Hindrances and heartaches, however, were sandwiched between our helps and happiness liberally enough to cause us to realize that she—as well as he—who wins must fight. We were not strong swimmers accustomed to breast the waves of an uneducated public disapproval; but we knew we must encounter it and nerve ourselves for the shock, putting ourselves at war against the liquor traffic and its political allies. Everywhere we found the W. C. T. U. the underpinning (not one would have dared to think of herself as a “pillar”) of the church. Very many of them had in tow the whole church structure—missionary societies, pastor’s salary, the choir, the parsonage, and the debt on the church. Most of them were mothers too; some, God help them! sad-eyed and broken-hearted becauseof the ravage of their own firesides which the open saloon had caused. We read our Bibles and prayed, and the word of the Lord came to us that the mother-heart in Christ’s people must protest against further slaying of the innocents at the open doorways of the dram shops!
We went to our brethren in the church (to whom else should we go?) with the Lord’s message. Some of them—not the dignitaries usually, but the humble-minded, prayerful men, God bless them! who went about their work unheralded—believed our report: but it was too hard a saying for the many that God ever spake except by the word of mouth of a man. They forgot Anna and Deborah, and practically sided with the “higher criticism” respecting the errancy of the Scripture in its statement about woman’s relation to the church. And so, after a while, I said at one of our conventions that I could count upon one hand all the ministers in New Orleans who had come forward to pray over one of our meetings.
We had to defend ourselves on the charge of being Sabbath-breakers, because after doing the Lord’s work six days in the week, a W. C. T. U. woman was said to have slept—“rested,” according to the commandment—on Sunday. On this charge, and because a speaker in returning to my house after a Sunday address took a ride in the last half hour of the day in a street-car, a resolution of endorsement of the W. C. T. U. failed to pass in a Louisiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and we were cruelly hurt by the tone of the discussion.
General Conference lifted us out of despair by noble resolutions against licensing the liquor traffic, and thereafter clerical dignitaries broke our hearts by a masterly inactivity—or took a scourge of small cords and proceeded, as it were, to drive us out with the hue and cry of “women’s rights,” lest, should a woman vote, her natural function should cease, and the sound of the lullaby and sewing machine be no longer heard in the land. It was comical sometimes to see how the bishops and politicians moved on the same line and for the same reason. But like some of our good bishops of slaveholding times, these certainly will not shine with lustre in the sky of history. Humbler ministerial brethren endured reproach with us and fought our battles; then we had sometimes the sorrow of seeing them removed from places of influence to obscure points in the service of the church. At last we and they tacitly understood that a preacher who wrought valiantly for prohibition jeoparded his “prospects.” So it came that some who had led us “went back” in the holy cause, and “standing afar off,” justified themselves, saying, “I’m as good a prohibitionist as you are, but I’m more practical.” Desperation seizes the soul of women in reform work when a preacher or politician uses the word “practical”; we know we shall get his “sympathy” but never his influence or his vote. And the diplomatic brother who has toexplainthat he is a temperance man, may hold clear qualifications for a citizenship in heaven, but is of no account whatever as a citizen of the militant kingdom Of God on earth, that must fight against “principalitiesand powers” if it would win the world to the principles of Christ.
It should be clearly understood that the legitimate work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is to close the open saloon, and not, as many mistake, to interfere with personal liberty by forcing total abstinence upon the individual. The members of the organization in the interests of consistency must be total abstainers; and because science pronounces alcohol a poison and an active peril in the human body, a vigorous educational propaganda is kept up in order that future generations may be protected by knowledge against the dangers of alcoholic drinks. The main point at issue is that the State has no right to license an institution which is a corrupter of public morals and a menace to social life. The Supreme Court of the United States has so interpreted. It is the sole duty of the State to protect and develop citizens; to protect their lives, their property, their morals and their rights; to develop the highest type of citizen that education by law and schoolhouse can produce. The saloon hazards the well-being of every citizen that is born to a State; it annuls the work of the church and the college; it disintegrates, degrades and destroys family life—the unit of the State; it impoverishes the home, pauperizes the child and debases manhood; it fills almshouses, jails and insane asylums; it lays the burden of the support of these institutions on the State; the taxes which all the people have paid for their mutual protection and development are unrighteously diverted to the sustenance of the victims of the saloon; the State protects a small class of citizensin doing injury to the interests of all other classes. For revenue, and for revenue only, it gives a right and a power to the saloon to make an unending army of criminals, paupers and lunatics out of the sons and daughters which every mother has gone down into the shadow of death to deliver into the keeping of her country.
The motherhood of the enlightened world is arousing against this treachery of the commonwealth to her sacred trust. The State has no right to sell her sons even unto righteousness; still less to deliver them into the bonds of iniquity for a price. It is incredible that the mother’s revolt did not begin long ago, for even the brute will fight for its young. But now they have begun to understand their duty and their power, and “so long as boys are ruined and mothers weep; so long as homes are wrecked and the sob of unsheltered children finds the ear of God; so long as the Gospel lets in the light for the lost, and Christ is King, there will be a contest on the temperance question until victory. So long as this Christian nation sanctions the destruction of its sons for revenue, and sets on a legalized throne ‘that sum of all villainies,’ the saloon; so long as ‘the wicked are justified for reward’ and cities are built with blood, there will be a prohibition issue, and one day the right will triumph.”
NERVOUS PROSTRATION AND A VENERABLE COUSIN.
I once heard a woman say that she had lived half a lifetime before she realized that the commandments were written for her. In a vague sort of way she had appropriated, “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not bear false witness;” but she did not intend to do these things—the commandments must be for those who did. Her dumb amazement may be imagined on hearing a venerable and saintly soul state that she was so grateful to God that in her long life she had had no temptation to be a Magdalen. It was unthinkable that she should have had.
But the stress of life grew to agony; disappointments and wrongs heaped upon my friend; and one day she stood bare-souled and alone before God, confronting the commandment: “Thoushalt not kill!” In her struggle back to the Divine she learned that all of the commandments were written for her. Ever since, her heart has been pierced with tenderest sympathy for every man or woman who has fallen before temptation, and the despair of the suicide seems her own.
Unvarying good health and steady nerves were my inheritance, and my husband’s fine, calm judgment helped to increase my nervous vigor. I am afraid Ihad once a quiet disdain for nervous women, and was supercilious towards what I deemed a lack of moral fiber, believing that with it health conditions would not have become “all at loose ends.” But a time came when I too was going from sofa to easy chair, and dropping back into bed limp and trembling; when the banging of a door or the rustling of a paper “set me wild;” when I was being a means of grace to all my family through giving them an opportunity to “let patience have its perfect work”—and all with no justifying cause, except that the iron of sorrow had entered my soul, the color had been taken from my life, and I had not yet found my readjustments. Nevertheless I denied my condition, and so one day the doctor tried to explain it to me. “A person,” he began, “is said to be nervous when presenting a special susceptibility to pain, or exhibiting an undue mobility of the nervous system, as when one starts, or shakes on the occasion of abrupt or intense sensorial impressions, thus showing an exalted emotional susceptibility. The heart itself under the influence of nervous stimulation may in a moment change its customary order and rate of action, and in extreme cases cease to beat. The whole mental processes, as well as the functions of organic life, may be seriously involved. Now in your case, madam——”
“Stop, doctor. I take in the fact,” said I, “which is evident in your high-sounding phrases, that nervous prostration is a killing complaint and you are going to treat me for it.”
