ACT I

WOMEN FOR VOTESACT IThe drawing-room at the Tilsburys’ house in the City of New York, tastefully arranged, with a door at each end and a sofa against the wall, over which hangs a beautiful full-length portrait of the first Mrs. Tilsbury. When the curtain rises,Mrs. Brownis seen seated in an easy chair, turning over the pages of a magazine, whileCochonis asleep on the floor beside her. EnterMrs. Tilsburywith her hat on, a contrast toMrs. Brownwho is in dinner dress.MRS. BROWN.(Looking up asMRS. TILSBURYenters.) Well, was the meeting a success?MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, a huge success. We were told of all sorts of horrors. Only fancy, Imogene, until 1857—or was it 1858? well, it doesn’t matter which—women were not allowed to testify on the witness stand about their husbands’ pedigrees.MRS. BROWN.Why did they want to testify about their husbands’ pedigrees? If it were about their husbands’ descendants now, a second familysub rosa, there might be something in it. They might testify about their pets’ pedigrees might they not? I would be permitted to tell all about your pedigree on a horridold witness stand, wouldn’t I little tootsie-wootsie-tootsie? (Takes up pig and caresses it.)MRS. TILSBURY.I don’t know, I am sure, why they should want to. The only time I ever took any interest in my husband’s pedigree was when I wanted to join the Society of Colonial Caudlers, and then I was told that my husband’s ancestors did not count, but that I must stand on my own.MRS. BROWN.Stand on your own! Could you find their graves?MRS. TILSBURY.No, that was the trouble. I haven’t any ancestors. I wouldn’t have wanted to use my husband’s if I had had any of my own, but it wasn’t any use.MRS. BROWN.Well, if that is all they said at the meeting I think I passed a more profitable afternoon. See this purse that I won as a prize at the Bridge party.MRS. TILSBURY.O, what a beauty! I do wish I could have gone. It is just what I want. Generally, Bridge prizes are some old thing that go from house to house as rapidly as a servant girl. Those tiresome suffrage meetings take up all my time. I never have a chance to do anything I like.MRS. BROWN.Why do you go to them? I never do. I don’t want to vote, there are so many other things that are more amusing.MRS. TILSBURY.I go with Mildred, she is so interested in Woman’s Suffrage.MRS. BROWN.Well, you are a good—I don’t even like to say the word. It would be such a misnomer in your case.MRS. TILSBURY.Stepmother, you mean. Oh, you needn’t mind saying it. I would be constantly reminded of it by that (looks up at portrait over sofa) even if it were not for other things.MRS. BROWN.Yes, that too. It is so magnanimous of you to hang it there, to give such prominence to the first Mrs. Tilsbury.MRS. TILSBURY.I suppose it is more respectable to succeed a wife who is dead than one who is divorced.MRS. BROWN.Oh, by all means. Dead women tell no lies, nor the truth either, and sometimes divorcées delight in telling tales about their first husbands’ second wives. But, tell me, why do you take the trouble to go to all these tiresome meetings when you might be enjoying yourself? Can’t Mildred go alone or with some friend?MRS. TILSBURY.Well, I suppose it is no harder way of making a living than any other. I was an artist before I married Mr. Tilsbury. My father lost all his money in the panic of 1893 and I had to do something to help mother.MRS. BROWN.Making a living? You don’t mean to tell me that the Women Suffragists are forced to pay their audiences to make them come to the meetings?MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, no! Not that of course; but I suppose I might as well make a clean breast of it, particularly as I want you to help me!MRS. BROWN.Yes, do. I should love to help you. You have always been so kind to me. What do you want me to do?MRS. TILSBURY.It’s this way, you see. Mildred’smother had all the money. George never had a cent of his own and he always spent whatever he could lay his hands on, so when Mrs. Tilsbury died she left a will bequeathing everything to Mildred except that old portrait there, which she gave to George as a token of her affection, and to show that she did not bear him any ill-will. The property is to belong to Mildred absolutely when she is twenty-five, or when she marries, if she should marry younger. Until either of these events happen, the estate is to be held in trust. The trustee appointed by Mrs. Tilsbury died a few days after she did, and George as Mildred’s father and nearest friend was made trustee. See?MRS. BROWN.Yes. How clever you are. You talk just like a lawyer.MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, my dear! I have heard it talked over so often that I have learned it by heart, but when I repeat those phrases, I feel just as if I had tight boots on. I am so glad to take them off and talk naturally again.MRS. BROWN.I don’t see what all this has to do with Woman’s Suffrage. Did Mrs. Tilsbury make it a condition in her will that Mildred should be brought up to support “votes for women”?MRS. TILSBURY.No, but when George first proposed to me, he told me all about the will, and said that it would be my duty if I married him to keep Mildred from marrying. He said that if she could be made to take an interest in other things and not marry until she was twenty-five, she would not be likely to marry at all, but would probably continue to live with us and leave the money in his hands; that it ranin the family to marry early or not at all, that two of her aunts had eloped when in their teens, and that the others were all old maids. Sometimes I think that George only married me so as to have some one to look after Mildred. A paid chaperone would not have the same interest at stake. She would only have her salary and Mildred might pension her if she married, but George and I are utterly dependent on that young girl.MRS. BROWN.Oh, don’t say that. Everybody knows how much George was in love with you. Why, he was positively foolish. It was to keep Mildred from marrying, then, that you influenced her to take part in the cause of Woman’s Suffrage?MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, George and I talked it over and we decided that that would be the most absorbing interest for her. You see the speakers tell such awful stories about men, and the inequality of men and women before the law, and the dreadful laws against married women, that no self-respecting girl who heard them would want to talk to a man hardly, much less dare to marry one.MRS. BROWN.Mildred made a speech this afternoon didn’t she?MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, her first one, and she has been so busy and interested in writing it that she hasn’t given a thought to the other sex except to denounce their vices.MRS. BROWN.You have just returned from the meeting now. What a long one it must have been.MRS. TILSBURY.Endless; and then the ladies insisted upon Mildred’s waiting afterwards for congratulations and a cup of tea.MRS. BROWN.You want me to help you, you say, but really, I have no time to go to these meetings. My time is so taken up. There is to-day for example. This morning I had my Auction Bridge class from nine until eleven, and that is most exhausting. The teacher keeps saying “ladies concentrate” just when I am concentrating on what stunning hands he has and so beautifully manicured.MRS. TILSBURY.My dear, I knew a woman once—you would know her, too, if I told you her name—who fell so in love with an actor that she studied manicuring, found out where he went to be manicured, and got a job there just to hold his hand an hour every two or three days!MRS. BROWN.Some women are so silly! What was I saying? Oh, yes, after the Bridge class, I went to the Chansons de Chiffons, and I wish you could have seen Mme. Duffoird who sang. Those opera singers never know how to dress, that is why they always want to be Brunhildas and Carmens. Why, in all the times I have gone to the opera, I have never obtained a fresh idea!MRS. TILSBURY.I saw rather a pretty gown inSapphoonce. Cavalieri wore it. That’s a modern opera.MRS. BROWN.Oh, I saw that. It looked as if it were made in Germany. Well, as I was saying, from the concert, I went to a luncheon, then to the Bridge party, and now I am here for dinner. I have not even had the time to give Cochon the air. Mother didn’t even have time to take her little pet walking, did she tootsie-wootsie-tootsie? That’s why I brought himhere to-night. Your rooms are bigger than mine and he has more space to run around in.MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, I didn’t intend to ask you to go to meetings. I have been obliged to give up so much to go to them myself that I would not ask it of any one else. It has been very hard. I was asked to be a manager in the “Unseen Blushers” and I had to refuse because I hadn’t the time.MRS. BROWN.“The Unseen Blushers”? Oh, that’s the new artistic, musical, and literary society, isn’t it?—but why do they call it by such an odd name? I thought blushes were made to be seen. They are so becoming. I have always wondered that no one has ever invented a rouge that could be turned off and on like an electric light before and after a kiss. There are so many clever inventions nowadays.MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, not that kind of a blush. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,” you know. It means to blossom I think. This society is for the discovery of hidden genius. The old theory was that men and women of genius rose to the top as naturally as cream rises and that they produced their works of art as unconcernedly as a hen hatches her eggs, but now the psychologists and physicists believe in aiding nature. They find that they can get more cream by means of a separator, that it is all through the milk and needs to be forced out, and that incubators can hatch eggs better than hens. So this society has been formed to encourage artistic, musical, and literary talent that is hard to discover and is unable to find its way to the surface. You understand!MRS. BROWN.I don’t! It is all Greek to me, but you are so clever, Josephine. Tell me about your art.MRS. TILSBURY.I have been forced to give it all up because of Mildred, and my last picture was such a success too. It received the third prize in the impressionist class. It was a painting of a street cleaner—a White Wing. I got the idea from a cup of chocolate I upset. The whipped cream made almost all the figure, the white uniform, you know, and then a few drops of chocolate looked like the bronzed face of a swarthy Italian. I just copied the spill exactly. Near by the thick white paint looked precisely like the whipped cream, but if you stood six yards away every one said it looked just like a street sweeper bending over with his broom to sweep up the dust.MRS. BROWN.How beautiful, and what an original idea!MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, that is what everybody said. Nowadays, when there is so much interest taken in the Traffic Squad of police and the firemen, the men who save lives in a conspicuous and sensational manner, and every one wants to reward them and paint them and sculpture them and their horses, no one remembers the humble life-savers who protect us from deadly diseases and pestilences by keeping the streets clean. One woman wrote a poem about my picture, beginning, “Germ gatherer grovelling in the gritty gravel.” It was charming. It is published in theUnseen Blushers Review. I will send you a copy.MRS. BROWN.Please do. I should love to have it and a photograph of your painting too.MRS. TILSBURY.I will remember. Yes, my wholecareer was just beginning when I had to give it all up to follow Mildred around to Woman’s Suffrage meetings only because there is more money in it. What does the artistic woman want of a vote? Art has always been open to both sexes, and the Unseen Blushers include both men and women.MRS. BROWN.It is very hard on you when you have so much talent to leave it all unused, but since you don’t want me to go to meetings, what assistance can I be to you?MRS. TILSBURY.I know you were very unhappy in your married life, and I want you to tell Mildred all about it.MRS. BROWN.(Indignantly.) Really, Josephine, there are some things that one doesn’t talk about to a child.MRS. TILSBURY.Mildred is eighteen, and the men are after her already. You have no idea what men will do to get a little money.MRS. BROWN.I cannot lay bare the secrets of my married life. Besides, I don’t know but I might marry again. My experience was in some ways unfortunate to be sure, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, nor one man matrimony.MRS. TILSBURY.One man doesn’t make matrimony! To hear you, Imogene, one would think you were—not a Mormon but the other thing; what is it they call it?