Senator Charles S. Thomas, also an exgovernor, Southern born, and the possessor of a voting wife and voting daughters, expresses the male sentiment of Colorado when he says: "The one offensive feature of equal suffrage has been the flood of blackguardly abuse heaped upon our women by foes of the movement. Scavengers, commissioned to attack and defame, have made pretense of studying our lives, thoughts, laws, and institutions between trains. The supposition that inclusion in the responsibilities of citizenship implies the instant degradation of our wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters can only proceed from mental perversion and degeneracy.”

Bishop Spaulding of Utah, after long observation, declares that equal suffrage has developed better wives and better mothers, and that women have brought to their duties as citizens and legislators superior humanity and motherliness.

The Portland "Oregonian," unalterably conservative, admits editorially that equal suffrage has turned out to be one of the strongest fortifications of the home, and throughout his entire investigation the writer could not find any one, not even a dethroned "boss," who would put his name to the charge that the vote had debased the women of his State.

The inevitable first result of equal suffrage is the removal of all polling-places from the neighborhood of saloons. What was good enough for men is not good enough for their women folk. For the most part, voting-booths are in churches, parlors, corner groceries, or schools. Illinois had many of its polling-places decorated with potted plants, many Kansas towns introduced "no-smoking" regulations, and in all of the older equal-suffrage States there is yet to be recorded an instance of insult to women in connection with the franchise.

Let conclusion come with the words of Mrs. Grenfell, that very wonderful woman whom many pick as Colorado's best citizen:

The opponents of equal suffrage never tire of declaring that woman's place is the home. I agree with them most heartily. It is because of the home that I want wo

men to have the vote. The State is so much the over-parent to-day that I cannot look after my home without the vote. The law says when the child shall go to school, what books it shall study, what food it shall eat, what carfare it shall pay, when it shall be vaccinated or given serums, punishes the child with truant-officers, truant-schools, juvenile courts, and tells when it may quit school and when it may go to work. It is through franchises gained by the ballot that I am told what to pay for my water, my gas, my electric light, my telephone; it is by the vote that liquor questions are decided, and ordinances adopted for the regulation of morals. of morals. I happened to read yesterday where the women of Kansas City were protesting against a return to the policy of licensing prostitution and making the community a sharer in the shameful gains. In another column I saw where an ordinance prohibiting saloons near schools and churches had been smothered in committee by an alderman who happened to be Kansas City's most notorious saloonkeeper. Are those not questions that affect the home? And will any one say that the voteless women of Kansas City are able to give their homes the fullest possible protection?

One must also consider the seven or eight millions of women who are forced outside the home by the necessities of existence. Is this vast army of underpaid, overworked toilers to have no voice at all? If women voted in New York, do you think America would be shamed by the spectacle of the Triangle Factory owners being fined $20 for the very offense that cost the lives of 145 girls in a former fire?

I have always thought, and I still think, that a government entirely by men is as stupid as a government entirely by women would be. There are as many home features in municipal or state administration as business features. Perhaps you may remember that the Indiana legislature recently passed a $5000 appropriation for the better care of hogs, and defeated an appropriation of $5000 for the better care of children. Do you see what I mean? I do not question the importance of the appropriation for the revenue-producing hog, but would n't it have been well had some woman been in that legislature to stand up for the non-revenueproducing child?

and forth, back and forth, in the hammock, tapping her small, brown toe on the porch as she swung. It was a charming porch, framed in clematis and woodbine, but Marianna had no eye for its good points. She was lying with two slim arms clasped behind her head, staring vacantly up at the ceiling and composing a poem. On the wicker table beside her stood a glass of malted milk and a teaspoon. They were not the subject of the poem, but they were nevertheless responsible for it. In the first place, Marianna would not drink her twelveo'clock malted milk, and as she was forbidden to go off the porch until she had done so, there seemed to be nothing better to do than to cultivate the muse in the hammock. After patiently sipping malted milk for eight years, Marianna had suddenly rebelled. In the second place, her cousin Frank, who lived in the next house, had been inspired by this beverage to make up an insulting ditty.

