CHAPTER VI.

“Are you prepared to enjoy the sight of a woman’s face?” was Mr. Lister’s first salutation to me as he entered the parlour where I was sitting soon after noon. The copy of _The Bitter Cry_ which I was reading fell from my hands. I looked at him searchingly, thinking that he must be jesting; but as his face was perfectly serious I concluded that he must refer to the golden time when the “Strike” should be peacefully settled, and woman should happily resume her wonted place in the universe, or a much larger one. I accordingly assured him sincerely that there was no sight on earth that would give me greater pleasure than the sight of a woman, and that I should await the result of the ballot on Monday with feverish impatience.

“But you need not wait the result of the ballot,” said Mr. Lister, “for the women have given notice that they will pass in procession through the town to-morrow afternoon.”

“Do you really mean that the women are going to parade?” I asked, aghast at this unexpected novelty.

“Well,” replied Mr. Lister, “I suppose it might be called a parade, though that term usually carries the idea of a noisy and sensational display, and there will be none of this in the women’s passage through the town. Drums, trumpets, banners, inscriptions, uniforms, speeches, and all the paraphernalia of customary parades will be conspicuously absent. Clothed in their ordinary garb, the women will exhibit nothing but themselves, in simple, critical sincerity. Before the ballots are cast they deem it to be both just and proper that man should see, in a simple panorama, exactly the condition of woman as it has been up to to-day. To-morrow will be Sunday, but as there are no church services the women think it the most proper time for them to walk quietly through the town.”

Again it seemed to me that I must be dreaming. Mobs there might have been in history of women clamouring for bread in some oppressed and king-ridden city, but the organization of all the women of Free America into one vast Sisterhood, and their peaceful, speechless procession through streets lined with homes which they had so lately occupied with men, and of which they had been the beacon, was a thought calculated to fill one with speculative awe!

But there were still many things concerning the Strike which I did not understand, and about which I wished to be fully informed before I should witness any such public exhibition. Accordingly, as Mr. Lister was at leisure that afternoon, I gave myself wholly to the task of learning all that I could about this strange situation of the sexes. And first I said:

“It is still exceedingly difficult for me to realize that woman could ever take such a bold step as to practically declare her independence of man. Although I have always known of a few so-called strong-minded women, yet these were not only covertly ridiculed by the men, but by the majority of their own sex as well. It certainly has been generally supposed, and with much apparent reason, that woman, as a whole did not possess that strength and earnestness of character that would ever enable her to carry out any great concerted movement for what she might suppose to be her emancipation. I confess,” I continued, with a new and sudden sense of shame, “that now I think of it, I have always regarded woman myself somewhat as I would a beautiful toy, the sweetest and most charming accessory to life’s happiness, but still so much devoted to personal ornament as to be forever incapable of any serious, persistent contention of a principle. The sight of a gay ribbon or the prospect of a new bonnet was, it was believed, sufficient to divert woman from any such vagary as man denominated her ‘rights’ to be. Moreover, at the time that I last gave any attention to the subject, woman’s vaulting social ambition was preternaturally active in seeking and buying, through marriage, the titled coronets of a profligate and imbecile nobility. How then could there be a transformation of character so sudden, and a precipitate movement requiring such sheer, desperate earnestness as this Woman’s strike?”

“All that you say,” replied Mr. Lister, “has been more or less true of woman’s character in the narrow conditions into which she has been forced in the past, but you must bear in mind that man as yet has never seen woman in her deepest and truest character. The warped and distorted exhibition of woman which has been given up to this day, has been, in the main, like the acting of fantastically dressed puppets in a children’s show. It is for the future, dating from this great Woman’s Strike to show the sublime possibilities of woman’s real character. And how in Heaven’s name could woman have shown any strength of purpose in the past? Robbed of all other means of employing her brilliant faculties, and bowed down to the doctrine that to look pretty was the chief end of her being, what wonder that her taste for the trappings and frivolities of life should have become abnormally developed? What wonder that being denied all distinction but a vain and showy social distinction, to be obtained only through marriage, she should have aimed at the tinsel stars in that firmament? If you bring up a child on bon-bons and charlotte russe to the exclusion of a more natural diet, you will have a very different kind of being from what you would have if a less artificial regimen were adopted. But after all it was the sudden discovery of her hitherto unsuspected power that transformed, or, rather, gave vent to woman’s true character, as quickly as the turning of a wheel. So long as she felt, as she had done for centuries, that she was a beggar, beholden to man’s bounty for everything she had, she submitted to being cajoled and wheedled by the airy trifles which he prescribed for her, and which developed only one side of her character. But when woman realized that she was in very truth a queen, that she was man’s indispensable complement, and that as such she had an equal right to the free development of all her faculties, and that she possessed the means for enforcing that right, the scales fell from her eyes. She struck so quickly that it was like the sudden stopping of a clock, but it was the world’s pendulum that ceased to move.”

“But I cannot conceive,” I said, “what woman should want more than you have told me has already been given her. As I understood you, she already has every political and economic right that pertains to man. Does she wish to compel man to do penance for the blackness of his past sins toward her? Does she wish to make man acknowledge that he is inferior to woman?”

“By no means,” said Mr. Lister. “The women were very careful in framing the statement of their grievances, not only to acknowledge but to distinctly proclaim their belief that man was the true head of woman, and as such, was, when a true relationship should be established, entitled to her most loyal recognition. But while she thus nobly recognised his dynamic character, she none the less declared, as I have told you, that she was his indispensable complement, that she was not a whit less essential than he in the great plan of the universe, and that she was, therefore, clearly entitled to the free development of her own nature, untrammelled by the heavy burdens which have been heaped upon her. Woman, who was made to be the glory of man, claims that man knows nothing whatever of what that glory might be if she existed in an atmosphere of freedom. She would be like the electric light as compared with the tallow candle of our forefathers. It would be a glory that would dazzle mankind.”

“But what is this freedom that woman seeks?” I said. “I beg you to tell me at once what this great right is that she calls her MAGNA CHARTA.”

“It is,” said Mr. Lister, turning and looking me squarely in the face, “the right to the perfect ownership of her own person.”

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