—oh, yes, I remember, a polyanthus.MRS. BROWN.I did not mean more than one husband at a time. I meant that if a woman is unfortunate in her first choice and is left a widow, she might from her increased experience be able to select a second husbandbetter. It is very lonesome to be a widow. It is all very well in the daytime when the men are down-town but the evenings are so long. There are so many jokes about widows that a man is afraid to be left alone with one. If I should talk a lot against marriage and then suddenly marry again, my inconsistency would do more harm to your cause than if I should keep silence in the first place.MRS. TILSBURY.I don’t know about that. I used to have a beau when I was a girl who always kept repeating, “Inconsistency, thy name is woman.” He said it so often that I have never been able to forget it since.MRS. BROWN.How is any one to know I want to marry again if I talk against matrimony? The men will all fly from me. No, Josephine, I must say how lonely I am and how nice it is to have a man come home at five o’clock and to make him comfy beside the fire, and how I love the odor of a cigar, and how strong men are beside us weak women, and that I wish I had some one to help me with my business which I find so difficult to understand. No, I can’t run down men to Mildred like a peevish old maid or a disappointed wife even to help you.MRS. TILSBURY.But every one knows how jealous your husband was of you.MRS. BROWN.Well, I worked awfully hard to make him so. I don’t think I will stay for dinner, Josephine, after all. You are too personal to-day. (Rises to go.)MRS. TILSBURY.Don’t be peeved, Imogene; stay, and talk about whatever you choose. If you would only help me it would be to your advantage if youreally are thinking about marrying again. You would meet ever so many men here. They are indeed like flies about a honey pot.MRS. BROWN.Fortune hunters! I am not looking for that kind. I need to find a snug little fortune myself. You know Mr. Brown left me his money only on condition that I did not marry again.MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, I know, dear. He was always very jealous. You should tell Mildred about that will.MRS. BROWN.And be rewarded by being shown off to her fortune hunters.MRS. TILSBURY.Some of them have money.MRS. BROWN.Yes, and want more to add to it. I know that sort. A man without a cent might marry a poor girl and work for her, but a man with a little money wants to gather in a little more when he marries, just like an old china collector.MRS. TILSBURY.There are exceptions.MRS. BROWN.The men who want to control their wives through their purse. Don’t think the exception improves the rule, Josephine.MRS. TILSBURY.You are almost as bitter against men as the suffragists.MRS. BROWN.Oh, no. I like men, only I know the faults of some of them. Who is coming here to-night?MRS. TILSBURY.A Mr. Becker and a Mr. Van Tousel. They have both been rushing Mildred for the last three weeks, but fortunately she has been so interested in her speech that she has hardly noticed them.MRS. BROWN.Why did you ask them to dinner?MRS. TILSBURY.Mr. Van Tousel fairly askedhimself. His attentions to Mildred have been so costly that I could not refuse him when he suggested coming after the meeting this afternoon, and then I invited Mr. Becker so that we might play Bridge and protect Mildred from a tête-à-tête.MRS. BROWN.What are they like?MRS. TILSBURY.Mr. Becker is a lawyer, and Mr. Van Tousel is old family.MRS. BROWN.Does he find it lucrative?MRS. TILSBURY.Find what lucrative?MRS. BROWN.Being old family?MRS. TILSBURY.Well, it furnishes him with conversation. That is something in these days.MRS. BROWN.He must be an awful bore. What about Mr. Becker?MRS. TILSBURY.I told you he is a lawyer.MRS. BROWN.That is not very descriptive.MRS. TILSBURY.It is in his case. George says that points of law are sticking out all over him so that he is as prickly as a hedgehog.MRS. BROWN.Where does he come from?MRS. TILSBURY.From up state somewhere. He is a rising man.MRS. BROWN.I have met so many rising men but they never seem to arrive. They remind me of an elevator that gets stuck between floors.MRS. TILSBURY.Without any passengers on board, I hope.MRS. BROWN.Oh, they usually are weighted down with a family.MRS. TILSBURY.Mr. Becker is a bachelor and George says he is making a very good income.MRS. BROWN.Well, that is satisfactory. There is the door-bell now.MRS. TILSBURY.So you see, Imogene, both of these men are exceptions to your remarks.KATY.(Announcing.) Mr. Van Tousel!MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, Mr. Van Tousel! I was just thinking of you and saying to Mrs. Brown that there are some men who are exceptions to the common run of selfish, self-centred New York men and that you were one of these exceptions. Mr. Van Tousel is so broad-minded. He believes in “the cause.”MRS. BROWN.Indeed!MR. VAN TOUSEL.I think it is a disgrace, madam, to ask women to pay taxes, to contribute their share to the maintenance of the government, and then to refuse them a single vote in the management of that same government.MRS. TILSBURY.Isn’t he generous!MRS. BROWN.(In a low voice.) People generally are with what isn’t their own.MR. VAN TOUSEL.How is Miss Mildred? I was at the meeting this afternoon and saw her sitting on the platform. What a noble sight it is to see a beautiful young girl, far removed from the struggle for existence, take up the cause of her less fortunate sisters.MRS. BROWN.I thought from what you just said that you believed only taxpayers ought to vote. Of course, you know Mildred pays large taxes.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Oh, Mrs. Brown, how could you so misunderstand me! I believe in the franchise for all women.MRS. TILSBURY.Here is Mildred now. She went to change her gown for dinner, but we were so late in returning from the meeting that Mrs. Brown was already here, and so I did not take the time to change mine. I hope you will both excuse me.(Mildred enters.)MRS. BROWN.You look charming, Josephine, as you always do. How do you do, Mildred?MILDRED.How do you do, Mrs. Brown. How do you do, Mr. Van Tousel? (Shakes hands with both, and then turns towards the pig.) How is Cochon?MRS. BROWN.He has been alone all day, poor little beastie. That is why I brought him here to-night.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Ah, Mrs. Brown, what a dear little dog. What breed is he, may I ask?MRS. BROWN.Pig, Mr. Van Tousel, common pig.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Do you mean to say he is only a pig?MRS. BROWN.Yes, it is the fashion to be original at present, you know, and to be original in dogs nowadays is so expensive. One has to get an animal from the Summer Palace of the Empress of China or the kennels of some royal prince, so I thought I would be original in making a pet of a pig. I am the first woman in New York to start the idea. The reporters from all the newspapers would be after me for an interview if it were generally known, but I am obliged to keep it a secret because there is an old law against keeping pigs in New York City. They used to be employed as scavengers, then they became so numerous that this law was passed. I can’t take Cochon outin the daytime, except in a motor car, for fear I shall be arrested, although he looks exactly like a little dog with his blanket on, except for his snout.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, I thought of course he was a dog.MRS. BROWN.The police are so disagreeable that one has to be very careful. Only the other day when I was late for a Bridge party, and I had offered the chauffeur of the taxicab double fare to get me there in time, a perfectly horrid officer arrested him and insisted upon taking off both the driver and the cab to the station house, although I explained everything to him and that it was most important for me to arrive in time because it was a club party and every table was to play against the room for a prize in money. All he said was, “Madam, you can walk.”MRS. TILSBURY.That was because women have no vote, no influence. If you had been a man, he would not have dared to make you late for an important engagement.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Quite true.MILDRED.I don’t believe the policeman saw whether the chauffeur had a man or a woman passenger when he arrested him, Mrs. Brown, but of course as a rule a vote does give a man the advantage.MR. VAN TOUSEL.How wonderfully you reason, Miss Mildred!KATY.(Announcing.) Miss Slavinsky!(Sophie enters.)MILDRED.How do you do, Sophie.SOPHIE.Oh, Mildred, I am afraid that I have come at a very bad time, just when you have all these grandfolks here, but I ran in right after supper, because I do not like to be out late. The cops pinch women down our way, you know, when they are out alone too late (looks up atMR. VAN TOUSEL), and I had to see you to-night because Mrs. Thom asked me to tell you that you have been chosen out of ever so many, as the most popular girl, to carry the banners of our Society in the Parade to-morrow.MILDRED.That was very kind of the ladies. Where is the banner?SOPHIE.I could not bring it with me. It is very heavy and it would make me look strange to carry it in the streets. The bad little boys would say, “Where did you get the barber’s pole, Miss?” I thought you would send for it to the Society’s rooms in your beautiful automobile.MILDRED.Yes, certainly. I’ll send the first thing in the morning. Let me introduce you to my stepmother, Mrs. Tilsbury, and this is Mrs. Brown and Mr. Van Tousel. We are all interested in the enfranchisement of women. You are among friends.SOPHIE.A gentleman who cares for our cause! Oh, that is great, as you Americans say. If we had many more like him, we would be voting just like the men. I am proud to shake your hand, Mr. Van Tousel.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Thank you, Miss Slavinsky. Any friend of Miss Tilsbury is a friend of mine.SOPHIE.She is indeed a wonder. To leave this beautiful home and her grand friends just to help us poor working girls to get our rights!MRS. BROWN.What work do you do, Miss Slavinsky?SOPHIE.I am an usheress.MRS. BROWN.A what?SOPHIE.An usheress, a lady usher at the theatre. And I have to work, oh, so hard, every night and matinées on Wednesdays and Saturdays.MRS. BROWN.It must be very nice to see all the plays without paying anything.SOPHIE.One can’t see much when one has to show stupid men and women to their seats all through the first act. People should not be allowed to come in after the curtain goes up. Then, too, we have the same play for so long. A run they call it. It is more like a walk, it is so slow. Now at the opera, they change every night, but the men have it all their own way there. They won’t have an usheress, but we will stop that monopoly soon. We have just organized a union, and we shall demand equal pay as the men. Now they try to put us off on half pay because we are women.MILDRED.I think there is a prejudice against women ushers in New York. I don’t see why, they have them at all the theatres in London.MR. VAN TOUSEL.And very neat and pretty they look in their white caps and aprons.SOPHIE.There is certainly a sex discrimination! Why, a man the other night said to me, “You women are all alike. You never get a thing straight.” Just because I was looking so hard at a woman’s bird of paradise head-dress that I gave her the man’s seat in the third row, and when he came in after, I gave him the lady’s seat in the thirteenth. He threatened to complain of me to the box-office—as if men ushers never made mistakes!MILDRED.How hateful of him!SOPHIE.Well, it will be all different now that we have organized. We are going to strike.ALL.What!SOPHIE.Yes, and then how we will laugh when we see the audience trying to find their own seats in the dark, and when they are all seated, we are going to the cloak-room to mix up their checks.MILDRED.Why, that is militant, like the English suffragettes. You wouldn’t do that, Sophie.SOPHIE.Yes, we will too, and the management will have to pay damages to the people who lose their things. We will have great times with the stingy old managers. You’ll see.MRS. BROWN.Let me know the date, Miss Slavinsky, and I will wear my old coat that I want to get rid of and see if I can pull a sable coat out of the grab-bag.KATY.