Time: the present. The action of the play takes place in the City of New York during a week in November.
WOMEN FOR VOTES
ACT I
The drawing-room at the Tilsburys’ house in the City of New York, tastefully arranged, with a door at each end and a sofa against the wall, over which hangs a beautiful full-length portrait of the first Mrs. Tilsbury. When the curtain rises, Mrs. Brown is seen seated in an easy chair, turning over the pages of a magazine, while Cochon is asleep on the floor beside her. Enter Mrs. Tilsbury with her hat on, a contrast to Mrs. Brown who is in dinner dress.
MRS. BROWN. (Looking up as MRS. TILSBURY enters.) Well, was the meeting a success?
MRS. TILSBURY. Oh, a huge success. We were told of all sorts of horrors. Only fancy, Imogene, until 1857—or was it 1858? well, it doesn’t matter which—women were not allowed to testify on the witness stand about their husbands’ pedigrees.
MRS. BROWN. Why did they want to testify about their husbands’ pedigrees? If it were about their husbands’ descendants now, a second family sub rosa, there might be something in it. They might testify about their pets’ pedigrees might they not? I would be permitted to tell all about your pedigree on a horrid old witness stand, wouldn’t I little tootsie-wootsie-tootsie? (Takes up pig and caresses it.)
MRS. TILSBURY. I don’t know, I am sure, why they should want to. The only time I ever took any interest in my husband’s pedigree was when I wanted to join the Society of Colonial Caudlers, and then I was told that my husband’s ancestors did not count, but that I must stand on my own.
MRS. BROWN. Stand on your own! Could you find their graves?