vidual that you discharged last winter
because he did not know enough to keep the horses' feet clean. Armed
with his license ballot, he halted a second before me; then, fluttering
the ballot, which he held between his fingers under my nose, he shouted
again and again, 'Vote for whisky, boys!"

"He gave me a look that told me plainer than a volume of words could
have done that he recognized his importance. He knew that he stood head
and shoulders above me in Uncle Sam's estimation, in spite of my
learning and morality, because on him had been bestowed a gift denied
me.

"I do not like it. I want the right of citizenship. I want to stand on
an equality with folks at least that do not know enough to clean a
horse's feet."

"It sounds very foolish, Jean," said her father, "for one of your birth
and breeding to be talking thus of an equality with such a character as
this."

"It does sound foolish, wonderfully foolish," admitted Jean. "You and I
know, father, that I am his superior, but when it comes to a question of
the social welfare, that is a very different thing. He well understands
that he is a privileged character there. He is a unit of society's
make-up, and where do I come in? Along with the Chinese, the ex-convict
and the insane! I do not relish any such sort of company. God made woman
capable of self-government, and expected it of her. Why should she not
be on a suffrage equality with man?"

"Why do you want to vote, Jean?" asked the judge, as he would begin
with a witness.

"Why do you want to vote, father?" sharply replied the girl.

"Why, my vote is my individuality in the body politic. I could not do
without my vote," said the judge, with a slight hesitation.

"Do you not suppose I want some individuality, too?" came the prompt
retort.

The judge laughed.

"I have every reason to believe you do," he said.

"Do you not suppose that I would not like to help make the laws that
govern me?" asked Jean, taking upon her the role of inquisitor.

"Men can make enough laws for both sexes, I guess," was the reply,
uttered in a tone that carried a suspicion of dismissal.

"I guess they can," persisted Jean; "but what sort of laws have they
been? Heathenish, some of them!"

"For instance?"

"Laws that have been on our statute books allowing fathers to will away
their unborn children; laws allowing the father to appoint guardians of
whatever kind or creed over his children, leaving the mother powerless.