spine in my back that was left out of me, and of its own strength got
developed into another and a finer woman. She became captain of my
Freshman soul, at the same time she captured the captaincy of the boat
crew, on which I pulled stroke, and I'm still hitting the water when she
gives the word, though it now looks as if we are both adrift on the high
and uncharted seas--or sitting on the lid of a tinder-box, juggling
lighted torches.

"You see, dear," she went on to say slowly, drawing Mary Elizabeth into
the spell-bound circle of our intensity, as we three sat together with
our newly-engraved sheepskins on our knees, "for these two years while
you have been growing and developing along all your natural lines in a
country which was not your own, in a little pool I should call it, out
of even sight and sound of the current of events, we have been here in
your own land engaged in the great work of the organization and
reorganization which is molding the destinies of the women of our
times, and those that come after us. That is what I want to talk to you
about, and devoutly have I been praying that your heart will be
receptive to the call that has claimed the life of Mary Elizabeth and
me. There is a particular work, for which you are fitted as no other
woman I have ever known is fitted, and I want to lay the case plainly
before you to-night. Will you give me a hearing?"

And the hearing I gave that beloved and devout woman was the _reveille_
that awakened me to this--this whirlwind that seems to be both inside me
and outside me, and everywhere else in the whole world.

It's not woman's suffrage; it has gone way down past the road from votes
for women. I wish I could have stopped in that political field of
endeavor before Jane got to me. She might have left me there doing