“Perhaps so,” said the doctor. “It often happens that an exaltation or diminution of activity in some oneportion of the nervous system causes perverted action in another part, as when any unusual strain has been thrown upon you.”
“For instance,” said I, “when a friend came last Sunday and allowed me to carry up-stairs her grip-sack with books in it?”
“Politeness should never require you to do such a thing,” said the doctor, “but the strain may not be any physical exertion or overwork; deficient sleep, any sudden shock of joy or fear, especially terror, might prove fatal.”
“I was much frightened last summer,” said I, “by a stroke of lightning which destroyed an immense oak tree in front of the door. It was a worse panic than that which seizes one on seeing one’s husband bringing three gentlemen to dinner, when there is only one good little porter-house steak in the house.”
“Allow me to say,” continued the doctor, “nervousness characterizes women more than men. It sometimes comes on as a sequence of severe illness, some grave anxiety, some physical or moral shock, like the unexpected discovery of perfidy or disloyalty on the part of a friend. Then, too, nervous prostration is brought on by unremitting or monotonous duties, which keep the same paths of action from day to day.”
“I was told,” said I, “of a lawyer who entering his office the other day read upon his slate the statement that he would be back in half an hour; in a fit of absence of mind he took a seat and waited for himself, and it was some time before he realized that he was in his own office, and that he was not one of his own clients.”
“That,” replied the doctor, “was no worse than the case of the reverend gentleman who on going out one morning gathered up an ordinary business coat and carried it around the whole day, thinking it was his overcoat, and was more surprised than anybody else when informed of his mistake. These examples are evidences and symptoms of nervous disorder. I never knew a man to hurt himself by mere bodily labor; but excessive mental toil is certainly capable of damaging the nervous tissues. Any calamity, misfortune, pecuniary loss, or accident is liable to bring on nervous prostration. What are the symptoms? Loss of sleeping power, incapacity and aversion to work, lassitude, headache, an anxious and cross expression of countenance, heart disturbance, cramp—all these may be indications of local nervous exhaustion.”
“Doctor, how do you propose to exterminate this formidable enemy?”
“For the treatment of nervous diseases,” said he, “we have at our disposal invaluable remedies whose action is more or less special. There is strychnine, bromide of potassium, possessing the opposite properties of increasing and diminishing the reflex excitability of the nervous system, in addition to other beneficial modes of action. Then we have chloral and morphine, acting directly and indirectly as hypnotics, thus allowing the curative action of rest to come into play. For pain, we have opium, Indian hemp, subcutaneous injections of morphia, and the galvanic current. We have any number of drugs for influencing, relaxing, mitigating pain, reinforcing the nutrition of wasted muscles. Thenthere are nervine tonics, preparations of zinc, arsenic, iron, quinine, phosphorus, cod-liver oil, to say nothing of cold or tepid douches, and the massage treatment.”
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “am I to swallow all these poisonous things?”
“There is no occasion for alarm, madam. I don’t propose to prescribe all these things at once. The first thing I shall order is very important—it is a simple but nutritious diet. Eat plenty of ripe fruit; drink pure, distilled water; take plenty of gentle but regular exercise, and sleep as much as possible. You must be surrounded by agreeable society, have plenty of fresh air and excellent food, and with temperance, avoiding all excitement and mental exertion, I hope you will soon be well.”
“But, doctor, suppose baby Laura falls down-stairs or the house takes fire?”
“You are to be kept ignorant of all such things. The medicine you need is perfect rest, for after all it is the most powerful therapeutic agent when you understand its nature and the indications for its use. You rest your body in sleep, you rest your mind by looking on beautiful things, hearing good music, and thinking of nothing. Sleep is a preventive of disease, and the want of it, if carried too far, causes death. Sleep is balm to the careworn mind and over-wrought brain. In these days of emulation and worry, the waste of nerve force must be repaired by sleeping and cessation from all work. Now is the time to stop, lest you come to the door of the insane asylum. I repeat, absolute rest,” said the doctor, striking his cane on the floor,“and no stimulants to excite rapid circulation. The brain recovers slowly and resents too early demands on it after any injury. The general health must be maintained at the highest possible standard, and you must not worry. You must be a philosopher.”
“Doctor,” said I, “I can do better than that; I can be a Christian. I can say, ‘Yes, Lord,’ to whatever God sends. That is the philosophy of Hannah Whitall Smith, and I have tested its efficacy.”
“Yes, madam, I too,” said the doctor, “would recommend anything of a soothing, tranquilizing character. I shall call to-morrow; good morning.”
I have reflected somewhat since those days, and when a woman tells me now that she is suffering from nervous prostration I know that she is struggling with a disease—a mournful, painful, destructive actuality. Emerson says, “when one is ill something the devil’s the matter.” I know it is so with a woman, for all the peace and joy of life go out of her with sickness. I believe, too, that she would be subject to less nervous prostration if she had greater part in the more enlarging and ennobling human activities. But as mother earth reinvigorated him who touched her, so what life we have comes from God, and indwelling with the Divine ought to renew us body and soul. Christ Himself may not have revealed the miracle of health to the apostles, but He taught them to use it. Mankind soon lost connection with the spiritual dynamo of revitalization—except most intermittingly. But has this been so through necessity or by reason of gross materialism? Among “the greater things than these” of the promise, may not highly spiritualizednatures already be refinding the natural laws of healthful living through emphasizing the rightful dominance of man’s spiritual being? “All my fresh springs are in Thee!” “I will arise in newness of life” cannot refer to the soul without including the body, for the greater includes the less. The tendency to give less and less medicine; the declaration of the medical world that drugs are not curative; the healing of the body by the invisible forces of nature, as is being done every day—all these things electrify with the hope that the world is about to discover “the miracles in which we are nourished.” The revelation of the 20th century may be how to pull out that “nail of pain” which, according to Plato, fastens the mind to the body; and the joy of simple, harmonious existence may become a reasonable hope to suffering mortals.
After this experience of illness I made a trip through Canada and the East. With new vigor and the old interest I resumed my home duties and was preparing to enjoy our New Orleans carnival season, when one morning the housemaid announced: “Mis’ Calline, I do b’lieve Rex is come, fur dar’s er ole man at de do’ wid er shabby umbril an’ deole-es’han’bag—an’ he say he’s you’ cousin!” I hastened to meet him, and knew at once who it was; but the old man was in an exhausted condition. He said: “I have some brandy with me, and I need it. I have been very sick, but I thought I was well enough to come to see you once more before I die.” I administered a stimulant to old cousin Jimmie, and in a cheerful strain he continued: “Oh, you’re so like your ma, cousin. She was an angel, and yourworldly-minded old pa gave her lots of trouble, for your ma was pious, and she had a hard time to get him into the church. Cousin David was a fine man, too, and he had to give in at last to the blessed persuasion of cousin Betsey, your angel-mother.”
