



Produced by David Widger






PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?

By Helen H. Gardener


R. F. Fenno & Company

9 and 11 East 16th Street

New York

1892


I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreampt Life stood before her,
and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And
she said to the woman, "Choose!"

And the woman waited long; and she said: "Freedom!" And Life said, "Thou
hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee
that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned
to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that
day I shall bear both gifts in one hand." I heard the woman laugh in her
sleep.

Olive Schreener's Dreams.



DEDICATED

With the love and admiration of the Author,

To Her Husband

Who is ever at once her first, most severe, and most sympathetic critic,
whose encouragement and interest in her work never flags; whose abiding
belief in human rights, without sex limitations, and in equality of
opportunity leaves scant room in his great soul to harbor patience with
sex domination in a land which boasts of freedom for all, and embodies
its symbol of Liberty in the form of the only legally disqualified and
unrepresented class to be found upon its shores.




PREFACE.

In the following story the writer shows us what poverty and dependence
are in their revolting outward aspects, as well as in their crippling
effects on all the tender sentiments of the human soul. Whilst the many
suffer for want of the decencies of life, the few have no knowledge of
such conditions.

They require the poor to keep clean, where water by landlords is
considered a luxury; to keep their garments whole, where they have
naught but rags to stitch together, twice and thrice worn threadbare.
The improvidence of the poor as a valid excuse for ignorance, poverty,
and vice, is as inadequate as is the providence of the rich, for their
virtue, luxury, and power. The artificial conditions of society are
based on false theories of government, religion, and morals, and not
upon the decrees of a God.

In this little volume we have a picture, too, of what the world would
call a happy family, in which a naturally strong, honest woman is
shrivelled into a mere echo of her husband, and the popular sentiment of
the class to which she belongs. The daughter having been educated in a
college with young men, and tasted of the tree of knowledge, and,
like the Gods, knowing good and evil, can no longer square her life by
opinions she has outgrown; hence with her parents there is friction,
struggle, open revolt, though conscientious and respectful withal.

Three girls belonging to different classes in society; each illustrates
the false philosophy on which woman's character is based, and each in a
different way, in the supreme moment of her life, shows the necessity of
self-reliance and self-support.

As the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class
of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts
of science, I hail with pleasure all such attempts by the young writers
of our day. The slave has had his novelist and poet, the farmer his,
the victims of ignorance and poverty theirs, but up to this time the
refinements of cruelty suffered by intelligent, educated women, have
never been painted in glowing colors, so that the living picture could
be seen and understood. It is easy to rouse attention to the grosser
forms of suffering and injustice, but the humiliations of spirit are not
so easily described and appreciated.

A class of earnest reformers have, for the last fifty years, in the
press, the pulpit, and on the platform, with essays, speeches, and
constitutional arguments before legislative assemblies, demanded the
complete emancipation of women from the political, religious, and social
bondage she now endures; but as yet few see clearly the need of larger
freedom, and the many maintain a stolid indifference to the demand.

I have long waited and watched for some woman to arise to do for her sex
what Mrs. Stowe did for the black race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book
that did more to rouse the national conscience than all the glowing
appeals and constitutional arguments that agitated our people during
half a century. If, from an objective point of view, a writer could
thus eloquently portray the sorrows of a subject race, how much more
graphically should some woman describe the degradation of sex.

In Helen Gardener's stories, I see the promise, in the near future,
of such a work of fiction, that shall paint the awful facts of woman's
position in living colors that all must see and feel. The civil and
canon law, state and church alike, make the mothers of the race a
helpless, ostracised class, pariahs of a corrupt civilization. In view
of woman's multiplied wrongs, my heart oft echoes the Russian poet who
said: "God has forgotten where he hid the key to woman's emancipation."
Those who know the sad facts of woman's life, so carefully veiled
from society at large, will not consider the pictures in this story
overdrawn.

The shallow and thoughtless may know nothing of their existence, while
the helpless victims, not being able to trace the causes of their
misery, are in no position to state their wrongs themselves.

Nevertheless all the author describes in this sad story, and worse
still, is realized in everyday life, and the dark shadows dim the
sunshine in every household.

The apathy of the public to the wrongs of woman is clearly seen at this
hour, in propositions now under consideration in the Legislature of New
York. Though two infamous bills have been laid before select committees,
one to legalize prostitution, and one to lower the age of consent, the
people have been alike ignorant and indifferent to these measures. When
it was proposed to take a fragment of Central Park for a race course, a
great public meeting of protest was called at once, and hundreds of men
hastened to Albany to defeat the measure.

