of heroism, she dragged you down and chained you to
the commonplace, taking all the zest and fervour out
of your soul! The memories of “seam-squirrels”
and of thin coffee and ill-smelling and greasy soup
had slipped somewhat into the background of Jimmie’s
mind, and he lived again the sublime hour when he
had confronted the court and stood for the fundamental
rights of an American citizen. He wanted to have
that act of daring appreciated at its true value.
Poor, blind, home-keeping Lizzie, who could not fulfil
these deeper needs of her husband’s soul!
Jimmie had been, so far in his married life, as well
domesticated as could be expected of a proletarian
propagandist. He had yearned to own a home of
his own, and meantime had manifested his repressed
wish by getting a big packing-box and some broken shingles,
and building a model play-house for Jimmie Junior
in the back yard. He had even found time on his
tired and crowded Sundays to start a garden in midsummer,
the season when the local was least active. But
now, of course, the war had come to obsess his mind,
driving him to terror for the future of humanity,
tempting him to martyrdoms and domestic irritations.
II
It was at this critical period in Jimmie’s life
that there appeared in Leesville a vivid young person
by the name of Evelyn Baskerville. Evelyn was
no tired kitchen slave—with her fluffy brown
hair, her pert little dimples, her trim figure, her
jaunty hat with a turkey feather stuck on one side
of her head. Evelyn was a stenographer and proclaimed
herself an advanced feminist; at her first visit she
set the local upside down. It happened to be
“social evening”, when all the men smoked,
and this “free” young thing took a cigarette
from her escort and puffed it all over the place.
This, of course, would not have made a stir in great
centres of culture such as London and Greenwich Village;
but in Leesville it was the first time that the equality
of women had been interpreted to mean that the women
should adopt the vices of the men.
Then Evelyn had produced from her handbag some leaflets
on Birth Control, and proposed that the local should
undertake their distribution. This was a new
subject in Leesville, and while the members supposed
it was all right, they found it embarrassing to have
the matter explained too fully in open meeting.
Evelyn wanted a “birth strike”, as the
surest means of ending the war; she wanted the Worker
to take up this programme, and did not conceal her
contempt for reactionaries in the movement who still
wanted to pretend that babies were brought by storks.
The delicate subject was finally “tabled”,
and when the meeting adjourned and the members walked
home, everyone was talking about Miss Baskerville—the
men mostly talking with the men, and the women with
the women.
Copyrights
Jimmie Higgins from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