(Announcing.) Mr. Becker.MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, Mr. Becker, how kind of you to come to-night to our quiet little dinner when you have so many engagements. Let me introduce Mrs. Brown. You already know Mildred and Mr. Van Tousel, and this is Miss Slavinsky.MR. BECKER.How do you do, Mrs. Brown. How do you do, Miss Slavinsky.SOPHIE.And is this another great big glorious man who wants to help us poor weak little women to get our rights? No, it is that same rude man who spoke so peevish to me at the theatre, the other night. Go away, I have no use for you.MR. BECKER.I don’t recall the circumstances. Ithink you have made a mistake, Miss Slavinsky. I do not think we have ever met before.SOPHIE.Oh yes we have.MILDRED.Miss Slavinsky is an usheress at a theatre, Mr. Becker, and she made a mistake in showing you to your seat the other evening that annoyed you.MR. BECKER.I don’t remember it, Miss Tilsbury.SOPHIE.Yes, you were at the theatre, don’t you remember, Mr. Becker, last Monday, with a lady all alone. Not a lady like these ladies, but another kind of a lady with a big red feather and a big red cheek.MR. BECKER.I still think you are mistaken, Miss Slavinsky. I have not been to the theatre in a month. You women are apt to jump to conclusions and then stick to them.SOPHIE.Ah, yes, that is you, that is what you said, “You women——”MRS. TILSBURY.Really, Miss Slavinsky, I think we had better let the subject drop. It is not a matter of great importance as to whether Mr. Becker went to the theatre on a particular evening or not. I think you said you came to give Miss Tilsbury a message about the Parade to-morrow.SOPHIE.And now you think I had better go like any messenger boy. You are right. What has a poor working girl to do in a fine house like this, and among fine people like you? Good-night, Mrs. Tilsbury. Good-night Mrs. Brown. Good-night, Mr. Becker. Good-night, Mildred. I shall see you to-morrow.MILDRED.Don’t go like this, Sophie. Josephine did not mean to hurt your feelings. She was onlyafraid that you would hurt Mr. Becker’s feelings. Stay and talk to us all.SOPHIE.No, Mildred, I know when I amde trop. Everybody is not so amiable as you. I will go. Good-night, Mr. Van Tousel; you are a kind man. If you will come to our theatre, the Cosmopolitan Theatre, I will show you your seat right away, no matter how many wait, and I will bring you a glass of water between every act. Oh we have just dear little glasses, now that the law is passed that each person has his own glass, just the sort to remind one of a cocktail. I have borrowed three for my room. What night will you come? To-night is Friday and the leading lady is ill and the theatre is all dark. That is how I could come here, but by Monday she will be all well again. You will come Monday, dear Mr. Van Tousel, you promise, yes? Good-night, dear friends. (Goes out.)MRS. BROWN.What an extraordinary creature.MILDRED.(In defence.) She is a Pole and not used to our ways. She has a most brilliant mind and speaks five languages.MR. BECKER.Five slangs I should call it, if she is as proficient in the other tongues as in the American. (Turns towards Mrs. Brown.) Is this your little dog, Mrs. Brown?MRS. BROWN.My little pig, you mean. I was saying just now that I can only take him out at night except in an automobile, because it is against the law in New York to keep pigs. Only fancy, they used to run around the streets as scavengers. Then they passed a law forbidding keeping them at all.MR. VAN TOUSELPity they don’t have them for scavengers now. I don’t suppose they would strike and they feel quite at home in the mud in some of the streets.MR. BECKER.You women never think about anything but how to break laws and yet you want to vote.MILDRED.If we helped to make the laws, Mr. Becker, we wouldn’t want to break them. One takes care of whatever one has made. I used to have a maid who never put away my dresses carefully unless she had put a clean collar or a fresh ruffle on one and then she was always most particular to keep it nice. It seemed as if when once she had put a little of her own hand work on a gown that it acquired a new value for her.MR. BECKER.Be law-abiding citizens first and prove yourselves fit to vote. Women are natural law-breakers. Look how women smuggle. The wealthiest and most fashionable are proud of cheating the government by bringing in some gown or jewel without paying duty on it. Mrs. Brown, here, wouldn’t think of keeping a pig if it were not for the excitement of breaking the law.MRS. BROWN.It isn’t that at all, Mr. Becker. I keep him to make conversation. Other women have dogs for the purpose, but a unique one is too expensive and there is almost nothing left to say about an ordinary one. I never smuggled anything in my life—that is nothing more important than a pair of silk stockings.MR. BECKER.That illustrates what I was saying. Women make a business of smuggling for the sake of excitement. Couldn’t you have bought—thearticle in question just as well in New York, Mrs. Brown?MRS. TILSBURY.(Anxious to keep the peace.) Cochon seems to be making plenty of conversation at present. Were you at the meeting this afternoon, Mr. Becker?MRS. BROWN.It’s a foolish old law about pigs anyway. So far from buying Cochon to break it, I never knew anything about it until Mrs. de Huyster looked it up to keep me out of the Colonial Caudlers. She said that my ancestress was the last woman to keep pigs in New York, and that she defied the authorities and was arrested; that a woman like that probably stole her caudle-cup from some one else, and that I was not a proper person to become a member of the society on that account.MR. VAN TOUSEL.How interesting! Then your taste for pigs is an example of heredity.MR. BECKER.And your taste for law-breaking also. What is the Society of Colonial Caudlers? I never heard of it.MR. VAN TOUSEL.It is a very fine society, Mr. Becker. My mother is one of its originators and a vice-president. All the members are women who have inherited a caudle-cup from a Colonial ancestor, and on New Year’s Day, they all meet and drink punch out of the cups. It is a very exclusive society. I don’t wonder you have never heard of it.MRS. BROWN.It is very difficult to get in, but Mrs. de Huyster couldn’t keep me out in spite of her raking up old history, for I discovered that her cup was only pewter, and she had to turn all her attention to passing a by-law that pewter cups were admissibleas well as silver. They had an awful time. It almost broke up the whole society. The pewterites claimed to be the real thing because they said that the pewter cups came over first and that silver cups were not introduced until much later, and that only the parvenues in the Colonies had silver cups.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Women are active in so many directions nowadays. The Society of Colonial Caudlers shows how much they have done in the line of historical research.MR. BECKER.It is a pity they don’t spend a little more activity in housekeeping. That little Pole would make an excellent cook probably.MILDRED.Oh, Mr. Becker, Sophie has too much education to do housework.MRS. TILSBURY.(In desperation.) Were you at the meeting this afternoon, Mr. Becker?MR. BECKER.What meeting, Mrs. Tilsbury? I was at a Bank Directors’ meeting, an executive meeting of an Insurance Company, and at a meeting of a special committee of the State Bar Association to draft some measures which we hope to recommend to the Legislature. I was at all these meetings. Which one do you refer to, Mrs. Tilsbury?MRS. TILSBURY.I meant the Woman’s Suffrage meeting.MR. BECKER.I did not know anything about it. (Turning toMILDRED.) You were not there I hope, Miss Tilsbury.MILDRED.Indeed I was, Mr. Becker.MRS. TILSBURY.Why Mildred was one of theprincipal speakers. That is why I thought you would be there.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, Miss Tilsbury made her maiden speech—or should I say the maiden’s speech? I congratulate you. It was fine.MR. BECKER.I wonder your father allows it. You might better be at home, darning his stockings.MRS. BROWN.You are not in favor of Woman’s Suffrage I take it, Mr. Becker.MR. BECKER.No, indeed, I believe that the home is the best place for women. The rough outside world is not suitable for them. When I see you women crying for the ballot like a baby crying for the moon, I think it would do you just as much good if you got it. You might better be at home taking care of your children if you have any. I dislike to see women trying to turn themselves into men. They should be shielded and protected from all the disagreeable things in the world.MILDRED.Sometimes men do not protect them, Mr. Becker, but take advantage of them instead.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Ah, Miss Mildred, that was a wonderful speech you made this afternoon. Your speaking of men’s taking advantage of women reminds me of the poor countess you told about.MR. BECKER.What countess was that, Miss Tilsbury? Tell me about her and you will see how much pleasanter it is to speak before a sympathetic audience of one in a charming drawing-room than before a hooting crowd in a bare, badly-ventilated political hall.MILDRED.There was no hooting this afternoon. There was some applause, but that was rather nice.MR. BECKER.I will applaud if you will tell me the story.MILDRED.But Mr. Van Tousel has already heard it.MR. BECKER.Let him go and talk to Mrs. Brown then about her pig.MR. VAN TOUSEL.I should like to hear it again. You tell it so well, Miss Mildred.MILDRED.Well, the Viscountess of Montacute was betrothed to Sir George Maxwell. That was long ago in the days of George the First, when a married woman’s property belonged absolutely to her husband unless it was securely settled upon her before the marriage. The Viscountess had a large estate and she wanted to keep it in her own hands, but Sir George, while always declaring that he would never touch her money, delayed signing the settlement from day to day until finally the wedding day arrived and the bride was putting on all her finery in one room in her castle and the groom was struggling to get into his stiff white brocade coat in another; then Lady Montacute suddenly thought of the paper still unsigned and sent it to Sir George while the clergyman and all the guests were waiting below. He came flying to her room.“My dearest love,” he said, “how could you mortify me so by sending that settlement to me to be signed before all my friends who were helping me to dress? You showed them all that you distrust me and that you think that I care more for your confounded fortune than for your sweet self. If you have so little confidence in me, let us break off the match before it is too late. I could not love an unbelieving wife.”The Viscountess burst into tears and almost washed off the little black patch which her maid had just placed on her rouged cheek.“Do not be so cruel, Sir George,” she cried. “It was those odious lawyers who have been pressing me to insist upon you putting your signature to this settlement. You know that I myself trust you completely.”Sir George clasped her in his arms regardless of her powdered hair which showered upon his coat.“You shall always be free to enjoy your fortune as you will,” he promised, “the same as if you remained unwed.”The Viscountess was so touched by his forgiveness of her lack of faith in him that she gave no further thought to the settlement and they went down-stairs hand in hand and were married by the clergyman at once.Needless to say, a few years later, Sir George claimed his marital right to gamble away his wife’s fortune and the distressed Viscountess went to the Lord Chancellor for protection, demanding that Sir George be compelled to keep his promise that she should enjoy her own estate. She found that she was powerless against her husband since the promise was not in writing. The learned Judges decided that soft words spoken in a moment of infatuation were not fraudulent if afterwards their purport was neglected, and that a lover’s vows do not constitute a contract though sealed with Hymen’s torch, so the unfortunate lady was reduced to beggary.