On and on they come, gray-headed women and curly-headed children from every station in life: the millionairess by the working woman, and the fashionable society woman by the business one. Two women on horseback, and one blowin’ a bugle, led the way for the carriage of Madam Antoinette Blackwell. I wonder if she ever dreamed when she wuz tryin’ to climb the hill of knowledge through the thorny path of sex persecution, that she would ever have a bugle blowed in front of her, to honor her for her efforts, and form a part of such a glorious Parade of the sect she give her youth and strength to free.
How they swept on, borne by the waves of music, heralded by wavin’ banners of purple and white and gold, bearin’ upliftin’ and noble mottoes. Physicians, lawyers, nurses, authors, journalists, artists, social workers, dressmakers, milliners, women from furrin countries dressed in their quaint costumes, laundresses, clerks, shop girls, college girls, all bearin’ the pennants and banners of their different colleges: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, etc., etc. High-school pupils, Woman’s Suffrage League, Woman’s Social League, and all along the brilliant line each division dressed in beautiful costumes and carryin’ their own gorgeous banners. And anon or oftener all along the long, long procession bands of music pealin’ out high and sweet, as if the Spirit of Music, who is always depictered as a woman, was glad and proud to do honor to her own sect. And all through the Parade you could see every little while men on foot and on horseback, not a great many, but jest enough to show that the really noble men wuz on their side. For, as I’ve said more formally, that is one of the most convincin’ arguments for Woman’s Suffrage. In fact, it don’t need any other. That bad men fight against Women’s Suffrage with all their might.
Down by the big marble library, the grand-stand wuz filled with men seated to see their wives march by on their road to Victory. I hearn and believe, they wuz a noble-lookin’ set of men. They had seen their wives in the past chasin’ Fashion and Amusement, and why shouldn’t they enjoy seein’ them follow Principle and Justice? Well, I might talk all day and not begin to tell of the beauty and splendor of the Woman’s Parade. And the most impressive sight to me wuz to see how the leaven of individual right and justice had entered into all these different classes of society, and how their enthusiasm and earnestness must affect every beholder.
And in my mind I drawed pictures of the different modes of our American women and our English sisters, each workin’ for the same cause, but in what a different manner. Of course, our English sisters may have more reason for their militant doin’s; more unjust laws regarding marriage—divorce, and care of children, and I can’t blame them married females for wantin’ to control their own money, specially if they earnt it by scrubbin’ floors and washin’. I can’t blame ’em for not wantin’ their husbands to take that money from them and their children, specially if they’re loafers and drunkards. And, of course, there are no men so noble and generous as our American men. But jest lookin’ at the matter from the outside and comparin’ the two, I wuz proud indeed of our Suffragists.
While our English sisters feel it their duty to rip and tear, burn and pillage, to draw attention to their cause, and reach the gole (which I believe they have sot back for years) through the smoke and fire of carnage, our American Suffragettes employ the gentle, convincin’ arts of beauty and reason. Some as the quiet golden sunshine draws out the flowers and fruit from the cold bosom of the earth. Mindin’ their own business, antagonizin’ and troublin’ no one, they march along and show to every beholder jest how earnest they be. They quietly and efficiently answer that argument of the She Auntys, that women don’t want to vote, by a parade two hours in length, of twenty thousand. They answer the argument that the ballot would render women careless in dress and reckless, by organizin’ and carryin’ on a parade so beautiful, so harmonious in color and design that it drew out enthusiastic praise from even the enemies of Suffrage. They quietly and without argument answered the old story that women was onbusiness-like and never on time, by startin’ the Parade the very minute it was announced, which you can’t always say of men’s parades.
It wuz a burnin’ hot day, and many who’d always argued that women hadn’t strength enough to lift a paper ballot, had prophesied that woman wuz too delicately organized, too “fraguile,” as Betsy Bobbet would say, to endure the strain of the long march in the torrid atmosphere.
But I told Josiah that women had walked daily over the burning plow shares of duty and domestic tribulation, till their feet had got calloused, and could stand more’n you’d think for.
And he said he didn’t know as females had any more burnin’ plow shares to tread on than men had.
And I sez, “I didn’t say they had, Josiah. I never wanted women to get more praise or justice than men. I simply want ’em to get as much—just an even amount; for,” sez I, solemnly, “‘male and female created He them.’”
Josiah is a deacon, and when I quote Scripture, he has to listen respectful, and I went on: “I guess it wuz a surprise even to the marchers that of all the ambulances that kept alongside the Parade to pick up faint and swoonin’ females, the only one occupied wuz by a man.”