Dr. Earl redoubled his attentions to Leonora, determined to give her no just cause for complaint. The doubts that had beset him disappeared, for no one could be more charming than Leonora, when she was permitted to follow her own bent. Her mother also showed her gratification at his devotion, and tried, with consummate tact, to wean him away from his evident partiality for the suffrage cause. She gave him the best of the tracts issued by the Anti-Suffrage Society; while he was waiting for his offices to be fitted up, she took him to lectures and teas and receptions where anti-suffrage sentiment abounded, and tried in various ways to convince him of the superior social status of the "Anti" women.

The culmination was reached, however, when he escorted her and Leonora to a meeting in a large theatre one afternoon. They were prominent figures in one of the boxes nearest the stage, and Silvia Holland and Carroll Renner, who were sitting well toward the rear of the parquet, had ample opportunity to watch the effect of the meeting upon him.

Frank Earl, who had come in directly afterward and taken a seat just back of them, leaned forward and talked while the crowd gathered. "Oh, don't mind him," he said, when Miss Renner asked if that were not his brother with the anti-suffrage leaders. "He can't help himself, but if he doesn't go away from here ready to enlist under Miss Holland's banner I miss my count. Even I should, were it not that I have seen the folly of it all on its native heath. Don't make faces at me, Carroll, or people will know you are a suffragette."

The theatre had been profusely decorated with flags, flowers and bunting, and mottoes were festooned along the walls, one of which was "God Bless Our Homes," and another, "Imbecile Children Will Be the Product of Imbecile Voting Women."

Dr. Earl was much impressed with the audience, which, nevertheless, seemed rather chilly and unresponsive. A dignity prevailed which either could not or dared not give way to any decided demonstration, in marked contradistinction to the enthusiasm which characterized the suffrage meetings he had witnessed.

In addition to the bunting and the mottoes, there were a number of large pictures, done in the style of the cartoonist. One of these showed a colonial dame at her spinning-wheel, with the words "An American Lady of Four Generations Ago" beneath it; beside it was the picture of a masculine-looking woman, in a harem skirt, standing on a box at a street corner, addressing other women similarly attired; this was called "The American Suffragette." Another picture showed a nurse caring for the sick and dying soldiers on one side, and on the other a suffragette charging the police; this picture was labeled "Before and After Taking."

The meeting opened with a spirited address by the president of the association, Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, who was welcomed with a brief rustle of well-bred applause, led by Frank Earl.

"Got to do it," he said, in answer to Carroll's reproachful look. "You'll see; even Jack will catch on before the end of the meeting. Always applaud these folks when they begin; maybe you can't when they quit."

Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss told of the enormous gains recently made by the "Antis" among the select people of the city, and passed off the suffrage parade as merely a tatterdemalion host of the riff-raff of the city led by a few notoriety seekers.

"You see, Miss Holland," Frank whispered, "what a good thing it is that I came here; I never should have known that that parade wasn't one of the finest assemblages of women in the world if I hadn't."

Silvia laughed in spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform went on piling up the indictment against her sex, and showing how demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and nobler politics would be without the influence of woman, and wound up with a glowing peroration on behalf of the women who were fighting to maintain the sanctity of the home and the elevation of the children.

Silvia gave an impatient ejaculation. "How can you take it so quietly, Miss Renner?" she asked. "I confess it always stirs me up."

"It wouldn't if you had the ballot," said the smaller woman. "It's just amusing, or tiresome, according to how well it is done. You women are the worried and worrying Marthas; we are the Marys, who have chosen the better part that shall not be taken away; we know it can't be, and this is something like hearing people laboriously argue that the world is flat with the sun revolving around it."

After the opening speech there were brief addresses by Dr. David Dearson on the disastrous results to motherhood should women participate in the active life of the nation; by the Reverend Jayson Yerkes on the Pauline doctrine of the subserviency of the truly feminine woman; by Mrs. Workman Werther on the decadence of feminine charm among women aping men's interests in life, and Crawford Dorer, a labor leader, opposed the movement because the natural timidity of woman would, he predicted, set back all hope of militant progress for the workers of the world. The "Antis" listened with a somewhat strained and puzzled attention, and a group of working-women, out on strike, and sitting in the balcony, gave an angry hiss, which was instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr. Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures and the pitiful spectacle that voting women make of themselves, he galvanized the audience into a semblance of real life and interest.

