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THE WOMAN WITH 
 EMPTY HANDS 
 
 The Evolution of a Suffragette 
 
 FRONTISPIECE 
 
 i \-t O - 
 
 New York 
 
 Dodd, Mead and Company 
 1913 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY 
 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 

 To 
 
 MRS. PANKHURST 
 AND HER DAUGHTERS 
 
 259929 
 
The Woman With Empty Hands 
 
" How did you you of all women 
 ever become a Suffragette?" 
 
 The words, in tones of sad indigna- 
 tion, were flung into my face at a street 
 corner by a friend I had not seen for 
 years, and his reproaching eyes and the 
 entire pose of his lank body said what 
 his tongue was too polite to utter that 
 he was cruelly disappointed in me; that 
 I had fallen in his esteem and carried 
 down with me many of his cherished 
 ideals. 
 
 He was a Southern gentleman of the 
 old school, chivalrous and elderly, and 
 i 
 
: i'tH : E.WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 I, once a respected and admired young 
 friend, now stood with my character dis- 
 played in glaring colours at a wind- 
 swept curb on lower Broadway, doing 
 my humble duty for the Great Cause, 
 crying out to passers-by: " * The Woman 
 Voter'! here. Buy a ' Voter'? Votes 
 for Women!" and offering the sheet 
 with an ingratiating smile. Not recog- 
 nising him at the moment I had ad- 
 dressed him unawares of all men I 
 should have chosen to avoid, for I knew 
 in advance what I'd be likely to get 
 from him! 
 
 " You, ," calling me by my 
 
 maiden name, " to be doing this on 
 the street! Your father's and mother's 
 daughter " 
 
 2 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 Words failed him at the thought of 
 my parents, and he had time to take 
 in a little more of me while I stopped 
 the conversation to sell a paper and 
 pocket the nickel. At which he became 
 aghast and told me so. 
 
 And yet the way he measured the gulf 
 he thought I'd fallen into from a pre- 
 vious lofty estate, measured for me the 
 heights to which I thought I'd risen 
 from a lowly one! So little do even 
 the most chivalrous men know the inner 
 workings of woman's psychology. Only 
 later, after I had explained to his ex- 
 asperated ears and he had left me to 
 my fate since I would have none of 
 his advice to return to " woman's proper 
 sphere, shedding abroad the beneficent 
 
 3 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 influence of the home " I thought over 
 the pictures he must have been carrying 
 of me in his mind all those years: 
 To him I stood as the daughter of an 
 esteemed old Virginia family; the youth- 
 ful centre of attention and gaiety; the 
 bride, staid and serious under her new 
 responsibilities; the mother, holding a 
 child to him for his inspection, listening 
 with bright eyes as he exclaimed: "An- 
 other Southern gentleman to carry on 
 our traditions!" and acquiescing. 
 
 And then to find me selling papers 
 on the street and drumming up votes 
 for women besides! No wonder it 
 shocked the dear old gentleman's finer 
 sensibilities and outraged all his pre- 
 conceived ideals of womanhood! Poor 
 4 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 man! He died a few months later, and 
 I never saw him again, so he never 
 had the gleam of an understanding of 
 the true inwardness of my conversion, 
 or what it brought me to; he saw 
 only the surface bad enough in all 
 conscience, according to his way of 
 thinking but he did not know that 
 the real change in me was so great 
 that when my mind harked back to 
 the days when he knew me, those early 
 years felt like another incarnation in 
 another world. 
 
 That world! so conventional; so se- 
 rene; so sheltered and secure; so good, 
 as the world reckons good; and so 
 smug. Truly, without exaggeration, I 
 think I must have been the smuggest 
 
 5 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 young thing in Richmond, and every- 
 body took it as a matter of course that 
 a girl in my position should be. And 
 oh, how beautifully satisfied I was with 
 the easy way of thousands of my class 
 making a man and child happy; and 
 on suitable, and strictly conventional 
 occasions, making happy a choice, small 
 circle of friends " shedding abroad 
 the influence of home " and giving 
 nothing but passing thoughts to any- 
 thing outside my little fenced-in life. 
 Just that for eight blessed years; not 
 a sickness; not a worry; not even one 
 small cloud of domestic misunderstand- 
 ing to dim the glamour ; eight years 
 steeped in affection and appreciation 
 from the two I held most dear. And 
 6 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 then within twenty-four hours of each 
 other both husband and child were 
 stricken with scarlet fever in its worst 
 form. 
 
 The man died; the child lived only 
 by a miracle. But little more than his 
 bare life remained in my keeping, for 
 he was left with kidney trouble that 
 developed into diabetes. It is a disease 
 almost invariably fatal to a child, and 
 the doctor warned me that except for 
 a second miracle the end was not far 
 off. 
 
 I must work that miracle. Terrible 
 as it was to lose my husband, I had no 
 time for thought of myself or for grief. 
 The boy claimed all of me. Every 
 mouthful of food he ate had to be 
 7 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 especially prepared. It was prepared 
 by his mother's hands and hers alone. 
 None other seemed good enough, or 
 devoted enough to touch it. Everything 
 that was done for him, except his wash- 
 ing, was done by me, and it simply 
 never occurred to me to relieve my 
 burdens by calling a trained nurse. I 
 bought every book on nursing published, 
 and with the doctor's help became an 
 expert myself. Such was the stuff in 
 me when put to the test. 
 
 For more than two years I kept my 
 boy with me. I was nurse, cook, com- 
 forter, entertainer, playmate, mother, 
 rolled into one, and my supreme reward 
 was that he could not bear me out of his 
 sight. The last year of it I never knew 
 8 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 what it was to have two consecutive 
 hours of rest, and I rejoiced in my 
 service of love and wished I might 
 find means to give him more. My 
 own life contained but a single object 
 my boy's life; and to it I devoted 
 every waking hour and my dreams. 
 