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Wonderfully dramatic. Beautifullytold. When I heard you repeat that story this afternoon, Miss Mildred, I was more convinced than ever how necessary it is for women to have the vote.MR. BECKER.Such a thing could not happen in these days. The married women’s property act has changed all that.MILDRED.Women still have some wrongs which need to be remedied, Mr. Becker, and a vote would be of great assistance to them in righting those wrongs.MR. VAN TOUSEL.And you are going to help me right them, Miss Mildred. You remind me of St. Elizabeth. Every time you spoke this afternoon it seemed as if a rose fell out from between your lips.MILDRED.I thought it was the bread which she was carrying to the poor which was turned into roses, Mr. Van Tousel, not the words she spoke.MR. BECKER.That is just what you modern women want to do, to give the poor roses when they are crying for bread.MILDRED.The miracle was performed in order that St. Elizabeth might avoid the anger of her husband. He was a hard-hearted man and objected to her charities.MR. BECKER.Oh, that was different. You ought to have a husband to send roses to you, Miss Tilsbury, but I suppose your head is so full of these “old wives’ tales” that you never think of marriage.MILDRED.I don’t know that I have thought very much about it as regards myself.MR. BECKER.Marriage is the highest aim of women’s existence, Miss Tilsbury, and when she seeksto avoid it, she makes herself an object of contempt to all right thinking men and women no matter how much they may pretend to believe the contrary.MILDRED.Sometimes a girl doesn’t meet a man she can love.MR. BECKER.Then she should marry a man who loves her.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, Miss Mildred, it really doesn’t make any difference whether you begin your dinner with soup and end with ice-cream or begin with ice-cream and end with soup. It’s all the same to you a week afterwards, and whether you begin with loving your husband or being loved by him is the same in the end.MRS. TILSBURY.(ToMRS. BROWN.) There they are, both at her again, each in his own way. Do cut in and stop them.MRS. BROWN.(Humming softly.)“You take the high road,And I’ll take the low,But I will reach Scotland before you.”Why not let them fight it out like the Kilkenny cats?MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, no! Remember you promised to help me!MRS. BROWN.Well, which is the most dangerous? The anti for me, but a girl’s taste may be different. Well, here I go. (She walks over to Mildred and the two men and addresses Mr. Van Tousel.) I think I went to school with a sister of yours, Mr. Van Tousel.MR. VAN TOUSEL.(Sulky at being interrupted.) Very likely, Mrs. Brown.MRS. BROWN.At Mrs. Read’s,—Augusta Van Tousel. I think she must have been your sister. Van Tousel is such an uncommon name.MR. VAN TOUSEL.(Becoming more interested.) There are only three in the telephone directory, my mother and myself and a cousin of my father’s. There is another family that spell the name T-o-u-s-l-e instead of e-l; but I do not know anything about them.MRS. BROWN.Your sister has married, has she not?MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, she married a German and lives in Berlin. She is not interested in “the cause,” I regret to say.MRS. BROWN.She was very much interested in American History when she was in school, probably because she had so many ancestors who helped to make it.MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, we are descended from three Colonial Governors, two Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and six Generals.MRS. BROWN.Dear me, and now you are keeping up the traditions of your family by taking part in this live issue of the day—Woman Suffrage. Do come over to the sofa, Mr. Van Tousel, and tell me all about your sister. It is so long since I have seen her. (They walk over to sofa and sit down conversing.)MR. BECKER.Have you known Mr. Van Foolsel a long time, Miss Tilsbury?MILDRED.Van Tousel! Mr. Becker, not Van Foolsel!MR. BECKER.I beg his pardon, but a man like that gets on my nerves. He isn’t willing to do a man’swork in the world and so he approves of women’s going out of the home and working instead. If I should marry, I would want to take care of my wife and not let her take care of me. Don’t you think that is the right spirit, Miss Tilsbury?MILDRED.A woman doesn’t like to sit around idle, Mr. Becker.MR. BECKER.Certainly not, but no woman need ever be idle. She has her housekeeping, her children, her friends, her charities, books to read, and plays to see. I only wish that I could command my time as a woman can do, but I have to work.MILDRED.Don’t you like to work?MR. BECKER.Yes, but sometimes I wish I could set my clients to work instead. They go to Europe and I stay at home to attend to their affairs. Sometime or other, I hope to go to Europe and leave my clients at home to attend to their own business. I wouldn’t want to go alone though, it would be too lonesome. I shall wait until I am married.MILDRED.Will that be soon?MR. BECKER.I hope so, unless women become voters and vote to abolish matrimony.MILDRED.I don’t believe there will be any danger of that.MR. BECKER.I don’t know. You can’t tell what a mob of women will do when they get started. Look at the way they behave at bargain counters, and at the excesses of the women in the French Revolution.MILDRED.I should not think you would want to marry if you feel that way about women.MR. BECKER.I am thinking of women in a crowd, not of exceptional individuals.MILDRED.Come and see the Parade to-morrow and you will think differently. Everything is to be as well ordered and dignified as possible.MR. BECKER.Are you going to march?MILDRED.Yes, indeed.MR. BECKER.Well, I will come, but I shall imagine you as walking up the aisle of a church as a bride. (They continue conversing in low tones.)(Enter Katy who goes over to Mrs. Tilsbury.)KATY.Can I speak with you for a moment, ma’am?MRS. TILSBURY.What is it, Katy?KATY.Helma says it is getting so late that she can’t wait to dish up the dinner.MRS. TILSBURY.Helma can’t wait to dish up the dinner? But Mr. Tilsbury hasn’t come in yet. Why can’t she wait. Where is she going?KATY.She is going to speak at a meeting at eight o’clock. Here she is herself. She will explain it all to you.(Enter Helma.)MRS. TILSBURY.You are going to a meeting, Helma?HELMA.Yes, a meeting for the advancement of the cause of Woman Suffrage.MRS. TILSBURY.Can’t you wait and go right after dinner? You needn’t stop to wash the dishes. I don’t see how you can go now. We are expecting Mr. Tilsbury every minute, and as soon as he comes we will go right into the dining-room and begin.HELMA.I can’t wait another minute. I am downas first speaker on the programme, and the ladies would never forgive me if I was late. I am to speak on “How it feels to vote.” I am the only lady in the Society who has ever voted, for in Norway the women are as good as men. No other member of the Society has had any experience and can speak instead of me.MRS. TILBURY.But, Helma, what will we do about our dinner? I will give you two dollars if you will stay and serve the dinner. See, this nice new two-dollar bill? You shall have this. My guests are all here, and the dinner half cooked. Oh! you must not go now.HELMA.I certainly must, Mrs. Tilsbury. I get five dollars for my talk. Tell Katy to cook the dinner.KATY.Indeed, and I will not, ma’am. It’s not my work. I wouldn’t meddle with her dirty, Norwegian tricks. I won’t stay in the same house with her any longer anyway. My young man says he will not marry me if I do. She drove him out of the kitchen only yesterday, sassing him about the boss of his district, and calling him a low-down Irish pig. She said she would never vote for a Democrat, but John says she will never vote for a Democrat or Republican either, so long as the Irish rule New York.HELMA.Seeing him would win me over to the Prohibition party.KATY.Is it trying to be funny, you are Helma? No, John says that women will neither vote nor smoke in the State of Greater New York, so long as the green grass and golden harp in the hand are worth all the stars and striped rainbows in the heavens.MRS. TILSBURY.Katy, you shall have the two dollars if you will serve up the dinner. It must be almost cooked, so it won’t be much work, and then you and John can use the money for two tickets and go to some nice play together to-morrow evening.KATY.John’s not the boy for that, Mrs. Tilsbury. He wouldn’t take a girl’s hard-earned money before he was married to her. I am going to leave anyway now that Miss Mildred is being so talked about for her views on votes for women. He says that the only difference between men and women now is that men smoke and vote and women don’t, and that to marry a girl who did both would be like having another man about the house. He says he has his doubts about taking a girl to wife out of this house.HELMA.You never saw me smoke but once, Katy Flanigan. I took an old stale cigarette out of a box Mr. Tilsbury had thrown away. I won’t stay here to be talked to like this no longer. (Goes out noisily.)MRS. TILSBURY.Does Helma really smoke.KATY.Indeed yes, ma’am. Wasn’t Mr. Tilsbury after noticing last night how fast his cigar box had emptied?MRS. TILSBURY.How dreadful; but now that she has gone, do serve the dinner and I will make it good to you.(Kitchen bell rings.)KATY.I can’t indeed, ma’am. There’s John now. The Union would never let him marry a girl that did extra work that wasn’t her own trade. (KATYgoes out hurriedly and almost knocks intoMR. TILSBURYwho is coming in.)MR. TILSBURY.What’s the trouble about, Josephine?MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, George. What has made you so late? Helma wouldn’t wait any longer to cook the dinner because she has an engagement to speak at a Woman Suffrage meeting and Katy won’t do it because she doesn’t want to vote and she and Helma have quarrelled about Katy’s beau. Everybody is here waiting for dinner and I don’t know what I shall do. Why didn’t you come sooner?MR. TILSBURY.I stopped in at the club for a minute and the fellows persuaded me to make a fourth at bridge. It seemed kind of mean not to when the three were just sitting there with nothing to do.MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, but there were five of us waiting for you here at home and now there is no dinner. It’s all your fault, so it’s up to you to suggest something. I have done my best.MR. TILSBURY.Well, I guess we had better adjourn to a restaurant. (Goes forward to greet the others.) How do you do, Mrs. Brown. Hello, Van Tousel; glad to see you Becker. It seems a domestic tragedy has just occurred. Mrs. Tilsbury tells me that the cause of Woman Suffrage is being fought out in our kitchen. It seems rather a small floor for the solution of a world problem, but the cook, who is a Norwegian and a suffragette, has hurried out to speak for the cause, and the waitress, who is an anti, refuses to come to the rescue. I think we had better let them fight it out and go to Sherry’s for dinner where cooks and waiters are all voters. (Goes out to dress.)MRS. BROWN.What shall I do with Cochon? Do you suppose I could take him in with me at Sherry’s or had I better leave him here?MRS. TILSBURY.I don’t know whether it would be wise to leave him here. The Irish are so sensitive on the subject of pigs. Suppose we leave him at your apartment as we go by. Come and put on your wrap again.(MRS. TILSBURYandMRS. BROWNgo out.)MR. BECKER.Well, this is a fine example of what the enfranchisement of woman will lead to; to be driven out of one’s home by political dissension in the kitchen.MILDRED.We believe in freedom for all women, Mr. Becker. One must be willing to put up with a little inconvenience for the sake of our convictions.MR. BECKER.And go to a restaurant while your own dinner at home is going to waste?MILDRED.All food will be cooked in a central kitchen soon and sent around to different homes. Cooking will be done outside of the homes, just as dressmaking, baking, laundering, and lots of other things have been transferred into independent industries. Women can no longer be slaves in the house.MR. VAN TOUSEL.(Clapping his hands.) Splendid, splendid, Miss Mildred. I have often thought the same thing.(Re-enterMRS. TILSBURYandMRS. BROWN.)MR. BECKER.Well, I hope I won’t live to see that day.MR. VAN TOUSEL.You will have to take a position as a chef, Becker, and eat your own cooking.MILDRED.Oh, Josephine, I have had such a splendid idea. Let me go down-stairs and finish cooking the dinner.MR. BECKERMiss Tilsbury, I admire your spirit.MRS. TILSBURY.Why, Mildred, you are too tired after making that speech to do anything of the kind. Besides you know how hard it is to get your father to go to a restaurant for dinner. He always says he is afraid of ptomaine poisoning. It will be a great deal more fun to dine at Sherry’s than to stay here. I am glad Helma has gone speechifying. Don’t let your father hear your ridiculous suggestion.MRS. BROWN.Yes, Mildred, do keep quiet. Think of the lights and the music and the women’s dresses. It will be awfully amusing. Hurry and put on your cloak!(Re-enterMr. Tilsbury.)MR. TILSBURY.Are you all ready? I have telephoned for two taxi’s.MRS. BROWN.Yes, indeed. Hurray for Woman Suffrage! This is the first time I have ever been in favor of it.MR. BECKER.The breaking-up of the American home, may it long be averted.(All go out. Curtain.)

WOMEN FOR VOTES

The drawing-room at the Tilsburys’ house in the City of New York, tastefully arranged, with a door at each end and a sofa against the wall, over which hangs a beautiful full-length portrait of the first Mrs. Tilsbury. When the curtain rises,Mrs. Brownis seen seated in an easy chair, turning over the pages of a magazine, whileCochonis asleep on the floor beside her. EnterMrs. Tilsburywith her hat on, a contrast toMrs. Brownwho is in dinner dress.

The drawing-room at the Tilsburys’ house in the City of New York, tastefully arranged, with a door at each end and a sofa against the wall, over which hangs a beautiful full-length portrait of the first Mrs. Tilsbury. When the curtain rises,Mrs. Brownis seen seated in an easy chair, turning over the pages of a magazine, whileCochonis asleep on the floor beside her. EnterMrs. Tilsburywith her hat on, a contrast toMrs. Brownwho is in dinner dress.

MRS. BROWN.(Looking up asMRS. TILSBURYenters.) Well, was the meeting a success?

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, a huge success. We were told of all sorts of horrors. Only fancy, Imogene, until 1857—or was it 1858? well, it doesn’t matter which—women were not allowed to testify on the witness stand about their husbands’ pedigrees.

MRS. BROWN.Why did they want to testify about their husbands’ pedigrees? If it were about their husbands’ descendants now, a second familysub rosa, there might be something in it. They might testify about their pets’ pedigrees might they not? I would be permitted to tell all about your pedigree on a horridold witness stand, wouldn’t I little tootsie-wootsie-tootsie? (Takes up pig and caresses it.)

MRS. TILSBURY.I don’t know, I am sure, why they should want to. The only time I ever took any interest in my husband’s pedigree was when I wanted to join the Society of Colonial Caudlers, and then I was told that my husband’s ancestors did not count, but that I must stand on my own.

MRS. BROWN.Stand on your own! Could you find their graves?

MRS. TILSBURY.No, that was the trouble. I haven’t any ancestors. I wouldn’t have wanted to use my husband’s if I had had any of my own, but it wasn’t any use.

MRS. BROWN.Well, if that is all they said at the meeting I think I passed a more profitable afternoon. See this purse that I won as a prize at the Bridge party.

MRS. TILSBURY.O, what a beauty! I do wish I could have gone. It is just what I want. Generally, Bridge prizes are some old thing that go from house to house as rapidly as a servant girl. Those tiresome suffrage meetings take up all my time. I never have a chance to do anything I like.

MRS. BROWN.Why do you go to them? I never do. I don’t want to vote, there are so many other things that are more amusing.

MRS. TILSBURY.I go with Mildred, she is so interested in Woman’s Suffrage.

MRS. BROWN.Well, you are a good—I don’t even like to say the word. It would be such a misnomer in your case.

MRS. TILSBURY.Stepmother, you mean. Oh, you needn’t mind saying it. I would be constantly reminded of it by that (looks up at portrait over sofa) even if it were not for other things.

MRS. BROWN.Yes, that too. It is so magnanimous of you to hang it there, to give such prominence to the first Mrs. Tilsbury.

MRS. TILSBURY.I suppose it is more respectable to succeed a wife who is dead than one who is divorced.

MRS. BROWN.Oh, by all means. Dead women tell no lies, nor the truth either, and sometimes divorcées delight in telling tales about their first husbands’ second wives. But, tell me, why do you take the trouble to go to all these tiresome meetings when you might be enjoying yourself? Can’t Mildred go alone or with some friend?

MRS. TILSBURY.Well, I suppose it is no harder way of making a living than any other. I was an artist before I married Mr. Tilsbury. My father lost all his money in the panic of 1893 and I had to do something to help mother.

MRS. BROWN.Making a living? You don’t mean to tell me that the Women Suffragists are forced to pay their audiences to make them come to the meetings?

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, no! Not that of course; but I suppose I might as well make a clean breast of it, particularly as I want you to help me!

MRS. BROWN.Yes, do. I should love to help you. You have always been so kind to me. What do you want me to do?

MRS. TILSBURY.It’s this way, you see. Mildred’smother had all the money. George never had a cent of his own and he always spent whatever he could lay his hands on, so when Mrs. Tilsbury died she left a will bequeathing everything to Mildred except that old portrait there, which she gave to George as a token of her affection, and to show that she did not bear him any ill-will. The property is to belong to Mildred absolutely when she is twenty-five, or when she marries, if she should marry younger. Until either of these events happen, the estate is to be held in trust. The trustee appointed by Mrs. Tilsbury died a few days after she did, and George as Mildred’s father and nearest friend was made trustee. See?

MRS. BROWN.Yes. How clever you are. You talk just like a lawyer.

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, my dear! I have heard it talked over so often that I have learned it by heart, but when I repeat those phrases, I feel just as if I had tight boots on. I am so glad to take them off and talk naturally again.

MRS. BROWN.I don’t see what all this has to do with Woman’s Suffrage. Did Mrs. Tilsbury make it a condition in her will that Mildred should be brought up to support “votes for women”?

MRS. TILSBURY.No, but when George first proposed to me, he told me all about the will, and said that it would be my duty if I married him to keep Mildred from marrying. He said that if she could be made to take an interest in other things and not marry until she was twenty-five, she would not be likely to marry at all, but would probably continue to live with us and leave the money in his hands; that it ranin the family to marry early or not at all, that two of her aunts had eloped when in their teens, and that the others were all old maids. Sometimes I think that George only married me so as to have some one to look after Mildred. A paid chaperone would not have the same interest at stake. She would only have her salary and Mildred might pension her if she married, but George and I are utterly dependent on that young girl.

MRS. BROWN.Oh, don’t say that. Everybody knows how much George was in love with you. Why, he was positively foolish. It was to keep Mildred from marrying, then, that you influenced her to take part in the cause of Woman’s Suffrage?

MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, George and I talked it over and we decided that that would be the most absorbing interest for her. You see the speakers tell such awful stories about men, and the inequality of men and women before the law, and the dreadful laws against married women, that no self-respecting girl who heard them would want to talk to a man hardly, much less dare to marry one.

MRS. BROWN.Mildred made a speech this afternoon didn’t she?

MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, her first one, and she has been so busy and interested in writing it that she hasn’t given a thought to the other sex except to denounce their vices.

MRS. BROWN.You have just returned from the meeting now. What a long one it must have been.

MRS. TILSBURY.Endless; and then the ladies insisted upon Mildred’s waiting afterwards for congratulations and a cup of tea.

MRS. BROWN.You want me to help you, you say, but really, I have no time to go to these meetings. My time is so taken up. There is to-day for example. This morning I had my Auction Bridge class from nine until eleven, and that is most exhausting. The teacher keeps saying “ladies concentrate” just when I am concentrating on what stunning hands he has and so beautifully manicured.

MRS. TILSBURY.My dear, I knew a woman once—you would know her, too, if I told you her name—who fell so in love with an actor that she studied manicuring, found out where he went to be manicured, and got a job there just to hold his hand an hour every two or three days!

MRS. BROWN.Some women are so silly! What was I saying? Oh, yes, after the Bridge class, I went to the Chansons de Chiffons, and I wish you could have seen Mme. Duffoird who sang. Those opera singers never know how to dress, that is why they always want to be Brunhildas and Carmens. Why, in all the times I have gone to the opera, I have never obtained a fresh idea!

MRS. TILSBURY.I saw rather a pretty gown inSapphoonce. Cavalieri wore it. That’s a modern opera.

MRS. BROWN.Oh, I saw that. It looked as if it were made in Germany. Well, as I was saying, from the concert, I went to a luncheon, then to the Bridge party, and now I am here for dinner. I have not even had the time to give Cochon the air. Mother didn’t even have time to take her little pet walking, did she tootsie-wootsie-tootsie? That’s why I brought himhere to-night. Your rooms are bigger than mine and he has more space to run around in.

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, I didn’t intend to ask you to go to meetings. I have been obliged to give up so much to go to them myself that I would not ask it of any one else. It has been very hard. I was asked to be a manager in the “Unseen Blushers” and I had to refuse because I hadn’t the time.

MRS. BROWN.“The Unseen Blushers”? Oh, that’s the new artistic, musical, and literary society, isn’t it?—but why do they call it by such an odd name? I thought blushes were made to be seen. They are so becoming. I have always wondered that no one has ever invented a rouge that could be turned off and on like an electric light before and after a kiss. There are so many clever inventions nowadays.

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, not that kind of a blush. “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,” you know. It means to blossom I think. This society is for the discovery of hidden genius. The old theory was that men and women of genius rose to the top as naturally as cream rises and that they produced their works of art as unconcernedly as a hen hatches her eggs, but now the psychologists and physicists believe in aiding nature. They find that they can get more cream by means of a separator, that it is all through the milk and needs to be forced out, and that incubators can hatch eggs better than hens. So this society has been formed to encourage artistic, musical, and literary talent that is hard to discover and is unable to find its way to the surface. You understand!

MRS. BROWN.I don’t! It is all Greek to me, but you are so clever, Josephine. Tell me about your art.

MRS. TILSBURY.I have been forced to give it all up because of Mildred, and my last picture was such a success too. It received the third prize in the impressionist class. It was a painting of a street cleaner—a White Wing. I got the idea from a cup of chocolate I upset. The whipped cream made almost all the figure, the white uniform, you know, and then a few drops of chocolate looked like the bronzed face of a swarthy Italian. I just copied the spill exactly. Near by the thick white paint looked precisely like the whipped cream, but if you stood six yards away every one said it looked just like a street sweeper bending over with his broom to sweep up the dust.

MRS. BROWN.How beautiful, and what an original idea!

MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, that is what everybody said. Nowadays, when there is so much interest taken in the Traffic Squad of police and the firemen, the men who save lives in a conspicuous and sensational manner, and every one wants to reward them and paint them and sculpture them and their horses, no one remembers the humble life-savers who protect us from deadly diseases and pestilences by keeping the streets clean. One woman wrote a poem about my picture, beginning, “Germ gatherer grovelling in the gritty gravel.” It was charming. It is published in theUnseen Blushers Review. I will send you a copy.

MRS. BROWN.Please do. I should love to have it and a photograph of your painting too.

MRS. TILSBURY.I will remember. Yes, my wholecareer was just beginning when I had to give it all up to follow Mildred around to Woman’s Suffrage meetings only because there is more money in it. What does the artistic woman want of a vote? Art has always been open to both sexes, and the Unseen Blushers include both men and women.

MRS. BROWN.It is very hard on you when you have so much talent to leave it all unused, but since you don’t want me to go to meetings, what assistance can I be to you?

MRS. TILSBURY.I know you were very unhappy in your married life, and I want you to tell Mildred all about it.

MRS. BROWN.(Indignantly.) Really, Josephine, there are some things that one doesn’t talk about to a child.

MRS. TILSBURY.Mildred is eighteen, and the men are after her already. You have no idea what men will do to get a little money.

MRS. BROWN.I cannot lay bare the secrets of my married life. Besides, I don’t know but I might marry again. My experience was in some ways unfortunate to be sure, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, nor one man matrimony.

MRS. TILSBURY.One man doesn’t make matrimony! To hear you, Imogene, one would think you were—not a Mormon but the other thing; what is it they call it?—oh, yes, I remember, a polyanthus.

MRS. BROWN.I did not mean more than one husband at a time. I meant that if a woman is unfortunate in her first choice and is left a widow, she might from her increased experience be able to select a second husbandbetter. It is very lonesome to be a widow. It is all very well in the daytime when the men are down-town but the evenings are so long. There are so many jokes about widows that a man is afraid to be left alone with one. If I should talk a lot against marriage and then suddenly marry again, my inconsistency would do more harm to your cause than if I should keep silence in the first place.

MRS. TILSBURY.I don’t know about that. I used to have a beau when I was a girl who always kept repeating, “Inconsistency, thy name is woman.” He said it so often that I have never been able to forget it since.

MRS. BROWN.How is any one to know I want to marry again if I talk against matrimony? The men will all fly from me. No, Josephine, I must say how lonely I am and how nice it is to have a man come home at five o’clock and to make him comfy beside the fire, and how I love the odor of a cigar, and how strong men are beside us weak women, and that I wish I had some one to help me with my business which I find so difficult to understand. No, I can’t run down men to Mildred like a peevish old maid or a disappointed wife even to help you.

MRS. TILSBURY.But every one knows how jealous your husband was of you.

MRS. BROWN.Well, I worked awfully hard to make him so. I don’t think I will stay for dinner, Josephine, after all. You are too personal to-day. (Rises to go.)

MRS. TILSBURY.Don’t be peeved, Imogene; stay, and talk about whatever you choose. If you would only help me it would be to your advantage if youreally are thinking about marrying again. You would meet ever so many men here. They are indeed like flies about a honey pot.

MRS. BROWN.Fortune hunters! I am not looking for that kind. I need to find a snug little fortune myself. You know Mr. Brown left me his money only on condition that I did not marry again.

MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, I know, dear. He was always very jealous. You should tell Mildred about that will.

MRS. BROWN.And be rewarded by being shown off to her fortune hunters.

MRS. TILSBURY.Some of them have money.

MRS. BROWN.Yes, and want more to add to it. I know that sort. A man without a cent might marry a poor girl and work for her, but a man with a little money wants to gather in a little more when he marries, just like an old china collector.

MRS. TILSBURY.There are exceptions.

MRS. BROWN.The men who want to control their wives through their purse. Don’t think the exception improves the rule, Josephine.

MRS. TILSBURY.You are almost as bitter against men as the suffragists.

MRS. BROWN.Oh, no. I like men, only I know the faults of some of them. Who is coming here to-night?

MRS. TILSBURY.A Mr. Becker and a Mr. Van Tousel. They have both been rushing Mildred for the last three weeks, but fortunately she has been so interested in her speech that she has hardly noticed them.

MRS. BROWN.Why did you ask them to dinner?

MRS. TILSBURY.Mr. Van Tousel fairly askedhimself. His attentions to Mildred have been so costly that I could not refuse him when he suggested coming after the meeting this afternoon, and then I invited Mr. Becker so that we might play Bridge and protect Mildred from a tête-à-tête.

MRS. BROWN.What are they like?

MRS. TILSBURY.Mr. Becker is a lawyer, and Mr. Van Tousel is old family.

MRS. BROWN.Does he find it lucrative?

MRS. TILSBURY.Find what lucrative?

MRS. BROWN.Being old family?

MRS. TILSBURY.Well, it furnishes him with conversation. That is something in these days.

MRS. BROWN.He must be an awful bore. What about Mr. Becker?

MRS. TILSBURY.I told you he is a lawyer.

MRS. BROWN.That is not very descriptive.

MRS. TILSBURY.It is in his case. George says that points of law are sticking out all over him so that he is as prickly as a hedgehog.

MRS. BROWN.Where does he come from?

MRS. TILSBURY.From up state somewhere. He is a rising man.

MRS. BROWN.I have met so many rising men but they never seem to arrive. They remind me of an elevator that gets stuck between floors.

MRS. TILSBURY.Without any passengers on board, I hope.

MRS. BROWN.Oh, they usually are weighted down with a family.

MRS. TILSBURY.Mr. Becker is a bachelor and George says he is making a very good income.

MRS. BROWN.Well, that is satisfactory. There is the door-bell now.

MRS. TILSBURY.So you see, Imogene, both of these men are exceptions to your remarks.

KATY.(Announcing.) Mr. Van Tousel!

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, Mr. Van Tousel! I was just thinking of you and saying to Mrs. Brown that there are some men who are exceptions to the common run of selfish, self-centred New York men and that you were one of these exceptions. Mr. Van Tousel is so broad-minded. He believes in “the cause.”

MRS. BROWN.Indeed!

MR. VAN TOUSEL.I think it is a disgrace, madam, to ask women to pay taxes, to contribute their share to the maintenance of the government, and then to refuse them a single vote in the management of that same government.

MRS. TILSBURY.Isn’t he generous!

MRS. BROWN.(In a low voice.) People generally are with what isn’t their own.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.How is Miss Mildred? I was at the meeting this afternoon and saw her sitting on the platform. What a noble sight it is to see a beautiful young girl, far removed from the struggle for existence, take up the cause of her less fortunate sisters.

MRS. BROWN.I thought from what you just said that you believed only taxpayers ought to vote. Of course, you know Mildred pays large taxes.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Oh, Mrs. Brown, how could you so misunderstand me! I believe in the franchise for all women.

MRS. TILSBURY.Here is Mildred now. She went to change her gown for dinner, but we were so late in returning from the meeting that Mrs. Brown was already here, and so I did not take the time to change mine. I hope you will both excuse me.

(Mildred enters.)

MRS. BROWN.You look charming, Josephine, as you always do. How do you do, Mildred?

MILDRED.How do you do, Mrs. Brown. How do you do, Mr. Van Tousel? (Shakes hands with both, and then turns towards the pig.) How is Cochon?

MRS. BROWN.He has been alone all day, poor little beastie. That is why I brought him here to-night.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Ah, Mrs. Brown, what a dear little dog. What breed is he, may I ask?

MRS. BROWN.Pig, Mr. Van Tousel, common pig.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Do you mean to say he is only a pig?

MRS. BROWN.Yes, it is the fashion to be original at present, you know, and to be original in dogs nowadays is so expensive. One has to get an animal from the Summer Palace of the Empress of China or the kennels of some royal prince, so I thought I would be original in making a pet of a pig. I am the first woman in New York to start the idea. The reporters from all the newspapers would be after me for an interview if it were generally known, but I am obliged to keep it a secret because there is an old law against keeping pigs in New York City. They used to be employed as scavengers, then they became so numerous that this law was passed. I can’t take Cochon outin the daytime, except in a motor car, for fear I shall be arrested, although he looks exactly like a little dog with his blanket on, except for his snout.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, I thought of course he was a dog.

MRS. BROWN.The police are so disagreeable that one has to be very careful. Only the other day when I was late for a Bridge party, and I had offered the chauffeur of the taxicab double fare to get me there in time, a perfectly horrid officer arrested him and insisted upon taking off both the driver and the cab to the station house, although I explained everything to him and that it was most important for me to arrive in time because it was a club party and every table was to play against the room for a prize in money. All he said was, “Madam, you can walk.”

MRS. TILSBURY.That was because women have no vote, no influence. If you had been a man, he would not have dared to make you late for an important engagement.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Quite true.

MILDRED.I don’t believe the policeman saw whether the chauffeur had a man or a woman passenger when he arrested him, Mrs. Brown, but of course as a rule a vote does give a man the advantage.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.How wonderfully you reason, Miss Mildred!

KATY.(Announcing.) Miss Slavinsky!

(Sophie enters.)

MILDRED.How do you do, Sophie.

SOPHIE.Oh, Mildred, I am afraid that I have come at a very bad time, just when you have all these grandfolks here, but I ran in right after supper, because I do not like to be out late. The cops pinch women down our way, you know, when they are out alone too late (looks up atMR. VAN TOUSEL), and I had to see you to-night because Mrs. Thom asked me to tell you that you have been chosen out of ever so many, as the most popular girl, to carry the banners of our Society in the Parade to-morrow.

MILDRED.That was very kind of the ladies. Where is the banner?

SOPHIE.I could not bring it with me. It is very heavy and it would make me look strange to carry it in the streets. The bad little boys would say, “Where did you get the barber’s pole, Miss?” I thought you would send for it to the Society’s rooms in your beautiful automobile.

MILDRED.Yes, certainly. I’ll send the first thing in the morning. Let me introduce you to my stepmother, Mrs. Tilsbury, and this is Mrs. Brown and Mr. Van Tousel. We are all interested in the enfranchisement of women. You are among friends.

SOPHIE.A gentleman who cares for our cause! Oh, that is great, as you Americans say. If we had many more like him, we would be voting just like the men. I am proud to shake your hand, Mr. Van Tousel.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Thank you, Miss Slavinsky. Any friend of Miss Tilsbury is a friend of mine.

SOPHIE.She is indeed a wonder. To leave this beautiful home and her grand friends just to help us poor working girls to get our rights!

MRS. BROWN.What work do you do, Miss Slavinsky?

SOPHIE.I am an usheress.

MRS. BROWN.A what?

SOPHIE.An usheress, a lady usher at the theatre. And I have to work, oh, so hard, every night and matinées on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

MRS. BROWN.It must be very nice to see all the plays without paying anything.

SOPHIE.One can’t see much when one has to show stupid men and women to their seats all through the first act. People should not be allowed to come in after the curtain goes up. Then, too, we have the same play for so long. A run they call it. It is more like a walk, it is so slow. Now at the opera, they change every night, but the men have it all their own way there. They won’t have an usheress, but we will stop that monopoly soon. We have just organized a union, and we shall demand equal pay as the men. Now they try to put us off on half pay because we are women.

MILDRED.I think there is a prejudice against women ushers in New York. I don’t see why, they have them at all the theatres in London.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.And very neat and pretty they look in their white caps and aprons.

SOPHIE.There is certainly a sex discrimination! Why, a man the other night said to me, “You women are all alike. You never get a thing straight.” Just because I was looking so hard at a woman’s bird of paradise head-dress that I gave her the man’s seat in the third row, and when he came in after, I gave him the lady’s seat in the thirteenth. He threatened to complain of me to the box-office—as if men ushers never made mistakes!

MILDRED.How hateful of him!

SOPHIE.Well, it will be all different now that we have organized. We are going to strike.

ALL.What!

SOPHIE.Yes, and then how we will laugh when we see the audience trying to find their own seats in the dark, and when they are all seated, we are going to the cloak-room to mix up their checks.

MILDRED.Why, that is militant, like the English suffragettes. You wouldn’t do that, Sophie.

SOPHIE.Yes, we will too, and the management will have to pay damages to the people who lose their things. We will have great times with the stingy old managers. You’ll see.

MRS. BROWN.Let me know the date, Miss Slavinsky, and I will wear my old coat that I want to get rid of and see if I can pull a sable coat out of the grab-bag.

KATY.(Announcing.) Mr. Becker.

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, Mr. Becker, how kind of you to come to-night to our quiet little dinner when you have so many engagements. Let me introduce Mrs. Brown. You already know Mildred and Mr. Van Tousel, and this is Miss Slavinsky.

MR. BECKER.How do you do, Mrs. Brown. How do you do, Miss Slavinsky.

SOPHIE.And is this another great big glorious man who wants to help us poor weak little women to get our rights? No, it is that same rude man who spoke so peevish to me at the theatre, the other night. Go away, I have no use for you.

MR. BECKER.I don’t recall the circumstances. Ithink you have made a mistake, Miss Slavinsky. I do not think we have ever met before.

SOPHIE.Oh yes we have.

MILDRED.Miss Slavinsky is an usheress at a theatre, Mr. Becker, and she made a mistake in showing you to your seat the other evening that annoyed you.