But the proposed invasion of the personal rights of woman, and the
wholesale desecration of childhood has scarce created a ripple on the
surface of society. The many do not know what laws their rulers are
making, and the few do not care, so long as they do not feel the iron
teeth of the law in their own flesh. Not one father in the House or
Senate would willingly have his wife, sister, or daughter subject to
these infamous bills proposed for the daughters of the people. Alas! for
the degradation of sex, even in this republic. When one may barter away
all that is precious to pure and innocent childhood at the age of ten
years, you may as well talk of a girl's safety with wild beasts in the
tangled forests of Africa, as in the present civilizations of England
and America, the leading nations on the globe.

Some critics say that every one knows and condemns these facts in our
social life, and that we do not need fiction to intensify the public
disgust. Others say, Why call the attention of the young and the
innocent to the existence of evils they should never know. The majority
of people do not watch legislative proceedings.

To keep our sons and daughters innocent, we must warn them of the
dangers that beset their path on every side.

Ignorance under no circumstances ensures safety. Honor protected by
knowledge, is safer than innocence protected by ignorance.

A few brave women are laboring to-day to secure for their less capable,
less thoughtful, less imaginative sisters, a recognition of a true
womanhood based on individual rights. There is just one remedy for the
social complications based on sex, and that is equality for woman in
every relation in life.

Men must learn to respect her as an equal factor in civilization, and
she must learn to respect herself as mother of the race. Womanhood is
the great primal fact of her existence; marriage and maternity, its
incidents.

This story shows that the very traits of character which society (whose
opinions are made and modified by men) considers most important and
charming in woman to ensure her success in social life, are the very
traits that ultimately lead to her failure.

Self-effacement, self-distrust, dependence and desire to please,
compliance, deference to the judgment and will of another, are what make
young women, in the opinion of these believers in sex domination, most
agreeable; but these are the very traits that lead to her ruin.

The danger of such training is well illustrated in the sad end of Ettie
Berton. When the trials and temptations of life come, then each one
must decide for herself, and hold in her own hands the reins of action.
Educated women of the passing generation chafe under the old order of
things, but, like Mrs. Foster in the present volume, are not strong
enough to swim up stream. But girls like Gertrude, who in the college
curriculum have measured their powers and capacities with strong young
men and found themselves their equals, have outgrown this superstition
of divinely ordained sex domination. The divine rights of kings, nobles,
popes, and bishops have long been questioned, and now that of sex is
under consideration and from the signs of the times, with all other
forms of class and caste, it is destined soon to pass away.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton




PRAY YOU, SIR, WHOSE DAUGHTER?




I

To say that Mrs. Foster was cruel, that she lacked sympathy with the
unfortunate, or that she was selfish, would be to state only the dark
half of a truism that has a wider application than class or sex could
give it; a truism whose boundary lines, indeed, are set by nothing short
of the ignorance of human beings hedged in by prejudice and handicapped
by lack of imagination. So when she sat, with dainty folded hands whose
jeweled softness found fitting background on the crimson velvet of her
trailing gown, and announced that she could endure everything associated
with, and felt deep sympathy for, the poor if it were not for the
besetting sin of uncleanliness that found its home almost invariably
where poverty dwelt, it would be unjust to pronounce her hard-hearted or
base.

"It is all nonsense to say that the poor need be so dirty," she
announced, as she held her splendid feather fan in one hand and caressed
the dainty tips of the white plumes with the tips of fingers only less
dainty and white.

"I have rarely ever seen a really poor man, woman, or child who was at
the same time really clean looking in person, and as to clothes--"

She broke off with an impatient and disgusted little shrug, as if to
say--what was quite true--that even the touch of properly descriptive
words held for her more soilure than she cared to bear contact with.

John Martin laughed. Then he essayed to banter his hostess, addressing
his remarks meanwhile to her daughter.

"One could not imagine your mamma a victim of poverty and hunger, much
less of dirt, Miss Gertrude," he began slowly; "but even that sumptuous
velvet gown of hers would grow to look more or less--let us say--rusty,
in time, I fear, if it were the only costume she possessed, and she were
obliged to eat, cook, wash, iron, sew, and market in it."

The two ladies laughed merrily at the droll suggestion, and Miss
Gertrude pursed up her lips and developed a decided squint in her eyes
as she turned them upon the folds of her mother's robe. Then she took up
Mr. Martin's description where the laugh had broken in upon it.

