in the perils of maternity,
ofttimes without nurse or physician in the supreme hour of their need,
going, as every mother does, to the very gates of death in giving life
to an immortal being!"

Traveling all over these Western States in the early days, seeing the
privations women suffered, and listening to the tales of sorrow at the
fireside, I wondered that men could ever forget the debt of gratitude
they owed to their mothers, or fail to commemorate their part in the
growth of a great people. Yet the men of Nebraska have twice defeated
the woman suffrage amendment.

In 1874 Michigan was the point of interest to all those who had taken
part in the woman-suffrage movement. The legislature, by a very large
majority, submitted to a vote of the electors an amendment of the
Constitution, in favor of striking out the word "male" and thus securing
civil and political rights to the women of the State. It was a very
active campaign. Crowded meetings were held in all the chief towns and
cities. Professor Moses Coit Tyler, and a large number of ministers
preached, every Sunday, on the subject of woman's position. The
Methodist conference passed a resolution in favor of the amendment by a
unanimous vote. I was in the State during the intense heat of May and
June, speaking every evening to large audiences; in the afternoon to
women alone, and preaching every Sunday in some pulpit. The Methodists,
Universalists, Unitarians, and Quakers all threw open their churches to
the apostles of the new gospel of equality for women. We spoke in jails,
prisons, asylums, depots, and the open air. Wherever there were ears to
hear, we lifted up our voices, and, on the wings of the wind, the glad
tidings were carried to the remote corners of the State, and the votes
of forty thousand men, on election day, in favor of the amendment were
so many testimonials to the value of the educational work accomplished.

I made many valuable acquaintances, on that trip, with whom I have
maintained lifelong friendships. One pleasant day I passed in the home
of Governor Bagley and his wife, with a group of pretty children. I
found the Governor deeply interested in prison reform. He had been
instrumental in passing a law giving prisoners lights in their cells and
pleasant reading matter until nine o'clock. His ideas of what prisons
should be, as unfolded that day, have since been fully realized in the
grand experiment now being successfully tried at Elmira, New Yo