of the enormous gains recently made by the
"Antis" among the select people of the city, and passed off the suffrage
parade as merely a tatterdemalion host of the riff-raff of the city led
by a few notoriety seekers.

"You see, Miss Holland," Frank whispered, "what a good thing it is that
I came here; I never should have known that that parade wasn't one of
the finest assemblages of women in the world if I hadn't."

Silvia laughed in spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform
went on piling up the indictment against her sex, and showing how
demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment
was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the
suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and
nobler politics would be without the influence of woman, and wound up
with a glowing peroration on behalf of the women who were fighting to
maintain the sanctity of the home and the elevation of the children.

Silvia gave an impatient ejaculation. "How can you take it so quietly,
Miss Renner?" she asked. "I confess it always stirs me up."

"It wouldn't if you had the ballot," said the smaller woman. "It's just
amusing, or tiresome, according to how well it is done. You women are
the worried and worrying Marthas; we are the Marys, who have chosen the
better part that shall not be taken away; we know it can't be, and this
is something like hearing people laboriously argue that the world is
flat with the sun revolving around it."

After the opening speech there were brief addresses by Dr. David Dearson
on the disastrous results to motherhood should women participate in the
active life of the nation; by the Reverend Jayson Yerkes on the Pauline
doctrine of the subserviency of the truly feminine woman; by Mrs.
Workman Werther on the decadence of feminine charm among women aping
men's interests in life, and Crawford Dorer, a labor leader, opposed the
movement because the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set
back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The
"Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a
group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave
an angry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr.
Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the
West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed
the weaknesses, the failures and