The Woman's Tribune

COCKIE-LAWI

(The following stanzas refer to the decision of the three Courts of Law on the claims of Miss Hall to be admitted to the bar, having passed all the necessary examination with honors. The Judges took from November last year to decide and now declare that woman is not a person.)

IS A GIRL A PERSON?
(Decided 12th of July, 1901)

There were thirteen weighty Judges
Sitting on a little case.
And the cause of all the clocking
Was a winsome lady's face:
For she asked a pressing question.
And it made them cold and hot--
"Is a little maid a 'person,
In your eyes, or is she not?"

Like the girls who practice medicine.
Teach and write, and clerk and draw.
She aspired to make her living
From the pickings of the law.
So she mastered Bell and Rankine,
Climbing up the hills of brass,
Till she thought she was a "person"
Duly qualified to pass.

She had seen her little sisters
Capped M. A.'s with applause,
And she wished to climb life's ladder
As a Bachelor of Laws
So she asked to be examined,
And to pass, if pass she could.
Forth into the black profession
Of the pleading brotherhood.

But the thirteen clucking Judges
Shook their feathers out and swore
That the only kind of "persons"
They had ever passed before
Were young men with shaven faces.
And they could not recognize
This fair lady in her laces,
As a 'person' in their eyes.

But the public are the judges
Of the Judges on the Bench.
And the public roared with laughter
At this answer to the wench.
If the lawyers won't let women
Pick from out their well-filled bowl
Better say so straight than argue
That a hen is not a fowl.

-Amos Chiseler, in Glasgow Evening News