An American Suffragette

by Isaac Newton Stevens

Dr. Earl took a late dinner at his sister's house, after having spent an hour with his fiancée on the way. There were just the four of them at table, his sister and her husband, his brother and himself.

His sister was the oldest member of his family, which comprised but the three of them, his father and mother having died some years before.

During the college days of both himself and his brother, who was two years his junior, his sister had assumed the rôle of a mother to them, and right devotedly had she filled the part. She had been more of a "pal" to them than anything else, and some years' residence in England during her schooldays had broadened her vision of the true meaning and value of this relation between those of opposite sex and particularly between brother and sister.

She possessed now, as always, the unbounded respect and confidence of these two young men of thoroughly dissimilar character and temperament, and she was the repository of the sacred secrets of each of them, which she was warned she must never betray to the other. And she never did.

Eight years previous to these occurrences, she had married George Ramsey, President of the Gotham Trust Company, which institution had recently absorbed half a dozen weaker concerns doing a similar business, and more recently had taken over from the New York bankers, who were stockholders in the trust company, the handling of most of the public utility securities that were floated in this country. But George Ramsey was not the pretentious pawnbroker in spirit and manner that so often presides over the destinies of American banks, but he was a philosophical financier who understood perfectly the strength and weakness of the system under which he worked, and who, while he wondered at the supine idiocy of the people that would permit of the prevailing Dick Turpin methods of high finance, never took his eye from the horizon of public action, where daily he expected to see "the cloud no bigger than a man's hand" that was to expand into the storm that would engulf these and other long permitted public ills.

Many times recently he had sounded the alarm of the dangers attending recapitalization of properties that already bore a heavy weight of watered securities, but his colleagues had laughed at what they termed his fears, and had attempted to reassure him of their complete possession of the departments of government that controlled such matters. Bred to the banking business, he had no thought of transferring his abilities and energies to the realm of statesmanship, but in the sanctum of his own home he would often pour forth his disgust with, and his fear of, such methods, to the tall, clear-eyed, clear-brained and beautiful woman from whom John and Frank Earl were wont to seek advice in their perplexities. And from her he always received valuable suggestions, a keener insight into the motives of men, a broader, more humane view-point, and withal a firmness to set himself, in part, where the law of the land should have been set wholly, as a barrier against the worst of these public depredations.

Mr. and Mrs. George Ramsey were the same lovers now that they were during their honeymoon. In the crowded ballroom, at the opera, in the automobile after the harassing cares of the day, on land or sea, he was always the admiring and devoted attendant, and gave expression to his feelings in a variety of new and interesting ways. It was evident that they had not run counter to the influence of the stars in waiting for a natural affinity. In their home they entered into the spirit of whatever was borne to them by their guests. With scholars and philosophers they held their own in abstruse and abstract discussions. With musicians and music lovers they were at ease, for both played and sang with more than amateur skill. With young people bent on a frolic, they could be the gayest of the party. Their outlook upon life was always across green meadows or perfectly kept beds of beautiful flowers.

Every guest found ready sympathy for whatever was nearest and dearest to him, and went away convinced that he had never rightly understood his own hobby before.

In this atmosphere, and at table with this couple, John and Frank Earl seated themselves at eight o'clock for dinner.

It would be difficult to imagine two brothers more widely separated in physical and mental characteristics. John was tall, athletic, with dark hair, large, dreamy brown eyes, perfect poise, a silent and dignified bearing that easily commanded attention when he spoke, a low, musical voice and an exceedingly strong and graceful hand.