My friend bought a copy of the paper and leading the way up the steps of a handsome residence, at which we had now arrived, said: “You are heartily welcome to my home, but I must again remind you that the soul of all delicate and artistic hospitality has vanished from it. It does not contain a woman.” [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. Although the house to which Mr. Justin Lister now introduced me was more orderly than many which I had observed on the streets through which I had passed, the absence of woman from its walls was still painfully apparent. It was as if warmth and light and flowers and sweet perfumes were suddenly wanting in a place in which you had always been accustomed to find them and to solace yourself with them. Indeed, the suddenness of woman’s flight, if I may so term it, was brought much more sharply to my consciousness by this visit to a house in which she had so recently held sway. There were unmistakable signs on every hand of unfinished feminine occupations. The piano stood open with a sonata by Beethoven lying upon it; artistic needlework with the needles still sticking in it lay in a window-seat, and a half finished sketch upon an easel all bore mute but telling testimony to the irreparable loss of gentle and artistic hands. Plants which had evidently had the cherishing care of feminine tenderness were languishing in a window, and a drooping canary disconsolately buried its head in its feathers in its cage. But that which weighed most heavily upon my sunken spirits was the indescribably pathetic sighing and whining of a large Newfoundland dog as he constantly roamed from room to room in search of a mistress’s caressing hand. I finally had to entreat Mr. Lister with tears in my eyes to put him away where I could not see his grief. Mr. Lister, as he explained to me, had lost not only his sweetheart and prospective bride by the Great Woman’s Strike, but his mother and two sisters as well. This fact raised the question in my mind as to how the women were supported in their retirement, and I said: “I can easily understand how the dockmen of London could stand the hunger of protracted idleness with their muscular frames and rude tastes, but how can refined and delicate women undergo the hardships of such a siege?” “You forget,” said Mr. Lister, “that the London dockmen had many sympathizers who contributed food and money to their cause. The women also have a legion of sympathizers, and if they had not, no man who has a mother or a sister would see them want. The result is that the women are like a vast army which is voluntarily supported by the very persons with whom they are in controversy.”