rs of the
disfranchised; we have circulated tracts, placed on file in
the public reading room all the suffrage journals, and
secured the best lecturers on the question. We are
organizing an afternoon reading society, to have read aloud
"The History of Woman Suffrage," and shall soon place it on
the shelves of the public library of the village. While we
cannot point to any wonderful revolution in public sentiment
because of our work, we are nevertheless full of courage,
and under the leadership of our State president, Elizabeth
Boynton Harbert, we shall go forward in faith and good
works, hoping for the end of woman's political slavery.[373]

In concluding this meager record of the methods of earnest men
and women of Illinois in their brave work for liberty, we are
painfully conscious of a vast aggregate of personal toil and
self sacrifice which can never be reported. We write of petitions
presented to State and National legislative assemblies, but it is
impossible to record the personal sacrifice and moral heroism of
the women who went from house to house in the cities and
villages, or traveled long distances across the broad prairies to
secure the signatures. Only those who have carried a petition
from door to door can know the fatigue and humiliation of spirit
it involves. Though these earnest women ask only the influence of
the names of persons to help on our reform, they are often
treated with less courtesy than the dreaded book-agent and
peddler.

WATSEKA, Ill.

I send you petitions, the one circulated by me has 270
names--the other by Clara L. Peters, 139.[374] We are
interested heart and soul in the movement, and our efforts
here have made many friends for the cause. Have been an
ardent worker since I was a child, and well remember that
grand hero of moral reforms, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, N.
Y., at a Woman's Temperance Convention held in Rochester in
1852, when I was eight years old.

VIOLA HAWKS ARCHIBALD.[375]

The following letter from Mary L. Davis, gives some idea of the
toils of circulating petitions:

DAVIS, Stephens