o comprehend. And so forth.

Our hero, then, had yet to acquire this finesse. As we are now
privileged to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the
multiplication table, as little devious and, alas! as lacking in
suavity. Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence of guile, of
verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his passionate bluntness in
the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might
have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps, would he have been so
emotional in his opposition to woman polluting herself with the mire of
politics.

Be it recalled that but five weeks had elapsed since George had solemnly
promised to cherish and protect the fairest of the non-voting sex--at
least in his State--and he was still taking his mission seriously. As he
wrote the words that were now electrifying, in a manner of speaking,
the readers of the _Sentinel_, and of neighboring journals with enough
enterprise to secure them, he had beheld his own Genevieve, fine,
flawless, tenderly nourished flower that she was, being dragged from her
high place with the most distressing results.

He saw her rushed from the sacred shelter of her home and made to attend
primaries; he saw her compelled to strive tearfully with problems that
revolted all her finer instincts; he saw her insulted at polling booths;
saw her voting in company with persons of both sexes whom one could
never know.

He saw her tainted, bruised, beaten down in the struggle, losing little
by little all sense of the holy values of Wife, Mother, Home. As he
wrote he heard her weakening cries for help as she perished, and more
than once his left arm instinctively curved to shield her.

Was it not for his wife, then; nay, for wifehood itself, that he wrote?
And so, was it quite fair for unmarried Penfield Evans, burning at
his breakfast table a cynical cigarette over the printed philippic, to
murmur, "Gee! old George _has_ spilled the beans!"

Simple words enough and not devoid of friendly concern. But should he
not have divined that George had been appalled to his extremities of
speech by the horrendous vision of his fair young bride being hurled
into depths where she would be obliged, if not to have opinions of her
own, at least to vote with the rabble as he might decide they ought to
vote?

And should not other critics known to us have divined the racking
anguish under which George had labored? For one, should not Elizabeth
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