The sturdy oak : $b a composite novel of American politics by fourteen American authors
General
The sturdy oak : $b a composite novel of American politics by fourteen American authors
New York (State) -- Fiction; Political fiction; Satire; Suffragists -- Fiction; Women -- New York (State) -- Fiction; Women -- Suffrage -- Fiction
"And I want to tell you that what has brought this change is what some
of the women of White-water have shown me--and also some of the things
our men politicians have done--our Doolittles, our Noonans----"
But George's speech terminated right there. Noise there had been before;
now there burst out an uproar, and there came an artillery attack of
eggs, vegetables, stones and bricks. One of the bricks struck George on
the shoulder and drove him staggering back against the Voiceless Speech,
sending that instrument of silent argument crashing to the floor.
Regaining his balance, George started furiously back for the window; but
Mrs. Herrington caught his arm.
"Let me go!" he called, trying to shake her off.
But she held on. "Don't--you've said enough!" she cried, and pulled him
toward the rear of the room. "Look!"
Through the window was coming a heavier fire of impromptu grenades that
rolled, spent, at their feet. But what they saw without was far more
stirring and important. Noonan's men in the crowd, their hoodlumism now
unleashed, were bowling over the people about them; but these really
constituted Noonan's outposts and advance guards.
From out of two side streets, though George and Mrs. Herrington could
not see their first appearance upon the scene, Noonan's real army
now came charging into Main Street, as per that gentleman's grim
instructions to "show them messin' women what it means to mess in
politics." Hundreds of Whitewater's women were flung about, many
sent sprawling to the pavement, and some hundreds of the city's most
respectable voters, caught unawares, were hustled about and knocked down
by the same ruthless drive.
"My God!" cried George, impulsively starting forward. "The damned
brutes!"
But Mrs. Herrington still held his arm. "Come on--they're making a drive
for this office!" breathlessly cried the quick-minded lady. "You can do
no good here. Out the rear way--my car's waiting in the back street."
Still clutching his sleeve, Mrs. Herrington opened a door and ran across
the back yard of McMonigal's building in a manner which indicated that
that lady had not spent her college years (and similarly spent the years
since then propped among embroidered cushions consuming marshmallows and
fudge.)
The lot crossed, she hurried through a little grocery and thence into
the street. Here they ran into a party that, seeing the riot on Main
Street and the drive upon the window from which George had spoken, had
rushed up reinforcements from the rear--a party consisting of Penny,
E. Eliot, Betty Sheridan and Genevieve. "Genevieve!" cried George, and
caught her into his arms.
"Oh, George," she choked. "I--I heard it all--and it--it was simply
wonderful!"
"George," cried Betty Sheridan, "I always knew, if you got the right
kind of a jolt, you'd be--you'd be what you are!"
E. Eliot gripped his hand in a clasp almost as strong as George's arm.
"Mr. Remington, if I were a man, I'd like to have the same sort of stuff
in me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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