, and lowlier down, suppose they should say, every
one, "I will not have the new, convenient house, the fresh
carpetings, the pretty curtains, or even the least, most fitting
freshness, until I know the means are earned for me with honest
service to the world, and by no lucky turn of even a small
speculation." Further back yet, suppose them to declare, "I will
not have the home at all, nor my own happiness, unless it can be
based and builded on the kind of life-work that helps to make a
real prosperity; that really goes to the building and safe-keeping
of a whole nation of such homes." Would there be no power in
that? Would it not be a kind of woman-suffrage to settle the very
initials of all that ever bears upon the public question? And to
bring that sort of woman on the stage, and to the front, is there
not enough work to do, and enough "higher education" to insist on
and secure?

After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it
would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such
existence as they could arrange without us. In blessed homes, or
in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or the worse which
these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to, women give
purpose to and direct the results of all men's work. If the false
standards of living first urge them, until at length the horrible
intoxication of the game itself drives them on further and deeper,
are we less responsible for the last state of those men than for
the first?

Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a
simpler and truer living, there are plenty of bad ones who would
take them anyhow, and supply the motive to deeper and more
unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand again.
Raise the fallen--at least save the growing womanhood--stop the
destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new
difficulty and danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not
these bad women the very "plenty" that would out-balance you at
the polls, if you persist in trying the "patch-and-plaster" remedy
of suffrage and legislation?

Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high
commission, is inward--vital--formative, and casual. Bring all
questions of choice or duty to this test, will it work at the
heart of things, among the