At three o’clock one morning, Julia Emory and Hazel Hunkins, two of the youngest and tiniest pickets, bore over to the Park from Headquarters several baskets of wood which they concealed in the shadows under the trees. The next problem was to get a ladder there without being seen. They accomplished this in some way, dragging it over the ground, slow foot after slow foot, and placed it against the urn. At intervals the policeman on the beat, who was making the entire round—or square—of the Park, passed. While one girl mounted the rudder and filled the urn with oil-soaked paper, oil-soaked wood, and liberal libations of oil, the other remained on guard. When the guard gave the word that the policeman was near, the two girls threw themselves face downward on the frozen grass. It is a very large urn and by this stealthy process it took hours to fill it. It was two days before they started the fire. Anybody might have seen the logs protruding from the top of the urn during those two days, but nobody did.
The day on which the urn projected itself into the history of the Woman’s Party, the Watchfires were burning for the first time on the White House pavements. The street and the Park were filled with people. A member of the Woman’s Party, passing the urn, furtively threw into it a lighted asbestos coil. The urn instantly belched flames which threatened to lick the sky. The police arrested every Woman’s Party member in sight. All the way down the street as the patrol carried them away, Hazel Hutchins and Julia Emory saw the flames flaring higher and higher.
“How did they do that?” one man was heard to say. “I’ve been here the whole afternoon and I didn’t see them light it.”
Twice afterwards fires were started in the urn. For that matter, fires were started there after the police had set a watch on it.
Hazel Hunkins, young, small, slender, took the urn under her special patronage. One of the pictures the Woman’s Party likes to draw is the time Hazel was arrested there. She had climbed up onto the pedestal and was throwing logs into the pool of oil when two huge policemen descended upon her. The first seized one foot and the second seized the other; and they both pulled hard. Of course in these circumstances, it was impossible for her to move. But she is an athlete and she clung tight to the urn edge. Still the policemen pulled. Finally she said gently, “If you will let go of my feet, I will come down myself.”
Later asbestos coils were introduced into the campaign. This—from the police point of view—was more annoying than the kerosene-soaked logs; for they were compact to carry, easy to handle, difficult to put out, and they lasted a long, long time.
Another picture the Woman’s Party likes to draw is of Mildred Morris starting asbestos coils. With her nimbus of flaming hair, Miss Morris seemed a flame herself. She was here, there, everywhere. The police could no more catch up with her than they could with a squirrel. One night, with the assistance of two others, she—unbelievably—fastened some asbestos coils among the White House trees; but to her everlasting regret the guards found them before the illumination could begin.
The stories they tell about arrests at this time are endless. Little Julia Emory, who was arrested thirty-four times, is a repository of lore on this subject.
They were a great trial to the police—the arrests of these later months. While under detention, the pickets used to organize impromptu entertainments. This was during the period, when at their trials, the Suffragists would answer no questions and the court authorities were put to it to establish their identities. They related with great glee how in his efforts to prove Annie Arniel’s identity, a policeman described one of their concerts in court.
And then, your Honor, that one there said, “We’ll now have a comb solo from a distinguished combist, who has played before all the crowned heads of Europe, Annie Arniel,” and then, your Honor, the defendant got up and played a tune on a comb.