began to wonder what they had found so attractive in the prospect of
putting ballot-papers into a box. In the country districts the task of
carrying out the provisions of the new Act was irksome enough; in the
towns and cities it became an incubus. There seemed no end to the
elections. Laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their
work to vote, often for a candidate whose name they hadn't heard
before, and whom they selected at haphazard; female clerks and
waitresses got up extra early to get their voting done before starting
off to their places of business. Society women found their
arrangements impeded and upset by the continual necessity for attending
the polling stations, and week-end parties and summer holidays became
gradually a masculine luxury. As for Cairo and the Riviera, they were
possible only for genuine invalids or people of enormous wealth, for
the accumulation of L10 fines during a prolonged absence was a
contingency that even ordinarily wealthy folk could hardly afford to
risk.

It was not wonderful that the female disfranchisement agitation became
a formidable movement. The No-Votes-for-Women League numbered its
feminine adherents by the million; its colours, citron and old
Dutch-madder, were flaunted everywhere, and its battle hymn, "We don't
want to Vote," became a popular refrain. As the Government showed no
signs of being impressed by peaceful persuasion, more violent methods
came into vogue. Meetings were disturbed, Ministers were mobbed,
policemen were bitten, and ordinary prison fare rejected, and on the
eve of the anniversary of Trafalgar women bound themselves in tiers up
the entire length of the Nelson column so that its customary floral
decoration had to be abandoned. Still the Government obstinately
adhered to its conviction that women ought to have the vote.

Then, as a last resort, some woman wit hit upon an expedient which it
was strange that no one had thought of before. The Great Weep was
organized. Relays of women, ten thousand at a time, wept continuously
in the public places of the Metropolis. They wept in railway stations,
in tubes and omnibuses, in the National Gallery, at the Army and Navy
Stores, in St. James's Park, at ballad concerts, at Prince's and in the
Burlington Arcade. The hitherto unbroken success of the brilliant
farcical comedy "Henry's Rabbit" was imperilled by the presence of
drearily weeping women in stalls and circle and gallery, and one of