“I’d get this nonsense out of Helen’s head if I was her mother.” She spoke firmly. “Old maids soon fade, and all these new-fangled ideas ain’t a-gonna keep her warm winter nights.” “Helen’s no old maid yet,” defended her mother. “’Pears like to me she’ll be thirty come this spring. And if that ain’t an old maid my mind’s failing me,” was the acid comment. In due time Helen Pitts took her seat in the Fourth National Suffrage Convention, meeting in Washington the first week in January, 1874. The air crackled with excitement. Now that the Fourteenth Amendment had gone to some length to define “citizenship” within the United States, “manhood suffrage” was being substituted by the politicians for the recent vanguard cry “universal suffrage.” Susan B. Anthony was calling upon the women of America to have their say. The leaders of the movement were ridiculed, mocked and libeled, but they had come to Washington in full armor. Her face aglow, eyes sparkling with indignation, Miss Anthony told the opening session that a petition against woman’s suffrage had been presented in the Senate by a Mr. Edmunds. Mrs. General Sherman, Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren and other Washington wives had signed it. “These are the women,” she said, “who never knew a want, whose children are well fed and warmly clad. Yet they would deny these same comforts to other women even though they are earned by the toil of their hands. Such women are traitors not only to their best instincts, but to all mothers of men!” Helen tried to applaud louder than anybody else. She would have liked to stand and tell them that her home was in Rochester, that she had been one of the youngest members of Susan B. Anthony’s own club. But the women did not spend their time exchanging compliments. Helen voted for or against resolution after resolution; she was placed on one committee. Lincoln Hall was packed for the big open session on Saturday afternoon. Many came just to hear the big speakers, but the women were happy because they were creating a real stir in Washington. They devoutly hoped it would be felt throughout the country. A shiver of anticipation went through the crowd at the appearance of Robert Ingersoll. “He’s like a Greek god,” a woman seated beside Helen moaned. “Any man as handsome as that is bound to be wicked!” An outstanding editor had written at great length on how laws in the United States favored women. Word by word and line by line Ingersoll, the lawyer, cut the ground from underneath the editor’s feet. Skilfully he analyzed the many laws upon the statute books which bound women and their children to the petty whims and humors of men. “But these laws will not change until _you_ change them,” he told them. “Justice and freedom do not rain like manna from heaven upon outstretched hands. We men will not _give_ you the ballot. You must _take_ it!”