The Ballad of Lost Causes

(About 465 years after Villon.)

    Tell me in what spot remote
      Do the antis dwell to-day,
    Those who did not want to vote,
      Feared their sex’s prompt decay? 
      Where are those who used to say: 
    “Home alone is woman’s sphere;
      Only those should vote who slay”? 
    Where the snows of yester-year?

    Where are those who used to quote
      Nietzsche’s words in dread array? 
    Where the ancient crones who wrote: 
      “Women rule through Beauty’s sway”? 
      And those lovers, where are they,
    Who could hold no woman dear
      If she had the ballot?  Nay! 
    Where the snows of yester-year?

    Prince, inquire no more, I pray,
      Whither antis disappear. 
    Suffrage won; they melt away,
      Like the snows of yester-year.

Thoughts at an Anti Meeting

    There are no homes in suffrage states,
      There are no children, glad and good,
    There, men no longer seek for mates,
      And women lose their womanhood.

    This I believe without debate,
      And yet I ask—­and ask in vain—­
    Why no one in a suffrage state
      Has moved to change things back again?

A MASQUE OF TEACHERS

AND

THE UNCONSCIOUS SUFFRAGISTS

The Ideal Candidates

(A by-law of the New York Board of Education says:  “No married woman shall be appointed to any teaching or supervising position in the New York public schools unless her husband is mentally or physically incapacitated to earn a living or has deserted her for a period of not less than one year.”)

CHARACTERS

Board of Education.
Three Would-Be Teachers.

Chorus by Board: 
Now please don’t waste
Your time and ours
By pleas all based
On mental powers. 
She seems to us
The proper stuff
Who has a hus-
Band bad enough. 
All other pleas appear to us
Excessively superfluous.

    1st Teacher: 
      My husband is not really bad——­

    Board: 
        How very sad, how very sad!

    1st Teacher: 
        He’s good, but hear my one excuse——­

    Board: 
        Oh, what’s the use, oh, what’s the use?

    1st Teacher: 
        Last winter in a railroad wreck
        He lost an arm and broke his neck. 
        He’s doomed, but lingers day by day.

    Board: 
        Her husband’s doomed!  Hurray! hurray!

    2nd Teacher: 
        My husband’s kind and healthy, too——­