"Too true, too true," she drawled; "and if she dusted the furniture
a week or so with that fan, I'm afraid it would lose more or less
of its--gloss. Mamma quite prides herself upon the delicate
peach-fuzz-bloom, so to speak, of those feathers. Just look at them!"
The girl reached over and took the fan from her mother's lap. She spread
the fine plumes to their fullest capacity, and held them under the rays
of the brass lamp that stood near their guest. Then she made a flourish
with it in the direction of the music stand, as if she were intent upon
whisking the last speck of dust from the sheets of Tannhauser that lay
on its top A little cry of alarm and protest escaped Mrs. Foster's lips
and she stretched oat her hand to rescue the beloved fan.

"Gertrude! how can you?" She settled back comfortably against the
cushions of the low divan with her rescued treasure once more waving in
gentle gracefulness before her.

"Oh, no," she protested. "Of course one could not work or live
constantly in one or two gowns and look fresh, but one could look and be
clean and--and whole. A patch is not pretty I admit, but it is a decided
improvement upon a bare elbow."

"I don't agree with you at all," smiled her guest; "I don't believe
I ever saw a patch in all my life that would be an improvement
upon--upon--" He glanced at the lovely round white arms before him, and
all three laughed. Mrs. Foster thought of how many Russian baths and
massage treatments had tended to give the exquisite curve and tint to
her arm.

"Then beside," smiled Mr. Martin, "a rent or hole may be an immediate
accident, liable to happen to the best of us. A patch looks like
premeditated poverty." Gertrude laughed brightly, but her mother did not
appear to have heard. She reverted to the previous insinuation.

"Oh, well; that is not fair! You know what I mean. I'm talking of elbows
that burst or wear out--not about those that never were intended to be
in. Then, besides, it is not the elbow I object to; it is the hole
one sees it through. _It_ tells a tale of shiftlessness and personal
untidiness that saps all sympathy for the poverty that compelled the
long wearing of the garment."

"Why, my dear Mrs. Foster," said Martin, slowly, "I wonder if you have
any idea of a grade of poverty that simply can't be either whole or
clean. Did--?"

"I'll give up the whole, but I won't give in on the clean. I can easily
see how a woman could be too tired, too ill, or too busy to mend a
garment; I can fancy her not knowing how to sew, or not having thread,
needles, and patches; but, surely, surely, Mr. Martin, no one living is
too poor to keep clean. Water is free, and it doesn't take long to take
a bath. Besides--"

Gertrude looked at her mother with a smile. Then she said with her
sarcastic little drawl again:--

"Russian, or Turkish?"

"Well, but fun' and nonsense aside, Gertrude," said her mother, "a plain
hot bath at home would make a new creature out of half the wretches one
sees or reads of, and--"

"Porcelain lined bath-tub, hot and cold water furnished at all hours.
Bath-room adjoining each sleeping apartment," laughed Mr. Martin. "What
a delightful idea you have of abject poverty, Mrs. Foster. I do wish
Fred could have heard that last remark of yours. I went with his clerk
one day to collect rents down in Mulberry Street. He had the collection
of the rents for the Feedour estate on his hands--"

"What's that about the rents of the Feedour estate?" inquired the head
of the house, extending his hand to their guest as he entered. Mrs.
Foster put out her hand and her husband touched the tips of her fingers
to his lips, while Gertrude slipped her arm through her father's and
drew him to a seat beside her. Her eyes were dancing, and she showed a
double row of the whitest of teeth.

"Oh, Mr. Martin was just explaining to mamma how your clerk collects
rent for the porcelain bath-tubs in the Feedour property down in
Mulberry Street. Mamma thinks that bath-rooms should be free--hot and
cold water, and all convenient appointments."

Fred Foster looked at their guest for a moment, and then both men burst
into a hearty laugh.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," protested Mrs. Foster. "Unless you
are guying me for thinking Mr. Martin in earnest about the tubs being
rented. I suppose, of course, the bath-rooms go with the apartments,
and one rent covers the whole of it. In which case, I still insist that
there is no reason why the poor can't be clean, and if they have only
one suit of clothes, they can wash them out at night and have them dry
next morning."

The men laughed again.

"Gertrude, has your mamma read her essay yet before the Ladies' Artistic
and Ethical Club on the 'Self-Inflicted Sorrows of the Poor?'" asked Mr.
Foster, pinching his daughter's chin, and allowing a chuckle of humorous
derision to escape him as he glanced at their guest.

"No," said the girl, a trifle uneasily; "Lizzie Feedour read last time.
Mamma's is next, and she has read her paper to me. It is just as good
as it can be. Better than half the essays used to be at college, not
excepting Mr. Holt's prize thesis on economics. I wish the poor people
could hear it. She speaks very kindly of their faults even while
criticising them. You--"

"Don't visit the tenement houses of the Feedour estate, dear, until
after you read your paper to the club," laughed her husband, "or your
essay won't take half so well. College theses and cold facts are not
likely to be more than third cousins; eh, Martin? I'm sure the part on
cleanliness would be easier for her to manage in discussion before she
visited the Spillini family, for example."

"Which one is that, Fred?" asked Mr. Foster.

Martin, a droll twinkle in his eye. "The family of eight, with Irish
mother and Italian father, who live in one room and take boarders?"

There was a little explosive "oh" of protest from Gertrude, while her
mother laughed delightedly.

"Mr. Martin, you are so perfectly absurd. Why didn't you say that the
room was only ten by fifteen feet and had but one window!"

"Because I don't think it is quite so big as that, and there is no
outside window at all," said he, quite gravely. "And their only bath-tub
for the entire crowd is a small tin basin also used to wash dishes in."

"W-h-a-t!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, as if she were beginning to suspect
their guest's sanity, for she recognized that his mood had changed from
one of banter.

The portiere was drawn aside, and other guests announced. As Mrs. Foster
swept forward to meet them, Gertrude grasped her father's arm and looked
into his eyes with something very like terror in her own. "Papa," she
said hastily, in an intense undertone; "Papa, is he in earnest? Do the
Feedour girls collect rent from such awful poverty as that? Do eight
human beings eat and sleep--live--in one room anywhere in a Christian
country? Does--?"

Her father took both of her hands in his own for a moment and looked
steadily into her face.

"Hundreds of them, darling," he said, gently. "Don't stare at Miss
Feedour that way. Go speak to her. She is looking toward us, and your
mother has left her with Martin quite long enough. He is in an ugly
humor to-night. Go--no, come," he said, slipping her hand in his arm and
drawing her forward through the long rooms to where the group of guests
were greeting each other with that easy familiarity which told of
frequent intercourse and community of interests and social information.




II.

Two hours later Gertrude found herself near a low window seat upon
which sat John Martin. She could not remember when he had not been her
father's closest friend, and she had no idea why his moods had changed
so of late. He was much less free and fatherly with her. She wondered
now if he despised her because she knew so little of the real woes of
a real world about her, while she, in common with those of her station,
sighed so heavily over the needs of a more distant or less repulsive
human swarm.

"Will you take me to see the Spillini family some day soon, Mr. Martin,"
she asked, seating herself by his side. "Papa said that you were telling
the truth--were not joking as I thought at first."

Her eyes were following the graceful movements of Lizzie Feedour, as
that young lady turned the leaves of a handsome volume that lay on
the table before her, and a gentleman with whom she was discussing its
merits and defects.

"I don't believe the call would be a pleasure on either side," said Mr.
Martin, brusquely, "unless we sent word the day before and had some of
the family moved out and a chair taken in."

The girl turned her eyes slowly upon him, but she did not speak. The
color began to climb into his face and dye the very roots of his hair.
She wondered why. Her own face was rather paler than usual and her eyes
were very serious.

"You don't want to take me," she said. "I wonder why men always try to
keep girls from knowing things--from learning of the world as it is--and
then blame them for their ignorance! You naturally think I am a very
silly, light girl, but--"

A great panic overtook John Martin's heart. He could hardly keep back
the tears. He felt the blood rush to his face again, but he did not know
just what he said.

"I do not--I do not! You are--I--I--should hate to be the one to
introduce you to such a view of life. I was an old fool to talk as I did
this evening. I--"

"Oh, that is it!" exclaimed Gertrude, relieved. "You found me ignorant,
and content because I was ignorant, and you regret that you have struck
a chord--a serious chord--where only make-believe or merry ones were
ever struck between us before."

John Martin fidgeted.

"No, it is not that I would like to strike the first serious chord for
you--in your heart, Gertrude."

He had called her Gertrude for years. Indeed the Miss upon his lips was
of very recent date, but there was a meaning in the name just now as
he spoke it that gave the girl a distinct shock. She felt that he was
covering retreat in one direction by a mendacious advance in another.
She arose suddenly.

"Lizzie Feedour is looking her best tonight," she said. "She grows
handsomer every day."

She had moved forward a step, but he caught the hand that hung by her
side. She faced him with a look of mingled protest and surprise in her
face; but when her eyes met his, she understood.

"Gertrude, darling!" was all he could say. This time the blood dyed her
face and a mist blinded her for a moment. She remembered feeling glad
that her back was turned to everyone but him, and that the window
drapery hid his face from the others, for the intensity of appeal
