Williston Graphic

Mr. Jobson on Suffrage
When Mr. Jobson reached his home from the office the other evening he found his wife entertaining in the parlor a handsome, well-groomed, middle-aged, wholesome-looking woman, of blitheful presence and amiable manners. Mrs. Jobson introduced her visitor to Mr. Jobson as "Mrs. Schenectady, of New York, an old school friend, whom I have not seen since we were girls together; she is here on business in connection with the suffrage for women."

Mr. Jobson, who had put on his Sunday smile when he entered the parlor, stiffened when his wife mentioned the "suffrage for women," and the smile froze on his face.

"Glad to meet you, ma'am," he said austerely, as if he meant it to be understood that he wasn't glad, or anything like glad. He excused himself after two minutes of desultory conversation, during which he sat straight up in his chair and looked daggers at his wife's visitor when the latter wasn't looking at him, and then he clomped upstairs. He heard his wife and her visitor talking animatedly, while he sat upstairs tugging at his mustache and growling:

"Suffrage, hey?" And when at last the handsome, wholesome-looking woman departed—saving at the door that she would meet Mrs. Jobson downtown in the morning—Mr. Jobson descended the stairs with a heavy tread and a scowl that reached from ear to ear.

"Madame," said he to Mrs. Jobson as his wife entered the parlor after closing the door upon her visitor, "I think we're about due to have a close searching, heart-to-heart talk, and there isn't going to be any better time for it than right now."

"Why, what has hap—" Mrs. Jobson began, looking at him in a surprised sort of way.

"Oh, nothing has happened particularly," interrupted Mr. Jobson, picking up a book from a table and looking through it with a severe, judicial air, as if searching for a legal definition. "Except that I was not aware until ten minutes ago, that you had aligned yourself with the female suffrage persons. Now, I want—"

"But you are—"

"I know what I am, Mrs. Jobson, and I don't need to be told by any proselyte in the women's suffrage business what I am," broke in Mr. Jobson, ponderously. "Now, I want to tell you one or two little things for your guidance in this matter. Mrs. Jobson—I want to make you aware of where I stand on that question. I—"

"But if you'll just wait a min—"

"You will permit me to say what I intend to say, and then you may have the floor, according to the parliamentary usages of your female suffrage organization, as long as you want it," cut in Mr. Jobson. "Mrs. Jobson, I don't care a pair of worn-out gum shoes, personally, whether the women of the United States, or the women of Zanzibar, for that matter, secure the right to stand around the polls on election day, distributing pasters and folders to jagged hodcarriers, or whether they stay right where they are with regard to the franchise until the year 3245. It's all one to me. I don't lose any sleep over it. If they did get the franchise universally it wouldn't affect me or this plant in the slightest, for I'm a resident of the District of Columbia, where men are disfranchised, as well as women, and I expect to go right on living here, and finally have the daisies planted in District of Columbia soil over my head. I don't read the proceedings of the female suffrage meetings. I dodge the headlines perched over the top of that newspaper material. There's no amount of coined metal that could induce me to attend one of the female suffrage meetings. I simply regard the whole thing as a matter that isn't imminent, which doesn't affect the course of my existence any more than the tribesmen's wars in equatorial Africa affect it, and I've slid along through this vale of tears for a matter of 40 years or so without missing a meal or batting an eye over the question of female suffrage. I—"

"Mr. Jobson, if you will be good enough to abate your flow of eloquence long enough to listen—"

"You'll just be good enough to defer your sarcastic allusions to my flow of eloquence until I'm through, madam," broke in Mr. Jobson, haughtily. "I've got my own little private ideas about the suffrage for women business, of course, but I'm not going around throwing 'em at people who don't believe the way I do about it, and during the past week I've ridden in the street cars with several scores of the female suffragists without rising in my seat and telling 'em just what I think of the proposition they are scrapping for. Mrs. Jobson, I don't mind giving you, for your own information, a brief outline of my conclusions with respect to the position of woman in the United States to-day. Mrs. Jobson, woman is it—to employ a slang phrase—in the United States to-day. The woman of the United States to-day has more privileges and fewer responsibilities than woman ever had anywhere since the world began. We break our necks to give her all that is coming to her, and more. We slave for her and we fight and die for her. She is at once the incentive of our best efforts and the recipient of all the results thereof. We love, admire and honor her. We are accused by foreign peoples of setting her up on a pedestal and worshiping her idolatrously. Be that as it may, woman isn't getting left in the game of civilization and progress. I'm glad of it. I'm tickled foolish when I reflect upon the exalted position woman occupies in the United States to-day."

"Hear, hear!" exclaimed Mrs. Jobson, enthusiastically. "That's just what I think—"

"Be kind enough to reserve your satire until I've concluded, madam," said Mr. Jobson, severely. "But, Mr. Jobson"—and here Mr. Jobson used the book for a baton wherewith to emphasize his remarks—"I'm agin female suffrage. I may be out of date. It may be that I ought to have lived in the era of the shepherd kings of Egypt, Mrs. Jobson. But, anyhow, and for all that, I stand pat on that declaration—I'm agin female suffrage. They can suffrage all they want to. They can tackle every legislature from the pine-clad hills of Maine to the golden sands of the Pacific.

"Hear, hear!" interpolated Mrs. Jobson.

"But I don't want any suffrage grafted on my own vine and fig tree. And, what is more to the point, madame"—here Mr. Jobson rose up on his toes and looked real savage—"I don't intend that there shall be any such grafting. I don't intend that any female suffragists shall come a-loping up here to my house for the purpose of attempting to poison the mind of my wife against—"

"But you are completely and entirely mis—"

"—tempting to poison the mind of my wife against me and the methods I employ for the operation of my own household. If you've got any kick coming about me, all you've got to do is to resolve yourself into a committee of one, draw up your bill of complaint and hand it to me. If the indictment is worth consideration it'll be properly considered. But I do not—understand me distinctly, Mrs. Jobson—I do not, n-o-t, not, purpose that my home and fireside shall be invaded by a lot of women who think the world is agrin them and who, consequently, take it to be their mission in life to embitter the minds of happy, contented married women against their husbands and protectors. I s'pose that one that was here told you, Mrs. Jobson, that because I'm beginning to get a roll of fat on the back of my neck I'm incapable of understanding the meaning of the higher and nobler, the good, the true and the beautiful, the influence of environment, and the—er—tum-ta-ra of the ta-ra-te-tum, hey? I s'pose she told you that I was gross and carnal and brutish because I require some kind of a dinner to be ready for me when I come home from work in the evening, hey? I s'pose she tried to throw it into you that I am incapable of understanding the spiritual, the—philosophical workings of your soul because I don't move out to Wyoming and throw myself on the firing line in support of the suffrage issue. And"

At this point Mr. Jobson picked up the coal tongs and rapped them four times against the grate.

"I don't like to see you get in so far that you can't get out again, Mr. Jobson," she said, smilingly.

"Mrs. Schenectady came here as one of the 'remonstrants,' which is the new name for the Woman's Anti-Suffrage Association!"

Mr. Jobson swallowed a gulp, but he was game.

"Say, can't you have her up for lunch to-morrow?" he inquired.—Washington Star.