Part 28

"No," I told him. "There is a reason, as you suggest. But it is not that one."

"Then why--" he insisted.

"I am rather sensitive about it," I explained. "I don't know that I care to discuss the subject."

The young minister looked pained. "But among friends--" he protested.

"True," I conceded. "Well, then, among friends, I will admit frankly that it is a birthmark. I was born with short hair."

That was the last time my short hair was criticized in my presence, but the young minister was right in his disapproval and I was wrong, as I subsequently realized. A few years later I let my hair grow long, for I had learned that no woman in public life can afford to make herself conspicuous by any eccentricity of dress or appearance. If she does so she suffers for it herself, which may not disturb her, and to a greater or less degree she injures the cause she represents, which should disturb her very much.

XII. BUILDING A HOME

It is not generally known that the meeting of the International Council of Women held in Chicago during the World's Fair was suggested by Miss Anthony, as was also the appointment of the Exposition's "Board of Lady Managers." "Aunt Susan" kept her name in the background, that she might not array against these projects the opposition of those prejudiced against woman suffrage. We both spoke at the meetings, however, as I have already explained, and one of our most chastening experiences occurred on "Actress Night." There was a great demand for tickets for this occasion, as every one seemed anxious to know what kind of speeches our leading women of the stage would make; and the programme offered such magic names as Helena Modjeska, Julia Marlowe, Georgia Cayvan, Clara Morris, and others of equal appeal. The hall was soon filled, and to keep out the increasing throng the doors were locked and the waiting crowd was directed to a second hall for an overflow meeting.

As it happened, Miss Anthony and I were among the earliest arrivals at the main hall. It was the first evening we had been free to do exactly as we pleased, and we were both in high spirits, looking forward to the speeches, congratulating each other on the good seats we had been given on the platform, and rallying the speakers on their stage fright; for, much to our amusement, we had found them all in mortal terror of their audience. Georgia Cayvan, for example, was so nervous that she had to be strengthened with hot milk before she could speak, and Julia Marlowe admitted freely that her knees were giving way beneath her. They really had something of an ordeal before them, for it was decided that each actress must speak twice going immediately from the hall to the overflow meeting and repeating there the speech she had just made. But in the mean time some one had to hold the impatient audience in the second hall, and as it was a duty every one else promptly repudiated, a row of suddenly imploring faces turned toward Miss Anthony and me. I admit that we responded to the appeal with great reluctance. We were SO comfortable where we were--and we were also deeply interested in the first intimate glimpse we were having of these stars in the dramatic sky. We saw our duty, however, and with deep sighs we rose and departed for the second hall, where a glance at the waiting throng did not add to our pleasure in the prospect before us.

When I walked upon the stage I found myself facing an actually hostile audience. They had come to look at and listen to the actresses who had been promised them, and they thought they were being deprived of that privilege by an interloper. Never before had I gazed out on a mass of such unresponsive faces or looked into so many angry eyes. They were exchanging views on their wrongs, and the general buzz of conversation continued when I appeared. For some moments I stood looking at them, my hands behind my back. If I had tried to speak they would undoubtedly have gone on talking; my silence attracted their attention and they began to wonder what I intended to do. When they had stopped whispering and moving about, I spoke to them with the frankness of an overburdened heart.

"I think," I said, slowly and distinctly, "that you are the most disagreeable audience I ever faced in my life."

They gasped and stared, almost open-mouthed in their surprise.

"Never," I went on, "have I seen a gathering of people turn such ugly looks upon a speaker who has sacrificed her own enjoyment to come and talk to them. Do you think I want to talk to you?" I demanded, warming to my subject. "I certainly do not. Neither does Miss Anthony want to talk to you, and the lady who spoke to you a few moments ago, and whom you treated so rudely, did not wish to be here. We would all much prefer to be in the other hall, listening to the speakers from our comfortable seats on the stage. To entertain you we gave up our places and came here simply because the committee begged us to do so. I have only one thing more to say. If you care to listen to me courteously I am willing to waste time on you; but don't imagine that I will stand here and wait while you criticize the management."

By this time I felt as if I had a child across my knee to whom I was administering maternal chastisement, and the uneasiness of my audience underlined the impression. They listened rather sulkily at first; then a few of the best-natured among them laughed, and the laugh grew and developed into applause. The experience had done them good, and they were a chastened band when Clara Morris appeared, and I gladly yielded the floor to her.

All the actresses who spoke that night delivered admirable addresses, but no one equaled Madame Modjeska, who delivered exquisitely a speech written, not by herself, but by a friend and countrywoman, on the condition of Polish women under the regime of Russia. We were all charmed as we listened, but none of us dreamed what that address would mean to Modjeska. It resulted in her banishment from Poland, her native land, which she was never again permitted to enter. But though she paid so heavy a price for the revelation, I do not think she ever really regretted having given to America the facts in that speech.