 She may expect it hourly for years, 
 but a mother is never prepared for the 
 death of her only son no warning can 
 prepare for the loosing of the elemental 
 ties; and during those years of nursing 
 I had formed no conception of what 
 it would mean when my child was no 
 longer with me. 
 
 The end came suddenly at dawn. 
 Nature found me numb with long watch- 
 9 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 ing and mercifully left me so. While 
 the small wasted body lay in its narrow 
 satin bed there was still something for 
 my hands to do flowers to arrange, 
 little nothings here and there. I shed 
 no tears; not even as the falling earth 
 drummed the last roll-call on the casket 
 that numbered him irrevocably with the 
 shadows of memory. " Dust to dust ," 
 the words struck no answering spark in 
 my intelligence, he was mine through 
 so inalienable a right to him. 
 
 All was over and I was still numb. 
 I slept a drugged sleep that night, rose 
 early as I had for so long and hurried 
 with my clothes, brushing my hair with 
 rapid strokes before the glass, yet hardly 
 noticing myself. 
 
 10 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 A voice spoke : " Why are you hurry- 
 ing so? " 
 
 With poised, uplifted arm stopped in 
 mid-air, my mind repeated to myself: 
 " Why are you hurrying so? What 
 have you to hurry for? No one needs 
 you no<w/" 
 
 The brush clattered to the floor. I 
 stood there, petrified. I looked at my 
 hands my empty hands and the words 
 burst from me aloud, " No one needs 
 me now! " 
 
 God! The horror of that revelation! 
 It enveloped me in a clammy wind 
 from a land of uttermost desolation. I 
 felt the dew spring out on my forehead. 
 I stared at my face in the glass and 
 asked it, " Is that you? the wife the 
 ii 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 mother the woman that nobody in the 
 wide world needs any more?" and I 
 answered, " Nobody in all this world 
 needs my willing hands to serve; no- 
 body needs my love." 
 
 Until that hour hell had been only 
 a word to me, sin but little more. I 
 had listened, with somewhat incredulous 
 ears, to those of the more emotional 
 religious faiths who experienced what 
 they called " the conviction of sin," or 
 " conversion," and wondered what they 
 meant. 
 
 I understood now, for in that moment 
 I experienced a " conviction," not of 
 sin that could be atoned for and laid 
 aside by the grace of God, but of some- 
 thing deeper even than sin, appalling 
 
 12 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 in its dreariness, irrevocable to the end 
 of me the conviction of utter useless- 
 ness. My work was done, and I still 
 in the prime of life! All my ability 
 as nurse and mother, all my stories, my 
 songs and verses, all the amusements, the 
 toys I had learned to make out of 
 paper, all my gifts of cheer and com- 
 fort were no better than so much human 
 waste. For now no little hands would 
 reach out " Oh, mamma! Give me!" 
 when soldiers, horses, Indians or funny 
 animals grew under my deft scissors; 
 no little eyes would sparkle with the 
 light of fairyland because of me. All 
 was over. 
 
 I heard myself whisper: " Now I 
 know there is a hell and it is this des- 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 olation. Life has cast me out. No- 
 body needs me, and yet I am denied 
 death that I may follow my husband 
 and son. But even they do not need 
 me now! " 
 
 I felt as if I were sinking or, rather, 
 I had a feeling as if some deep, sup- 
 porting tide of inner warmth, will, en- 
 ergy slowly forsook me, melted out of 
 my flesh and very bones and oozed away. 
 It was like a subterranean spring whose 
 existence I for the first time became 
 conscious of through its sudden absence. 
 A sense of cessation took possession of 
 me the whole interior machinery of 
 my being appeared stopped at once. 
 The voice was right why should I 
 hurry? Why should I even dress, now 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 or ever again? Why go through all 
 the meaningless antics of a meaningless 
 day? Why even live? Why O Lord! 
 let me not depart in peace, the woman 
 with the empty hands? 
 
 How long I remained standing in 
 this strange mental condition this sense 
 of illumination on life's austere, un- 
 mitigated meanings I do not know. 
 Katie, the maid, knocked. I heard 
 without being able to tell myself what 
 the sound was. Then she called my 
 name in frightened tones and asked if 
 I were awake. 
 
 Awake! I opened the door and stared 
 at her. She said breakfast " was wait- 
 ing this long time " would I like a 
 tray brought up, perhaps? I felt her 
 15 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 anxious, sympathetic eyes studying me 
 from head to foot. She had been with 
 me a long time and loved me as much 
 as a maid can love a mistress. I an- 
 swered I'd be down presently, and she 
 went away, troubled and perplexed. 
 She pitied me, but she could not un- 
 derstand; yet in all that great city she 
 was the one person who had a heartfelt 
 interest in me, and she was nothing of 
 mine! In a month she would be mar- 
 ried and go away with her man. 
 
 The thought came to me : " This is 
 a large world with millions of people. 
 How grotesque it would be if there is 
 no one in it who needs just me. There 
 must be some one, somewhere." The 
 idea spurred me. Again I hurried with 
 16 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 my dressing. I would find that some 
 one who needed me. 
 
 After I had eaten I went out and 
 walked. I looked for young children 
 of my boy's age, but there seemed to 
 be none roaming the streets. I suppose 
 they were in school. Mothers with 
 little children I passed quickly they 
 did not need me. 
 
 I went into a department store. 
 Polite clerks asked: "Anything I can 
 show you, madam? " One, I remem- 
 ber, said : " Here's the very latest in 
 'fancy hose special sale to-day!" 
 
 My face must have frightened her, 
 for she murmured a hasty apology and 
 sidled off. They wanted my money, 
 not me. I was nothing to them; they 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 had their own lives and friends, mothers 
 and sweethearts. Millions of busy, 
 happy people in those great stores, 
 buying and selling, looking and pricing, 
 calculating and desiring, endlessly surg- 
 ing to and fro in the search for things, 
 but there was no tiny corner for me 
 in their intimacies. 
 