The next day I observed cousin Jimmie was holding a wooden whistle in his hand, and blowing softly into it. I inquired what it was. “This whistle,” he said, “is older than your old spinning-wheel and the ancient chiny in the corner cupboard.” “But, I enquired, what is the use of it?” Cousin Jimmie replied: “They called up the crows with it, so they could shoot ’em.” “I always regarded crows as harmless creatures whose inky blackness of color was very useful as a comparison,” I replied. “Well, you never knowed anything at all about crows,” said cousin Jimmie. “I tell you, when a crow lights on a year o’ corn, they eats every single grain before they stop; and I tell you they are suspicious critters, too—these crows! I used to thread a horsehair into a needle and stick it in a grain o’ corn, and draw the hair through, and tie it, and throw it around, and they would pick it up and swallow the corn. Then I would stand off and watch the rascals scratchin’ their beaks tryin’ to get rid o’ the hair, until they got so bothered they would quit that field and never come back. I was a little boy, them days.” “Yes,” said I, “and boys are so cruel.” “Maybe so,” said cousin Jimmie; “but I wa’n’t ’lowed to have a gun to shoot ’em—crows nor nuthin’ else. Boys was boys them days, not undersized men struttin’ ’round with a cigyar in their mouths, too grand to lay holt of a plow handle.Why, some big boys, sixteen years old, can’t ketch a horse and saddle him, let alone put him to a buggy all right. I know that for a fact!”
“Do you like roast lamb and green peas, cousin Jimmie?—for that is what we have for dinner to-day; but I can order anything else you like better?” “I’m not hard to please, cousin,” he answered. “I like good fat mutton—and turnips; but cousin, them turnips must be biled good anddone.Doneturnips never hurt nobody. Why, when I had the pneumony last winter I sent and got a bagful—and I had ’em cooked all right; and way in the night, whilst I had a fever, I would retch out and get a turnip and eat it. Bile ’em good and done and they can’t hurt nobody—sickor well.”
“I never heard of sick people eating turnips,” said I.
“But you see I have, and has eat ’em, and am here to tell you about ’em.”
“General Grant is nominated for President,” said I, looking over the morning paper. “Grant, did you say? I’ll never vote for him! He wasn’t satisfied with $25,000 for salary, but wanted $50,000; and nex’ time he’ll want a hundred thousand. Do you know, cousin,” said the old man, “that them Yankees robbed me of one hundred and fifty niggers? The government ought to pay me for ’em. They had no more right to take them niggers than they had to steal my horses and mules—which they stole at the same time. I tell you, they mustpayme for my property!” and cousin Jimmie came down with a heavy blow of his walking cane on the rug. “Ef they don’t pay me they are the grandestset o’ villyuns on top o’ earth! When the blue-coated raskils was goin’ up the Cheneyville road they met up with two runaways old Mr. Ironton had caught and hobbled with a chain. A Yankee said it was a shame for a human bein’ to be treated so. Mrs. Ironton flung back at ’em: ‘I don’t care! you may show them to the President himself, and hang them round his neck, if you like.’ The old woman was so sassy that the man simmered down. I heard another officer inquire very perlite, ef it was customary to sarve the niggers this way, and I said we had to do something to keep ’em down in their places; and, no matter how bad a nigger was, he was too valuable to kill, so we punished ’em in other ways.
“To-morrow is my birthday,” sighed cousin Jimmie, “and I’ll be eighty-eight years old.” I celebrated the day for him and made him some presents; and I asked him to tell me bravely and truly whether or not he would be willing to live his life over, to accumulate all the money and estate he once possessed, to become a second time sick and old and destitute. Cousin Jimmie was silent a moment; then his aged eyes twinkled, and a smile spread over his still handsome old face: “I would try it over; life is mighty sweet; I’m not ready to give it up, cousin.” “But you must before long relinquish all there is in this life.” “Well,” said he, “I’ve made pervision. I gave my niece Mary all my silver and my red satin furniture, and my brother has promised to bury me with my people in Mississippi. I’m all right there.”
“I’ve heard, cousin Jimmie, that you denied the globular shape of the earth. How is that?”
“Why, Iknowthe earth is flat. ’Tain’t fashionable to say so, but it don’t stand to reason that the world is round and flyin’ in the air, like folks say. ’Tain’t no sech thing—else eyes ain’t no account.”
Two years more of this life, and then old cousin Jimmie—who was my father’s first cousin on his mother’s side—was able from some other planet, we hope, to investigate the shape of this one to which he had clung so loyally.
ENTER—AS AN EPISODE—MRS. COLUMBIANA PORTERFIELD.
There are characters of such marked and peculiar individuality that they loom upon one’s consciousness like Stonehenge, or any other magnificent ruin, as Charles Lamb says of Mrs. Conrady’s ugliness; and their discovery “is an era in one’s existence.” In this way one of my intimate associates, Mrs. Columbiana Porterfield, stands preeminent in my early and later recollections; but I was sorry to see into her. Every time we were together it impressed me more vividly than before, that self was the great center about which everything revolved for her. All her sympathies were related to that idol. No small human creature interested her large mind, except as connected with herself. She was devoted to her church, especially to its ministers, but it was a sanctuary where she worshiped self in the guise of godliness, and her own honor and glory was what she worked for in the name of the Master. At one time the sense of her colossal selfishness so ate into my spirit of charity that I tried to work it off by writing out, to one of my intimates, the following letters which embrace actual incidents and individual experiences through which are revealed Columbiana’sinordinate ambitions and desires for distinction—“her mark, her token; that by which she was known.” Perhaps she may stand like a lighthouse to warn off other women from the same shoals.
Number 1.
Miss Columbiana Porterfield was fat, fair, and almost forty years old when she became a winter visitor at Colonel Johnson’s plantation home in the far South. She was so much respected and admired by the Colonel that when his wife died he urgently invited her to fill the void in his heart and home.
The position seemed advantageous, and the lady accepted the situation, entering confidently upon the duties involved, resolving to adapt herself to her surroundings when she could not bend circumstances to her own strong will. She was a sensible woman, and her good husband loved her with a doting, foolish fondness which he had never exhibited to the departed wife of his youth.
The family servants did not hesitate in giving her the allegiance due to power and place, and they were careful to pay all deference to the new mistress; therefore Mrs. Johnson was surprised to overhear the housewoman saying to the cook: “I tell yer dat ar white ’oman from de Norf ain’t got dem keen eyes in dat big head o’ hern for nuthin’; I’m afeered of her, I is dat.” The lady was wisely deaf to these remarks, but they rankled in her mind several days.
