Mrs. George D. Pratt Contributes to Suffrage Library. Mrs. George D. Pratt has contributed as many books to the free circulating library of the Equal Franchise Society as the clever committee will be able to buy with twenty-five dollars. Considering the many demands on the sympathy of Mrs. Pratt it was a very generous gift to the organization which is one of the most dignified of the suffrage societies, in that as Mrs. Clarence Mackay, its former president, explained, it considers political equality entirely an ethical question and it works along only educational lines. It will circulate books not bricks; it invites working girls to its meetings, and instead of inciting revolt and envy it makes friendships between the rich and poor at its teas and entertainments in the club rooms on East Thirty-seventh. Street near Tiffany's. Mrs. Pratt approves of this, as do many dignified women of the social world. It was well-proved that the Equal Franchise Society has the sanction of people of enviable position at the meeting held in Carnegie Hall on Friday night of last week. In the boxes sat women in beautiful evening gowns. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont looked down on the scene through her lorgnette and Bourke Cockran tried to hide behind the brim of his wife's picture hat when Rabbi Wise was denouncing Murphy and his ilk. It was at this meeting that Mrs. Pratt agreed to give twenty-five dollars for the library and it all happened as the result of a clever little plan. Mrs. Pearce Bailey, the wife of the noted neurologist (it was she who posed as Molly Pitcher in the great suffrage tableaux last year) was making her speech in regard to women and education. Standing hardly taller than the lectern, Mrs. Bailey was telling the audience in a droll colloquial way of the library that the society hopes to establish. Mrs. Mackay's speech had already won sympathy for the society in that she had voiced its disapproval of brickhurling and window-smashing methods. Mrs. Bailey said, of the library, "Of course to have a apropos circulating library the principal thing is to have books. Now we have only thirty. We can't do anything so plebeian as to pass the hat, but if there are people in this audience I know I want them to pledge themselves to contribute to the fund. I've got to raise one thousand dollars to-night. Who will give me one hundred dollars? Come now," she said, with an elf-like mischief, looking up in the boxes. "I recognize you, many of you. please give me one thousand dollars." The audience was stunned for a few minutes by surprise. But. quickly a man's voice spoke, offering one hundred dollars and after that, making a second contribution a gentleman from the back of the house announced clearly, "Mrs. George D. Pratt, twenty-five dollars." Mrs. Bailey was successful in raising fifty dollars over the one thousand she made her aim. When there was a pause she challenged the audience and woke it up with a bright little anecdote or joke. In several cases money was passed across the footlights to her.
