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Title: Samantha on the Woman Question

Author: Marietta Holley

Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7833]
                Most recently updated: February 15, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Eric Eldred, William Flis and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA ON THE WOMAN QUESTION ***




Samantha on the Woman Question

by Marietta Holley

“Josiah Allen’s Wife”

Author of

“Samantha at Saratoga,” “My Opinions” and
“Betsey Bobbet’s,” etc.


Contents

 I. “SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS”
 II. “THEY CAN’T BLAME HER”
 III. “POLLY’S EYES GROWED TENDER”
 IV. “STRIVIN’ WITH THE EMISSARY”
 V. “HE WUZ DRETFUL POLITE”
 VI. “CONCERNING MOTH-MILLERS AND MINNY FISH”
 VII. “NO HAMPERIN’ HITCHIN’ STRAPS”
 VIII. “OLD MOM NATER LISTENIN’”
 IX. THE WOMEN’S PARADE
 X. “THE CREATION SEARCHIN’ SOCIETY”

[Illustration:
“And I wonder if there is a woman in the land that can blame Serepta
for wantin’ her rights.”]


ILLUSTRATIONS

 “AND I WONDER IF THERE’S A WOMAN IN THE LAND THAT CAN BLAME SEREPTA
 FOR WANTIN’ HER RIGHTS”
 “I WANTED TO VISIT THE CAPITOL OF OUR COUNTRY.... SO WE LAID OUT TO
 GO”
 “HE’D ENTERED POLITICAL LIFE WHERE THE BIBLE WUZN’T POPULAR; HE’D
 NEVER READ FURTHER THAN GULLIVER’S EPISTLE TO THE LILIPUTIANS”
 “SEZ JOSIAH, ‘DOES THAT THING KNOW ENOUGH TO VOTE?’”




I.
“SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS”


Lorinda Cagwin invited Josiah and me to a reunion of the Allen family
at her home nigh Washington, D.C., the birthplace of the first Allen we
knowed anything about, and Josiah said:

“Bein’ one of the best lookin’ and influential Allens on earth now, it
would be expected on him to attend to it.”

And I fell in with the idee, partly to be done as I would be done by if
it wuz the relation on my side, and partly because by goin’ I could hit
two birds with one stun, as the poet sez. Indeed, I could hit four on
’em.

My own cousin, Diantha Trimble, lived in a city nigh Lorinda’s and I
had promised to visit her if I wuz ever nigh her, and help bear her
burdens for a spell, of which burden more anon and bom-by.

Diantha wuz one bird, the Reunion another, and the third bird I had in
my mind’s eye wuz the big outdoor meeting of the suffragists that wuz
to be held in the city where Diantha lived, only a little ways from
Lorinda’s.

And the fourth bird and the biggest one I wuz aimin’ to hit from this
tower of ourn wuz Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit the Capitol of our
country, the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun
in the solar system, sendin’ out beams of power and wisdom and law and
order, and justice and injustice, and money and oratory, and talk and
talk, and wind and everything, to the uttermost points of our vast
possessions, and from them clear to the ends of the earth. I wanted to
see it, I wanted to like a dog. So we laid out to go.

[Illustration: “I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country.... So we
laid out to go.”]

Lorinda lived on the old Allen place, and I always sot store by her,
and her girl, Polly, wuz, as Thomas J. said, a peach. She had spent one
of her college vacations with us, and a sweeter, prettier, brighter
girl I don’t want to see. Her name is Pauline, but everybody calls her
Polly.

The Cagwins are rich, and Polly had every advantage money could give,
and old Mom Nater gin her a lot of advantages money couldn’t buy,
beauty and intellect, a big generous heart and charm. And you know the
Cagwins couldn’t bought that at no price. Charm in a girl is like the
perfume in a rose, and can’t be bought or sold. And you can’t handle or
describe either on ’em exactly. But what a influence they have; how
they lay holt of your heart and fancy.

Royal Gray, the young man who wuz payin’ attention to her, stopped once
for a day or two in Jonesville with Polly and her Ma on their way to
the Cagwins’ camp in the Adirondacks. And we all liked him so well that
we agreed in givin’ him this extraordinary praise, we said he wuz
worthy of Polly, we knowed of course that wuz the highest enconium
possible for us to give.

