearranges it a little, folding her hands again as before.) But perhaps you do. Mrs. Somers (with dignity).-Will you answer my question?

Campbell.-Certainly. I meant what I said.

Mrs. Somers.-Oh! you did? Very well, then! When a woman stands by the bedside of her sick child, and risks her life from contagion, what kind of courage do you call that?

Campbell.-Moral.

Mrs. Somers. And when she remains in a burning building or a sinking ship-as they often do-and perishes, while her child is saved, what kind of courage is it?

Campbell.-Moral.

Mrs. Somers. When she seizes an axe and defends her little ones against a bear or a wolf that's just bursting in the cabin door, what kind of courage does she show? Campbell.-Moral.

Mrs. Somers. Or when her babe crawls up the track, and she snatches it from the very jaws of the cow catcher

Campbell.-Oh! hold on, now, Amy! Be fair! It's the engineer who does that: he runs along the side of the locomotive, and catches the smiling infant up and lays it in the mother's arms as the train thunders by. His name is usually Hank Rollins. The mother is always paralyzed with terror.

Mrs. Somers.-Of course she is. But in those other cases how does her courage differ from a man's? If hers is always moral, what kind of courage does a man show when he faces the cannon?

Campbell.-Immoral. Come, Amy, are you trying to prove that women are braver than men? Well, they are. I never was in any danger yet that I didn't wish I was a woman, for then I should have the courage to face it, or else I could turn and run without disgrace. All that I said in that speech was that women haven't so much nerve as men.

Mrs. Somers. They have more.
Campbell.-Nerves-yes.

Mrs. Somers.-No, nerve.

Take Dr. Cissy Gay, that little, slender, delicate, sensitive thing: what do you suppose she went through when she was studying medicine, and walking the hospitals, and all those disgusting things? And Mrs. J. Plunkett Harmon: do you mean to say that she has no nerve, facing all sorts of audiences, on the platform, everywhere? Or Rev. Lily Barber, living down all that ridicule, and going quietly on in her work— Campbell.-Oh! they've been talking to you.

Mrs. Somers. They have not! And if they have Dr. Gay is as much opposed to suffrage as you are.

Campbell.-As I? Aren't you opposed to it, too? Mrs. Somers. Of course I am. Or I was till you made that speech.

Compbell-It wasn't exactly intended to convert you Mrs. Somers. It has placed me in a false position Everybody knows, or the same as knows, that we're engaged

Campbell-Well, I'm not ashamed of it, Amy.

Mrs. Somers severely).—No matter! And now it will look as if I had no ideas of my own, and was just swayed abo it any way by you. A woman is despicable that joins with men in ridiculing women.

Campbell.—Who's been saying that?

Mrs. Somers.-No one. It doesn't matter who's been saying it. Mrs. Mervane has been saying it.

Campbell.-Mrs. Mervane?

Mrs. Somers.—Yes, Mrs. Mervane, that you're always praising and admiring so for her good sense and her right ideas. Didn't you say she wrote as logically and forcibly as a man?

Campbell.-Yes, I did.

Mrs. Somers-Very well, then, she says that if any thing could turn her in favor of suffrage, it is that speech of yours. She says it's a subtle attack upon the whole sex.

Campbell.-Well, I give it up! You are all alike. You take everything personally in the first place, and then you say it's an attack on all women. Couldn't I make this right by publishing a card to acknowledge your physical courage before the whole community, Amy? Then your friends would have to say that I had recognized the pluck of universal womanhood.

Mrs. Somers.-No, sir; you can't make it right now. And I'm sorry, sorry, sorry I signed the anti-suffrage petition. Nothing will ever teach men to appreciate women till women practically assert themselves.

Campbell. That sounds very much like another quotation, Amy.

Mrs. Somers.-And they must expect to be treated as cowards till they show themselves heroes. And they must first of all have the ballot.

Campbell.-Oh!

Mrs. Somers.-Yes. Then, and not till then, men will acknowledge their equality in all that is admirable in both. Then there will be no more puling insolence about moral courage and vital emergencies to evoke it.

Campbell. I don't see the steps to this conclusion, but the master-mind of Mrs. J. Plunkett Harmon reaches conclusions at a bound.

Mrs. Somers.-It wasn't Mrs. Harmon.

Campbell.-Oh! well, Rev. Lily Barber, then. You needn't tell me you originated that stuff, Amy. But I submit for the present. Think it over, my dear, and when I come back to-morrow

Mrs. Somers.-Perhaps you had better not come back to-morrow.

Campbell.-Why?

Mrs. Somers.-Because-because I'm afraid we are not in sympathy. Because if you thought that I needed some vital emergency to make me show that I was ready to die for you any moment—

Campbell.-Die for me? I want you to live for me,

Amy.

Mrs. Somers. And the emergency never came, you would despise me.

Campbell.-Never.

Mrs. Somers. If you have such a low opinion of women generally

Campbell.-I a low opinion of women!