CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURMonday morning and ten o'clock found Selina and Maud, both more than a little shy, and also a good deal excited, presenting themselves at the door of the Bruce library where Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson awaited them. The room itself was familiar to them both, with its faded solid red carpet, its book-shelving from floor to ceiling behind doors of oak and glass, its framed prints of Washington, Jefferson, Clay and Robert E. Lee, its incredible litter of papers and pamphlets, its overflow of books stacked into corners and upon chairs.But to-day it was visibly made ready for the occasion. The big central table was swept clean by the simple expedient of piling its accumulation on the floor beneath, Marcus' old desk in a corner stood cleared and open, and a kitchen table of deal, piled with stationery and printed circulars, was placed near a window.Mrs. Bruce herself, tall, unmended and ungroomed, and entirely unconcerned as to that, was taking envelopes by the pack out of boxes.Mrs. Harriet Polksbury Higginson, otherwise Mrs. Amos Higginson, was seated at the table. Heriron-gray hair was drawn in rippling bands either side her personable, big-featured face, her silk dress was sensible, her big-faced watch with its short chain and bunch of charms, laid on the table by her, was for utility, though the stones in the rings on her strong, goodly hands, were wonderful.To Selina and Maud, as said before, not the least exciting part in the undertaking, was the thought of working under Mrs. Higginson."Not that we are snobs," Maud had diagramed yet again, "nor because she's our richest woman in the biggest house. But because being the richest woman in the biggest house, she's famous for being outspoken and independent of the snobs and all the rest of it, and therefore worth while."Aunt Juanita, looking up, saw the two girls standing in the doorway a bit diffidently, both in summer wash-dresses, Maud's gingham pink, Selina's percale blue. As the two dimly realized even then, Aunt Juanita saw femininity in the mass only, as a cause, an issue. Its youth and its diffidence and its pink and blue habiliments were lost on her, and its hesitation to come on in and get to business, only irritated her."Well, Maud, well, Selina, come in, come in," testily. "Everything's here in readiness," as they entered, "and the first thing's to get our list of chosen names in shape with their addresses. Selina, since you're to work with me, take the desk for the time being. Maud, sit at the table across from—Mrs.Higginson, do you know my niece, Selina Wistar, and my young friend, Maud Addison?"They took, their places hastily, Aunt Juanita palpably having no thought of confusing amenities with purpose."Selina," from Aunt Juanita brusquely, "here are three lists, a combined church list, Mrs, Higginson's dinner and party lists, and the names of women taxpayers in town that Aurelius secured for me. We're checking these over and want you to make a revised list from them, alphabetically arranged. And here's a city directory, Maud. As Selina hands the lists to you, fill out their addresses." Aunt Juanita, though she abjured amenities, was a credit to her sex in being definite about what she considered her business.Mrs. Higginson, checking names on her lists with a gold lead-pencil, looked up, at the abrupt method of introduction and smiled good-humoredly, at the assistant in pink, and then the assistant in blue. For her woman in the mass still included individuals, and amenities belonged to the life she knew."Every woman's name on the list you're to make, Miss Selina," she explained, "is a target at which we two are proposing to fire our convictions. It's a glorious thing at any time of one's life to have convictions, let me tell you, if you haven't discovered it." Was she laughing at them? "Mrs. Bruce and I are the two liveliest women in this town, and always will be, because our convictions, whatever they be, ride us."Having finished unboxing the envelopes Aunt Juanita was going around distributing ink. She paused at this point in Mrs. Higginson's remarks, tweaked her nose with the side of the ink bottle in her hand, since that hand was occupied with the bottle, and addressed herself to this lady."Organize!Organize!If we can just get that word and its significances over to the women in this town! If we can make 'em understand that woman's hope everywhere lies in this one word! If we can show 'em that it's the instrument of the whole era upon us, for class, labor, capital, too, Aurelius points out, as well as the one instrument for them! Organize and discover our strength as women and so on to our rights. That's the phrase. That's the slogan."The clerical force in pink showed a bright spot on either cheek! The open heart and the open mind were ever hers! Her handsome, hazel-brown eyes beneath her red-brown hair were dilating with the beginnings of zeal, of fire!The clerical force with the heavy masses of pale flaxen hair, the clerical force, that is to say, in blue brought some names on a bit of paper over to the visibly impressed force in pink. "Organize for what, Maud? Who'll organize? And where?""Hush," said Maud, "I don't know. But I feel right from the start I'm with 'em! So you're, Selina." And so were others all over this fair land to be with them; others as great in faith and zeal as Maudie, though no better equipped in comprehensionas to what it was about! But it was glorious none the less to be there!Mrs. Higginson was replying to Aunt Juanita. Her voice was good-humored but ripe and decided. She was a person accustomed to being heard. "Now, Juanita Bruce, you haven't any grounds whatever for assuming I'm with you in any position. You know exactly where I stand in this movement among women all over this land. You know the stand I've taken in it as well as you know your own. And you knowwhyI want to organize our own women in this town.Isay this movement, this quiver, so to put it, running from side to side of this continent, has some underlying cause.Isay it's woman's dissatisfaction with herself.Isay she's roused and looked at herself and the sight's not pleasing to her. You put the cause outside of woman.Isay to my sex, 'Organize and find out what's the trouble with yourself.' That'smyslogan to my sex, and that'smypresent mission."Aunt Juanita banged down the ink bottle still in her hand. Two hairpins leaped from her hair with the impact, and the switch of gray hair that all too palpably eked out her own scant store, promptly surged forward and threatened her left eye. But the uplift of the moment raised everybody's mind above such as that! The clerical force were so enthralled they couldn't keep to work if salvation depended on it. And on the other hand apparently salvation of some kind depended on their listeningand finding out about this thing?Wasthere a movement among their sex, a movement wide as the continent? Where had they been during it? Why had they not heard of it? How had it manifested itself? Had it spoken?So these young and ardent two! Nor knew that they in their gropings, their dissatisfactions, their restlessness, their eager scannings of horizons, their questionings, their discontents with inaction, they and Juliette in her revolt, they and Adele in her repinings, were part and proof with it and of it!Aunt Juanita retwisting her hair with that impatience called out in the human breast by the depravity of inanimate objects such as hair switches, was flinging back words at Mrs. Higginson."Don't expect me to believe in any such stand as that, Harriet Higginson? There isn't but one issue to this thing. In a word, women have discovered they haven't their inalienable rights, and they want 'em.""I'msocertain in my stand, Juanita Bruce, that I've come into this local thing with you to work for the issue as I believe it to be. I've given not a little thought and investigation and observation to the matter, for a good many years, and so have you. But I tell you, Juanita, your suffrage bee shall be proved a mere side issue in the final adjustment, whenever this does come, sooner or later. You and your adherents are diverting us from the main issue. We may lose it through you for years. For just to theextent that you do divert us you're putting the final outcome back."Aunt Juanita snorted and started to reply. Mrs. Higginson, using the gold eye-glasses in her hand, waved her to unwilling silence."No, let me finish, Juanita, and then take your say. This is mine. I claim, and I'll go on claiming—I went up to your meeting in Rochester and stood for it from the platform. I'm going over to Chicago week after next and put it to 'em again from their platform. I claim that our rights, as you call 'em, will come to us as our capabilities push ahead of us, exactly as the flood follows the channel. I see it so plain, it's come to be an obsession with me. Let me illustrate. Take this town we live in, you and I. We're not the big mould of women now our mothers and our grandmothers were. Reasonable and intelligent administration of our homes and our servants and our income is the exception, and who shall say this town's not typical? For my part, my slogan is, and I'm here to cry it from your housetop, 'Organize and find out what's the matter.' Ability engendered among us, Juanita, and the rest of what you want will follow," Mrs. Higginson flipped the air again with her eye-glasses, "as the night the day."The clerical force drew breath. It was a thrilling and momentous morning! They wouldn't have missed it!"As the day the night is rather what my kind isdemanding," from Aunt Juanita grimly. "We're benighted enough in all conscience now. Harriet Higginson, hear me. Not one woman in a hundred in this town, no, not one in five hundred or a thousand, owns a bank-book. I've investigated," grimly. "And ifthisis so in this town, why not the same thing elsewhere?"The clerical force in blue felt this to be a sidelight. It brought in Tuttle Jones. Had he in the end secured the information for Aunt Juanita? How far away from this present battlefield seemed Tuttle and his world?Mrs. Higginson was replying. "H'm, now that's valuable data, Juanita, I owe you some gratitude for giving me that. Putting that with some conclusions I've arrived at myself, sheds light on my problem. The whole cause of our present economic unfitness as I see it in woman, may lie in this fact you give me—no bank account of her own. It's worth looking into. It's only fair a woman should handle and apportion the money through which she is expected to administer the home. And what I've discovered for myself is this. Not one woman in your thousand in this town knows the price of flour, or sugar, or bacon or any other staple she uses every day in her household, except as quoted to her at her nearest grocery. No, nor can tell you her running expenses of this year as compared with any other year under her management. Nor but is so harassed by the servant problem as it's grown to be, that her peace and comfortand almost her self-respect is undermined. And our mothers bequeathed us a wonderful article in servants here in the South, too, in the house-servants of slave-time. Organize and find out what's the matter, I say. If the fault's not inus, then find out where it is, even unto bank-books," laughing. "And at all events, Juanita," pacifically and smiling again, "we're agreed on one point, the essential point right now. Organize 'em. Put it to 'em, pro and con, you and I, and let 'em choose. But first, organize 'em."Itwasa thrilling and momentous morning as may be seen! The clerical force in pink and the clerical force in blue, entirely unable to hold its mind to the task in hand, felt that they were in touch at last with issues, real issues, throbbing, vital and essential issues!And who shall say they were not? Though these issues, a quarter of a century old since then, are still open! And still open perhaps, and again who may say not, because as Mrs. Higginson claimed, the movement mistook the main issue?Undoubtedly itwasa thrilling and momentous morning. Youth is eager, youth is full of the ardor of impatient faith, youth is impressionable. It longs to be fired! It yearns for a cause! 'Rights' is a stirring word! 'Organize' is a new one! Had the clerical force found its cause at last? It wondered.On the way home at noon, Maud spoke to Selina. They were confused over a few matters. "Mrs. Bruce is all for rights, Selina, as if it were a personalthing. I don't suppose there can be a person alive, do you, who comes nearer doing as she pleases.""Just as nobody could be more capable than Mrs. Higginson with all that money and children and grandchildren, and the retinue of servants she's famous for running. Or maybe it's because they've each got what they stand for, that they want it for other women?""'Rights,'" from Maud, ruminating. "It's a thrilling word, Selina. And 'organize' is a new one.""Slogan," corrected Selina, "that's what they called it."That evening Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Preston Cannon were at the Wistars calling. By chance Maud and Juliette were over, too.Maud and Selina were eloquent about their new word."Organize how and for what?" queried Mr. Cannon. "No, I'm not caviling, truly I'm not, I want to know?"So in a way did they, but they were not going to confess it."For—uh—consolidation," from Maud grandly."For—well—some general benefit," from Selina hesitatingly."It's in the air," from Maud authoritatively. She'd heard Mrs. Bruce say it was.Little Judy, quiet as a rule of late, spoke here sosuddenly and so unexpectedly, they all started. There seemed no haziness about it to Juliette. They hardly knew her these days."Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her.""It's an impelling," she said passionately. "We're all feeling it. Woman, I mean. It's driving us. We don't know where it's taking us. But it's mandatory. I wouldn't say it's not instinct.""What is?" asked Mr. Cannon breaking the silence which this astounding outbreak from Juliette left behind it momentarily.The young ladies, two of them at any rate, were indignant at his levity. Figuratively they turned their backs on Mr. Cannon and refused to answer him, and went on talking about the morning and its revelations and purposes to the others.Culpepper came across to Selina presently and leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her. His breath touched her cheek and her pretty ear. Her heart leaped, treacherous, traitorous heart! And the blood beat in her throat!"Honey, when you going to let me come and talk to you? School's over next week and I'll have to go home. I can't go on finding excuses for hanging around."CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVESelina and Maud found themselves more and more thrilled with their work under Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson."It's the virus of content for one thing," said Maud grandly, "we are occupied, and then, too, of course, it's a cause."There were varying happenings which went with the cause. The business as the days went on, so overcrowded the library, that Aunt Juanita and Selina and the especial medium they worked in, newspaper articles to be compiled, and proofs of circulars from the printers to be corrected, overflowed into the dining-room and onto the dining-table. Mrs. Higginson and Maud in the library folded and directed and stamped all this data in its final form.Everyone was in earnest and the work engrossing. "You'll stay here to lunch," Aunt Juanita would direct. "There's no time to be wasted going off to hunt food." And the impatience in her voice for any quest so unreasonable and unnecessary as one for food, kept anybody from going.Nor did conveniences when they were not conveniences carry any weight with her. "No, certainlyyou can't have the dining-table," she told Hester on an occasion when they all did stay for lunch, and that person, cloth in hand, presented herself to set this piece of furniture for the meal. It was quite as if Hester had asked for something as irregular and preposterous as somebody's nose or ear. "Don't you see Miss Selina and I are using it? That it is piled with our papers? Put the food in dishes and set it around. Why ask me where?" exasperatedly. "Anywhere. We'll help ourselves when we get ready."And they did, from side-board, window-seat, and mantelpiece, without comment and with equanimity. And be it remarked it was excellent food. And excellently cooked. Trust a Bruce for that! They surprised you by such unexpected characteristics as knowing good food and having it!Another day Aunt Juanita departed betimes for the printer, leaving the others at their tasks."What? What's that, Maud?" from Mrs. Higginson presently, looking about her as she stood up, tying on her bonnet, "Mrs. Bruce told you to get those circulars to the post-office when you finish them? Why there's five hundred of them! That's Juanita Bruce! Go home and get your lunches, both of you, and I'll send the carriage around here for you. It can take you to the office with the circulars, and wherever you'd like to go afterwards. Girls always have a round of calls to pay. Use it for the afternoon."And the Higginson carriage meant a pair as well and coachman and footman and liveries!"The greenhouses are going to waste," said this lady another day, "waiting for weather to get the flowers out into the beds. Come back in the carriage to lunch with me, both of you, and let the gardener cut you what you want." And the Higginson house meant pictures brought from abroad, and wonderful rugs, and articles of what Maud once inadvertently called virtue! The clerical force were thrilled and enraptured with their secretarial occupation!And it would seem, too, that the time was ripe for the cause which Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were furthering. Selina for proof of this had only to take the cases of her mother and Auntie.Mail from the outer and impersonal world, coming to either of these two, was so infrequent as to be negligible, their correspondence being altogether personal and intimate. When such mail began to come to both, circulars, and clippings and marked newspapers, despite the fact that their own Selina, or if not she, then Maud, was known to have directed them, they were impressed and fluttered, and put their sewing aside, needles in work, thimbles on sills, read it through with absorption and remark and comment."'The Ladies' Library Club of Kalamazoo' is the oldest organization of the kind in the West," Mrs. Wistar would read aloud. "'Four book clubs recently were formed in the State of Pennsylvania.' I'msure such affairs must be altogether beneficial in communities. We think too little no doubt of the things of the mind. Cultivation along such lines as would be proper in a book club would be stimulating for us all here in our community. Now take Anna, for instance," she referred to Cousin Anna Tomlinson on whom she turned thus testily every now and then, "no matter where she is, or what the occasion, sheneverwants to talk about anything now but the dishonesty or the appetites of her servants. It's come to be wearing.""'The Cosmos Club of West Newburyport, Mass.,'" read Auntie whose vocabulary was circumscribed and confined to the familiar, darling soul, and who conceived of cosmos only as pink and white and magenta, grown on bushes and brought in in the fall and put about in vases, "Now I'd like to see something like a cosmos club started here among ourselves. I've always said it was an excellent plan to exchange seeds and cuttings and ideas with other flower lovers."Juliette Caldwell's pretty mother considered that she'd had a musical training in her day. Hadn't she studied a wholeyearas a girl at the Conservatory of Music up in Cincinnati? She stopped Selina on the sidewalk to speak about a marked article in a paper sent to her. "It's really wonderful about that B-Sharp Club away out there in a little town in Dakota. I'm so tired when I'm through with the servants, or the no-servants, and the children and thehouse, I'd be grateful to any incentive which would send me to my piano again."Cousin Anna Tomlinson came by the Wistars with a circular report of various kinds of Woman's organizations. "The Ladies' Tourist Clubs? Are they parties for travel, Selina? I do get so tired when I go on a trip with your Cousin Willoughby, who won't let me do a thing or see a thing my way."Selina one day chanced to report these things to her Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson."I've known it for some while," assented her aunt. "I've not waited and worked, and worked and waited twelve years for this moment, not to