in Boston alone on a decisive school question, in 1888, and in a driving snow-storm. Women have the ballot now on school questions in twenty-two States, have municipal and school suffrage in Kansas and Oklahoma; while by constitutional enactment, ratified by a vote of eight to one among the people, they are fully disinthralled in the Free Mountain State of Wyoming. Well sang a woman of that happy commonwealth on the day of its admission to the family of States.

The first republic of the world

Now greets the day, its flag unfurled
To the pure mountain air.

On plains, in canyon, shop, and mine,
The star of equal rights shall shine
From its blue folds, with light divine-
A symbol bright and fair.

John Bright said that agitation is but "the marshalling of a nation's conscience to right its laws," and in this large view every patriotic woman must perceive her duty to be made willing to vote if she is not so already. The new United States Senator from Kansas put the point pithily in a recent speech. He said:

"At the dawn of the twentieth century the United States will be governed by the people that live in them. When that good time. comes, women will vote and men quit drinking.”

CHAPTER XXX.

THE WORK OF WOMEN DURING THE WAR.

THE

BY MARY A. LIVERMORE.*

HE great uprising among men in April, 1861, who ignored party and politics, and forgot sect and trade, in the fervor of their quickened love of country, was paralleled by a similar uprising among women. The patriotic speech and song which fired the blood of men, and led them to enter the lists as soldiers, nourished the selfsacrifice of women, and stimulated them to the collection of hospital supplies, and to brave the horrors and hardships of hospital life.

If men responded to the call of the country when it demanded soldiers by the hundred thousand, women planned money-making enterprises, whose vastness of conception, and good business management, yielded millions of dollars to be expended in the interest of sick and wounded soldiers. If men faltered not, and went gaily to death, that slavery might be exterminated, and the United States remain intact and undivided, women strengthened them by accepting the policy of the Government uncomplainingly. When the telegraph recorded for the country "defeat" instead of "victory," and for their beloved "death" instead of "life," women continued to give the Government their faith, and patiently worked and waited.

The transition of the country from peace to the tumult and waste of war, was appalling and swift, but the regeneration of its women kept pace with it. They lopped off superfluities, retrenched in expenditures, became deaf to the calls of pleasure, and heeded not the mandates of fashion. The incoming patriotism of the hour swept them to the loftiest height of devotion, and they were eager to do, to bear or to suffer for the beloved country. The fetters of caste and

* Author of "My Recollections of the War," etc.

conventionalism dropped at their feet, and they sat together, patrician and plebeian, Protestant and Catholic, and scraped lint, and rolled bandages, or made garments for the poorly-clad soldiery.

An order was sent to Boston for 5,000 shirts for the Massachusetts toops at the South. Every church in the city sent a delegation of needle-women to "Union Hall," heretofore used as a ball-room. The Catholic priests detailed 500 sewing-girls to the pious work. Suburban towns rang the bells of the town halls to muster the seamstresses. The plebeian Irish Catholic of South Boston ran the sewing-machine, while the patrician Protestant of Beacon Street basted, and the shirts were made at the rate of 1,000 a day. On Thursday, Dorothea Dix sent an order for 5,000 shirts for hospitals in Washington. On Friday they were cut, made, and packed, and were sent on their way that night. Similar events were of constant occurrence in every other city. The zeal and devotion of women no more flagged through the war than did that of the army in the field. They rose to the height of every emergency, and through all discouragements and reverses maintained a sympathetic unity between the soldiers and themselves that gave to the former a marvellous heroism.

At a meeting in Washington during the war, called in the interest of the Sanitary Commission, President Lincoln said: "I am not accustomed to use the language of eulogy. I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women, but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women, was applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. I will close by saying, God bless the women of America."

It is to the honor of American women that they confronted the horrid aspects of war with mighty love and earnestness. They kept up their own courage and that of their countrymen who periled health and life for the nation. They sent the love and impulses of home into the extended ranks of the army, through the unceasing correspondence they maintained with "the boys in blue." They planned largely, and toiled untiringly, and with steady persistence to the end, that the horrors of the battle-field might be mitigated, and the hospitals abound in needed comfort. The men at the front were