A corps of good workers was finally enlisted. Our canvassing luncheons proved a decided success, especially where the hostess possessed an attractive villa and garden. Our calls were made, for the most part, on persons of moderate means. Few of the rich people have their permanent residence in Newport, hence do not vote there. It is also easier to canvass among the former, because no supercilious flunky, anxious to guard his mistress from unwelcome visitors, comes to the door. It is opened, instead, by the voter’s wife, with whom one can at once establish pleasant relations, unless the baby is crying. In that case it is kinder not to detain her. Friends often lent us their automobiles, the distances being much greater than in our densely inhabited district in New York. Instead of high tenement-buildings we found two-story wooden houses where our chats took place at the open doorway. Altogether it was pleasant work, chiefly among women, the men being usually absent from home. We assured them that the possession of the franchise did not necessitate deserting the home, and explained its advantages. It is strange that, after nearly seventy years of agitation, the question of woman suffrage should still be considered so mysterious! We found most of our hearers open to conviction where their opinions were not already favorable to us. Many names were secured for our yellow (favorable) slips, and only a few for the white (undecided); still fewer for the blue (opposed). Our labor was repaid a hundredfold by the victory of our cause a few months later. For our formidable list of persons favorable to suffrage was copied on a catalogue of imposing proportions and presented to the Rhode Island Legislature. It was one of the arguments which persuaded them to grant the presidential franchise to the women of the state in 1917. In New York, while our stirring campaign of 1915 met temporary defeat, it paved the way for the great victory of November, 1917, when the women of the Empire State won full citizenship. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXIII UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION _My Mother’s Beautiful Old Age.—How It Feels to Be an Ancestor.—Grandmotherhood in the Twentieth Century.—Keeping Alive the Sacred Fires of Noble Tradition.—Handing on the Lighted Torch._ IT has often seemed to me that my mother’s life was like that of the century-plant—increasing in beauty as time went on. The last flowering, the loveliest of all, came when she was well over four-score years of age. Is not this the normal course of a well-spent life? The fruit reaches its full beauty when ready to drop from the tree. The colors of the sunset splendidly crown a perfect day.