One of the neighbors thought Mrs. Johnson was not a good housekeeper, because she had apple fritters fordinner, when there was ample time to make floating-island and even Charlotte Russe before that meal was served. Yet with all this talk it was easy to see that the newly-adopted head of the household had completely identified herself with her family.
There are Americans who go to Europe, and after a short stay no longer regard the United States as a fit dwelling-place for civilized beings; who indulge themselves in the abuse of scenery, climate, customs and government of their own native land as freely as any hostile-minded foreigner. Therefore it is not strange that Northerners who come to live in the South should become attached to their surroundings, and even prefer them to all others which they ever knew.
Mrs. Johnson loved her stepchildren, Harry and Lucy. She taught them to call her “aunt,” but their own mother could not have been more devoted to the children of the father who had lain down and died amidst the great conflict which was a horror to the whole country. Mrs. Johnson was greatly agitated by the war and its results, and as soon as possible after this cruel strife was over, she took Lucy with her on a visit to her Northern home, leaving Harry behind. Among the first letters sent back was the following, dated October 15th, 1867:
My dearest Harry,—My sister was rejoiced to see me alive once more; but I feel like a stranger, for when I look at your sister I cannot realize that she is here where she does not belong. It is a visible contrast of two extremes, my family representing one, and Lucy,the other. The North and South will breakfast together to-morrow morning on buckwheat cakes and codfish balls. Everybody loves your little rebel sister. Even the girl in the kitchen dotes on her, and looks lovingly on the dear girl while she is demolishing the dainty dishes she has compounded for her delectation. I don’t mean fish-balls, for she hates them.
I know she thinks Lucy is an angel, while I suspect I am thought to be exactly the reverse, judging by the disagreeable, reluctant way she has of serving me. A woman who had been teaching the freedmen down in South Carolina came here last week to collect money for them. Everybody went to hear her speak, and Lucy just went along with the rest. It was a highly improper thing for a Southern girl to do. I knew it, but could not put my veto on it and make myself odious to the family, so I held my peace and let her go, though I should have been ashamed to be seen in such a place. She told me all about it, however, and you have a right to be proud of your noble sister. She conquered her nerves and sat perched on a front seat and listened with great attention, and almost repeated the whole thing for me when she came home.
The woman dilated eloquently upon the awful sin of caste prejudice existing among the abominable South Carolina aristocrats, who, while they would accost and speak to the colored pupils, were so stuck up that they regarded the white teachers as no better than the dirt under their feet. After the speech was over, they took up a collection, and when my sister told me she saw Lucy put in five dollars, I was just too provoked to saya word. To do this foolish thing after all our losses was too much—when she has ordered a new pelisse from New York, too! I could scarcely sleep for thinking of this folly. The cold weather gives me a despondency anyhow. It makes me think of my own home in the South, with all its comforts and the beautiful wood fires, now mine no longer. True, the house is mine, the dear Colonel gave me that, and the land, and the stock. There is the old family carriage and the horses; but it is bitter as wormwood and gall to have no one here to drive me out or do the smallest thing for me unless I pay out money which I no longer possess. It was a wicked thing to ruin and break up our homes like this, but, my dear boy, we must try to be content with what God sends. Our portion is not money, but water; an overflow of it in the river, and too many caterpillars in the cotton fields eating up our crops. You must be prepared to suffer poverty and affliction without slaves to polish your boots and rub down your horses. You may even be obliged to chop kindling for me to cook with, before you are done.
The old purposes, habits and customs cannot be carried out any longer. You must not think of matrimony. You ought now to wait until you are thirty years old before you attempt to make a shipwreck of your life by marriage. But I do know a perfect Hebe who would suit you exactly. She comes here often. Oh! she is a dainty warbler, not quite full-fledged, but superior, noble, magnificent in design, able to soar higher than any of those finiky, twittering little canaries you love to play with. A splendid ancestry, too, as ever lived,solid, wealthy men, though some of them are deteriorated by having married wives who were nobody. Some women dwarf men’s souls by their own littleness. I hope you will not fall a victim to any such.
You must keep up the family prestige; your talents and associations demand a foremost place, and you must refuse to commonize yourself with that low, ignorant, profane, dram-drinking set of young men around you. I do heartily despise them all, and have never received them in my house when I could help it. They would gladly drag you down to their own level if they could.
How these good New Englanders rejoice in the emancipation of the slaves! All my friends and relations chuckle over it, so that it looks to me like malice triumphant. Lucy came out last Sunday in a beautiful new hat and pelisse from New York, looking like the daughter of a duchess; and old cousin Althea said that she did not look that day as much like ruin as she had expected when she saw me and Lucy getting out of the carriage in our shabby old war clothes. That old thing is perfectly hateful and always was.
If our old servants are still with you, say “howdie” to them for me. I hope Chloe has not run off with her freedom anywhere. She does make such nice waffles and French rolls. You must contrive some way to keep Chloe if I am expected to spend much time with you.
Your loving aunt,Columbiana.
Number 2.
My dear Harry,—Lucy has a beau. She denies the fact, but there is a gentleman here from New York who is an intimate friend of my brother, and he looks at your sister and watches her so eagerly, and does so many things to please her and to promote my comfort, that I am dead sure it is an elaborate case of love. I do not think him a suitable match for Lucy in every respect, but he is very useful to accompany us on excursions and he manages a pair of horses admirably, and it is convenient to have such a man around. We went to cousin Sabina Suns’ yesterday, where we were all invited to dine and to meet the Bishop and Prof. Elliott. I made occasion to pass through the dining-room. Heaps of red currants in lovely cut-glass bowls, golden cream in abundance, white mountain cake and luscious peaches were set out for dessert, instead of the everlasting doughnuts and perpetual pie which you see everywhere. Not that I care for dessert. I knew we should have oyster soup and a pair of roasted fowls and all accompaniments of a regular dinner, for Sabina Suns’ girl is the best cook I have found anywhere.
We were all sitting in the west drawing-room, and the Bishop had not yet arrived, when somehow we got upon the subject of the late unpleasantness, and Sabina Suns blurted out that Jefferson Davis was a traitor, and ought to be hanged. Tears came to Lucy’s eyes and the blood mounted to her temples. She suddenly disappeared. I saw the fire in the child’s eyes and felt the bitterness in her heart, though I said nothing to her,but I begged Sabina to spare our feelings, for I saw she had gone too far. In a few moments Lucy appeared with her hat and gloves and bade cousin Sabina Suns good-by, and went away before our astonishment had subsided.
I wanted Lucy to meet the Bishop and the young college professor of entomology. I had been telling her what a fine young man he was, of such a wealthy family, and it now became her to be on the lookout for some better establishment than any poor Southerner could offer. She is young and pays little attention to what I say. Sabina was rude and unkind, but the Bishop and Professor were coming, and then there was the dinner, so I remained and really had a splendid time, except for this unpleasant episode.
I intended to scold Lucy, but when I reached my sister’s house I found it was no use. Lucy’s fiery indignation would brook no reproof. She opened the flood-gates of her wrath upon Sabina without mercy. She said the woman had elevated one of her enormous feet upon the other as though such cruel language must inevitably be accompanied by some vulgar action, and her two feet so elevated seemed high enough for a common gallows post. To be candid, I was almost scared to death to see your sister so angry and spiteful. But I like a woman of spirit; it is not best, however, to run off on a tangent in the face of good company and a first-class dinner. My dear Harry, I think you are better trained, and would have shown more common sense under the same circumstances.
The Hightowers, who have so often entertained me inNew York, want their son Howard to come to the mountains or go somewhere to rest after he is graduated, and I have invited him to come up here as a sort of return hospitality for a long visit I made with them. The New Yorkbeauis soon to leave. I could not understand that Lucy promoted his departure in any way, but I thought Howard would be useful. Not that I think he would be a more desirablepartithan the other, but it is handy to have a young fellow around to wait upon us or take us to different places. He will come next week, but I shall not apprise my sister, who might object at the last moment, though I am sure she will treat him well, as she does all my friends.
Lucy dressed herself with great elegance this evening. I did not think it was worth while to be wasting her best dry goods and her dear self on the people she was going to visit; and as I sat in her dressing-room and saw her laced up in her new lavender silk, which is supremely becoming to her lovely complexion, and then pin on a rich Brussels lace collar, I could not help reproving her by reminding her of her long deceased elder sister, who, I said, doubtless was looking down from heaven in sorrow and disapprobation of such vanities. “Oh, Aunt Columbia!” said she, “Nanny Jones was right when she said you had such a terrible way of throwing up a girl’s dead kinfolks to her; please don’t make me cry; I don’t want to go to the party with red eyes.” Henry, that Jones girl ought never to have been invited to your uncle Joseph’s house. She was an incorrigible piece, and was a great trial to me that month she spent with me.
I do hope you go regularly to church. It looks beautiful to see a high-bred young gentleman sitting in his father’s pew. The desecration of the Sabbath in our Southern country is perfectly awful. I never could bear to see it. You know your uncle Joe, Christian as he proposes to be, will say to his wife: “Julia, if you must have a cold dinner once a week, get it in on a week day; on Sunday I must have something better than usual, and it must be fresh and hot.” I frequently stopped there after church and dined with him, so I was well aware of this bad example, right in our own family, as it were.
One would think, after fighting through such a long, bloody war, that our young men would have done with all private killing and murdering, and would settle down at home and be industrious and peaceful; so I was all the more shocked to hear that young Joe McDonald had shot and killed Billy Whitfield, and all about a trifling little Texas pony. Joe actually had the impertinence to write to Lucy explaining that he only acted in self-defense, and begging her not to refuse to speak to him when she returned. She shall never answer his letter or look at him again with my consent. I tremble for you, my dear boy, subject as you are to such dreadful associations, and I pray that you may be kept in safety from every evil-influence.
Make Chloe look after the poultry. If she sets some hens now, they (the chickens) will be ready for broiling by Christmas. You know how fond I am of young chickens for supper. I have eaten enough cold breadup here to last a lifetime. It may be good for dyspeptics, but I am not one.
Your loving aunt,Columbiana.
Number 3.
My dear Harry,—I do miss the New York man. He was a quiet, sensible gentleman, and if you happened to utter an idea above the average he was always able to respond and keep the ball of conversation passing agreeably around the table and fireside. There are so many men who will not take the trouble to answer a lady’s question with any serious thoughtfulness. This boy Howard is not a goose by any means, but he is full of animal spirits and all sorts of pranks. He has kept Lucy racing about over the country so that she has no time for anything else. Two weeks ago I ripped up my old black satin dress which did not set right in the back, and there it lies waiting for Lucy to put it together—for I do hate dressmakers’ bills, and your sister learned the whole science of remodeling old clothes during the war, when she could not buy any cloth to save her life.
Lucy can embroider and do all kinds of needlework, but she is letting the needle lie idle and putting out all her own sewing, which I cannot allow her to do with a good conscience.
I noticed the other day that Howard had Lucy’s diamond ring on his little finger, and now she tells me he lost one of the stones out of it when he went after pond lilies yesterday. The boy was plagued and worried over it and said he would replace it; but that isnonsense, for the Hightowers would never have sent Howard here on my invitation if they had money to buy diamonds. I made Lucy put away the ring in her trunk, and told her jewels were unbecoming to a Christian girl and her father ought never have given her any diamonds.
We are going to visit a mountain to-morrow. Lucy is wild after such things, and no wonder, living so long in a flat country which can boast of nothing which constitutes scenery, not even a pebble or a brook of clear water. These hills are perfectly heavenly with their grassy slopes ornamented by noble trees, and then the meadows so fragrant with new-mown hay; I am lost in admiration myself, so I cannot blame the raptures of this unsophisticated child of nature, who sees it all for the first time.
My sister’s horses are high-spirited creatures, and Howard, who has had no experience in driving, insisted upon taking the reins, when they ran away and Lucy was thrown out; and the funniest thing happened to her in a wonderful and providential manner; she was landed upon a bed a farmer’s wife had put out to sun before her door. She fell right in on the feathers and not a bone was broken. But my heart failed me when Howard came home at a late hour, with the side of his face scratched and bruised, and helped Lucy out of the battered carriage, which had to be repaired before it could be driven home.
I shall greatly rejoice when that boy takes his leave, for I am in hourly dread of his impetuosity in getting us into trouble.
Still, he is a bright, noble spirit, and is so penitent when he does anything wrong that I must needs forgive him. I really fear my sister is beginning to weary of my young friend. I think the broken phaeton has some influence on her feelings.
I have no time to write a long letter, so I enclose one which I have just read from your cousin Maria which contains a great lesson for a young man setting out in life—one which I hope you will lay to heart.
Dear Auntie,—Tell Lucy to have the lilac silk dress made up, which she is commissioned to buy for me. We are the same size almost, so it can be fitted to her shape, and I want it trimmed with real lace. I never saw any lace while the war went on and I long to feel once more like a lady. I think a liberal quantity of fine applique or real Brussels lace would help me to realize the Union is truly restored. So Lucy must reserve one-half the money I send for the dress to be invested in this trimming.
