The first voter on whom I called, like other individuals whom custom clothes in trousers, suffered from the hallucination of thinking himself a man. When I opened the conversation by saying that I had feared not finding him at home so early, five o’clock, he explained that, being a “gentleman of leisure,” he was always at home to charming ladies. Being aware that the race of fools had not been entirely exterminated, I allowed his explanation, along with the accompanying smirk, to pass unnoticed, and proceeded to business.
At the mention of suffrage his back stiffened and his eyes flashed green. When I offered him one of the yellow pledge-slips, asked him to sign it, he broke forth:
“You women!” he spit at me. “You’ve lost all sense of decency. Do you realize that our country is at war? Do you realize that men are dying? Do you realize it? Do you realize it?”
“I realize all of it,” I told him, rising to my feet, and I think my eyes flashed green. “Besides, I realize that every man at the front—fighting, dying, and dead—was brought into the world by a woman, who went through the jaws of death, suffered the pangs of hell, to give him birth.” I walked to the door of the drawing-room, then turned and glared at him, standing speechless beside his chair. “There’s something else I realize—the pity of it that a man like you has to be born of a woman, when you might just as well have been hatched out of a goose-egg.”
The footman, whom I had looked upon as an impassive piece of furniture, followed me out on the stoop.
“If you’ll give me one, lady,” he said, “I’ll be glad to sign it and send it in by mail.”
Halting on the corner I took myself to task. I admitted without regret that I had inherited all the temper of my Huguenot and Scot ancestors. What I did regret was having lost control of that temper, acting, as I considered, like a shrew. The following afternoon Miss Marks showed me two signed slips mailed from the same address—master and footman had pledged themselves to vote for the suffrage amendment.
“Lose your temper!—act like a shrew!” Miss Marks exclaimed, when I described the incident. “Do anything to get results like that. Why, that man has been for years a violent Anti.”
It was an Anti who converted me, made a living, working suffragist of me. The scene of my conversion was the State House of Massachusetts. The Suffrage Party was making its annual appeal to the lawmakers of their commonwealth. I attended the meeting because of a promise made, years before, to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, not because of my interest in suffrage.
While in college Mrs. Howe had asked me to attend such a meeting, and I, because it was easier to say yes than no, had promised to do so. Not having any interest in the question, I forgot all about it until I learned from the Transcript that the meeting had taken place, and that Mrs. Howe had been the chief speaker. Having been brought up in the faith that no well-bred man or woman will intentionally break a promise, I hastened to call on Mrs. Howe and apologize. I told her the truth—that I had forgotten.