The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-09-24

to talk to you about, and devoutly have I been praying that your heart will be receptive to the call that has claimed the life of Mary Elizabeth and me. There is particular work, for which you are fitted as no other wo- man I have ever known is fitted, and want te lay the case plainly before you tonight Will you give me hearingT'
 And the hearing gave that beloved and devout woman was the reveille that awakened me to this-this whirl- wind that seems to be both inside me and outside me and everywhere else in the whole world.
 It's not woman's suffrage; it has gone way down past the road from votes for women, I wish I could have stopped in that political field of endeavor be- fore Jane got to me. T
 Of course for years, as all women have been doing who are sensible enough to use the brains God gave them and stop depending on their cen turies seasoned munitions and fascina- tions, have been reading about this feminist revolution that seems all of a sudden to have reVoiuted from nobody knows where, and I have been general ly indignant over things whether un- derstood them or not, and have felt that was being oppressed by the op- posite sex, even if I could not locate the exact spot of the pain produced.
 When my father died in my junior year and left me all alone in the world the first thing that made me feel life, in my veins again was the unhcly rage I experienced when I found that he had left me bodaciously and otherwise to my fifth cousin, James Hardin
 Cousin James is healthy reversion to the primitive type of Father Abra- ham, and he has so much aristocratic moss on him that he reminds me of that old gray crag that hangs oyer Si1- yer creek out on Providence road. Artstically he is perfectly beautiful in an Old Testament fashion He lives in an ancient, rambling house across the road from my home, and he is making a souv enir collection Of dere- liet women Everybody that dies in Glendale leaves him a relict, and, in cfuding his mother, Cousin Martha, he nov has either seven or nine female charges, depending on the sex of Sal lie Cafruthefs' twin babies, which can't exactly remember, but will wager is feminine
 My being left to him was an insult to me, though of course. father did not see it that way. He adored the Graz, . as everybody else in Glendale does. and wouldn't have considered not leav- ing him precious me. Wanting to ig- nore Cousin James because I was bound out to him until my twenty-ffth year or marriage, which is worse, has kept me from Glendale all these four years since father died suddenly while was away at college. laid up with the ankle which I broke in the gymnasium Still, as much as resent him, keep the letter the Graz wrote me the night after father died right where can put
 my hand on it if life suddenly panics circumstances I have yet met. I won der if I ought to burn it now
 But, to be honest with myself, will have to confess that the explosiveIy sentimental scene on the front porch
 the night I left for college with Polk
 Hayes has had something to do with
 my c6Wardice in lingering in foreign chimes. I feel that it is something I will have to go on with some day, and
 the devil will have to pick up the chips. Polk is the kind of man that ought Ito
 be exterminated by the government in symoathy for it's women wards, if his
 clan didn't make such good citizens when they do finally marry. He ought
 at least to be labeled poison for the very young" was very young out on the porch that night. Still I don't re
 sent him like do the archaic Graz
 And as Jane talked my seasoned in
 dignation Of four years against my keeper fared up. and while she paused at intervals for breath I hurled out plans for his demolishment I wish now I had been more conservatively quiet and left myself a loophole, but
 I didn't. I walked into this situation
 and shut the door behind me.
 s.Yes, Evelina, I think you will have ke insist fofcibly on assuming charge l Ofyour own social and financial affairs in your own home. You are to rise and establish with your fellow man
 plane of common citizenship. You do 1t for his sake and your own and for that of humanity"
 Suppose after I get up there on that 1 plateau didn't find any man at aII,'' ventured faint heartedly, but with a ripple of my risibles, the last in life, I ! fear
 You must reach down your hands to them and draw them up to, you,'' she answered in a tone of tonic inspira- l fion- You are to claim the same right i to express your emotions that man 1 has. You are to offer your friendship ] to both men and women on the same frank terms, with no degrading hesi-
 tancy caused by an embarrassment on 1 account of your sex. It is his due and yours. No form of affection is to Bc withheld from him. It is to be dC1la l frankly and impressiveIy, and when fhe time comes that you feel the mat. i ing instinct in you move toward any man charge you that you are to con sider it sacred obligation to express it with the same honesty that a man
 would express the same thing to you in like case even if he has shown nr sign of that impulse toward you. No contortions and contcmptible indirect