"Grocerman, bring a can
Baby-food for Mary Ann!"

he sang loudly over the hedge whenever he caught sight of Marianna's middy blouse and yellow pigtails. That was yesterday. To-day the malted milk was standing untouched upon the wicker table, and Marianna in the hammock was trying to think up an offensive rhyme for Frank. When she found it, she intended to go around on the other side of the house and shout it as loud as ever she could in the direction of her uncle's garden. This, it is true, was a tame revenge. What Marianna really wanted to do was to go over and pinch her cousin Frank; but that, unhappily, was out of the question, as Frank had a cold, and she was strictly forbidden to go near anybody with a cold. Frank was always having colds, and Mrs. Lane, who knew how unnecessary they were, was severe upon her sister-in-law.

"Children don't catch colds by sitting

"We know now that it is always due to a germ. There is no need of children of intelligent parents coming in contact with germs. But you let Frank play with anybody and eat anything. Then he does n't assimilate his food, and has no resistance. Proper assimilation, that should be our watchword. If you belonged to our Civics and Hygiene Club, you would understand these things, Esther. Some day I want to show you about food values and the proper combinations for Frank."

Meanwhile Marianna lay back in the hammock, trying Frank in all sorts of interesting combinations.

"Frank, bank; Frank, crank; Frank, lank; Frank, sank," she repeated softly to herself. She had gotten as far as "Frank, Frank, spindle-shank," when the screen door opened, and her mother came out upon the porch. She was buttoning her white gloves, and had her card-case and parasol stuck under her arm.

"I'm going now, Marianna," she said, "and I hope to find my little girl more reasonable when I come back." She glanced at the malted milk.

Marianna pouted down at her blouse. "And as soon as you have decided to be mama's obedient little daughter," went on Mrs. Lane, "you may go down to Bates's and get ten-cents' worth of animal crackers, and you may eat twelve before supper. Now kiss mama.

Marianna lifted a wayward mouth. Her mother sniffed.

"Marianna," she said gravely, "have you been eating a peppermint?"

"Oh, no, Mama," replied Marianna in a tone of offended innocence.

"Let me see your tongue," said her mother. Marianna stuck that organ out as far as it would go. At the same moment her eyes fell upon a scrap of pink paper almost under the tip of her mother's parasol. On it could be read the words:

A DELICIOUS, LASTING FLAVOR PERFUMES THE BREATH

It was the wrapping of a recent present from her cousin Frank.

"That 's very strange," said Mrs. Lane as she went down the steps, her nose still elevated, "I thought I smelled something."

Marianna leaned forward in the hammock and listened until she could no longer hear the swish of her mother's skirts; then she darted at that scrap of pink paper and thrust it hastily down a crack; then she searched in the remote corners of her mouth with her tongue to satisfy herself that Frank's present was still there; then she walked over to the steps with the glass of malted milk, and poured it slowly out as a libation upon her mother's fern bed.

"What you doing that for?" called a voice from the garden opposite.

Marianna, looking up, was astonished to see a little girl sitting on the steps across the way. She was a black-haired Gipsy of a little girl in a bright-red frock, and she had her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. Though the new family had moved in a week ago, this was the very first appearance of anything so vivid and interesting.

"Because I hate malted milk," Marianna shouted back.

"They never could make me touch it," said the other.

Marianna liked the tone of this immensely. She went down the steps and across the street to the opposite hedge. The other little girl continued to sit with her chin in her hands, regarding the middy blouse and the yellow pigtails out of two elfish, black eyes. Marianna explored in the back of her mouth again.

"Do you chew gum?" she inquired. "Yes," replied the other, exploring in the back of hers; "one of my best poems is about it. It begins:

"They do not know that I chew gum Because I keep so very, mum."

"Do you write poems, too?" said Marianna, amazed.

The other nodded.

"Piles of 'em," she said; "sometimes I write five a day. My name 's Elizabeth Barrett, so I can make 'em up just as easy. There was another poetess named that, you know. She wrote sonnets from the Porchoo Geese. When I grow up I'm

going to be like her, so I shall give all my gum to John Edward. The rest of that poem is:

"But Mrs. Browning did not chew it, And so I think I shall not do it."

Marianna was much impressed. "Do you know a good rhyme for Frank?" she said.

"Spank," said the other without a moment's hesitation. Marianna opened the gate and started up the path.

"Oh, you can't come in here," cried Elizabeth Barrett, scrambling up on the top step; "you must n't get near me. I've got chicken-pox."

