As there are women and women there are many kinds of adventuresses; not
all of them wicked and detestable. But, good or bad, the lot of the
adventuress is at best a hard lot. Be she a girl with a future or a
woman with a past she is still a woman, and the world can never be too
kind to its women—the child bearers, the home makers, the moral light
of the universe as they meet the purpose of God and Nature and seek not
to thwart it by unsexing themselves in order that they may keep step
with man in ways of self-indulgent dalliance. The adventuress of
fiction always comes to grief. But the adventuress in real life—the
prudent adventuress who draws the line at adultery—the would-be leader
of society without the wealth—the would-be political leader without the
masculine fiber—is sure of disappointment in the end.
Take the agitation over Suffragism. What is it that the woman
suffragette expects to get? No one of them can, or does, clearly tell
us.
It is feminism, rather than suffragism, which is dangerous. Now that
they have it, my fear is that the leaders will not stop with the ballot
for women. They are too fond of the spotlight. It has become a
necessity for them. If all women should fall in with them there would
be nothing of womanhood left, and the world bereft of its women will
become a masculine harlotocracy.
Let me repeat that I have been fighting woman’s battles in one way and
another all my life. I am not opposed to Votes for Women. But I would
discriminate and educate, and even at that rate I would limit the
franchise to actual taxpayers, and, outside of these, confine it to
charities, corrections and schools, keeping woman away from the dirt of
politics. I do not believe the ballot will benefit woman and cannot
help thinking that in seeking unlimited and precipitate suffrage the
women who favor it are off their reckoning! I doubt the performances
got up to exploit it, though somehow, when the hikers started from New
York to Albany, and afterward from New York to Washington, the
inspiring thought of Bertha von Hillern came back to me.
I am sure the reader never heard of her. As it makes a pretty story let
me tell it. Many years ago—don’t ask me how many—there was a young
woman, Bertha von Hillern by name, a poor art student seeking money
enough to take her abroad, who engaged with the management of a hall in
Louisville to walk one hundred miles around a fixed track in
twenty-four consecutive hours. She did it. Her share of the gate money,
I was told, amounted to three thousand dollars.
I shall never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage
and endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle
undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much
diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from
start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and
the last hour the enthusiasm was overwhelming. Wave upon wave of
cheering followed every footstep of the plucky girl, rising to a storm
of exultation as the final lap was reached.
More dead than alive, but game to the core, the little heroine was
carried off the field, a winner, every heart throbbing with human
sympathy, every eye wet with proud and happy tears. It is not possible
adequately to describe all that happened. One must have been there and
seen it fully to comprehend the glory of it.
Touching the recent Albany and Washington hikes and hikers let me say
at once that I cannot approve the cause of Votes for women as I had
approved the cause of Bertha von Hillern. Where she showed heroic, most
of the suffragettes appear to me grotesque. Where her aim was rational,
their aim has been visionary. To me the younger of them seem as
children who need to be spanked and kissed. There has been indeed about
the whole Suffrage business something pitiful and comic.
Often I have felt like swearing “You idiots!” and then like crying
“Poor dears!” But I have kept on with them, and had I been in Albany or
Washington I would have caught Rosalie Jones in my arms, and before she
could say “Jack Robinson” have exclaimed: “You ridiculous child, go and
get a bath and put on some pretty clothes and come and join us at
dinner in the State Banquet Hall, duly made and provided for you and
the rest of you delightful sillies.”