recognize it when it comes. The time is ripe." Aunt Juanita spoke solemnly and as if genuinely moved. "I knew that when Mrs. Higginson and I started upon this local agitation and movement.""I've studied the situation nearly five years myself," from Mrs. Higginson. "Juanita is right, the timeisripe, and the momentishere!"It was the crucial moment! Both ladies admitted it! Acknowledged they had foreseen it and made ready for it! And then turned their backs upon it!Mrs. Bruce met her clerical force of two as they arrived at her door the next morning. It was near the end of May."Important as I deem the cause here at home," she told Selina and Maud, "and I hold nothing higher than the arousing of the individual woman,Mrs. Higginson and I are called to Chicago. There's a chance that the demand by women for representation on the commission of the projected world's fair in Chicago is to be turned down. Mrs. Higginson hopes to be appointed one of these women representatives if the demand is granted to use the opportunity to spread her ideas about women among women. I am interested on principle. We go to-day."Here Mrs. Higginson arrived in her carriage to pick up Mrs. Bruce and her satchel. She got out and came in for a brief conference."We had hoped to call on the women here in our own town and induce them to meet and organize this week. We may have to be in Chicago ten days, which will bring it well into June. By that time the various commencements and such are all on, and after them the summer exodus will have begun and the moment will be past. It's most unfortunate."CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXWhen Selina and Maud became converts to the cause of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, they carried Adele and Juliette with them. They also offered of their enthusiasm and their enlightenment to Amanthus but she only looked at them wonderingly.The day after the two sponsors for the cause, Mrs. Higginson and Mrs. Bruce, deserted it, the four were gathered at the Wistars' in Selina's room, discussing the affair, when Amanthus walked in."Yououghtto be interested in what we're talking about, Amanthus," said Maud severely, "though you're not. It's a question involving every phase and—er—" Maud had lost the vocabulary of the article she was quoting, "every side of woman" she finished a little lamely. "You ought to be an espouser either for or against such a cause, or you ought to know at least, whether you consider it a cause."Amanthus heard Maudie out. How pretty she was in her attention that didn't do more than just attend. Then she laughed protestingly. The little wonder on her face, the bother in her eyes, made hersweet and irresistible. Made you want to protect and defend her! Want to shield her from the bothering Mauds of life with their perpetual attacks and innuendoes!"You're so queer, Maudie," smiling affectionately; "you and Judy and Adele, and, yes, Selina, too. You all do get so worked up. Last time it was about the reverting, or was it the reversion of the Scriptures? And whether you approve of it? I don't see what it is you all are always thinking you're about." She paused a perceptible time. Then she blushed, dazzlingly, radiantly. While they wasted themselves in all these puzzling fashions,shehad been about the real business of life. "Mr. Tate has asked Mamma if I may marry him."A mere puff from the May breeze ruffling the fruit tree outside the window of Selina's room could have felled her audience over. Their faces paled even to their red young lips. The first, she, their Amanthus, foritto come to!It, the incredible, the barely formulated in thought, the well-nigh unuttered in phrase! They stared at her, and at each other about the room! It was a space before volition began to come back to them! And with the return of it, they remembered! Bliss' father had just put him into business, Bliss was working like a man, pretty Bliss, thinking it was for Amanthus!Amanthus the meanwhile was continuing to drop further startling information. "Mr. Tate is going to Germany. He wants to study. He says ifMamma will consent to let me be married at once, and all of us go over together, it will be better. We can live in any sort of way or fashion Mamma and I choose, he says. There's a great deal of money."Somebody gasped. It turned out to be Maud. Amanthus, sweet and unruffled and definite, was going on."Mamma says, however, he's to go away. Quite away. And let her have the summer to take me about. We're going to Mamma's two cousins who married East, one at Narragansett, and one at Bar Harbor, and think it over. But I know now. Mamma needn't bother."Juliette more than ever these days was Spartan and accusing. She spared not herself nor anyone. Her aquiline little face blazed and her dark eyes flashed. "How do you reconcile it with yourself about Bliss?"Amanthus colored. "I don't have to. I told him it was a boy and girl affair all the time. It never would have been Bliss anyhow. There have been several this winter I haven't talked about."That night Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon came around again to Selina's. As if drawn back by a common need of fellowship, Maud and Juliette and Adele were there."Wonderful old Tate!" said Mr. Welling. "He's just broken it to us."The four were silent. Maud was by Selina onthe sofa, and Juliette who was sitting by Adele, had her hand. They avoided Mr. Welling's eyes, and the eyes of each other. As Amanthus herself had said, they took things hard. Probe beneath this affair of hers with anybody, they could not. Nor could they bring themselves to mention Mr. Tate. It was as if silently and desperately they sought support in each other only, and clung together.Perhaps the others understood. "Fool Bliss," said Culpepper, "but then he always has been."They could not discuss that either."How's the cause?" from Mr. Cannon suddenly.He having indulged in levity concerning it, was in disgrace in that respect. The ladies eyed him doubtfully, and questioningly."But I mean it. No cavil. Who do you think called me up at the law class to-day? Got the first private telephone line in town, just put in, lively old girl! Aunt Jinnie Hines Cumming,ætat. eighty-three! She was vigorously and impatiently saying, 'Hurrah,' 'hurrah,' instead of 'Hello,' when I got to the receiver, having forgotten the cabalistic word, but that's small detail. She promptly went on to tell me over the telephone that she's always considered women such fools—her words, not mine, ladies—she'd like to see 'em started toward some sort of mitigation of their condition before she died—that she'd been getting all sorts of data through the mail of late about women—that of course, she knew it came from Juanita Bruce and Harriet Higginson.But nevertheless it had given her an idea, and would I come round there?"From Maud, "Of all people, even more than Mrs. Higginson, the right one!"From Juliette, "Do you suppose shereallymeans to do it?"From Selina, "Does she know how unfortunately Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were called away? We've got the lists of names and all the data. Oh, go on and tell us, did you go?"From Adele, "If anybody can put it through, Mrs. Cumming can!"Mr. Cannon rubbed his hands and eyed his audience delightsomely. "My Aunt Jinnie Cumming,ætat. eighty-three, sent for me in my legal status, to tell her how to go about it! She proposes to organize!"CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENIt was a momentous assemblage, that gathering of ladies who responded to the call of their erstwhile social leader, Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming. This octogenarian person, about to go away for the summer with her two maids and her six trunks when the idea struck her, delayed her going but declined to have the covers taken off the furniture in her drawing-room."Never put yourself out for women," was her explanation of this to Preston Cannon, her nephew. "If they think you overvalue them, they undervalue you, and the other way round for the reverse of the proposition."Consequently the meeting came to order in due time in Mrs. Cumming's less formal library, which she declared was easier to unswathe and put in order.Thanks to the beneficent offices of Preston Cannon, right hand for all the ladies concerned in planning the affair, Miss Selina Wistar, Miss Maud Addison and Miss Adele Carter were present, established in the dining-room opening off the library in the combined callings of ushers, pages and tellers. It wasn't strictly parliamentary that they should bethere, and years afterwards they turned on him and told him so, but then they were only thrilled and excited and grateful to him for arranging it with Mrs. Cumming.On the afternoon in question the three wearing immaculate white dresses, and seated at a small table just inside the door leading from the dining-room into the library, with trays of papers and pencils in readiness, watched the ladies surge in, in pairs, trios and groups, and find chairs.Adele leaned across to speak to Maud and Selina. She had on a white sailor hat with scarlet cherries on it, fruit being the rage in millinery this season, a jaunty type which didn't at all suit her. "How would it do to take some notes of the meeting for Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson? They'll want to know everything." Conscientious Adele!Maud looked stunning in her new white hat with crystallized grapes on it. "Better than that," she whispered in reply, "Selina and I are going to telegraph 'em when the meeting's over. We have their address."Selina had been considerably worried over Mamma's extravagance for her this spring, but since she could not combat it, looked rather nice herself in a soft-brimmed leghorn with a wreath of strawberries, both blossoms and fruit, upon it. She leaned across the table in her turn. "We're going to the telegraph office before we go home. Come with us. Thanks to Maud the message is written out in telling style.""I felt it was a significant moment," said Maud, "a moment we may be proud to feel we witnessed. And I felt the message ought to be epigrammatic in a way and worthy of it. Read it, Selina."Selina produced it from her pocket-book and read it softly, the library filling rapidly with ladies by now:Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our rights and our realms our platform.It was a representative gathering, this, in the library of old Mrs. Cumming. Summer silks, summer grenadines, buntings, and this latest thing, French satines, abounded. While fashion this season decreed trains which swept pavements and floors impassively, the marked characteristic of the hour was bustles. And if bonnets predominated over hats, the bonnets made up for any over-sedateness in form by their wealth in that rage of the moment mentioned, fruit in every shape known to millinery if not to pomology.Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle was there, Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones was there, and also Mrs. Jones' three married stepdaughters. Mrs. William Williams was there, and Mrs. Carter, mother of Adele, and Mrs. Grosvenor, her grandmother, Mrs. Harrison, very lovely and very charming and smiling, Mrs. Addison, Mrs. Caldwell, Selina's little mother, Mrs. Wistar, and Auntie and Cousin Anna Tomlinson. And besidesthese, serried ranks of others even the more impressive because the less well known."Mrs. Cumming ordered a hundred chairs from the undertaker's, though she wouldn't have this known, every confectioner in town chancing to have his engaged for this afternoon or this evening, I know that," whispered Selina to Maud and Adele, "for Mr. Cannon said so, and there are just ten vacant."Here Mrs. Jinnie Cumming rose from her chair in the front row of the audience, tottery but equal to it, game old girl, as Preston Cannon said of her. And deliberately reading the instructions furnished her by her nephew through her lorgnette after she had risen, found what she wanted, asked somebody near by to pound a chair back, and call the meeting to order.Having gotten it to order, and its attention fixed on herself, she told the ninety ladies gathered in her library that they knew as well as she did what they were there for, or ought to know if they had read the card she'd sent 'em. And thereupon asked Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones to take the chair.Mrs. Jones in grenadine, trained and bustled, and red blackberries, had prepared herself for this, so it was understood afterwards, having been told beforehand. She swung matters deftly along from this point, being a capable person and a Tuttle. When Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle in turn should pass the social scepter to the next in line, there was very littledoubt as to who hoped to be qualified to receive it.With a few graceful phrases explaining the reasons for their presence here this afternoon, Mrs. Jones appointed a secretary, and this done came to the point."Since we are here, because we are really interested, ladies, will someone tell us a little of what women are doing elsewhere?"Mrs. William Williams, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Wistar all got up. Mrs. Wistar explained afterwards that however disinclined she might have felt to do so, there was no choice left her, being Juanita's sister.Mrs. Williams whose bodily proportions were by far the larger of the three, and wearing a summer silk of green, a bustle, and a bonnet with gooseberries, was recognized by the chair, and the other two ladies sat down. Whereupon Mrs. Williams with a sudden change of countenance, looked about her as if for help, colored violently and sat down herself. It was as startling as it was uncharacteristic, and the first exhibition of club-fright witnessed by any of the company. It added verve to the occasion.Mrs. Carter now arose, in bunting, bustle and pink raspberries, smiling and propitiatory. Not for worlds, so said her manner, would she have it thought that she was covering Mrs. Williams' confusion."'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment.'"]"It would seem, ladies, that women everywhere are awaking to a need of more uplift in their lives, are realizing that their lives on the whole are starved. In proof of this, book-clubs, magazine clubs, culture clubs are forming all over this land of ours. More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment among our sex." One recalled the nature of periodical at the Carter house that no one read but Adele!"And who of us but rejoices that women are awake to this need in themselves?"Mrs. Wistar arose, all of five feet four, but none the less impressive and none the less herself for that."She was a Livingston, too, like Mrs. Bruce," somebody whispered to somebody."In our leisure," Mrs. Wistar deplored, "and I hope it is not disloyal to say it, women are too inclined to talk recipes and seamstresses and servants to the exclusion of more elevating and uplifting topics." Was she getting back at Cousin Anna? "From the information on the subject we all have been receiving recently, it would seem woman is lifting the plane of her life to things more worth while. As one eloquent article written by a woman herself, ably puts it, 'Woman has for too long allowed herself to become subdued to the thing she works in.' In other words, as the writer goes on to explain, domesticity."At a signal from the chair that her time was up, Mrs. Wistar sat down, and in compliance with a previous understanding between Mrs. Jones, Mrs, Cumming and Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, Mrs. Tuttle arose, resplendent, as becomes a leader, in purple silk and train, nature having provided the bustle, and purple and green grapes combined with a modest crop of seckel pears upon her bonnet. She arose and moved that the body of women present organize themselves into a club for purposes to be set forth following organization.Seconded by Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson, and also by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle herself, in a loud voice, she being on ground new to her, it was put to the vote without remark, Mrs. Jones failing to recall she ought to ask for any; and unanimously adopted."And the name of this club, ladies?" from Mrs. Jones in the chair."Perhaps the name will better follow after we determine the club's purposes?" from Mrs. Harrison on her feet for the moment, lovely and smiling in grenadine, bustle, and bonnet garniture of small oranges."Music," called pretty Mrs. Caldwell in a checked silk, bustle and huckleberries."Literature," from Mrs. Carter, she of the pink raspberries."Art," from Mrs. Williams, recovered, with a reviving nod of her gooseberries."Or," from little Mrs. Wistar impressively arising—surely this lady had belonged to the ranks of the retiring and deprecating only because the way had never opened to her to be elsewhere! "Or may we not includeallof these suggestions, and say music, artandliterature?"A newcomer, late in arriving, stood up, in a wool street dress, plain but perfectly decent and genteel, though lacking a bustle. It was Miss Emma McRanney, in a plain straw hat, poor, working creature, large of feature, thick-set and good-humored."Ladies, it may be well here to remind ourselvesof the two persons who've done most toward this end of organization and common fellowship among us. And who most regrettably to themselves and to us, I hope I may say, are not with us to-day. I speak, of course, of Mrs. Aurelius Bruce and Mrs. Amos Higginson, who have given of themselves and their time and their money to bring about the present occasion. And I would like to recall that each of these ladies has a conviction which she feels should be at base of any such organization of women as we are effecting now. Convictions which, I'm sure you'll all agree with me, we owe it to them to consider."A murmur went around the ninety ladies, and Mrs. Jones bowed graciously from the chair in recognition of the general agreement to this.Miss Emma McRanney went on. "One of these ladies, Mrs. Bruce, believes and has believed for years that the great factor in the future of woman is suffrage. Mrs. Higginson's conviction is as strong that woman will come into her larger sphere and wider field of usefulness through a better understanding of her own present business of domesticity. I am merely the mouthpiece of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, ladies, with whose views I chance to be familiar. They, hearing of the meeting through Mrs. Cumming, who telegraphed them in Chicago to such effect, have replied asking that their views be presented to you this afternoon, and at the request of Mrs. Cumming I am here to do it. Mrs. Bruce believesthat the platform of this or any other organization of women for woman's own betterment must be suffrage. Mrs. Higginson maintains that such a club at start should be a forum and clearing-house for the broadening and enlightenment of women as home administrators."But murmurs were many: currants were nodding in emphatic refutation to cherries, blackberries to quinces, apples to gooseberries. Milliners might dictate their common absurdities in head-gear; mantua-makers in dress styles, but not Mrs. Bruce or Mrs. Higginson, hopeless dressers both, their business to these ladies! Denunciations grew audible. Remarks, while unofficial and made from lady to lady, nevertheless, were to one end."Suffrage, with all apologies to Mrs. Bruce," said some apricots to some Concord grapes next to 'em, "simply stands with and for freaks. Who'd want to look like Mrs. Bruce?""And domesticity is exactly what we're running away from," returned the grapes, outraged. "We want to turn our backs for a while on the servant problem and its vexations."As a unit the ninety were against Miss Emma McRanney! One only was to rise to her support, and that one Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming!Miss McRanney was still speaking. "If woman in any numbers is to become a self-supporting and economic factor, and it looks as if she were going to have to, it's only fair she ask for her part in makingthe laws she'll work under. And if woman is to be a self-supporting factor as well as a homemaker, it's only wisdom on her part to get about fitting herself to do both things."Mrs. Cumming having struggled up out of her chair by means of her cane, was on her old feet now. "If woman's going to be an economic factor, she's a long ways to travel before she'll be one. If she hopes to see herself arrive she'd better set about starting."Cousin Anna Tomlinson, of all persons, in grenadine, bustle and plums, was on her feet and being recognized by the chair. When one saw her fumbling for her pince-nez, as she called her eye-glasses, and having found the same, peer about until the angle desired was obtained between them and a slip of paper in her hand, it grew clear that she was recognized for reasons, someone, pushing her to her feet as a mouthpiece, having put the paper there.Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson and her clique in truth had put it there, scribbling it hastily on a bit of paper secured from those young girl pages, Mrs, Sampson's clique including Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Grosvenor, and, yes, Mrs. Wistar, a very bright spot on either cheek, torn from the cause of her sister Juanita by the compelling magic of that call to culture."It is moved," read Cousin Anna Tomlinson stumblingly, and continuing to shift her glasses to keep the angle "that the purpose of this organizationof women be for the furthering of its members in the arts, including music and literature, and indirectly the community in which it lives——"This being seconded by loud acclaim, it was promptly put to the vote and adopted with applause, before it was realized Mrs. Tomlinson was still on her feet and still by the aid of her pince-nez endeavoring to complete her motion."—and further that the name of this organization be The Woman's Culture Club of Blankington."Mrs. Wistar, an even brighter spot on either cheek, was on her feet at this. Truly a star too long eclipsed, she spun madly in this sky of sudden opportunity. Auntie next her, dear soul, sought to restrain her. "At leastactas if you remembered Juanita," she begged in a cautious whisper, "if only for the looks of the thing, Lavinia."But Mrs. Wistar shook Ann Eliza's hand off her arm. She had scented culture and it had fired her brain. She even would hold them to culture's finer distinctions. "I rise to deplore Mrs. Tomlinson's use of the word woman. And would suggest that in its place she substitute the customary and more pleasing word, lady."Mrs. Jinnie Cumming at that last reseating of her old self had shown fatigue. But at this she emerged again, reached out a veined and withered hand for a grip on the wrist of her nearest neighbor and pulled herself to her feet. Shrewd and dry she gazed around. Her old eyes ran appraisingly over thefaces of that assemblage. With here and there a sophisticated one, as in the cases of Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Carter, for the most these ninety women's faces were naïve, credulous, pleased, the faces of children grown to maturity, eager, excited.Mrs. Jinnie Cumming took her time in surveying them. Ninety women, most of whom she considered fools, if one believed her statements, couldn't hurryher! She even communed with herself. "Our mothers and our grandmothers were women with women's capacities. Nobody shielded them as these weakling creatures have been shielded. The world and its brutal facts met 'em square, and sophisticated 'em. I go back eighty years myself and I remember 'em."Whereupon she spoke. "I rise for two things, ladies. The first is to put myself on record with Miss McRanney, Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson and to say that by the platform you've just adopted you've set the impulse among you back into dilettantism by—who shall say how many years? And next to say that I take issue with the last speaker who would have the wordladysubstituted for that ofwomanin the name of this organization. It is my feeling the day of the lady, so denominated, is passing, and the hour of woman is come.""Great old girl," said Preston Cannon when he heard about it afterwards. But that was later.Right now the meeting adjourned, after the appointmentof committees to draw up working plans. And as Mrs. Jinnie Cumming tottered out with the assistance of her maid, the ninety ladies followed in pairs, in trios, and groups; in grenadines, silks, buntings and bustles; in apricots, apples, peaches and plums; whereupon the young girl page and usher, Selina Wistar, slim and fair and aghast, beneath a wreath of strawberries and their blossoms, looked at her companion pages and ushers, Maud Allison beneath white grapes crystallized, and Adele Carter in her jaunty hat with cherries that didn't suit her."And we have to break it to Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson!" said Selina. Tears were in her eyes. Tears of outrage and indignation! She seemed to have glimpsed something for her sex that loomed big and pertinent! And here was an end to it!"Where's the telegram?" asked Maud tersely.Selina produced and unfolded it and the three of them read it over:Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our rights and our realms our platform."We can't send that," said Maud. "Give it to me."She seized a pencil from the table and edited the message sternly.Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming not responsible. Apologies. Our rights and our realms rejected.At which light seemed to break upon Maud! And she saw things through a revealing sense of proportion. Glimpsed humor and truth which go to make proportion at last!"They'll be as funny in their war-paint, hunting culture, as we've been carrying around the wisdom that was to die with us!"And all the while during this afternoon a note lay in Selina's pocket-book, along with that telegram, a note written on French gray paper, embossed and monogrammed The postman had handed it to her at her gate and she had read it on the way here. The contents came back to her as later, after sending the telegram she walked home in company with Maud and Adele.My dear Selina, I am going as usual to my cottage at the Virginia springs about the middle of June. Bereft of companionship by the marriage of the last daughter in our family, it occurs to me to wonder if you will come and be my guest for July? Tuttle's vacation will lend him to us for part of that time. I need hardly say that he adds his entreaties to mine.Affectionately and sincerely yours,Alicia Tuttle Jones.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURMonday morning and ten o'clock found Selina and Maud, both more than a little shy, and also a good deal excited, presenting themselves at the door of the Bruce library where Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson awaited them. The room itself was familiar to them both, with its faded solid red carpet, its book-shelving from floor to ceiling behind doors of oak and glass, its framed prints of Washington, Jefferson, Clay and Robert E. Lee, its incredible litter of papers and pamphlets, its overflow of books stacked into corners and upon chairs.But to-day it was visibly made ready for the occasion. The big central table was swept clean by the simple expedient of piling its accumulation on the floor beneath, Marcus' old desk in a corner stood cleared and open, and a kitchen table of deal, piled with stationery and printed circulars, was placed near a window.Mrs. Bruce herself, tall, unmended and ungroomed, and entirely unconcerned as to that, was taking envelopes by the pack out of boxes.Mrs. Harriet Polksbury Higginson, otherwise Mrs. Amos Higginson, was seated at the table. Heriron-gray hair was drawn in rippling bands either side her personable, big-featured face, her silk dress was sensible, her big-faced watch with its short chain and bunch of charms, laid on the table by her, was for utility, though the stones in the rings on her strong, goodly hands, were wonderful.To Selina and Maud, as said before, not the least exciting part in the undertaking, was the thought of working under Mrs. Higginson."Not that we are snobs," Maud had diagramed yet again, "nor because she's our richest woman in the biggest house. But because being the richest woman in the biggest house, she's famous for being outspoken and independent of the snobs and all the rest of it, and therefore worth while."Aunt Juanita, looking up, saw the two girls standing in the doorway a bit diffidently, both in summer wash-dresses, Maud's gingham pink, Selina's percale blue. As the two dimly realized even then, Aunt Juanita saw femininity in the mass only, as a cause, an issue. Its youth and its diffidence and its pink and blue habiliments were lost on her, and its hesitation to come on in and get to business, only irritated her."Well, Maud, well, Selina, come in, come in," testily. "Everything's here in readiness," as they entered, "and the first thing's to get our list of chosen names in shape with their addresses. Selina, since you're to work with me, take the desk for the time being. Maud, sit at the table across from—Mrs.Higginson, do you know my niece, Selina Wistar, and my young friend, Maud Addison?"They took, their places hastily, Aunt Juanita palpably having no thought of confusing amenities with purpose."Selina," from Aunt Juanita brusquely, "here are three lists, a combined church list, Mrs, Higginson's dinner and party lists, and the names of women taxpayers in town that Aurelius secured for me. We're checking these over and want you to make a revised list from them, alphabetically arranged. And here's a city directory, Maud. As Selina hands the lists to you, fill out their addresses." Aunt Juanita, though she abjured amenities, was a credit to her sex in being definite about what she considered her business.Mrs. Higginson, checking names on her lists with a gold lead-pencil, looked up, at the abrupt method of introduction and smiled good-humoredly, at the assistant in pink, and then the assistant in blue. For her woman in the mass still included individuals, and amenities belonged to the life she knew."Every woman's name on the list you're to make, Miss Selina," she explained, "is a target at which we two are proposing to fire our convictions. It's a glorious thing at any time of one's life to have convictions, let me tell you, if you haven't discovered it." Was she laughing at them? "Mrs. Bruce and I are the two liveliest women in this town, and always will be, because our convictions, whatever they be, ride us."Having finished unboxing the envelopes Aunt Juanita was going around distributing ink. She paused at this point in Mrs. Higginson's remarks, tweaked her nose with the side of the ink bottle in her hand, since that hand was occupied with the bottle, and addressed herself to this lady."Organize!Organize!If we can just get that word and its significances over to the women in this town! If we can make 'em understand that woman's hope everywhere lies in this one word! If we can show 'em that it's the instrument of the whole era upon us, for class, labor, capital, too, Aurelius points out, as well as the one instrument for them! Organize and discover our strength as women and so on to our rights. That's the phrase. That's the slogan."The clerical force in pink showed a bright spot on either cheek! The open heart and the open mind were ever hers! Her handsome, hazel-brown eyes beneath her red-brown hair were dilating with the beginnings of zeal, of fire!The clerical force with the heavy masses of pale flaxen hair, the clerical force, that is to say, in blue brought some names on a bit of paper over to the visibly impressed force in pink. "Organize for what, Maud? Who'll organize? And where?""Hush," said Maud, "I don't know. But I feel right from the start I'm with 'em! So you're, Selina." And so were others all over this fair land to be with them; others as great in faith and zeal as Maudie, though no better equipped in comprehensionas to what it was about! But it was glorious none the less to be there!Mrs. Higginson was replying to Aunt Juanita. Her voice was good-humored but ripe and decided. She was a person accustomed to being heard. "Now, Juanita Bruce, you haven't any grounds whatever for assuming I'm with you in any position. You know exactly where I stand in this movement among women all over this land. You know the stand I've taken in it as well as you know your own. And you knowwhyI want to organize our own women in this town.Isay this movement, this quiver, so to put it, running from side to side of this continent, has some underlying cause.Isay it's woman's dissatisfaction with herself.Isay she's roused and looked at herself and the sight's not pleasing to her. You put the cause outside of woman.Isay to my sex, 'Organize and find out what's the trouble with yourself.' That'smyslogan to my sex, and that'smypresent mission."Aunt Juanita banged down the ink bottle still in her hand. Two hairpins leaped from her hair with the impact, and the switch of gray hair that all too palpably eked out her own scant store, promptly surged forward and threatened her left eye. But the uplift of the moment raised everybody's mind above such as that! The clerical force were so enthralled they couldn't keep to work if salvation depended on it. And on the other hand apparently salvation of some kind depended on their listeningand finding out about this thing?Wasthere a movement among their sex, a movement wide as the continent? Where had they been during it? Why had they not heard of it? How had it manifested itself? Had it spoken?So these young and ardent two! Nor knew that they in their gropings, their dissatisfactions, their restlessness, their eager scannings of horizons, their questionings, their discontents with inaction, they and Juliette in her revolt, they and Adele in her repinings, were part and proof with it and of it!Aunt Juanita retwisting her hair with that impatience called out in the human breast by the depravity of inanimate objects such as hair switches, was flinging back words at Mrs. Higginson."Don't expect me to believe in any such stand as that, Harriet Higginson? There isn't but one issue to this thing. In a word, women have discovered they haven't their inalienable rights, and they want 'em.""I'msocertain in my stand, Juanita Bruce, that I've come into this local thing with you to work for the issue as I believe it to be. I've given not a little thought and investigation and observation to the matter, for a good many years, and so have you. But I tell you, Juanita, your suffrage bee shall be proved a mere side issue in the final adjustment, whenever this does come, sooner or later. You and your adherents are diverting us from the main issue. We may lose it through you for years. For just to theextent that you do divert us you're putting the final outcome back."Aunt Juanita snorted and started to reply. Mrs. Higginson, using the gold eye-glasses in her hand, waved her to unwilling silence."No, let me finish, Juanita, and then take your say. This is mine. I claim, and I'll go on claiming—I went up to your meeting in Rochester and stood for it from the platform. I'm going over to Chicago week after next and put it to 'em again from their platform. I claim that our rights, as you call 'em, will come to us as our capabilities push ahead of us, exactly as the flood follows the channel. I see it so plain, it's come to be an obsession with me. Let me illustrate. Take this town we live in, you and I. We're not the big mould of women now our mothers and our grandmothers were. Reasonable and intelligent administration of our homes and our servants and our income is the exception, and who shall say this town's not typical? For my part, my slogan is, and I'm here to cry it from your housetop, 'Organize and find out what's the matter.' Ability engendered among us, Juanita, and the rest of what you want will follow," Mrs. Higginson flipped the air again with her eye-glasses, "as the night the day."The clerical force drew breath. It was a thrilling and momentous morning! They wouldn't have missed it!"As the day the night is rather what my kind isdemanding," from Aunt Juanita grimly. "We're benighted enough in all conscience now. Harriet Higginson, hear me. Not one woman in a hundred in this town, no, not one in five hundred or a thousand, owns a bank-book. I've investigated," grimly. "And ifthisis so in this town, why not the same thing elsewhere?"The clerical force in blue felt this to be a sidelight. It brought in Tuttle Jones. Had he in the end secured the information for Aunt Juanita? How far away from this present battlefield seemed Tuttle and his world?Mrs. Higginson was replying. "H'm, now that's valuable data, Juanita, I owe you some gratitude for giving me that. Putting that with some conclusions I've arrived at myself, sheds light on my problem. The whole cause of our present economic unfitness as I see it in woman, may lie in this fact you give me—no bank account of her own. It's worth looking into. It's only fair a woman should handle and apportion the money through which she is expected to administer the home. And what I've discovered for myself is this. Not one woman in your thousand in this town knows the price of flour, or sugar, or bacon or any other staple she uses every day in her household, except as quoted to her at her nearest grocery. No, nor can tell you her running expenses of this year as compared with any other year under her management. Nor but is so harassed by the servant problem as it's grown to be, that her peace and comfortand almost her self-respect is undermined. And our mothers bequeathed us a wonderful article in servants here in the South, too, in the house-servants of slave-time. Organize and find out what's the matter, I say. If the fault's not inus, then find out where it is, even unto bank-books," laughing. "And at all events, Juanita," pacifically and smiling again, "we're agreed on one point, the essential point right now. Organize 'em. Put it to 'em, pro and con, you and I, and let 'em choose. But first, organize 'em."Itwasa thrilling and momentous morning as may be seen! The clerical force in pink and the clerical force in blue, entirely unable to hold its mind to the task in hand, felt that they were in touch at last with issues, real issues, throbbing, vital and essential issues!And who shall say they were not? Though these issues, a quarter of a century old since then, are still open! And still open perhaps, and again who may say not, because as Mrs. Higginson claimed, the movement mistook the main issue?Undoubtedly itwasa thrilling and momentous morning. Youth is eager, youth is full of the ardor of impatient faith, youth is impressionable. It longs to be fired! It yearns for a cause! 'Rights' is a stirring word! 'Organize' is a new one! Had the clerical force found its cause at last? It wondered.On the way home at noon, Maud spoke to Selina. They were confused over a few matters. "Mrs. Bruce is all for rights, Selina, as if it were a personalthing. I don't suppose there can be a person alive, do you, who comes nearer doing as she pleases.""Just as nobody could be more capable than Mrs. Higginson with all that money and children and grandchildren, and the retinue of servants she's famous for running. Or maybe it's because they've each got what they stand for, that they want it for other women?""'Rights,'" from Maud, ruminating. "It's a thrilling word, Selina. And 'organize' is a new one.""Slogan," corrected Selina, "that's what they called it."That evening Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Preston Cannon were at the Wistars calling. By chance Maud and Juliette were over, too.Maud and Selina were eloquent about their new word."Organize how and for what?" queried Mr. Cannon. "No, I'm not caviling, truly I'm not, I want to know?"So in a way did they, but they were not going to confess it."For—uh—consolidation," from Maud grandly."For—well—some general benefit," from Selina hesitatingly."It's in the air," from Maud authoritatively. She'd heard Mrs. Bruce say it was.Little Judy, quiet as a rule of late, spoke here sosuddenly and so unexpectedly, they all started. There seemed no haziness about it to Juliette. They hardly knew her these days."Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her.""It's an impelling," she said passionately. "We're all feeling it. Woman, I mean. It's driving us. We don't know where it's taking us. But it's mandatory. I wouldn't say it's not instinct.""What is?" asked Mr. Cannon breaking the silence which this astounding outbreak from Juliette left behind it momentarily.The young ladies, two of them at any rate, were indignant at his levity. Figuratively they turned their backs on Mr. Cannon and refused to answer him, and went on talking about the morning and its revelations and purposes to the others.Culpepper came across to Selina presently and leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her. His breath touched her cheek and her pretty ear. Her heart leaped, treacherous, traitorous heart! And the blood beat in her throat!"Honey, when you going to let me come and talk to you? School's over next week and I'll have to go home. I can't go on finding excuses for hanging around."

Monday morning and ten o'clock found Selina and Maud, both more than a little shy, and also a good deal excited, presenting themselves at the door of the Bruce library where Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson awaited them. The room itself was familiar to them both, with its faded solid red carpet, its book-shelving from floor to ceiling behind doors of oak and glass, its framed prints of Washington, Jefferson, Clay and Robert E. Lee, its incredible litter of papers and pamphlets, its overflow of books stacked into corners and upon chairs.

But to-day it was visibly made ready for the occasion. The big central table was swept clean by the simple expedient of piling its accumulation on the floor beneath, Marcus' old desk in a corner stood cleared and open, and a kitchen table of deal, piled with stationery and printed circulars, was placed near a window.

Mrs. Bruce herself, tall, unmended and ungroomed, and entirely unconcerned as to that, was taking envelopes by the pack out of boxes.

Mrs. Harriet Polksbury Higginson, otherwise Mrs. Amos Higginson, was seated at the table. Heriron-gray hair was drawn in rippling bands either side her personable, big-featured face, her silk dress was sensible, her big-faced watch with its short chain and bunch of charms, laid on the table by her, was for utility, though the stones in the rings on her strong, goodly hands, were wonderful.

To Selina and Maud, as said before, not the least exciting part in the undertaking, was the thought of working under Mrs. Higginson.

"Not that we are snobs," Maud had diagramed yet again, "nor because she's our richest woman in the biggest house. But because being the richest woman in the biggest house, she's famous for being outspoken and independent of the snobs and all the rest of it, and therefore worth while."

Aunt Juanita, looking up, saw the two girls standing in the doorway a bit diffidently, both in summer wash-dresses, Maud's gingham pink, Selina's percale blue. As the two dimly realized even then, Aunt Juanita saw femininity in the mass only, as a cause, an issue. Its youth and its diffidence and its pink and blue habiliments were lost on her, and its hesitation to come on in and get to business, only irritated her.

"Well, Maud, well, Selina, come in, come in," testily. "Everything's here in readiness," as they entered, "and the first thing's to get our list of chosen names in shape with their addresses. Selina, since you're to work with me, take the desk for the time being. Maud, sit at the table across from—Mrs.Higginson, do you know my niece, Selina Wistar, and my young friend, Maud Addison?"

They took, their places hastily, Aunt Juanita palpably having no thought of confusing amenities with purpose.

"Selina," from Aunt Juanita brusquely, "here are three lists, a combined church list, Mrs, Higginson's dinner and party lists, and the names of women taxpayers in town that Aurelius secured for me. We're checking these over and want you to make a revised list from them, alphabetically arranged. And here's a city directory, Maud. As Selina hands the lists to you, fill out their addresses." Aunt Juanita, though she abjured amenities, was a credit to her sex in being definite about what she considered her business.

Mrs. Higginson, checking names on her lists with a gold lead-pencil, looked up, at the abrupt method of introduction and smiled good-humoredly, at the assistant in pink, and then the assistant in blue. For her woman in the mass still included individuals, and amenities belonged to the life she knew.

"Every woman's name on the list you're to make, Miss Selina," she explained, "is a target at which we two are proposing to fire our convictions. It's a glorious thing at any time of one's life to have convictions, let me tell you, if you haven't discovered it." Was she laughing at them? "Mrs. Bruce and I are the two liveliest women in this town, and always will be, because our convictions, whatever they be, ride us."

Having finished unboxing the envelopes Aunt Juanita was going around distributing ink. She paused at this point in Mrs. Higginson's remarks, tweaked her nose with the side of the ink bottle in her hand, since that hand was occupied with the bottle, and addressed herself to this lady.

"Organize!Organize!If we can just get that word and its significances over to the women in this town! If we can make 'em understand that woman's hope everywhere lies in this one word! If we can show 'em that it's the instrument of the whole era upon us, for class, labor, capital, too, Aurelius points out, as well as the one instrument for them! Organize and discover our strength as women and so on to our rights. That's the phrase. That's the slogan."

The clerical force in pink showed a bright spot on either cheek! The open heart and the open mind were ever hers! Her handsome, hazel-brown eyes beneath her red-brown hair were dilating with the beginnings of zeal, of fire!

The clerical force with the heavy masses of pale flaxen hair, the clerical force, that is to say, in blue brought some names on a bit of paper over to the visibly impressed force in pink. "Organize for what, Maud? Who'll organize? And where?"

"Hush," said Maud, "I don't know. But I feel right from the start I'm with 'em! So you're, Selina." And so were others all over this fair land to be with them; others as great in faith and zeal as Maudie, though no better equipped in comprehensionas to what it was about! But it was glorious none the less to be there!

Mrs. Higginson was replying to Aunt Juanita. Her voice was good-humored but ripe and decided. She was a person accustomed to being heard. "Now, Juanita Bruce, you haven't any grounds whatever for assuming I'm with you in any position. You know exactly where I stand in this movement among women all over this land. You know the stand I've taken in it as well as you know your own. And you knowwhyI want to organize our own women in this town.Isay this movement, this quiver, so to put it, running from side to side of this continent, has some underlying cause.Isay it's woman's dissatisfaction with herself.Isay she's roused and looked at herself and the sight's not pleasing to her. You put the cause outside of woman.Isay to my sex, 'Organize and find out what's the trouble with yourself.' That'smyslogan to my sex, and that'smypresent mission."

Aunt Juanita banged down the ink bottle still in her hand. Two hairpins leaped from her hair with the impact, and the switch of gray hair that all too palpably eked out her own scant store, promptly surged forward and threatened her left eye. But the uplift of the moment raised everybody's mind above such as that! The clerical force were so enthralled they couldn't keep to work if salvation depended on it. And on the other hand apparently salvation of some kind depended on their listeningand finding out about this thing?Wasthere a movement among their sex, a movement wide as the continent? Where had they been during it? Why had they not heard of it? How had it manifested itself? Had it spoken?

So these young and ardent two! Nor knew that they in their gropings, their dissatisfactions, their restlessness, their eager scannings of horizons, their questionings, their discontents with inaction, they and Juliette in her revolt, they and Adele in her repinings, were part and proof with it and of it!

Aunt Juanita retwisting her hair with that impatience called out in the human breast by the depravity of inanimate objects such as hair switches, was flinging back words at Mrs. Higginson.

"Don't expect me to believe in any such stand as that, Harriet Higginson? There isn't but one issue to this thing. In a word, women have discovered they haven't their inalienable rights, and they want 'em."

"I'msocertain in my stand, Juanita Bruce, that I've come into this local thing with you to work for the issue as I believe it to be. I've given not a little thought and investigation and observation to the matter, for a good many years, and so have you. But I tell you, Juanita, your suffrage bee shall be proved a mere side issue in the final adjustment, whenever this does come, sooner or later. You and your adherents are diverting us from the main issue. We may lose it through you for years. For just to theextent that you do divert us you're putting the final outcome back."

Aunt Juanita snorted and started to reply. Mrs. Higginson, using the gold eye-glasses in her hand, waved her to unwilling silence.

"No, let me finish, Juanita, and then take your say. This is mine. I claim, and I'll go on claiming—I went up to your meeting in Rochester and stood for it from the platform. I'm going over to Chicago week after next and put it to 'em again from their platform. I claim that our rights, as you call 'em, will come to us as our capabilities push ahead of us, exactly as the flood follows the channel. I see it so plain, it's come to be an obsession with me. Let me illustrate. Take this town we live in, you and I. We're not the big mould of women now our mothers and our grandmothers were. Reasonable and intelligent administration of our homes and our servants and our income is the exception, and who shall say this town's not typical? For my part, my slogan is, and I'm here to cry it from your housetop, 'Organize and find out what's the matter.' Ability engendered among us, Juanita, and the rest of what you want will follow," Mrs. Higginson flipped the air again with her eye-glasses, "as the night the day."

The clerical force drew breath. It was a thrilling and momentous morning! They wouldn't have missed it!

"As the day the night is rather what my kind isdemanding," from Aunt Juanita grimly. "We're benighted enough in all conscience now. Harriet Higginson, hear me. Not one woman in a hundred in this town, no, not one in five hundred or a thousand, owns a bank-book. I've investigated," grimly. "And ifthisis so in this town, why not the same thing elsewhere?"

The clerical force in blue felt this to be a sidelight. It brought in Tuttle Jones. Had he in the end secured the information for Aunt Juanita? How far away from this present battlefield seemed Tuttle and his world?

Mrs. Higginson was replying. "H'm, now that's valuable data, Juanita, I owe you some gratitude for giving me that. Putting that with some conclusions I've arrived at myself, sheds light on my problem. The whole cause of our present economic unfitness as I see it in woman, may lie in this fact you give me—no bank account of her own. It's worth looking into. It's only fair a woman should handle and apportion the money through which she is expected to administer the home. And what I've discovered for myself is this. Not one woman in your thousand in this town knows the price of flour, or sugar, or bacon or any other staple she uses every day in her household, except as quoted to her at her nearest grocery. No, nor can tell you her running expenses of this year as compared with any other year under her management. Nor but is so harassed by the servant problem as it's grown to be, that her peace and comfortand almost her self-respect is undermined. And our mothers bequeathed us a wonderful article in servants here in the South, too, in the house-servants of slave-time. Organize and find out what's the matter, I say. If the fault's not inus, then find out where it is, even unto bank-books," laughing. "And at all events, Juanita," pacifically and smiling again, "we're agreed on one point, the essential point right now. Organize 'em. Put it to 'em, pro and con, you and I, and let 'em choose. But first, organize 'em."

Itwasa thrilling and momentous morning as may be seen! The clerical force in pink and the clerical force in blue, entirely unable to hold its mind to the task in hand, felt that they were in touch at last with issues, real issues, throbbing, vital and essential issues!

And who shall say they were not? Though these issues, a quarter of a century old since then, are still open! And still open perhaps, and again who may say not, because as Mrs. Higginson claimed, the movement mistook the main issue?

Undoubtedly itwasa thrilling and momentous morning. Youth is eager, youth is full of the ardor of impatient faith, youth is impressionable. It longs to be fired! It yearns for a cause! 'Rights' is a stirring word! 'Organize' is a new one! Had the clerical force found its cause at last? It wondered.

On the way home at noon, Maud spoke to Selina. They were confused over a few matters. "Mrs. Bruce is all for rights, Selina, as if it were a personalthing. I don't suppose there can be a person alive, do you, who comes nearer doing as she pleases."

"Just as nobody could be more capable than Mrs. Higginson with all that money and children and grandchildren, and the retinue of servants she's famous for running. Or maybe it's because they've each got what they stand for, that they want it for other women?"

"'Rights,'" from Maud, ruminating. "It's a thrilling word, Selina. And 'organize' is a new one."

"Slogan," corrected Selina, "that's what they called it."

That evening Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Preston Cannon were at the Wistars calling. By chance Maud and Juliette were over, too.

Maud and Selina were eloquent about their new word.

"Organize how and for what?" queried Mr. Cannon. "No, I'm not caviling, truly I'm not, I want to know?"

So in a way did they, but they were not going to confess it.

"For—uh—consolidation," from Maud grandly.

"For—well—some general benefit," from Selina hesitatingly.

"It's in the air," from Maud authoritatively. She'd heard Mrs. Bruce say it was.

Little Judy, quiet as a rule of late, spoke here sosuddenly and so unexpectedly, they all started. There seemed no haziness about it to Juliette. They hardly knew her these days.

"Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her."

"Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her."

"Culpepper ... leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her."

"It's an impelling," she said passionately. "We're all feeling it. Woman, I mean. It's driving us. We don't know where it's taking us. But it's mandatory. I wouldn't say it's not instinct."

"What is?" asked Mr. Cannon breaking the silence which this astounding outbreak from Juliette left behind it momentarily.

The young ladies, two of them at any rate, were indignant at his levity. Figuratively they turned their backs on Mr. Cannon and refused to answer him, and went on talking about the morning and its revelations and purposes to the others.

Culpepper came across to Selina presently and leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her. His breath touched her cheek and her pretty ear. Her heart leaped, treacherous, traitorous heart! And the blood beat in her throat!

"Honey, when you going to let me come and talk to you? School's over next week and I'll have to go home. I can't go on finding excuses for hanging around."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVESelina and Maud found themselves more and more thrilled with their work under Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson."It's the virus of content for one thing," said Maud grandly, "we are occupied, and then, too, of course, it's a cause."There were varying happenings which went with the cause. The business as the days went on, so overcrowded the library, that Aunt Juanita and Selina and the especial medium they worked in, newspaper articles to be compiled, and proofs of circulars from the printers to be corrected, overflowed into the dining-room and onto the dining-table. Mrs. Higginson and Maud in the library folded and directed and stamped all this data in its final form.Everyone was in earnest and the work engrossing. "You'll stay here to lunch," Aunt Juanita would direct. "There's no time to be wasted going off to hunt food." And the impatience in her voice for any quest so unreasonable and unnecessary as one for food, kept anybody from going.Nor did conveniences when they were not conveniences carry any weight with her. "No, certainlyyou can't have the dining-table," she told Hester on an occasion when they all did stay for lunch, and that person, cloth in hand, presented herself to set this piece of furniture for the meal. It was quite as if Hester had asked for something as irregular and preposterous as somebody's nose or ear. "Don't you see Miss Selina and I are using it? That it is piled with our papers? Put the food in dishes and set it around. Why ask me where?" exasperatedly. "Anywhere. We'll help ourselves when we get ready."And they did, from side-board, window-seat, and mantelpiece, without comment and with equanimity. And be it remarked it was excellent food. And excellently cooked. Trust a Bruce for that! They surprised you by such unexpected characteristics as knowing good food and having it!Another day Aunt Juanita departed betimes for the printer, leaving the others at their tasks."What? What's that, Maud?" from Mrs. Higginson presently, looking about her as she stood up, tying on her bonnet, "Mrs. Bruce told you to get those circulars to the post-office when you finish them? Why there's five hundred of them! That's Juanita Bruce! Go home and get your lunches, both of you, and I'll send the carriage around here for you. It can take you to the office with the circulars, and wherever you'd like to go afterwards. Girls always have a round of calls to pay. Use it for the afternoon."And the Higginson carriage meant a pair as well and coachman and footman and liveries!"The greenhouses are going to waste," said this lady another day, "waiting for weather to get the flowers out into the beds. Come back in the carriage to lunch with me, both of you, and let the gardener cut you what you want." And the Higginson house meant pictures brought from abroad, and wonderful rugs, and articles of what Maud once inadvertently called virtue! The clerical force were thrilled and enraptured with their secretarial occupation!And it would seem, too, that the time was ripe for the cause which Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were furthering. Selina for proof of this had only to take the cases of her mother and Auntie.Mail from the outer and impersonal world, coming to either of these two, was so infrequent as to be negligible, their correspondence being altogether personal and intimate. When such mail began to come to both, circulars, and clippings and marked newspapers, despite the fact that their own Selina, or if not she, then Maud, was known to have directed them, they were impressed and fluttered, and put their sewing aside, needles in work, thimbles on sills, read it through with absorption and remark and comment."'The Ladies' Library Club of Kalamazoo' is the oldest organization of the kind in the West," Mrs. Wistar would read aloud. "'Four book clubs recently were formed in the State of Pennsylvania.' I'msure such affairs must be altogether beneficial in communities. We think too little no doubt of the things of the mind. Cultivation along such lines as would be proper in a book club would be stimulating for us all here in our community. Now take Anna, for instance," she referred to Cousin Anna Tomlinson on whom she turned thus testily every now and then, "no matter where she is, or what the occasion, sheneverwants to talk about anything now but the dishonesty or the appetites of her servants. It's come to be wearing.""'The Cosmos Club of West Newburyport, Mass.,'" read Auntie whose vocabulary was circumscribed and confined to the familiar, darling soul, and who conceived of cosmos only as pink and white and magenta, grown on bushes and brought in in the fall and put about in vases, "Now I'd like to see something like a cosmos club started here among ourselves. I've always said it was an excellent plan to exchange seeds and cuttings and ideas with other flower lovers."Juliette Caldwell's pretty mother considered that she'd had a musical training in her day. Hadn't she studied a wholeyearas a girl at the Conservatory of Music up in Cincinnati? She stopped Selina on the sidewalk to speak about a marked article in a paper sent to her. "It's really wonderful about that B-Sharp Club away out there in a little town in Dakota. I'm so tired when I'm through with the servants, or the no-servants, and the children and thehouse, I'd be grateful to any incentive which would send me to my piano again."Cousin Anna Tomlinson came by the Wistars with a circular report of various kinds of Woman's organizations. "The Ladies' Tourist Clubs? Are they parties for travel, Selina? I do get so tired when I go on a trip with your Cousin Willoughby, who won't let me do a thing or see a thing my way."Selina one day chanced to report these things to her Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson."I've known it for some while," assented her aunt. "I've not waited and worked, and worked and waited twelve years for this moment, not to recognize it when it comes. The time is ripe." Aunt Juanita spoke solemnly and as if genuinely moved. "I knew that when Mrs. Higginson and I started upon this local agitation and movement.""I've studied the situation nearly five years myself," from Mrs. Higginson. "Juanita is right, the timeisripe, and the momentishere!"It was the crucial moment! Both ladies admitted it! Acknowledged they had foreseen it and made ready for it! And then turned their backs upon it!Mrs. Bruce met her clerical force of two as they arrived at her door the next morning. It was near the end of May."Important as I deem the cause here at home," she told Selina and Maud, "and I hold nothing higher than the arousing of the individual woman,Mrs. Higginson and I are called to Chicago. There's a chance that the demand by women for representation on the commission of the projected world's fair in Chicago is to be turned down. Mrs. Higginson hopes to be appointed one of these women representatives if the demand is granted to use the opportunity to spread her ideas about women among women. I am interested on principle. We go to-day."Here Mrs. Higginson arrived in her carriage to pick up Mrs. Bruce and her satchel. She got out and came in for a brief conference."We had hoped to call on the women here in our own town and induce them to meet and organize this week. We may have to be in Chicago ten days, which will bring it well into June. By that time the various commencements and such are all on, and after them the summer exodus will have begun and the moment will be past. It's most unfortunate."

Selina and Maud found themselves more and more thrilled with their work under Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson.

"It's the virus of content for one thing," said Maud grandly, "we are occupied, and then, too, of course, it's a cause."

There were varying happenings which went with the cause. The business as the days went on, so overcrowded the library, that Aunt Juanita and Selina and the especial medium they worked in, newspaper articles to be compiled, and proofs of circulars from the printers to be corrected, overflowed into the dining-room and onto the dining-table. Mrs. Higginson and Maud in the library folded and directed and stamped all this data in its final form.

Everyone was in earnest and the work engrossing. "You'll stay here to lunch," Aunt Juanita would direct. "There's no time to be wasted going off to hunt food." And the impatience in her voice for any quest so unreasonable and unnecessary as one for food, kept anybody from going.

Nor did conveniences when they were not conveniences carry any weight with her. "No, certainlyyou can't have the dining-table," she told Hester on an occasion when they all did stay for lunch, and that person, cloth in hand, presented herself to set this piece of furniture for the meal. It was quite as if Hester had asked for something as irregular and preposterous as somebody's nose or ear. "Don't you see Miss Selina and I are using it? That it is piled with our papers? Put the food in dishes and set it around. Why ask me where?" exasperatedly. "Anywhere. We'll help ourselves when we get ready."

And they did, from side-board, window-seat, and mantelpiece, without comment and with equanimity. And be it remarked it was excellent food. And excellently cooked. Trust a Bruce for that! They surprised you by such unexpected characteristics as knowing good food and having it!

Another day Aunt Juanita departed betimes for the printer, leaving the others at their tasks.

"What? What's that, Maud?" from Mrs. Higginson presently, looking about her as she stood up, tying on her bonnet, "Mrs. Bruce told you to get those circulars to the post-office when you finish them? Why there's five hundred of them! That's Juanita Bruce! Go home and get your lunches, both of you, and I'll send the carriage around here for you. It can take you to the office with the circulars, and wherever you'd like to go afterwards. Girls always have a round of calls to pay. Use it for the afternoon."

And the Higginson carriage meant a pair as well and coachman and footman and liveries!

"The greenhouses are going to waste," said this lady another day, "waiting for weather to get the flowers out into the beds. Come back in the carriage to lunch with me, both of you, and let the gardener cut you what you want." And the Higginson house meant pictures brought from abroad, and wonderful rugs, and articles of what Maud once inadvertently called virtue! The clerical force were thrilled and enraptured with their secretarial occupation!

And it would seem, too, that the time was ripe for the cause which Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were furthering. Selina for proof of this had only to take the cases of her mother and Auntie.

Mail from the outer and impersonal world, coming to either of these two, was so infrequent as to be negligible, their correspondence being altogether personal and intimate. When such mail began to come to both, circulars, and clippings and marked newspapers, despite the fact that their own Selina, or if not she, then Maud, was known to have directed them, they were impressed and fluttered, and put their sewing aside, needles in work, thimbles on sills, read it through with absorption and remark and comment.

"'The Ladies' Library Club of Kalamazoo' is the oldest organization of the kind in the West," Mrs. Wistar would read aloud. "'Four book clubs recently were formed in the State of Pennsylvania.' I'msure such affairs must be altogether beneficial in communities. We think too little no doubt of the things of the mind. Cultivation along such lines as would be proper in a book club would be stimulating for us all here in our community. Now take Anna, for instance," she referred to Cousin Anna Tomlinson on whom she turned thus testily every now and then, "no matter where she is, or what the occasion, sheneverwants to talk about anything now but the dishonesty or the appetites of her servants. It's come to be wearing."

"'The Cosmos Club of West Newburyport, Mass.,'" read Auntie whose vocabulary was circumscribed and confined to the familiar, darling soul, and who conceived of cosmos only as pink and white and magenta, grown on bushes and brought in in the fall and put about in vases, "Now I'd like to see something like a cosmos club started here among ourselves. I've always said it was an excellent plan to exchange seeds and cuttings and ideas with other flower lovers."

Juliette Caldwell's pretty mother considered that she'd had a musical training in her day. Hadn't she studied a wholeyearas a girl at the Conservatory of Music up in Cincinnati? She stopped Selina on the sidewalk to speak about a marked article in a paper sent to her. "It's really wonderful about that B-Sharp Club away out there in a little town in Dakota. I'm so tired when I'm through with the servants, or the no-servants, and the children and thehouse, I'd be grateful to any incentive which would send me to my piano again."

Cousin Anna Tomlinson came by the Wistars with a circular report of various kinds of Woman's organizations. "The Ladies' Tourist Clubs? Are they parties for travel, Selina? I do get so tired when I go on a trip with your Cousin Willoughby, who won't let me do a thing or see a thing my way."

Selina one day chanced to report these things to her Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson.

"I've known it for some while," assented her aunt. "I've not waited and worked, and worked and waited twelve years for this moment, not to recognize it when it comes. The time is ripe." Aunt Juanita spoke solemnly and as if genuinely moved. "I knew that when Mrs. Higginson and I started upon this local agitation and movement."

"I've studied the situation nearly five years myself," from Mrs. Higginson. "Juanita is right, the timeisripe, and the momentishere!"

It was the crucial moment! Both ladies admitted it! Acknowledged they had foreseen it and made ready for it! And then turned their backs upon it!

Mrs. Bruce met her clerical force of two as they arrived at her door the next morning. It was near the end of May.

"Important as I deem the cause here at home," she told Selina and Maud, "and I hold nothing higher than the arousing of the individual woman,Mrs. Higginson and I are called to Chicago. There's a chance that the demand by women for representation on the commission of the projected world's fair in Chicago is to be turned down. Mrs. Higginson hopes to be appointed one of these women representatives if the demand is granted to use the opportunity to spread her ideas about women among women. I am interested on principle. We go to-day."

Here Mrs. Higginson arrived in her carriage to pick up Mrs. Bruce and her satchel. She got out and came in for a brief conference.

"We had hoped to call on the women here in our own town and induce them to meet and organize this week. We may have to be in Chicago ten days, which will bring it well into June. By that time the various commencements and such are all on, and after them the summer exodus will have begun and the moment will be past. It's most unfortunate."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXWhen Selina and Maud became converts to the cause of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, they carried Adele and Juliette with them. They also offered of their enthusiasm and their enlightenment to Amanthus but she only looked at them wonderingly.The day after the two sponsors for the cause, Mrs. Higginson and Mrs. Bruce, deserted it, the four were gathered at the Wistars' in Selina's room, discussing the affair, when Amanthus walked in."Yououghtto be interested in what we're talking about, Amanthus," said Maud severely, "though you're not. It's a question involving every phase and—er—" Maud had lost the vocabulary of the article she was quoting, "every side of woman" she finished a little lamely. "You ought to be an espouser either for or against such a cause, or you ought to know at least, whether you consider it a cause."Amanthus heard Maudie out. How pretty she was in her attention that didn't do more than just attend. Then she laughed protestingly. The little wonder on her face, the bother in her eyes, made hersweet and irresistible. Made you want to protect and defend her! Want to shield her from the bothering Mauds of life with their perpetual attacks and innuendoes!"You're so queer, Maudie," smiling affectionately; "you and Judy and Adele, and, yes, Selina, too. You all do get so worked up. Last time it was about the reverting, or was it the reversion of the Scriptures? And whether you approve of it? I don't see what it is you all are always thinking you're about." She paused a perceptible time. Then she blushed, dazzlingly, radiantly. While they wasted themselves in all these puzzling fashions,shehad been about the real business of life. "Mr. Tate has asked Mamma if I may marry him."A mere puff from the May breeze ruffling the fruit tree outside the window of Selina's room could have felled her audience over. Their faces paled even to their red young lips. The first, she, their Amanthus, foritto come to!It, the incredible, the barely formulated in thought, the well-nigh unuttered in phrase! They stared at her, and at each other about the room! It was a space before volition began to come back to them! And with the return of it, they remembered! Bliss' father had just put him into business, Bliss was working like a man, pretty Bliss, thinking it was for Amanthus!Amanthus the meanwhile was continuing to drop further startling information. "Mr. Tate is going to Germany. He wants to study. He says ifMamma will consent to let me be married at once, and all of us go over together, it will be better. We can live in any sort of way or fashion Mamma and I choose, he says. There's a great deal of money."Somebody gasped. It turned out to be Maud. Amanthus, sweet and unruffled and definite, was going on."Mamma says, however, he's to go away. Quite away. And let her have the summer to take me about. We're going to Mamma's two cousins who married East, one at Narragansett, and one at Bar Harbor, and think it over. But I know now. Mamma needn't bother."Juliette more than ever these days was Spartan and accusing. She spared not herself nor anyone. Her aquiline little face blazed and her dark eyes flashed. "How do you reconcile it with yourself about Bliss?"Amanthus colored. "I don't have to. I told him it was a boy and girl affair all the time. It never would have been Bliss anyhow. There have been several this winter I haven't talked about."That night Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon came around again to Selina's. As if drawn back by a common need of fellowship, Maud and Juliette and Adele were there."Wonderful old Tate!" said Mr. Welling. "He's just broken it to us."The four were silent. Maud was by Selina onthe sofa, and Juliette who was sitting by Adele, had her hand. They avoided Mr. Welling's eyes, and the eyes of each other. As Amanthus herself had said, they took things hard. Probe beneath this affair of hers with anybody, they could not. Nor could they bring themselves to mention Mr. Tate. It was as if silently and desperately they sought support in each other only, and clung together.Perhaps the others understood. "Fool Bliss," said Culpepper, "but then he always has been."They could not discuss that either."How's the cause?" from Mr. Cannon suddenly.He having indulged in levity concerning it, was in disgrace in that respect. The ladies eyed him doubtfully, and questioningly."But I mean it. No cavil. Who do you think called me up at the law class to-day? Got the first private telephone line in town, just put in, lively old girl! Aunt Jinnie Hines Cumming,ætat. eighty-three! She was vigorously and impatiently saying, 'Hurrah,' 'hurrah,' instead of 'Hello,' when I got to the receiver, having forgotten the cabalistic word, but that's small detail. She promptly went on to tell me over the telephone that she's always considered women such fools—her words, not mine, ladies—she'd like to see 'em started toward some sort of mitigation of their condition before she died—that she'd been getting all sorts of data through the mail of late about women—that of course, she knew it came from Juanita Bruce and Harriet Higginson.But nevertheless it had given her an idea, and would I come round there?"From Maud, "Of all people, even more than Mrs. Higginson, the right one!"From Juliette, "Do you suppose shereallymeans to do it?"From Selina, "Does she know how unfortunately Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were called away? We've got the lists of names and all the data. Oh, go on and tell us, did you go?"From Adele, "If anybody can put it through, Mrs. Cumming can!"Mr. Cannon rubbed his hands and eyed his audience delightsomely. "My Aunt Jinnie Cumming,ætat. eighty-three, sent for me in my legal status, to tell her how to go about it! She proposes to organize!"

When Selina and Maud became converts to the cause of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, they carried Adele and Juliette with them. They also offered of their enthusiasm and their enlightenment to Amanthus but she only looked at them wonderingly.

The day after the two sponsors for the cause, Mrs. Higginson and Mrs. Bruce, deserted it, the four were gathered at the Wistars' in Selina's room, discussing the affair, when Amanthus walked in.

"Yououghtto be interested in what we're talking about, Amanthus," said Maud severely, "though you're not. It's a question involving every phase and—er—" Maud had lost the vocabulary of the article she was quoting, "every side of woman" she finished a little lamely. "You ought to be an espouser either for or against such a cause, or you ought to know at least, whether you consider it a cause."

Amanthus heard Maudie out. How pretty she was in her attention that didn't do more than just attend. Then she laughed protestingly. The little wonder on her face, the bother in her eyes, made hersweet and irresistible. Made you want to protect and defend her! Want to shield her from the bothering Mauds of life with their perpetual attacks and innuendoes!

"You're so queer, Maudie," smiling affectionately; "you and Judy and Adele, and, yes, Selina, too. You all do get so worked up. Last time it was about the reverting, or was it the reversion of the Scriptures? And whether you approve of it? I don't see what it is you all are always thinking you're about." She paused a perceptible time. Then she blushed, dazzlingly, radiantly. While they wasted themselves in all these puzzling fashions,shehad been about the real business of life. "Mr. Tate has asked Mamma if I may marry him."

A mere puff from the May breeze ruffling the fruit tree outside the window of Selina's room could have felled her audience over. Their faces paled even to their red young lips. The first, she, their Amanthus, foritto come to!It, the incredible, the barely formulated in thought, the well-nigh unuttered in phrase! They stared at her, and at each other about the room! It was a space before volition began to come back to them! And with the return of it, they remembered! Bliss' father had just put him into business, Bliss was working like a man, pretty Bliss, thinking it was for Amanthus!

Amanthus the meanwhile was continuing to drop further startling information. "Mr. Tate is going to Germany. He wants to study. He says ifMamma will consent to let me be married at once, and all of us go over together, it will be better. We can live in any sort of way or fashion Mamma and I choose, he says. There's a great deal of money."

Somebody gasped. It turned out to be Maud. Amanthus, sweet and unruffled and definite, was going on.

"Mamma says, however, he's to go away. Quite away. And let her have the summer to take me about. We're going to Mamma's two cousins who married East, one at Narragansett, and one at Bar Harbor, and think it over. But I know now. Mamma needn't bother."

Juliette more than ever these days was Spartan and accusing. She spared not herself nor anyone. Her aquiline little face blazed and her dark eyes flashed. "How do you reconcile it with yourself about Bliss?"

Amanthus colored. "I don't have to. I told him it was a boy and girl affair all the time. It never would have been Bliss anyhow. There have been several this winter I haven't talked about."

That night Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Mr. Cannon came around again to Selina's. As if drawn back by a common need of fellowship, Maud and Juliette and Adele were there.

"Wonderful old Tate!" said Mr. Welling. "He's just broken it to us."

The four were silent. Maud was by Selina onthe sofa, and Juliette who was sitting by Adele, had her hand. They avoided Mr. Welling's eyes, and the eyes of each other. As Amanthus herself had said, they took things hard. Probe beneath this affair of hers with anybody, they could not. Nor could they bring themselves to mention Mr. Tate. It was as if silently and desperately they sought support in each other only, and clung together.

Perhaps the others understood. "Fool Bliss," said Culpepper, "but then he always has been."

They could not discuss that either.

"How's the cause?" from Mr. Cannon suddenly.

He having indulged in levity concerning it, was in disgrace in that respect. The ladies eyed him doubtfully, and questioningly.

"But I mean it. No cavil. Who do you think called me up at the law class to-day? Got the first private telephone line in town, just put in, lively old girl! Aunt Jinnie Hines Cumming,ætat. eighty-three! She was vigorously and impatiently saying, 'Hurrah,' 'hurrah,' instead of 'Hello,' when I got to the receiver, having forgotten the cabalistic word, but that's small detail. She promptly went on to tell me over the telephone that she's always considered women such fools—her words, not mine, ladies—she'd like to see 'em started toward some sort of mitigation of their condition before she died—that she'd been getting all sorts of data through the mail of late about women—that of course, she knew it came from Juanita Bruce and Harriet Higginson.But nevertheless it had given her an idea, and would I come round there?"

From Maud, "Of all people, even more than Mrs. Higginson, the right one!"

From Juliette, "Do you suppose shereallymeans to do it?"

From Selina, "Does she know how unfortunately Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson were called away? We've got the lists of names and all the data. Oh, go on and tell us, did you go?"

From Adele, "If anybody can put it through, Mrs. Cumming can!"