MR. BECKER.I don’t remember it, Miss Tilsbury.

SOPHIE.Yes, you were at the theatre, don’t you remember, Mr. Becker, last Monday, with a lady all alone. Not a lady like these ladies, but another kind of a lady with a big red feather and a big red cheek.

MR. BECKER.I still think you are mistaken, Miss Slavinsky. I have not been to the theatre in a month. You women are apt to jump to conclusions and then stick to them.

SOPHIE.Ah, yes, that is you, that is what you said, “You women——”

MRS. TILSBURY.Really, Miss Slavinsky, I think we had better let the subject drop. It is not a matter of great importance as to whether Mr. Becker went to the theatre on a particular evening or not. I think you said you came to give Miss Tilsbury a message about the Parade to-morrow.

SOPHIE.And now you think I had better go like any messenger boy. You are right. What has a poor working girl to do in a fine house like this, and among fine people like you? Good-night, Mrs. Tilsbury. Good-night Mrs. Brown. Good-night, Mr. Becker. Good-night, Mildred. I shall see you to-morrow.

MILDRED.Don’t go like this, Sophie. Josephine did not mean to hurt your feelings. She was onlyafraid that you would hurt Mr. Becker’s feelings. Stay and talk to us all.

SOPHIE.No, Mildred, I know when I amde trop. Everybody is not so amiable as you. I will go. Good-night, Mr. Van Tousel; you are a kind man. If you will come to our theatre, the Cosmopolitan Theatre, I will show you your seat right away, no matter how many wait, and I will bring you a glass of water between every act. Oh we have just dear little glasses, now that the law is passed that each person has his own glass, just the sort to remind one of a cocktail. I have borrowed three for my room. What night will you come? To-night is Friday and the leading lady is ill and the theatre is all dark. That is how I could come here, but by Monday she will be all well again. You will come Monday, dear Mr. Van Tousel, you promise, yes? Good-night, dear friends. (Goes out.)

MRS. BROWN.What an extraordinary creature.

MILDRED.(In defence.) She is a Pole and not used to our ways. She has a most brilliant mind and speaks five languages.

MR. BECKER.Five slangs I should call it, if she is as proficient in the other tongues as in the American. (Turns towards Mrs. Brown.) Is this your little dog, Mrs. Brown?

MRS. BROWN.My little pig, you mean. I was saying just now that I can only take him out at night except in an automobile, because it is against the law in New York to keep pigs. Only fancy, they used to run around the streets as scavengers. Then they passed a law forbidding keeping them at all.

MR. VAN TOUSELPity they don’t have them for scavengers now. I don’t suppose they would strike and they feel quite at home in the mud in some of the streets.

MR. BECKER.You women never think about anything but how to break laws and yet you want to vote.

MILDRED.If we helped to make the laws, Mr. Becker, we wouldn’t want to break them. One takes care of whatever one has made. I used to have a maid who never put away my dresses carefully unless she had put a clean collar or a fresh ruffle on one and then she was always most particular to keep it nice. It seemed as if when once she had put a little of her own hand work on a gown that it acquired a new value for her.

MR. BECKER.Be law-abiding citizens first and prove yourselves fit to vote. Women are natural law-breakers. Look how women smuggle. The wealthiest and most fashionable are proud of cheating the government by bringing in some gown or jewel without paying duty on it. Mrs. Brown, here, wouldn’t think of keeping a pig if it were not for the excitement of breaking the law.

MRS. BROWN.It isn’t that at all, Mr. Becker. I keep him to make conversation. Other women have dogs for the purpose, but a unique one is too expensive and there is almost nothing left to say about an ordinary one. I never smuggled anything in my life—that is nothing more important than a pair of silk stockings.

MR. BECKER.That illustrates what I was saying. Women make a business of smuggling for the sake of excitement. Couldn’t you have bought—thearticle in question just as well in New York, Mrs. Brown?

MRS. TILSBURY.(Anxious to keep the peace.) Cochon seems to be making plenty of conversation at present. Were you at the meeting this afternoon, Mr. Becker?

MRS. BROWN.It’s a foolish old law about pigs anyway. So far from buying Cochon to break it, I never knew anything about it until Mrs. de Huyster looked it up to keep me out of the Colonial Caudlers. She said that my ancestress was the last woman to keep pigs in New York, and that she defied the authorities and was arrested; that a woman like that probably stole her caudle-cup from some one else, and that I was not a proper person to become a member of the society on that account.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.How interesting! Then your taste for pigs is an example of heredity.

MR. BECKER.And your taste for law-breaking also. What is the Society of Colonial Caudlers? I never heard of it.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.It is a very fine society, Mr. Becker. My mother is one of its originators and a vice-president. All the members are women who have inherited a caudle-cup from a Colonial ancestor, and on New Year’s Day, they all meet and drink punch out of the cups. It is a very exclusive society. I don’t wonder you have never heard of it.

MRS. BROWN.It is very difficult to get in, but Mrs. de Huyster couldn’t keep me out in spite of her raking up old history, for I discovered that her cup was only pewter, and she had to turn all her attention to passing a by-law that pewter cups were admissibleas well as silver. They had an awful time. It almost broke up the whole society. The pewterites claimed to be the real thing because they said that the pewter cups came over first and that silver cups were not introduced until much later, and that only the parvenues in the Colonies had silver cups.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Women are active in so many directions nowadays. The Society of Colonial Caudlers shows how much they have done in the line of historical research.

MR. BECKER.It is a pity they don’t spend a little more activity in housekeeping. That little Pole would make an excellent cook probably.

MILDRED.Oh, Mr. Becker, Sophie has too much education to do housework.

MRS. TILSBURY.(In desperation.) Were you at the meeting this afternoon, Mr. Becker?

MR. BECKER.What meeting, Mrs. Tilsbury? I was at a Bank Directors’ meeting, an executive meeting of an Insurance Company, and at a meeting of a special committee of the State Bar Association to draft some measures which we hope to recommend to the Legislature. I was at all these meetings. Which one do you refer to, Mrs. Tilsbury?

MRS. TILSBURY.I meant the Woman’s Suffrage meeting.

MR. BECKER.I did not know anything about it. (Turning toMILDRED.) You were not there I hope, Miss Tilsbury.

MILDRED.Indeed I was, Mr. Becker.

MRS. TILSBURY.Why Mildred was one of theprincipal speakers. That is why I thought you would be there.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, Miss Tilsbury made her maiden speech—or should I say the maiden’s speech? I congratulate you. It was fine.

MR. BECKER.I wonder your father allows it. You might better be at home, darning his stockings.

MRS. BROWN.You are not in favor of Woman’s Suffrage I take it, Mr. Becker.

MR. BECKER.No, indeed, I believe that the home is the best place for women. The rough outside world is not suitable for them. When I see you women crying for the ballot like a baby crying for the moon, I think it would do you just as much good if you got it. You might better be at home taking care of your children if you have any. I dislike to see women trying to turn themselves into men. They should be shielded and protected from all the disagreeable things in the world.

MILDRED.Sometimes men do not protect them, Mr. Becker, but take advantage of them instead.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Ah, Miss Mildred, that was a wonderful speech you made this afternoon. Your speaking of men’s taking advantage of women reminds me of the poor countess you told about.

MR. BECKER.What countess was that, Miss Tilsbury? Tell me about her and you will see how much pleasanter it is to speak before a sympathetic audience of one in a charming drawing-room than before a hooting crowd in a bare, badly-ventilated political hall.

MILDRED.There was no hooting this afternoon. There was some applause, but that was rather nice.

MR. BECKER.I will applaud if you will tell me the story.

MILDRED.But Mr. Van Tousel has already heard it.

MR. BECKER.Let him go and talk to Mrs. Brown then about her pig.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.I should like to hear it again. You tell it so well, Miss Mildred.

MILDRED.Well, the Viscountess of Montacute was betrothed to Sir George Maxwell. That was long ago in the days of George the First, when a married woman’s property belonged absolutely to her husband unless it was securely settled upon her before the marriage. The Viscountess had a large estate and she wanted to keep it in her own hands, but Sir George, while always declaring that he would never touch her money, delayed signing the settlement from day to day until finally the wedding day arrived and the bride was putting on all her finery in one room in her castle and the groom was struggling to get into his stiff white brocade coat in another; then Lady Montacute suddenly thought of the paper still unsigned and sent it to Sir George while the clergyman and all the guests were waiting below. He came flying to her room.

“My dearest love,” he said, “how could you mortify me so by sending that settlement to me to be signed before all my friends who were helping me to dress? You showed them all that you distrust me and that you think that I care more for your confounded fortune than for your sweet self. If you have so little confidence in me, let us break off the match before it is too late. I could not love an unbelieving wife.”

The Viscountess burst into tears and almost washed off the little black patch which her maid had just placed on her rouged cheek.

“Do not be so cruel, Sir George,” she cried. “It was those odious lawyers who have been pressing me to insist upon you putting your signature to this settlement. You know that I myself trust you completely.”

Sir George clasped her in his arms regardless of her powdered hair which showered upon his coat.

“You shall always be free to enjoy your fortune as you will,” he promised, “the same as if you remained unwed.”

The Viscountess was so touched by his forgiveness of her lack of faith in him that she gave no further thought to the settlement and they went down-stairs hand in hand and were married by the clergyman at once.

Needless to say, a few years later, Sir George claimed his marital right to gamble away his wife’s fortune and the distressed Viscountess went to the Lord Chancellor for protection, demanding that Sir George be compelled to keep his promise that she should enjoy her own estate. She found that she was powerless against her husband since the promise was not in writing. The learned Judges decided that soft words spoken in a moment of infatuation were not fraudulent if afterwards their purport was neglected, and that a lover’s vows do not constitute a contract though sealed with Hymen’s torch, so the unfortunate lady was reduced to beggary.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Wonderfully dramatic. Beautifullytold. When I heard you repeat that story this afternoon, Miss Mildred, I was more convinced than ever how necessary it is for women to have the vote.

MR. BECKER.Such a thing could not happen in these days. The married women’s property act has changed all that.

MILDRED.Women still have some wrongs which need to be remedied, Mr. Becker, and a vote would be of great assistance to them in righting those wrongs.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.And you are going to help me right them, Miss Mildred. You remind me of St. Elizabeth. Every time you spoke this afternoon it seemed as if a rose fell out from between your lips.

MILDRED.I thought it was the bread which she was carrying to the poor which was turned into roses, Mr. Van Tousel, not the words she spoke.

MR. BECKER.That is just what you modern women want to do, to give the poor roses when they are crying for bread.

MILDRED.The miracle was performed in order that St. Elizabeth might avoid the anger of her husband. He was a hard-hearted man and objected to her charities.

MR. BECKER.Oh, that was different. You ought to have a husband to send roses to you, Miss Tilsbury, but I suppose your head is so full of these “old wives’ tales” that you never think of marriage.

MILDRED.I don’t know that I have thought very much about it as regards myself.

MR. BECKER.Marriage is the highest aim of women’s existence, Miss Tilsbury, and when she seeksto avoid it, she makes herself an object of contempt to all right thinking men and women no matter how much they may pretend to believe the contrary.

MILDRED.Sometimes a girl doesn’t meet a man she can love.

