od. This
contempt is palpable throughout all the entire code of laws.

Another argument that is frequently made against the extension of
the suffrage to woman is this: "If women go to the polls it is
going to take them away from their homes and families." These
arguments are urged with as much pertinacity as if the polls were
open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and
twenty-four hours each day, and that all that people did was to
lie around the polls and vote, and vote, and vote, and vote.

Another statement is, that it is because women have been kept out
of politics that they are pure and good. Well, now, it is a poor
rule that won't work both ways, and if disfranchisement has made
such angels of women, suppose you try it a little on men. I have
a firm belief that the men need, infinitely more than the women
do, the influence that woman will bring with her to the ballot;
not because woman is better, but because she is the other half of
humanity. It reminds me of the account of the battle of
Gettysburg, given by a colonel of a Western regiment. His
regiment was placed among the reserves, on an eminence, where
they could see the battle as it went on. "There we stood," said
the colonel; "our brave men trying to serve their country; able
to do it, and anxious to do it. Yet we were kept the whole of the
first day watching the fight go on. On the second day another
regiment, which had been much associated with ours, was called
into action. We saw them marching, their guns aslant, as if there
was no battle being carried on, or deeds of death and
destruction--and all the while, as they marched, the grape, and
the canister, and the shot, and the shell, tore their ranks
terribly; and men fell dead in all directions; and still those
who yet remained carried their guns in the same position, and
kept time, and closed up, and closed up, until my agitation
became so unendurable that I forgot all else, and cried out,
'Oh, God! why don't they call the reserves into action? We could
help them.'"

Gentlemen, very few of us are very young women. We have forty,
fifty, some of us seventy years of life behind us. We have stood
on this eminence where you in your mistaken kindness and
gallantry placed us, and we have been all this time looking d