Good lookin’, smart as a whip, and deep, you could see that by lookin’
into his eyes, half laughin’ and half serious eyes and kinder sad
lookin’ too under the fun, as eyes must be in this world of ourn if
they look back fur, or ahead much of any. A queer world this is, and
kinder sad and mysterious, behind all the good and glory on’t.

He wuz jest out of Harvard school and as full of life and sperits as a
colt let loose in a clover field. He went out in the hay field, he and
Polly, and rode home on top of a load of hay jest as nateral and easy
and bare-headed as if he wuz workin’ for wages, and he the only son of
a millionaire—we all took to him.

Well, when the news got out that I wuz goin’ to visit Washington, D.C.,
all the neighbors wanted to send errents by me. Betsy Bobbet Slimpsey
wanted a dozen Patent Office books for scrap books for her poetry.

Uncle Nate Gowdey wanted me to go to the Agricultural Buro and git him
a paper of lettuce seed. And Solomon Sypher wanted me to git him a new
kind of string beans and some cowcumber seeds.

Uncle Jarvis Bentley, who wuz goin’ to paint his house, wanted me to
ask the President what kind of paint he used on the White House. He
thought it ort to be a extra kind to stand the sharp glare that wuz
beatin’ down on it constant, and to ask him if he didn’t think the
paint would last longer and the glare be mollified some if they used
pure white and clear ile in it, and left off whitewash and karseen.

Ardelia Rumsey, who is goin’ to be married, wanted me, if I see any new
kinds of bedquilt patterns at the White House or the Senator’s housen,
to git patterns for ’em. She said she wuz sick of sun flowers and
blazin’ stars. She thought mebby they’d have sunthin’ new, spread eagle
style. She said her feller wuz goin’ to be connected with the Govermunt
and she thought it would be appropriate.

And I asked her how. And she said he wuz goin’ to git a patent on a new
kind of jack knife.

I told her that if she wanted a govermunt quilt and wanted it
appropriate she ort to have a crazy quilt.

And she said she had jest finished a crazy quilt with seven thousand
pieces of silk in it, and each piece trimmed with seven hundred
stitches of feather stitchin’—she’d counted ’em. And then I remembered
seein’ it. There wuz a petition fer wimmen’s rights and I remember
Ardelia couldn’t sign it for lack of time. She wanted to, but she
hadn’t got the quilt more than half done. It took the biggest heft of
two years to do it. And so less important things had to be put aside.

And Ardelia’s mother wanted to sign it, but she couldn’t owin’ to a
bed-spread she wuz makin’. She wuz quiltin’ in Noah’s Ark and all the
animals on a Turkey red quilt. I remember she wuz quiltin’ the camel
that day and couldn’t be disturbed, so we didn’t git the names. It took
the old lady three years, and when it wuz done it wuz a sight to
behold, though I wouldn’t want to sleep under so many animals. But
folks went from fur and near to see it, and I enjoyed lookin’ at it
that day.

Zebulin Coon wanted me to carry a new hen coop of hisen to git
patented. And I thought to myself I wonder if they will ask me to carry
a cow.

And sure enough Elnathan Purdy wanted me to dicker for a calf from
Mount Vernon, swop one of his yearlin’s for it.

But the errents Serepta Pester sent wuz fur more hefty and momentous
than all the rest put together, calves, hen coop, cow and all.

And when she told ’em over to me, and I meditated on her reasons for
sendin’ ’em and her need of havin’ ’em done, I felt that I would do the
errents for her if a breath wuz left in my body. She come for a all
day’s visit; and though she is a vegetable widow and humbly, I wuz
middlin’ glad to see her. But thinkses I as I carried her things into
my bedroom, “She’ll want to send some errent by me”; and I wondered
what it would be.

And so it didn’t surprise me when she asked me if I would lobby a
little for her in Washington. I spozed it wuz some new kind of tattin’
or fancy work. I told her I shouldn’t have much time but would try to
git her some if I could.

And she said she wanted me to lobby myself. And then I thought mebby it
wuz a new kind of dance and told her, “I wuz too old to lobby, I hadn’t
lobbied a step since I wuz married.”

And then she explained she wanted me to canvas some of the Senators.

And I hung back and asked her in a cautious tone, “How many she wanted
canvassed, and how much canvas it would take?”

I had a good many things to buy for my tower, and though I wanted to
obleege Serepta, I didn’t feel like runnin’ into any great expense for
canvas.

And then she broke off from that subject, and said she wanted her
rights and wanted the Whiskey Ring broke up.

