Pete got in contact with a voracious bulldog, that came from somewhere over in the back country; and in the final analysis--in which the two animals participated--Pete was left in a badly mangled condition.
Cal found him, and happening to be near the shanty of a neighbor, several miles from his own shack, carried the unfortunate Pete tenderly to shelter.
It was through this neighbor, another hermit, with another history, that Cal got interested in a pile of old newspapers and magazines which had been procured in some way by this isolated tenant of the sands, who still maintained a lagging interest in the affairs of the outside world.
During Pete’s convalescence, Cal found in one of these old papers an account of a women’s rights meeting in his native city, in which his former ideal of beauty and loveliness had taken a prominent part.
disillusioned. The finger of time had touched the love of his youth and she was ugly. The tender blossom of nineteen was a cactus at fifty. To use his own phrase--“she looked like the breakin’ up of a hard winter.” In addition to the picture, the report of the proceedings, during which his former affinity had violently attacked what Cal considered were the sacred prerogatives of the male sex, extinguished the last lingering fond impression, and the lovely vision vanished.
He did not believe that women had sufficient intelligence to vote, and the idea of their taking part in sage political councils was repugnant to him. While he did not vote himself, he said that there “was plenty o’ men to ’tend to them things, an’ its foolish to allow women to git mixed up in the govament.”
This wise and smug anti-suffragist thought that the female sex “should be allowed to meet, if they want to, but they hadn’t ought a butt in on things that require superior intelligence.”
The newspaper cut had done its awful work on Cal, and women’s rights had completed the demolition of an ideal that had been cherished through the years. His idol had crumbled and turned to ashes, and his dog was now the only live thing that he considered worthy of affection.
The story had in it much pathos, but interspersed through it was a great deal of picturesque profanity, particularly in connection with the idea of women casting votes, which had aroused the dormant passions of his nature.