Dr. Earl found the speeches entertaining if not enlightening, and after the second, gave himself up to the silent enjoyment of collating the arguments presented in juxtaposition. No sooner had one speaker convinced his hearers that women would precipitate anarchy by their radicalism than the next proved equally conclusively that an era of dilettantism and millinery shop legislation would be the inevitable result of woman suffrage; no sooner were they filled with the horror of the degradation of politics by the class of women certain to participate in it, than another speaker assured them that politics was already so vile that any woman would be hopelessly contaminated who had anything to do with the gangrenous growth, and yet another showed that women wouldn't vote anyhow. It was all he could do to control the muscles of his face when the Reverend Mr. Yerkes told them in one sentence of the dissension that would rend families and in the next that married women simply voted as their husbands dictated, and he could not repress a smile when the doctor and the professor made it clear that if woman is to reproduce the race she must not be expected to do anything else, only to have Mrs. Werther show how woman must be free to take part in the ennobling activities of the world, philanthropy, charity, etc., if she is to "bring to motherhood that crown which is the glory of the race," and much more of the same sort. He heard the ancient argument about bullets and ballots, and in the same breath his attention was called to Semiramis conquering Assyria, the Amazons invading Asia, the triumph of Sappho in song, Aspasia in the salon, Deborah among the Judges of Israel, George Eliot in literature, and a host of others who had won distinction.

The audience was told that it was entirely proper to agitate, cajole, coax, beseech, threaten, bully and browbeat men into voting for candidates and measures desired by the women; anything that stopped short of blackmail and personal intimidation bore the hallmark of refined femininity, but to take two minutes to accomplish results for themselves by depositing a ballot on election day meant everlasting damnation to all feminine traits! And Leonora patted her pretty little hands, and looked up to Earl for approval, feeling that at last he must see that Silvia and her cohorts were routed horse and foot.

When the attack upon Western women was well under way, and Mr. Rice, a dapper little chap, looking like a freshman from high school, was rolling out his arraignment of Denver women in particular as typical of the nethermost depths to which the voting female may descend, Carroll Renner wrote a few lines on a bit of paper, and gave it to one of the ushers, and a few minutes later she had the satisfaction of watching the portly Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss read it. When Mr. Rice had concluded his diatribe, the lady stated in dulcet tones that Mr. Frank Earl was said to be in the audience, and as he lived in Denver, and was known to have strong views on this question, there was an urgent request that he should come to the platform, that they might know from one who had long witnessed with regret the deteriorating effects of woman suffrage that nothing that they had heard was in any way exaggerated. She vouched for Earl as one whom she had known since his boyhood, a member of one of the most highly respected families in New York, and who had never failed to reply when she had needed statistics from the field of woman's dethronement.

There was a bustle and stir over the audience, and John Earl looked a good deal startled, while Leonora was openly delighted. An excellent speaker, and a trained debater, the occasion had no terrors for Frank Earl. In fact, he confessed to himself as he made his way to the platform, he had not had so much fun as he expected to enjoy in the next fifteen minutes for many a long day. He was introduced with many rather florid expressions, and began by stating his position calmly, unmistakably, as opposed to the extension of the franchise to women. He then made a few complimentary references to those ladies who nobly put aside their own devotion to the home, the sphere they adorned so admirably, in order to save their misguided suffrage sisters from the evil effects of their mistaken zeal.

There were a good many suffragists and some suffragettes in that anti-suffrage meeting, and Frank saw that the chilly audience had at last thawed, melted, warmed up and was rapidly approaching the point where it might reasonably be expected to boil over.

"I am unalterably against the extension of the franchise to women," he repeated, and went on, "but my reasons for this opposition are concrete and practical rather than abstract and theoretical, and are based upon the experience I have gained from my residence in Colorado. I am also opposed to it because it is all too evident that the suffrage should be restricted rather than extended. The ballot should be the reward of intelligence, education, and a comprehension of the great political problems of the nation."

"Give us the truth," some one at the left of the parquet cried.

