Nevertheless, they all went to Jordantown on the appointed day. It was their custom to go, and they were determined that this woman foolishness should not interfere with their long-established habit of celebrating the Fourth.
The sun rose blistering hot. Clouds of dust rolled above every highway to the town, and out of it moved a long procession of vehicles, buggies, wagons, even ox carts, all filled with men, women, and children.
Jordantown was doing its best to look glorious. It had thrown off for a moment the lethargy of business depression. Flags waved, the Town Hall was literally swathed in yellow bunting, with a great white canvas stretched across the top of the doors, upon which was printed in black letters a foot long:
Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting!
3:00 p. m.
Don't Miss It!
The square teamed with life and glory. Mules brayed, horses neighed, dogs yelped, man hailed his fellowman. Matrons in calico frocks and sunbonnets walked side by side with their daughters in white muslin and pink sashes, with gala hats on their young heads. The avenue was a sight and a scandal. Strings ran across from house to house high above the heads of the throng, upon which little yellow flags with "Votes for Women" hung thick as waving goldenrod upon October hills, alternating with the red, white, and blue larkspur of the national colours. The Women's Coöperative Store was a seething beehive of activity. There was a cake and lemonade stand stretching across the entire front, where, for the first time in the history of glorious Fourths, you got your lemonade and gluttonous wedges of cake free of charge. This may or may not have accounted for the fact that, as the day advanced, the avenue outdid the square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw its hats high in the air over this performance, then, with the fickleness of its nature, it turned again toward the avenue and the free lemonade dispensed by the fairest maidens in Jordantown. But before the stream could turn the corner, a long-legged black pig greased with the lard of its forbears was turned loose—to become the property of any man who could catch and hold him. A wild scramble ensued. The pig darted this way and that, slipped nimbly through detaining hands, until, by much handling, his grease was rubbed off, and he was held, a squealing trophy, by a young farmer. One after another the attractions of the square failed, and the crowd surged into the avenue, where it was fed to repletion—all free of charge. The stomach of man is singularly elemental in its cravings, and not subject to political or any other influence which fails to meet this demand.
Long before three o'clock in the afternoon the Town Hall was filled and jammed to its doors with men and women. The farmers were in such high good humour that, laying all masculine prejudice aside, they were determined to witness the last feature of the day's entertainment, or rather they would indulge in the humour of gratifying their masculine prejudices at the mass meeting. They stamped their feet, they hooted, they looked at the still empty stage and demanded to know where were the leaders of the "Crinoline Campaign." They whispered and nudged each other and shouted ribald laughter.
At ten minutes to three o'clock a line of women filed on the rostrum and took their chairs at the back of it. They were the representatives of the Co-Citizens' County Leagues. There were twenty-five of them, and they ranged in age and dignity all the way from Granny White, who was seventy, to the youngest bride from Apple Valley. Granny White looked like a crooked letter of the female alphabet in a peroda waist frock with a very full skirt, and a black silk sunbonnet upon her old palsied head, which wagged incessantly. The bride wore her wedding dress, which was now a trifle too tight for her. She looked like a pale young Madonna scarcely able to bear the weighty honour which had been thrust upon her. Some of the other women were enormously fat, some were pathetically lean, but they all faced the jeering crowd below with amazing assurance. They represented the harvest of all the virtues and sorrows and sacrifices of women for centuries, and all unconsciously they showed it with a calm accusing majesty.
The audience, which was largely composed of men, stared at them and grew suddenly silent. They recognized their wives and mothers in those serene faces, and manhood forbids that you should hoot at your own blood-and-bone kin womenfolk. So they changed the subject. They began to talk, a perfect hurricane of inconsequential comments on every imaginable subject except the subject of women and their rights.