Page:The Gilded Age - Twain - 1874.pdf/199

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USES OF WOMEN IN WASHINGTON.
179

"Would you have her sign our petition?" asked the Colonel, innocently.

NOT EASILY REFERRED.
NOT EASILY REFERRED.

Harry laughed. "Women don't get anything by petitioning Congress; nobody does, that's for form. Petitions are referred somewhere, and that's the last of them; you can't refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is present. They prefer 'em mostly."

The petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a glowing description of Napoleon and the adjacent country, and a statement of the absolute necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on the great through route to the Pacific, of the immediate improvement of