But the questions which now began to crowd my excited mind respecting the strange state of affairs by which I was surrounded, imperatively demanded an answer, and I lost no time in looking for some one who should further satisfy me. The man who first caught my attention was loitering near a corner, apparently studying the numerous advertisements of pain-killers, salves, ointments and cures for burns which were conspicuously displayed in the windows of a drug store. He stood with his hands in his pockets, and had a more jaunty air than any one whom I had yet observed. He was tall and thin, with whiskers on the end of his chin. There was a look of loquacity about him which encouraged approach, and also a “make the best of it” air which had the effect of somewhat relieving my painful concern of mind. This man had given up collars entirely. His coat was wide open and his whole attitude seemed to defiantly assert that collars and buttons were not, and never had been, any essential part of his make-up. To my observation respecting the Woman’s Strike, which I made as general and incidental as possible in order to get at his view of it, he replied: “Yaas, it’s a kind of a hinderment. But the worst thing about it is the set-back it’s going to give the population here in Hustleburg. Now there’s Sprawltown, the rival town in our county what’s trying to git the County Seat away from us. At the last census by doin’ some of the tallest kind of lyin’ and takin’ names off from all the tombstones in the cemetery, they made out that they had about five more inhabitants than we had. Well, now to make things wuss, the women of Sprawltown didn’t tumble to the idea of strikin’ till about a month after the women of Hustleburg did, an’ the birth rate goin’ right on’ll give it a great start.” “Do you mean to say that the Strike has completely separated husbands and wives?” I asked. “Reckon it has, stranger,” replied the man. “Oh a woman’s got grit when she makes her mind up, and they say they’re goin’ to have their rights this time or they’ll let the race die clean off from the globe. Shouldn’t wonder, if this thing ain’t settled before long, if some one should have the chance to act out the part of ‘Campbell’s Last Man’ that I used to speak when I went to school. If I am the last man you can just bet I’ll go over to Sprawltown to declaim it after every one there’s been laid out. I’d just like to show that snipe that edits the _Sprawltown Git There_ that the population of Hustleburg was ahead once without counting any dead men either.” “But how did the women get the idea of striking for their rights in this unheard of way? Such an idea was never before to my knowledge discussed or dreamed of.”