An American Suffragette | Page 6

when they
gave public demonstrations of their powers, or conversed with their
Chelæ without the medium of written or spoken language.
When he left America the woman suffrage movement in New York was
a subject of more or less ridicule; a few wealthy women had begun to
identify themselves with it, but they were called "faddists" and their
efforts were not taken seriously. It was apparent now that the suffrage
cause had been given the impetus of the world-wide movement that
was reaching the women of all countries, and had changed from a
gospel of tracts to a militant crusade for their share of the duties and
responsibilities of life and the power properly to discharge them. Never
had he seen so many of the real leaders of New York society engaged
in any work, charitable or otherwise, as had taken part in this parade,
marching on foot the full two miles, and often side by side with the
working-women of the city.
He had once seen a painting of the Maid of Orleans in a foreign gallery
that carried so much of spiritual earnestness that he felt that he could
appreciate how easy it was for the French army instinctively to follow
her lead, and how much easier it was for the poor dupes of ignorance

and superstition to believe that this overmastering spiritual nature was
the product of witchcraft.
Absorbing though these thoughts were, they did not exclude another
train which had to do with the mysterious banner bearer, and as he
entered his hotel he clenched his right hand suddenly and muttered to
himself, "I must dismiss her from my thoughts."
CHAPTER III
THE MYSTERIOUS YOUNG WOMAN
Dr. Earl took a late dinner at his sister's house, after having spent an
hour with his fiancée on the way. There were just the four of them at
table, his sister and her husband, his brother and himself.
His sister was the oldest member of his family, which comprised but
the three of them, his father and mother having died some years before.
During the college days of both himself and his brother, who was two
years his junior, his sister had assumed the rôle of a mother to them,
and right devotedly had she filled the part. She had been more of a
"pal" to them than anything else, and some years' residence in England
during her schooldays had broadened her vision of the true meaning
and value of this relation between those of opposite sex and particularly
between brother and sister.
She possessed now, as always, the unbounded respect and confidence
of these two young men of thoroughly dissimilar character and
temperament, and she was the repository of the sacred secrets of each
of them, which she was warned she must never betray to the other. And
she never did.
Eight years previous to these occurrences, she had married George
Ramsey, President of the Gotham Trust Company, which institution
had recently absorbed half a dozen weaker concerns doing a similar
business, and more recently had taken over from the New York bankers,
who were stockholders in the trust company, the handling of most of

the public utility securities that were floated in this country. But George
Ramsey was not the pretentious pawnbroker in spirit and manner that
so often presides over the destinies of American banks, but he was a
philosophical financier who understood perfectly the strength and
weakness of the system under which he worked, and who, while he
wondered at the supine idiocy of the people that would permit of the
prevailing Dick Turpin methods of high finance, never took his eye
from the horizon of public action, where daily he expected to see "the
cloud no bigger than a man's hand" that was to expand into the storm
that would engulf these and other long permitted public ills.
Many times recently he had sounded the alarm of the dangers attending
recapitalization of properties that already bore a heavy weight of
watered securities, but his colleagues had laughed at what they termed
his fears, and had attempted to reassure him of their complete
possession of the departments of government that controlled such
matters. Bred to the banking business, he had no thought of transferring
his abilities and energies to the realm of statesmanship, but in the
sanctum of his own home he would often pour forth his disgust with,
and his fear of, such methods, to the tall, clear-eyed, clear-brained and
beautiful woman from whom John and Frank Earl were wont to seek
advice in their perplexities. And from her he always received valuable
suggestions, a keener insight into the motives of men, a broader, more
humane view-point, and withal a firmness to set himself, in part, where
the law of the land should have been set