How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette

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5^arljarlr College Uibrarg

Bought with

Rdoney received fron

Library Klnes

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

Hoiv it Feels

io he the Mmhand,

of a Svffragette

fiy Him

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
MAY WILSON PRESTON

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

s

c-'O 6 o^H'O

SEP 23 1915

Copyright, 1914,
By The Ridgway Company

Copyright, 191 5,
By George H. Doran Company

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Please visualize the gentleman "Occasionally
explaining" to Grandmama 15

"Oh, Mr. Blank," she said, "Do you think
women should vote? " 23

For some odd reason the Wholesale Liquor
Dealers' Association doesn't happen to like
the idea of female suffrage 34

Before she dares approach the distressing fact
that the grocer's bill was fiercer than usual
this month 47

Now and then at odd intervals she slides up in
a bashful way and asks your help in working
out an investment 59

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

-\ ~V7^0U are the party
■'f A aimed at. You who"-
stood on the side-
walk and urged
\ passionately
that we who
'marched go
home and wash
the dishes or
mind the baby.
Nobody an-
swered you then. To be frank, you
didn't say much that sounded worth
7

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

considering; besides, it's not good
form for a procession to indulge in
acrimony. But don't you think for
a moment that the forlorn little
corporal's guard marching at the
tail end of the first suffrage parade
down Fifth Avenue didn't feel acutely
every hostile taunt. It takes a good
deal better man than I've met yet to
face the mirth of a mob without some
of it getting under his hide.

Out in the middle of Fifth Avenue's
width we felt a heap isolated; it even
went farther than that — we felt os-
tracized. Tagging after the girls —
that's what we were doing; and no-
body would let us forget it.

8

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

If you can go back to your kid days
and remember how the gang at some
time sat in judgment on you and, for
alleged failure on your part to shine
in the full glory of a budding male,
rounded up on you, called you ''cry
baby,'' and callously bade you ''go
play with the girls,'' you'll get a little
of the sensation we had out there,
unchaperoned, entirely surrounded
by empty asphalt, with two or three
hundred thousand people earnestly
cracking their larynxes calling us
"sis" or "henpeck."
"I don't want to be misunderstood
— this is not going to be a defense, an
apology, or a confession — merely a

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

frank statement. After a man has
lived in the same house with a suffra-
gette for a number of years, he is
Hkely to have a severe disesteem for
all forms of excuse or apology.

Some one said once: **It's far more
important that a man make good
than be good, and this applies with
special force to husbands.''

You can safely add that to the
husbands of suffragettes it applies
clear through, and buttons down the
back.

For while the suffrage lady has
been reading, she has also been ob-
serving. She has a fuller and franker
knowledge of the motives that move

lO

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

the world than her grandmother ever
let on to have had.

Grandmother had it pounded into
her, from the cradle to the finishing-
school, that it would be money out of
her pocket if she ever confessed to
knowledge of any human mystery
deeper than the compounding of cus-
tard-pie.

Here, by way of proof, is a quota-
tion from a time-honored volume
pertaining to women:

A lady should appear to think well of
books, rather than to speak well of them.
She may show the engaging light that good
taste and sensibility always diffuses over
conversation; she may give instances of great
and affecting passages because they show the
fineness of her imagination or the goodness

II

f*»jp^-;i-

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

of her heart ; but all criticism beyond
this sits awkwardly upon her. She should,
by habit, form her mind to the noble and
pathetic, and she should have an aquaintance
with the fine arts because they enrich and
beautify the imagination; but she should
carefully keep them out of view in the shape
of learning and let them run through the
easy vein of impremeditated thought. For
this reason she should seldom use and not
always appear to understand the terms of
art. The gentleman will occasionally ex-
plain them to her.

This gem of purest ray serene is
from a work called

"THE AMERICAN BOOK OF BEAUTY,
OR FRIENDSHIP'S TOKEN,"

published in Hartford, Conn., in

1 85 1, and given to grandmother by a

very attentive young gentleman, who

12

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

accompanied it with one of those nice
little, old-fashioned, lace-edged val-
entine letters, every word of which
breathed his ardent and reverential
devotion to grandmama.

