Sylvias Marriage | Page 8

ready with which to kill it.
"But now," Sylvia went on, "I've got some money, and I can help, so I
dare not be ignorant any longer. You must show me the way, and my
husband too. I'm sure he doesn't know what can be done."
I said that I would do anything in my power. Her help would be

invaluable, not merely because of the money she might give, but
because of the influence of her name; the attention she could draw to
any cause she chose. I explained to her the aims and the methods of our
child-labour committee. We lobbied to get new legislation; we watched
officials to compel them to enforce the laws already existing; above all,
we worked for publicity, to make people realise what it meant that the
new generation was growing up without education, and stunted by
premature toil. And that was where she could help us most--if she
would go and see the conditions with her own eyes, and then appear
before the legislative committee this winter, in favour of our new bill!
She turned her startled eyes upon me at this. Her ideas of doing good in
the world were the old-fashioned ones of visiting and almsgiving; she
had no more conception of modern remedies than she had of modern
diseases. "Oh, I couldn't possibly make a speech!" she exclaimed.
"Why not?" I asked.
"I never thought of such a thing. I don't know enough."
"But you can learn."
"I know, but that kind of work ought to be done by men."
"We've given men a chance, and they have made the evils. Whose
business is it to protect the children if not the women's?"
She hesitated a moment, and then said: "I suppose you'll laugh at me."
"No, no," I promised; then as I looked at her I guessed. "Are you going
to tell me that woman's place is the home?"
"That is what we think in Castleman County," she said, smiling in spite
of herself.
"The children have got out of the home," I replied. "If they are ever to
get back, we women must go and fetch them."
Suddenly she laughed--that merry laugh that was the April sunshine of
my life for many years. "Somebody made a Suffrage speech in our
State a couple of years ago, and I wish you could have seen the horror
of my people! My Aunt Nannie--she's Bishop Chilton's wife--thought it
was the most dreadful thing that had happened since Jefferson Davis
was put in irons. She talked about it for days, and at last she went
upstairs and shut herself in the attic. The younger children came home
from school, and wanted to know where mamma was. Nobody knew.
Bye and bye, the cook came. 'Marse Basil, what we gwine have fo'
dinner? I done been up to Mis' Nannie, an' she say g'way an' not pester

her--she busy.' Company came, and there was dreadful
confusion--nobody knew what to do about anything--and still Aunt
Nannie was locked in! At last came dinner-time, and everybody else
came. At last up went the butler, and came down with the message that
they were to eat whatever they had, and take care of the company
somehow, and go to prayer-meeting, and let her alone--she was writing
a letter to the Castleman County Register on the subject of 'The Duty of
Woman as a Homemaker'!"
8. This was the beginning of my introduction to Castleman County. It
was a long time before I went there, but I learned to know its
inhabitants from Sylvia's stories of them. Funny stories, tragic stories,
wild and incredible stories out of a half-barbaric age! She would tell
them and we would laugh together; but then a wistful look would come
into her eyes, and a silence would fall. So very soon I made the
discovery that my Sylvia was homesick. In all the years that I knew her
she never ceased to speak of Castleman Hall as "home". All her
standards came from there, her new ideas were referred there.
We talked of Suffrage for a while, and I spoke about the lives of
women on lonely farms--how they give their youth and health to their
husband's struggle, yet have no money partnership which they can
enforce in case of necessity. "But surely," cried Sylvia, "you don't want
to make divorce more easy!"
"I want to make the conditions of it fair to women," I said.
"But then more women will get it! And there are so many divorced
women now! Papa says that divorce is a greater menace than
Socialism!"
She spoke of Suffrage in England, where women were just beginning to
make public disturbances. Surely I did not approve of their leaving
their homes for such purposes as that! As