ts poured in upon me that I know just
what to say. I shall buy the chair when I have been told what is the
correct thing to buy by another niece of Miss Anthony's, who for
twelve years has made a home for me. If you want to see a pretty
little spot, come to our home, and every one of you shall sit in _our_
chair."[132]

Then Miss Anthony, clasping the hand of Mrs. Chapman Catt, led her
forward and introduced her to the audience as "president of the
National-American Woman Suffrage Association." The _Woman's Journal_
thus described the occasion:

She was received with immense applause, the great audience rising
and waving handkerchiefs. She spoke on The Three I's, showing how
every effort of women for improvement was called, first,
indelicate, then immodest, and finally impracticable, but how all
the old objections had been proved to be, in legal phrase,
"incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial."

The woman's rights agitation began in the early days of the
republic, and a moral warfare along that line has been waged for
more than a hundred years. Each step has been fiercely contested.
The advocates of every claim have been lovers of justice and the
opponents have been adherents of conservatism. The warfare has
been waged in three distinct battles, the weapon of the opponents
always being ridicule, that of the defenders, appeals to reason.

In the early days, when colleges and public schools were closed
to women and the education of girls was confined to the three
R's, an agitation was begun to permit them to take more advanced
studies. Society received it with the cry "indelicate." At that
time delicacy was the choicest charm of woman and indelicacy was
a crushing criticism. But the battle was won.

The second great battle occurred between 1850 and 1860. Upon
every hand incorrigible woman, with a big W, arose to irritate
and torment the conservatives of the world. She appeared in the
pulpit, on the platform, in conventions, in new occupations and
in innumerable untried fields. Everywhere the finger of scorn was
pointed at her, and the world with merciless derision pronounced
her immodest. But that battle was won.

We are now in the heat of the greatest of all battles. Woman asks
for the suffrage. The world answers, "impractical." We are told
that this movement is quite dif