A SUFFRAGETTE STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

A SUFFRAGETTE STORY.

ADULT SUFFRAGE IN AUSTRALIA AS A WOMAN SEES IT.

The modern movement would be incomplete without its periodicals, its lecturers, and its novels—and the suffragette movement has all three. Miles Franklin, a well-known writer, has given in "Some Everyday Folk and Dawn" (Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh), her impressions of the working of female suffrage in the Commonwealth. In spite of many inaccuracies and an evident, ignorance of the fact that Australia was behind many States in granting votes to women, the story is thoroughly interesting. It is full of strongly-drawn characters, is vividly descriptive, and has a very cheery little love plot straggling through its pages. The chief personages of the book areGrandma Clay and her grand-daughter Dawn, who are both Australian to the tips of their fingers. Grandma Clay, hale and eighty, tells the tale of her one and only love. She was a stage-driver's daughter, and once, when her father was lying ill, drove his team of " terrible new horses." The box-seat was a driver's perquisite, and when the girl drove it was much in request.

THE FIGHTING LOVER. " I used to dispose of it by a sort of tender, an' £5 was nothink for it; an' once in the gold-rush times, w'en money was. laying around like water, a big miner, just to show off,-gave me two tenners for it. They used to be wantin' to drive, but I took me father's advice, an' never let go the reins. Well, among all these fine chaps Jim Clay wasn't noticed. He was always a terrible quiet fedler. I did all the'jorin'. He'd always say, ' Come, . now Martha, there's reason in everythink,' just w'en I'd be mad. because I couldn't see no reason in nothink. He was sittin' in „ the back of the coach, an' it was one wet night, an' only a few passengers for a wonder, who was glad to take refuge inside. Only the lawyer feller was out on the box with me, an' makin' love heavier than it was rainin'. I staved him off all I could, an' with him an' the horses me hands was full. You never see the like of the roads in them days. It was only in later years the Sydney road, I was remarkin', was made good. In them times there was no made roads, and you can imagine the bogs! Why, sometimes you'd think the whole coach was going out of sight in 'em, and chargin' round the stumps up to the axle was considered nothink. We had more pluck in them days! Well, that night 5 the roads was that -slippery the brake gave me all I could do, an' a new horse in the back had no more notion of hangin' in the breechin' than a cow; so I took no notice to the lawyer, only told him to hold his mag once or twice an' riot be such a blitherer, but it was no use, he took a mean advantage off of me. You can imagine it was easy w'en I had five horses in a coach goin' round slippery sidlin's pitch dark an' rainin'. He put his arms round me. waist an' that raised me blood, an' I tell you things hummed a little. You'll see Dawn in a tantrum one of these days, but she ain't a patch on mew'en me dander ■ 'was lup in me young .days,*' Looking at the flashing eye 3 and the steel in; her still, it was easy to see the truth of this. ' : ;. .. ■"' '■'-> -•^>- : '."; :'•-

" I jofed him to take his hands' off me or I'd pull up the coach an' call the inside passengers out to knock him off. He gamed me to do ; it, an* laughed an' squeezed me harder, . an' the cowardly crawler actually made to kiss me; but I bit him on the nose, and spat at him; an' took ; the horses over a bad gutter round a fallen tree at the same time—an' some people is afraid to let their blessed daughters out in a doll's sulky with a tiddy little pony no bigger than a dog. If I had children like that I'd give 'em all the chances, goin' of breaking their neck, as they wouldn't be worth savin' for anythink but sausage meat! Well, this cur still kep' on at his larks, so soon as I got the team on the level—it was at Sapling Sidin', runnin' into Ti-tree creek; I could hear the creek gurgling above the sound of the rain, and the white froth on ■ the ■- water I can see it plain now—l pulled sudden and said ' Woa !' an' it was beautiful the way they'd stop dead. The passengers all suspected there must be a accident, or the bushrangers must have bailed us up, for they was around in fulk blast in them days. Well, w'en I pulled up I got nervous an' ashamed, an bust out crying,, an' the passengers didn't know wh&t to make of it but Jim Clay, it appears, had his eye an' ear cocked all the time, an' before anyone knew what had happened he had the lawyer feller welted off of the coach an' was goin' in to him right an' left. That's what give me a feelin' to Jim Clay all of a sudden, like I never had to no one else before or since. He was always such a terrible quiet feller that no one seemed to notice, an' he'd never made love to me before, but he got besides hifself then and shouts, If ever you touch my girl again I'll hammer you to smithereens.' Then he got back on the box an' wiped me eyes on his handkerchief an' protected me." '.";

;'i-i . THE OLD LADY VOTES. ; Mrs. Clay dresses in Her best for voting day, and votes in style, The bright Australian sun shone with genial approval on all, and in the air was a hint of the scent of the jonquils and violets so early in that temperate region. Grandma Clay must not be forgotten, for in her Immaculate silk cloth dress and cape, her bonnet of the best material, and htr ' lastings,' with her spectacles in one hand and her properly-prized electoral right in the other, and her irreproachable respectability oozing from her every action, she could not be overlooked. As 'she neared the door the gentlemen and younger ladies crowding there politely stood back and cancelled their turn in her favour; and Mrs. Martha Clay, a flush on her cheeks, a flash in her eyes, and with her splendidly active, upright figure carried valiantly, at the age of seventy-five, disappeared within the pol-ling-booth to cast her first vote for the State Parliament. " What a girl she must :•; have been in those far-off teens when she had handled a team of five in Cobb and Co.'s lumbering coaches,, when her curls, blowing in the rain and wind, had been bronze, when with a feather-weight bound she. could spring from the high box-seat to the ground ! Lucky Jim Clay, to have held such ; vigorous love and splendid personality all his own. All his own to this late day, for the old dame returning said to me 'This is a great day for me, and I only wish that Jim Clay had lived to see me vote;' and there was a pathetic quiver in the old voice inexpressibly sweet to the ear of one believing in true love."