Elizabeth Hughes

“ How could I put out disorderly audiences with one arm laid up in a sling? Well, Mr. Becker came to see me every day with flowers and—well, love did the rest.
MILDRED. Well, dear Sophie, I am so glad you are happy.
MRS. THOM. I suppose we shall not see you at the tea on next Friday.
SOPHIE. No, we are going to Niagara, for our honeymoon. It is train time now, Theodore, nicht wahr?
MR. BECKER. I think we should be starting. You women—except you, Sophie—are so apt to miss trains.
SOPHIE. Au revoir. Auf wiedersehen! See you later.
MR. VAN TOUSEL. Good-bye. My congratulations, Becker. ”

“ MILDRED. Mr. Melvin doesn’t know I am an heiress.
MRS. TILSBURY. Every one knows it. Men make a business of knowing how much money a girl has. They have it printed in a little book like a time-table, “Bradshaw’s” they call it. Only after a girl’s name instead of putting the time the train arrives, they state the amount of her present fortune and the next stop is represented by her future expectations, and “discontinued” means, she has married some one else. All the men carry pocket editions of this book with them so as to avoid mistakes. ”

“ 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’s [32] work 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. ”

“ MRS. TILSBURY. Oh, dear, the points of these pencils are all broken. Will some one sharpen them?
MR. BECKER. That means you and me, Van Tousel. I have never seen a woman who could sharpen a pencil.
MRS. BROWN. It is certainly much nicer to have some one else to do it. Sharpening pencils is such dirty work. (The men sharpen the pencils while the women look on.)
MRS. BROWN. Did you ever see anything so funny as that parade anyway? There wasn’t a decently dressed woman in the whole crowd nor a good-looking one either— (suddenly remembering where she is) —except Mildred. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ MILDRED. Oh, but Edward does sympathize with me. He has been sympathizing with me all the week. I never met any one who understood me so well.
MR. VAN TOUSEL. Perhaps I should have said sympathize in “the cause.” A man and a woman who believe in the same cause when joined together can do so much for its advancement.
MILDRED. I will convert him after we are married.
MRS. THOM. It will be too late then. Conversion [92] after marriage is like putting yeast in bread after it is baked. It cannot raise the fallen.
(Enter SOPHIE SLAVINSKY and BECKER. The latter a little shamefaced.) ”

“ 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-enter MRS. TILSBURY and MRS. BROWN.)
MR. BECKER. Well, I hope I won’t live to see that day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MR. BECKER. Marriage is the highest aim of women’s existence, Miss Tilsbury, and when she seeks [30] to 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MRS. TILSBURY. Well, the parade is over, thank goodness. Now we four will have a nice little game of Auction. Half a cent a point, no more. What do you say, Imogene?
MRS. BROWN. I don’t know whether I dare. I have been losing so all the week. I don’t half believe in playing for money, Josephine. Our Rector gave us such a touching sermon about it last week I almost cried in church.
MR. VAN TOUSEL. Oh, come along, Mrs. Brown, be a sport. Probably you will win to-day. I always find myself even at the end of the year when I play often enough. ”

“ She is Vice-President of the Women’s Anti-Suffrage League.
MRS. THOM. Your mother doesn’t believe in the enfranchisement of women! She is a disgrace to her sex. It is the women who, coddled in the lap of luxury, are unwilling to turn out from their enervating seraglios to do an honest day’s work for the hard-working women and girls of the People who do the most damage to the cause! It is they whom tricky politicians make use of when they say that they would [56] give their support to the enfranchisement of our sex if they thought that the majority of women really wanted to vote. ”

“ 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! ”

“ MILDRED. Well, people then. I have seen lots of people.
MR. MELVIN. (Suspiciously.) Men?
MILDRED. Men and women both. (To change the subject.) I don’t know but what you were right about the Daughters of the Danaïdes, Mr. Melvin.
MR. MELVIN. Right how?
MILDRED. About their drawing water in a sieve. I am beginning to be very discouraged. We do not seem to accomplish anything. There doesn’t seem to be any prospect of our ever really accomplishing anything, and sometimes I am not sure that the others care; even Mrs. Thom seems to enjoy the excitement more than she is concerned about results. ”

“ Bring the card here, Katy. Edward Melvin, Harmony Club. Why he must be the president of the Cornering Trust Company. I can’t afford to have him turned out of the house. He’s a very strong man. You must treat him politely, Josephine.
MRS. TILSBURY. What am I to do? It’s one minute I must play the dragon and keep men away from Mildred, and the next minute that I must treat a man politely because he is of importance. I can’t ask men here to dinner and then put poison in their food.
MRS. BROWN. Never mind, dear. Let him come up here. I’ll help you out. He must be a better parti than Mr. Becker. ”

“ 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 only [22] afraid that you would hurt Mr. Becker’s feelings. Stay and talk to us all.
SOPHIE. No, Mildred, I know when I am de trop. Everybody is not so amiable as you. I will go. Good-night, Mr. Van Tousel; you are a kind man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MRS. TILSBURY. Why, where is Mr. Becker?
MRS. BROWN. He has gone home or to his Club. I think that he has had all of women’s rights that he can stand for one afternoon. If you make enemies of all the men who have the power to grant the vote to women, Mrs. Thom, how are you going to obtain it? Get what you want first and fight the men afterwards, that would be my advice. I always followed that method with Mr. Brown.
MRS. THOM. You were consistent to the end. You got what you wanted when your husband died, and you fought his will afterwards. ”

“ 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 down [34] as 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. ”

“ MR. BECKER. And Cochon, there, doesn’t he make you up-to-date?
MRS. BROWN. He is a domestic animal, a barn yard animal, and all old-fashioned women used to busy themselves about barn yard animals. I remember when I was a little girl, I used to go with my grandmother on the farm every morning to see the pigs fed. It is only lately, Mr. Becker, that the hog business has been incorporated and taken away from the list of home activities. Women’s work used to be in the home, but now they are driven out to work in factories and offices. ”