 I returned to the street. A Salva- 
 tion Army lassie passed a little, aus- 
 tere figure that seemed to say, " All 
 these things for which you people 
 struggle, surging to and fro, are but 
 vanity of the flesh and joyless mockery 
 of the spirit. Think of the souls to 
 save! " 
 
 Ah, she could help me! She could 
 tell me where to find some one who 
 18 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 needed just me! I turned and looked 
 after her, but long before I had made 
 up my mind to speak she was out of 
 sight. 
 
 I passed a Catholic church and saw 
 a woman entering. She was shabby and 
 poor and old. Didn't she need a 
 friend? Or was she finding all she 
 needed behind that swinging door? 
 Perhaps who knew? I might find 
 something there. I walked around the 
 block twice; then slowly followed the 
 woman into the hushed silence. 
 
 She was kneeling, telling her beads 
 before a picture of the Mater Dolorosa. 
 I knelt beside her and my heart cried 
 out: " O Mother of Sorrows, you, too, 
 knew the meaning of empty hands!" 
 
 19 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 And this woman beside me in rusty 
 widow's weeds, were her hands empty? 
 I could not bear it and went out hastily 
 without speaking. 
 
 20 
 
II 
 
 LOOKING back over that and the days 
 immediately following, I seem to have 
 lived in a sort of dream of emotional 
 revelation on all life's subtler values 
 an unnatural state of vision in which 
 my will was almost paralysed. I longed 
 to talk with some one and pour out 
 the thoughts seething in me, and it 
 seemed as if that were all I required 
 to bring me back to normal conscious- 
 ness; yet I could not force myself to 
 speak, and even the few friends who 
 called to offer condolences I denied my- 
 self to. The shock of the conviction 
 21 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 that my work was done, coming on me 
 in that frightfully sudden way, had 
 broken my nerve. With the supreme 
 reason for doing everything swept away 
 at a blow, there seemed no reason for 
 doing anything; and the more I looked 
 about me, the less I saw in life for me. 
 I did not then appreciate that I was 
 suffering from the universal malady of 
 all souls risen above the plane of animal 
 enjoyments when brought face to face 
 with the stern verities of loss and grief, 
 of life in terms of the irrevocable. Oh, 
 if I could bring back just one hour of 
 the blessed time when some one belonged 
 to me! Yet with a whole worldful of 
 people I was as much alone as if I were 
 the last woman. 
 
 22 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 Now for the first time I began to 
 realise the loss of my husband. When 
 he died I felt as if I only packed my 
 grief up temporarily, as one lays aside 
 clothing too heavy for the season, but 
 keeps it ready to hand against a fitting 
 opportunity; for I had never wished 
 my boy to fall under the shadow of 
 sorrow and had never put on mourning; 
 indeed, I do not think he ever knew 
 that his father was what the world calls 
 dead. In the early days of his sickness 
 nothing, of course, was said before the 
 child; later, when he began to ask, I 
 told him that his father had been very 
 sick and had had to take a long vaca- 
 tion in a beautiful place where we 
 should some day join him. He seemed 
 
 23 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 happy in the thought and eager to be 
 "well enough to go, too," and I left 
 it that way. Little by little the subject 
 dropped; we sank into a quiet sense of 
 waiting that needed no discussion until 
 the time came. 
 
 Now that the waiting was over I felt 
 I owed it as a wifely duty to clothe 
 myself in widow's mourning and show 
 the proper outward signs of grief. 
 With this change came the tremendous 
 realisation: The world is so full of 
 widows. 
 
 Never had I dreamed how many there 
 were how many of us! Everywhere 
 everywhere all over the wide earth, in 
 all walks of life widows! Thousands 
 and tens of thousands of us widows! 
 24 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 I now walked the streets constantly; 
 nothing else distracted or interested me; 
 and I was always watching for widows. 
 Women in mourning fascinated me. I 
 sometimes followed them for blocks to 
 their very doors, perhaps longing to 
 speak to them; to ask if their loss had 
 been as great as mine; if it had meant 
 all, all, all of life, the curtain dropped 
 and the lights out; if anything had 
 helped them bear it when it came; if 
 they had since found anything worth 
 while. But I never spoke. Convention 
 held me silent. 
 
 The world was so full of widows: 
 This thought or revelation, if you will 
 was what actually laid the foundation 
 for my becoming a suffragist, because 
 
 25 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 it initiated a vital change in my whole 
 mental attitude and horizon. My out- 
 look on the world widened. A new 
 appreciation arose in me, a new sense 
 of sisterhood quite distinct from my pre- 
 vious feelings regarding women. For 
 the very first time in my life I became 
 conscious of an idea held in common 
 with other women, and I came to the 
 realisation of a class of women widows 
 through being one of the sorrowers 
 myself. 
 
 To men, I fear, this will seem very 
 far-fetched; but men so seldom under- 
 stand that woman is by nature an in- 
 dividualist. She meets her world al- 
 ways in terms of " you and me." The 
 gang instinct in boys has but a feeble 
 26 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 echo in her school days; and later, the 
 home encases her with its multitudinous 
 and always individual duties and 
 claims to her attention. Perhaps if she 
 had her children half a dozen at a time 
 she would get some idea of a squad at 
 work or play, of a group with common 
 elements, concerted activities and aims; 
 but every member of her household 
 is of different age and must be met with 
 different treatment, often with different 
 food, mealtimes, bedtimes, clothing and 
 regulations at large. Her relations are 
 thus all private and intimate if she lives 
 the average life of a woman in the 
 average home. Only the college women 
 among my own set seem to develop a 
 consciousness of class as distinct from per- 
 27 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 sons, an idea of a body of people united 
 by common ties and acting as one. 
 