Marianna stopped short, her hands clasped behind her.

"What's that?" she said.

"Can't you see the little red speckles all over me?" said Elizabeth Barrett, thrusting out a small, pointed chin in the direction of her visitor. "Did n't you ever have it?" Marianna shook her head and came a step nearer. "You did n't?" said the other with a touch of scorn. "What have you had?"

"I had a boil once," said Marianna, with dignity, "and my cousin Frank has a cold."

"Oh, colds are n't anything," scoffed Elizabeth Barrett, wrinkling up a brown, snub nose; "everybody has piles of colds. I've had German measles and scarlet fever and tonsulls and mumps, and John Edward 's had real measles and addernoids, and now he 's got whooping-cough.”

"I've had periter-nighties, too," piped a voice from the apple-tree, and immediately whooped.

Marianna now saw two sturdy legs in blue overalls dangling from a limb that commanded a view up and down the street and above the legs a mischievous little face peering out between the leaves. "Do you see him yet, John Edward?" said Elizabeth Barrett.

"Nope," replied John Edward, and edged a little farther out on the limb.

"My papa's a doctor, and my mama 's a doctor, so we have everything," continued Elizabeth Barrett, with doubtful logic. "What do yours do?"

"Papa goes to his office," said Marianna, glad to be able to report some activity on the part of her family.

"And does your mama go to her office, too?" pursued Elizabeth Barrett.

"Oh, no," said Marianna, evidently shocked; "she-she just takes care of me and makes calls and things. She's gone

to make some now."

"Mine makes calls, too, but she gener'lly goes in the middle of the night," said Elizabeth Barrett.

"The middle of the night!" echoed Marianna. "Is n't she scared?"

"She carries a bag full of sharp steel things," explained Elizabeth Barrett.

"Where is she now?" inquired Marianna, peering over Elizabeth Barrett's head to see if she could get a glimpse of this extraordinary mother through the open doorway.

"She's gone to her office. That's why we 're waiting for the blowna man. He goes by every afternoon. Do you like

blowna?"

"I-I don't know," said Marianna. "What is it?"

sau

Blowna-b-l-o-w-n-a-blowna sage," said Elizabeth Barrett, impatient at such stupidity. "We can't go down to the store because we 're in quarrelteen. You might as well come up here now and sit down," she added calmly. "You 've come so close you'll catch it, anyway."

Marianna, it is true, had been gradually creeping nearer and nearer, as these interesting revelations followed one other, until she was at the foot of the steps. "Does it hurt, the chick-those speckles?" she asked, retreating a little.

"No; 'course not," said Elizabeth Barrett. The middy blouse sat down cautiously beside the red frock. Elizabeth Barrett pushed up her sleeves and stretched two slim, rigid little arms out in front of her. "Just look at 'em," she said proudly.

Marianna examined them. They were certainly covered with the most luxuriant speckles. Then she rubbed her fingers over them to see if anything came off.

"My arms have a thousand specks,
My ear but one;

But I'll have some more, you bet,
With the rising of the sun,"

repeated Elizabeth Barrett.

"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve," counted Marianna, touching each little speckle lightly with her forefinger.

"Oh, I see him, I see him! He 's com

ing!" cried John Edward, sliding from his crow's-nest in the apple-tree. The others jumped from the steps, and the three children crowded out upon the sidewalk, regardless of all quarantine regulations. Several blocks away they could see a jaded, white horse toiling up through the vista of maples, a small deliverywagon behind him.

"Oh, I hope he 'll have piles of blownas," said John Edward, dancing up and down in his impatience.

"We 've only got ten cents, anyway," said Elizabeth Barrett.

Then suddenly, as they watched, the old white horse veered.

DELICATESSEN

HECKELSTEIN'S BEST BRAND

BOLOGNAS SAUERKRAUT

could be read for a moment on the side of the wagon before horse and sign disappeared entirely down a side street.

'He's going the other way," cried Elizabeth Barrett. John Edward started blindly off down the middle of the street.

"Blowna-man, wait a minute! Please wait a minute, blowna-man!" he called. His sister brought him back whooping.

'Come inside the gate," she said sternly, pushing him before her, "or you know we'll catch it." Then she turned swiftly upon Marianna. "You'll have to go," she said. "Run after him quick; here's the ten cents."

