She was still writing at odd times’; and now her articles were appearing.  They were keen, simple, full of meat, and the public liked them.  As Kate read them over, she smiled to find them so emphatic.  She was far from feeling emphatic, but she seemed to have a trick of expressing herself in that way.  She was still in need of great economy.  Her growing influence brought little to her in the way of monetary rewards, and it was hard for her to live within her income because she had a scattering hand.  She liked to dispense good things and she liked to have them.  A liberal programme suited her best—­whatever gave free play to life.  She was a wild creature in that she hated bars.  Of all the prison houses of life, poverty seemed one of the most hectoring.

But poverty, to be completely itself, must exclude opportunity.  Kate had the key to opportunity, and she realized it.  In the letters she received and wrote bringing her into association with men and women of force and aspiration, she had a privilege to which, for all of her youth, she could not be indifferent.  She liked the way these purposeful persons put things, and felt a distinct pleasure in matching their ideas with her own.  As the summer wore on, she was asked to country homes of charm and taste—­homes where wealth, though great, was subordinated to more essential things.  There she met those who could further her purposes—­who could lend their influence to aid her Idea, now shaping itself excellently.  At the suggestion of Miss Addams, she prepared an article in which her plan unfolded itself in all its benevolent length and breadth—­an article which it was suggested might yet form a portion of a speech made before a congressional committee.  There was even talk of having Kate deliver this address, but she had not yet reached the point where she could contemplate such an adventure with calmness.

However, she was having training in her suffrage work, which was now assuming greater importance in her eyes.  She addressed women audiences in various parts of the city, and had even gone on a few flying motor excursions with leading suffragists, speaking to the people in villages and at country schoolhouses.

There was an ever-increasing conviction in this department of her work.  She had learned to count the ballot as the best bulwark of liberty, and she could find no logic to inform her why, if it was a protection for man,—­for the least and most insignificant of men,—­it was not equally a weapon which women, searching now as never before for defined and enduring forms of liberty, should be permitted to use.  She not only desired it for other women,—­women who were supposed to “need it” more,—­but she wished it for herself.  She felt it to be merely consistent that she, in whom service to her community was becoming a necessity, should have this privilege.  It never would be possible for her to exercise murderous powers of destruction in behalf of her country.