calls loudly for better
legislation--for morality in politics.

A member of the House said to me yesterday, that he thought that
some of the members from the rural districts were not
sufficiently enlightened upon the question of woman suffrage, and
the bill ought to have been thoroughly discussed. Yes, and
perhaps treated with respect by its friends. I saw the member
from Calais while a vote was being taken. Standing in his seat,
with his hand stretched toward the rear of the House, where it is
generally supposed that members sit who are a little slow in
voting at the beck of politicians, he said: "_Yes_ is the way to
vote, gentlemen! Yes! Yes!" When women have such politicians for
champions equal suffrage is secured. But do we want such men? The
member from Calais voted against woman's right of suffrage. He is
said to be an ambitious aspirant in the fifth congressional
district. See to it, women of the fifth district, that you do not
have him as an opponent of equal rights in congress. There is a
throne behind a throne. Let woman be _regal_ in the background,
where she must stand for the present, in Maine.

But I am happy and proud to state that some very high-minded men,
and some of the best legislators in the House, did vote for the
bill, viz.: Brown of Bangor, Judge Titcomb of Augusta, General
Perry of Oxford, Porter of Burlington, Labroke of Foxcroft, and
many others; in the Senate, the president and fourteen others,
the real bone and marrow of the Senate, voted for the bill. The
signs of the times are good. The watchman of the night discerns
the morning light in the broad eastern horizon.

[Signed:] PATIENCE COMMONSENSE.

The _Portland Press_, in a summary of progress in Maine for 1873,
says:

Women certainly have no reason to complain of the year's dealings
with them, for they have been recognized in many ways which
indicate the gradual breaking down of the prejudices that have
hitherto given them a position of _quasi_ subjection. Mrs. Mary
D. Welcome has been licensed to preach by the Methodists; Mrs.
Fannie U. Roberts of Kittery has been commissioned by the
governor to solemnize marriages; Clara H. Nash, of the famous law
firm of F. C. & C. H. Nash, of Columbia Falls, has argued a case
before a jury in