But Euphrasia sez, “My niece, Ellen, teaches in a state where wimmen vote and she gits the same wages men git for the same work, and her school rooms are bright and pleasant and sanitary, and the pupils, of course, are well and happy. And if you don’t think wimmen can help in such public matters just go to Seattle and see how quick a bad man wuz yanked out of his public office and a good man put in his place, mostly by wimmen’s efforts and votes.” “Yes,” sez I, “it is a proved fact that wimmen’s votes do help in these matters. And do you think, Lorinda, that if educated, motherly, thoughtful wimmen helped make the laws so many little children would be allowed to toil in factories and mines, their tender shoulders bearin’ the burden of constant labor that wears out the iron muscles of men?” Polly’s eyes growed tender and wistful, and her little white hands lingered over her posies, and I knowed the hard lot of the poor, the wrongs of wimmen and children, the woes of humanity, wuz pressin’ down on her generous young heart. And I could see in her sweet face the brave determination to do and to dare, to try to help ondo the wrongs, and try to lift the burdens from weak and achin’ shoulders. But Lorinda kep’ on with the same old moth-eaten argument so broke down and feeble it ort to be allowed to die in peace. “Woman’s suffrage would make women neglect their homes and housework and let their children run loose into ruin.” I knowed she said it partly on Polly’s account, but I sez in surprise, “Why, Lorinda, it must be you hain’t read up on the subject or you would know wherever wimmen has voted they have looked out first of all for the children’s welfare. They have raised the age of consent, have closed saloons and other places of licensed evil, and in every way it has been their first care to help ’em to safer and more moral surroundin’s, for who has the interest of children more at heart than the mothers who bore them, children who are the light of their eyes and the hope of the future.” Lorinda admitted that the state of the children in the homes of the poor and ignorant wuz pitiful. “But,” sez she, “the Bible sez ‘ye shall always have the poor with you,’ and I spoze we always shall, with all their sufferin’s and wants. But,” sez she, “in well-to-do homes the children are safe and well off, and don’t need any help from woman legislation.”