"Mr. Rattler is particularly afraid that woman suffrage will break up the family. 'Imagine,' he says, 'a family in which the husband is a Democrat and the wife a Cannon Republican. Imagine them constantly fighting out the subject of tariff revision over the supper-table, and conceive the dreadful effect on the children, who at present are accustomed to see father light his cigar after supper and fall asleep. Or suppose the wife develops a passion for political meetings. That means that the husband will have to stay at home with the baby.' 'Well,' replies Mrs. Cadgers, 'such an arrangement has its advantages. It would not only give the wife a chance to learn the meaning of citizenship, but it would give the husband a chance to get acquainted with the baby.' And besides, Mrs. Cadgers goes on to argue, a woman's political duties need not take up more than a small fraction of her time. That, retorts Mr. Rattler, with a sneer, is because woman derives her ideas on the subject from seeing her husband fulfil his duties as a citizen once every two years when he forgets to register.
"An excellent debate on the subject was the one between Mrs. Excelsior, who spoke in favour of the ballot for women, and Professor Van Doodle, who upheld the negative. Professor Van Doodle maintained that women are incapable of taking a genuine interest in public affairs. What is it that appeals to a woman when she reads a newspaper? A Presidential election may be impending, a great war is raging in the Far East, an explorer has just returned from the South Pole, and, woman, picking up the Sunday paper, plunges straight into the fashion columns! She hardly finds time to answer her husband's petulant inquiry as to what she has done with the comic supplement. Can woman take an impersonal view of things? No, says Professor Van Doodle. In a critical Presidential election, one in which the fate of the country is at stake, she will vote for the candidate from whom she thinks she can get most for her husband and her children, whereas, her husband under the same circumstances will cast aside all personal interests and vote the same ticket his father voted for. Woman, concluded the professor, is constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood.
"Mrs. Excelsior made a spirited defence. She showed that woman's undeveloped sense of what truth and honesty are, would not handicap her in the pursuit of practical politics. She argued that the complicated problems of municipal finance are no easier for the man who sets out to raise a family on fifteen dollars a week than for the woman who succeeds in doing so. She declared that a person who can travel thirty miles by subway and surface car, price $500 worth of dressgoods, and buy her lunch, all on fifteen cents in cash and a transfer ticket, would make a good comptroller for New York City.
"Professor Van Doodle claimed that under woman suffrage only a good-looking candidate would stand a chance of being elected. Mrs. Excelsior replied that there was no reason for believing that women would be more particular in choosing a State Senator than in selecting a husband. The professor was foolish when he asserted that if women went to the polls they would vote for the aldermen and the sheriffs, and would forget to vote for the President of the United States, and would insist on doing so in a postscript. This was of a piece with the other ancient jest that women are sure to vote for a Democrat when at heart they prefer a Republican, and vice versa.
"The whole case," concluded Harding, "was summed up by the Rev. Dr. Hollow when he said that in theory there is no objection to the present arrangement by which man rules the earth through his reason, and woman rules man through his stomach; but unfortunately, the human reason and the average man's stomach are apt to get out of order."
XXXIV
THE GERMS OF CULTURE
In my afternoon paper there was a letter by Veritas who tried to prove something about the Trusts by quoting from the third volume of Macaulay's history. After dinner I took the book from the shelf and as I struck it against the table to let the dust fly up, I thought of what Mrs. Harrington said. The Harringtons had spent an evening with me. As they rose to go Mrs. Harrington ran the tip of her gloved finger across half a dozen dingy volumes and sniffed. "Why don't you put glass doors on your bookshelves?" she asked. It was a raw point with me and she knew it. "The pretty kind, perhaps," I sneered, "with leaded panes and an antique iron lock?" "Exactly," she replied. "The dust here is abominable. You must be just steeped in all sorts of infection; and perhaps if you kept your books under lock and key people wouldn't run away with them." I was a fool to have tried irony upon Mrs. Harrington. Her outlook upon life is literal and domestic. Books are to her primarily part of a scheme of interior decoration. Harrington's views come closer to my own, but Harrington is an indulgent husband.
The incident was now a week old, but something of the original fury came back to me. It was exasperating that the world should be so afraid of dust in the only place where dust has meaning and beauty. People who will go abroad in motor cars and veneer themselves with the germ-laden dust of the highway, find it impossible to endure the silent deposit of the years on the covers of an old book. And the dust of the gutter that is swept up by trailing skirts? And the dust of soggy theatre-chairs? And the dust of old beliefs in which we live, my friend? And the dust that statesmen and prophets are always throwing into our eyes? None of these interfere with Mrs. Harrington's peace of mind. But when it comes to the dust on the gilt tops of my red-buckrammed Molière she fears infection.