CHAPTER II.

It was a fine-looking man that I had thus unceremoniously grasped by the arm, albeit he seemed to be plunged into the same deep dejection that I had observed in all his fellows. Like them, his hair and beard were neglected and unkempt, and there was a devouring melancholy in his eyes. His collar, instead of being fastened by any mechanical contrivance, depended solely upon his scarf for being held in place. This scarf was closely tied around his neck in a hard knot. Occasionally, when he turned his head to one side or the other, one end of his collar would escape from the scarf and stand off from his throat at an obtuse angle. But of this he appeared to be quite careless, and for the most part unconscious. Like many other men whom I had seen, one hand was awkwardly wrapped up in a cloth of sombre hue, and in the other hand he carried a bottle labelled “For Burns.”

“Excuse me, sir,” I cried, “but I beg you to tell me what horrible misfortune has befallen this place. It seems like a land of mysterious mourning. Has some fearful plague devastated it? For Heaven’s sake, tell me, where are the women?”

The man regarded me with an air of deep surprise, which, however, lent no animation to his cheerless countenance as he replied:

“Is it possible that you are not aware of the Great Woman’s Strike which has now been in progress here for more than three months? The women of this country have combined as a sex to utterly refuse to perform any longer those duties and functions which have hitherto been magnanimously marked out for them by man as being the sole tasks predestined for them by the Creator. They say that the chains which have bound them for unnumbered ages, although artfully garlanded with flowers and called by sentimental and endearing names, are older and more galling than those of any bondspeople on the globe. They have decided that the time has come to throw off those chains.”

“Do you really mean,” I gasped, “that the women have struck for what they suppose to be their rights, _as a sex_?”

“That is exactly what I mean,” replied the man, “They have struck for their rights as a sex;” and he fumbled for the end of his collar.

My surprise at this statement was so overwhelming, the idea of woman ever combining and striking as a sex had been so utterly undreamed of in my philosophy that I could not speak for several moments, seeing which the man said, while for the first time a sickly and self-conscious smile appeared upon his features:

“I must be off. I left my clothes boiling on the parlour stove this morning, and as it is now past noon, I fear that the water has all boiled away.” And he turned away.

“But for God’s sake,” I cried after him, “where have the women gone, and their innocent children? Tell me that before I flee from this accursed place and shake its dust from off my feet forever. Surely the women have not made away with themselves?”

“Oh, no,” said the man, “it is not quite so bad as that. The women have simply wholly withdrawn from their habitations with men. They have taken possession of the commodious buildings of a large institute on the hill overlooking the town. There they confer with delegations from the masculine authorities. They left not a single female of any class in the town, taking with them even the poor, the sick, and the aged. The grandmothers, the matrons, the blooming girls of sixteen, and the little girls of four or five are all together there. All male children who were so young as to be dependent on their mothers for care they also took. There is not a woman young or old in the town. Woman’s abandonment of man has been complete, and,” he added with a shudder, “final, unless the guarantee they ask is given them.”

Having said this the man hastened down a side street, cutting, as I afterwards remembered, a very grotesque figure, the tails of his buttonless coat flying loosely behind him.

But the questions which now began to crowd my excited mind respecting the strange state of affairs by which I was surrounded, imperatively demanded an answer, and I lost no time in looking for some one who should further satisfy me. The man who first caught my attention was loitering near a corner, apparently studying the numerous advertisements of pain-killers, salves, ointments and cures for burns which were conspicuously displayed in the windows of a drug store. He stood with his hands in his pockets, and had a more jaunty air than any one whom I had yet observed. He was tall and thin, with whiskers on the end of his chin. There was a look of loquacity about him which encouraged approach, and also a “make the best of it” air which had the effect of somewhat relieving my painful concern of mind. This man had given up collars entirely. His coat was wide open and his whole attitude seemed to defiantly assert that collars and buttons were not, and never had been, any essential part of his make-up. To my observation respecting the Woman’s Strike, which I made as general and incidental as possible in order to get at his view of it, he replied:

“Yaas, it’s a kind of a hinderment. But the worst thing about it is the set-back it’s going to give the population here in Hustleburg. Now there’s Sprawltown, the rival town in our county what’s trying to git the County Seat away from us. At the last census by doin’ some of the tallest kind of lyin’ and takin’ names off from all the tombstones in the cemetery, they made out that they had about five more inhabitants than we had. Well, now to make things wuss, the women of Sprawltown didn’t tumble to the idea of strikin’ till about a month after the women of Hustleburg did, an’ the birth rate goin’ right on’ll give it a great start.”

“Do you mean to say that the Strike has completely separated husbands and wives?” I asked.

“Reckon it has, stranger,” replied the man. “Oh a woman’s got grit when she makes her mind up, and they say they’re goin’ to have their rights this time or they’ll let the race die clean off from the globe. Shouldn’t wonder, if this thing ain’t settled before long, if some one should have the chance to act out the part of ‘Campbell’s Last Man’ that I used to speak when I went to school. If I am the last man you can just bet I’ll go over to Sprawltown to declaim it after every one there’s been laid out. I’d just like to show that snipe that edits the _Sprawltown Git There_ that the population of Hustleburg was ahead once without counting any dead men either.”

“But how did the women get the idea of striking for their rights in this unheard of way? Such an idea was never before to my knowledge discussed or dreamed of.”

“Well,” said the man, “that young fellow who is coming yonder can tell you a good deal more about it than I can. He was engaged to be married when the Strike came on, and what did his best girl do but drop her weddin’-dress, half finished as if it were a hot pertater, and leave him like a shot. Jehoshaphat! to think that Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, should ask thousands of years ago, if ‘a bride could forget her attire,’ and then to have one up and do it here in this nineteenth century. I’ll introduce you to the young chap. He’s naturally desperately anxious to get things fixed up, and he knows just what the women want.”

The young man referred to, who had now come up to where we stood, was a broad-shouldered, good-looking young fellow who bore a serious, introspective air, together with one of brave manliness. My chance acquaintance introduced the young man to me as Mr. Justin Lister, and I offered my name in return--Rodney Carford.

I was impatient to begin serious conversation with Mr. Lister, but our loquacious introducer stopped long enough to say, as he pointed at the advertisements, in the druggist’s window, of oil for burns, which were named after all the saints in the calendar:

“This man who runs this drug store’s gettin’ ready to retire from business. Got rich sellin’ arnica and St. Huldy’s oil since the strike began. You see men can’t monkey around stoves and flat-irons and such things in a kitchen without knockin’ the skin off from their knuckles and burnin’ their fingers. They ain’t got the patience of women, if they had the skill. I’m thinking of buyin’ this man out if the Strike continers, and as I know two or three other men who’ve got their eyes on the place, I’ll have to leave you to close up the deal.” And he disappeared into the drug store.

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