I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed through the heat of a Washington summer, returned only long enough at the end of the summer to close up my work in state suffrage and came back to join the group at Washington. And it was years before I ever mentioned a holiday again.
Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of retort. Soon after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she went to call on a suffragist in that city to ask her to donate ;some funds toward the rent of headquarters in the Capital. The woman sighed. “I thought when Miss Anthony died,” she said, “that all my troubles were at an end. She used to come to me for money for a federal amendment and I always told her it was wrong to ask for one, and that besides we would never get it. But she kept right on coming. Then when she died we didn’t hear any more about an amendment. And now you come again saying the same things Miss Anthony said.”
Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly a check arrived at headquarters to cover a month’s rent.
A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting the other person relieve herself of all her objections without contest. Over and over again I have heard this scene enacted.
“Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about this federal amendment business. I don’t believe in it. Suffrage should come slowly but surely by the states. And although I have been a life-long suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count on me, for feeling as I do, I cannot give you any help.”
A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously, “Have you a half hour to spare?”
“I guess so,” would come slowly from the protestant. “Why?”
“Won’t you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon.”
“But I don’t believe …”
“Oh, that’s all right. These letters are going to women probably a lot of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come to the meeting to hear our side.”