I shall never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage
and endurance. She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle
undersized, but shapely and sinewy. The vast crowd that without much
diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from
start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and
the last hour the enthusiasm was overwhelming. Wave upon wave of
cheering followed every footstep of the plucky girl, rising to a storm
of exultation as the final lap was reached.
More dead than alive, but game to the core, the little heroine was
carried off the field, a winner, every heart throbbing with human
sympathy, every eye wet with proud and happy tears. It is not possible
adequately to describe all that happened. One must have been there and
seen it fully to comprehend the glory of it.
Touching the recent Albany and Washington hikes and hikers let me say
at once that I cannot approve the cause of Votes for women as I had
approved the cause of Bertha von Hillern. Where she showed heroic, most
of the suffragettes appear to me grotesque. Where her aim was rational,
their aim has been visionary. To me the younger of them seem as
children who need to be spanked and kissed. There has been indeed about
the whole Suffrage business something pitiful and comic.
Often I have felt like swearing “You idiots!” and then like crying
“Poor dears!” But I have kept on with them, and had I been in Albany or
Washington I would have caught Rosalie Jones in my arms, and before she
could say “Jack Robinson” have exclaimed: “You ridiculous child, go and
get a bath and put on some pretty clothes and come and join us at
dinner in the State Banquet Hall, duly made and provided for you and
the rest of you delightful sillies.”
Chapter the Ninth
Dr. Norvin Green—Joseph Pulitzer—Chester A. Arthur—General Grant—The
Case of Fitz-John Porter
I
Truth we are told is stranger than fiction. I have found it so in the
knowledge which has variously come to me of many interesting men and
women. Of these Dr. Norvin Green was a striking example. To have sprung
from humble parentage in the wilds of Kentucky and to die at the head
of the most potential corporation in the world—to have held this place
against all comers by force of abilities deemed indispensable to its
welfare—to have gone the while his ain gait, disdaining the precepts of
Doctor Franklin—who, by the way, did not trouble overmuch to follow
them himself—seems so unusual as to rival the most stirring stories of
the novel mongers.
When I first met Doctor Green he was president of a Kentucky railway
company. He had been, however, one of the organizers of the Western
Union Telegraph Company. He deluded himself for a little by political
ambitions. He wanted to go to the Senate of the United States, and
during a legislative session of prolonged balloting at Frankfort he
missed his election by a single vote.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account