But I must tell you, Auntie, such a strange thing happened night before last. It was after midnight and everybody was in bed when a loud knocking at the hall door waked us all up, and father went down to see who it was. What was our surprise to see our neighbor’s wife, Mrs. McAlpine, all wet with rain, without any hat or shawl, her long black hair hanging down her back, the very picture of a forlorn and despairing creature. She begged my father to take her in and conceal her, for she said she had run away from home, for her husband was going to kill her if he could find her. Mymother asked her what she had done to awaken such wrath and vengeance, and she replied: “Nothing at all; Mr. McAlpine had been drinking and was wild from the effects of liquor.” Mother gave the poor lady the guest chamber and sent me to her room with dry clothing, and I assisted her to undress. Auntie, when I pulled her wet dress down from her white shoulders what was my horror to see them all bruised and seamed in every direction as by the marks of whip or cowhide. “Oh, my God,” said I, “what a shame!” She quickly covered herself with the gown I brought, while tears silently flowed down her pale cheeks. My own blood boiled with indignation and I resolved that I never would speak to the handsome, gentlemanly brute who had committed this outrage upon his patient and gentle wife. I told mother what I had seen and she turned pale and told me to say nothing to anyone, but try to contribute in every way to the comfort of the unhappy guest who had come to us in such a singular way. The next day about ten o’clock Mr. McAlpine came and asked to see father. When Mrs. McAlpine found her husband was in the house she seemed crazed with a mortal terror and begged mother to lock her up in the closet and “save” her. Mother tried to reassure her, but in vain; nor did she draw an easy breath until she saw him driving down the avenue after his long interview with father was over. Late that evening father called mother and me into the library and informed us that we must not feel so hostile toward the man whose unhappy wife we were entertaining, for he was entitled to our sympathy and pity, and he was sorry to tell us that Colonel McAlpine was the wretched victim of anintemperate wife, whom he had tried in vain to reform and restrain and in fact he had resorted to everything else before using the lash and my father was convinced of the truth of his version of the miserable story.
The Colonel begged us to keep the lady quiet for a day or two and then bring her home. It seemed to me nothing could excuse such brutality, and when mother grew somewhat reserved to her unbidden guest, I never varied in my conduct, and she was quick to appreciate my kindness. When two days had passed, to my surprise she herself proposed to return and asked me to drive over with her to her home. I was reluctant to leave her then, but the Colonel received her with such an apparent kindness and cordiality that I was entirely reassured and I tried to banish the recollection of those dreadful marks on his wife’s shoulders. But what could I do under the circumstances? The woman said she must go home—to her child.
You will think this is enough of tragedy, but wait, dear Auntie, until you hear the end. Last night Mr. McAlpine shot his wife through the heart, then blew out his own brains, and the whole country is perfectly horrified, and the wildest rumors are going around. Father has written to their friends in New York, and mother has agreed to take care of the baby until they come for it.
It seems really frivolous for me to go back to the dress question after these horrors, but tell Lucy to have our dresses made open a little in the neck, as they are for evening.
Yours devotedly,Maria.
THE SOUTHERN WOMAN BECOMES A “CLUBABLE” BEING.
In every individual life there enter events which in their enlarged influence are analogous to epoch-making periods in the nation’s history. Such, surely, was my meeting with Susan B. Anthony, when she visited the New Orleans Exposition in 1885. I had long kept a vivid and dear picture of her in the inner sanctuary of my mind; had become acquainted through the press with the vigor of her intellect and the native independence and integrity of her character; had known she was a woman “born out of due season,” who had already spent fifty years of her life trying to make “the rank and file” of women and men see that the human race in all its social relations is in bondage, while woman occupies a position less than free. I had so long been one with her in spirit and principles that I was not prepared to feel so like a little chicken looking into the shell out of which it has just stepped, as I did feel on coming face to face with all the expansiveness her many years of service for women had wrought her own justice-loving personality.
New Orleans stretched out a friendly hand to Miss Anthony. The surprise of finding her a simple,motherly, gentle-mannered woman instead of the typical woman’s-rights exponent, disarmed and warmed their hearts, so that press and people received her cordially. She was invited to address the city public schools, and spoke to many appreciative audiences during the few weeks New Orleans had the uplift of her presence. In a private letter of that date she said to me: “I remember my visit to the Crescent City with a great deal of pleasure, and cherish the friendships I made there. We are finding out quite a good many fine things about women in the Gulf States, so that I think you may feel proud that so much true growth went on—even while that other problem of freedom was being settled.
“Susan B. Anthony.”
Miss Anthony’s work here made a permanent impression on public thought; the personal hospitality of the people meant a certain sort of receptivity of her cause, for which the war era and the more trying decade following it was a period of incubation; for unquestionably all times of stress and effort and experience of soul are seasons of enlargement, of suggestion, and form the matrix of a new life. If movement be once started in original cell structures, reforming is sure, and the new species depends on the character of the environment. Heart-rending and irremediable as were the personal effects of the war to thousands, there is little doubt but that it has resulted in definite gain to the whole people, by establishing a system of self-reliance in place of reliance upon the labor of others; and even more throughthe liberation of the general mind from captivity to the belief in the ethical rectitude of human slavery.
But it takes the North a long time to come to any true understanding of the Southern people. Certain transient, exterior features—which are as impermanent as the conditions that created them—have been mistaken for their real character, which depends upon indwelling ideals—and these have always been thoroughly American. The leisure for thought and study which ante-bellum ease allowed to many molded a high-thinking type that was true to the best intellectual and Christian models, as the character of Southern public men has evidenced. The simple integrity of the Southern ideal has had no match in national life except in the rigid standard of New England. Puritan and Huguenot—far apart as they seem—were like founders of the rugged righteousness of American principles; and in so far as we have forgotten our origin, has the national character lost its purity.
The love of freedom is ingrained in the ideals of the South. Its apparent conservatism is not hostility to the new nor intense devotion to the old; it is more an inevitable result of thin population scattered over wide areas, with little opportunity for the frequent and direct contact which is indispensable to the rapid and general development of a common idea. It is not true that Southern men are more opposed than others to the freedom of women. The several Codes show that the Southern States were the first to remove the inequality of women as to property rights. It must also be remembered that a vigorous propaganda for the enfranchisementof women has been conducted for fifty years, at great expense of time and talent, all over the North, while it may be said to have just begun in the South.
If in 1890 any effort had been made by the National American Woman Suffrage Association to influence the Constitutional Convention then in session in Mississippi, the woman’s ballot on an educational basis might have been secured. Henry Blackwell was the only prominent Northern suffragist who seemed to have a wide-open eye on that convention. What he could he did, gratis, to help the cause, and won the friendship and gratitude of many in that State. The leading women who were applied to offered not one word of appreciation of the situation—doubtless because they were accustomed to expecting nothing good out of Nazareth; perhaps also because they would not aid what seemed an unrighteous effort to eliminate the negro vote.
It is not the first time in suffrage history that the white woman has been sacrificed to the brother in black. A political necessity brought within a few votes the political equality of woman. If Mississippi had then settled the race question on the only statesmanlike and just plan—by enfranchising intelligence and disfranchising ignorance—other States would have followed; for the South generally desires a model for a just and legal white supremacy—without the patent subterfuge of “grandfather clauses.” The heartbreak of any human soul or cause is not to have been equal to its opportunity. The whole woman’s movement is yet bearing the consequences of that eclipse of vision ten years ago.
The first ground broken in the cultivation of greaterprivileges for Louisiana women was the organization of the Woman’s Club of New Orleans. In 1884—as narrated in its history prepared for the World’s Columbian Exposition—in response to a notice in theNew Orleans Times-Democrat, twelve women met in the parlor of the Young Men’s Christian Association and organized the first Woman’s Club in the South.
