"Very well!" she cried, "I will give you an English author. Doctor Johnson, at least, was not effeminate. What did he say? 'The character of the ancient Amazons was terrible, rather than lovely. The hand could not be very delicate that was only employed in directing the bow and brandishing the battle-axe. Their power was maintained by cruelty; their courage was deformed by ferocity'.... Besides, the whole thing's impossible." Conflicting cries broke out in every quarter, and the rest of the sentence became wholly inaudible. There was a slight lull when the Vice-President rose and raised her hand.
"Is it your pleasure that this lady be heard further?" she demanded. The hint received a ready response, and shrieks of "No, no!" drowned the protests of the minority. In a moment, the Vice-President put her resolution and called for a show of hands. In another moment, she had declared the motion carried by an overwhelming majority.
At a sign, the organ gave forth a trumpet note, and then burst into a rushing volume of sound, which drowned all cries and counter-cries, and ended the meeting in a scene of unexampled tumult and excitement.
THE PRICE OF POWER.
After the great and epoch-making meeting in Queen's Hall, the disturbed state of public feeling was accentuated. It was generally felt that the sex-conflict which the revolt of woman had brought about now was shaping towards some new and startling climax. A crisis was at hand. Moreover, at the same time, the appearance and rapid development of a serious and unfamiliar epidemic created widespread alarm.
At first people had laughed at the "new disease," but the laughter was shortlived—like great numbers of those whom the epidemic attacked. Harley Street described it professionally as a recrudescence of plica polonica; and just as at an earlier period people had contracted influenza into "the flue," they now went about asking each other how about the "plic." It was a malady which at one time had prevailed extensively in Poland, and but little doubt could be felt that it had now been introduced into England by the Polish Jews, whose alien colony in Whitechapel and other parts of the East End had attained enormous proportions. The peculiar feature of the plic. was that it attacked the hair of the head, matting it together and twisting it in hard knots, to touch which caused the most exquisite pain; this symptom was often accompanied with manifestations of acute nervous disorder. The patient speedily became feverish, and in most instances showed signs of derangement in the functions of the brain. As the malady developed sleep was banished, or, when obtained, would be disturbed by dreadful dreams. Profound depression weighed upon the spirits, and the bare sight of food and drink excited strong repulsion. Gouty pains in arms and legs caused acute agony to some of the sufferers, and in many cases there were fits of giddiness and an affection of the optic nerve that produced temporary blindness.
The disease more often than not proved fatal. Physicians were at a loss for radical cures, and a course of thermal baths was found to be the most efficacious palliative that the faculty could recommend. Under the advice of Harley Street, great numbers of patients, in the early stages of the disease, flocked to Bath for the water-cure. Not since the days of the Georges had the famous city of the west harboured so many afflicted visitors. Every hotel was crowded from basement to attic. The lodging-house keepers exacted monstrous prices for the most indifferent accommodation. Local doctors drove a roaring trade, and every other woman in the street seemed to wear the familiar garb of the hospital nurse.