high moral standing that the average woman would have cast her vote for had she had the privilege. While it may be truly said of too many women that they are giving too much of their time and thought to fashion and the pastimes of the day to have leisure left to post themselves on the many intricate matters that pertain to government, the women are few who are not able to discern the fitness of a man for office as regards the moral question. And just here I can but express my sur prise that all women interested in lifting higher the standard of purity, do not see just where the work is crippled by women not having a voice at the ballot-box, for that will tell as to who shall be our justices of the peace, county attorney and sheriff. I mention these officers more particularly, as it is with these that I come in contact in every attempt at enforcing the law, which, I am often taunted, even by good women, for not resorting to oftener. Toward such of these as are too listless and indifferent as to care to inform themselves so as to be able to cast an intelligent vote, and too delicate to cast it, I can but feel something akin to a righteous indignation, for they are aiders to the class of men who are barring us from our rights, and from which class come the officers who in one way or other defeat the purpose of all good laws. My conviction, too, ever having been that just as sure as right is right, we women should stand side by side with men at the polls, in all matters that pertain to the laws that govern us, and we shall just as soon as women en masse demand it.

THE LAW "MOTHER BENEDICT" OBTAINED FOR IOWA, AND ITS

EFFECT UPON THE BORDER STATES.

In the revised Code of 1888, commencing at the bottom of page 1553, and continued on page 1554, are the following acts:

"If any person entice back into a life of shame any person who has heretofore been guilty of the crime of prostitution; or who shall inveigle or entice any female, before reputed virtuous, to a house of ill-fame, or knowingly conceal or assist, or abet in concealing such female, so deluded

or enticed for the purpose of prostitution or lewdness, he shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary not less than three nor more than ten years."

PENALTY FOR PROSTITUTION.

"If any person for the purpose of prostitution or lewdness resorts to, ases, occupies or inhabits any house of ill-fame, or place kept for such purpose, or if any person be found at any hotel, boarding house, cigar store or other place, leading a life of prostitution and lewdness, such person shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary not more than five years."

EVIDENCE NECESSARY TO CONVICT.

"The State, upon the trial of any person indicted for keeping a house of ill-fame, may, for the purpose of establishing the character of the house kept by defendant, introduce evidence of the general reputation of such house as so kept, and such evidence shall be competent for such purpose."

While I was rejoicing, as, from city to city, I found vacant buildings, or respectable occupants where I had been wont to find those soul and body destroying institutions, I was little dreaming of the terrible results that came to virtue-loving, vice-hating occupants of the border states. While I had not been without thinking of what the result was likely to be, knowing that in one of our river cities at least ten houses of ill-fame were vacated at once as the act of the Twentieth General Assembly became effective law. Yet I did not cross our border rivers and see for myself what had happened to cities, small or great, until late in the autumn of 1891, while lecturing in the interest of social purity, in Sioux City, I was solicited by interested parties to go over into Covington and undertake the rescue of one of those unfortunate ones.

After having been a visitor of dens of infamy throughout the length and breadth of Iowa, it might easily be supposed that there were no depths of those pits of vice with which my eye had not become familiar, yet I found that Covington had depths to reveal beyond anything that had before come to my knowledge, crowded, as it was, with those who had fled the law of Iowa.

We crossed the pontoon bridge, one of the wealthy ladies of the city having volunteered to take me in her carriage. Imagine a large proud stepping horse on a bridge barely wide enough for teams to pass, and only one small wire stretched on either side to prevent the slightest refractory movement of the animal from precipitating the carriage and riders into the muddy waters of the Missouri, or rather "Big Muddy" as it is significantly called. The traveler is stopped to pay his toll just where the muddy waters run swiftest and most suggestive of bearing the frail structure from beneath him or him with it, on to where it loses itself in the "Father of Waters." This ordeal passed and we are once more safe so far as solid foundation is concerned. The quaking bridge, the turbid river, the island midway between its banks, the rag pickers rummaging where all the debris of the city is deposited, form a picture never to be forgotten, yet one that does not compare with that which was beyond to be revealed as I entered the saloon and brothel combined, designated to me as where I would find the object of my search.

