rated shrillness
of the feminine voice when raised in the open air--how it amused the
mob. They imitated the falsetto with squeals of delight. Each time she
began afresh she was met by the shrill echo of her own voice. The
contest went on for several minutes. The spectacle of the agitated
little figure, bobbing and gesticulating and nothing heard but shrill
squeaks, raised a very pandemonium of merriment. It didn't mend matters
for her to say when she did get a hearing--

'I've come all the way from----' (place indistinguishable in the
confusion) 'to talk to you this afternoon----'

''ow kind!'

'Do you reely think they could spare you?'

'And I'm going to convert every man within reach of my voice.'

Groans, and 'Hear! Hear!'

'Let's see you try!'

She talked on quite inaudibly for the most part. A phrase here and there
came out, and the rest lost. So much hilarity in the crowd attracted to
it a bibulous gentleman, who kept calling out, 'Oh, the pretty dear!' to
the rapture of the bystanders. He became so elevated that the police
were obliged to remove him. When the excitement attending this passage
had calmed down, the reformer was perceived to be still piping away.

''ow long are you goin' on like this?'

'Ain't you _never_ goin' to stop?'

'Oh, not for a long time,' she shrilled cheerfully. 'I've got the
accumulations of _centuries_ on me, and I'm only just beginning to
unload! Although we haven't got the vote--_not yet_--never mind, we've
got our tongues!'

'Lord, don't we know it!' said a sad-faced gentleman, in a rusty topper.

'This one's too intolerable,' said a man to his companion.

'Yes; she ought to be smacked.'

They melted out of the crowd.

'We've got our tongues, and I've been going round among all the women I
know getting them to promise to _use_ their tongues----'

'You stand up there and tell us they needed _urgin'_?'

'To use their tongues to such purpose that it won't be women, but _men_,
who get up the next monster petition to Parliament asking for Woman's
Suffrage.'

She went down under a flood of jeers, and rose to the surface again to
say--

'A man's petition, praying Parliament for goodness' sake give those
women the vote! Yes, you'd better be seeing about that petition, my
friends, for I tell you there isn't going to be any peace till we get
the franchise.'

'Aw now, they'd give _you_ anything!'

When the jeering had died a little, and she came to the top once more