Part 11

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An army of suffragists have just ended a 400-mile walk from Edinburgh to present a suffrage petition to Prime Minister Asquith. The suffragette way is quicker—they just wrap it around a stone and throw it through his window. Both branches of the movement seem to have proved that they possess the physical strength to cast a ballot.

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The health commissioner of New York is determined that all the restaurants and hotel dining-rooms shall display signs telling how much benzoate of soda and similar stuff there is in the pastry. It is often asked why men make so much better cooks than women but no such signs were ever necessary on the pies that mother used to make.

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Irvin Cobb told them at the Kentucky dinner that “the reason woman suffrage is not a success in his State is that woman can never be man’s equal because she is always his superior.” That remark has a sort of “befo’ the wah” flavor. Women accept man’s word that they are much his superior but when they get the ballot they will try to improve his status.

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A “mere man” complains in a Chicago paper that “men have dwindled in importance in the eyes of women.” Don’t worry! They are just as important as ever in their own eyes.

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The pugilists of California are so mad because prize fights are prohibited that they are going to move out of the State to spite the women who did it.

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The Los Angeles woman police officer who is touring the Eastern States gives as one great advantage of woman suffrage that men no longer have to go down town to talk politics. A good many men would consider that an argument against it.

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The secretary of state for New York is willing to concede a good deal to women, but insists on the “physical superiority” of men. Then how do all life insurance statistics happen to show that women live to a much greater age than men?

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Dr. Forbes Ross, an eminent English physician, has discovered that in two thousand years the men will have degenerated into gorillas. The women can save the race, he says, but not if they insist on the vote. The women will probably answer that they will take the vote now and run the risk of the gorillas two thousand years hence. And, when one comes to think of it, after the treatment the suffragists in England have received from some of the present generation of men, gorillas would have no terrors for them!

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Another English doctor heard from! This one deprecates the present style of dress because “it does away with the mystery in women, which is greatly against their own interests.” Let the doctor calm himself—woman will always be enough of a mystery to keep the men busy guessing.

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A Florida woman writes to the National Suffrage Association for permission to organize a troop of cavalry women, arm them with light rifles and send them to the Legislature to get a suffrage bill. The Southern women have been rather slow to get started but when they do they will go on horseback where the Northern women have gone on foot.

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The chivalry of medieval times was of poor quality compared with the brand they have in Kansas. A man out there was too chivalrous to stand as candidate for an office when he found his opponent was a woman. This is a vast improvement on going to war with your lady’s handkerchief on the point of your spear.

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On the adjournment of Congress, when the men who had been fighting each other for months and using language that had to be expunged from the Record fell on one another’s necks and wept and sang “Blest be the tie that binds”—it was then the women in the gallery realized that their sex is far too emotional and hysterical ever to make the laws for the nation.

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Alexander Graham Bell says in his letter on eugenics, “Always remember that you are marrying a family, not a person.” Alas, yes; and if you forget it you are very apt to be reminded of it afterward.

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Now that President Wilson has received Colonel Harvey and Colonel Watterson with open arms he ought to be ready to do the Abraham act with the suffragists.