After twenty-four hours in the express I found myself in a pleasant room in the International Hotel at La Crosse, looking out on the Great Mother of Waters, on whose cold bosom the ice and the steamers were struggling for mastery.  Beyond stretched the snow-clad bluffs, sternly looking down on the Mississippi, as if to say, “’Thus far shalt thou come and no farther’—­though sluggish, you are aggressive, ever pushing where you should not; but all attempts in this direction are alike vain; since creation’s dawn, we have defied you, and here we stand, to-day, calm, majestic, immovable.  Coquette as you will in other latitudes, with flowery banks and youthful piers in the busy marts of trade, and undermine them, one and all, with your deceitful wooings, but bow in reverence as you gaze on us.  We have no eyes for your beauty; no ears for your endless song; our heads are in the clouds, our hearts commune with gods; you have no part in the eternal problems of the ages that fill our thoughts, yours the humble duty to wash our feet, and then pass on, remembering to keep in your appropriate sphere, within the barks that wise geographers have seen fit to mark.”

As I listened to these complacent hills and watched the poor Mississippi weeping as she swept along, to lose her sorrows in ocean’s depths, I thought how like the attitude of man to woman.  Let these proud hills remember that they, too, slumbered for centuries in deep valleys down, down, when, perchance, the sparkling Mississippi rolled above their heads, and but for some generous outburst, some upheaval of old Mother Earth, wishing that her rock-ribbed sons, as well as graceful daughters, might enjoy the light, the sunshine and the shower—­but for this soul of love in matter as well as mind—­these bluffs and the sons of Adam, too, might not boast the altitude they glory in to-day.  Those who have ears to hear discern low, rumbling noises that foretell convulsions in our social world that may, perchance, in the next upheaval, bring woman to the surface; up, up, from gloomy ocean depths, dark caverns, and damper valleys.  The struggling daughters of earth are soon to walk in the sunlight of a higher civilization.

Escorted by Mr. Woodward, a member of the bar, I devoted a day to the lions of La Crosse.  First we explored the courthouse, a large, new brick building, from whose dome we had a grand view of the surrounding country.  The courtroom where justice is administered was large, clean, airy—­the bench carpeted and adorned with a large, green, stuffed chair, in which I sat down, and, in imagination, summoned up advocates, jurors, prisoners, and people, and wondered how I should feel pronouncing sentence of death on a fellow-being, or, like Portia, wisely checkmating the Shylocks of our times.  Here I met Judge Hugh Cameron, formerly of Johnstown.  He invited us into his sanctum, where we had a pleasant chat about our native hills, Scotch affiliations, the bench and bar of New York, and the Wisconsin laws for women.  The Judge, having maintained a happy bachelor state, looked placidly on the aggressive movements of the sex, as his domestic felicity would be no way affected, whether woman was voted up or down.