And she talked a sight about her children, and how bad she felt to be
parted from ’em, and how she used to worship her husband and how her
hull life wuz ruined and the Whiskey Ring had done it, that and
wimmen’s helpless condition under the law and she cried and wep’ and I
did. And right while I wuz cryin’ onto that gingham apron, she made me
promise to carry them two errents of hern to the President and git ’em
done for her if I possibly could.

She wanted the Whiskey Ring destroyed and her rights, and she wanted
’em both inside of two weeks.

I told her I didn’t believe she could git ’em done inside that length
of time, but I would tell the President about it, and I thought more’n
likely as not he would want to do right by her. “And,” sez I, “if he
sets out to, he can haul them babies of yourn out of that Ring pretty
sudden.”

And then to git her mind offen her sufferin’s, I asked how her sister
Azuba wuz gittin’ along? I hadn’t heard from her for years. She married
Phileman Clapsaddle, and Serepty spoke out as bitter as a bitter
walnut, and sez she:

“She’s in the poor-house.”

“Why, Serepta Pester!” sez I, “what do you mean?”

“I mean what I say, my sister, Azuba Clapsaddle, is in the poor-house.”

“Why, where is their property gone?” sez I. “They wuz well off. Azuba
had five thousand dollars of her own when she married him.”

“I know it,” sez she, “and I can tell you, Josiah Allen’s wife, where
their property has gone, it has gone down Phileman Clapsaddle’s throat.
Look down that man’s throat and you will see 150 acres of land, a good
house and barn, twenty sheep and forty head of cattle.”

“Why-ee!” sez I.

“Yes, and you’ll see four mules, a span of horses, two buggies, a
double sleigh, and three buffalo robes. He’s drinked ’em all up, and
two horse rakes, a cultivator, and a thrashin’ machine.”

“Why-ee!” sez I agin. “And where are the children?”

“The boys have inherited their father’s habits and drink as bad as he
duz and the oldest girl has gone to the bad.”

“Oh dear! oh dear me!” sez I, and we both sot silent for a spell. And
then thinkin’ I must say sunthin’ and wantin’ to strike a safe subject
and a good lookin’ one, I sez:

“Where is your Aunt Cassandra’s girl? That pretty girl I see to your
house once?”

“That girl is in the lunatick asylum.”

“Serepta Pester,” sez I, “be you tellin’ the truth?”

“Yes, I be, the livin’ truth. She went to New York to buy millinery
goods for her mother’s store. It wuz quite cool when she left home and
she hadn’t took off her winter clothes, and it come on brilin’ hot in
the city, and in goin’ about from store to store the heat and hard work
overcome her and she fell down in a sort of faintin’ fit and wuz called
drunk and dragged off to a police court by a man who wuz a animal in
human shape. And he misused her in such a way that she never got over
the horror of what befell her when she come to to find herself at the
mercy of a brute in a man’s shape. She went into a melancholy madness
and wuz sent to the asylum.”

I sithed a long and mournful sithe and sot silent agin for quite a
spell. But thinkin’ I must be sociable I sez: “Your aunt Cassandra is
well, I spoze?”

“She is moulderin’ in jail,” sez she.

“In jail? Cassandra in jail!”

“Yes, in jail.” And Serepta’s tone wuz now like worm-wood and gall.

“You know she owns a big property in tenement houses and other
buildings where she lives. Of course her taxes wuz awful high, and she
didn’t expect to have any voice in tellin’ how that money, a part of
her own property that she earned herself in a store, should be used.
But she had been taxed high for new sidewalks in front of some of her
buildin’s. And then another man come into power in that ward, and he
naterally wanted to make some money out of her, so he ordered her to
build new sidewalks. And she wouldn’t tear up a good sidewalk to please
him or anybody else, so she wuz put to jail for refusin’ to comply with
the law.”

Thinkses I, I don’t believe the law would have been so hard on her if
she hadn’t been so humbly. The Pesters are a humbly lot. But I didn’t
think it out loud, and didn’t ophold the law for feelin’ so. I sez in
pityin’ tones, for I wuz truly sorry for Cassandra Keeler:

“How did it end?”

“It hain’t ended,” sez she, “it only took place a month ago and she has
got her grit up and won’t pay; and no knowin’ how it will end; she lays
there amoulderin’.”