Wasn't the editor grand? Can you
see grandmama sitting at home
alone, carefully cultivating the noble
and pathetic, while grandpa hooted
around town nights with the boys,
finding the noble and pathetic utterly
unnecessary in his business? And
that little touch — "The gentleman
will occasionally explain them to her"
— isn't that delicate?

Please visualize the gentleman oc
casionally explaining some perfectly

13

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

immaterial proposition and fondly
hoping that he is successfully divert-
ing grandmama's mind from some of
the basic facts of life?

There is still extant an extremely
lovely daguerreotype of grandmama,
aetat twenty-two, at the time of the
presentation of the book; and, look-
ing into the beautiful young face,
sparkling with intelligence, you are
almost tempted to think that pos-
sibly grandmama knew a thing or
two not set down in the editor's pre-
scription.

At any rate, granddaughter, the
suffragette, refuses to fall for ''the
noble and pathetic." If she has at-

14

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

tended one of the big colleges for girls,
she is likely to know just as much
about art as her gentleman friend.
She talks some before she is married,
and more afterward, and she talks
very much to the point.

Mr. Husband has got to be pre-
pared to stand the gaflf, and if he is
indiscreet enough to come weaving in
at three G. M., he might just as well
talk straight. Those diaphanous X-
ray effects in excuses are out of style.
His best chance is to look the judge
right in the eye and announce that he
stayed out because he didn't want to
come home; that he thought a little
cessation of domesticity would ex-

17

I

il

I
I

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

pand his moral nature. He had
better trust for protection to the fact
that he has at one time rowed a boat
or lifted weights — if it comes to actual
physical violence; because if he starts
to duck he is liable to get something
for contempt of court.

So you can put it down as the first
mile-stone to observe on the road to
being a suffragette's husband, that a
reasonable amount of frankness —
just an ordinary quantity of common
or garden truth-telling — is a health-
ful and exhilarating occupation, and
will conduce, as the Good Book says,
to ' ' make your days long in the land , ' '
although it may possibly shorten

i8

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

Up your ''nights out" a trifle at
times.

Getting a suffragette for a wife is
no different from obtaining any other i
kind of a wife. The formula is the
same in both cases. There's a certain
excitement, though, in the fact that
you don't always know she is going
to be a suffragette until after you
have got her. But that, happily, is
getting rarer and rarer. The new
crop is finding out that advertising
pays, and it is pretty hard nowa-
days to pick out a discreet and
docile suffragette who will abso-
lutely refrain from confiding the fact

19

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

to you, if you sit up with her long
enough.

Personally, we — I and mine — fell
into suffrage together and practically
made only one splash; but it was long
after we were married. You notice
that I said mine. I meant it. Shar-
ing some common things in common
doesn't necessarily prevent the lady
from being all yours.

We had been at a nice little dinner-
party in a smart suburban town.
The dinner was all it should be, with
one exception: the star guest refused
to perform for the benefit of the com-
pany. He was a very clever Irish

lawyer, with a name for wit. He

20

HOW IT. FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

came accompanied by a rarely beau-
tiful wife, and her efforts during the
evening to have husband jump
through the hoop and lie down and
roll over and play dead were pathetic.
Something had gone wrong business-
wise during the day, and Melancholia
had claimed him for her own. He
would do nothing but grunt and
grump.

After dinner, when all were com-
fortable in the smoking-room library,
the hostess made a last stab to
draw him out. The papers at that
moment were full of the first des-
patches telling of the astounding
performances of the English mili-

21

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

tants, and the hostess said in her
sweetest coo:

''Oh, Mr. Blank, do you think
women should vote?''

And in a voice that carried more
grouch than any previous grunt dur-
ing the evening, he answered: ''Of
course I do, course I do; and if they
hadn't been such damn fools, they
would have been doing it long ago."

On the way to the station the lady
who controls my destinies repeated
the hostess's question:

"Do you believe women should
vote?"

It was an awful question to have
put to one in the darkness and mys-

22

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

tery of a station hack. It was so
sudden that, I am ashamed to con-
fess, I dived in the hope of avoiding it.

I went down Hke a mud-hen, deep
enough, as I trusted, to let an ocean
liner go over my head.

When I came up there was the
same old question with both barrels
trained full on me.

Did I believe that women should
vote?

What did I know about it?

Had I ever given it a single second's
thought?

Were the things I thought were my
thoughts and liked to advertise as my
ideas anything more than a hazy

25

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

blend of old cartoons, funny men's
paragraphs, and an occasional squint
at a set of spit curls on an elderly
dame who seemed to be discontented
with something?

I held my breath for half a minute
and thought so hard that I could
almost hear my mental processes.

"Yes," I said, "I do beUeve they
should vote/'

''Why?" asked the silent partner.

Well, there was the Revolution —
no taxation without representation;
and there was the Rebellion — no slav-
ery, political or economic. Big wars,
both of them, mighty expensive, defi-
nitely deciding the questions involved

26

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

for all the people of these United
States.

Then you get down to the proposi-
tion: ''Are women peopled'

I believe they must be, or they
wouldn't act the way they do. Be-
sides, it's discouraging to try to argue
that women aren't people. After
you've done your best, you are likely
to wind up by merely proving that
you yourself are either a Turk or an
Ishmaelite. They are the only two
varieties of humans who've ever been
able to make it stick. They just say
blandly that women haven't any
souls, and as they believe it and con-
vince their lady friends that they

27

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

believe it, the argument bogs down
right there.

Then you've got the fact that about
fifty per cent, of the population is
feminine and that in the minds of the
other fifty per cent, they certainly
represent at least half of the sweet-
ness, truth, and idealism of the na-
tion.

Of course, there may be an odd
Schopenhauer here and there who
jumps sidewise and has a fit every
time he sees a skirt; but most of us
aren't nearly as timid as that.

Somewhere along here it became
evident that the lady wasn't going to

insist on any more reasons, but was

28

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

inclined to accept meekly the heredi-
tary intellectual dominance of the
male.

Lots of good men who have no
intellectual objection to women's vot-
ing nurse at heart a timidity when-
ever they visualize the horrible re-
sults. You can see it in many a
polite, genteel citizen's eye, the mo-
ment suffrage talk starts, as if he
were wondering just what his own
women folks would act like around
the house if they knew they were as
good as he was and could prove it
legally.

Of course it is a false alarm. The

percentage of divorces doesn't rise in

29

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

suffrage states because of suffrage;
and logically there is no more reason
why two domestic partners who are
comrades, mutually acknowledging
a pleasant equality, should separate,
than there is for the separation of
two people of opposite sex who, con-
demned to live together, are striving
diligently to maintain an inequality.
And isn't it quaint that the states
which have given suffrage to their
women'^should be almost uniformly
the ''gun" states — states where the
husky male not infrequently tops off
his wardrobe with a cartridge belt
and a gun or two? But there is a kind
of logic in it, after all, because a man

30

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

with two guns ought not to be so
much afraid of his wife as the man
who is afraid of firearms. It is the
man whose polite soul cleaves to gen-
tle ways who is most likely to dread
the possibility of being surrounded
by women whom the law has pro-
nounced his equals. To him the pos-
sibilities even of verbal rough-house
seem appalling, and his gentle spirit
quails.

For some odd reason the Whole-
sale Liquor Dealers' Association
doesn't happen to like the idea of
female suffrage, either. But this is
largely, also, a case of false alarm.
For in spite of the activities of the

31

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

W. C. T. U., the average woman is
quite prone to look on drinking
largely as a masculine accomplish-
ment, and as long as it is pursued in
reasonable moderation is fairly con-
tent to have it that way; that is, she
neither clamors for the booze herself
nor is she insistent on wholly separat-
ing man from it; and you will find
that few of the states with large
feminine vote have made any deter-
mined wholesale assault on alcohol.
It is only when alcohol is arrogant
and dictates politics or insidiously
attempts to wreck homes or ruin
young lives that the feminine vote
comes across and lights on the alco-

32

D B£ASON THE WHOLESALE UQUOE DEALEKS ASSOCIATION

. t

fi

l!

i-[|

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

holic neck; and even then it is likely
to be a measure tending to repress
rather than to extirpate.

You may think that all of this is
irrelevant. You may want more inti-
mate details. But I was asked to tell
''how it feels," and that's what I am
trying to tell you — how it feels rather
than the daily routine and whether
the coffee was good this morning
(which it certainly was), and whether
she wears good-looking hats (which
she most assuredly does).

But you have probably read in the
English despatches that Mr. and
Mrs. So-and-so were arrested for
leading a mob to throw bricks at

37

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

Mr. Asquith's windows and had to
spend the next two years in jail
in separate cells; or you may have
read in the American press that the
distinguished Mrs. Blank, who lives
in New York, is delivering a lecture in
New Orleans, and immediately your
mind conjures up Mr. Blank as a sad-
eyed, lonesome, scared-looking tyke,
with debilitated side-whiskers, who
alternates being neglected most to
death with being hustled around the
house till he daren't peep.

From the outside, looking in, it
may seem to you as if there isn't any
inside to the home; but, honestly,
there is.

38

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

Personally, I^believe that a lady
with a well-worn latch-key, who has
healthy interests outside her home, is
better company than one whose view
of life is circumscribed by the four
walls that the landlord refused to
paper last spring. And that pretty
clothes as an incidental habit are
cheerier to live with than swell rai-
ment as an engrossing topic of con-
versation and a financial holocaust
at the end of the month.

My own pet boss doesn't know how
to play bridge. When a friend urges
her to learn, she always says she
hasn't time. Mind you, she has time
to study the economics of Australia

39

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

and the politics of China; she under-
stands the workings of the Gutenberg
liquor law, and she has gone pretty
thoroughly into street-cleaning prob-
lems with one of the engineers of the
department. She also has time to go
on long, lazy fishing trips with me,
when we rustle our own grub and
forget what day of the week it is. And
she drives a car a lot better than the
lad who draws pay for the job. But
she hasn't time for bridge.

You'll say that she is either a
remarkable woman or else she has
me hypnotized.

All right, say it; get it oflF your

chest.

40

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

But you are this far wrong:

She is only remarkable in this, that
she didn't stop with the ''finishing-
school," as so many of them do: she
went right on trying to learn things
that were worth while, trying to get
better acquainted with life, trying to
economize the efforts spent in drudg-
ery and'utilize'the time saved for bet-
ter things, trying to stop waste in
order to enjoy plenty.

I remember when her books were
comparatively simple. Now I don't
know where her reading is going to
take her next. But I don't care.
Like the bee, she brings back sweet-
ness from every field. Solomon was

41

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

eminently correct when he said —
speaking of her type of lady — ''her
price is above rubies."

You can bet Solomon had a right
to know. He perished in a gallant
attempt to live with a thousand of
the other kind simultaneously, and
he surely had opportunities to garner
experience that you and I are bound
to pray will be forever denied us.

About the hypnosis — oh, well, I
guess ril plead guilty.

But the fact that your wife is striv-
ing every day to become better read
and more intelligently able to discuss
any human subject in no wise detracts
from her charm as a companion.

42

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

The fact that she asks for her place in
the world'as a human being usually
indicates a consciousness of ability on
her part. And, having declared this
consciousness to others, if she is any
kind of a woman at all she is in honor
bound to try to make good on the
ability in her own home.

I will confess right here — and it
may be a shock to some of you — that
I do not wash the dishes in our home;
nor does my wife, for that matter.
I believe that something over 11,863
of you requested me to go home and
wash them on the occasion of that
first parade. But I never cared
greatly for dishwashing, and I doubt

43

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

whether my wife would let me wash
them if I did. She values the dishes
too highly: they are safer in the hands
of a well-trained maid.

ril make one exception. When we
go camping I do it, just as I usually
do the long end of the cooking; but
that's because I can do things out of
doors better than she can, and she
knows it. In the same way, I sew on
the most important buttons myself —
not that she isn't a very dainty seam-
stress on frail and feminine fabrics;
but I learned to sew on buttons on
a coal-schooner, and any job of
seamstressing that calls for sail
twine and a three-cornered needle

44

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

and a brass palm I arrogate to
myself.

We share our family finances: she
has her own income, bank accounts,
and investments, quite independent
of me. All you've got to do is to trans-
late that into masculine terms to find
out how it works. Which friend do
you enjoy more — the one who is con-
stantly coming to you begging for
small sums of money and exhibiting
unexpected bills, or the one who sel-
dom discusses money matters with
you, and yet who likes you well
enough to go flat broke for you if the
occasion arises? Lots of men and
most women don't like to ask for

45

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

money; but lots of men who regard
themselves as good spenders, and who
fancy themselves as enjoying the spe-
cial beneficence of that Higher Power
who is credited with loving a cheerful
giver, keep their wives on what
amounts to a domestic bread-line,
and remain blandly unconscious of
the fact.

''Economic independence" is one
of the watchwords of women nowa-
days. The lady who has to propitiate
you with an extra-good dinner and
spend an hour or two currying your
fur the right way before she dares
approach the distressing fact that

the grocer's bill was fiercer than usual

46

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

this month, hasn't got it. The lady
who ALWAYS gives you an extra-good
dinner, who only mentions her pri-
vate finances as an occasion for mirth,
and who now and then at odd inter-
vals slides up in a bashful way and
asks your help in working out an in-
vestment, is economically indepen-
dent. She has a better time and she
advertises it as such. I don't know
whether it costs any more money
(this is for the benefit of the hard-
headed business man) ; but if it does,
it is surely worth it.

Do you see how her declaration of
principle commits her to a definite
line of action in the household? She

49

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

has got to keep house better than any
of her women friends who are not
suffragettes. She knows that they
would guy her if she didn't. She has
got to have better-trained help, be-
cause she has formally announced
that she has executive ability. She
has got to be more reasonable with
them than any other woman would
be, because one of the planks in her
platform is that ''woman is a reason-
ing being." She has even got to be
more reasonable with me — she knows
rd guy her if she didn't.

The fact that she goes out of an
occasional evening and makes a sim-
ple, logical little talk to a collection

50

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

of hard - headed, and often hard-
handed, men does not break up our
home life. I sometimes go out of an
evening myself, and I don't always
have as much to show for it on my
return as she does; nor am I always
prepared to talk as interestingly as
to where I have been and with whom
I have conversed.

There is this, however, about living
in the house with a woman who takes
a kind, warm, vital interest in every-
thing that is going on in the world —
and you can, if you like, count it as
one of the hardships of being a suf-
fragette's husband : you have at times
to force yourself to seem more intelli-

51

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

gent than you really feel like being.
There are times when the promptings
of the baser nature would lead you to
camp down on the sofa immediately
after dinner and snore, when you've
got to subdue that inclination and
sit up and look bright-eyed and be
just as near a nice fellow as lies within
your power.

Otherwise, a certain look will come
into her eye which you can't afford to
have there. It is a hardship at times,
I will freely acknowledge, but it
doesn't leave any permanent bad re-
sults, and sometimes you are hon-
estly surprised at how well you do

behave .

52

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

There is a streak of vanity, or some-
thing like it, in most of us male per-
sons that makes us piteously grateful
for a kind word now and then. We
are more sensitive than we are given
credit for being. We all want a word
of appreciation occasionally.

And when it gradually comes over
you that your particular lady, in the
course of her pursuit of proving that
she is a reasonable being, is giving
out more kind words than the aver-
age, it is calculated to put you in a
frame of mind where you don't care a
darn whom she wants for President
as long as she continues to vote for
you as a husband.

S3

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

f I suppose those English Militants
stick in your crop more or less.

