She was followed by a
pompous little man, who made a legal speech with lumbering attempts at
humor. Milly was much impressed by the long list of legal disabilities
he cited which women suffered in this "man-made world," and which she
had not hitherto suspected. The man by her side was yawning, and Milly
felt like reproving him.
After the pompous judge came the star of the performance,--the pretty
little woman who was separated from her husband. She was very becomingly
dressed, much excited apparently, and swayed to and fro as she talked.
Sometimes she closed her eye in a frenetic vision of women's wrongs,
then suddenly opened them wide upon her audience with flashing
indignation, as old-fashioned actresses once did. After the dull pleas
of the preceding speakers, based on general principles and equity, this
was an impassioned invective against the animal man. One felt that hers
was a personal experience. The low, degraded nature of the sex that had,
by physical force, usurped the rule of the universe was dramatically
exposed. Milly glowed with sympathy while she listened, though she could
not explain why, as her experience with men had not been with lechers,
drunkards, wife-beaters. The men she had known had been on the whole a
fairly clean, hard-working, kindly lot, yet she knew instinctively, as
she often said, that "All men are alike," by which she meant tyrannical
and corrupt in regard to women.
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