Do you ask the governing of the nation? You have the making of the nation. Would you choose your statesmen? First make your statesmen. Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the proving of an alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at the caucuses, conventions, polls? She is needed, at the same time, elsewhere. Two years of time and strength, of thought and love, from some woman, are essential for every little human being, that he may even begin a life. When you remember that every man is once a little child, born of a woman, trained--or needing training--at a woman's hands; that of the little men, every one of whom takes and shapes his life so, come at length the hand for the helm, the voice for the law, and the arm to enforce law--what do you want more for a woman's opportunity and control? Which would you choose as a force, an advantage, in settling any question of public moment, or as touching your own private interest through the general management--the right to go upon election day and cast one vote, or a hold beforehand upon the individual ear and attention of each voter now qualified? The ability to present to him your argument, to show him the real point at issue, to convince and persuade him of the right and lasting, instead of the weak and briefly politic way? This initial privilege is in the hands of woman; assuming that she can be brought to feel and act as a unit, which appears to be what is claimed for her in the argument for her regeneration of the outer political word. But already and separately, if every intelligent, conscientious woman can but reach one man, and influence him from the principle involved--from her interior perception of it, kept pure on purpose from bias and temptation that assail him in the outside mix and jostle--will she not have done her work without the casting of a ballot? And what becomes of "taxation without representation," when, from Eden down, Eve can always plead with Adam, can have the first word instead of the last--if she knows what that first word is, in herself and thence in its power with him--can beguile him to his good instead of to his harm, as indeed she only meant to do in that first ignorant experiment? Would it be any less easy to qualify for and accomplish this than to convince and outnumber in public gathering not only bodies of men but the mass of women that will also have to be confronted and convinced or overborne?