my life accordingly.  You are sure that you are right.  I am equally sure that I am.  Hence there is nothing to be done in either case but to let each other alone, and wait for the slow process of evolution to give to each of us a higher standard.”  Just then one of the officers asked me if I was ready for a game of whist, and I excused myself from further discussion.  I met many of those dolorous saints in my travels, who spent so much thought on eternity and saving their souls that they lost all the joys of time, as well as those sweet virtues of courtesy and charity that might best fit them for good works on earth and happiness in heaven.

In the spring I went to Nebraska, and Miss Anthony and I again made a Western tour, sometimes together and sometimes by different routes.  A constitutional convention was in session in Lincoln, and it was proposed to submit an amendment to strike the word “male” from the Constitution.  Nebraska became a State in March, 1867, and took “Equality before the law” as her motto.  Her Territorial legislature had discussed, many times, proposed liberal legislation for women, and her State legislature had twice considered propositions for woman’s enfranchisement.  I had a valise with me containing Hon. Benjamin F. Butler’s minority reports as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, in favor of woman’s right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.  As we were crossing the Platte River, in transferring the baggage to the boat, my valise fell into the river.  My heart stood still at the thought of such a fate for all those able arguments.  After the great General had been in hot water all his life, it was grievous to think of any of his lucubrations perishing in cold water at last.  Fortunately they were rescued.  On reaching Lincoln I was escorted to the home of the Governor, where I spread the documents in the sunshine, and they were soon ready to be distributed among the members of the constitutional convention.

After I had addressed the convention, some of the members called on me to discuss the points of my speech.  All the gentlemen were serious and respectful with one exception.  A man with an unusually small head, diminutive form, and crooked legs tried, at my expense, to be witty and facetious.  During a brief pause in the conversation he brought his chair directly before me and said, in a mocking tone, “Don’t you think that the best thing a woman can do is to perform well her part in the role of wife and mother?  My wife has presented me with eight beautiful children; is not this a better life-work than that of exercising the right of suffrage?”

I had had my eye on this man during the whole interview, and saw that the other members were annoyed at his behavior.  I decided, when the opportune moment arrived, to give him an answer not soon to be forgotten; so I promptly replied to his question, as I slowly viewed him from head to foot, “I have met few men, in my life, worth repeating eight times.”  The members burst into a roar of laughter, and one of them, clapping him on the shoulder, said:  “There, sonny, you have read and spelled; you better go.”  This scene was heralded in all the Nebraska papers, and, wherever the little man went, he was asked why Mrs. Stanton thought he was not worth repeating eight times.