Rebel women

pot of the

is that it was never uttered. When, on the other hand, we announced that we meant to carry our election campaign into the black spot of the constituency, where a criminal population congregated thickly in a few mean streets, warnings came quick and fast. They were the normal warnings, telling how the police hesitated to penetrate there after dark, how it was never safe at any time of d

y the elimination of the juvenile element. Anthropologists probably know all kinds of reasons why the young human creature always wants to throw things at what he cannot understand; and if I had to humanize the embryonic hooligan of our back streets, I believe I should begin by setting up a mysterious-looking target, a diffe

ven bear mud; and stones are never aimed with enough determination to matter much; but I should lik

rcepted on its way towards her face. "When I am advancing a suffrage argument

he visited their homes in his official capacity. This information did not meet with the response he evidently expected from us, and realizing that voteless women could not be reasonably expected to feel furiously ho

; "they are too stupid to understand, and th

re to talk about votes for women," over and over again, with an ingratiating smile, to a policeman with a coldly detached air, and, perhaps, a young man on the opposite side of the road, who is longing to listen but dare not cross over for fear of being identified with lawless young women whose husbands and babies languish untended in the theoretical home. Afterwards, when the

no party cry and for no party candidate, the audience came in rushes from all the alleys and dens in the neighbourhood, and in less than two minutes one looked down upon a swaying mass of tattered and slatternly humanity that would have been horribly pathetic if f

speaker in the lorry no time t

fed on skilly, do she?" was a sal

king girl whose open, laughing face might have belonged to any child of tw

!" roared

n the girl as she went shuffling off. "I've been to prison myself," she said,

r laugh. "Oh, a drop of beer and a few w

into conversation, and other women, who we

or us pore women," said one, more intelligent-looking than the

nter Parlyment, that I

to you!" cried a

who was asserting with drowsy monotony that he didn't want women

impatiently. "Forgettin'

place was rather at a drawing-room meeting than at a street-corner one, went elsewhere in search of love and obedience; and the crowd of derelicts that remained, growing more numerous every minute, pressed closer and closer to the lorry till they swarmed up the wheels and over the sides and sat at the feet of the woman who had been where they had been, and suffered what they had suffered, for a cause they dimly began to understand because it appeared to be connected with prison and suffering. Even their primitive minds could receive an impression of the woman standing up above them, again

and stood for a moment gazing vacantly up at the trim little figure of the

f standards was bewildering; and one felt that here was another interrupter wh

ection. There was a pause; then the speaker declared the meeting closed. The meeting, however, declined to be closed. The crowd stood motionless, waiting for more; and they had it, when a real electioneer, wearing party colours and bristling with party commonplaces, stepp

she has! Give it 'im agi

e speaker unawares in the end. Unable to do this, after failing to accept or indeed to comprehend the answer that was patiently repeated four times, the ingenuous heckler wanted to know if the lady d

ke up. The woman who had been speaking looked down upon her

these people," she sai

iers, and they haven't learnt to se

softly. "Suffragettes forced to be sinners, and sinners who are not given a ch

eir dens, passed a similar verdict, if different

e old gal!" cried a young fellow, chal

, as she looked after the flapping flag that had brought a streak of colour, f