 I cannot too strongly say it, that my 
 feelings during this second period I 
 call it " the widow stage " of my evolu- 
 tion were so different from my former 
 self up to the time my boy died that I 
 noted them with positive surprise. The 
 weirdest ideas now took possession of 
 me. If I saw a widow who looked as 
 if she had been one a long time, I felt 
 I wanted her to comfort me; or, if she 
 seemed to be fresh to it, I longed to 
 put my arms around her and comfort 
 her. Then again I thought: Suppose 
 I were to give a huge reception to 
 widows only and we all told our ex- 
 28 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 periences; or: Suppose we formed a 
 club, with a Ways and Means Com- 
 mittee to take charge of the new ones 
 and show them how to get back to life 
 when three-quarters of them is buried. 
 And then the widows that have been 
 left poor to struggle with life, not know- 
 ing how to meet it alone my heart went 
 out especially to them, for I had been 
 left comparatively rich. I had money 
 for the visible decencies of mourning, 
 leisure for the decencies of grief. It 
 would be part of my new sisterhood's 
 work to provide mourning and the 
 wherewithal for a little space of sor- 
 row's leisure to those who must toil 
 incessantly for bread, with not an hour 
 for the deep things of the heart. 
 29 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 Remember the idea of suffrage never 
 once entered my head ! Yet in this feel- 
 ing of sisterhood I was slowly preparing 
 for it, for, strange though it may seem, 
 those morbid, tear-stained days were, 
 nevertheless, days of tremendous inner 
 growth, of quickening of the spirit by 
 a single word, as new in my existence 
 as if dropped out of heaven Sisterhood. 
 
 The other day I came across a pas- 
 sage in William James's Memories and 
 Studies that expresses what I mean: 
 
 " Some thoughts act almost like me- 
 chanical centres of crystallization; facts 
 cluster of themselves about them. Such 
 a thought was that of the gradual growth 
 of all things by natural processes out 
 of natural antecedents. Until the mid- 
 30 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 die of the nineteenth century no one 
 had grasped it 'wholesale." 
 
 I had grasped the idea of women 
 wholesale; not yet all women that was 
 coming by a process of " crystallisa- 
 tion " ; but a large class of women. Nor 
 had I submerged the sense of social 
 distinctions, so much keener in women 
 than in men, in the greater sense of the 
 Common Good of all women a sense 
 so large and thrilling it was presently 
 to sweep me off my feet and carry me, 
 through undreamed-of emotions, into 
 undreamed-of appreciations. 
 
Ill 
 
 How small a circumstance determines 
 a life's trend when the auspicious hour 
 arrives! My new trend was given me 
 by four men, running. They elbowed 
 me; one flung me roughly out of his 
 way. A hand caught me as I was fall- 
 ing. A pleasing voice asked, " Are you 
 hurt? " 
 
 I thanked the voice, and looked into 
 a pair of very beautiful grey eyes under 
 a fluff of auburn hair. 
 
 Next: " Buy a ' Voter'?" asked the 
 pleasing voice, and the rescuing hand 
 held a paper toward me. " I'm sure 
 32 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 you're interested in votes for women. 
 This is our official organ." 
 
 I recoiled. Votes for women! I " in- 
 terested " in the shrieking sisterhood? 
 Heaven forbid! But since the little lady 
 had saved me a possible broken bone 
 or two by her prompt action at a critical 
 moment, I was bound to be civil; so I 
 shook my head and replied politely: 
 
 " I'm afraid I'm not interested. I'm 
 a Virginian, and you know we Southern 
 women are brought up to believe a 
 woman's place is in her home. We 
 think if she takes proper care of that 
 and her husband and children, she has 
 her hands full enough with the duties 
 God has called her to." 
 
 " Yes, of course she has," admitted 
 
 33 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 the voice just as politely, and I was given 
 a charming smile. " We believe that 
 too if a woman has a home. If she 
 has a husband and children and work 
 enough to occupy her from morning till 
 night, she isn't called to active work in 
 the suffrage movement. 
 
 " But, you see, thousands of women 
 haven't homes not as you understand 
 the word. Their homes are dark tene- 
 ments, attics, cellars; they have drunken 
 husbands, ragged children, and not even 
 sufficient food to feed them. We feel 
 called on to help those just because we 
 have comfortable homes. 
 
 " And then there are the tens of 
 thousands of matrimonially superfluous 
 women who is to look after their in- 
 34 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 terests if they don't do it themselves? 
 Did you know that in Massachusetts 
 alone there are thirty thousand more 
 women of marriageable age than men 
 women who can't have husbands there 
 simply because there aren't husbands 
 enough to go round? 
 
 " Still, if your husband and children 
 take all your time, don't you see you 
 can help us in other ways? We need 
 every woman we can get to join the 
 ranks of those demanding the suffrage." 
 
 My husband and children! I left her 
 hastily. I almost ran away from her. 
 The irony of my words! The banality 
 of my argument! Parrotlike, I had re- 
 peated the man-made platitude of a by- 
 gone generation on the " home and mak- 
 
 35 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 ing some good man happy " I, who 
 hadn't so much as a parrot to make 
 happy with a crust! 
 
 I found myself presently at the Bat- 
 tery, looking into the water, listening 
 to the plash-plash of little wavelets tell- 
 ing me the futility of my life and its 
 specious arguments. I was ashamed 
 then of the way I had deceived those 
 honest grey eyes and had let the little 
 lady think me something other and bet- 
 ter than I was I who was only a woman 
 utterly empty-handed in the world at 
 large. 
 
 And why had I scurried away? Was 
 I afraid, or ashamed to be taken for a 
 woman with an interest in other women's 
 interests? Was it so much nobler to 
 
 36 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 be taken as I had allowed myself to 
 be taken by the grey-eyed lady for a 
 woman whose only interest was men? 
 Or, perhaps, nothing at all! But what 
 had she said about " matrimonially 
 superfluous women " thirty thousand? 
 Impossible! I had misunderstood her 
 she must have said three thousand. 
 Why, thirty thousand would be an army 
 an army of superfluous women! 
 
 The whole idea of " superfluous " 
 women was a brand-new one to me, and 
 after I recovered from the sting of my 
 personal feelings I experienced a sense 
 of fellowship with women as a class 
 larger than anything I had felt before. 
 Those thirty thousand left-overs some- 
 how belonged as a chapter in my sister- 
 
 37 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 hood of widows, and were, oh, so much 
 more to be pitied because they had never 
 known the blessing of a good man's love 
 and protection. 
 
