l influence and political power to frown down corruption,
chicanery, and low cunning."

"But mother just think if women went to the polls how many vicious ones
would go?"

"I hope and believe for the honor of our sex that the vicious women of
the community are never in the majority, that for one woman whose feet
turn aside from the paths of rectitude that there are thousands of feet
that never stray into forbidden paths, and today I believe there is
virtue enough in society to confront its vice, and intelligence enough
to grapple with its ignorance."[6]

Chapter XVIII

"Why Mrs. Gladstone," said Miss Tabitha, "you are as zealous as a new
convert to the cause of woman suffrage. We single women who are
constantly taxed without being represented, know what it is to see
ignorance and corruption striking hands together and voting away our
money for whatever purposes they choose. I pay as large a tax as many of
the men in A.P., and yet cannot say who shall assess my property for a
single year."

"And there is another thing," said Mrs. Gladstone, "ought to be brought
to the consideration of the men, and it is this. They refuse to let us
vote and yet fail to protect our homes from the ravages of rum. My
young friend, whom I said died of starvation; foolishly married a
dissipated man who happened to be rich and handsome. She was gentle,
loving, sensitive to a fault. He was querulous, fault-finding and
irritable, because his nervous system was constantly unstrung by liquor.
She lacked tenderness, sympathy and heart support, and at last faded and
died, not starvation of the body, but a trophy of the soul, and when I
say the law helped, I mean it licensed the places that kept the
temptation ever in his way. And I fear, that is the secret of Jeanette's
faded looks, and unhappy bearing."

No Jeanette was not happy. Night after night would she pace the floor of
her splendidly furnished chamber waiting and watching for her husband's
footsteps. She and his friends had hoped that her influence would be
strong enough to win him away from his boon companions, that his home
and beautiful bride would present superior attractions to Anderson's
saloon, his gambling pool, and champaign suppers, and for a while they
did, but soon the novelty wore off, and Jeanette found out to her great
grief that her power to bind him to the simple attractions of home were
as futile as a role of cobwebs to moor a ship to the shore, when it has
dri