“Gentlemen, you tell me a woman’s place is the home. Ah, gentlemen, if I only had a home I’d be too glad to stay in it. I know you can’t give me a home—there are too many like me. But you can give me the ballot.” She bent toward the men on the rostrum, the law-makers. “Please give it to me,” she pleaded, her little voice so husky that it was hardly more than a hoarse whisper. “Please give me the ballot. Then I can vote, stand a chance of getting my work hours limited. You don’t let ’em work a horse day and night, gentlemen. Give me a horse’s chance. Give me the ballot, gentlemen.” There may have been applause when she slipped back into her seat. But if so I was unconscious of it. My heart was like a throbbing, aching tooth in my bosom. Was there really a God in heaven? Then across the aisle from the little woman a man stepped out. Such a man as would make you feel sure that at his birth his mother might have proclaimed with pride: “Behold, I have brought forth a man child; a man made in the image of his Maker.” From the tips of his polished shoes to the crown of his waving iron-gray hair he personified “the best”—the best breed, the best care, the best food, the best education, the best fashion, always the best and only the best. The jewel in his scarf-pin or one of the rings on his hand would have made the puny factory worker comfortable for the balance of her days, would have given her a home. The way he railed at her—that great, strong, well-fed, handsomely dressed, handsome man. He not only shook his finger in her face, but he threatened her and all suffragists against following the example of the militant Englishwomen, who he claimed had poured acid in the letter-boxes of London. While I did not see him actually grit his teeth, that was his manner—gritting his teeth and foaming at the mouth with fury. At the end he gathered himself together, raising himself to his full height, and proclaimed his contempt for the women before him. The “ladies” of his acquaintance not only would refuse to vote were the ballot given them, but they would draw their skirts aside to keep from coming in contact with such despicable representatives of their sex. When he finished, the women around me clapped and shouted like mad. Amazed, I turned to the woman next me and asked what she meant by it. “He’s on our side,” she told me, her face glowing with satisfied pride. “He is our chief speaker. Applaud him. Applaud him.” I saw a great light. In my stupidity I had taken a seat among the Antis. Rising I crossed over the aisle. There was no seat, so I took my stand at the back of the room against the wall. A hand reached back and touched me. “I recognized you,” a sweet voice whispered, “and I knew you had gotten in the wrong pew.” It was a daughter of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.