 My eyes at this were suddenly opened 
 to some aspects of the world I had never 
 before considered, for I may as well 
 confess that in the bottom of my heart 
 I had always had distinct contempt for 
 an old maid. I'd taken it for granted 
 that if a woman wasn't married it was 
 her own fault she hadn't made herself 
 attractive enough to men in general and 
 one nice man in particular. But when 
 you have thirty thousand surplus women, 
 somebody's bound to get left out no mat- 
 ter what they do. 
 
 Then thought I: If they simply can't 
 38 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 get husbands to look after their legal 
 interests, who does it for them? Some 
 other woman's husband, who doesn't 
 care a rap about them personally or 
 oughtn't to? 
 
 In one minute, with that before me, 
 my life-long cherished view of the whole 
 question of marrying and getting in mar- 
 riage underwent reconstruction ; and that 
 was the precise minute when I began 
 to be a suffragist! The tide of my mind 
 flowed on from sisterhood to votes for 
 women as the natural consequence of 
 insufficient husbands. For the first time 
 in my life I appreciated the real mean- 
 ing of " Taxation without representa- 
 tion." 
 
 Within another minute or so I had 
 39 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 thought of a dozen questions to put to 
 the grey-eyed girl. I retraced my steps 
 faster even than I had hurried off, but 
 she was nowhere to be seen. All 
 through the neighbourhood I walked; 
 there was no one remotely resembling 
 her. 
 
 That day I went home with a new 
 interest, a feeling of zest. My very 
 shame at myself stimulated me it gave 
 me something to do. Next morning at 
 the same hour I was back on my beat 
 looking for my suffragist, though with- 
 out success; but the more I thought 
 of her, the more I sought her, the more 
 I felt I simply must find her and ex- 
 plain. 
 
 I am, like most of my class and 
 40 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 breed, a person of a good deal of sin- 
 gleness of purpose once my interest is 
 aroused, and finding the grey-eyed girl 
 now became almost an obsession with 
 me. Apart from the questions I meant 
 to ask her, she appealed to something 
 in my own life and traditions. I could 
 talk with her, woman to woman, about 
 insufficient husbands, after I had con- 
 fessed to her that I, also, was a super- 
 fluous woman. 
 
 For about two weeks I industriously 
 tramped the neighbourhood where I 
 had first seen her it never occurred 
 to me to look up any of the various 
 suffrage organisations and find her that 
 way and I finally discovered her stand- 
 ing on a soap-box! She was address- 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 ing a small gathering, mostly women 
 that seemed to be of the better paid 
 classes, stenographers, cashiers, and so 
 forth. 
 
 I wormed my way through the circle, 
 pushing right and left, until I reached 
 a place directly in front of her. Our 
 eyes met. She recognised me, smiled 
 and slightly bowed, and went on: 
 
 ". . . You say: *I am only one. 
 One doesn't count'; and so you don't 
 enroll with us. 
 
 "Oh, friends, every one does count! 
 Our ranks are made of one and one, 
 and we need every one. 
 
 "Others of you say: 'But I'm so 
 busy; it's all I can do to get along 
 myself. I have no time for anything 
 42 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 outside my regular work.' Are there 
 any here too busy for interest in the 
 Cause, in the great woman movement? 
 We need numbers, of course, but still 
 more do we need enthusiastic interest, 
 moral support, public sentiment; and 
 you, friends, are part of that. There's 
 work to be done for the world, but we 
 can't do it unless we have public sen- 
 timent back of us to support our efforts. 
 Give your interest, then, if you have 
 no time for anything else. 
 
 " Oh, my friends, your help is needed, 
 and every one here now can help in 
 breaking the way for the rest to follow. 
 We of this day and generation are the 
 bridge builders into a more beautiful 
 future for those who have so little now. 
 
 43 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 Our ideals to-day will be the realities 
 of to-morrow. Only let us work for 
 them work together as one great sister- 
 hood, without class prejudice, or class 
 distinction. Let us work, North, South, 
 East and West, for the common good, 
 each taking part in the woman move- 
 ment sweeping around the world. 
 
 " Every woman is needed, the South- 
 ern gentlewoman as much as any." 
 Her eyes were earnestly searching my 
 face and I saw she was appealing espe- 
 cially to me; then she leaned a little 
 forward and spoke directly to me 
 " Oh, my friend, the cause of woman 
 needs you!" 
 
 A light that was lightness of spirit, 
 of heart and of understanding broke 
 44 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 upon me. I was needed at last! Count- 
 less women, or rather women's lives, 
 seemed pressing around me from all 
 quarters of the globe; women with toil- 
 worn hands and aching backs, carry- 
 ing the burdens of maternity; lives 
 starved and weary with the struggle 
 for bare existence on the planet; lonely 
 women who could never find a mate; 
 friendless women and cripples a vast 
 sisterhood of all the women in the world, 
 and I was one of them. 
 
 Instantly after, I felt appalled and 
 ashamed that I should be able to live 
 at ease and bemuse myself with grief, 
 while hundreds of thousands women 
 like me must work incessantly to keep 
 bread in their mouths; and at the same 
 
 45 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 time I felt exultant that I was called to 
 help; that I was still in a world that 
 could help. I was needed! "Every 
 one was needed," the speaker said. I 
 was at least one I counted for some- 
 thing. 
 
 A salvation feeling flooded me, lifted 
 me out of myself and carried me aloft 
 on its wings. I can think of no other 
 word than " salvation " for what I then 
 experienced. I had the vivifying sense 
 of a changed life. 
 
 I lost count of time and flowing words 
 until I saw my little grey-eyed friend 
 coming toward me with outstretched 
 hand. I laid mine in hers and said: 
 "I'm so glad! Use me any way you 
 can." 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 She has told me since the tears were 
 rolling down my cheeks. I did not 
 know it. She slipped her arm through 
 mine and took me with her. 
 
 47 
 
IV 
 
 I THOUGHT at first mine was an ex- 
 ceptional, dramatic and almost acci- 
 dental conversion to the cause of woman 
 suffrage. Talking with other workers 
 I have learned to my surprise it was 
 rather the contrary that mine was 
 unique only in its extremities of grief 
 and realisations, not in its general pat- 
 tern, nor in the fervency with which 
 the cause is embraced, once the feeling 
 of the Great Sisterhood of Women takes 
 possession of the imagination. With all 
 converts that appeal is to a basic in- 
 stinct, 'woman's hunger to be needed; 
 48 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 an instinct so profoundly embedded in 
 the very fibres of her being that with- 
 out it she ceases to be woman. 
 
 Did you ever think of that instinct? 
 think how, back to the very dawn of 
 the world, woman has felt herself 
 needed by her young? Yes, even the 
 beasts of the field and the birds of the 
 air feel it too. And when in the dark 
 recesses of her mind she knew her off- 
 spring needed food and protection, and 
 she responded to their cries, it was her 
 first conscious recognition of a relation- 
 ship that had a claim a claim for a 
 personal service antedating the tribe, 
 the herd, the hunting pack, and taking 
 precedence over all other claims of 
 pack, herd, tribe, nation, society, or the 
 
 49 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 world at large. For ages piled on ages 
 that instinct has been silently growing, 
 eternally responded to in woman's na- 
 ture as it never has in man's; and for 
 all those ages that instinct has been 
 almost entirely absorbed and gratified 
 within the four walls of home. 
 
 And now it is the world that has 
 changed, not woman; for the plain truth 
 is that the modern home, the modern 
 family with its adjunct schools and 
 tutors of every art, the modern house 
 with its labour-saving devices, the mod- 
 ern industrial community with its divi- 
 sion of labour, do not begin to use up 
 the values of the modern woman's life. 
 While the simple life of the up-to-date 
 apartment has been releasing volumes 
 SO 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 of energy and active devotion once ab- 
 sorbed in the complicated, house-ridden 
 lives of our grandmothers, present-day 
 woman with her higher education and 
 her ambition for self-improvement has 
 also been acquiring larger and larger 
 values in herself. She now has more 
 to give and less to give it to in her 
 home than her grandmother in hers. 
 Her home labours have shrunk and her 
 world has enlarged, and it is a world 
 with a good many things in it our 
 grandmothers hardly knew the names 
 of popular magazines and the daily 
 news of everything from pure milk to 
 murder, theatres and symphony con- 
 certs, slums, sweatshops, child labour, 
 Browning clubs, domestic economics, 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 the servant problem, woman's increased 
 earning capacity and financial independ- 
 ence. In other words, ours is a world 
 of far greater variety of pleasures and 
 opportunities and a wider call to our 
 sympathies. 
 
 But the change in myself was, I think, 
 much more than a change in point of 
 view; it was an actual development of 
 my psychic nature. ,And this is true 
 of the entire movement. What we are 
 witnessing to-day is a psychological de- 
 velopment, wholesale: a primeval in- 
 stinct is rising like a river out of its bed 
 and overflowing new territory; an in- 
 stinct that purled along for centuries on 
 the personal plane, contented, stopped 
 by the garden gate; now discontented, 
 52 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 turbulently flooding out into the broad 
 highway of the world. Woman as a 
 class is, as it were, shifting up her centre 
 of gravity; as a class she is entering a 
 different plane of conscious activity and 
 passing from the strictly personal to 
 the impersonal; from concrete interests 
 in material things to abstract interests 
 in ideals. But with all its turbulence, 
 it is at bottom the fidelity to a special 
 tradition lasting through the events of 
 a new existence. We are following a 
 traced way; we are living out our heri- 
 tage from the mother instinct of the 
 ages the desire to be needed 
 bequeathed us in direct succession 
 since mother instinct came into the 
 world. 
 
 53 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 Instinct! that is to me the magic 
 word, the key to the mystery of the 
 whole woman movement; that is the 
 invincible, overwhelming force back of 
 it all. 
 
 Stop and think what instinct really 
 means. When Nature wants a job done 
 a big job like keeping alive a species 
 or populating the earth; a job requiring 
 sacrifice and self-effacement and endless 
 work and watching does she call in 
 reason, argument, philosophy, art, sci- 
 ence, religion, economics, or philan- 
 thropy? Not a bit of it! She hands 
 that job over to a fundamental instinct 
 and instinct gets that job done. The 
 hardest thing in the world to change is 
 a fundamental instinct, for it will live 
 54 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 on for generations through untold cen- 
 turies after the natural object of it has 
 disappeared. 
 
 In women, the instinct for service has 
 survived a large part of the need for 
 her former specialised services in the 
 home; but that instinct must satisfy it- 
 self somewhere. A woman will go 
 through fire and water to give herself 
 to what needs her most; she will sac- 
 rifice her comfort, her pleasures, her 
 ambitions, her beauty, her reputation 
 and even her very life, content in the 
 thought she has served a loved one. 
 Literally, she will stop at nothing once 
 the instinct calls her to act, whether 
 the call come from a beloved person, 
 a beloved institution, a beloved cause, or 
 
 55 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 a beloved ideal. That is what made 
 the suffragists in the beginning; that is 
 what is now turning them wholesale 
 into suffragettes. 
 
 I know, as thousands of us know, 
 that no matter what my social traditions, 
 or what my reason tells me, I am now 
 ready to fight; as ready as the serene 
 old cow is ready to gore the wolf 
 circling her and her calf, or as the timid 
 sparrow is ready to fly at the snake 
 crawling toward her nest and try to 
 peck out his eyes for him. It is the 
 readiness of millions of timid mothers 
 before us. Reason says : " Fly away 
 and save your own feathers " ; instinct 
 tells me to stay where I am and fight 
 defending the thing I love, and talk 
 
 56 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 about it afterwards if there's anything 
 left of the enemy when I'm through 
 with him! Nor do I need to pray for 
 courage to join the riot, throw stones, 
 scratch faces, tear clothes, or anything 
 else that comes along in the course of 
 defending my ideals that courage was 
 born in me as my woman's heritage of 
 the ages, and trained by every tradi- 
 tion of my personal life and of the 
 South. 
 
 And here is the important point, it 
 seems to me, the men and the " antis " 
 are missing in the psychology of the 
 present stage of the woman movement, 
 particularly as it is manifesting in Eng- 
 land: When driven to despair of the 
 use of milder methods despair of argu- 
 
 57 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 ment with a wolf, or moral suasion 
 with a snake we start fighting, nerved 
 and spurred to it by one of the oldest 
 instincts in the world defence of our 
 offspring of body or brain. The in- 
 stinct has never changed, for those 
 mothers that lacked the instinct to nour- 
 ish and protect left no offspring in the 
 world; and may Heaven defend us from 
 the woman who isn't womanly enough 
 to stand up and fight, regardless of self- 
 interest, for the thing she loves! The 
 woman who isn't willing to isn't a 
 woman at all; she's only an apology 
 in petticoats. 
 
 Realising this now, I frankly glory 
 in being " a creature of instinct." It 
 makes me feel consciously allied, as I 
 58 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 never did before, with the whole living 
 world, one with its primal forces, par- 
 taker of its progress, assistant creator 
 of its coming achievements. 
 
 59 
 
THE great procession marked the half- 
 way stage between my being a suffragist 
 and a suffragette; it was to me the final 
 loosing of a bondage to an eye-service 
 conventionality. Up to that time I 
 could enthusiastically attend meetings 
 and all that sort of thing, but I couldn't 
 no, I simply could not go out into 
 the public streets and exhibit myself 
 to the gaping multitude. Gracious no! 
 My little cherished dignity would never 
 allow it! What would my friends think 
 if they saw me? I still cared a great 
 deal what people thought about me, 
 60 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 even if I didn't care a rap for the 
 people who did the thinking. But when 
 my grey-eyed friend said: "Of course 
 you must show yourself with us; you 
 must do your share in the open with 
 the new crusaders, not sit back coddling 
 yourself on cushions within your castle 
 walls while the rest march forth afoot 
 carrying the banner of progress," I got 
 terribly ashamed of my cowardice and 
 went along like a lamb. 
 
 The two weeks before the parade 
 I spent mostly in screwing my cour- 
 age up, notch, notch, notch, with all 
 the noble reasons for my joining in 
 I could lay hands on. Every time I 
 quailed at the picture of little home- 
 loving me afoot in the middle of the 
 61 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 street, I repeated what my friend had 
 said, quoted a text, or took thought unto 
 my forbears that had fought and died 
 for the cause of secession in the South; 
 none of which made the picture less 
 dreadful, but only kept my mind off 
 it. Up to the last minute I was still 
 inwardly quaking and quailing and 
 shuddering with outraged conventions, 
 though I was in a do-or-die determi- 
 nation when our division gathered at 
 its meeting-place. 
 
 Just a lot of women like myself! a 
 crowd getting more jammed every min- 
 ute as the hall filled, and every one 
 laughing, chatting, calling back and 
 forth, handclasps and howdy-do's mixed 
 up together, with directions for the 
 62 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 march shooting like rockets through 
 the buzz of voices. Were they all 
 quailing inside, too? They certainly 
 didn't show it and no more would I ! 
 The battle was on die game! 
 
 Presently I became conscious of a 
 subtle, vibrant undertone throughout the 
 room, an electric thrill in the words 
 passing among us: " You here?" and 
 the sharp reply: " Of course I'm here! " 
 Some added: " Do you think I'd let 
 this slip?" 
 
 As my little grey-eyed friend spied 
 me and shot her question through a 
 smile, I shot back: "Of course I'm 
 here!" and began to feel it wasn't so 
 dreadfully unladylike after all. In- 
 deed, I got quite brave about it 
 63 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 and told myself I was glad I'd 
 come. 
 
 A bugle sounded. Almost pell-mell 
 we hurried down to form in line. The 
 band heading our division struck up; 
 the ranks in front of me marked time, 
 swung into step, marched. Before I 
 knew it, I was marking time and 
 moving forward in the great proces- 
 sion. 
 
 My heart beat wildly, partly through 
 nervousness, partly through the excite- 
 ment of the crowd and the music. For 
 some minutes, in front of the throng 
 of strange faces lining the street where 
 we formed, it seemed as if I might 
 faint. Then we wheeled, rank on rank, 
 into Fifth Avenue, and before me, as 
 64 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 far as my eye could reach, stretched 
 that great army of marching women. 
 
 With the first block on the Avenue 
 all my nervousness left me; verily, I 
 seemed to be treading air, not the dust 
 of the common roadway. With an- 
 other block or two, I seemed to be 
 swept entirely out of myself on a re- 
 sistless tide of aspiration, flowing on- 
 ward, ever onward, toward the ideal 
 of universal fraternity, its banners borne 
 aloft by women's hands. 
 
 You never know until you have been 
 in it the tremendous emotion of a pro- 
 cession marching for a cause some- 
 thing never experienced in ordinary life 
 that catches you up and sweeps you 
 along with it, tears you out of yourself 
 
 65 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 and fills you with the strength of hun- 
 dreds. 
 
 For the first time I realised the force 
 of the woman movement gaining head- 
 way all over the civilised world; the 
 sheer mass of it in terms of human 
 flesh and blood. Nothing could stay 
 us now. 
 
 " 'Twere all as well to bid a cloud to 
 
 stand, 
 
 Or hold a running river with the 
 hand." 
 
 Individuals among us might fail and 
 fall out of the procession, but countless 
 others were rising up to take our places. 
 The Cause could not fail. 
 
