landlady descending upon the polls like a wolf on the fold, to annihilate his election.  Oglesby, erst warrior of Illinois, spake with such endearing gallantry of his “dear constituents,” whom he did all his wit could do to make ridiculous, that the Senate laughed, and even Roscoe Conkling, who never condescends to sneer at a woman in public, turned and listened and smiled his most sardonic smile.  Then Thurman blew his loudest regulation blast—­sure portent of approaching battle—­and rose and moved that the petition be referred to the committee on public lands, of which Oglesby is chairman.  At this proposition—­intended to be equally humorous and contemptuous—­the whole Senate laughed aloud.

There was one senator man enough and gentleman enough to lift the petition from this insulting proposition.  It was Senator Sargent, of California, the husband of the woman who, though a senator’s wife, is brave enough to be the treasurer of the National Suffrage Association.  He turned to Mr. Thurman and demanded for the petition of more than 10,000 women at least the courtesy which would be given to any other....  Then the craven Senate declared Thurman’s motion, which was only an insult, carried.  Let it be recorded of the Senate of the Forty-fifth Congress that the one petition which it received as a preposterous joke and treated with utter contempt and outrage was that of tens of thousands of the mothers, wives and daughters of the land.

The Capital of Sunday was perfectly correct when it said:  “The ladies managed the business badly.  If they had employed the female lobby, the venerable Solons would have softened and thrown open their doors as readily as their hearts.”  It seems an ungracious thing to say; but it is the truth.  The woman who wins her way with the majority of these men is the siren of the gallery and the anteroom, who sends in her card and her invitation to the senator at his desk.  She never talks of “rights.”  She cares for no “cause” but her own cause of ease and pelf.  She shakes her tresses, “banged” and usually blonde; she lifts her alluring eyes, and nine times out of ten makes him do as she listeth.  No wonder when the earnest appeal of honest women reaches his hands, he has neither response, honor nor justice to give it.

Miss Anthony had been speaking in all parts of the country for a quarter of a century and generally had been her own manager.  The preceding year she had given the Slayton Lyceum Bureau a partial trial and at the beginning of 1877 made a contract with it, commencing the last of January.  The entire first page of the circular for the season was devoted to this new engagement and began: