When one of them dies of the strain, she just dies. The obituary notice of her as the wife of so-and-so never tells how she just "gave out," having borne eight children and having done the cooking, washing, ironing, and sewing for the family, besides "helping in the fields."
It was to these women that Selah came with her definite plans for better conditions for them and their children. She brought them the refreshment of social intercourse, and united them in a secret common cause. It was difficult to accomplish against the order and very nature of their lives. Sometimes she failed.
One day she called at a little farmhouse hidden away from the public road in one of the mountain coves. There were no children about, no noisy cackling of cocks and hens, no flowers in the yard, not a sound to break the awful silence of the accompanying hills. It was as if life died there long ago and left behind only the rickety skeleton of a house as a mournful epitaph.
But inside, an old woman sat mending bags. She wore a gray calico slip, tied in around the waist with her apron strings; both were ragged, abominablysoiled. Her hair was white; strands of it hung around her neck from a little knot twisted tight on the back of her head. Her face was ghastly white, wrinkled, toothless, but the pale blue eyes, rolling wildly, senselessly, in the cavernous sockets, gave her an expression so terrible that Selah started back involuntarily as she lifted her head, stared at her, and went on with her mending on the ill-smelling meal sack. This was the wife of Jake Terry.
The Terrys had had nine children. They all worked in the field. None of them had ever gone to school. They were poor with a desperation of poverty undreamed of even in the slums.
But Terry had a sawmill. At last when his sons were old enough to work, he began to make money. The wife and daughters did the farming. Then, quite inconveniently, Mrs. Terry took leave of her senses. She was violent in her efforts to throw herself in the mill pond. She was sent to the asylum and remained there three years—until she was no longer violent. Then she was brought home, still witless, but able in a mechanical way from long habit to do the things she had always done. Terry thought that this was better than hiring some one.His children had married or "run off" and left him. So the old wife went back into the treadmill. She was obsessed with the idea of work. She would not sleep. Sometimes she would spring out of the bed in the dead hours of the night, kindle a fire in the slatternly stove, and "start breakfast." She was always hurrying from one task to another.
"How do you do, Mrs. Terry?" Selah ventured, still standing in the doorway.
"My hens is all dead!" cried the old woman.
"I've come to see you about something," Selah said, advancing.
"No, you ain't; nobody ever comes here. My children are all dead, too!" she wailed.
"They are not dead, they are married," Selah said soothingly.
"My hens is all dead, and my children is all dead, and I'm dead, too. Women don't live, you know, they jest work." This last in a low, confidential tone as she stretched the wrinkles of her face into a ghastly grin. "I've heard of you," she went on. "You think you are going to make the women live same as men. You can't do it. We ain't for ourselves, we are jest made for them. Iwouldn't mind it so much if my hens hadn't all died!"
Selah fled from the house, climbed into the car, and commanded the chauffeur to drive on.
"I knew it wasn't any use for you to go in there," said Mrs. Deal, staring at the girl's stricken face. "Did she tell you all her hens were dead?"
"Yes, but it wasn't that, nor her forlorn condition; it was something else. She said she was dead, too: 'Women don't live you know, they just work!' Ah, it was awful!"
"We've had four women from this settlement sent to the asylum just like that," Mrs. Deal added after a pause as they moved swiftly along the fragrant June road.
It was Saturday afternoon; they were on their way to a meeting of the Co-Citizens' League at Possum Trot. Mr. Deal, a prosperous farmer, was also the justice of the peace in the tiny mountain village; and this also happened to be the day when he retailed justice in small sentences in the usual neighbourhood squabbles.
Court had adjourned as they entered the village. Men stood in groups before the one store, talking inundertones as women passed—all going in the direction of the schoolhouse, which stood exactly opposite. Deal was "dressed up"—that is to say, he wore his coat, collar, and tie. He stood combing his whiskers and looking over his steel-rimmed spectacles at Mrs. Deal, who descended from the automobile and followed Selah into the house.
Presently another man flirted his head to one side, spat on the ground, and looked at Deal, whose face above his whiskers was puffed out in a fat smile.
"Helendamnation, Squire! what does all this female gaddin' and gittin' together and whisperin' mean?" he snickered.
"Nothin'!" answered Deal.
"What we goin' to do about it?"
"Nothin'!"
"But they tell me they're fixin' to vote or bust."
"Well, they won't! it's just a piece of devilment started by Susan Walton to pretend she's earnin' her salary as trustee of that fool Fund the Mosely woman left. She's puttin' the Adams girl up to this. 'Tain't nothin'. Susan Walton ain't the husband of my wife nor the head of my family. What I say goes in my house!"
"I don't know, things is gittin' mighty queer, especially the women. My wife's quit talkin'! I hear they're fixin' to boycott us durin' the harvest season if we don't vote for 'em!"
"I've been married twenty years, and my wife's never refused to do what I tell her yet. I don't reckon she'll begin now by refusin' to cook for me and them that sets at my table."
During this exchange of opinions both men had made their way slowly across the street and entered the group of men who were gathering about the schoolhouse door.
Far down in the cool brown shadows within, Selah Adams was standing upon the teacher's rostrum. She was speaking in low terms which could not be heard from the door, which had been left open for coolness. Fifty women sat below her in creaking split-bottom chairs, with faces as rapt and attentive as if they had been listening to a revival sermon. Some of them were mature maidens of thirty years; some were young wives who had reached that stage of feminine dissolution when women cease to curl their front hair and permit their short back locks to hang down in a doleful fringe upon the back of their necks. Themajority of them, however, were elderly matrons. Their shoulders had that noble giving droop which only women show who have reached the sublimity of nurturing many children at their breasts. They were all moving palmetto fans with the serene air of fat, ugly old goddesses who had passed out of the desire of man and had now returned to their own woman's sanity.
"Squire, I don't like them goings on in thar!"
"What you talkin' about?"
"That gal, she looks damn dangerous seditious. I can't hear what she's sayin', but them women they can, and they look like they was bein' converted. They got the same expression females always have durin' a revival, when they've made up their pra'r-meetin' minds to do what the preacher tells 'em if they burn at the stake for it! I tell you that gal's got 'em. They'll follow her as if she was a 'pillow' of cloud by day and of fire by night, leadin' 'em through the Red Sea to the Promised Land!"
"I'll show you who one of 'em will follow!" exclaimed Deal, advancing to the door.
His long forked shadow fell across the silent figures in the audience as he thrust his head in andcraned his neck until he caught sight of Mrs. Deal seated at the far end of the first row.
"Molly!" he called sternly.
The even rhythm of Molly's fan did not change. She did not so much as turn her head. Her large blue eyes upturned beneath their thick lids never wavered from Selah's face.
"Molly, come out! I'm waitin' for you!" shouted the Squire in a louder, unmistakable voice of command.
Selah paused, nodded to a young girl, and murmured, "Close the door, Mary," very much in the same preoccupied tone she might have used if she had said, "Mary, shoo the chickens out!" It was a splendid triumph for Selah.
The next moment a roar of laughter went up in the street beyond the closed door. A red spot flamed upon Molly Deal's cheeks, but her fan went on swinging gently to and fro. Her eyes were still fixed upon Selah's smiling face.
The meeting was important. The day and even the hour was fixed when the women would announce the plans by which they were determined to obtain suffrage in Jordan County. So far the men had notreceived a hint as to what these plans were. The whole movement seemed senseless and hopeless, merely causing furious antagonism and outrageous embarrassment; for Mrs. Walton's perversities as director of the bank had been felt far and wide in the country districts, where farmers were not only unable to secure loans, but many who had mortgaged their land to the Mosely Estate now found themselves facing the possibility of foreclosure.
There was to be a mass meeting in Jordantown the first Saturday in July. Selah informed the Leagues of this as she made this tour from one community to another. The purpose of the great mass meeting was fully explained, and plans were laid for getting as many people to attend as possible.
At last, as the shades of evening fell, the women filed out of the schoolhouse, strange, exasperatingly potential figures to the Odd Fellow husbands who had waited impatiently outside for them. Molly Deal climbed silently into the red-and-green spring wagon beside her equally silent husband. Selah waved her hand prettily from the car as she passed up the road in the direction of Jordantown. She was fairly contented with the progress made in theCounty Leagues. She had worked indefatigably for nearly three months, organizing, teaching, and inspiring the proper spirit of life and hope, as she called it, in the women.
But the test was yet to come. All depended upon the success of the mass meeting, its effects upon the men. Would they understand the gravity of refusing to coöperate with the women? She refused to contemplate the disasters, the bitter suspense and disappointment if they did hold out. It seemed strange that not a single man had guessed the method the suffragists would adopt to win. She was excited, elated, hopeful, and at the same time she was sad. She thought of her father, so bereaved by her conduct. Her eyes filled with tears at the vision of him mournfully silent in the evenings, too much cast down to even reproach her with her perfidy. Then she began to laugh as a certain thought came to her. He had ceased to show his diminished head on the streets of Jordantown. He had been sober for two months, spending all of his time attending to his farm. He was like a good soldier, who in the face of a decisive battle indulges in no weakness, keeps his wits about him. She was sure he was camping in thespirit beneath her walls, waiting for the citadel to fall. They practised the fine honour of noble enemies. He never asked her any question about what was going forward in the suffrage ranks. He even broke his own eggs at breakfast with the proud air of a man who neither asks nor gives quarter.
"Father," she would say at the breakfast table, "let me break your eggs!"
"No, Selah, I'm an old man, I've come upon evil days in my own house, but I am still able to attend to my simple wants. Pray don't let me detain you"—seeing that she wore her hat, and that the abominable car would be purring at the curb.
"Very well, then, I'll be off, but expect me back before night," she would say, kissing him on the forehead.
"No, I do not expect you home before night. I never do. It would not surprise me if you didn't get in before midnight. I'm prepared for anything now!" he would answer without looking up.
Nevertheless, she made it a rule always to get back from her engagements before he came in.
"Is that you, father?" she would call down the staircase.
"Yes, just came in, but I didn't expect to find you here," he would answer accusingly.
It could not be said that they kept the peace. Rather they kept a truce, smiling on the part of Selah, coldly dignified on the part of the Colonel.
One evening she came down unexpectedly, and surprised him sneaking in with one enormous bunch of June roses which he had brought in from the farm.
"How lovely, and how sweet of you to think of me!" she exclaimed.
"I did not think of you, and these are not for you. If I'd been gathering flowers for you, Selah, I should have brought bachelor buttons!" he answered as he passed out into the darkened avenue, still carrying his posy ludicrously upside down.
It was another month before she or any one else knew what he did with them.
She had tried to put Bob Sasnett out of her thoughts, but not very successfully. Love is the finest logic nature ever achieves. Nothing, no argument however reasonable and expedient, can withstand it. She thought continually of him as an enemy she must face sooner or later. She loved him—at least she feared that she did. But she was stillso young that she longed for sacrifice. She wished to give the whole of her life to women. She could not do that and give the whole of her heart to Bob. She did not reflect that this is the law of women's hearts with which no privilege of citizenship can interfere, and that all the other women for whom she sacrificed herself would be doing just this thing if there should be enough men about to receive their hearts. One thing was certain: she had "grown." She was no longer the girl she had been, shrinking, timid, yet filled with longings to live her own life, to do things. Three months ago she had but one outlook, that of marrying Bob Sasnett and spending the remainder of her days as Mrs. Sasnett's daughter-in-law—that is to say, in total eclipse. Now, she reflected, as the car rolled silently toward the distant courthouse dome, showing gray above the trees of Jordantown, now some day she might become a lawyer and plead a case beneath that very dome!
"Good evening, sweet Goddess of Liberty! Deign to bend your far-seeing eyes upon your humble slave!"
"Mr. Sasnett!" exclaimed Selah, as he advanced from the deep shade of an elm tree beside the road, where he appeared to have been standing.
"No, not 'Mr. Sasnett!' I left him an hour since, vainly contending with Susan Walton, in the effort to gain her consent for the bank to extend the loan to the Acres Mercantile Company another six months, and——"
Selah laughed.
"Don't interrupt, Minerva! I say that I left this fellow Sasnett imploring her, paying her undue compliments with this charitable end in view, while Acres waited outside the door of the directors' room. This poor adventurer whom you behold bound at present to your chariot wheel, is none other than 'Bob,'" he concluded, smiling up at her with whimsical audacity.
"But what are you doing out here at this hour? It's almost tea time," she exclaimed with well-simulated innocence.
"Waiting for you," he replied, accusing her innocence with a stare so bold that she blushed.
"That was kind of you. Get in!" she said, thrusting the door of the car open and making room for him on the seat.
"It is not my idea to return to the er—goddess-ridden metropolis of Jordantown as the obvious captiveof Minerva," he replied, backing off. "I ventured to hope that you would descend and walk back with me," he explained.
"I can't," she objected, "I always try to be home when father comes, and it's already late."
"Old boy won't be in for another hour. He's having his wheat thrashed; met one of the men taking more sacks out just now. He says it will be nine o'clock before they finish."
Still she hesitated, looking down at him.
"Come!" he insisted, "I've something very important to tell you."
"Are you sure it's important?" she asked waveringly.
"Absolutely! Whole future of your movement, as you call it, may depend upon it!" he assured her with suspicious gravity.
"Very well, then, I'll come," she agreed, allowing him to assist her down into the road.
"Drive on, Charles!" Sasnett commanded, surreptitiously placing a dollar in the negro's hand to insure a quick departure.
The car sprang forward, disregarding all speed limits, leaving the two lovers veiled in yellow dust,which lifted presently, wind blown, rolling out over the fields beyond like dried sunlight. The road lay before them, a golden band between widespreading trees, fading into the shadows of evening.
They walked in silence, Selah waiting for what he should tell her, wondering vaguely if at last the men had divined their plans, and if this was the news he brought. She feared it might be something disagreeable, since he was in no hurry to begin. She looked at him surreptitiously, and flushed to find that he was also regarding her in the same sidewise, secret manner.
"Well, what is it?" she demanded quickly to cover her embarrassment.
"What is what?" he asked innocently.
"The important something that you have to tell me."
"That I love you," he answered shamelessly.
"Oh!" exclaimed Selah, looking unutterable reproach.
"Isn't that important? Do you think the ballot will satisfy your whole heart and nature, make life one glad song? Will women cease to love men when they can vote? Not on your life, dear! Look atyour Co-Citizens now. Didn't Susan Walton have a husband who honoured and obeyed her till the day of his death? Doesn't the fact that they have husbands add to the interest Mabel Acres and Agatha Coleman have in the suffrage question? Do you think poor Miss Mary Heath would refuse a proposal of marriage, even if she controlled every man's vote in the town? Believe me, those little adolescent Citizenesses-to-be, the seminary girls, do not primp and pile their curls bewitchingly over their ears because they want the ballot. It's the daily petition they make of themselves for lovers!"
"That is your egregious masculine conceit, Bob, imagining every woman is thinking of winning lovers and husbands. We love ourselves. We do our best to look well because we have a satisfaction in our own appearance!" Selah exclaimed with indignant heat.
"Of course, and I must say you bear charming witness to your own sweet perfection, dear," he laughed, "but you don't see my point."
"I will not! It is not a point anyway, it's—it's—a joke you make at our expense!" she accused.
"No, beloved, it really is well taken, my position. But your mind is so obsessed, all of your thoughtsare so focussed upon one of the mere incidents of life, that you are missing the real issue of happiness. Let me explain."
"You can't do it, but you may try," she conceded.
"Love, Selah, is the one thing that must always come to pass in the hearts of men and women. It doesn't matter under what conditions they live, they must love or die unfulfilled in the very purpose for which they were created. It is a season in the life of us, dear, aseason, you understand—the time when nature blooms in us, when the fragrance of our very spirits ascends in tender emotions, in the perfume of language, in looks such as the gaze with which I now behold you, and which makes your cheek one anthology of roses!" he concluded, as the warm colour rose like a red wreath beneath her ivory skin. "But listen, dear, the season passes. The rose fades. The strength of man changes, passes into the strength of achievement or into the dead leaves of failure. Then where will we be, Selah, you and I?"
"Well be doing our share of the world's work, sanely and well, I hope," she answered quickly.
"Granted, though it's an awful gamble. But suppose you succeed. Suppose you win everything andmore than you are now contending for. Suppose at forty you are nominated for Congress from this district, do you think I'd ask you then to be my wife? Not if I had failed as much as you had succeeded! I would not, because I could not love you as I love you now. Don't cry! But I swear I will not marry you then!" he ended, laughing.
"And do you think I'd want to marry you then?" she asked, amazed.
"Yes, I know you will; if not me, some other man. You will have discovered that doing the world's work even well is a thankless job, and that fame and success are the husks that swine do eat compared with even the tears and griefs of love. But you will not be lovable then, Selah; you will only be horribly intelligent and capable. I can see that, the way you are tending now. You will have gray hair, thin, too. You will draw it back like a conviction, and wind it in a knot at the back of your head as tight as a narrow-minded conclusion. You will have lost the damask flush of youth. I think your cheek bones will stick up, too prominent, you know, as if your character had knobbed up under your eyes. There will be a staircase of political wrinkles uponyour forehead. Your eyes—— Oh, my God! I cannot bear the vision I see of you, with your eyes showing like gray stones casting eddies of wrinkles! And you'll be lank, the skeleton left by the passing of a great and successful movement undertaken for the emancipation of woman!"
"And if I married you, how should I look at forty?" asked Selah with shrewish shrewdness.
"Oh, my beloved, I don't know. I should not know even then. You would be my wife, the mother of my children—as sacred as that—the memory of my youth distilled, the citadel of my mature years, the alabaster box of my hopes and faith in the life to come! I couldn't see you at all, Selah, for you would have become everything to me, and a man can't see or foretell that much."
She looked at him, her eyes shining behind her tears like distant windows of light through the rain on a dark night. How could she keep faith with the Cause of Woman while the Cause of Man stood before her so gallantly portrayed!
"Bob," she whispered, "I—you are so dear. You cannot know how dear you are to me. I've just found out myself, but——"
"But what?" he cried impatiently.
"You must wait. I can't, I just can't give you my whole heart now. It seems to have gone from me, some fierce energy of life. I've got to do this thing that we've set out to do before I can promise, before I'll know myself."
"Well, for God's sake, hurry then and do it," he answered, not pleased.
"You'll help, won't you?" she asked softly.
"There are times when I fear I'd help you commit murder if the victim stood between us, Selah, but really I don't know how I can help you win this fight for suffrage in Jordan County. The whole thing seems so far fetched. I can't see what you are driving at. You have effectually tied up things for the men, but what good will that do? I don't want to discourage you, but I can only think harm will come of it without your having accomplished your purpose."
She was singularly serene under this discouragement. She even changed the subject.
"When do you begin your campaign as candidate for representative?" she asked as they entered the avenue.
"Two bodies cannot revolve in the same orbit. I'm waiting until you quit revolving in the county. I hear you make the Co-Citizens write their names in their own blood when they sign the vow not to reveal the secrets of the League. Is that so?" he laughed.
"Not quite so bad as that. But they do keep the vow, don't they? Not one of you will know our plans until we reveal them ourselves at the mass meeting. But you are going to run for the legislature?" she insisted, returning to that.
"I'm not sure; I'm waiting to see what Prim's going to do. I——"
"We will take care of Prim," she put in.
"Oh, you will? And which one of you has been chosen to murder him, you or Susan? Nothing short of death, I think, will rid this town of him."
"We shall not resort to capital punishment unless it is absolutely necessary," she laughed, "but I think I can assure you of one thing: Prim will not be a candidate."
"Thanks!" he said, but without conviction. "Does Prim know he is not to run?" almost sarcastically.
"Not yet," she laughed.
"Good night, Minerva!" he murmured, kissing her hand.
"Good night, Bob, and remember you can go ahead. Prim will not be in your way."
"I'll wait, thank you; I'm young; I can afford to take my time gathering county laurels for my brow. And no decent man could oppose Prim without getting smeared with political slime. Sticks, too!"
One very hot morning early in July Mike Prim came up the staircase of the National Bank Building. He stood for a moment in the hall, breathing heavily from the exertion of bearing his great weight up the steps. He took off his straw hat and mopped his red face. Then he glared at the door of Judge Regis's office.
"That's the long-legged old devil's horse who's put the women up to all this damnation!" he growled as he entered his own office and closed the door.
He took off his coat, then his collar and tie, flung them with his hat on a chair, and sat down to his desk. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. He placed his elbows on the desk and his enormous folded chin in his two hands. So he sat, a monstrous figure, with his great paunch filling his white shirt like a concealed balloon, with his hideously hairy arms naked halfway, and his thickhands purple beneath the weight of his amorphously fat face, his little reptilian eyes staring at the opposite wall.
He was at his wits' end. He was not making good at his business, and he knew it. What was worse, everybody else knew it. He had had few callers of late. Campaign collections had dwindled to almost nothing. They were getting bold in their refusals to contribute at all. "Why didn't he do something?" "What were they paying him for if it was not to do something?" "Was he going to let a set of fanatical women down him and take things in their own hands?" These were some of the questions they asked him which he could not answer satisfactorily. In vain he advised patience, and even more vainly he vowed he could and would stop the women's damphulishness at the proper time. They did not believe him; they pointed out that business had already stopped. From being the one who threatened, he had become the one who cajoled, while every man who came in offered him veiled threats instead of dollars.
He was furious, and he was obliged to conceal his fury. He hated these rebellious men even morethan he hated the upstart women. He was determined, if the opportunity offered, to be revenged upon them for their insolence. But how? This was the matter he revolved in his snake-licking mind as he stared at the wall, and he was in a hurry to reach a solution of his difficulty. Stark Coleman had called him before he was out of bed that morning to say that there had been a citizens' meeting the night before, and that he, Coleman, would be up to see him at ten o'clock. In the first place, why had he not been notified of the citizens' meeting. He usually presided on these occasions when the tutelary deities of Jordantown gathered in Coleman's office, or more frequently in his own office, to discuss the ways and means by which the principles of the Democratic party could be made to contribute most liberally to the liberty of man, especially in Jordantown. In the second place, the tone of Coleman's voice was cool, offensively so. He detected a note of command in it. Suppose Coleman should be coming up to inform him of certain changes in the policy which would govern the manifestations of the democratic principle? In short, suppose he was about to be dismissed from his office? True, it was anoffice without a name, but it had been a lucrative position.
There was a knock upon the door. He flung himself back, looked hastily at his watch and saw that it was barely nine o'clock. Coleman must be anxious, he thought, to keep an appointment in such a hurry, which was a good sign.
"Come in!" he shouted, whirling around on his swivel chair to face the door.
It opened with a quick inward thrust and Susan Walton walked in. She carried her everlasting little black reticule in one hand, and in the other she held—of all things in this world—an empty brown-linen laundry bag, swinging by the strings!
"Good morning, Mr. Prim!" she said, looking at him pleasantly over the top of her spectacles, as if it was the most natural thing for her to drop in informally.
He was too amazed to return her salutation. He stared at her, then he bowed his thick neck and stared at the flabby bag. He did not even offer her a seat, but she was in no way disconcerted by that. She chose a chair, drew it up in front of him, sat down, and crumpled the bag up in her lap.
"I came to see you on a matter of business, Mr. Prim," she said, coming briskly to the point. "I suppose you've been expecting me?"
"No," he managed to say.
"I'd given you credit then for more sense than you seem to have, for I'm the only hope you have now."
She said that in tones of conviction.
"You are the last person in the world I'd look upon as a—hope!" he returned slowly, widening his lips into a grin which was also a sneer.
"You are at the end of your rope. You've been so for a month. You can't squeeze another dollar out of this town for your campaign fund. The men have lost confidence in you."
"How'd you come by so much useful information?" he interrupted.
"I have it. That's the point. You'll never dare announce yourself a candidate for representative. You gave that up three months ago."
"What makes you think so?" he asked, fixing his eyes upon her face with deep reptilian concentration.
"I don't think, I know it. You went on with your collections for private, personal reasons. But you did not deposit a single dollar of it in this bank,and you knew from the day Sarah Mosely's will was read up here in Judge Regis's office that you did not have a ghost of a chance to be elected, and you made up your mind that day not to run."
"Your powers of penetration are well known, Madam, but again I must ask you how you have penetrated so far into my secret thoughts, granting of course for the sake of argument that you have done so?" he said, now in complete possession of his faculties, and coolly on guard.
"I saw you listening at Judge Regis's office door the day the will was read, and the day we first discussed our plans for winning equal suffrage for women in this country. You are the only man in it who has known positively from the first that we can do it!" she answered, and showed her nerve by keeping her gaze fixed imperturbably upon him.
He bent forward, his face slowly purpling with rage, his fists clenched, his upper lip skinned back from his teeth as he hissed: "You are a—you did not see me!"
"I didn't see you, that's a fact, but I saw your shadow in the ground-glass door, cast by the light from the window at the end of the hall. Nobodycould mistake it for any other shape who'd ever seen you, Mike Prim!"
They sat for the briefest moment measuring each other, he with incredible ferocity, and Susan with her lips primped, grimly fearless.
"Now that we understand each other, let's get down to business!" she began.
"To business?" he snarled.
"Yes, this is the situation: you can't run for the legislature; you don't want to! You have squeezed every dollar you can get out of the Democrats here." She sniffed at the word. "They have lost confidence in you as manager of their political ends. They've begun to suspect your game. It's only a question of hours, I might say of one hour, before you get your walking papers, so to speak; for they are mad, Mike Prim. They are as angry as men always are when they realize that they've been duped and robbed——"
"If you were not a woman you couldn't sit there and say such things to me. Anyhow, I won't stand it! What's your business, as you call it?" he exclaimed, heaving his huge bulk from the chair and coming to his feet.
"Sit down! Sit down, Mr. Prim. I am here to make you a definite proposition!"
"Make it!" he growled, still standing, his feet wide apart, glowering down at her.
"The Co-Citizens' Foundation is prepared to purchase your papers——"
"My papers?"
"Yes, your letters, your political correspondence."
"Think they are valuable?"
"We can get on without them, but we are willing to pay a reasonable price for them. We know that they are valuable to a certain extent."
"How?"
"You remember your conversation with Stark Coleman the day you threatened him with certain letters you had of his and of other prominent citizens here. Miss Adams heard what you said on that occasion."
"So she's added eavesdropping to her other accomplishments?" he exclaimed venomously.
"Not eavesdropping, but Coleman left the door slightly ajar; she had come back up here to get some papers from Judge Regis, and, hearing such interesting conversation going on, naturally she listened. What will you take for these letters?" she demanded.
"I'd have to think about it," he said, sitting down.
"I'll buy them now or not at all'" she said.
"Aim to publish them?" he asked, grinning. He was beginning to be in a very good humour.
"That's our affair, but I don't mind telling you that we do not intend to publish them."
"And if I refuse?" he held out.
"In that case you must abide by the consequences, you and the men who wrote the letters. We shall publish all we know about them, what you yourself claimed for them, and leave the next grand jury to make the proper investigations."
"Humph!"
"Naturally we should try to see to it that you did not escape," she added.
"What will you pay for them?" he demanded.
"Five hundred dollars for every scrap of paper in this desk, and immunity for you—for turning state's evidence you know!"
"They are worth more than that," he said, taking no notice of the insult.
They bargained back and forth. Prim was really in a hurry to close the trade. He wished to be able to handle Coleman when he came in. It was fiveminutes to ten o'clock when they finally closed the deal.
"But I can't take a check," he objected suddenly.
"I thought as much. I've brought the money. A thousand dollars is too much. This bag isn't half full!" she exclaimed, shaking it down, drawing up the strings, and looking at it. Then she counted out the bills on the desk, every drawer of which was now empty.
Some one came up the stairs and walked briskly forward in the hall outside.
Prim had barely time to snatch the fluttering green and yellow bills before Stark Coleman entered the room, without the ceremony of knocking.
It would be difficult to say which showed the greater surprise at seeing the other, he or Susan Walton, tightly clutching her bulging laundry bag.
"Good morning, Mr. Coleman," she said, waddling rapidly toward the door.
"Good morning, Madam!" he returned.
"Fine large day!" She said this from the door as she went out.
Coleman turned angrily to Prim, who was standingreared back, feet wide apart, hands in his pockets, grinning broadly.
"What's she doing in here?" he demanded.
"Wanted me to help the cause!" he answered shamelessly.
"What'd she have in that bag?"
"Dirty linen—wash day. Taking it to the Co-Citizens' Laundry!"
"Didn't know they had one."
"Yes, they have. She's soliciting patronage!"
"Well, I'll be damned! You don't mean to tell me that woman was up here to get——"
"My soiled office linen," Prim obligingly finished. "She was, and I let her have every scrap of it," he answered symbolically.
He turned, seized his collar and tie, and reached for the button at the back of his neck.
"Look here, Mike, things aren't going right in this town," Coleman began, having lighted a fresh cigar without offering one to Prim, who went on adjusting his collar. "We had a meeting last night and the general opinion was that you are not holding the situation down as we expected you would."
When there was no reply from Prim, who washolding his head back and struggling to make ends meet over his front collar button, he went on:
"We don't blame you, but the fact is we want to make a change."
"Good idea!" said Prim.
"Glad you feel that way. Knew you would, but the boys thought you might be willing to dispose of the records and papers that have accumulated here." Coleman looked up and caught Prim's eye fixed upon him. "They're of no value to you. And we are prepared to offer you, well, more than they are worth. We——"
"Want my memoirs, do you?" laughed Prim, seizing his coat.
"That's it, for the archives, you know. How much will you take for them?"
"I wouldn't sell them to you, Stark Coleman, for all the cash you could rake and scrape out of your measly little old Co-Citizens' Bank!" he answered, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his coat, hunching it up on his shoulders, and making for the door.
Coleman could not believe his ears, and now he could not believe his eyes. The man was actuallyleaving the room. He took the cigar from his mouth, and lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.
"Hold on, Prim!"
"Hold on yourself if you can! I'm off! A henpecked town is no place for aman!" he sneered, banging the door.
Coleman stood a moment stupefied. He heard Prim thundering downstairs. Then suddenly he returned to his senses. He rushed to the desk, and pulled out one drawer after another. Not a scrap of paper remained in a single one of them.
"My God!" he groaned, burying his face in his hands. He had no doubt at all as to the quality of the linen in Susan Walton's laundry bag.
Meanwhile Prim was standing on the platform of the vestibule train tying his cravat. He had not taken the trouble to buy a ticket. He had actually swung on board the train as it moved slowly out of the depot along the track which ran directly behind the National Bank Building.
The Fourth of July fell on Saturday, the day wisely chosen by the Women's Leagues for their mass meeting. Bills were posted advertising this "historicalevent" far and wide in every post office, and country store, in mills, gin houses, and at every crossroad in the county.
Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting
Great Historical Event!
At Jordantown Hall, July 4th, 3:00 p. m.
Speeches by Prominent Leaders of the Movement!
Announcement of Election Plans!
Everybody invited!
If anything could have added to the crowds which gathered in Jordantown every year on this day, these impudent circulars were calculated to do it.
"Election plans! by gad!" exclaimed Squire Deal when he found one of the obnoxious bills posted on the door of the little courtroom in Possum Trot. "Who said there was going to be an election, I'd like to know. Darndest piece of impudence I ever saw in my life!"
"Maybe they'll tell us what their rickrack political platform is, too!" said another farmer.
Nevertheless, they all went to Jordantown on the appointed day. It was their custom to go, and they were determined that this woman foolishness should not interfere with their long-established habit of celebrating the Fourth.
The sun rose blistering hot. Clouds of dust rolled above every highway to the town, and out of it moved a long procession of vehicles, buggies, wagons, even ox carts, all filled with men, women, and children.
Jordantown was doing its best to look glorious. It had thrown off for a moment the lethargy of business depression. Flags waved, the Town Hall was literally swathed in yellow bunting, with a great white canvas stretched across the top of the doors, upon which was printed in black letters a foot long:
Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting!
3:00 p. m.
Don't Miss It!
The square teamed with life and glory. Mules brayed, horses neighed, dogs yelped, man hailed hisfellowman. Matrons in calico frocks and sunbonnets walked side by side with their daughters in white muslin and pink sashes, with gala hats on their young heads. The avenue was a sight and a scandal. Strings ran across from house to house high above the heads of the throng, upon which little yellow flags with "Votes for Women" hung thick as waving goldenrod upon October hills, alternating with the red, white, and blue larkspur of the national colours. The Women's Coöperative Store was a seething beehive of activity. There was a cake and lemonade stand stretching across the entire front, where, for the first time in the history of glorious Fourths, you got your lemonade and gluttonous wedges of cake free of charge. This may or may not have accounted for the fact that, as the day advanced, the avenue outdid the square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top andseized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw its hats high in the air over this performance, then, with the fickleness of its nature, it turned again toward the avenue and the free lemonade dispensed by the fairest maidens in Jordantown. But before the stream could turn the corner, a long-legged black pig greased with the lard of its forbears was turned loose—to become the property of any man who could catch and hold him. A wild scramble ensued. The pig darted this way and that, slipped nimbly through detaining hands, until, by much handling, his grease was rubbed off, and he was held, a squealing trophy, by a young farmer. One after another the attractions of the square failed, and the crowd surged into the avenue, where it was fed to repletion—all free of charge. The stomach of man is singularly elemental in its cravings, and not subject to political or any other influence which fails to meet this demand.
Long before three o'clock in the afternoon the Town Hall was filled and jammed to its doors with men and women. The farmers were in such high good humour that, laying all masculine prejudice aside, they were determined to witness the last featureof the day's entertainment, or rather they would indulge in the humour of gratifying their masculine prejudices at the mass meeting. They stamped their feet, they hooted, they looked at the still empty stage and demanded to know where were the leaders of the "Crinoline Campaign." They whispered and nudged each other and shouted ribald laughter.
At ten minutes to three o'clock a line of women filed on the rostrum and took their chairs at the back of it. They were the representatives of the Co-Citizens' County Leagues. There were twenty-five of them, and they ranged in age and dignity all the way from Granny White, who was seventy, to the youngest bride from Apple Valley. Granny White looked like a crooked letter of the female alphabet in a peroda waist frock with a very full skirt, and a black silk sunbonnet upon her old palsied head, which wagged incessantly. The bride wore her wedding dress, which was now a trifle too tight for her. She looked like a pale young Madonna scarcely able to bear the weighty honour which had been thrust upon her. Some of the other women were enormously fat, some were pathetically lean, but they all faced the jeering crowd below with amazingassurance. They represented the harvest of all the virtues and sorrows and sacrifices of women for centuries, and all unconsciously they showed it with a calm accusing majesty.
The audience, which was largely composed of men, stared at them and grew suddenly silent. They recognized their wives and mothers in those serene faces, and manhood forbids that you should hoot at your own blood-and-bone kin womenfolk. So they changed the subject. They began to talk, a perfect hurricane of inconsequential comments on every imaginable subject except the subject of women and their rights.
Promptly at three o'clock Judge Regis came through a side door upon the rostrum, accompanied by Susan Walton and Selah Adams. The women took their places in two empty chairs among those at the back; the Judge approached the table in the middle of the rostrum, stood for a moment, a tall and elegant figure, looking out over the sea of faces below him. Then, lifting the gavel, he rapped for order.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began in slow, distinct tones, "I have the honour and privilege of opening the most remarkable meeting ever held in thiscounty or state. We are about to make history, which is becoming to this memorial day of American Independence. I shall not address you upon the momentous issue at hand. Others far more capable will speak to you presently on that. I shall only state the purpose of the meeting.
"We are assembled here to learn for the first time how the brave women who have done such valiant work for the cause of suffrage in this county have succeeded in their efforts beyond their most sanguine hopes——"
"Hear! Hear! Ha! ha! Oh, haw-haw, haw!" The wall shook with the cannonade of masculine mirth.
The Judge waited patiently. Then he rapped loudly for order, and in the lull he went on, not hurrying:
"—and to reveal to you the plans by which this county will have the great distinction of being the first one in this or any other Southern state to give the ballot to our women, who have proved by nearly three hundred years of devotion and virtue and sacrifice for us and our children their worthiness for this trust.
"The speakers of the afternoon are Miss Selah Adams and Mrs. Susan Walton. I have the honour to introduce Miss Adams, who will address you upon some general aspects of the question under discussion."
"Adams! Adams! Adams!" yelled the audience.
But before the Judge could retire or Selah could rise from her chair, one of those incidents occurred which sometimes inform a public occasion with humour and pathos. At this moment Colonel Marshall Adams entered the hall. He had not heard Judge Regis's "opening remarks," but he had spent an unusually glorious Fourth. He was magnificently befuddled, and for the first time in three months he was the regnant intoxicated ideal of what a gentleman and a soldier should be. He was a man among men, equal to any emergency, capable of leading a forlorn hope, or entering the lists for a lady's hand. He had forgotten, if he had ever known, the object of this meeting; but when he heard his name loudly called, he understood at once; he recalled the fact that he had something eloquent and momentous to say.
He squared his shoulders, lifted his old standard-bearing presence, and made for the rostrum. Before any one could stop him—if any one in the roaring throng would have done so—he stood beside the table, one hand resting heavily upon it, the other thrust into the tightly buttoned breast of his yellow seersucker coat.
He was received with deafening applause. He waited, as he must have waited long ago at the charge of his regiment when it climbed the breastworks of the enemy in the roar of a thousand guns, his head erect, his nostrils dilated, his eyes glistening—only slightly wavering upon his Fourth of July legs.
"Ladies and gentlemen: It was with surprise not unmixed with pardonable pride that I heard you calling my name upon this momentous occasion. But never has Marshall Adams failed to listen to the call of his country in dishtresh!" he cried, making a determined effort to control his inebriated aitches and waving his sword arm defiantly.
"And we are in dire distress, my countrymen! Never since the bloodstained days of eighteen shixty-five have we been in such need of courage. We face a terrible situation. I addresh you in behalf ofthese fair woman whom we shee before us, and who are about to suffer the irreparable loss of their sphere. No greater calamity could befall this great nation. For four long years, through the snows of winter and the heat of summer, we fought for them, my countrymen, to preserve their homes, their traditions, their honour and pride as the fairest flowers in this fair land!" Deafening applause, during which the Colonel waited, sanctified by his emotions; then waving his hand for silence, he went on:
"And we did preserve them! The Yankees relieved us of the burden of a few unprofitable slaves. They slew the best and the bravest of our men. They took our wealth and reduced us to unimaginable poverty and hardship. But, thank God, we saved our women! We returned to them ragged, wounded, footsore, and despairing, and we found them faithful as the stars in their courses. More inspiring than 'pillows' of fire by night and of cloud by day, they led us back to hope and love and prosperity. They were the trophies of the brave which no enemy could wrest from us——"
"Oh Lord! listen to him! That thar's a man talkin' up thar!" shouted an old veteran.
"—and we went on shaving 'em, gentlemen! There has never been another country in the world reduced to ashes by war where the women were not forced to work shoulder to shoulder with the men afterward to reclaim her. But we treasured our women. We did the work, we kept them comely and fine. We educated them when we could not educate ourselves. We poured our wealth at their feet—and that's why they have the smallest feet in America, gentlemen, the fairest skin, the softest palms."
There was a slight sniffing to be heard here among the farmers' wives, but he went on to his conclusion:
"And now, my comrades, we must save them again; they are about to be dragged from the shanctity of the home, from the altar of the fireside, into the grime and dirt of publicity. There is a movement on foot to thrust the ballot, gentlemen, into their unsteady hands! My God! My God! where is your gallantry and courage? Where is your manhood that you think of giving these gentle creatures your work to do, and lose what a hundred to one Yankees could not take from you?"
He looked about him with terrific scorn.
"I did not think that I should ever again appearin their dear defence. I'm an old man, my glory has departed. You shee before you—you shee—before—you——"
He lifted his hand to his forehead as if suddenly he was dazed, sunken into the dream of years. His knees bent, he would have fallen. Selah sprang swiftly forward, placed his arm over her shoulder, and supported him. He sank slowly into the chair she had just vacated. She made sure swiftly from long experience that he had only reached the coma of a familiar state. Then she went back to the front of the stage and began to speak.
The Colonel looked up vaguely, saw her standing there as one remembers a vision in a dream.
"That's it, Selah, my love! Give 'em 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,'" he murmured, as his head sank upon his breast.
"You have listened to the brave speech of a brave gentleman, my friends," she began, "and I would not if I could subtract one lovely word from that lovely tribute to the men and women and order to which he belongs. What he has said is the truth, raised to the eloquence of a martial soul. Until the present time we women, as he told you, have figured chieflyin religion, poetry, and romance. We have been that part of the imaginations of men which creates creeds, poetry, windmills, and fiction. We have no reputation for any other form of existence. We have been purely imaginary beings living in physical bodies for just men. Our character is a legend invented by men; it could never fit a real human being. Yet we have accepted it, and tried to believe in it. You have indeed kept us, but we have not lived at all except for you. We are not the authors of a single standard governing our lives. Do you understand what that means, you men who live only according to your own will and purpose?"
They listened to her in silence. They studied her in amazement. But we do not applaud an accusing angel, and they did not applaud Selah, who stood so elegantly fair and tall, a slim figure with earnest dark eyes bent in passionate appeal upon their faces.
"It was men," she went on, "who divided women into three great classes—virgins, wives, and prostitutes, a purely physical classification. You commanded chastity. We have never had the right to choose it. Women have never been real parents. They are only the mothers of the children of men.The small, almost negligible influence they have over their sons proves that. After the years of childhood are passed sons sustain only a sentimental relation to their mothers. They are inspired by them merely as religion or poetry inspires. Your institutions, social, moral, economic, and political, do not represent us nor our needs. But they represent you men.
"Every civilization is a bachelor civilization, with good or bad provision in it for the protection of women. But we do live, and like other sentient beings we desire to express ourselves in life, not merely in poetry. Listen, men," she said, bending sweetly forward like a lily in the golden gloom. "After they had knowledge, the first pair, man and woman, went out of the gardentogether! But you, with your beautiful but mistaken chivalry, have gone out and left us in the garden, the helpless, kept women of your love and desires. We wish to come out, to be with you. We must come! Once we have tasted knowledge, once we know what better things we are for, we must follow you to the ends of the earth. This everlasting garden where you keep us is no place for a thoughtful person. It is too limited by innocence and idleness. We are no longerinnocent, we know the same things you know; we have the same education, the same thoughts, the same aspirations. Disobedience is not always a sin. When the first man and woman tasted of the fruit of knowledge, they simply assumed a terrific responsibility. But they assumed ittogether! You are withholding from us this right to live by your side. We are doing too much, or nothing at all. And you are not sharing justly with us. We are losing our old places in your hearts. After all, this is not the golden age of poetry and knights. The very pedestal upon which we once stood in your regard has been overturned by realities. We have ceased to be your ideals dearly cherished. It is not our fault nor yours. No one is to blame. This movement of women is as natural as any other growth. We are migrating out of the legendary into the real; we are passing from sentiment and romance into history. And we have arrived! Nothing can stop us. You only shame yourselves, your manhood, and your honour if you oppose us. We must succeed because we are right!"
She turned suddenly, and went back into the wings.
"What'd she say?" asked a man in a hoarse whisper. "Gol dern if I know! Foreign language to me!"
"The volypuke of the Woman's Movement! Didn't understand one word she said!"
"Well, you'll understand what's coming now or I'll eat my boots!" the other whispered.
He nodded toward the stage, where Susan Walton stood, flat-footed, fat, belligerent, her mouth primped, holding her head very much as if she wore horns instead of the black bonnet tied under her chin. And she was looking over the top of her spectacles at every man, seemingly straight in the eye.
"Don't look at us that way, Susan! Makes us feel like we'd been in washing without your permission!" called some one, imitating a little boy's whine. There was a gale of good-natured laughter.
"Men and women," she began in her high virago voice, "we have listened to two very fine speeches this afternoon, one upholding the sentimentality of the past, the other mystically prophesying the sentimentality of the future. I'm an apostate from the past, and a disciple of the future. I've got one foot in the grave and the other foot on the ballot forwomen. I shall not deal in sentiment or prophecies, but in cold facts!"
"Told you we'd understand her, boys!" shouted a voice.
"Go it, Susan! we all know you, and we don't have to give you no quarter!" yelled a bearded farmer standing in the back of the hall.
"Yes," screamed the old lady, shaking her fist at him, "and I know you, Tim Cates. You've been living on your wife's land ever since you married her. And you've made her mortgage it to pay your debts!"
"Git a chip somebody and take po' Tim out on it. She's done ruin't him!"
"Come ag'in, Susan! you drawed blood that time!" shouted the voice.
"I'm coming, and I've got the facts with me!" she cried, flirting her head in the direction from which the voice came. "I know every man in this hall: how he lives, how he votes, what he owes, what he can't or don't pay. I know how hard you farmers work your wives, harder than you do your beasts, in spite of all that fine talk we listened to from Marshall Adams, and I know how little you give them, how little they are allowed to spend. There'sone of you standing in plain sight of me right now who took the fancy bedquilts your wife and daughters pieced last winter and sold them to get money to pay his taxes, though he is worth five thousand dollars! You needn't dodge!" she laughed shrilly. "I'll not call your name if you keep quiet and behave. But if you men don't stop your fuss and listen to what I have to say, I'll tell everything I know about you."
The titters of the women became distinctly audible for the first time in the indignant silence which followed this threat, for they knew that she was as good and could be even worse than her word.
"Three months ago Sarah Mosely died and willed all of her property to the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, with the distinct command that the interest on this fund shall be spent to get suffrage for women in Jordan County," she began again. "The property of this Fund consists in mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county, in the ownership of most of the business houses around the square in Jordantown, in various loans, in 60 per cent. of the stock of the National Bank, and in other properties,including theSignal. That is to say, gentlemen, if we do not own this county, we control enough of the property in it to have a right to say how it shall be taxed and governed. And while there is a law against bribing voters or intimidating voters, there is no law against foreclosing these loans and mortgages, nearly all of which are overdue. And I give you my word as one of the trustees of this Fund, that every one of them shall be foreclosed as fast as we can do it if our rights as citizens are not acknowledged with all the privileges that go with citizenship!
"And that is not all! Day before yesterday we purchased from Mr. Mike Prim the written records of the political workings of the Democratic party in this county during the past three years—all the letters written by you men who control the county districts with the money you received or were to receive for your services, and other letters even more interesting—but not a single statement of what you actually did with these contributions. I have not had time to go over Mr. Prim's memoirs carefully, but as near as I can make out it has been a blood-sucking business. Some of you have paid as highas three hundred dollars a year to the campaign fund, and some of you have received as much as a thousand dollars for delivering this town, say, in an election, while your wives pinched and scraped to pay the preachers and support missions in foreign fields! The appropriations for county schools have been bitten into with outrageous expense accounts which took thousands of dollars from the already meagre appropriations.
"I say these papers and letters are now the property of the Co-Citizens' Foundation; and if necessary we shall use them, spend your reputations as ruthlessly and extravagantly for our ends as you have spent the taxes of this county for your political purposes.
"The time has passed, men, when we are to be deceived by that foolish fallacy by which you have so long even deceived yourselves: that women win by their gentle influence over you. They don't! If they influence you at all it is for your good, not theirs. We are in the position to use the same lever that you have always had—power—and we shall use it. If you defeat us, you must destroy yourselves, your credit, and your reputation.
"You have been boasting at the impossibility of our even getting this issue as far as the polls. You have been challenging us to tell you how that can be done. That's what we are here for this afternoon: to tell you, and to leave you perfectly free to act as your judgment directs."
The audience moved, drew its breath, crossed and uncrossed its knees, spat its tobacco quids upon the floor, and craned its neck to see her better, to hear more distinctly what she had to say. Every man in Jordan County had been waiting for this news for three months.
"How did you get stock low in this county fifteen years ago?" she asked, and waited.
"Please, Marm, we voted on it!" whimpered the same waggish voice.
"But before you voted, you got up a petition signed by three fourths of the voting register of the county, didn't you? And then you submitted the petition to the Ordinary of the county, who by the laws of this state advertised the election to be held not sooner than thirty days. And you got prohibition the same way! Twenty, fifteen years ago this was the only way to close saloons andgrogshops that were open at every crossroad and on the streets of every town and village. We have a state-wide temperance law now as the result of local option laws that were enforced first until public sentiment against liquor was sufficiently strong to control state legislation."
She paused, opened one palm, and brought her other fist down upon it with a smack that could be heard to the back of the hall, as she exclaimed:
"That, gentlemen, is the way we shall win suffrage for women in this state. We shall get it first bylocal optionin this county! Other counties will follow your illustrious example and get it the same way, until the boundaries of these counties shall touch, and the experiment is no longer an experiment but an assured success!"
The women cheered. They made as much noise as they could, they waved their handkerchiefs, and emitted little feminine chirrups. But the men sat silent, staring in amazement at the little fat old lady who was smiling at them like a gratified mother.
"Now I have told you, and all you have to do at present is to sign that petition," she went on very pleasantly. "We have already secured to-day andyesterday the names of many of the leading citizens of Jordantown. And you will find just outside the doors of this hall two gentlemen whom you all know very well, Mr. Stark Coleman and Mr. Martin Acres. Each of them has a copy of the petition to be signed, and enough extra sheets of paper for every man here to sign his name.
"Now," she concluded, "we will close this meeting by singing the national hymn, not only because this day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but because, for all years to come, we shall look back upon this day as the one upon which the men of this county signed the petition which calls for liberty, rights, and justice for women!"