Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/74

58 in the mold and dust of my later years. I will not go further into the matter. My wife s hair is black.

"And reading on, but losing the thread of the poet's eulogy in the golden fabric of my resur rected dream, it came to me to compare that maid I knew in the long ago with the women I know to-day. Ah, gentlemen! Lips, made but for smil ing, fling weighty arguments on the unoffending atmosphere. Eyes, made to light with that light that never was by land or sea, blaze instead with what they call the injustice of woman s servitude. White hands, made to find their way to the hands of some young man in the moonlight, carry ban ners in the dusty streets. It seemed I saw the blue eyes of that girl of long ago turned, sad, rebuking, on her sisters of to-day. As I finished reading, my heart was awhirl. I said to the young men before me:

"There was a woman, gentlemen—a woman worth a million suffragettes.

"They applauded. The fire in me died down. Soon I was my old meek, academic self. The vision had left no trace. I dismissed my class and