During this same period I embarked upon a high adventure. I had always longed for a home, and my heart had always been loyal to Cape Cod. Now I decided to have a home at Wianno, across the Cape from my old parish at East Dennis. Deep-seated as my home-making aspiration had been, it was realized largely as the result of chance. A special hobby of mine has always been auction sales. I dearly love to drop into auction-rooms while sales are in progress, and bid up to the danger-point, taking care to stop just in time to let some one else get the offered article. But of course I sometimes failed to stop at the psychological moment, and the result was a sudden realization that, in the course of the years, I had accumulated an extraordinary number of articles for which I had no shelter and no possible use.

The crown jewel of the collection was a bedroom set I had picked up in Philadelphia. Usually, cautious friends accompanied me on my auction-room expeditions and restrained my ardor; but this time I got away alone and found myself bidding at the sale of a solid bog-wood bedroom set which had been exhibited as a show-piece at the World's Fair, and was now, in the words of the auctioneer, "going for a song." I sang the song. I offered twenty dollars, thirty dollars, forty dollars, and other excited voices drowned mine with higher bids. It was very thrilling. I offered fifty dollars, and there was a horrible silence, broken at last by the auctioneer's final, "Going, going, GONE!" I was mistress of the bog-wood bedroom set--a set wholly out of harmony with everything else I possessed, and so huge and massive that two men were required to lift the head-board alone. Like many of the previous treasures I had acquired, this was a white elephant; but, unlike some of them, it was worth more than I had paid for it. I was offered sixty dollars for one piece alone, but I coldly refused to sell it, though the tribute to my judgment warmed my heart. I had not the faintest idea what to do with the set, however, and at last I confided my dilemma to my friend, Mrs. Ellen Dietrick, who sagely advised me to build a house for it. The idea intrigued me. The bog-wood furniture needed a home, and so did I.

The result of our talk was that Mrs. Dietrick promised to select a lot for me at Wianno, where she herself lived, and even promised to supervise the building of my cottage, and to attend to all the other details connected with it. Thus put, the temptation was irresistible. Besides Mrs. Dietrick, many other delightful friends lived at Wianno--the Garrisons, the Chases of Rhode Island, the Wymans, the Wellingtons--a most charming community. I gave Mrs. Dietrick full authority to use her judgment in every detail connected with the undertaking, and the cottage was built. Having put her hand to this plow of friendship, Mrs. Dietrick did the work with characteristic thoroughness. I did not even visit Wianno to look at my land. She selected it, bought it, engaged a woman architect--Lois Howe of Boston--and followed the latter's work from beginning to end. The only stipulation I made was that the cottage must be far up on the beach, out of sight of everybody--really in the woods; and this was easily met, for along that coast the trees came almost to the water's edge.

The cottage was a great success, and for many years I spent my vacations there, filling the place with young people. From the time of my sister Mary's death I had had the general oversight of her two daughters, Lola and Grace, as well as of Nicolas and Eleanor, the two motherless daughters of my brother John. They were all with me every summer in the new home, together with Lucy Anthony, her sister and brother, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, and other friends. We had special fishing costumes made, and wore them much of the time. My nieces wore knickerbockers, and I found vast contentment in short, heavy skirts over bloomers. We lived out of doors, boating, fishing, and clamming all day long, and, as in my early pioneer days in Michigan, my part of the work was in the open. I chopped all the wood, kept the fires going, and looked after the grounds.

Rumors of our care-free and unconventional life began to circulate, and presently our Eden was invaded by the only serpent I have ever found in the newspaper world--a girl reporter from Boston. She telegraphed that she was coming to see us; and though, when she came, we had been warned of her propensities and received her in conventional attire, formally entertaining her with tea on the veranda, she went away and gave free play to a hectic fancy. She wrote a sensational full-page article for a Sunday newspaper, illustrated with pictures showing us all in knickerbockers. In this striking work of art I carried a fish net and pole and wore a handkerchief tied over my head. The article, which was headed THE ADAMLESS EDEN, was almost libelous, and I admit that for a long time it dimmed our enjoyment of our beloved retreat. Then, gradually, my old friends died, Mrs. Dietrick among the first; others moved away; and the character of the entire region changed. It became fashionable, privacy was no longer to be found there, and we ceased to visit it. For five years I have not even seen the cottage.