Mr. Cannon rubbed his hands and eyed his audience delightsomely. "My Aunt Jinnie Cumming,ætat. eighty-three, sent for me in my legal status, to tell her how to go about it! She proposes to organize!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENIt was a momentous assemblage, that gathering of ladies who responded to the call of their erstwhile social leader, Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming. This octogenarian person, about to go away for the summer with her two maids and her six trunks when the idea struck her, delayed her going but declined to have the covers taken off the furniture in her drawing-room."Never put yourself out for women," was her explanation of this to Preston Cannon, her nephew. "If they think you overvalue them, they undervalue you, and the other way round for the reverse of the proposition."Consequently the meeting came to order in due time in Mrs. Cumming's less formal library, which she declared was easier to unswathe and put in order.Thanks to the beneficent offices of Preston Cannon, right hand for all the ladies concerned in planning the affair, Miss Selina Wistar, Miss Maud Addison and Miss Adele Carter were present, established in the dining-room opening off the library in the combined callings of ushers, pages and tellers. It wasn't strictly parliamentary that they should bethere, and years afterwards they turned on him and told him so, but then they were only thrilled and excited and grateful to him for arranging it with Mrs. Cumming.On the afternoon in question the three wearing immaculate white dresses, and seated at a small table just inside the door leading from the dining-room into the library, with trays of papers and pencils in readiness, watched the ladies surge in, in pairs, trios and groups, and find chairs.Adele leaned across to speak to Maud and Selina. She had on a white sailor hat with scarlet cherries on it, fruit being the rage in millinery this season, a jaunty type which didn't at all suit her. "How would it do to take some notes of the meeting for Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson? They'll want to know everything." Conscientious Adele!Maud looked stunning in her new white hat with crystallized grapes on it. "Better than that," she whispered in reply, "Selina and I are going to telegraph 'em when the meeting's over. We have their address."Selina had been considerably worried over Mamma's extravagance for her this spring, but since she could not combat it, looked rather nice herself in a soft-brimmed leghorn with a wreath of strawberries, both blossoms and fruit, upon it. She leaned across the table in her turn. "We're going to the telegraph office before we go home. Come with us. Thanks to Maud the message is written out in telling style.""I felt it was a significant moment," said Maud, "a moment we may be proud to feel we witnessed. And I felt the message ought to be epigrammatic in a way and worthy of it. Read it, Selina."Selina produced it from her pocket-book and read it softly, the library filling rapidly with ladies by now:Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our rights and our realms our platform.It was a representative gathering, this, in the library of old Mrs. Cumming. Summer silks, summer grenadines, buntings, and this latest thing, French satines, abounded. While fashion this season decreed trains which swept pavements and floors impassively, the marked characteristic of the hour was bustles. And if bonnets predominated over hats, the bonnets made up for any over-sedateness in form by their wealth in that rage of the moment mentioned, fruit in every shape known to millinery if not to pomology.Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle was there, Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones was there, and also Mrs. Jones' three married stepdaughters. Mrs. William Williams was there, and Mrs. Carter, mother of Adele, and Mrs. Grosvenor, her grandmother, Mrs. Harrison, very lovely and very charming and smiling, Mrs. Addison, Mrs. Caldwell, Selina's little mother, Mrs. Wistar, and Auntie and Cousin Anna Tomlinson. And besidesthese, serried ranks of others even the more impressive because the less well known."Mrs. Cumming ordered a hundred chairs from the undertaker's, though she wouldn't have this known, every confectioner in town chancing to have his engaged for this afternoon or this evening, I know that," whispered Selina to Maud and Adele, "for Mr. Cannon said so, and there are just ten vacant."Here Mrs. Jinnie Cumming rose from her chair in the front row of the audience, tottery but equal to it, game old girl, as Preston Cannon said of her. And deliberately reading the instructions furnished her by her nephew through her lorgnette after she had risen, found what she wanted, asked somebody near by to pound a chair back, and call the meeting to order.Having gotten it to order, and its attention fixed on herself, she told the ninety ladies gathered in her library that they knew as well as she did what they were there for, or ought to know if they had read the card she'd sent 'em. And thereupon asked Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones to take the chair.Mrs. Jones in grenadine, trained and bustled, and red blackberries, had prepared herself for this, so it was understood afterwards, having been told beforehand. She swung matters deftly along from this point, being a capable person and a Tuttle. When Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle in turn should pass the social scepter to the next in line, there was very littledoubt as to who hoped to be qualified to receive it.With a few graceful phrases explaining the reasons for their presence here this afternoon, Mrs. Jones appointed a secretary, and this done came to the point."Since we are here, because we are really interested, ladies, will someone tell us a little of what women are doing elsewhere?"Mrs. William Williams, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Wistar all got up. Mrs. Wistar explained afterwards that however disinclined she might have felt to do so, there was no choice left her, being Juanita's sister.Mrs. Williams whose bodily proportions were by far the larger of the three, and wearing a summer silk of green, a bustle, and a bonnet with gooseberries, was recognized by the chair, and the other two ladies sat down. Whereupon Mrs. Williams with a sudden change of countenance, looked about her as if for help, colored violently and sat down herself. It was as startling as it was uncharacteristic, and the first exhibition of club-fright witnessed by any of the company. It added verve to the occasion.Mrs. Carter now arose, in bunting, bustle and pink raspberries, smiling and propitiatory. Not for worlds, so said her manner, would she have it thought that she was covering Mrs. Williams' confusion."'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment.'"]"It would seem, ladies, that women everywhere are awaking to a need of more uplift in their lives, are realizing that their lives on the whole are starved. In proof of this, book-clubs, magazine clubs, culture clubs are forming all over this land of ours. More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment among our sex." One recalled the nature of periodical at the Carter house that no one read but Adele!"And who of us but rejoices that women are awake to this need in themselves?"Mrs. Wistar arose, all of five feet four, but none the less impressive and none the less herself for that."She was a Livingston, too, like Mrs. Bruce," somebody whispered to somebody."In our leisure," Mrs. Wistar deplored, "and I hope it is not disloyal to say it, women are too inclined to talk recipes and seamstresses and servants to the exclusion of more elevating and uplifting topics." Was she getting back at Cousin Anna? "From the information on the subject we all have been receiving recently, it would seem woman is lifting the plane of her life to things more worth while. As one eloquent article written by a woman herself, ably puts it, 'Woman has for too long allowed herself to become subdued to the thing she works in.' In other words, as the writer goes on to explain, domesticity."At a signal from the chair that her time was up, Mrs. Wistar sat down, and in compliance with a previous understanding between Mrs. Jones, Mrs, Cumming and Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, Mrs. Tuttle arose, resplendent, as becomes a leader, in purple silk and train, nature having provided the bustle, and purple and green grapes combined with a modest crop of seckel pears upon her bonnet. She arose and moved that the body of women present organize themselves into a club for purposes to be set forth following organization.Seconded by Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson, and also by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle herself, in a loud voice, she being on ground new to her, it was put to the vote without remark, Mrs. Jones failing to recall she ought to ask for any; and unanimously adopted."And the name of this club, ladies?" from Mrs. Jones in the chair."Perhaps the name will better follow after we determine the club's purposes?" from Mrs. Harrison on her feet for the moment, lovely and smiling in grenadine, bustle, and bonnet garniture of small oranges."Music," called pretty Mrs. Caldwell in a checked silk, bustle and huckleberries."Literature," from Mrs. Carter, she of the pink raspberries."Art," from Mrs. Williams, recovered, with a reviving nod of her gooseberries."Or," from little Mrs. Wistar impressively arising—surely this lady had belonged to the ranks of the retiring and deprecating only because the way had never opened to her to be elsewhere! "Or may we not includeallof these suggestions, and say music, artandliterature?"A newcomer, late in arriving, stood up, in a wool street dress, plain but perfectly decent and genteel, though lacking a bustle. It was Miss Emma McRanney, in a plain straw hat, poor, working creature, large of feature, thick-set and good-humored."Ladies, it may be well here to remind ourselvesof the two persons who've done most toward this end of organization and common fellowship among us. And who most regrettably to themselves and to us, I hope I may say, are not with us to-day. I speak, of course, of Mrs. Aurelius Bruce and Mrs. Amos Higginson, who have given of themselves and their time and their money to bring about the present occasion. And I would like to recall that each of these ladies has a conviction which she feels should be at base of any such organization of women as we are effecting now. Convictions which, I'm sure you'll all agree with me, we owe it to them to consider."A murmur went around the ninety ladies, and Mrs. Jones bowed graciously from the chair in recognition of the general agreement to this.Miss Emma McRanney went on. "One of these ladies, Mrs. Bruce, believes and has believed for years that the great factor in the future of woman is suffrage. Mrs. Higginson's conviction is as strong that woman will come into her larger sphere and wider field of usefulness through a better understanding of her own present business of domesticity. I am merely the mouthpiece of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, ladies, with whose views I chance to be familiar. They, hearing of the meeting through Mrs. Cumming, who telegraphed them in Chicago to such effect, have replied asking that their views be presented to you this afternoon, and at the request of Mrs. Cumming I am here to do it. Mrs. Bruce believesthat the platform of this or any other organization of women for woman's own betterment must be suffrage. Mrs. Higginson maintains that such a club at start should be a forum and clearing-house for the broadening and enlightenment of women as home administrators."But murmurs were many: currants were nodding in emphatic refutation to cherries, blackberries to quinces, apples to gooseberries. Milliners might dictate their common absurdities in head-gear; mantua-makers in dress styles, but not Mrs. Bruce or Mrs. Higginson, hopeless dressers both, their business to these ladies! Denunciations grew audible. Remarks, while unofficial and made from lady to lady, nevertheless, were to one end."Suffrage, with all apologies to Mrs. Bruce," said some apricots to some Concord grapes next to 'em, "simply stands with and for freaks. Who'd want to look like Mrs. Bruce?""And domesticity is exactly what we're running away from," returned the grapes, outraged. "We want to turn our backs for a while on the servant problem and its vexations."As a unit the ninety were against Miss Emma McRanney! One only was to rise to her support, and that one Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming!Miss McRanney was still speaking. "If woman in any numbers is to become a self-supporting and economic factor, and it looks as if she were going to have to, it's only fair she ask for her part in makingthe laws she'll work under. And if woman is to be a self-supporting factor as well as a homemaker, it's only wisdom on her part to get about fitting herself to do both things."Mrs. Cumming having struggled up out of her chair by means of her cane, was on her old feet now. "If woman's going to be an economic factor, she's a long ways to travel before she'll be one. If she hopes to see herself arrive she'd better set about starting."Cousin Anna Tomlinson, of all persons, in grenadine, bustle and plums, was on her feet and being recognized by the chair. When one saw her fumbling for her pince-nez, as she called her eye-glasses, and having found the same, peer about until the angle desired was obtained between them and a slip of paper in her hand, it grew clear that she was recognized for reasons, someone, pushing her to her feet as a mouthpiece, having put the paper there.Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson and her clique in truth had put it there, scribbling it hastily on a bit of paper secured from those young girl pages, Mrs, Sampson's clique including Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Grosvenor, and, yes, Mrs. Wistar, a very bright spot on either cheek, torn from the cause of her sister Juanita by the compelling magic of that call to culture."It is moved," read Cousin Anna Tomlinson stumblingly, and continuing to shift her glasses to keep the angle "that the purpose of this organizationof women be for the furthering of its members in the arts, including music and literature, and indirectly the community in which it lives——"This being seconded by loud acclaim, it was promptly put to the vote and adopted with applause, before it was realized Mrs. Tomlinson was still on her feet and still by the aid of her pince-nez endeavoring to complete her motion."—and further that the name of this organization be The Woman's Culture Club of Blankington."Mrs. Wistar, an even brighter spot on either cheek, was on her feet at this. Truly a star too long eclipsed, she spun madly in this sky of sudden opportunity. Auntie next her, dear soul, sought to restrain her. "At leastactas if you remembered Juanita," she begged in a cautious whisper, "if only for the looks of the thing, Lavinia."But Mrs. Wistar shook Ann Eliza's hand off her arm. She had scented culture and it had fired her brain. She even would hold them to culture's finer distinctions. "I rise to deplore Mrs. Tomlinson's use of the word woman. And would suggest that in its place she substitute the customary and more pleasing word, lady."Mrs. Jinnie Cumming at that last reseating of her old self had shown fatigue. But at this she emerged again, reached out a veined and withered hand for a grip on the wrist of her nearest neighbor and pulled herself to her feet. Shrewd and dry she gazed around. Her old eyes ran appraisingly over thefaces of that assemblage. With here and there a sophisticated one, as in the cases of Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Carter, for the most these ninety women's faces were naïve, credulous, pleased, the faces of children grown to maturity, eager, excited.Mrs. Jinnie Cumming took her time in surveying them. Ninety women, most of whom she considered fools, if one believed her statements, couldn't hurryher! She even communed with herself. "Our mothers and our grandmothers were women with women's capacities. Nobody shielded them as these weakling creatures have been shielded. The world and its brutal facts met 'em square, and sophisticated 'em. I go back eighty years myself and I remember 'em."Whereupon she spoke. "I rise for two things, ladies. The first is to put myself on record with Miss McRanney, Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson and to say that by the platform you've just adopted you've set the impulse among you back into dilettantism by—who shall say how many years? And next to say that I take issue with the last speaker who would have the wordladysubstituted for that ofwomanin the name of this organization. It is my feeling the day of the lady, so denominated, is passing, and the hour of woman is come.""Great old girl," said Preston Cannon when he heard about it afterwards. But that was later.Right now the meeting adjourned, after the appointmentof committees to draw up working plans. And as Mrs. Jinnie Cumming tottered out with the assistance of her maid, the ninety ladies followed in pairs, in trios, and groups; in grenadines, silks, buntings and bustles; in apricots, apples, peaches and plums; whereupon the young girl page and usher, Selina Wistar, slim and fair and aghast, beneath a wreath of strawberries and their blossoms, looked at her companion pages and ushers, Maud Allison beneath white grapes crystallized, and Adele Carter in her jaunty hat with cherries that didn't suit her."And we have to break it to Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson!" said Selina. Tears were in her eyes. Tears of outrage and indignation! She seemed to have glimpsed something for her sex that loomed big and pertinent! And here was an end to it!"Where's the telegram?" asked Maud tersely.Selina produced and unfolded it and the three of them read it over:Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our rights and our realms our platform."We can't send that," said Maud. "Give it to me."She seized a pencil from the table and edited the message sternly.Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming not responsible. Apologies. Our rights and our realms rejected.At which light seemed to break upon Maud! And she saw things through a revealing sense of proportion. Glimpsed humor and truth which go to make proportion at last!"They'll be as funny in their war-paint, hunting culture, as we've been carrying around the wisdom that was to die with us!"And all the while during this afternoon a note lay in Selina's pocket-book, along with that telegram, a note written on French gray paper, embossed and monogrammed The postman had handed it to her at her gate and she had read it on the way here. The contents came back to her as later, after sending the telegram she walked home in company with Maud and Adele.My dear Selina, I am going as usual to my cottage at the Virginia springs about the middle of June. Bereft of companionship by the marriage of the last daughter in our family, it occurs to me to wonder if you will come and be my guest for July? Tuttle's vacation will lend him to us for part of that time. I need hardly say that he adds his entreaties to mine.Affectionately and sincerely yours,Alicia Tuttle Jones.

It was a momentous assemblage, that gathering of ladies who responded to the call of their erstwhile social leader, Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming. This octogenarian person, about to go away for the summer with her two maids and her six trunks when the idea struck her, delayed her going but declined to have the covers taken off the furniture in her drawing-room.

"Never put yourself out for women," was her explanation of this to Preston Cannon, her nephew. "If they think you overvalue them, they undervalue you, and the other way round for the reverse of the proposition."

Consequently the meeting came to order in due time in Mrs. Cumming's less formal library, which she declared was easier to unswathe and put in order.

Thanks to the beneficent offices of Preston Cannon, right hand for all the ladies concerned in planning the affair, Miss Selina Wistar, Miss Maud Addison and Miss Adele Carter were present, established in the dining-room opening off the library in the combined callings of ushers, pages and tellers. It wasn't strictly parliamentary that they should bethere, and years afterwards they turned on him and told him so, but then they were only thrilled and excited and grateful to him for arranging it with Mrs. Cumming.

On the afternoon in question the three wearing immaculate white dresses, and seated at a small table just inside the door leading from the dining-room into the library, with trays of papers and pencils in readiness, watched the ladies surge in, in pairs, trios and groups, and find chairs.

