irculating
a temperance petition to present to the legislature. One day
while busy on the third floor of the high-school building a
fellow-teacher sent up word that a lady wished to see me.
Descending, I was introduced to Mrs. Wallace, who, in a bland
way, requested me to sign the paper which she extended. Never
doubting that I might do so, I had taken my pen when my eye
caught the words: "While we do not clamor for any additional
civil or political rights." "But I do clamor," I exclaimed, and
threw down the paper and pen and went back to my work, vexed in
soul that I should have been dragged down three flights of stairs
to see one more proof of the degree to which honorable women love
to humiliate themselves before men for sweet favor's sake. Mrs.
Wallace went forward with her work of solicitation, thinking me,
no doubt, to be a very impetuous, if not impertinent, young
woman.

When, however, upon the presentation of her petition, whose
framers had taken such care to disclaim any desire "for
additional civil and political rights," Mrs. Wallace was startled
by Dr. Thompson's avowal (having known the doctor, as she naively
says, "as a Christian gentleman"), that he was not there "to
represent his conscience, but to obey his constituents," in her
aroused soul there was that instant born the determination to
become a "constituent." As soon as the hearing was at an end,
Mrs. Wallace confessed this determination to Dr. Thompson,
thanking him for unintentionally awakening her to a sense of
woman's proper position in the republic. This change in Mrs.
Wallace's attitude was not generally known until the following
May, when the annual State Temperance convention was held in
Indianapolis; then, in her address before that body, she avowed
her conviction that it was woman's duty to seek the ballot as a
means of exerting her will upon legislation. From that time Mrs.
Wallace has neglected no opportunity to propagate suffrage
doctrines, and has been most potent in influencing her temperance
coaedjutors to embrace these principles. Earnestness and logic are
Mrs. Wallace's abiding forces. Her literary work is chiefly
confined to correspondence, in which she is so faithful that it
is doubtful if any man in public life in Indiana can plead
ignorance