The Gay Rebellion - ebook

PREFACE

These stories, mademoiselle, as your intuition tells you, are for old-fashioned young people only; and should be read in the Golden Future, some snowy evening by the fire after a home dinner à deux. Your predestined husband, mademoiselle, is to extend his god-like figure upon a sofa, with an ash-tray convenient. You are to do the reading, curled up in the big velvet wing-chair, with the lamp at your left elbow and the fender under your pretty feet. As for me, I shall venture to smile at you now and then from the printed page–but with discretion, mademoiselle, not inconveniencing your party à deux. For, to be rid of me, you have merely to close this book.I

The year had been, as everybody knows, a momentous and sinister year for the masculine sex; marriages and births in the United States alone had fallen off nearly eighty per cent.; the establishment of Suffragette Unions in every city, town, and village of the country, their obedience to the dictation of the Central National Female Franchise Federation; the financial distress of the florists, caterers, milliners and modistes incident to the almost total suspension of social functions throughout the great cities of the land, threatened eventually to paralyse the nation’s business.

Clergymen were in a pitiable condition for lack of fees and teas; the marriage license bureau was open only Mondays and Saturdays; the social columns of the newspapers were abolished. All over the Union young men were finding time hanging heavy on their hands after business hours because there was little to do now that every town had its Franchise Clubs magnificently fitted with every requisite that a rapidly advancing sex could possibly demand.

The pressure upon the men of the Republic was becoming tremendous; but, as everybody knows, they held out with a courage worthy, perhaps, of a better cause, and women were still denied the franchise in the face of impending national disaster.

But the Central Federation of Amalgamated Females was to deliver a more deadly blow at man than any yet attempted, a blow that for cruelty and audacity remains unparalleled in the annals of that restless sex.

As everybody now knows, this terrible policy was to be inaugurated in secret; a trial was to be made of the idea in New York State; neither the state nor federal governments had the faintest suspicion of what impended; not a single newspaper had any inkling.

Even Augustus Melnor, owner and editor of that greatest of New York daily newspapers, the _Morning Star_, continued to pay overwhelming attention to his personal appearance, confident that the great feminine revolt was on its last shapely legs, and that once more womankind would be kind to any kind of mankind, and flirt and frivol and marry, and provide progeny, and rock the cradle as in the good old days of yore.

So it happened one raw, windy day in May, Mr. Melnor entered his private office in the huge _Morning Star_building, in an unusually cheerful frame of mind and sent for the city editor, Mr. Trinkle.

“An exceedingly pretty girl smiled at me on my way down town, Trinkle,” he said exultantly. “That begins to look as though the backbone of this suffragette strike was broken. What?”

“You’ve got a dent in your derby; it may have been that,” said Mr. Trinkle.

Mr. Melnor hastily removed his hat and punched out the dent.

“I’m not so sure it was that,” he said, flushing up.

Mr. Trinkle gazed gloomily out of the window.

For an hour they talked business; then Mr. Melnor was ready to go.

“How are my nephews getting on?” he asked.

“Something rotten,” replied Mr. Trinkle truthfully.

“What’s the matter with ’em?”

“Everything–except a talent for business.”

“You mean to say they exhibit no aptitude?”

“Not the slightest.”

Mr. Melnor seized his overcoat from the hook.

Mr. Trinkle offered to hold it for him. The offer irritated the wealthy owner of the _Star_, who suspected that the city editor meant to intimate that he, Mr. Melnor, was too old to get into his own overcoat without assistance.

“Never mind!” he said ungratefully. He fussed at the carnation in his buttonhole, picked up his doggy walking stick, glanced over his carefully pressed trousers and light coloured spats, strolled across to the mirror, and leisurely drew on his new gloves.

“Mr. Trinkle,” he began more complacently, “what I want you to always bear in mind is that my pup nephews require a thorough grilling! I want you to bully ’em! Suppress ’em! Squelch, nag, worry, sit on ’em!”

“I have,” said the city editor with satisfaction. “They loathe me.”

“Do it some more, then! I won’t permit any nepotism in this office! If you don’t keep after ’em they’ll turn into little beastly journalists instead of into decent, self-respecting newspaper men! Have either of my nephews attempted to write any more poetry for the Saturday supplement?”

“Young Sayre got away with some verses.”

“Wha’ d’ye do with ’em?” growled Mr. Melnor.

“Printed ’em.”

“_Printed_them! Are–you–craz-y?”

“Don’t worry. Sayre got no signature out of me.”

“But _why_did you print?”

“Because those verses were too devilish good to lose. You must have read them. It was that poem _Amourette_.”

“Did _he_do _that_?”

“Yes; and the entire sentimental press of the country is now copying it without credit.”

“My nephew wrote _Amourette_?” repeated Mr. Melnor with mingled emotions.

“He sure did. That poem seemed to deal a direct blow at this suffragette strike. Several women subscribers sent in mash notes. I had a mind to take advantage of one or two myself.”

Pride and duty contended in the breast of Augustus Melnor; duty won.

“That’s what I told you!” he snapped; “those pups will begin to write for the magazines if you don’t look out!”

“Well _I_tell _you_that they’ve no nose for news–no real instinct–and they might as well write for the backs of the magazines.”

“They’ve got to acquire news instinct! Bang it into ‘em, Trinkle! Rub their noses in it! I’ll have those pups understand that if ever they expect to see any inheritance from me they’ll have to prepare themselves to step into my shoes! They’ll have to know the whole business–from window-washer to desk!–and they’ve got to like it, too–every bit of it! You keep ’em at it if it kills ‘em, Trinkle. Understand?”

“It’ll kill more than those gifted young literary gentlemen,” said Trinkle darkly.

“What do you mean by that?”

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