 I think one can never be quite the 
 66 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 same again after such an experience. 
 I was not. Somewhere along the line 
 of march I had shed the shackles of con- 
 vention and left behind my petty self and 
 its withholdings. Thenceforth I felt I 
 could withhold nothing from the Cause 
 not ease and personal comfort, or 
 money, or dignity, or even reputation. 
 The whole of me had been called out 
 in a burst; I felt too big for the old 
 shell. The old shell pinched my soul! 
 And from that experience, when we 
 disbanded, I walked away a suffra- 
 gette ! 
 
 67 
 
VI 
 
 THE event that made me admittedly 
 a suffragette I must of necessity touch 
 very lightly here; enough to say it was 
 a matter the name of which I barely 
 knew, and whose meaning in terms of 
 a life to live I didn't know at all. The 
 case that converted me to militancy was 
 a girl brought from my own State and 
 rescued, running away, half-clothed, 
 half-starved, by my grey-eyed friend. 
 I took the child home until we could 
 decide what to do with her, and thus 
 I heard her story. 
 
 Though I learned soon enough it 
 68 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 was the common one, it was my first 
 glimpse into the underworld. I walked 
 the floor almost the entire night, boil- 
 ing. Remember, I belonged to the 
 " sheltered " classes; I had been out- 
 wardly protected as well as inwardly 
 from this knowledge, and when it came, 
 it struck me like a blow between the 
 eyes. Could such conditions exist in a 
 civilised world? in the same world in 
 which I had lived secure? Little Min- 
 nie and my friend left me no manner 
 of doubt about it this was no unusual 
 thing to happen to an unprotected girl. 
 Worse than that, the laws of all the 
 States set the " age of consent " in a 
 girl's 'teens and so, this poverty-pinched 
 mountaineer's child, unable to read and 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 write, younger in education, intellect, 
 judgment, knowledge of the world and 
 moral sense than my little dead son 
 of ten and in my fond eyes he was 
 scarcely more than a baby this poor 
 starveling girl had been endowed by 
 law with the power to " consent " to 
 her ruin, not knowing what it meant 
 then, or would mean thereafter. 
 
 In the fire of my indignation two 
 words were burnt upon my brain 
 "THE LAWS" laws made by men 
 for women that must be unmade by 
 women for women. 
 
 Up to that period I seem to have 
 
 thought very little in detail of the legal 
 
 aspect of the woman movement. I had 
 
 put it to myself as " working for the 
 
 70 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 cause of progress," " helpfulness," " the 
 great sisterhood, bettering the conditions 
 of all women," vaguely, and without 
 formulating the betterment in terms of 
 specific laws and statutes on the books. 
 Now it suddenly came home to me that 
 if we were to better anything we must 
 get right down to the laws, and we 
 could do nothing with the laws until 
 we had the ballot. " Votes for women " 
 had been to me sort of halleluiah-and- 
 amen. That night it took on a poign- 
 ant, insistent, definite meaning, col- 
 oured with the tragedy of a little ruined 
 life, better dead a thousand times than 
 living with the memories of its past. 
 
 I flamed. Literally, I saw red. 
 Something must be done! We women 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 must stop talking and act! Fight! 
 Throw stones! Do anything, it didn't 
 matter what, so long as we got the vote 
 and could legislate in our own protec- 
 tion and the protection of the children! 
 
 The fury of that mood passed off 
 with daylight, but its marks remain 
 with me still, and I am only one of 
 thousands of women who have felt the 
 same at least once in their lives over 
 man's injustice. 
 
 I admit it is quite useless for mere 
 man or an anti-suffragist to discuss the 
 situation with me calmly; tell me cold 
 reasons why " it isn't expedient to give 
 woman the unrestricted franchise," or 
 point out " what women haven't yet 
 done in the States where they do vote, 
 72 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 therefore we have every reason to sup- 
 pose " and so on, ad nauseam; not be- 
 cause I'm deaf to reason, or opposed to 
 calm argument in their place, but be- 
 cause when an instinct boils over it 
 sweeps away reasons and arguments and 
 rushes into action along the open way. 
 Instinct invariably says: "Do!" And 
 that is all I think of Do! Do some- 
 thing, and do it quickly and effectively. 
 Let there be an end of shilly-shallying. 
 We militant suffragettes feel we are 
 soldiers of the Common Good of 
 Woman, and many of us have reached 
 the place where we are ready to fight 
 and die for the Cause, if our dying will 
 help it one step forward, as our ances- 
 tors faced death and fought through 
 
 73 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 the Civil War or the Revolution for 
 causes they held dearer than life. 
 
 But are we fighting now, sex against 
 sex, woman against man? At times it 
 almost seems that way ; it feels that way, 
 too, in my moments of indignation at 
 the injustice of some of the man-made 
 laws for us. I have what I certainly 
 never had in my youth a sense of 
 opposition to the entire sex. I have 
 grown pugnacious, and only the mem- 
 ory of personal loved ones keeps me 
 from becoming bitter toward every 
 creature with a vote that I am deprived 
 of. 
 
 And yet to say that we my friend 
 and I and thousands more suffragettes 
 like us no longer desire domestic life, 
 74 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 that we wouldn't marry the right man 
 if he properly asked us to, is the ab- 
 surdity of an infantile mind that doesn't 
 know what women are made of. 
 
 Even though a suffragette, I am still 
 a woman as much as I ever was, and 
 more so in some ways. Still, I must 
 say this I could never marry again 
 on the former terms. I could not now 
 engage to deliver over all my thought, 
 time, energy, devotion, ambition and 
 money to my husband's and my indi- 
 vidual interests as I once did; for with 
 the larger development of my mind, 
 the wider horizon opened to my view 
 through suffragism, the sense of great 
 issues and a closer sisterhood, I can no 
 longer regard the home as a purely 
 
 75 
 
THE WOMAN WITH EMPTY HANDS 
 
 personal affair between two people and 
 their offspring. I see the home now 
 as part of an immense, complicated, em- 
 bracing whole to which every woman 
 owes a duty; to which she is bound by 
 high moral obligation to render what- 
 ever service of work or support in its 
 forward progress she is able to give. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
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