Miss Elizabeth Bisland, now Mrs. Charles W. Wetmore of New York, was its first president. Miss Bisland had already earned fair fame in literature, and the South was justly proud of her. She afterwards challenged the world’s notice by her swift girdling of the globe in the interest of theCosmopolitan Magazine. The charter members of the pioneer club were of the heroic type, and amid fluctuations of hope and despair, forced on by the irresistible spirit of the age, founded a society which numbered its members by hundreds, and which secured and retained the sympathy and respect of the people.
The Constitution provided at first only for working women, but afterward eliminated this restriction. It stated that, evolved as it was from a progressive civilization, its movements must be elastic, its work versatile and comprehensive. It estimated its own scope as follows: “The vital and influential work of our club must always be along sociological lines. The term embraces pursuits of study and pastime, our labors and relaxations. In the aggregate we are breaking down and removing barriers of local prejudice; we are assisting intellectual growth and spiritual ambition in the community of which we are a dignified and effectivebody—for the immense economy of moral force made possible by a permanent organization such as ours, is well understood by the thoughtful.” It extended hospitality in the public recognition of extraordinary achievements by women, and helped to bring aspirants in art, literature and sociology before appreciative audiences, and introduced to New Orleans many world-renowned women and men.
Being the first woman’s club in the South it was the subject of peculiar interest and attention from other organizations of women, and was wise enough, from the beginning, to ally itself with the general movement. Its delegate was a conspicuous part of the National Convention of Women’s Clubs, held in New York in 1889, under the auspices of Sorosis; in 1892 it was represented in the Convention of Federated Clubs, in Chicago, by its president and delegate, and was present in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1894. It was the host, in connection with Portia Club, in 1895, of the “Association for the Advancement of Women,” which enjoyed for a week the novelty of the Crescent City and its environs.
Through its initiation, matrons were placed in station houses and a bed was furnished in the “Women’s and Children’s Hospital.” It petitioned for a revocation of Mrs. Maybrick’s sentence, and distributed rations to the sufferers in the great overflows of the Mississippi and Texas rivers. It is clearly manifest from the foregoing that the Woman’s Club was the initial step of whatever progression women have made through subsequent organizations.
Following the enlarging influence of the New Orleans Exposition in 1885-86, there came the great contest to overthrow the Louisiana State Lottery. The whole energy of the church and every citizen was called into action all over the State. Women’s Lottery Leagues were formed in every town,—that in New Orleans numbering 900 members; it was denominated “the crowning influence that resulted in victory.” It is impossible to overestimate the liberative value for woman of this struggle brought to a successful issue; or to reckon how far back into inertia she would have been thrown by defeat; for the first time in our post-bellum history it united women of all classes and ages in a common moral and political battle-ground. The federal anti-lottery law which has secured the results of this victory may prove to be an invaluable precedent for anti-trust legislation.
In 1892, in response to my invitation, some of the strong, progressive and intellectual women of New Orleans were ready to meet at my house and organize the first suffrage association in Louisiana. It was formed with nine members, and was called the “Portia Club.” The officers were Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, president; Mrs. Jas. M. Ferguson, vice-president; Mrs. Evelyn Ordway, treasurer. Through its influence Governor Foster appointed four women on the school boards of some of the Northern parishes of Louisiana. It has done excellent educational work by the discussion of such subjects as “Is the Woman in the Wage-earning World a Benefit to Civilization?” “Is Organization Beneficial to Labor?” “Hasthe State of Wyoming been Benefited by Woman Suffrage?” “Would Municipal Suffrage for Women be a Benefit in New Orleans?” “The Initiative and Referendum;” “The Republic of Venice;” “Disabilities of Women in Louisiana.” The Portias have maintained a leading part in all public causes that have enlisted women, and in the interests of full suffrage were heard by the Suffrage Committee of the Constitutional Convention of 1898.
On the occasion of Miss Susan B. Anthony’s seventieth birthday, a reception at my house brought together not only those favorable to our undertaking but many whom it was desirable to enlist. When that gentle-faced, lion-hearted pioneer, Lucy Stone, yielded up her beautiful, self-effacing life, the Portia Club held a fitting memorial service. Mrs. Clara C. Hoffman made a most memorable suffrage address for the Portias in this city, which aroused tremendous enthusiasm. She lectured extensively elsewhere in the State, and wrote to me as follows after her visit here: “It is generally claimed that Southern people are conservative and bitterly opposed to any mention of equal suffrage. In my recent tour I found them not only willing but anxious to hear the subject discussed. I came into Louisiana at the request of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Convention, and had been informed that I must not say anything about suffrage, as the people would not bear it. In my first address I reviewed the hindering causes that delay and prevent the establishment of needed reforms, and showed the danger of enfranchising all the vice and ignorance in the land without seekingto counteract it; but I said not a word about what the counteractant might be. The convention closed with Sunday services; but before the day was gone I received an invitation from leading citizens—professional and business men—to speak in the Opera House in Shreveport at their expense, on Monday night, on woman suffrage. A packed audience greeted me when I was cordially introduced by a prominent lawyer. I presented arguments, answered objections. Round after round of applause interrupted, and many crowded about at the close, expressing themselves with utmost warmth. How is that for Shreveport, and Louisiana?”
Later Mrs. Hoffman spoke at Monroe and Lake Charles with equal acceptance. One of our city papers said of her: “Mrs. Hoffman entered bravely upon her subject, interspersing her remarks with delicious bits of witticism. She is a forcible and brilliant speaker, a radical of the radicals, but disarms by her clear, genial manner of presenting truth.”
Besides the women’s societies in the various churches, which have done so much to widen the field of woman’s thought and endeavor, the Arena Club of New Orleans, under the leadership of Mrs. James M. Ferguson, has been a vital force. While tacitly endorsing suffrage, it advances social, political and economic questions of the day. Its latest efforts have been to create sentiment for anti-trust legislation.
There has been a valuable period of training through Auxiliaries. Every great movement, social and religious, had its Woman’s Auxiliary. These helped to reveal to woman her own capacities and her utter want ofpower. But the day of the Auxiliary is done. If some of the auxiliary women have not yet found out what woman ought to do, they have discovered the next best thing—what not to do!
In 1895 an amicable division of the Portia Club was made, the offshoot becoming the Era Club—Equal Rights Association. It was a vigorous child, full of progressive energy, and soon outgrew its mother. Its original members, like the Portia, were nine, as follows: Mmes. Ferguson, Ordway, Hereford, Pierce, Misses Brewer, Brown, Koppel, Nobles, Van Horn. At this juncture Miss Anthony, accompanied by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, strengthened our hearts and cause by her presence. It was again my privilege to entertain her in my home. She spoke to an enthusiastic audience and Mrs. Catt was complimented in the same way. The next morning the following letter from a leading member of the New Orleans bar was brought to Miss Anthony by a member of the Portia Club: “That was a great meeting last night. When people are willing to stand for three long hours and listen to speakers it means something. There were ten or twelve men and a score of women standing within ten feet of me, and not one of them who did not remain to the end. There are few men who can hold an audience in that way. I looked around the Assembly Hall and counted near me eight of my legal confrères. One of the most distinguished lawyers in the State told me in court this morning that Mrs. Catt’s argument was one of the finest speeches he had ever listened to. Yesterday I was asked at dinner to define the word ‘oratory.’ Mrs. Catt is an exponentof ‘the art of moving human hearts to beat in unison with her own’—which is the end and aim of oratory,—and was that quality which made the Athenians who heard Demosthenes declare that they would ‘fight Philip.’ Give the speaker a lawyer’s compliments.”