I don’t believe Cassanda wuz mouldy, but that is Serepta’s way of
talkin’, very flowery.

“Well,” sez I, “do you think the weather is goin’ to moderate?”

I truly felt that I dassent speak to her about any human bein’ under
the sun, not knowin’ what turn she would give to the talk, bein’ so
embittered. But I felt that the weather wuz safe, and cotton stockin’s,
and hens, and factory cloth, and I kep’ her down on them for more’n two
hours.

But good land! I can’t blame her for bein’ embittered agin men and the
laws they’ve made, for it seems as if I never see a human creeter so
afflicted as Serepta Pester has been all her life.

Why, her sufferin’s date back before she wuz born, and that’s goin’
pretty fur back. Her father and mother had some difficulty and he wuz
took down with billerous colick, voylent four weeks before Serepta wuz
born. And some think it wuz the hardness between ’em and some think it
wuz the gripin’ of the colick when he made his will, anyway he willed
Serepta away, boy or girl whichever it wuz, to his brother up on the
Canada line.

So when Serepta wuz born (and born a girl ontirely onbeknown to her)
she wuz took right away from her mother and gin to this brother. Her
mother couldn’t help herself, he had the law on his side. But it killed
her. She drooped away and died before the baby wuz a year old. She wuz
a affectionate, tenderhearted woman and her husband wuz overbearin’ and
stern always.

But it wuz this last move of hisen that killed her, for it is pretty
tough on a mother to have her baby, a part of her own life, took right
out of her own arms and gin to a stranger. For this uncle of hern wuz a
entire stranger to Serepta, and almost like a stranger to her father,
for he hadn’t seen him since he wuz a boy, but knew he hadn’t any
children and spozed that he wuz rich and respectable. But the truth wuz
he had been runnin’ down every way, had lost his property and his
character, wuz dissipated and mean. But the will wuz made and the law
stood. Men are ashamed now to think that the law wuz ever in voge, but
it wuz, and is now in some of the states, and the poor young mother
couldn’t help herself. It has always been the boast of our American law
that it takes care of wimmen. It took care of her. It held her in its
strong protectin’ grasp so tight that the only way she could slip out
of it wuz to drop into the grave, which she did in a few months. Then
it leggo.

But it kep’ holt of Serepta, it bound her tight to her uncle while he
run through with what property she had, while he sunk lower and lower
until at last he needed the very necessaries of life and then he bound
her out to work to a woman who kep’ a drinkin’ den and the lowest hant
of vice.

Twice Serepta run away, bein’ virtuous but humbly, but them strong
protectin’ arms of the law that had held her mother so tight reached
out and dragged her back agin. Upheld by them her uncle could compel
her to give her service wherever he wanted her to work, and he wuz
owin’ this woman and she wanted Serepta’s work, so she had to submit.

But the third time she made a effort so voyalent that she got away. A
good woman, who bein’ nothin’ but a woman couldn’t do anything towards
onclinchin’ them powerful arms that wuz protectin’ her, helped her to
slip through ’em. And Serepta come to Jonesville to live with a sister
of that good woman; changed her name so’s it wouldn’t be so easy to
find her; grew up to be a nice industrious girl. And when the woman she
wuz took by died she left Serepta quite a handsome property.

And finally she married Lank Burpee, and did considerable well it wuz
spozed. Her property, put with what little he had, made ’em a
comfortable home and they had two pretty children, a boy and a girl.
But when the little girl wuz a baby he took to drinkin’, neglected his
bizness, got mixed up with a whiskey ring, whipped Serepta—not so very
hard. He went accordin’ to law, and the law of the United States don’t
approve of a man’s whippin’ his wife enough to endanger her life, it
sez it don’t. He made every move of hisen lawful and felt that Serepta
hadn’t ort to complain and feel hurt. But a good whippin’ will make
anybody feel hurt, law or no law. And then he parted with her and got
her property and her two little children. Why, it seemed as if
everything under the sun and moon, that could happen to a woman, had
happened to Serepta, painful things and gauldin’.

Jest before Lank parted with her, she fell on a broken sidewalk: some
think he tripped her up, but it never wuz proved. But anyway Serepta
fell and broke her hip hone; and her husband sued the corporation and
got ten thousand dollars for it. Of course the law give the money to
him and she never got a cent of it. But she wouldn’t have made any fuss
over that, knowin’ that the law of the United States wuz such. But what
made it so awful mortifyin’ to her wuz, that while she wuz layin’ there
achin’ in splints, he took that very money and used it to court up
another woman with. Gin her presents, jewelry, bunnets, head-dresses,
artificial flowers out of Serepta’s own hip money.

