The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-07-27


The Apogee wept saline tears
Into the saline sea.
TO overhear two mutineers
Discuss their pedigree.
Said he:
OF all the futile futile things that
ever l did see.
This is as truly fullest as fullest
can bel
What Poet ever indulged in that
drivelgo demanded the Bibliomaniac.
Modesty prevents my mentioning
his name. Mr.. Bib smiled the Idiot.
" but if you ever want his picture to
hang up in your study alongside OF
those of Shakespeare, Byron, and
Araminta Mintdrop. just let me know
and III have my tintype taken for
you.
" But to come back to these suf-
fragette ladies. it seems to me that
they have gone far enough along lines
of violence to discover that riot,
rampag, 5, and rebellion are not doing
their cause any good. They must
realize by this time that their recent
act in lassooing the stroke oar of the
Cambridge Crew and hitching him to
a bell buoy just as that Crew was
the oxford Cambridge Race, thereby
causing Cambridge to lose. has not
only not helped but positively inn
paired the whole movement. | have
confidential information that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was so
enraged by that act that he seriously
proposed putting a Progressive An
nual Age Tax on all the Old Maids of
the Empire.
Then there was that Stratford-on-
Avon business. How can they help
realizing that that dreadful act of
vandalism which they perpetrated
when they introduced that vacuum
cleaner surreptitiously into Shake
speare's grave and not only disturbed
but actually removed the Duste En-
cloased There, without any regard
whatsoever, for the curse they thereby
called down upon their heads from
the great bard himself, has set all the
dramatists and poets of England
against them?
Gross Outrages.
"Then there was that gross out
rage involved in the forcible shaving
of Mr.. Hall Caine and Bernard Shaw,
thus exposing the ehins of those illus
trious personag ges to the cold gray
glare of the public gaze-that. has
shocked the whole civilized world in
such a way as must inevitably react
upon their cause"
al hadn't heard of these things
said Mr.. Pedagog.
One has to keep ones ears wide
open these days. Mr.. Pedagog," said
the Idiot "Indeed there is so much
happening in the world these times
that really a man has to exercise his
Imagination somewhat to keep up
with the facts
But as to these acts, the truth is
that they are ordinarily of so brutal
a character-like interfering with
mans right to choose his whiskers
that instead of making men look
with favor upon women's equality
in the pursuit of life, liberty, and
taxes, they are really filling them
with what Shakespeare used to call a
hard-favored rage that may sooner or
later take shape in such reprisals as
the passage of laws forbidding women
TO wear false hair, to use powder
puffs, and compelling them all to
dress in green mother -hubbards. In
stead of making the British Male
Thing view them and their aspirations
with favor, these acts confirm him in,
and intensity, his hatred of them,
and make him feel that it is his eman-
cipation from her rather than hers
from him that is the real question
of the hour"
Then you'd have them give up the
fight would you? " sneered the Biblio-
maniac You're a gay suffragent,
you are!
No, Stree, / wouldn't retreat an
inch" returned the Idiot. " But hav-
ing failed in one way I'd change my
tactics. If those good ladies were real
ly any more wide awake than their
British Brothers they would have
Il changed tnelf ldcllCS ioll6 dSb.
Instead of doing things that fill
the British male mind with rage I'd
make subtler approach. I'd go in
for course of action that would fill
the men with vague uneasiness as to
what was going to happen next. 1t is
the insidious, unknown threatening
that changes the current of mans
thought Mr.. Bib, not the known dan
ger for which he can prepare.
Personally, if / were the Premier
of Great Britain to-day l should be
vastly more afraid of a Suffragette
presenting me with a sofa cushion
wrought by her own fair hands than
of a red-haired child of Bellona who
approached my new silk hat with a
sledge hammer, or a brick, in her soft
little fist
Do you suppose for one minute
Sir, that when Lucrezia Borgia want
ed to get the name of a social rival
off her visiting list she violently seized
that person by the neck and forcibly
fed him or her with tablespoonfuls
of cyanide of potassium on the hoof?
Never, She was an LII. d. of Subtle
ty. Shed give pleasant little after
noon Bridge Party, and when the sar-
dine sandwiches were passed around
later, with the lemonade, that par
ticular rival would get his or hers
mixed in with the mayonnaise, and
pass away quietly the next morning