In 1908 I built the house I now occupy (in Moylan, Pennsylvania), which is the realization of a desire I have always had--to build on a tract which had a stream, a grove of trees, great boulders and rocks, and a hill site for the house with a broad outlook, and a railroad station conveniently near. The friend who finally found the place for me had begun his quest with the pessimistic remark that I would better wait for it until I got to Paradise; but two years later he telegraphed me that he had discovered it on this planet, and he was right. I have only eight acres of land, but no one could ask a more ideal site for a cottage; and on the place is my beloved forest, including a grove of three hundred firs. From every country I have visited I have brought back a tiny tree for this little forest, and now it is as full of memories as of beauty.

To the surprise of my neighbors, I built my house with its back toward the public road, facing the valley and the stream. "But you will never see anybody go by," they protested. I answered that the one person in the house who was necessarily interested in passers-by was my maid, and she could see them perfectly from the kitchen, which faced the road. I enjoy my views from the broad veranda that overlooks the valley, the stream, and the country for miles around.

Every suffragist I have ever met has been a lover of home; and only the conviction that she is fighting for her home, her children, for other women, or for all of these, has sustained her in her public work. Looking back on many campaign experiences, I am forced to admit that it is not always the privations we endure which make us think most tenderly of home. Often we are more overcome by the attentions of well-meaning friends. As an example of this I recall an incident of one Oregon campaign. I was to speak in a small city in the southern part of the state, and on reaching the station, hot, tired, and covered with the grime of a midsummer journey, I found awaiting me a delegation of citizens, a brass-band, and a white carriage drawn by a pair of beautiful white horses. In this carriage, and devotedly escorted by the citizens and the band, the latter playing its hardest, I was driven to the City Hall and there met by the mayor, who delivered an address, after which I was crowned with a laurel wreath. Subsequently, with this wreath still resting upon my perspiring brow, I was again driven through the streets of the city; and if ever a woman felt that her place was in the home and longed to be in her place, I felt it that day.

An almost equally trying occasion had San Francisco for its setting. The city had arranged a Fourth of July celebration, at which Miss Anthony and I were to speak. Here we rode in a carriage decorated with flowers--yellow roses--while just in front of us was the mayor in a carriage gorgeously festooned with purple blossoms. Behind us, for more than a mile, stretched a procession of uniformed policemen, soldiers, and citizens, while the sidewalks were lined with men and women whose enthusiastic greetings came to Miss Anthony from every side. She was enchanted over the whole experience, for to her it meant, as always, not a personal tribute, but a triumph of the Cause. But I sat by her side acutely miserable; for across my shoulders and breast had been draped a huge sash with the word "Orator" emblazoned on it, and this was further embellished by a striking rosette with streamers which hung nearly to the bottom of my gown. It is almost unnecessary to add that this remarkable decoration was furnished by a committee of men, and was also worn by all the men speakers of the day. Possibly I was overheated by the sash, or by the emotions the sash aroused in me, for I was stricken with pneumonia the following day and experienced my first serious illness, from which, however, I soon recovered.

On our way to California in 1895 Miss Anthony and I spent a day at Cheyenne, Wyoming, as the guests of Senator and Mrs. Carey, who gave a dinner for us. At the table I asked Senator Carey what he considered the best result of the enfranchisement of Wyoming women, and even after the lapse of twenty years I am able to give his reply almost word for word, for it impressed me deeply at the time and I have since quoted it again and again.

"There have been many good results," he said, "but the one I consider above all the others is the great change for the better in the character of our candidates for office. Consider this for a moment: Since our women have voted there has never been an embezzlement of public funds, or a scandalous misuse of public funds, or a disgraceful condition of graft. I attribute the better character of our public officials almost entirely to the votes of the women."

"Those are inspiring facts," I conceded, "but let us be just. There are three men in Wyoming to every woman, and no candidate for office could be elected unless the men voted for him, too. Why, then, don't they deserve as much credit for his election as the women?"

"Because," explained Senator Carey, promptly, "women are politically an uncertain factor. We can go among men and learn beforehand how they are going to vote, but we can't do that with women; they keep us guessing. In the old days, when we went into the caucus we knew what resolutions put into our platforms would win the votes of the ranchmen, what would win the miners, what would win the men of different nationalities; but we did not know how to win the votes of the women until we began to nominate our candidates. Then we immediately discovered that if the Democrats nominated a man of immoral character for office, the women voted for his Republican opponent, and we learned our first big lesson--that whatever a candidate's other qualifications for office may be, he must first of all have a clean record. In the old days, when we nominated a candidate we asked, 'Can he hold the saloon vote?' Now we ask, 'Can he hold the women's vote?' Instead of bidding down to the saloon, we bid up to the home."