Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/304

are too emotional to vote; but the morning paper described a pugilistic encounter between two members of Congress which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. It is said that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got it into their heads that they are. When we read the arguments against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like jumping is by no means confined to women."

On one evening the Hon. Henry C. Hammond of Georgia made the opening address, which was thus reported:

After declaring that the atmosphere of the nineteenth century is surcharged with the sentiment of woman's emancipation, he traced the gradual evolution of this sentiment, showing that one by one the shackles had been stricken from the limbs of woman until now she was making her final protest against tyranny and her last appeal for liberty."What is meant," said he, "by this mysterious dictum, 'Out of her sphere?' It is merely a sentimental phrase without either sense or reason." He then proceeded to say that if woman had a sphere the privilege of voting was clearly within its limitations. There was no doubt in his mind as to woman's moral superiority, and the politics of the country was in need of her purifying touch. In its present distracted and unhappy condition, the adoption of the woman suffrage platform and the incorporation of equal rights into the supreme law of the land was the only hope of its ultimate salvation. ....

J. Colton Lynes of Georgia, taking for his subject Women to the Front, gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter of Kentucky," and the Constitution said the next day: "If the spirit of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman Suffrage in the South, Mrs. Henry said:

It is asserted on all sides that the women of the South do not want the ballot. The real truth is the women of the South never have been asked what they want. When Pundita Ramabai was in this country she saw a hen carried to market with its head downward.