is his business to supply their wants.  There are frivolous young men, too, in this world of ours, whose whole minds seem bent on the exquisite parting of their back hair, the peculiar shape of their collar and shade of gloves or neck-tie, and the exact height of the heel of their French boots; men who run up bills and ruin fathers and wives without any apparent compunctions of conscience, and who feel no shame that their wives or daughters support them while they squander both time and money.  Yet these men, frivolous as it is possible to be, are not denied equal privileges with the rest of their sex, nor is their frivolity pleaded as a reason why sensible men should not be allowed the franchise.

Why, then, should the frivolity of some women be urged against the whole sex?  Rather, educate them.  Let them realize that they are equally with man responsible to God for the powers of mind given them.  And let them know, too, that they shall have equal opportunities for the development and exercise of those powers; that with equality in responsibility there is equality in privilege; and the next half-century will number fewer frivolous women—­by many hundreds.

The dread is entertained by some that, if granted the elective franchise, women would be mixed up in election rows and drunken squabbles, as men are now.  Such an event does not necessarily follow; neither is it at all probable.  Men of good principle and well-balanced judgment do not make either fools or beasts of themselves now, badly as elections are managed; nor would sensible, right-minded women degrade themselves by unseemly conduct while exercising their right to vote.

No law has ever yet existed which entirely prevented evil-minded men and evil-minded women from making public exhibition of their degradation; and, as society is now constructed, where wicked men congregate, some wicked women will be found.  Elevate women to perfect equality with man, and fewer wicked ones will prey upon society.

The great objection, the one which rises above all others, with regard to women taking an active part in civil and ecclesiastical matters, is, that they would thereby neglect their houses and families.

This objection has some weight; it is not altogether so unreasonable as most of the others raised.  But even here the event dreaded does not necessarily follow, any more than because men are allowed to vote therefore their business and families must suffer in consequence.  Prudent men, when they accept offices of public trust, so order their business arrangements that they shall be properly attended to without allowing the one to interfere with the other.  So also would prudent women.  It might with as much propriety be argued that a farmer must not be permitted to accept any public office, not even that of juryman, because the acceptance of it might call him from home, either in Springtime or harvest; nor a doctor to become a candidate for public honors, lest some one might be