While in college Mrs. Howe had asked me to attend such a meeting, and I, because it was easier to say yes than no, had promised to do so. Not having any interest in the question, I forgot all about it until I learned from the _Transcript_ that the meeting had taken place, and that Mrs. Howe had been the chief speaker. Having been brought up in the faith that no well-bred man or woman will intentionally break a promise, I hastened to call on Mrs. Howe and apologize. I told her the truth—that I had forgotten. As always, Mrs. Howe was kind and sympathetic. When I was telling her good-by, while she was still holding my hands, she asked me to give her another promise—to attend such a meeting at the State House at my earliest opportunity. That opportunity came while I was taking a graduate course at Radcliffe—Professor Baker’s course in playwriting. Learning from the morning paper that the Suffrage Party was to make its annual appeal in the State House that afternoon, quite a little while after the appointed hour I drifted in. It was a long room with high ceiling, and I knew that the broad windows on the side facing the door by which I entered overlooked Charlestown and the Charles River. That side, the Charles River side, was packed—every seat taken, and numbers of women standing against the wall. On the side next the door there were a good many vacant seats, and without giving the matter a thought, I took my place beside a woman, who, catching my eye, made room for me. There were several speeches for and against. Then a little wisp of a woman got up. She had the face of a blighted new-born baby—wrinkled and old as the human race. And in her eyes there shone the patient acceptance of the curse: “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on their children, to the third and fourth generation.” She was from Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had been working in the mills since she was ten years old. For years she had supported her delicate mother and her younger brothers and sisters. These younger ones, having been forced into the mills before they were strong enough, had sickened and dropped off like so many flies. So at last she was left the sole support of a bedridden mother. She told of conditions in the mills, and I knew she spoke the truth. For it was soon after the notorious “Lawrence strike,” during which I had journeyed down from Cambridge and spent a week in the mill town. This ill-fed little feminine creature, who had never known a care-free day in her whole life, ended her statement with the appeal: