Part 13 (1/2)

These are out and out professional adventuresses There are other adventuresses, however, than those of the story and the stage, the casino and the cabaret The woirl with the future

Curiously enough this latter is mainly, almost exclusively, recruited fron titles join surpassing ignorance of foreign society Thus she is ready to the hand of the Continental fortune seekeras a nobleman--occasionally but not often the black sheep of so not a bona fide but a courtesy title--the count and the no-account, the lord and the Lord knoho! The Yankee girl with a _dot_ had becoular quarry for impecunious aristocrats and clever crooks, the ic in their frequency and squalor

Another curious circumstance is the readiness hich the American newspaper tumbles to these frauds The yellow press especially luxuriates in theroolows over the tin-plate stars and i the pictorial paraphernalia in cold but not forgotten storage waits for the inevitable scandal, and then, with lavish exaggeration, works the old story over again

These newspapers ring all the sensational changes Now it is the wondrous beauty with the cool itimate of athe dose--it is the ten- of Pontarabia's brother, and may thus aspire to be one day Empress of Sahara

Old European travelers can recall many funny and sometimes melancholy incidents--episodes--histories--of which they have witnessed the beginning and the end, carrying the self-same denouement and lesson

IV

As there are women and women there are many kinds of adventuresses; not all of theood or bad, the lot of the adventuress is at best a hard lot Be she a girl with a future or a woman with a past she is still a woman, and the world can never be too kind to its woht of the universe as they meet the purpose of God and Nature and seek not to thwart it by unsexing themselves in order that they ent dalliance The adventuress of fiction always corief But the adventuress in real life--the prudent adventuress who draws the line at adultery--the would-be leader of society without the wealth--the would-be political leader without the masculine fiber--is sure of disappointiset? No one of them can, or does, clearly tell us

It is feerous Now that they have it, my fear is that the leaders will not stop with the ballot for woht It has become a necessity for them If all wo of womanhood left, and the world bereft of its women will become a masculine harlotocracy

Letwoman's battles in one way and another all my life I am not opposed to Votes for Women But I would discriminate and educate, and even at that rate I would limit the franchise to actual taxpayers, and, outside of these, confine it to charities, corrections and schools, keeping woman away from the dirt of politics I do not believe the ballot will benefit wo unlie the wo! I doubt the perforh somehohen the hikers started from New York to Albany, and afterward froht of Bertha von Hillern came back to me

I am sure the reader never heard of her As it o--don't askwo ement of a hall in Louisville to walk one hundred miles around a fixed track in twenty-four consecutive hours She did it Her share of the gate money, I was told, aet the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage and endurance She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy The vast crowd that without es, had watched her frorow tense with the approach to the end, and the last hour the enthusias followed every footstep of the plucky girl, rising to a storm of exultation as the final lap was reached

More dead than alive, but game to the core, the little heroine was carried off the field, a winner, every heart throbbing with human sympathy, every eye ith proud and happy tears It is not possible adequately to describe all that happened One lory of it

Touching the recent Albany and Washi+ngton hikes and hikers let me say at once that I cannot approve the cause of Votes for women as I had approved the cause of Bertha von Hillern Where she showed heroic, rotesque Where her aier of them seem as children who need to be spanked and kissed There has been indeed about the whole Suffrage business so pitiful and co ”You idiots!” and then like crying ”Poor dears!” But I have kept on with theton I would have caught Rosalie Jones in my arms, and before she could say ”Jack Robinson” have exclaiet a bath and put on some pretty clothes and come and join us at dinner in the State Banquet Hall, duly htful sillies”

Chapter the Ninth

Dr Norvin Green--Joseph Pulitzer--Chester A Arthur--General Grant--The Case of Fitz-John Porter

I

Truth we are told is stranger than fiction I have found it so in the knowledge which has variously coexae in the wilds of Kentucky and to die at the head of the most potential corporation in the world--to have held this place against all comers by force of abilities deeone the while his ain gait, disdaining the precepts of Doctor Franklin--who, by the way, did not trouble overmuch to follow the stories of the novel ers

When I first met Doctor Green he was president of a Kentucky railway coanizers of the Western Union Telegraph Company He deluded hio to the Senate of the United States, and during a legislative session of prolonged balloting at Frankfort he le vote

It ure at Washi+ngton His talents were constructive rather than declah he never thought it so--and was foreraph system of the country al of the typical Kentuckian, with the dead calm of the stoic philosopher; i hientlerew to be constant comrades and friends, and when he returned to New York to take the important post which to the end of his days he filled so co became my don headquarters

There I met Jay Gould fae, whoton, he a hayseed ress; and occasionally other of the Wall Street leaders In a s fever But I was on the ”inside,” and it was a cold day when I did not ”clean up” a goodly aave this over through sheer disgust of acquiring sono natural love of etting it except to spend it--earning by my own accustomed and fruitful toil always a sufficiency--the distractions and dissipations it brought to my annual vacations and occasional visits, affronted in a way er quest of pleasure Money is purely relative The root of all evil, too Too h

At the outset ofexperience I was one day in the office of President Edward H Green, of the Louisville and Nashville Railway, no relation of Dr Norvin Green, but the husband of the famous Hetty Green He said to me, ”How are you in stocks?”