And I don’t know as anything could be much more gauldin’ to a woman
than that—while she lay there groanin’ in splints, to have her husband
take the money for her own broken bones and dress up another woman like
a doll with it.

But the law gin it to him, and he wuz only availin’ himself of the
glorious liberty of our free Republic, and doin’ as he wuz a mind to.
And it wuz spozed that that very hip money wuz what made the match. For
before she wuz fairly out of splints he got a divorce from her and
married agin. And by the help of Serepta’s hip money and the Whiskey
Ring he got her two little children away from her.




II.
“THEY CAN’T BLAME HER”


And I wonder if there is a woman in the land that can blame Serepta for
gittin’ mad and wantin’ her rights and wantin’ the Whiskey Ring broke
up, when they think how she’s been fooled round with by men; willed
away, and whipped, and parted with, and stole from. Why, they can’t
blame her for feelin’ fairly savage about ’em, as she duz.

For as she sez to me once, when we wuz talkin’ it over, how everything
had happened to her. “Yes,” sez she, with a axent like bone-set and
vinegar, “and what few things hain’t happened to me has happened to my
folks.”

And sure enough I couldn’t dispute her. Trouble and wrongs and
sufferin’s seemed to be epidemic in the race of Pester wimmen. Why, one
of her aunts on her father’s side, Huldah Pester, married for her first
husband, Eliphelet Perkins. He wuz a minister, rode on a circuit, and
he took Huldah on it too, and she rode round with him on it a good deal
of the time. But she never loved to, she wuz a woman that loved to be
still, and kinder settled down at home.

But she loved Eliphelet so well that she would do anything to please
him, so she rode round with him on that circuit till she wuz perfectly
fagged out.

He wuz a dretful good man to her, but he wuz kinder poor and they had
hard times to git along. But what property they had wuzn’t taxed, so
that helped some, and Huldah would make one dollar go a good ways.

No, their property wuzn’t taxed till Eliphelet died. Then the
supervisor taxed it the very minute the breath left his body; run his
horse, so it wuz said, so’s to be sure to git it onto the tax list, and
comply with the law.

You see Eliphelet’s salary stopped when his breath did. And I spoze the
law thought, seein’ she wuz havin’ trouble, she might jest as well have
a little more; so it taxed all the property it never had taxed a cent
for before.

But she had this to console her that the law didn’t forgit her in her
widowhood. No; the law is quite thoughtful of wimmen by spells. It sez
it protects wimmen. And I spoze that in some mysterious way, too deep
for wimmen to understand, it wuz protectin’ her now.

Well, she suffered along and finally married agin. I wondered why she
did. But she wuz such a quiet, home-lovin’ woman that it wuz spozed she
wanted to settle down and be kinder still and sot. But of all the bad
luck she had. She married on short acquaintance, and he proved to be a
perfect wanderer. He couldn’t keep still, it wuz spozed to be a mark.

He moved Huldah thirteen times in two years, and at last he took her
into a cart, a sort of covered wagon, and traveled right through the
western states with her. He wanted to see the country and loved to live
in the wagon, it wuz his make. And, of course, the law give him control
of her body, and she had to go where he moved it, or else part with
him. And I spoze the law thought it wuz guardin’ and nourishin’ her
when it wuz joltin’ her over them prairies and mountains and abysses.
But it jest kep’ her shook up the hull of the time.

It wuz the regular Pester luck.

And then another of her aunts, Drusilly Pester, married a industrious,
hard-workin’ man, one that never drinked, wuz sound on the doctrines,
and give good measure to his customers, he wuz a groceryman. And a
master hand for wantin’ to foller the laws of his country as tight as
laws could be follered. And so knowin’ that the law approved of
moderate correction for wimmen, and that “a man might whip his wife,
but not enough to endanger her life”; he bein’ such a master hand for
wantin’ to do everything faithful and do his very best for his
customers, it wuz spozed he wanted to do the best for the law, and so
when he got to whippin’ Drusilly, he would whip her too severe, he
would be too faithful to it.

You see what made him whip her at all wuz she wuz cross to him. They
had nine little children, she thought two or three children would be
about all one woman could bring up well by hand, when that hand wuz so
stiff and sore with hard work.

