She was sublimely unconscious of the figure she made moving across the room with the ends of her kimono trailing back like the gray wings of an old duck-legged hen. She gathered up some loose sheets from her desk.
"Here's the whole thing—all divided into three parts. Yours will be in some ways the most difficult. You'll have the organizing to do among the women in the country districts. But we've decided to get a good motor. You'll need to cover distances rapidly. That will be one agreeable feature at least. You and Bob Sasnett may find it convenient to do your canvassing together!" she laughed, while Selah blushed.
If by some miracle a modern man should awaken some morning to find himself thrust back a hundred years in time, although in the same place where he had always lived, he could not believe in the reality of a single thing he saw. Every man and every woman would be merely characters in an historical romance. Every sentence he would hear would sound like fiction. All manners and customs would seem exaggerated, sentimental, and he himself would give the impression of being a monster without breeding or a single attribute becoming to proper manhood.
If, on the other hand, he should by some incantation be projected forward only fifty years in time, still in the place of his birth, the effect of unreality would be even more startling, especially if those things should have happened which prophets predict and toward which all progress tends. Conditions would be unendurable, manners offensive. No man would seem quite a man. No woman would seem modest. Clothes, customs, beliefs, ambitions, and ideals would all have changed. And he himself would seem to them a pitiable reversion to type, ludicrously unequal to meeting the emergencies of advanced civilization. In short, there are no lasting standards of living. Education, morals, economics, finance, and politics are only the cards we play every generation in the progressive euchre of evolution. The honesty with which we play the game determines the worth of society.
At the end of a month Jordantown had not undergone so great a metamorphosis as fifty years would make, but it was in the throes of a frightful evolution. The changes already wrought were so amazing that the author may be excused if this record fails to convince the reader of their reality. At least half the citizens themselves did not and could not believe that they were not walking in a hideous nightmare from which they hoped to awaken and find their womankind properly subdued and returned to the less conspicuous sphere of womanhood.
The first bomb exploded when Samuel Briggs resigned as director of the National Bank. Mr. Briggs had been elected to represent the stock owned by the Mosely Estate. He had not only resigned, but he had ventured to propose the name of Mrs. Susan Walton as a suitable person to represent the same stock which was now owned and controlled by the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund. He did not add that he had been able to retain his position as agent only by signing a contract with the Board of Trust to obey every instruction given him with all the energy and influence he possessed in the town. This demand, that he should resign as director in favour of Mrs. Walton, was the first test made of his obedience.
Having offered his suggestions Briggs leaned back in his chair, smoked, and stared at the ceiling, while the eleven other directors stared at him with the horror of honest men contemplating an armed traitor.
"If this is going to be a hencoop instead of a bank, I'll draw every dollar I have in it out, and sell my stock to the lowest bidder!" exclaimed a frowsy old man, clawing his whiskers. This was Thaddeus Bailey. He owned three grocery stores in Jordantown, and had a monopoly on that trade.
"I don't know how much money you have on deposit, Thad, but it will take more stock than you own to satisfy that mortgage you owe to this new-fangled female suffrage fund," answered his neighbour.