MR. BECKER.Then she should marry a man who loves her.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, Miss Mildred, it really doesn’t make any difference whether you begin your dinner with soup and end with ice-cream or begin with ice-cream and end with soup. It’s all the same to you a week afterwards, and whether you begin with loving your husband or being loved by him is the same in the end.

MRS. TILSBURY.(ToMRS. BROWN.) There they are, both at her again, each in his own way. Do cut in and stop them.

MRS. BROWN.(Humming softly.)

“You take the high road,And I’ll take the low,But I will reach Scotland before you.”

“You take the high road,And I’ll take the low,But I will reach Scotland before you.”

“You take the high road,And I’ll take the low,But I will reach Scotland before you.”

“You take the high road,

And I’ll take the low,

But I will reach Scotland before you.”

Why not let them fight it out like the Kilkenny cats?

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, no! Remember you promised to help me!

MRS. BROWN.Well, which is the most dangerous? The anti for me, but a girl’s taste may be different. Well, here I go. (She walks over to Mildred and the two men and addresses Mr. Van Tousel.) I think I went to school with a sister of yours, Mr. Van Tousel.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.(Sulky at being interrupted.) Very likely, Mrs. Brown.

MRS. BROWN.At Mrs. Read’s,—Augusta Van Tousel. I think she must have been your sister. Van Tousel is such an uncommon name.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.(Becoming more interested.) There are only three in the telephone directory, my mother and myself and a cousin of my father’s. There is another family that spell the name T-o-u-s-l-e instead of e-l; but I do not know anything about them.

MRS. BROWN.Your sister has married, has she not?

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, she married a German and lives in Berlin. She is not interested in “the cause,” I regret to say.

MRS. BROWN.She was very much interested in American History when she was in school, probably because she had so many ancestors who helped to make it.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.Yes, we are descended from three Colonial Governors, two Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and six Generals.

MRS. BROWN.Dear me, and now you are keeping up the traditions of your family by taking part in this live issue of the day—Woman Suffrage. Do come over to the sofa, Mr. Van Tousel, and tell me all about your sister. It is so long since I have seen her. (They walk over to sofa and sit down conversing.)

MR. BECKER.Have you known Mr. Van Foolsel a long time, Miss Tilsbury?

MILDRED.Van Tousel! Mr. Becker, not Van Foolsel!

MR. BECKER.I beg his pardon, but a man like that gets on my nerves. He isn’t willing to do a man’swork in the world and so he approves of women’s going out of the home and working instead. If I should marry, I would want to take care of my wife and not let her take care of me. Don’t you think that is the right spirit, Miss Tilsbury?

MILDRED.A woman doesn’t like to sit around idle, Mr. Becker.

MR. BECKER.Certainly not, but no woman need ever be idle. She has her housekeeping, her children, her friends, her charities, books to read, and plays to see. I only wish that I could command my time as a woman can do, but I have to work.

MILDRED.Don’t you like to work?

MR. BECKER.Yes, but sometimes I wish I could set my clients to work instead. They go to Europe and I stay at home to attend to their affairs. Sometime or other, I hope to go to Europe and leave my clients at home to attend to their own business. I wouldn’t want to go alone though, it would be too lonesome. I shall wait until I am married.

MILDRED.Will that be soon?

MR. BECKER.I hope so, unless women become voters and vote to abolish matrimony.

MILDRED.I don’t believe there will be any danger of that.

MR. BECKER.I don’t know. You can’t tell what a mob of women will do when they get started. Look at the way they behave at bargain counters, and at the excesses of the women in the French Revolution.

MILDRED.I should not think you would want to marry if you feel that way about women.

MR. BECKER.I am thinking of women in a crowd, not of exceptional individuals.

MILDRED.Come and see the Parade to-morrow and you will think differently. Everything is to be as well ordered and dignified as possible.

MR. BECKER.Are you going to march?

MILDRED.Yes, indeed.

MR. BECKER.Well, I will come, but I shall imagine you as walking up the aisle of a church as a bride. (They continue conversing in low tones.)

(Enter Katy who goes over to Mrs. Tilsbury.)

KATY.Can I speak with you for a moment, ma’am?

MRS. TILSBURY.What is it, Katy?

KATY.Helma says it is getting so late that she can’t wait to dish up the dinner.

MRS. TILSBURY.Helma can’t wait to dish up the dinner? But Mr. Tilsbury hasn’t come in yet. Why can’t she wait. Where is she going?

KATY.She is going to speak at a meeting at eight o’clock. Here she is herself. She will explain it all to you.

(Enter Helma.)

MRS. TILSBURY.You are going to a meeting, Helma?

HELMA.Yes, a meeting for the advancement of the cause of Woman Suffrage.

MRS. TILSBURY.Can’t you wait and go right after dinner? You needn’t stop to wash the dishes. I don’t see how you can go now. We are expecting Mr. Tilsbury every minute, and as soon as he comes we will go right into the dining-room and begin.

HELMA.I can’t wait another minute. I am downas first speaker on the programme, and the ladies would never forgive me if I was late. I am to speak on “How it feels to vote.” I am the only lady in the Society who has ever voted, for in Norway the women are as good as men. No other member of the Society has had any experience and can speak instead of me.

MRS. TILBURY.But, Helma, what will we do about our dinner? I will give you two dollars if you will stay and serve the dinner. See, this nice new two-dollar bill? You shall have this. My guests are all here, and the dinner half cooked. Oh! you must not go now.

HELMA.I certainly must, Mrs. Tilsbury. I get five dollars for my talk. Tell Katy to cook the dinner.

KATY.Indeed, and I will not, ma’am. It’s not my work. I wouldn’t meddle with her dirty, Norwegian tricks. I won’t stay in the same house with her any longer anyway. My young man says he will not marry me if I do. She drove him out of the kitchen only yesterday, sassing him about the boss of his district, and calling him a low-down Irish pig. She said she would never vote for a Democrat, but John says she will never vote for a Democrat or Republican either, so long as the Irish rule New York.

HELMA.Seeing him would win me over to the Prohibition party.

KATY.Is it trying to be funny, you are Helma? No, John says that women will neither vote nor smoke in the State of Greater New York, so long as the green grass and golden harp in the hand are worth all the stars and striped rainbows in the heavens.

MRS. TILSBURY.Katy, you shall have the two dollars if you will serve up the dinner. It must be almost cooked, so it won’t be much work, and then you and John can use the money for two tickets and go to some nice play together to-morrow evening.

KATY.John’s not the boy for that, Mrs. Tilsbury. He wouldn’t take a girl’s hard-earned money before he was married to her. I am going to leave anyway now that Miss Mildred is being so talked about for her views on votes for women. He says that the only difference between men and women now is that men smoke and vote and women don’t, and that to marry a girl who did both would be like having another man about the house. He says he has his doubts about taking a girl to wife out of this house.

HELMA.You never saw me smoke but once, Katy Flanigan. I took an old stale cigarette out of a box Mr. Tilsbury had thrown away. I won’t stay here to be talked to like this no longer. (Goes out noisily.)

MRS. TILSBURY.Does Helma really smoke.

KATY.Indeed yes, ma’am. Wasn’t Mr. Tilsbury after noticing last night how fast his cigar box had emptied?

MRS. TILSBURY.How dreadful; but now that she has gone, do serve the dinner and I will make it good to you.

(Kitchen bell rings.)

KATY.I can’t indeed, ma’am. There’s John now. The Union would never let him marry a girl that did extra work that wasn’t her own trade. (KATYgoes out hurriedly and almost knocks intoMR. TILSBURYwho is coming in.)

MR. TILSBURY.What’s the trouble about, Josephine?

MRS. TILSBURY.Oh, George. What has made you so late? Helma wouldn’t wait any longer to cook the dinner because she has an engagement to speak at a Woman Suffrage meeting and Katy won’t do it because she doesn’t want to vote and she and Helma have quarrelled about Katy’s beau. Everybody is here waiting for dinner and I don’t know what I shall do. Why didn’t you come sooner?

MR. TILSBURY.I stopped in at the club for a minute and the fellows persuaded me to make a fourth at bridge. It seemed kind of mean not to when the three were just sitting there with nothing to do.

MRS. TILSBURY.Yes, but there were five of us waiting for you here at home and now there is no dinner. It’s all your fault, so it’s up to you to suggest something. I have done my best.

MR. TILSBURY.Well, I guess we had better adjourn to a restaurant. (Goes forward to greet the others.) How do you do, Mrs. Brown. Hello, Van Tousel; glad to see you Becker. It seems a domestic tragedy has just occurred. Mrs. Tilsbury tells me that the cause of Woman Suffrage is being fought out in our kitchen. It seems rather a small floor for the solution of a world problem, but the cook, who is a Norwegian and a suffragette, has hurried out to speak for the cause, and the waitress, who is an anti, refuses to come to the rescue. I think we had better let them fight it out and go to Sherry’s for dinner where cooks and waiters are all voters. (Goes out to dress.)

MRS. BROWN.What shall I do with Cochon? Do you suppose I could take him in with me at Sherry’s or had I better leave him here?

MRS. TILSBURY.I don’t know whether it would be wise to leave him here. The Irish are so sensitive on the subject of pigs. Suppose we leave him at your apartment as we go by. Come and put on your wrap again.

(MRS. TILSBURYandMRS. BROWNgo out.)

MR. BECKER.Well, this is a fine example of what the enfranchisement of woman will lead to; to be driven out of one’s home by political dissension in the kitchen.

MILDRED.We believe in freedom for all women, Mr. Becker. One must be willing to put up with a little inconvenience for the sake of our convictions.

MR. BECKER.And go to a restaurant while your own dinner at home is going to waste?

MILDRED.All food will be cooked in a central kitchen soon and sent around to different homes. Cooking will be done outside of the homes, just as dressmaking, baking, laundering, and lots of other things have been transferred into independent industries. Women can no longer be slaves in the house.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.(Clapping his hands.) Splendid, splendid, Miss Mildred. I have often thought the same thing.

(Re-enterMRS. TILSBURYandMRS. BROWN.)

MR. BECKER.Well, I hope I won’t live to see that day.

MR. VAN TOUSEL.You will have to take a position as a chef, Becker, and eat your own cooking.

MILDRED.Oh, Josephine, I have had such a splendid idea. Let me go down-stairs and finish cooking the dinner.

MR. BECKERMiss Tilsbury, I admire your spirit.

MRS. TILSBURY.Why, Mildred, you are too tired after making that speech to do anything of the kind. Besides you know how hard it is to get your father to go to a restaurant for dinner. He always says he is afraid of ptomaine poisoning. It will be a great deal more fun to dine at Sherry’s than to stay here. I am glad Helma has gone speechifying. Don’t let your father hear your ridiculous suggestion.

MRS. BROWN.Yes, Mildred, do keep quiet. Think of the lights and the music and the women’s dresses. It will be awfully amusing. Hurry and put on your cloak!

(Re-enterMr. Tilsbury.)

MR. TILSBURY.Are you all ready? I have telephoned for two taxi’s.

MRS. BROWN.Yes, indeed. Hurray for Woman Suffrage! This is the first time I have ever been in favor of it.

MR. BECKER.The breaking-up of the American home, may it long be averted.

(All go out. Curtain.)

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