Entering, there stood a man at the bar pouring out the soul and body destroying liquid that must have had its origin first in the intelligence of the Prince of Devils ere it because the potent agent that it is in the destruction of man created in the image of God, and of woman the crowning excellence and finishing touch of His handiwork in this world of ours.

But partly curtained off from the saloon in front was a brothel in the background, where, moving to the sound of the piano in the wild hilarious dance, were those marred images of their Creator of both sexes already too far under the influence of the maddening bowl to listen with intelligent judgment, yet with enough of the sense of manhood and womanhood in them to pause in their dance as I approached and began to address them. But quickly divining that my purpose was to snatch those of my own sex from their bondage to men's lust, they were quickly rushed to the bar where the agent from the pit

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poured out the flowing glasses which, when quaffed, would place them, in a very little time, in a condition where nothing said could at all effect them. Yet all were able for a little time to listen, and gathered close around me. One poor fellow already too drunk to more than stumble along, came up, not forgetting his manners, saying as he passed before me making his way to a seat, as he was illy able to stand, “ Ex-excuse me, a-madam, I, I, came to meeting." After listening for a moment, another half intoxicated fellow said, "Girls, you had better listen to the sister. She is all right. Let us take up a collection." Suiting the action to the word, he thrust his hand into his pocket and handed me a quarter which I accepted and soon found use for, as my attention was soon arrested by a little girl of twelve appearing on the scene. The presence of the child in such a place was so all absorbing as to call my thought away from those who were already so far gone and to fix them on the rescue of the child. I immediately asked, "How came this little girl here? Has she a mother, and, if so, where is she?" to which the keeper a woman replied, "She is working here. And she has a mother who lives just down here in the brush." Then turning to the little girl, she said, "You had better put on your bonnet and go and show the lady where your mother lives. "Glad to follow, while the child led the way, she was placed in the carriage of the dear Christian lady who had waited outside and wept while I talked to the revelers within. Following the child's directions, we soon came to what had the appearance to us of a low old fashioned mud oven on a large scale. Passing half way around, I found an opening, the entrance to which was suggestive of a beaver's slide. Not attempting to make my way down, the wretched mother of the squalid abode responded to my call and came out. I presented her child and plead the necessity of her forbidding her ever again to enter the terrible abode of vice where I found her. The mother plead their poverty; her own ill health, the hand of consumption having her so in its grasp that bleeding at the lungs was of frequent

occurrence. To this, add prospective motherhood, with a baby then in her arms, and the story of the feeble health of her husband who, she said, was suffering so with rheumatism that he could do but little toward their support which made it necessary that the child should earn something. She could get two dollars a week for her services in that sink of iniquity, while in places of respectability a child like her could scarcely earn a dollar. Again the wealthy lady of the city wept while I talked and handed over the quarter I had received in the brothel, promising the poor mother that if she would but keep her child away from that vicious haunt, the ladies of Sioux City would surely come to her relief, and assist her in clothing not only her twelve year old daughter, but would also provide her something for the little one and the one yet unborn. This promise made in faith, was soon verified by the wealthy lady being out on her mission gathering up the supplies to meet the wants of the most squalid poverty my eyes had ever rested upon.

This has only described one saloon of Covington with its attractions of the fair and fallen ones, and but one of the wretched abodes of poverty that are the inevitable ultimate of the existence of the saloon in any community. Multiply this by three fourths of the domiciles of the city and you have Covington, so nearly given over to the saloon and brothel that insurance men refuse any longer to take any risks in it, and virtuous citizens regret ever having invested a dollar there. As we women always have the worst of it, I will tell the story of one Christian woman, at least, who, with her husband, had made Covington their home in its better days ere they dreamed that it would be swallowed up by vice. They had planned their own Eden. A cottage reared to their own taste where fruit and flowers needed but the touch of cultivation for they sprang almost spontaneously from the fertile soil. Trees planted by their own hands had grown to yield a lovely shade; and they were sure that the well they had digged yielded purer water than any fountain for miles around. Interested above all