ry, the young wife for a season found her family cares
all-absorbing, but her taste for study, her love of literature and
her natural desire to improve the conditions about her, soon led
her to work up an interest in the establishment of a library and
course of lectures. She afterwards edited a department in the
Beatrice _Express_ called "Woman's Work," and in 1883 she started
_The Woman's Tribune_, a paper whose columns show that Mrs. Colby
has the true editorial instinct. For several years she has been
deeply interested in the movement for woman's enfranchisement,
devoting her journal to the advocacy of this great reform. In
addition to her cares as housekeeper[457] and editor, Mrs. Colby
has also lectured extensively in many States, east and west, not
only to popular audiences, but before legislative and congressional
committees.

In her description of Nebraska and the steps of progress in woman's
civil and political rights, Mrs. Colby says:

Nebraska makes its first appearance in history as part of
Louisiana and belonging to Spain. Seized by France in 1683, ceded
to Spain in 1762; again the property of France in 1800, and sold
to the United States in 1803; the shifting ownership yet left no
trace on that interior and inaccessible portion of Louisiana now
known as Nebraska. It was the home of the Dakotas, who had come
down from the north pushing the earlier Indian races before them.
Every autumn when _Heyokah_, the Spirit of the North, puffed from
his huge pipe the purpling smoke "enwrapping all the land in
mellow haze," the Dakotas gathered at the Great Red Pipestone
Quarry for their annual feast and council. These yearly
excursions brought them in contact with the fur traders, who in
turn roamed the wild and beautiful country of the Niobrara,
returning thence to Quebec laden with pelts. With the exception
of a few military posts, the first established in 1820 where the
town of Fort Calhoun now stands, Nebraska was uninhabited by
white people until the gold hunters of 1849 passed through what
seemed to them an arid desert, as they sought their Eldorado in
the mountains beyond. Disappointed and homesick, many of the
emigrants retraced their steps, and found their former trail
through Nebraska marked by sunflowers, the luxuriance of which
evidenced the fertility of the soil, and encouraged the travelers