"Just what I have expected to hear," said her father, "and what can be done when you put yourself in the way of it?"
"I have not the remotest idea how I put myself in the way of it, but you will probably be able to explain to me. Our venerable Uncle Sam is the offending party, and the offense is something like the indignity you would offer me if you gave Vivian all the privileges and love that you should share with me, because she happened to be born with black hair, and then should try to keep me in a state of blissful delusion by telling me I had the sweeter disposition. There would be about as much sense and justice in such a procedure, coming from you, as there is in the way Uncle Sam treats women.
"Here I am, a woman of good moral character, fairly intelligent, I hope, with a good education, denied my right to the ballot because, forsooth, I chanced to be born a woman and am considered too good. To-day's visit to the polls has reminded me of this insult, tendered by our government to its loyal women.
"By the time I got within two blocks of the polling place, I could hear the general commotion. When I arrived on the scene of action, I found a number of women, of good standing in the community, trying to get men to vote against license. Truly a humiliating business! But as they pressed me, I took a few of the ballots and started into the crowd, while a friendly looking policeman followed me.
"I had hardly made a start when some one crossed my path yelling wildly, 'Vote for whisky, boys! Vote for whisky, boys!' He was that half-witted, pumpkin-colored individual that you discharged last winter because he did not know enough to keep the horses' feet clean. Armed with his license ballot, he halted a second before me; then, fluttering the ballot, which he held between his fingers under my nose, he shouted again and again, 'Vote for whisky, boys!"
"He gave me a look that told me plainer than a volume of words could have done that he recognized his importance. He knew that he stood head and shoulders above me in Uncle Sam's estimation, in spite of my learning and morality, because on him had been bestowed a gift denied me.
"I do not like it. I want the right of citizenship. I want to stand on an equality with folks at least that do not know enough to clean a horse's feet."
"It sounds very foolish, Jean," said her father, "for one of your birth and breeding to be talking thus of an equality with such a character as this."
"It does sound foolish, wonderfully foolish," admitted Jean. "You and I know, father, that I am his superior, but when it comes to a question of the social welfare, that is a very different thing. He well understands that he is a privileged character there. He is a unit of society's make-up, and where do I come in? Along with the Chinese, the ex-convict and the insane! I do not relish any such sort of company. God made woman capable of self-government, and expected it of her. Why should she not be on a suffrage equality with man?"