While in San Francisco we had many delightful sails in the harbor and drives to the seashore and for miles along the beach.  We spent several hours at the little Ocean House, watching the gambols of the celebrated seals.  These, like the big trees, were named after distinguished statesmen.  One very black fellow was named Charles Sumner, in honor of his love of the black race; another, with a little squint in his eye, was called Ben Butler; a stout, rotund specimen that seemed to take life philosophically, was named Senator Davis of Illinois; a very belligerent one, who appeared determined to crowd his confreres into the sea, was called Secretary Stanton.  Grant and Lincoln, on a higher ledge of the rocks, were complacently observing the gambols of the rest.

California was on the eve of an important election, and John A. Bingham of Ohio and Senator Cole were stumping the State for the Republican party.  At several points we had the use of their great tents for our audiences, and of such of their able arguments as applied to woman.  As Mr. Bingham’s great speech was on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, every principle he laid down literally enfranchised the women of the nation.  I met the Ohio statesman one morning at breakfast, after hearing him the night before.  I told him his logic must compel him to advocate woman suffrage.  With a most cynical smile he said “he was not the puppet of logic, but the slave of practical politics.”

We met most of our suffrage coadjutors in different parts of California.  I spent a few days with Mrs. Elizabeth B. Schenck, one of the earliest pioneers in the suffrage movement.  She was a cultivated, noble woman, and her little cottage was a gem of beauty and comfort, surrounded with beautiful gardens and a hedge of fish-geraniums over ten feet high, covered with scarlet flowers.  It seemed altogether more like a fairy bower than a human habitation.  The windmills all over California, for pumping water, make a very pretty feature in the landscape, as well as an important one, as people are obliged to irrigate their gardens during the dry season.  In August the hills are as brown as ours in December.

Here, too, I first met Senator Sargent’s family, and visited them in Sacramento City, where we had a suffrage meeting in the evening and one for women alone next day.  At a similar meeting in San Francisco six hundred women were present in Platt’s Hall.  We discussed marriage, maternity, and social life in general.  Supposing none but women were present, as all were dressed in feminine costume, the audience were quite free in their questions, and I equally so in my answers.  To our astonishment, the next morning, a verbatim report of all that was said appeared in one of the leading papers, with most respectful comments.  As I always wrote and read carefully what I had to say on such delicate subjects, the language was well chosen and the presentation of facts and philosophy quite unobjectionable; hence, the information being as important for men as for women, I did not regret the publication.  During the day a committee of three gentlemen called to know if I would give a lecture to men alone.  As I had no lecture prepared, I declined, with the promise to do so the next time I visited California.  The idea was novel, but I think women could do much good in that way.