Our hero, then, had yet to acquire this finesse. As we are now privileged
to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table,
as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to
George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed
for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in
his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again,
perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman
polluting herself with the mire of politics.

Be it recalled that but five weeks had elapsed since George had solemnly
promised to cherish and protect the fairest of the non-voting sex--at least
in his State--and he was still taking his mission seriously. As he wrote
the words that were now electrifying, in a manner of speaking, the readers
of the _Sentinel_, and of neighboring journals with enough enterprise to
secure them, he had beheld his own Genevieve, fine, flawless, tenderly
nourished flower that she was, being dragged from her high place with the
most distressing results.

He saw her rushed from the sacred shelter of her home and made to attend
primaries; he saw her compelled to strive tearfully with problems that
revolted all her finer instincts; he saw her insulted at polling booths;
saw her voting in company with persons of both sexes whom one could never
know.

He saw her tainted, bruised, beaten down in the struggle, losing little by
little all sense of the holy values of Wife, Mother, Home. As he wrote he
heard her weakening cries for help as she perished, and more than once his
left arm instinctively curved to shield her.