vilege of the citizen--suffrage?" On behalf of the people of a
State whose legislature has granted everything else to
women--whose devotion to free speech, untrammeled discussion and
an independent press has been conspicuous in its constitutional
and legislative history--I welcome them to this city and State,
and bespeak for them a patient, candid, respectful, appreciative
hearing.

Miss Anthony replied briefly to Mr. Poppleton's eloquent address
and returned the thanks of the convention for the courtesy with
which its members had been received by the citizens of Omaha.[93]
She then read a letter from the president of the convention:

TOULOUSE, France, September 1, 1882.

_To the National Woman Suffrage Association in Convention
assembled:_

DEAR FRIENDS: People never appreciate the magnitude and
importance on any step in progress, at the time it is taken, nor
the full moral worth of the characters who inspire it, hence it
will be in line with the whole history of reform from the
beginning if woman's enfranchisement in Nebraska should in many
minds seem puerile and premature, and its advocates fanatical and
unreasonable. Nevertheless the proposition speaks for itself. A
constitutional amendment to crown one-half of the people of a
great State with all their civil and political rights, is the
most vital question the citizens of Nebraska have ever been
called on to consider; and the fact cannot be gainsaid that some
of the purest and ablest women America can boast, are now in the
State advocating the measure.

For the last two months I have been assisting my son in the
compilation of a work soon to be published in America, under the
title, "The Woman Question in Europe," to which distinguished
women in different nations have each contributed a sketch of the
progress made in their condition. One interesting and significant
fact as shown in this work, is, that in the very years we began
to agitate the question of equal rights, there was a simultaneous
movement by women for various privileges, industrial, social,
educational, civil and political, throughout the civilized world.
And this without the slightest concert of action, or knowledge of
each other's existence, showing that the time had come in the
natural evolution of