Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/166

 State protesting against the enfranchisement of women. Senator Hoar called attention to the fact that the writer herself was an office-holder, a member of the State Board of Lunacy and Charity, to which Senator Vest answered:

Ah! but what sort of an office-holder? She held the office delegated to her by God himself, a ministering angel to the sick, the afflicted and the insane. What man in his senses would take from woman this sphere? What man would close to her the charitable institutions and eleemosynary establishments of the country? That is part of her kingdom; that is part of her undisputed sway and realm. Is that the office to which woman suffragists of this country ask us now to admit them? Is it to be the director of a hospital? Is it to the presidency of a board of visitors of an eleemosynary Institution? Oh, no; they want to be President, to be Senators and Members of the House of Representatives and, God save the mark, ministerial and executive officers, sheriffs, constables and marshals. Of course, this lady is found on this board of directors. Where else should a true woman be found? Where else has she always been found but by the fevered brow, the palsied hand, the erring intellect, aye, God bless them, from the cradle to the grave the guide and support of the faltering steps of childhood and the weakening steps of old age.

Oh, no, Mr. President, this will not do. If we are to tear down all the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to unsex our mothers and wives and sisters and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into ward political-assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution. But for one I thank God that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or of my mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this political monstrosity.

I now present a pamphlet sent to me by a lady. I do not know whether she be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as Adeline D. T. Whitney. I have read it twice, and read it to pure and gentle and intellectual women. I shall not read it today for my strength does not suffice. There is not one impure, unintellectual aspiration or thought throughout the whole of it. Would to God that I knew her, that I could thank ber on behalf of the society and politics of the United States for This production. She says to her own sex: "After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange without us."

Oh, how true that is, how true!