private conveyances, enables one in a
measure to appreciate the physical fatigue these ladies endured. In
reading of their earnest speeches, debates, conversations at every
fireside and dinner-table, in every car and carriage as they
journeyed by the way or waited at the station, their untiring
perseverance must command the unqualified admiration of those who
know what a political campaign involves. During those six weeks of
intense excitement they were alike hopeful and anxious as to the
result. At last the day dawned when the momentous question of the
enfranchisement of 75,000 women was to be decided. Every train
brought some of the speakers to their headquarters in Omaha, with
cheering news from the different localities they had canvassed. And
now one last effort must be made, they must see what can be done at
the polls. Some of the ladies went in carriages to each of the
polling booths and made earnest appeals to those who were to vote
for or against the woman's amendment. Others stood dispensing
refreshments and the tickets they wished to see voted, all day
long. And while the men sipped their coffee and ate their viands
with evident relish, the women appealed to their sense of justice,
to their love of liberty and republican institutions. Vain would be
the attempt to describe the patient waiting, the fond hopes, the
bright visions of coming freedom, that had nerved these brave women
to these untiring labors, or to shadow in colors dark enough the
fears, the anxieties, the disappointments, all centered in that
November election. A fitting subject for an historical picture was
that group of intensely earnest women gathered there, as the last
rays of the setting sun warned them that whether for weal or for
woe the decisive hour had come; no word of theirs could turn defeat
to victory.

The hours of anxious waiting were not long, the verdict soon came
flashing on every wire, from the north, the south, the west: "No!"
"No!" "No!" The mothers, wives and daughters of Nebraska must still
wear the yoke of slavery; they who endured with man the hardships
of the early days and bravely met the dangers of a pioneer life,
they who have reared two generations of boys and taught them the
elements of all they know, who have stood foremost in all good
works of charity and reform, who appreciate the genius of free
institutions, native-born American citizens, are still to be
governed by the ignorant, vicious classes from the old w