why do they not
apply to the body politic the same methods they use with the one man
which an all-wise Destiny has committed to their keeping?

If all the women in the world should make up their minds that they
wanted to vote worse than anything else on earth--worse even than they
want their husbands to go to church with them--and each woman would
put on her prettiest clothes, and cuddle up to her own particular man
in her softest and most womanish way, when she was begging him to get
suffrage for her--why, you all know they would do it. Men would get it
for us exactly as they would buy us a pair of horses.

Have you men ever thought about practising for suffrage in politics by
giving women suffrage in love? Surely you do not doubt that, should
you do this, it would not occur to us to stuff the ballot-boxes, or to
put up a ticket with any but honorable candidates for our hands. We do
not ask nor wish to indicate who shall run for office. Let the men
announce themselves candidates. We would not take the initiative there
if it were offered to us for a thousand years. All we ask is to be
given plenty of time to canvass the honor of the candidates,
thoroughly to understand and investigate the platform (with an eye to
how near he will come to sticking to his promises after election), and
to be allowed to cast a free and untrammelled vote.

Now, men seem to think that if they allowed woman equal suffrage, the
bright white light of our honesty would be too strong a glare for
their weak eyes--so long accustomed to darkness--to bear. Um--possibly
in politics. Hardly in love.

For myself, I consider absolute honesty most unpleasant. I never knew
any really nice, lovable women who were unflinchingly honest. But I
have known a few iron-visaged, square-jawed women who were so brutally
honest that I have most ingloriously fled at the mention of their
approach, and solaced myself with a congenial spirit who is in the
habit of skirting delicately around painful truth, and a cozy corner
in which to abuse the aforesaid iron-visaged carver of helpless
humanity, who loves to draw blood with her truth. Such an one will get
a vote in politics long before she gets it in love.

No; men need not fear to give us equal suffrage in love. Our honesty
will not be disconcerting. (I would even address a private query, at
just this point, to the women, begging that the men will skip it,
asking women where in the world we would find ourselves if we