_John Bull's Cousin German.--A Salutary Lesson.--Women's
Vengeance.--A Battle with Rotten Eggs.--An Unsavoury
Omelette.--Tarring and Feathering.--Description of the
Operation.--An Awkward Quarter-of-an-hour.--Vengeance of a
Ladies' School.--A Town Council of Women.--Woman's Standing
in the States.--Story of a Widow and her Two Daughters._
Jonathan is the cousin-german of John Bull, but yet not so German as one
might imagine; for, if Germany supplies America with three or four
hundred thousand immigrants yearly, these Germans do not Germanise
America. On the contrary, they themselves become Americanised, thanks to
that faculty of assimilation which they possess in a high degree.
One strong proof of this is the way in which women are treated from one
end of the United States to the other. And here I may say that in this
matter Jonathan sets John Bull an example which the latter would do well
to profit by.
Whilst English justice gives merely one or two months' imprisonment to
the man who is found guilty of having almost kicked his wife to death,
an American town is in arms at the mere rumour of a man having
maltreated a woman.
Here are a few scenes which I have come across in America:
Elmore Creel, an inhabitant of Greeve's Run, Wirt County, Virginia, had
been known for some time to have subjected his wife and children to
harsh treatment. The complaint became, at last, so general that an
avenging mob took upon itself to chastise him. At midnight, Creel's
house was surrounded. Creel was in bed. A squad of masked men broke into
the house, and, overcoming his struggles, tied his hands, took him to
the yard, and gave him a fearful thrashing with cowhides and hickory
withes. After whipping him, they untied him and let him go, with the
warning that another visit from them might be looked for if he was not
kinder to his wife.
The following I extract from a Pittsburg paper:
George Burton, a well-to-do man of Ohio, one day turned his wife out of
the house and left for Pittsburg. Next day he returned, bringing with
him a dashing widow, named Fenton, whom he installed in his wife's
place. When Mrs. Burton applied for admittance, she was sent away, her
husband saying that he had someone else to care for him now. The news
spread, and the female neighbours decided to avenge the wife's wrongs.
After ten o'clock at night, three hundred women went to the house and
beat the doors open. Burton and the dashing widow were dragged out, the
man being chased several blocks, and pelted the while with rotten eggs.
The widow was pounded and pummelled until the police rescued her. She
and the man were locked up in safe keeping. The neighbours then
ransacked the house, and when they left it the place looked as if a
cyclone had struck it. It was with great difficulty that the
objectionable widow was conveyed to the train in safety by the police
next day, and despatched to Trenton, New Jersey, where she came from.
Sometimes the chastisement takes a comic form. There are few
distractions in the little western towns, and native humour finds an
outlet in strange fashions. A man who illtreats his wife, or forsakes
her for another woman, is often tarred and feathered. The operation is
curious, and satisfies the vengeance of the populace, while procuring
them an hour's amusement.
The delinquent is led, sometimes to the sound of music, to a retired
spot. There he is stripped to the skin, and coated over with tar from
head to foot. This done, he is rolled in feathers, which, of course,
stick to him, and give him the appearance of a huge ugly duckling. To
put a finishing touch to the operations, his clothes are carried off,
and the mob wish him good luck.
This chastisement is sometimes applied to a woman whose conduct is known
to be immoral. In such cases it is the women who operate on the culprit.
They want their husbands and sons to be able to get about without
danger, and they take upon themselves the task of keeping the moral
atmosphere of the neighbourhood healthy. The idea appears primitive, but
morality thrives by it.
If men may not tar and feather a woman, women occasionally give
themselves the pleasure of tarring and feathering a man, which shows
once more how privileged woman is in America. On the 12th of August,
1887, the editor of a paper in a little town in Illinois had to submit
to this ignominious operation at the hands of about five hundred of his
townswomen. His crime was that of having spoken cavalierly of the
feminine morals of the township.
* * * * *
The following is from the _New York World_:
"A few days ago, an editor living in Hammond, Indiana, was horsewhipped
by three schoolgirls, because he published articles about them which
they called falsehoods. They also threw red pepper in his eyes, and this
is a crime punishable by long sentence in this State; so that it is
expected they will be indicted."
Youth is often indiscreet. Those girls ought to have stopped at the
horsewhipping, and been happy.
* * * * *
The susceptibilities of American women are sometimes very easily
wounded:
A paper having announced a man's death under the heading, "John K. gone
to a better home," the widow brought an action for libel against the
editor.
* * * * *
The women are not content with beating the men in the market-place, they
beat them at elections as well. During my stay in the States, the town
of Oskaloosa, in the State of Kansas, returned all the women who put up
as candidates for election to the Town Council. At the head of the poll
was a Mrs. Lowman, who was proclaimed Mayor. It was said that for a year
all the taverns and billiard-rooms of the town would be closed. When the
result of the polling was known, the men pulled very long faces; but
they finished by getting used to the idea of petticoat government, and
in the evening they serenaded their Town Councilwomen.
The further west one goes, the more apparent becomes the power of the
women; the further west one goes, the rarer does woman get. Is this the
reason?
To every American hotel there is a ladies' entrance. This is to prevent
contamination from the possible contact of man. When it rains or snows,
an awning is thrown out over the pavement; but I daresay a permanent
triumphal arch will ultimately be demanded by the ladies.
In the States of Kansas and Colorado, a woman on entering a railway
train will touch a man on the shoulder, and say _almost_ politely, "I
like that seat; you take another."
I was riding one day in a Chicago tramcar. The seats were all occupied;
but in America that does not mean that the car is full, and presently
the conductor let in a woman, who came and stood near my seat. At the
moment of her entry I had my head turned, and it might have been twenty
or thirty seconds before I perceived that she was standing in front of
me. Then I rose and offered her my place. Do not imagine that she
thanked me. She shot me a glance which clearly said, "Oh! you have made
up your mind at last; you take your time over it." I need not say that
she was not a lady; but, at any rate, she was well, even stylishly,
dressed, and looked highly respectable. The American _lady_ accepts
graciously and gracefully the homage men render her; but the vulgar
woman exacts it as her due, and does not feel bound to give any such
small change of politeness as thanks or smiles. Women are everywhere
more prone than men to act as _parvenues_.
* * * * *
The arrival of a woman in any little town of the Far West puts the male
part of the population in revolution. "Whose wife will she become?" is
the great question of the day, and all the eligible men of the
neighbourhood enroll themselves in the list of her suitors.
Here is a little story, the authenticity of which is guaranteed by the
_Dublin Mail_:
Idaho territory lies very far west indeed, and there is an alarming
scarcity of women there. This has been curiously illustrated of late in
the town of Waggon Wheel.
Recently two young ladies travelled to that remote region to attend to
their dying brother. The poor fellow did not long require their
services, and immediately after his death the sisters prepared to return
home. Before, however, they could get away, nearly the whole population
of the town--headed by the Mayor and other high officials--were making
matrimonial overtures to them. Feeling ran very high during five or six
anxious days; and the Mayor's chances, despite his mature years, ruled
the betting at six to one. At the end of the week both young ladies had
capitulated, and were duly engaged. The Mayor was, however, cut out by a
handsome young miner. The wedding-day was fixed, and the mother of the
young ladies was summoned upon the scene. Here troubles began. She duly
arrived, and was hotly indignant with her daughters for the scant
respect which they had manifested towards their brother's memory by such
indecent haste to wed. The girls explained that they had literally been
besieged, and had yielded to the overwhelming force of circumstances. As
usual, explanations increased the offence; and the mother vowed that
neither of them should be married out there at all--that, in fact, the
engagements were "off," and that they must be off too. The cup of
felicity was thus rudely dashed from the lips of the two accepted men,
and they made haste to tell their sorrows to the town. An indignation
meeting was held, and the Mayor appointed a committee to wait upon the
irate matron in order to ask her to reconsider her resolution. The
Mayor, with rare magnanimity, considering the cruel blow his own hopes
had just received, placed himself at the head of the deputation, and, in
the name of patriotism, humbly implored the good lady to grant the
petition, which he ardently urged. She, however, stood firmly on her
parental rights, and declared she would not leave the town without her
daughters. Then the genius of the Mayor shone forth like the sun. He
blandly proposed a compromise. Why need she leave at all? He drew her
attention, of course in most delicate terms, to the fact that she was
fair, plump, and fifty odd, and that similar language might be taken as
descriptive of himself. There and then he offered her his hand and
heart, and the young ladies a kind father and protector.
That settled the matter, and three marriages took place with a great
flourish of trumpets at Waggon Wheel.