Mr. Huddleston, the thin, blonde type of Congressman, sat at his desk in his low-ceilinged, well-lighted office.
“What is it?” he greeted me when I entered. His manner was very brusque, but I refused to be repelled by it. I began to speak.
“There’s always some one hippodroming around here with some kind of propaganda,” he snapped, interrupting. “We’re very busy, we’ve got important things to do, we can’t be bothered with Woman Suffrage.” He made a jerky motion, rattling the papers on his desk, and turning his head to look through the window. I thought of several things to say to Mr. Huddleston, but this was obviously the time to say none of them. So I murmured, “Thank you,” and withdrew....
Mr. Whaley’s face is red; his head is prematurely gray outside and his thoughts prematurely gray inside. “We don’t need women voting in South Carolina,” he said with a large masculine manner. “We know how to take care of our women in our State. We don’t allow divorce for any reason whatever.”
He was continuing with expressed contempt for Suffrage and implied contempt for Suffragists, when the door opened and a negro, evidently a clergyman, entered.
“Get out of here!” said Mr. Whaley. “You stand in the hall till you’re called.” As the negro hastily retreated, Mr. Whaley turned to me and said with pride, “That’s the way to treat ’em.”...
A few minutes later, I opened Mr. Sisson’s door and saw him, very large and rugged, standing with some letters in his hand and dictating to a stenographer.
“I can’t discuss that subject,” he interrupted at my first words, and then he discussed it at length. He had meant that I was not to discuss it. He spoke of women in the kitchen, in the nursery, in the parlor. He spoke of her tenderness, her charm, her need for shelter and kindness. Wearily shifting from one foot to the other, I listened. At last I opened my mouth to speak, but he silenced me with a brusque gesture.
“The reason I’m so lenient with you,” he explained—for he had allowed me to stand and listen to him—“is because you’re a woman. If you were a man——” He left the end of the sentence in dark doubt. What would he have done to a man standing dumbly in my place, holding tight to a muff? I shall never know. Discretion did not allow me to ask him.
Mr. Reed sat at his mahogany desk—a large, rather good-looking Senator, with gray hair. His record in our card-index read: “He is most reactionary, not to say antediluvian.” So I was not surprised to hear him say slowly and solemnly: