I console myself with
thinking that the end of it all must be good, since the principle
is right: but, dear me! I had no idea that I should be called
upon to go through such tribulation.
Now the reason I write--and I suppose I must hurry to the end, or
you will be out of all patience--is to beg, and insist, and implore
my sisters in other States to lose no more time, but at once to
coax, or melt, or threaten the men into accepting their claims. We
are now so isolated in our rights that we are obliged to bear more
than our proper share of the burden. When the States around us
shall be so far advanced, there will be a chance for new
stateswomen to spring up, and fill Mrs. Whiston's place, and we
shall then, I firmly believe, devise a plan to cleanse the great
Augean stable of politics by turning into it the river of female
honesty and intelligence and morality. But they must do this,
somehow or other, without letting the river be tainted by the heaps
of pestilent offal it must sweep away. As Lord Bacon says (in that
play falsely attributed to Shakespeare)--"Ay, there's the rub!"
If you were to ask me, NOW, what effect the right of suffrage,
office, and all the duties of men has had upon the morals of the
women of our State, I should be puzzled what to say.
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