But he had read some scareful talk from high quarters about Race
Suicide. Some men do git real wrought up about it and want everybody to
have all the children they can, jest as fast as they can, though wimmen
don’t all feel so.

Aunt Hetty Sidman said, “If men had to born ’em and nuss ’em
themselves, she didn’t spoze they would be so enthusiastick about it
after they had had a few, ‘specially if they done their own housework
themselves,” and Aunt Hetty said that some of the men who wuz exhortin’
wimmen to have big families, had better spend some of their strength
and wind in tryin’ to make this world a safer place for children to be
born into.

She said they’d be better off in Nonentity than here in this world with
saloons on every corner, and war-dogs howlin’ at ’em.

I don’t know exactly what she meant by Nonentity, but guess she meant
the world we all stay in, before we are born into this one.

Aunt Hetty has lost five boys, two by battle and three by licensed
saloons, that makes her talk real bitter, but to resoom. I told Josiah
that men needn’t worry about Race Suicide, for you might as well try to
stop a hen from makin’ a nest, as to stop wimmen from wantin’ a baby to
love and hold on her heart. But sez I, “Folks ort to be moderate and
mejum in babies as well as in everything else.”

But Drusilly’s husband wanted twelve boys he said, to be law-abidin’
citizens as their Pa wuz, and a protection to the Govermunt, and to be
ready to man the new warships, if a war broke out. But her babies wuz
real pretty and cunning, and she wuz so weak-minded she couldn’t enjoy
the thought that if our male statesmen got to scrappin’ with some other
nation’s male law-makers and made another war, of havin’ her grown-up
babies face the cannons. I spoze it wuz when she wuz so awful tired she
felt so.

You see she had to do every mite of her housework, and milk cows, and
make butter and cheese, and cook and wash and scour, and take all the
care of the children day and night in sickness and health, and make
their clothes and keep ’em clean. And when there wuz so many of ’em and
she enjoyin’ real poor health, I spoze she sometimes thought more of
her own achin’ back than she did of the good of the Govermunt—and she
would git kinder discouraged sometimes and be cross to him. And knowin’
his own motives wuz so high and loyal, he felt that he ort to whip her,
so he did.

And what shows that Drusilly wuzn’t so bad after all and did have her
good streaks and a deep reverence for the law is, that she stood his
whippin’s first-rate, and never whipped him. Now she wuz fur bigger
than he wuz, weighed eighty pounds the most, and might have whipped him
if the law had been such. But they wuz both law-abidin’ and wanted to
keep every preamble, so she stood it to be whipped, and never once
whipped him in all the seventeen years they lived together. She died
when her twelfth child wuz born. There wuz jest ten months difference
between that and the one next older. And they said she often spoke out
in her last sickness, and said, “Thank fortune, I’ve always kep’ the
law!” And they said the same thought wuz a great comfort to him in his
last moments. He died about a year after she did, leavin’ his second
wife with twins and a good property.

Then there wuz Abagail Pester. She married a sort of a high-headed man,
though one that paid his debts, wuz truthful, good lookin’, and played
well on the fiddle. Why, it seemed as if he had almost every
qualification for makin’ a woman happy, only he had this one little
eccentricity, he would lock up Abagail’s clothes every time he got mad
at her.

Of course the law give her clothes to him, and knowin’ that it wuz the
law in the state where they lived, she wouldn’t have complained only
when they had company. But it wuz mortifyin’, nobody could dispute it,
to have company come and have nothin’ to put on. Several times she had
to withdraw into the woodhouse, and stay most all day there shiverin’,
and under the suller stairs and round in clothes presses. But he
boasted in prayer meetin’s and on boxes before grocery stores that he
wuz a law-abidin’ citizen, and he wuz. Eben Flanders wouldn’t lie for
anybody.

But I’ll bet Abagail Flanders beat our old revolutionary four-mothers
in thinkin’ out new laws, when she lay round under stairs and behind
barrels in her night-gown. When a man hides his wife’s stockin’s and
petticoats it is governin’ without the consent of the governed. If you
don’t believe it you’d ort to peeked round them barrels and seen
Abagail’s eyes, they had hull reams of by-laws in ’em and preambles,
and Declarations of Independence, so I’ve been told. But it beat
everything I ever hearn on, the lawful sufferin’s of them wimmen. For
there wuzn’t nothin’ illegal about one single trouble of theirn. They
suffered accordin’ to law, every one on ’em. But it wuz tuff for ’em,
very tuff. And their bein’ so dretful humbly wuz another drawback to
’em, though that too wuz perfectly lawful, as everybody knows.

