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
"My man don't make mistakes," she said laconically. "And, what's more to
the point, miss, he's a friend of George Remington, and why should he
be giving his lady a vacation? You are E. Eliot, and your friends think
you're workin' too hard, so they're goin' to give you a nice rest.
Nothin' will happen to you if you are a lady, as I think you are. And
when I find out who this other lady is, we'll make her as welcome as
you!"
She went out of the room, locking the door behind her as the two women
struggled vainly with their bonds. In an instant she returned.
"My man says to tell the one who thinks she's Mrs. George Remington that
she's spendin' the week-end with Mrs. Napoleon Boneypart." My man
says he's a good friend of George Remington and is supportin' him for
district attorney, and that's how he can make it so pleasant here.
"And I'll tell you something else," she continued proudly. "When George
got married, it was my man that went up and down Smoky Row and seen
all the girls and got 'em to give a dollar apiece for them lovely roses
labeled 'The Young Men's Republican Club.' Mr. Doolittle he seen to
that. My man really collected fifty dollars more'n he turned in, and I
got a diamond-set wrist watch with it! So, you see, we're real friendly
with them Remingtons, and we're glad to see you, Mrs. Remington!"
"Oh, how horrible!" cried Genevieve. "There were eight dozen of those
roses from the Young Men's Republican Club, and to think---Oh, to
think----"
"Well, now, George," cried Mr. Penfield Evans, "just stop and think. Use
your bean, my boy! What is the one thing on earth that puts the fear of
God into Pat Noonan? It's prohibition. Look at the prohibition map out
West and at the suffrage map out West. They fit each other like the
paper on the wall. Whatever women may lack in intelligence about some
things, there is one thing woman knows--high and low, rich and poor!
She knows that the saloon is her enemy, and she hits it; and Pat Noonan,
seeing this rise of women investigating industry, makes common cause
with Martin Jaffry and the whole employing class of Whitewater against
the nosey interference of women.
"And Pat Noonan is depending on you," continued Evans. "He expects you
to rise. He expects you to go to Congress--possibly to the Senate, and
he figures that he wants to be dead sure you'll not get to truckling to
decency on the liquor question. So he ties you up--or tries you out for
a tie-up or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who likes a sporting
event, takes a chance that you'll stand hitched in a plan to rid the
community of a political pest without seriously hurting the pest--a
friendless old maid who won't be missed for a day or two, and whose
disappearance can be hushed up one way or another after she appears too
late for the election.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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