y the thought that he should
at least secure his wife's vote for a pet schoolhouse of his own. Election
day came, and the newly enfranchised matron showed the most culpable
indifference to her privileges. She made breakfast as usual, went about her
housework, and did on that perilous day precisely the things that her
anxious husband had always predicted that women never would do under such
circumstances. His hints and advice found no response; and nothing short of
the best pair of horses and the best wagon finally sufficed to take the
farmer's wife to the polls. I am not the least afraid that women will find
voting a rude or disagreeable arrangement. There is more danger of their
being treated too well, and being too much attacked and allured by these
cheap cajoleries. But women are pretty shrewd, and can probably be trusted
to go to the polls, even in first-class carriages.

EDUCATION _via_ SUFFRAGE

I know a rich bachelor of large property who fatigues his friends by
perpetual denunciations of everything American, and especially of universal
suffrage. He rarely votes; and I was much amazed, when the popular vote was
to be taken on building an expensive schoolhouse, to see him go to the
polls, and vote in the affirmative. On being asked his reason, he explained
that, while we labored under the calamity of universal (male) suffrage, he
thought it best to mitigate its evils by educating the voters. In short, he
wished, as Mr. Lowe said in England when the last Reform Bill passed, "to
prevail upon our future masters to learn their alphabets."

These motives may not be generous; but the schoolhouses, when they are
built, are just as useful. Even girls get the benefit of them, though the
long delay in many places before girls got their share came in part from
the want of this obvious stimulus. It is universal male suffrage that
guarantees schoolhouse and school. The most selfish man understands that
argument: "We must educate the masses, if it is only to keep them from our
throats."

But there is a wider way in which suffrage guarantees education. At every
election time political information is poured upon the whole voting
community till it is deluged. Presses run night and day to print newspaper
extras; clerks sit up all night to send out congressional speeches; the
most eloquent men in the community expound the most difficult matters to
the ignorant. Of course each party affords only its own point of view; but