Senator Jones does not act on mad impulse. No one could imagine that placid, unhurried man buckling on his armor and brandishing his sword to lead his forces a second time up a blind alley only to lead them back again. Senator Jones was a strong Administration man and would not act without approval.
Moreover, he was a sincere Suffragist. In fact, he was a Father of the Amendment. So we kept at work, aiding and abetting all its Fathers. For the disabilities of fathers are manifest when you compare them with mothers. A father is so casual, especially when his child is an Amendment to the Constitution.
“Nagging!” said Senator Lenroot viciously, when I asked him to speak to Senator Borah. “If you women would only stop nagging!” And making a savage face at me, he hurried down the hall.
I stood still. It was but the second time we had spoken to him since he had come to the Senate. I wondered if he thought we liked “nagging”; if we liked going to the Capitol day after day, tramping on marble floors, waiting in ante-rooms—sometimes rebuffed, sometimes snarled at. I wondered if he thought we could do it for anything but a great cause—for the thousands of women toiling in the factories, for the thousands struggling under burdens at home. And then I bit my lips to keep back the tears, and putting aside such uncomfortable things as feelings, and putting forward such solacing things as a lace jabot and a smile, I sent for another Senator.
Senator Martin, of silvery white hair and determined manner would not sit down and talk Suffrage, nor would he stand up and talk Suffrage. The only way to discuss Suffrage with Senator Martin was to run beside him down the hall.
“The good women of Virginia do not want Suffrage,” he said, breaking almost into a trot, with eyes on his goal, which was an elevator.
“But if you were convinced that the good women of Virginia do want it?” you replied, breaking almost into a run, with your eyes on him.
“It’s only the professional agitators I hear from,” he answered.
It is interesting to talk Suffrage with Senator Martin, and very good exercise. But it was still more interesting to watch a deputation of good Virginia women talking to him.
“Every one knows where I stand, and yet the ladies waylay me all about the halls,” he complained. Yet when we had spoken before the Platform Committee of the Democratic Convention in St. Louis, he told me: “I said to those men, ‘There isn’t an equal number of you that could make as good speeches as those women made.’” So he was not to be considered as hopeless, though the path to his salvation was a strenuous one.