In spite of the discomforts we suffered in the Kansas campaign, I was glad of the experience.  It gave me added self-respect to know that I could endure such hardships and fatigue with a great degree of cheerfulness.  The Governor and I often laughed heartily, as we patiently chewed our gum arabic and slippery elm, to think on what a gentle stimulus we were accomplishing such wonderful feats as orators and travelers.  It was fortunate our intense enthusiasm for the subject gave us all the necessary inspiration, as the supplies we gathered by the way were by no means sufficiently invigorating for prolonged propagandism.

I enjoyed these daily drives over the vast prairies, listening to the Governor’s descriptions of the early days when the “bushwhackers and jayhawkers” made their raids on the inhabitants of the young free State.  The courage and endurance of the women, surrounded by dangers and discomforts, surpassed all description.  I count it a great privilege to have made the acquaintance of so many noble women and men who had passed through such scenes and conquered such difficulties.  They seemed to live in an atmosphere altogether beyond their surroundings.  Many educated families from New England, disappointed in not finding the much talked of bonanzas, were living in log cabins, in solitary places, miles from any neighbors.  But I found Emerson, Parker, Holmes, Hawthorne, Whittier, and Lowell on their bookshelves to gladden their leisure hours.

Miss Anthony and I often comforted ourselves mid adverse winds with memories of the short time we spent under Mother Bickerdyke’s hospitable roof at Salina.  There we had clean, comfortable beds, delicious viands, and everything was exquisitely neat.  She entertained us with her reminiscences of the War.  With great self-denial she had served her country in camp and hospital, and was with Sherman’s army in that wonderful march to the sea, and here we found her on the outpost of civilization, determined to start what Kansas most needed—­a good hotel.  But alas! it was too good for that latitude and proved a financial failure.  It was, to us, an oasis in the desert, where we would gladly have lingered if the opposition would have come to us for conversion.  But, as we had to carry the gospel of woman’s equality into the highways and hedges, we left dear Mother Bickerdyke with profound regret.  The seed sown in Kansas in 1867 is now bearing its legitimate fruits.  There was not a county in the State where meetings were not held or tracts scattered with a generous hand.  If the friends of our cause in the East had been true and had done for woman what they did for the colored man, I believe both propositions would have been carried; but with a narrow policy, playing off one against the other, both were defeated.  A policy of injustice always bears its own legitimate fruit in failure.