Oh, well—if you forgive me of course I'll stop anything you say. Though really, now, that wasn't joshing. It came from the depths. Anyway, as I was saying, "Votes from Women"—excuse me, please; I fell off there once and I'm going to go slow—"Votes from Women" was the burning question back at Siwash when I infested the campus. The women had the votes already—no use agitating that. The big question was getting 'em back when we needed them. You see, the Faculty always insisted on regulating athletics more or less and on organizing things for us—didn't believe we mere college youths could get an organization together according to Hoyle, or whoever drew up the rules of disorder in college societies, without the help of some skyscraper-browed professor. So they saw fit to organize what they called a general athletic association. Every student who paid a dollar was enrolled as a member, with a vote and the privilege of blowing a horn in a lady or gentleman like manner at all college games. And just to assure a large membership, the faculty made a rule that the dollar must be paid by all students with their tuition at the beginning of the year. That, of course, enrolled the whole college, girls and all, in the Athletic Association. And it was the Athletic Association that raised the money to pay for the college teams and hired the coaches and greased old Siwash's way to glory every fall during the football season.
Now this didn't bother any for a few years. The men went to the meetings and voted, and the girls stayed at home and made banners for the games. Everything was lovely and comfortable. Then one day, in my Freshman year just before the election, there was a crack in the slate and the Shi Delts saw a chance to elect one of their men president—it wasn't their turn that year, but you never could trust the Shi Delts politically any farther than you could kick a steam roller. They put up their man and there was a little campaign for about three hours that got up to eleven hundred revolutions a minute. We clawed and scratched and dug for votes and were still short when Reilly got an idea and rushed over to Browning Hall. Five minutes before the polls closed he appeared, leading twenty-seven Siwash girls, and the trouble was over. They voted for our man and he was elected by four votes. But, incidentally, we tipped over a can of—no, wait a minute. I've simply got to be more classical. What's the use of a college diploma if you have to tell all you know in baseball language? Let's see—you remember that beautiful Greek lady who opened a box under the impression that there was a pound of assorted chocolate creams in it and let loose a whole international museum of trouble? Dora Somebody—eh? Oh, yes, Pandora. I always did fall down on that name. Anyway, the box we opened in that election would have made Pandora's little grief repository look like a box of pink powder. The kind you girls—oh, very well. I take it back. Honestly, Miss Allstairs, you'll get me so afraid of the cars in a minute that I'll have to ditch this train of thought and talk about art. Ever hear me talk about art? Well, it would serve you right if you did. I talked about art with a kalsominer once, and he wanted to fight me for the honor of his profession.
However, as I was saying, the women voted at Siwash that fall and I guess they must have liked the taste, for the first thing we knew we had the woman vote to take care of all the time. The next fall pretty nearly every girl in the college turned out to class meetings, and the way they voted pretty nearly drove us mad. They seemed to regard it as a game. They fussed about whether to vote on pink paper or blue paper; voted for members of the Faculty for class president; one of them voted for the President of the United States for president of the Sophomore class; wanted to vote twice; came up to the ballot box and demanded their votes back because they had changed their minds; went away before election and left word with a friend to vote for them. Took us an hour, right in football practice time, to get the ticket through in our class; and what with lending pencils and chasing girls who carried their ballots away with them, and getting called down for trying to see that everything went along proper and shipshape and according to program, we boys were half crazy when it was all over.
But the girls liked it enormously. It was a novelty for them, and we saw right there that it was a case of organize the female vote or have things hopelessly muddled up before the end of the year. In the interests of harmony things had to be done in a businesslike manner. Certain candidates had to be put through and certain factions had to be gently but firmly stepped on. Harmony, you know, Miss Allstairs, is a most important thing in politics. Without harmony you can't do a thing. Harmony in politics consists of giving the insurgents not what they ask for, but something that you don't want. I was a grand little harmonizer in my day too. I ran the oratorical league the year before it went broke and then traded the presidency to the Chi Yi-Delta Whoop crowd for the editorship of the Student Weekly. That's harmony. They were happy and so was I. When I saw how hard they had to hustle to pay the association debts the next fall I was so happy I could hardly stand it.
No, Miss Allstairs, that was not meanness on my part. It was politics. There is a great deal of difference between meanness and politics. One is lowdown and contemptible and nasty, and the other is expedient. See? Why, some of the most generous men in the world are politicians. Time and again I've seen Andy Hoople, the big politician of our town, pay a man's fare to Chicago so that he could go up there and rest during the last week of a political campaign and not bother himself and get all worried over the way things were going—and the man would be on the other side too.