"I shall," he said, "and that necessitates correcting a few impressions which seem to me at variance with the facts. If it were true that women would not vote, or would vote as directed by the male members of their families, I should not so much deprecate giving them the ballot; but neither contention is true. Women do vote, and what is worse, they vote in steadily increasing numbers. Out of seventy thousand votes cast at the last election in my city a little less than half of them were cast by women, and judging from the results, I must say that the men of their families had very little influence with them. The possession of the franchise has developed the secretive instinct among women; they no longer confide their intentions to their doting husbands; they listen to their words of wisdom and then—they vote the secret ballot as they please."

There was a wave of laughter that swelled into a gleeful sort of shout of mirth, but with an air of the most grieved surprise the speaker turned wonderingly to Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, who still beamed upon him, though she was looking worried.

"But surely, Mr. Earl," she said, "when the disagreeable duty is thrust upon them, the conservative women do what they can to protect the interests of the State?"

He shook his head sadly.

"This is one of the most frightful discoveries we have made since women began to vote. When Mr. Dorer speaks of the innate conservatism of women he shows that he is not conversant with the woman movement. It is true that there are a few intensely partisan women, who can be held by party ties, but the rank and file observe no such allegiance. They read and study, but in addition they go to the legislative halls, and there they see that both parties make and break promises with equal facility, and what is the result?"

"Well, what is it?" cried an impatient feminine voice.

"I hardly know how to break it to you," he said, "but the result is revolt, revolt all along the line. Yes, ladies; women, lovely, refined, gentle, educated women utterly refuse to be dictated to by political leaders, and openly sneer at ward bosses. They can't be kept in line. They no longer sing the sweet strains of 'The land of the free and the home of the brave.' On the contrary, they raise the battle cry, 'Let independence be our boast,' and in spite of the passionate pleas of their natural leaders, they go on record for the most radical legislation. Why, I'm told that nearly every so-called progressive law enacted in my State has been passed by their continued efforts.

"They have no conception of the ideal of government laid down by Hamilton; they will submit to neither checks nor balances, and would subvert the whole scheme of representative government and replace it with an out-and-out democracy. In accord with this mistaken view they have adopted the initiative and referendum, carried it overwhelmingly, three to one, in every county in the State, and I need not tell an audience of intelligence that this is the most insidious form of attack now being made upon the fundamental principles of our government."

By this time Silvia and all the suffragists in the audience were applauding wildly, while Carroll Renner laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks, and once more Frank turned a patient and puzzled countenance to the presiding officer.

"I do not understand the applause, ladies," he said mildly, with a gleam in his eyes that none but Carroll understood. "The thing I am telling you is frightful. The enfranchisement of women means the end of the Republic as it now is; it means the rejection of all theories that are found wanting, and the putting out on the vast uncharted sea of experiment; it means interference with those great business enterprises that have built up, I had nearly said that 'make and preserve us a nation'! It means a reckless disregard for property rights in the sentimental desire to protect the individual, as if a nation could become great and strong by individual effort alone, and without the guiding and sustaining hands of statecraft and financial genius gripping the rudder of the ship of state. They will not listen to the voice of experience; they cannot be intimidated; they cannot be deceived for an indefinite number of years; if the established order seems to them unfair, unjust or illiberal, they have little respect for tradition when it's results they're after."

"But if the anti-suffrage movement is growing as we have been told, can't the anti-suffragists overcome those tendencies?" asked an old lady on the platform.

Frank restated the question for the benefit of the audience, and then answered with indescribable pathos, "I cannot conceal the truth from you; improbable as it seems, when once this poison becomes virulent in the body politic it spares none, and the very women who have battled most nobly against this corroding innovation are apt to succumb to its insidious influence; even the anti-suffragist, home-loving, God-fearing, modest and retiring as is her nature, has developed a talent for political intrigue that has led to the downfall of more than one of the best laid plans of mice and men."

He tried to go on, but the audience was convulsed, not so much by what he said as by his manner, and by the sudden turning of the tables after the long tension had reached the snapping point. Still uncertain whether to regard his as friend or foe, Mrs. Briglow-Jorliss, after rapping vainly for order, was obliged to dismiss the meeting, and by some irony of fate the orchestra played "Hail Columbia," and the suffragettes took up the words and sung them with much unction, especially the lines—

"Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost."