Chapter XIV

_John Bull's Cousin German.--A Salutary Lesson.--Women's
Vengeance.--A Battle with Rotten Eggs.--An Unsavoury
Omelette.--Tarring and Feathering.--Description of the
Operation.--An Awkward Quarter-of-an-hour.--Vengeance of a
Ladies' School.--A Town Council of Women.--Woman's Standing
in the States.--Story of a Widow and her Two Daughters._

Jonathan is the cousin-german of John Bull, but yet not so German as one might imagine; for, if Germany supplies America with three or four hundred thousand immigrants yearly, these Germans do not Germanise America. On the contrary, they themselves become Americanised, thanks to that faculty of assimilation which they possess in a high degree.

One strong proof of this is the way in which women are treated from one end of the United States to the other. And here I may say that in this matter Jonathan sets John Bull an example which the latter would do well to profit by.

Whilst English justice gives merely one or two months' imprisonment to the man who is found guilty of having almost kicked his wife to death, an American town is in arms at the mere rumour of a man having maltreated a woman.

Here are a few scenes which I have come across in America:

Elmore Creel, an inhabitant of Greeve's Run, Wirt County, Virginia, had been known for some time to have subjected his wife and children to harsh treatment. The complaint became, at last, so general that an avenging mob took upon itself to chastise him. At midnight, Creel's house was surrounded. Creel was in bed. A squad of masked men broke into the house, and, overcoming his struggles, tied his hands, took him to the yard, and gave him a fearful thrashing with cowhides and hickory withes. After whipping him, they untied him and let him go, with the warning that another visit from them might be looked for if he was not kinder to his wife.

The following I extract from a Pittsburg paper:

George Burton, a well-to-do man of Ohio, one day turned his wife out of the house and left for Pittsburg. Next day he returned, bringing with him a dashing widow, named Fenton, whom he installed in his wife's place. When Mrs. Burton applied for admittance, she was sent away, her husband saying that he had someone else to care for him now. The news spread, and the female neighbours decided to avenge the wife's wrongs. After ten o'clock at night, three hundred women went to the house and beat the doors open. Burton and the dashing widow were dragged out, the man being chased several blocks, and pelted the while with rotten eggs. The widow was pounded and pummelled until the police rescued her. She and the man were locked up in safe keeping. The neighbours then ransacked the house, and when they left it the place looked as if a cyclone had struck it. It was with great difficulty that the objectionable widow was conveyed to the train in safety by the police next day, and despatched to Trenton, New Jersey, where she came from.

Sometimes the chastisement takes a comic form. There are few distractions in the little western towns, and native humour finds an outlet in strange fashions. A man who illtreats his wife, or forsakes her for another woman, is often tarred and feathered. The operation is curious, and satisfies the vengeance of the populace, while procuring them an hour's amusement.

The delinquent is led, sometimes to the sound of music, to a retired spot. There he is stripped to the skin, and coated over with tar from head to foot. This done, he is rolled in feathers, which, of course, stick to him, and give him the appearance of a huge ugly duckling. To put a finishing touch to the operations, his clothes are carried off, and the mob wish him good luck.

This chastisement is sometimes applied to a woman whose conduct is known to be immoral. In such cases it is the women who operate on the culprit. They want their husbands and sons to be able to get about without danger, and they take upon themselves the task of keeping the moral atmosphere of the neighbourhood healthy. The idea appears primitive, but morality thrives by it.

If men may not tar and feather a woman, women occasionally give themselves the pleasure of tarring and feathering a man, which shows once more how privileged woman is in America. On the 12th of August, 1887, the editor of a paper in a little town in Illinois had to submit to this ignominious operation at the hands of about five hundred of his townswomen. His crime was that of having spoken cavalierly of the feminine morals of the township.

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The following is from the _New York World_:

"A few days ago, an editor living in Hammond, Indiana, was horsewhipped by three schoolgirls, because he published articles about them which they called falsehoods. They also threw red pepper in his eyes, and this is a crime punishable by long sentence in this State; so that it is expected they will be indicted."

Youth is often indiscreet. Those girls ought to have stopped at the horsewhipping, and been happy.

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The susceptibilities of American women are sometimes very easily wounded:

A paper having announced a man's death under the heading, "John K. gone to a better home," the widow brought an action for libel against the editor.

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The women are not content with beating the men in the market-place, they beat them at elections as well. During my stay in the States, the town of Oskaloosa, in the State of Kansas, returned all the women who put up as candidates for election to the Town Council. At the head of the poll was a Mrs. Lowman, who was proclaimed Mayor. It was said that for a year all the taverns and billiard-rooms of the town would be closed. When the result of the polling was known, the men pulled very long faces; but they finished by getting used to the idea of petticoat government, and in the evening they serenaded their Town Councilwomen.

The further west one goes, the more apparent becomes the power of the women; the further west one goes, the rarer does woman get. Is this the reason?

To every American hotel there is a ladies' entrance. This is to prevent contamination from the possible contact of man. When it rains or snows, an awning is thrown out over the pavement; but I daresay a permanent triumphal arch will ultimately be demanded by the ladies.

In the States of Kansas and Colorado, a woman on entering a railway train will touch a man on the shoulder, and say _almost_ politely, "I like that seat; you take another."

I was riding one day in a Chicago tramcar. The seats were all occupied; but in America that does not mean that the car is full, and presently the conductor let in a woman, who came and stood near my seat. At the moment of her entry I had my head turned, and it might have been twenty or thirty seconds before I perceived that she was standing in front of me. Then I rose and offered her my place. Do not imagine that she thanked me. She shot me a glance which clearly said, "Oh! you have made up your mind at last; you take your time over it." I need not say that she was not a lady; but, at any rate, she was well, even stylishly, dressed, and looked highly respectable. The American _lady_ accepts graciously and gracefully the homage men render her; but the vulgar woman exacts it as her due, and does not feel bound to give any such small change of politeness as thanks or smiles. Women are everywhere more prone than men to act as _parvenues_.

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The arrival of a woman in any little town of the Far West puts the male part of the population in revolution. "Whose wife will she become?" is the great question of the day, and all the eligible men of the neighbourhood enroll themselves in the list of her suitors.

Here is a little story, the authenticity of which is guaranteed by the _Dublin Mail_:

Idaho territory lies very far west indeed, and there is an alarming scarcity of women there. This has been curiously illustrated of late in the town of Waggon Wheel.

Recently two young ladies travelled to that remote region to attend to their dying brother. The poor fellow did not long require their services, and immediately after his death the sisters prepared to return home. Before, however, they could get away, nearly the whole population of the town--headed by the Mayor and other high officials--were making matrimonial overtures to them. Feeling ran very high during five or six anxious days; and the Mayor's chances, despite his mature years, ruled the betting at six to one. At the end of the week both young ladies had capitulated, and were duly engaged. The Mayor was, however, cut out by a handsome young miner. The wedding-day was fixed, and the mother of the young ladies was summoned upon the scene. Here troubles began. She duly arrived, and was hotly indignant with her daughters for the scant respect which they had manifested towards their brother's memory by such indecent haste to wed. The girls explained that they had literally been besieged, and had yielded to the overwhelming force of circumstances. As usual, explanations increased the offence; and the mother vowed that neither of them should be married out there at all--that, in fact, the engagements were "off," and that they must be off too. The cup of felicity was thus rudely dashed from the lips of the two accepted men, and they made haste to tell their sorrows to the town. An indignation meeting was held, and the Mayor appointed a committee to wait upon the irate matron in order to ask her to reconsider her resolution. The Mayor, with rare magnanimity, considering the cruel blow his own hopes had just received, placed himself at the head of the deputation, and, in the name of patriotism, humbly implored the good lady to grant the petition, which he ardently urged. She, however, stood firmly on her parental rights, and declared she would not leave the town without her daughters. Then the genius of the Mayor shone forth like the sun. He blandly proposed a compromise. Why need she leave at all? He drew her attention, of course in most delicate terms, to the fact that she was fair, plump, and fifty odd, and that similar language might be taken as descriptive of himself. There and then he offered her his hand and heart, and the young ladies a kind father and protector.

That settled the matter, and three marriages took place with a great flourish of trumpets at Waggon Wheel.