would mind the baby while the madam went out to vote.  Serious-minded persons of both sexes disposed of the whole foolishness forever by saying (and wondering why nobody had ever thought of it before) that woman’s place was the home.  But few there were who perceived a symptom here; not even when the League grew with unintelligible rapidity, and croaking diagnosticians here or there professed to see other manifestations not unrelated.

Cassandras remarked that women wearied of thinking “through their husbands.”  The census revealed to the close student that some women even had no husbands.  It was a fact that year before last women had appeared at legislative “hearings” for the first time in the history of the State.  These women, plague on them, failed to fortify the wags by powdering their noses in front of pocket mirrors while they talked, or making sweet-eyes at the chairmen of committees.  They appeared, to tell the honest truth, with late reference-books under their arms, and in their heads the faculty for asking the most annoying sort of questions.  More than one honest Solon was seen to stammer and turn red under their interrogations, so often stiffened by a date and a little figure or so.

And these troublesome “thinking women” had not retired when the legislature did.  Editors nowadays were often surprised in their sanctums by committees of three from some pestiferous unwomanly club or other, and they had not come, alackaday, to have their handkerchiefs picked up with courtly speeches, graced with an apt quotation from “Maud.”  The Civic Improvement League, with a woman president, was taking a continuous interest in matters of playgrounds and parks, clean streets and city planning.  The Society for Social Progress, almost exclusively feminine, was continuously astir about pure milk and factory laws, birth-rates and infant mortality, sociology and eugenics.  And now here was the conservative Woman’s Club, which had been purely literary and social for a quarter of a century, holding a largely attended symposium on How Shall We Help the Poor?

This latter meeting, attended by Carlisle Heth and her cousin Henrietta the day after Canning left, was no doubt a trivial and obscure occurrence.  Not an earthly thing could be said for it, except that it was a bubble on the surface of an unrest which would one day change the face of human society....

The two cousins, having come a little tardy, were content with seats in the next to the last row.  The Woman’s Club inhabited an old family mansion on Washington Street,—­bought in the legendary age when land was not computed by the square foot,—­and its assembly-rooms were the one-time parlors, with the dining-room thrown in by an architectural dexterity.  Perhaps two hundred women could be seated here, and all seemed to be present to-day.  Cally regarded serried rows of feminine backs, some of which she recognized.  The little platform at the farther end of the rooms remained empty, and the place was abuzz with murmured talk.  Not a back was silent, not even Henrietta’s.  Hen was saying enthusiastically that nothing like this could have been seen ten years ago....