Marianna took the money mechanically. The suggestion that she, Marianna Lane, pursue a sausage-man and buy bologna was very shocking. Marianna knew nothing about sausages except that they were one of the seven deadly sins. She had always been hurried past the delicatessen-shop window, where they hung in tempting strings, and where she would fain have lingered. "No one knows what is in them, Marianna," her mother had said; since then Marianna had been hoping for a chance to investigate for herself.

"Hur-ri-yup!" said John Edward, placing his small, brown palms on the back of the middy blouse and pushing with all his might. Marianna hesitated for just one moment; then she ran-ran madly, deliriously, after the blowna-man, her pig

tails bobbing behind her, her slim legs flickering through the patches of sunshine, until she turned the corner and vanished.

Elizabeth Barrett and John Edward, leaning out over the gate, thought she never would reappear. After about ten minutes, however, she did. She was walking very slowly. In one hand she held a paper bag, in the other she clasped a section of bologna, which she was nibbling daintily. "She's eating it all up!" cried Elizabeth Barrett.

John Edward ran outside the gate again, and made a trumpet of his hands. "No fair!" he shouted. "Bring it here! No fair!"

But Marianna went right on nibbling. Then suddenly they saw her stop short in the middle of the sidewalk, the bologna poised at her lips.

But She The

"Whasser matter?" they called. Marianna neither spoke nor stirred. had heard a voice and a footstep. footstep was coming down a gravel path behind the line of privet hedge, and the voice was saying:

"Yes, Mrs. Smith, I 'm so glad to have had this little talk with you. Proper assimilation, that should be our watchword with these little lives that are intrusted to us. Why, here is my little girl now, waiting for mama. Shake hands with Mrs. Smith, darling."

The moment Marianna heard that watchword she finished the bologna in two gulps. Then she took a fresh grip on the neck of the paper bag and gave her hand prettily to Mrs. Smith.

"I let her go down now and then and get animal crackers," said Mrs. Lane, looking complacently at the paper bag. “I believe in a little sweet for children once in a while, don't you, Mrs. Smith?"

Marianna followed her mother up the street in a trance. She could see two dark heads hanging over the gate a block away, and a glint of red frock flickering like a danger-signal.

'Hur-ri-yup!" called John Edward, with a prolonged whoop.

"Mercy! there's a dreadful child with the whooping-cough over there. Keep close to me, Marianna," said Mrs. Lane, and she steered instantly across the street. Marianna, at her heels, ventured a cautious glance over her shoulder. Elizabeth Barrett and John Edward were star

ing, speechless, after their departing blowna. They seemed unable to believe in such treason.

"When we get home we 'll have a little tea-party with the animal crackers, you and mama, won't we, darling?" said her mother. "Come, Marianna, don't loiter. You can walk on the curbstone any time." Mrs. Lane set her hand upon the gate.

"O Mama," said Marianna, suddenly, "my paper bag has gone down the sewer!" and she stood gazing into the gutter with the sweetest composure.

'Gone down the sewer?" repeated her mother, turning in astonishment. "Why, Marianna, mama thinks that was very careless of her little girl. I sha'n't let you buy any more to-day. You must learn to be careful with your things."

There could be no doubt about it. It really was inexcusably careless. The sewer hole opened against the curbstone in a vertical position, and things were projected into it only with difficulty from the street.

Marianna walked reluctantly through the gate after her mother. She was full of misgiving as she thought of her five o'clock malted milk; she had never in her life felt less like malted milk. She felt, in fact, very queer. She wondered if it could be the chicken-pox coming out.

Suddenly there arose an indignant chorus from across the street. Elizabeth Barrett had just achieved another poem.

"Fraidy-cat, saw you throw it,

So your mother would n't know it! "Fraidy-cat, saw you throw it,

So your mother would n't know it!"

"What are those rude children saying?" said Mrs. Lane, stopping puzzled at the door, and turning around to listen. "They 're not talking to you, are they, Marianna? What was that-saw you throw something? So your mother would n't what? Know it? Know what, Marianna? What have you thrown away? Were you carrying anything but the bag of ani- Marianna, I want you to come into the house this minute and tell me exactly what was in that paper bag."

And Marianna, as she went through the screen door, thought it quite possible. that she might be going to catch other things beside the chicken-pox.