But they are running pretty true
to form — only their petticoats get in
their way now and then. They were
not so much rougher than the last
people who won the vote in England.
You know the men of Bristol broke
miles of windows, burned most of the
public buildings in town, killed and
got killed. That was eighty years
ago, and all any one remembers of
them now is that —

They got the vote.

And Mrs. Pankhurst:

She's a bit trying at times, isn't
she? But, after all, she probably

54

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

hasn't been in jail any oftener than
Saint Peter, and possibly no more
than John Bunyan.

I once had the pleasure of sitting at
dinner in her company. A mild little
gentlewoman, sad with the sadness of
too much experience with the hard
ways of injustice, clever though, and
with a most fascinating care-worn
little smile flashing at intervals
through her talk. Able and willing
to chat gracefully and intelligently
on any topic. And yet through it all
ran an undercurrent that made you
feel somehow that here might be
one of the great women of history,
brooding over her life-work. As

55

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

God sends, she sees it — mothering a
race.

And it's a naughty bad lot of little
boys she's trying to bring up.

Asquith has told the women things
that if he were fifty years younger
would get him spanked.

And the politicians are tricky, and
not always truthful. For sixty long
years they've been saying with fat,
comfortable, delusive smiles: ''Yes,
yes, daughter, right away now. Next
week. Next month. Next year."

Time after time the women of Eng-
land have piled up majorities that
would have carried any other ques-
tion through with a yell, each time to

S6

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

see them fade into the maze of poHtics.
And Mrs. Pankhurst stood there
sadly aloof from all the joy and com-
radeship, everything that makes life
worth living, and said:

''Make good on your promises.
Stop these lies! Or I will make
your life intolerable to you from the
ridicule and humiliation heaped on
your heads. I can't fight you with
muscle. But I will fight with my
wits.

'1 will spoil every sport and pas-
time you enjoy.

''I will keep this one subject — jus-
tice to women — always and eternally
before you until you tell us the truth •

57

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

'1 will stop at nothing but harm
to human life. In all the turmoil and
rioting we shall be the only sufferers."

Is it any wonder that the man who
runs England feared her, that thou-
sands followed where she led, that
they subscribed seventy-five thou-
sand dollars in a single afternoon?

Of course Fm glad my wife hasn't
got her job.

But then Fm glad my wife hasn't
got Moll Pitcher's job, either — she
of Revolutionary fame. Mrs. Pitch-
er's work was rough — and besides,
Mr. Pitcher is dead.

A great many people fear that giv-
ing a woman her honest equal rights

58

'It'

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

in the world's work is bound to make
her act mannish, even if she doesn't
go to the length of militancy. My

experience is that so far as it has been

«

tried out it merely makes her act a
little more like a gentleman.

Of course there will be occasions
when a frank difference of opinion
between equal partners will get ani-
mated . It may be conducted on both
sides with what you might call
'Verve" and 'Vivacity," although at
that it probably will not actually
make more noise than when on simi-
lar occasions Mr. Domestic Tyrant
issues a ukase to Mrs. Domestic
Dove, or, God defend us, on those

6i

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

other and worse occasions when Mrs.
Henry Peck hands out the final word
to Henry.

But, after all, it's only part of the
rugged game of life and likely to be a
mighty interesting part at that, as
any one who has ever chummed with
a wise lady will readily admit; and it
isn't as black as your fancy would
paint it, because, as hinted before, if
you have ever lifted weights or pulled
an oar, there is always back of any
domestic disagreement the serene in-
ner consciousness that if worse comes
to worst, you can wind it up suddenly,
take a handful of papers, and go down

and explain to the judge just why the

62

HOW IT FEELS TO BE THE
HUSBAND OF A SUFFRAGETTE

officer has charged you with wife-
beating.

Of course, if your early training
hasn't fitted you for an active life,
and you know that, if it comes down
to brass tacks, the lady can lick you,
you are up against it. All you can do,
my brother, is to pray — pray fer-
vently — that suffrage may never
come; but with all due regard to
Napoleon's remark about God being
on the side that has the heaviest
artillery, I'm afraid you lose.

63

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