“Oh, the buttons!” said Mr. Lister, with the first genuine laugh that I had heard that day; “one of the first things that the women did after the strike began, was to send word to the tailors, that inasmuch as the sewing of buttons on to garments had from time immemorial been the chief high prerogative which man had grandly conceded to woman, they did not propose to allow any one to take it from them. Small and poor as woman’s privileges had been in the world’s great history she could not part with a single one of them. They made the poor tailors quake in their shoes by threatening that they should never know the smile of a woman again if they sewed a single button on to a garment of any kind. The tailors hastened to send a delegation to the Women’s Executive Committee, meekly promising to obey. They even offered to take the buttons off from all the garments they had on hand, if any such propitiation was needed.” “This regulation in regard to buttons, must have been rather hard on the button manufacturers?” I suggested, with an effort at jocularity which I had not deemed possible under the circumstances. “Yes,” said Mr. Lister, “it has completely extinguished that industry for the present. I understand that the Button Manufacturers have a delegation now on its knees before the Woman’s Executive Committee imploring them to rescue them from gaping ruin. But the young woman who is chairwoman of that committee is a person of great spirit, a regular Jeanne d’Arc. She will never yield,” and Mr. Justin Lister sighed so deeply that I suddenly remembered that the Strike had summarily deprived him of a prospective bride. We walked along in silence for a few moments when all at once it occurred to my mind that I had not made any inquiry as to the nature of the rights for which woman was contending. In fact, I had assumed, so completely as a matter of course, that the rights she was asking for were simply those which I had seen from time to time sarcastically enumerated in some scoffing newspaper, that it seemed unnecessary for me to say as I did to Mr. Lister: “These rights which women are asking in such an imperious fashion are doubtless the old ones with which I am familiar: greater security in the holding of property, the right to vote, and to be eligible for all civil offices, including, perhaps, the Presidency, to be placed on an equal footing with man, as regards wages and all material advantages. These, doubtless cover all the things that they are contending for?”