Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/1039

944 extending it. John Stuart Mill, too, was always opposed to the exclusion of married women in the demand for suffrage.

If our English friends had our system of conventions and discussions in which every resolution is subject to criticism, changes could be more readily effected. But as their meetings are now conducted, a motion to amend a resolution would throw the platform into the wildest confusion and hopelessly bewilder the chairman. We saw this experiment made at the great demonstration in St. James' Hall the night before Mr. Mason's bill was to be acted on in the House of Commons. For its effect on their champions some were desirous that a resolution should be endorsed by that great audience proposing higher ground; that instead of "spinsters and widows," the demand should be for "all duly qualified women." After the reading of one of the resolutions Miss Jessie Craigen arose and proposed such an amendment. Mr. Woodhall, M. P., in the chair, seemed quite at a loss what to do. She was finally, after much debate and prolonged confusion, suppressed, whether in a parliamentary manner or not I am unable to say. Here we should have discussed the matter at length if it had taken us until midnight, or adjourned over until next day, "the spinsters and widows" having been the target for all our barbed arrows until completely annihilated.

Spending two months in traveling on the continent, Miss Anthony had many amusing experiences. While visiting our minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Sargent, at Berlin, she occupied some rainy days, when sight-seeing was out of the question, in doing up papers and writing a large number of letters on our official paper, bearing the revolutionary mottoes, "No just government can be formed without the consent of the governed," "Taxation without representation is tyranny." For a brief period she was in the full enjoyment of that freedom one has when a pressing duty to family and friends has been thoroughly discharged. But alas! her satisfaction was soon turned to disappointment. After a few days a dignified official appeared at the American Legation with a large package bearing the proscribed mottoes, saying, 'such sentiments cannot pass through the post-office in Germany." So all that form of propagandism was nipped in the bud, and in modest, uncomplaining wraps the letters and papers started again for the land of the free and reached their destination.

But this experience did not satisfy the "Napoleon of our