I found her a thick-built woman, after the gladiatorial fashion ... as she moved she made me think of a battleship going into action.  There was something about her face ... a squareness of jaw, a belligerency, that reminded me of Roosevelt, whom I had seen twice ... once, at Mt.  Hebron, when he had made a speech from the chapel platform ... (when I had determined not to join in the general applause of one whom I considered a mere demagogue—­but, before I knew it, found myself on my feet roaring inarticulately as he strode in) and again, after he had returned from his African expedition, and had come to Laurel to dedicate a fountain set up for the local horses and dogs by the S.P.C.A.

Jack Leitman looked to me like a fat nincompoop.  Such a weakling as great women must necessarily, it seems, “fall for.”  But he was an efficient manager.  Possessed of a large voice and an insistent manner, he sold books by the dozen before and after Emma Silverman’s lectures....

Miss Silverman already knew of me through Summershire, the wealthy socialist editor and owner of Summershire’s Magazine, and Penton Baxter.  It thrilled me when she called me by my first name....

Her first lecture was on Sex.  The hall was jammed to the doors by a curiosity-moved crowd.

She began by assuming that she was not talking to idiots and cretins, but to men and women of mature minds—­so she could speak as she thought in a forthright manner.  She inveighed against the double standard.  When someone in the auditorium asked what she meant by the single standard she replied, she meant sexual expression and experience for man and woman on an equal footing ... the normal living of life without which no human being could be really decent—­and that regardless of marriage and the conventions!

“The situation as it is, is odious ... all men, with but few exceptions, have sexual life before marriage, but they insist that their wives come to them in that state of absurd ignorance of their own bodily functions and consequent lack of exercise of them, which they denominate ‘purity.’ ...

“I doubt if there is a solitary man in this audience—­a married man—­who has not had premarital intercourse with women.”

All the while I kept my eye on Professor Wilton, who sat near me, in the row ahead ... he was flushing furiously in angry, puritanic dissent ... and I knew him well enough to foresee a forthcoming outburst of protest.

“Yes, I think I can safely say that there is not one married man here who can honestly claim that he came to his wife with that same physical ‘purity’ which he required of her.”

Wilton leaped to his feet in a fury ... the good, simple soul.  He was so indignant that the few white hairs on his head worked up sizzling with his emotion....

“Here’s one!” he shouted, forgetting in his earnest anger the assembled audience, most of whom knew him.