orld. What
a verdict was this for one of the youngest States in the American
republic in the nineteenth century!

But these heroic women did not sit down in sackcloth and ashes to
weep over the cruel verdict. Anticipating victory, they had engaged
the Opera House to hold their jubilee if the women of Nebraska were
enfranchised; or, if the returns brought them no cause for
rejoicing, they would at least exalt the educational work that had
been done in the State, and dedicate themselves anew to this
struggle for liberty. They had survived three defeats, in Kansas,
Michigan, Colorado, and tasted the bitterness of repeated
disappointments, and another could not crush them. When the hour
arrived, an immense audience welcomed them in the Opera House, and
from this new baptism of sorrow they spoke more eloquently than
ever before. In their calm, determined manner they seemed to say
with Milton's hero:

"All is not lost: the unconquerable will is ours."

A report of the Fifteenth Annual Washington Convention, Jan. 23,
24, 25, 1883, was written by Miss Jessie Waite of Chicago, and
published in the _Washington Chronicle_, from which we give the
following extracts:

The proceedings of the Association were inaugurated at Lincoln
Hall Monday evening by a novel lecture, entitled "Zekle's Wife,"
by Mrs. Amy Talbot Dunn of Indianapolis. The personality of Mrs.
Dunn is so entirely lost in that of Zekle's wife that it is hard
to realize that the old lady of so many and so varied experiences
is a happy young wife. As a character sketch Mrs. Dunn's "Zekle's
Wife" stands on an equality with Denman Thompson's "Joshua
Whitcomb" and with Joe Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle." To sustain a
conception so foreign to the natural characteristics of the actor
without once allowing the interest of the audience to flag,
requires originality of thought, independence of idea, and genius
for action. Mrs. Dunn, herself the author of her sketch,
possesses to a remarkable degree the power to impress upon her
audience the feeling that the old lady from "Kaintuck" is before
them, not only to say things for their amusement, but also to
impress upon them those great truths which have presented
themselves to her mind during the fifty years of her married
life. "Zekle's Wife" is a keen, shrewd, warm-hearted, lovable old
woman, without education or culture, yet wit