Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/861

780 Lester, the famous prima donna, electrified the delighted crowd by her triumphant rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner." The exercises closed with the announcement by the writer, who had. officiated as president of the day, that the Executive Committee of the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association had, during the noon recess, adopted the following resolutions:

Resolved, That our thanks are due to General Nelson A. Miles of the department of the Columbia for his valuable coöperation in the exercises and entertainments of this historic day.

Resolved, That we thank the citizens of Clarke county, and especially of Vancouver, for their hospitality and kindness, so graciously bestowed upon their less fortunate Oregon neighbors, who have not yet achieved their full independence, and we shall ever cherish their fraternal recognition in grateful remembrance.

Resolved, That while we deplore the injustice that still deprives the women of Oregon of the liberty to exercise their right to the elective franchise, we rejoice in the record the women of Washington are making as citizens, as voters and as jurors. We congratulate them upon their newly-acquired liberties, and especially upon the intelligent and conscientious manner in which they are discharging the important public duties that in no wise interfere with their home affairs. And we are further

Resolved, That if our own fathers, husbands, sons and brothers do not at the next session of the Oregon legislature bestow upon us the same electoral privileges which the women of Washington already enjoy, we will prepare to cross the Columbia river and take up our permanent abode in this "land of the free and home of the brave."

The resolutions evoked cheers that waked the echoes, and the celebration, reported by the Oregon press, contributed largely to the growth of the equal-rights sentiment among the people of the State. Two stanzas of a spirited poem are subjoined, written for the Woman Suffrage Association just after our defeat at the polls, by a young man from Southern Oregon who has withheld his own name but included the names of all the counties in his glorious prophecy:

Mrs. Mary Olney Brown gives an amusing account of her attempts to vote in Washington territory. The incidents related occurred several years before the passage of the act specifically enfranchising women. She says:

I do not think there has ever been a session of our legislature that has not had before it the subject of woman suffrage. It has been my habit to write out, and send to all parts of the territory, before the assembling of each legislature, petitions to be signed, asking for a law guaranteeing to