The cuspidors were hidden.
Gay frocks swept cigar stubs out of sight.
When the members of the Judiciary Committee attempted to enter the House
chamber to conduct the hearing on suffrage, it required full ten minutes
of persuasive eloquence and courteous pushing on the part of the
messengers to break the jam of women that filled the door and packed the
lobby floor adjacent. The fair lobbyists did not want to give up even
that vantage-point in order to admit the men who were to listen. And
after the committee had managed to wriggle its way in single file to the
platform they had not the heart to expel the women who were occupying
their chairs. They gallantly stood in a row against the rear wall of the
Speaker's alcove and listened to the petitioners--each woman allowed two
minutes! Not one member of the legislature, outside the committee,
heard. It would have been an ungallant man, indeed, who did not
surrender his place in the chamber to a woman who had come to present
her cause. So the women amiably listened to themselves, and the
committee listened to them in all politeness, and both sides understood
that it was only a genial social diversion out of which nothing would
come.
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