LETTER III. 43 



years back she told me they enfranchised the 

 women of Washington Territory, and now they 

 were trying to disfranchise them again, ' and I 

 hope,' said my friend, ' that they'll succeed. 

 Why, now they make us do all manner of things ; 

 sit on juries in all sorts of cases, however bad 

 they are, along with the men. Some of the 

 women like it ; I don't. If you've got a child 

 two years old or under, you are exempt from 

 serving ; but very few claim their exemption. 

 You see, women get three dollars a day for 

 serving, and some of them like a law court 

 better than a theayter, and bring their baby 

 along rather than stay away. I was called on 

 the Chinese riot case, but the marshal, who 

 found me cleaning the kitchen-floor, let me off 

 coming.' 



Some of the people on board were charmingly 

 simple and unaffected, knowing very little of the 

 old world men and women who had been so 

 busy all their lives making a new world, that 

 they had had no time to look back at the old. 

 Others were so widely travelled and deeply read 

 that no land seemed untrodden, no book unread 

 by them. Domestic life in your own little house 

 in England, with your own little cares and your 

 own snug pleasures, is very comfortable, Lena ; 

 but just now I feel as if it were all very small. 