Anyway, to—wait a minute; I'm going to hook over some French now. Look out, low bridge—to rendezvous to our muttons—how's that? In a good many ways there are worse jobs than that of persuading a pretty girl to vote the right way. Sometimes I liked the job so well that I was sorry when election came. But, on the whole, it was hard, hard work. We tried arguments and exhortation and politics, and you might as well have shot cheese balls at the moon. Never touched 'em. I talked straight logic to a girl for an hour once, showing her conclusively that it was her duty as a patriotic Siwash student to vote for a man who could give a strong mind and a lot of money to the debating cause; and then she remarked quite placidly that she would always vote for the other man for whatever office he wanted, because he wore his dress suit with such an air. I had to take her clear downtown and buy her ice cream and things before she could understand the gravity of the case at all—
No, indeed, Miss Allstairs, I didn't bribe her. You must be very careful about charging people with bribery. Bribery is a very serious offense. It's so serious that nowadays it's a very grave thing to charge a politician with it. I think it will be made a crime soon. I bought ice cream for this girl because she could understand things better while she was eating ice cream. It made her think better. Of course, you can't do that with a man in real politics. You have to give him an office or a contract or something in order to get his mind into a cheerful condition. You can argue so much better with a man when he is cheerful. No, indeed. I wouldn't bribe a fly. Nobody would. There isn't any bribing any more anyway. Illinois has taught the world that.
But that was the least of our troubles. After you had persuaded a girl to vote right you had to keep her persuaded. Now most any man might be able to keep one vote in line, but that wasn't enough. Some of us had to keep four or five votes all ready for use, for competition was pretty swift and there were a tremendous number of co-eds in school. You never saw such a job as it was. No sooner would I have Miss A. entirely friendly to my candidate for the editorship of the Weekly than Miss B. would flop over and show marked signs of frost—and then I would have to drop everything and walk over from chapel with her three mornings hand-running, and take her to a play, and make a wild pass about not knowing whether any one would go to the prom with me or not. And then just as she would begin to smile when she saw me Miss A. would pass me on the street and look at me as if I had robbed a hen-roost. And just as I was entirely friendly with both of them it would occur to me that I hadn't called on Miss C. for three weeks and that Bannister, of the Alfalfa Delts, was waiting for Miss D. after chapel every morning and would doubtless make a lowdown, underhanded attempt to talk politics to her in the spring. For a month before each election I felt like a giddy young squirrel running races with myself around a wheel. Some college boys can keep on terms of desperate and exclusive friendliness with a dozen girls at a time—Petey Simmons got up to eighteen one spring when we won the big athletic election—but four or five were as many as I could manage by any means, and it kept me busted, conditioned and all out of training to accomplish this. And when election-time approached and it came to talking real politics, and the girl you had counted on all winter to swing her wing of the third floor in Browning Hall for your candidate would suddenly remember in the midst of a businesslike talk on candidates and things that you had cut two dances with her at the prom, and you couldn't explain that you simply had to do it because you had to keep your stand-in with a girl on the first floor who had the music-club vote in her pocket-book—well, I may get out over Niagara Falls some day on a rotten old tight-rope, with a sprained ankle and a fellow on my shoulders who is drunk and wants to make a speech, standing up—but if I do I won't feel any more wobbly and uncertain about the future than I used to feel on those occasions.
Of course it was entirely impossible for the few dozen college politicians to make personal friends and supporters of all the girls in Siwash. We didn't want to. There are girls and girls at Siwash, just as there are everywhere else. Maybe a third of the Siwash girls were pretty and fascinating and wise and loyal, and nine or ten other exceedingly pleasant adjectives. And perhaps another third were—well, nice enough to dance with at a class party and not remember it with terror. And then there was another third which—oh, well, you know how it goes everywhere. They were grand young women, and they were there for educational purposes. They took prizes and learned a lot, and this was partly because there were no swarms of bumptious young collegians hanging around them and wasting their time. Far be it from me, Miss Allstairs, to speak disparagingly of a single member of your sex—you are all too good for us—but, if you will force me to admit it, there were girls at Siwash—ex-girls—who would have made a true and loyal student of art and beauty climb a high board—certainly, I said I wasn't going to say anything against them, and I'm not. Anyway, it's no great compliment to be admired for your youth and beauty alone. Age has its claims to respect too—oh, very well; I'll change the subject.
As I was saying, we couldn't influence all the co-ed vote personally, but we handled it very systematically. Every popular girl in the school had her following, of course, at Browning Hall. So we just fought it out among the popular girls. Before elections they'd line up on their respective sides, and then they'd line up the rest of the co-ed vote. On a close election we'd get out every vote, and we'd have it accounted for, too, beforehand. The real precinct leaders had nothing on us. It took a lot of time and worry; but it was all very pleasant at the end. The popular girls would each lead over her collection of slaves of Horace and Trig, and Counterpoint and Rhetoric, and we'd cheer politely while they voted 'em. Then we'd take off our hats and bow low to said slaves, and they would go back to their galleys after having done their duty as free-born college girls, and that would be over for another year. Everything would have continued lovely and comfortable and darned expensive if it hadn't been for Mary Jane Hicks, of Carruthers' Corners, Missouri.