Miss Anthony was much moved by this letter. “All this,” she said, “is so much sweeter than the ridicule that used to come to me in those early days when I stood alone.”
Committees from the Portia and Era Clubs met in November, 1896, in the parlors of the Woman’s Club, and organized a State Woman Suffrage Association, with Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, president; Mrs. Eveleyn Ordway, vice-president; Miss Matilda P. Hero, corresponding secretary; Miss Belle Van Horn, recording secretary; Mrs. Boseley, treasurer; Mrs. Helen Behrens, an ardent and able pioneer and present worker in the cause, being made our first delegate to a National Convention.
In 1898, the Era Club, in the name of Louisiana women, presented to the Suffrage Committee of the Constitutional Convention, then in session in New Orleans, the following petition: “In view of the fact that one of the purposes of this Convention is to provide an educational qualification for the exercise of the franchise by which to guard more carefully the welfare of the State, we, the undersigned, believing that still another change would likewise conduce greatly to the welfare of our people, pray that your honorable body will, after deciding upon the qualifications deemed necessary,extend the franchise with the same qualifications to the women of this State.”
Mrs. Evelyn Ordway, one of the most efficient and public-spirited women of New Orleans, as president of the Era Club, wisely and bravely led the women’s campaign. Owing to a rain which flooded the city, the most of the woman’s contingent were prisoners in their homes on the day the petition was procured. Mrs. Lewis S. Graham, and Misses Katharine Nobles, Kate and Jennie Gordon alone were able to cross the submerged streets to the Committee room. Mrs. Graham made the leading address, and was ably supported by her colleagues. Mrs. Carrie Chapman-Catt, aided by Misses Laura Clay, Mary Hay and Frances Griffin, had been busy creating public sentiment by means of brilliant addresses both in and out of the Convention. Dr. Dickson Bruns should be ever held in grateful memory for his constant and unflinching efforts in behalf of the woman’s petition, which was presented in Convention by the Hon. Anthony W. Faulkner of Monroe.
There were many women and a few noble men who were deeply stirred over the fate of our memorial. I wrote to Miss Belle Kearney just after this hearing: “You are needed right here, this very day, to speak what the women want said for them now that the other speakers are gone away. I am so dead tired and heart-sore that I almost wish I were lying quiet in my grave waiting for the resurrection! God help all women, young and old! They are a man-neglected, God-forgotten lot, here in Louisiana, when they ask simply for a reasonable recognition, and justice under theConstitution now being constructed, and under which they must be governed and pay taxes. We pray in vain, work always in vain. How that grand old martyr, Susan Anthony, can still hold out is a marvel. The Convention has apparently forgotten the women. They discuss the needs of every man and his qualification for the ballot. Yet, good women brought such men into the world to keep other women in subjection and minority forever!—still, they love that sinner, man, better than their own souls—and I know they will continue that way to the end. But it is hard lines to be kept waiting. The dead can wait, but we cannot! Oh, Lord, how long!”
Once again, however, it was proven that nothing is ever quite so bad as it seems, for the convention did give the right to vote to all taxpaying women—a mere crumb—but a prophetic-crumb. This much being gained led, in 1899, to the organization, through the initiative of the Era Club, of the “Woman’s League for Sewerage and Drainage.” That variable and imponderable quantity, “influence,” now had added to its much invoked “womanly sweetness”—power—a power which could not only be felt but which would have to be counted.
Mrs. Ordway tells in a little review of the movement, that several months previous to the election many of those who voted would have scouted the idea that they should do so unwomanly a deed;—voting belonged to men. Many did not even know that they had a right to vote. The question proposed to them was one affecting the health and prosperity of New Orleans—whether ornot they were willing to be additionally taxed in order to secure pure water and an effective system of drainage. There were about 10,000 taxpaying women in the city, many of them small householders, owning the little homes in which they dwelt. Owing to New Orleans being peculiarly situated below the level of the Mississippi river, and to the fact that there is no underground drainage, many parts of the city are inundated during heavy rains. There was much at stake. No wonder the women were interested, and that parlor and mass meetings were held, in which women were not only invited but urged—even by the mayor and other prominent men—to come forward with their votes. When election day arrived, women found that they did want the franchise, one-third of the votes cast being contributed by them. After months of hard work and a house-to-house canvass for signatures of taxpaying women, who would vote personally or by proxy, the battle was won, as was universally conceded, by the energy of the woman’s ballot.
Very many men and women soon realized the need of full suffrage for women, in a quickly succeeding campaign for the election of municipal officers who would properly carry out the people’s intent for sewerage and drainage. Though they could not vote every courtesy and respect was accorded the women, and their influence was appealed to by the respective sides. The day has dawned for woman’s full enfranchisement in Louisiana.
In her farewell address after the victory the president of the Woman’s League, Miss Kate M. Gordon,—president of the Era Club,—who had led the women’sforces with an intelligent courage and dignity that won universal admiration, stated as follows: “At one time the success of this great work was seriously threatened by an element of conservatism raising the cry, ‘It is simply suffrage movement!’ While it is hard to disassociate suffrage from any work which depends on a vote for success, and while the word, defined by Worcester, means ‘a vote, the act of voting,’ yet it seems a poor commentary on the intelligence, patriotism and even sagacity of that conservatism to raise the question when the life of a city was trembling in the balance, and that city their home.
“In justice to women holding suffrage views, I ask are they to be treated as a class apart because they believe intelligence and not sex should be the determining power in government? Is there any wrong in believing that power added to influence would be a factor in creating and enforcing laws for a higher moral standard? Where is the woman, who, holding the power, would not use it to enforce the laws for the protection of minors, and to give to character at least the same protection given to property? Where is the woman who would withhold her power from creating and enforcing a law to read; ‘Equal pay for equal work’? Is it unwomanly to believe the wife’s wages should belong to the wife who earned them? Is it unnatural to resent being classed with idiots, insane, criminal and minors—and so on,ad infinitum?
“The Woman’s League contributed with no sacrifice of womanliness, but with a sacrifice of personal comfort, to an education against apathy and indifference,to the Godlike charity of helping men to help themselves—the keynote of physical as well as moral regeneration. As women throw the power of your influence against the dangers of proxies. The proxy vote is not a personal expression; it is giving manifold power into the hands of one individual, and therefore un-American.”