Adele leaned across to speak to Maud and Selina. She had on a white sailor hat with scarlet cherries on it, fruit being the rage in millinery this season, a jaunty type which didn't at all suit her. "How would it do to take some notes of the meeting for Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson? They'll want to know everything." Conscientious Adele!

Maud looked stunning in her new white hat with crystallized grapes on it. "Better than that," she whispered in reply, "Selina and I are going to telegraph 'em when the meeting's over. We have their address."

Selina had been considerably worried over Mamma's extravagance for her this spring, but since she could not combat it, looked rather nice herself in a soft-brimmed leghorn with a wreath of strawberries, both blossoms and fruit, upon it. She leaned across the table in her turn. "We're going to the telegraph office before we go home. Come with us. Thanks to Maud the message is written out in telling style."

"I felt it was a significant moment," said Maud, "a moment we may be proud to feel we witnessed. And I felt the message ought to be epigrammatic in a way and worthy of it. Read it, Selina."

Selina produced it from her pocket-book and read it softly, the library filling rapidly with ladies by now:

Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our rights and our realms our platform.

It was a representative gathering, this, in the library of old Mrs. Cumming. Summer silks, summer grenadines, buntings, and this latest thing, French satines, abounded. While fashion this season decreed trains which swept pavements and floors impassively, the marked characteristic of the hour was bustles. And if bonnets predominated over hats, the bonnets made up for any over-sedateness in form by their wealth in that rage of the moment mentioned, fruit in every shape known to millinery if not to pomology.

Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle was there, Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones was there, and also Mrs. Jones' three married stepdaughters. Mrs. William Williams was there, and Mrs. Carter, mother of Adele, and Mrs. Grosvenor, her grandmother, Mrs. Harrison, very lovely and very charming and smiling, Mrs. Addison, Mrs. Caldwell, Selina's little mother, Mrs. Wistar, and Auntie and Cousin Anna Tomlinson. And besidesthese, serried ranks of others even the more impressive because the less well known.

"Mrs. Cumming ordered a hundred chairs from the undertaker's, though she wouldn't have this known, every confectioner in town chancing to have his engaged for this afternoon or this evening, I know that," whispered Selina to Maud and Adele, "for Mr. Cannon said so, and there are just ten vacant."

Here Mrs. Jinnie Cumming rose from her chair in the front row of the audience, tottery but equal to it, game old girl, as Preston Cannon said of her. And deliberately reading the instructions furnished her by her nephew through her lorgnette after she had risen, found what she wanted, asked somebody near by to pound a chair back, and call the meeting to order.

Having gotten it to order, and its attention fixed on herself, she told the ninety ladies gathered in her library that they knew as well as she did what they were there for, or ought to know if they had read the card she'd sent 'em. And thereupon asked Mrs. Alicia Tuttle Jones to take the chair.

Mrs. Jones in grenadine, trained and bustled, and red blackberries, had prepared herself for this, so it was understood afterwards, having been told beforehand. She swung matters deftly along from this point, being a capable person and a Tuttle. When Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle in turn should pass the social scepter to the next in line, there was very littledoubt as to who hoped to be qualified to receive it.

With a few graceful phrases explaining the reasons for their presence here this afternoon, Mrs. Jones appointed a secretary, and this done came to the point.

"Since we are here, because we are really interested, ladies, will someone tell us a little of what women are doing elsewhere?"

Mrs. William Williams, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Wistar all got up. Mrs. Wistar explained afterwards that however disinclined she might have felt to do so, there was no choice left her, being Juanita's sister.

Mrs. Williams whose bodily proportions were by far the larger of the three, and wearing a summer silk of green, a bustle, and a bonnet with gooseberries, was recognized by the chair, and the other two ladies sat down. Whereupon Mrs. Williams with a sudden change of countenance, looked about her as if for help, colored violently and sat down herself. It was as startling as it was uncharacteristic, and the first exhibition of club-fright witnessed by any of the company. It added verve to the occasion.

Mrs. Carter now arose, in bunting, bustle and pink raspberries, smiling and propitiatory. Not for worlds, so said her manner, would she have it thought that she was covering Mrs. Williams' confusion.

"'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment.'"]

"'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment.'"]

"'More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment.'"]

"It would seem, ladies, that women everywhere are awaking to a need of more uplift in their lives, are realizing that their lives on the whole are starved. In proof of this, book-clubs, magazine clubs, culture clubs are forming all over this land of ours. More uplift, more culture is the cry of the moment among our sex." One recalled the nature of periodical at the Carter house that no one read but Adele!"And who of us but rejoices that women are awake to this need in themselves?"

Mrs. Wistar arose, all of five feet four, but none the less impressive and none the less herself for that.

"She was a Livingston, too, like Mrs. Bruce," somebody whispered to somebody.

"In our leisure," Mrs. Wistar deplored, "and I hope it is not disloyal to say it, women are too inclined to talk recipes and seamstresses and servants to the exclusion of more elevating and uplifting topics." Was she getting back at Cousin Anna? "From the information on the subject we all have been receiving recently, it would seem woman is lifting the plane of her life to things more worth while. As one eloquent article written by a woman herself, ably puts it, 'Woman has for too long allowed herself to become subdued to the thing she works in.' In other words, as the writer goes on to explain, domesticity."

At a signal from the chair that her time was up, Mrs. Wistar sat down, and in compliance with a previous understanding between Mrs. Jones, Mrs, Cumming and Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle, Mrs. Tuttle arose, resplendent, as becomes a leader, in purple silk and train, nature having provided the bustle, and purple and green grapes combined with a modest crop of seckel pears upon her bonnet. She arose and moved that the body of women present organize themselves into a club for purposes to be set forth following organization.

Seconded by Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson, and also by Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle herself, in a loud voice, she being on ground new to her, it was put to the vote without remark, Mrs. Jones failing to recall she ought to ask for any; and unanimously adopted.

"And the name of this club, ladies?" from Mrs. Jones in the chair.

"Perhaps the name will better follow after we determine the club's purposes?" from Mrs. Harrison on her feet for the moment, lovely and smiling in grenadine, bustle, and bonnet garniture of small oranges.

"Music," called pretty Mrs. Caldwell in a checked silk, bustle and huckleberries.

"Literature," from Mrs. Carter, she of the pink raspberries.

"Art," from Mrs. Williams, recovered, with a reviving nod of her gooseberries.

"Or," from little Mrs. Wistar impressively arising—surely this lady had belonged to the ranks of the retiring and deprecating only because the way had never opened to her to be elsewhere! "Or may we not includeallof these suggestions, and say music, artandliterature?"

A newcomer, late in arriving, stood up, in a wool street dress, plain but perfectly decent and genteel, though lacking a bustle. It was Miss Emma McRanney, in a plain straw hat, poor, working creature, large of feature, thick-set and good-humored.

"Ladies, it may be well here to remind ourselvesof the two persons who've done most toward this end of organization and common fellowship among us. And who most regrettably to themselves and to us, I hope I may say, are not with us to-day. I speak, of course, of Mrs. Aurelius Bruce and Mrs. Amos Higginson, who have given of themselves and their time and their money to bring about the present occasion. And I would like to recall that each of these ladies has a conviction which she feels should be at base of any such organization of women as we are effecting now. Convictions which, I'm sure you'll all agree with me, we owe it to them to consider."

A murmur went around the ninety ladies, and Mrs. Jones bowed graciously from the chair in recognition of the general agreement to this.

Miss Emma McRanney went on. "One of these ladies, Mrs. Bruce, believes and has believed for years that the great factor in the future of woman is suffrage. Mrs. Higginson's conviction is as strong that woman will come into her larger sphere and wider field of usefulness through a better understanding of her own present business of domesticity. I am merely the mouthpiece of Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson, ladies, with whose views I chance to be familiar. They, hearing of the meeting through Mrs. Cumming, who telegraphed them in Chicago to such effect, have replied asking that their views be presented to you this afternoon, and at the request of Mrs. Cumming I am here to do it. Mrs. Bruce believesthat the platform of this or any other organization of women for woman's own betterment must be suffrage. Mrs. Higginson maintains that such a club at start should be a forum and clearing-house for the broadening and enlightenment of women as home administrators."

But murmurs were many: currants were nodding in emphatic refutation to cherries, blackberries to quinces, apples to gooseberries. Milliners might dictate their common absurdities in head-gear; mantua-makers in dress styles, but not Mrs. Bruce or Mrs. Higginson, hopeless dressers both, their business to these ladies! Denunciations grew audible. Remarks, while unofficial and made from lady to lady, nevertheless, were to one end.

"Suffrage, with all apologies to Mrs. Bruce," said some apricots to some Concord grapes next to 'em, "simply stands with and for freaks. Who'd want to look like Mrs. Bruce?"

"And domesticity is exactly what we're running away from," returned the grapes, outraged. "We want to turn our backs for a while on the servant problem and its vexations."

As a unit the ninety were against Miss Emma McRanney! One only was to rise to her support, and that one Mrs. Jinnie Hines Cumming!

Miss McRanney was still speaking. "If woman in any numbers is to become a self-supporting and economic factor, and it looks as if she were going to have to, it's only fair she ask for her part in makingthe laws she'll work under. And if woman is to be a self-supporting factor as well as a homemaker, it's only wisdom on her part to get about fitting herself to do both things."

Mrs. Cumming having struggled up out of her chair by means of her cane, was on her old feet now. "If woman's going to be an economic factor, she's a long ways to travel before she'll be one. If she hopes to see herself arrive she'd better set about starting."

Cousin Anna Tomlinson, of all persons, in grenadine, bustle and plums, was on her feet and being recognized by the chair. When one saw her fumbling for her pince-nez, as she called her eye-glasses, and having found the same, peer about until the angle desired was obtained between them and a slip of paper in her hand, it grew clear that she was recognized for reasons, someone, pushing her to her feet as a mouthpiece, having put the paper there.

Mrs. Sally Jones Sampson and her clique in truth had put it there, scribbling it hastily on a bit of paper secured from those young girl pages, Mrs, Sampson's clique including Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Grosvenor, and, yes, Mrs. Wistar, a very bright spot on either cheek, torn from the cause of her sister Juanita by the compelling magic of that call to culture.

"It is moved," read Cousin Anna Tomlinson stumblingly, and continuing to shift her glasses to keep the angle "that the purpose of this organizationof women be for the furthering of its members in the arts, including music and literature, and indirectly the community in which it lives——"

This being seconded by loud acclaim, it was promptly put to the vote and adopted with applause, before it was realized Mrs. Tomlinson was still on her feet and still by the aid of her pince-nez endeavoring to complete her motion.

"—and further that the name of this organization be The Woman's Culture Club of Blankington."

Mrs. Wistar, an even brighter spot on either cheek, was on her feet at this. Truly a star too long eclipsed, she spun madly in this sky of sudden opportunity. Auntie next her, dear soul, sought to restrain her. "At leastactas if you remembered Juanita," she begged in a cautious whisper, "if only for the looks of the thing, Lavinia."

But Mrs. Wistar shook Ann Eliza's hand off her arm. She had scented culture and it had fired her brain. She even would hold them to culture's finer distinctions. "I rise to deplore Mrs. Tomlinson's use of the word woman. And would suggest that in its place she substitute the customary and more pleasing word, lady."

Mrs. Jinnie Cumming at that last reseating of her old self had shown fatigue. But at this she emerged again, reached out a veined and withered hand for a grip on the wrist of her nearest neighbor and pulled herself to her feet. Shrewd and dry she gazed around. Her old eyes ran appraisingly over thefaces of that assemblage. With here and there a sophisticated one, as in the cases of Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Carter, for the most these ninety women's faces were naïve, credulous, pleased, the faces of children grown to maturity, eager, excited.

Mrs. Jinnie Cumming took her time in surveying them. Ninety women, most of whom she considered fools, if one believed her statements, couldn't hurryher! She even communed with herself. "Our mothers and our grandmothers were women with women's capacities. Nobody shielded them as these weakling creatures have been shielded. The world and its brutal facts met 'em square, and sophisticated 'em. I go back eighty years myself and I remember 'em."

Whereupon she spoke. "I rise for two things, ladies. The first is to put myself on record with Miss McRanney, Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson and to say that by the platform you've just adopted you've set the impulse among you back into dilettantism by—who shall say how many years? And next to say that I take issue with the last speaker who would have the wordladysubstituted for that ofwomanin the name of this organization. It is my feeling the day of the lady, so denominated, is passing, and the hour of woman is come."

"Great old girl," said Preston Cannon when he heard about it afterwards. But that was later.

Right now the meeting adjourned, after the appointmentof committees to draw up working plans. And as Mrs. Jinnie Cumming tottered out with the assistance of her maid, the ninety ladies followed in pairs, in trios, and groups; in grenadines, silks, buntings and bustles; in apricots, apples, peaches and plums; whereupon the young girl page and usher, Selina Wistar, slim and fair and aghast, beneath a wreath of strawberries and their blossoms, looked at her companion pages and ushers, Maud Allison beneath white grapes crystallized, and Adele Carter in her jaunty hat with cherries that didn't suit her.

"And we have to break it to Aunt Juanita and Mrs. Higginson!" said Selina. Tears were in her eyes. Tears of outrage and indignation! She seemed to have glimpsed something for her sex that loomed big and pertinent! And here was an end to it!

"Where's the telegram?" asked Maud tersely.

Selina produced and unfolded it and the three of them read it over:

Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming responsible. Congratulations. Our rights and our realms our platform.

"We can't send that," said Maud. "Give it to me."

She seized a pencil from the table and edited the message sternly.

Organization effected. Mrs. Cumming not responsible. Apologies. Our rights and our realms rejected.

At which light seemed to break upon Maud! And she saw things through a revealing sense of proportion. Glimpsed humor and truth which go to make proportion at last!

"They'll be as funny in their war-paint, hunting culture, as we've been carrying around the wisdom that was to die with us!"

And all the while during this afternoon a note lay in Selina's pocket-book, along with that telegram, a note written on French gray paper, embossed and monogrammed The postman had handed it to her at her gate and she had read it on the way here. The contents came back to her as later, after sending the telegram she walked home in company with Maud and Adele.

My dear Selina, I am going as usual to my cottage at the Virginia springs about the middle of June. Bereft of companionship by the marriage of the last daughter in our family, it occurs to me to wonder if you will come and be my guest for July? Tuttle's vacation will lend him to us for part of that time. I need hardly say that he adds his entreaties to mine.

Affectionately and sincerely yours,

Alicia Tuttle Jones.

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