The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-01


 sI wish the ladies luck, but 1t looks to me as if they'd split the beans in A maner of speaking When lovely wom- an stoops to folly, as the poet says she generally stoops so far that she looks like she was walking on her hands. And that heroic little group of English wives and mothers and maiden ladies who are still unattached and not yet bespoke, so to speak-and not much danger Of their being bespoke. either judging from what I can learn-that heroic little band made a fatal error. 1t seems to me, when they began to act up in such man ner as to make people laugh at them instead of with them. The noblest cru sade that ever was crusaded woudn have la4lted 20 minutes. Larry If the populace, got an idea into it's mind thar 1t was so,mething to laugh at. sense of humor- would have put Joan of Arc, or Peter srhe Hermit, or Coxey's army on the eve1 lasting fritenhon the hrst day out. Not being cursed with the ratal sense of humor those parties put the thing throua h, or at least they went good ways VI ith 1t. And the suffrasettes apuea1-d to Me doing first rate for the f1rsf two or three years. At the end or that time the, English public began to see the Soke. It generally takes longer than that but this was an exceptional case, and mot more than two years oI at most thVee had elapsed before the joke dawpedN upon them and then all or a sudden, w&h "a great, glad cry they bust out laughing. well, anyway, the paper says there been & lot of popular indignation over seudsn' them woman to jail, said the House Detective c-.,- .,..,4 did vor hear of any of their husbands joininr In the indignation? You did not. Nor didr'x and I've been listening very closely If I was an Engnsh huspano, Larry, which Heaven foroad' put IT ves and had wife with one of those +,n,s-iocI exnressions on her face and law that worked on a ball and socket and if she fell irdo the haMt Of going out and waking up stewed capnen lo make suffragette speeches to thefn' TOT getting that an Enslishnlans house IS his castle and may not be MVaneo, ana most as second-class female mall matter and if she spent her moSnings beating on Pren,ier Asouith's front ,soor with cot ion umbrella, yelling PetNt0n, Peuuon' and went to Parliament of erternoohs ano chained herself to an iron sratlns ana
 
 one to tea and yelled 1t some more and went to bed and woke in the middle of the night and yelled some tnore' ana if a London bobby. or Rober tacop, ar rested her and the judge gave her three months in Wormwood Scrubos, oo you think for a moment, Larry. that I'd join in any popular indignation? Not a pop. not an indignate, not even very small dig or a nate for mine. Mo- sT' 1T His worship gave her only three months I'd send him a box of cigars aulo II he'd make it six it'd be two boxes of the oigars and A case of fine old c1nsted mort at two and six pence the bottle for him with my compliments
 1T think twould be better for the Eng fish suffragettes everything consloereo, if they'd cut out the knockabout stun and copy after the example of their Amer ican co-workers, who wo turn that is more refined and at the same time mildly amusing The American sunra- Rette doesn't make her act one DIE scream from start to finish. shes more of a light housekeeping style Of sunra gette. doing chahng dish suffragedting as you might say and the comedy ism so broad In consequence we haven begun to laugh at her so very nara al vet and until we do begin she ought t' last quite a spell. And besides we VI tried woman suffrage in several or oul western states and have found that thesf states don't send any worse grade o1 senators to Washington than they dio before the women began to vote.'
 "It looks like these days a woman don think she's properly organized onlesser she's forever joinin' some movement oi some club or somethn', D said the House Detective.
 With a few unmportant exceptions yes" said the Hotel Clerk. ''Moderr woman has sphere 1T she can only fn( 1t and she generally hunts for 1t hart enough, goodness knows. It's fine anf lovely boating for the ladies but trih' wearing, at times on their husbands. Tn thinking particularly of the case of m. friend, SmetZer."
 sWho's Smeltzer?, said the House De tective.
 'sThese days he's best known as Mrs Smeltzer's husband" said the Hotel Clerk His is a sad case, very sad case. Whe the family is travelling the order Of pro cedure giving each separate article 1t relative importance, is as follows: Mrs Smeltzer, Mrs. Smeltzers maid. Mri Smeltzers dog, Mrs. Smetzer's baggag and Mrs Smeltzers husband carryin Mrs. Smeltzer's hand bag. But can re member when Smeltzer had an identit of his own. Sometimes he comes in her and talks about the old glad days befor he married, thinking he was going [ get wife, only to find he'd got clu woman.
 ..It seems that in the early days 2 their married life she was of very emo tional temperament. From what Smel' ger tells me about her you'd have though she was the favorite child of old man | Mosher himself. She was one of thos Lady Dreadnoughts for size, but b nature, highly emotional She belonged very exclusive, slant-browed Ernerso club where the members used to assembl once a week and read His Essays an see If any of the other members va wearing anything new. She was also yer strong for the Ibsen or blue mass scho' of drama and frequently went to play that had been written by the great Nol wegian just after eating a hearty mei consisting of whale oil. fish and calom pills when he was feeling sort of morbi and low in his mind. She'd go to a mat nee and sit there and cry through thrs or four long or Ibsen acts and come hon with red nose and raging sick heal ache and go to bed and say she'd had
 perfectly lovely afternoon. But afte awhile these comparatively simple pul r suits of the higher knowledge failed 1 satisfy the cravings Of her soul. She bs gan to go in for civic uphfts and gres economic movements where If a membe wore the game gown to two meetings succession 1t amounted to a scandal An also she began to daily extensively wit those very superior societies that aI made up entirely of descendants
 Smeltzer was telling me about 1t tn last time he. was in. He'd been aroun emong the retail liquor stores shoppin vtp ric clr and fh and ba uya