And Serepta looked as bad agin as she would otherwise on account of her
teeth. It wuz after Lank had begun to git after this other woman, and
wuz indifferent to his wife’s looks that Serepta had a new set of teeth
on her upper jaw. And they sot out and made her look so bad it fairly
made her ache to look at herself in the glass. And they hurt her gooms
too, and she carried ’em back to the dentist and wanted him to make her
another set, but he acted mean and wouldn’t take ’em back, and sued
Lank for the pay. And they had a law-suit. And the law bein’ such that
a woman can’t testify in court, in any matter that is of mutual
interest to husband and wife, and Lank wantin’ to act mean, said that
they wuz good sound teeth.

And there Serepta sot right in front of ’em with her gooms achin’ and
her face all swelled out, and lookin’ like furiation, and couldn’t say
a word. But she had to give in to the law. And ruther than go toothless
she wears ’em to this day, and I believe it is the raspin’ of them
teeth aginst her gooms and her discouraged, mad feelin’s every time she
looks in the glass that helps embitter her towards men, and the laws
men have made, so’s a woman can’t have control of her own teeth and her
own bones.

Serepta went home about 5 P.M., I promisin’ sacred to do her errents
for her.

And I gin a deep, happy sithe after I shot the door behind her, and I
sez to Josiah I do hope that’s the very last errent we will have to
carry to Washington, D.C., for the Jonesvillians.

“Yes,” says he, “an’ I guess I will get a fresh pail of water and hang
on the tea kettle for you.”

“And,” I says, “it’s pretty early for supper, but I’ll start it, for I
do feel kinder gone to the stomach. Sympathy is real exhaustin’.
Sometimes I think it tires me more’n hard work. And Heaven knows I
sympathized with Serepta. I felt for her full as much as if she was one
of the relations on _his_ side.”

But if you’ll believe it, I had hardly got the words out of my mouth
and Josiah had jest laid holt of the water pail, when in comes
Philander Dagget, the President of the Jonesville Creation Searchin’
Society and, of course, he had a job for us to do on our tower. This
Society was started by the leadin’ men of Jonesville, for the purpose
of searchin’ out and criticizin’ the affairs of the world, an’ so far
as possible advisin’ and correctin’ the meanderin’s an’ wrong-doin’s of
the universe.

This Society, which we call the C.S.S. for short, has been ruther quiet
for years. But sence woman’s suffrage has got to be such a prominent
question, they bein’ so bitterly opposed to it, have reorganized and
meet every once in a while, to sneer at the suffragettes and poke fun
at ’em and show in every way they can their hitter antipathy to the
cause.

Philander told me if I see anything new and strikin’ in the way of
Society badges and regalia, to let him know about it, for he said the
C.S.S. was goin’ to take a decided stand and show their colors. They
wuz goin’ to help protect his women endangered sect, an’ he wanted
sunthin’ showy and suggestive.

I thought of a number of badges and mottoes that I felt would be
suitable for this Society, but dassent tell ’em to him, for his idees
and mine on this subject are as fur apart as the two poles. He talked
awful bitter to me once about it, and I sez to him:

“Philander, the world is full of good men, and there are also bad men
in the world, and, sez I, did you ever in your born days see a bad man
that wuzn’t opposed to Woman’s Suffrage? All the men who trade in, and
profit by, the weakness and sin of men and women, they every one of
’em, to a man, fight agin it. And would they do this if they didn’t
think that their vile trades would suffer if women had the right to
vote? It is the great-hearted, generous, noble man who wants women to
become a real citizen with himself—which she is not now—she is only a
citizen just enough to be taxed equally with man, or more
exhorbitantly, and be punished and executed by the law she has no hand
in makin’.”

Philander sed, “I have always found it don’t pay to talk with women on
matters they don’t understand.”

An’ he got up and started for the door, an’ Josiah sed, “No, it don’t
pay, not a cent; I’ve always said so.”

But I told Philander I’d let him know if I see anything appropriate to
the C.S.S. Holdin’ back with a almost Herculaneum effort the mottoes
and badges that run through my mind as bein’ appropriate to their
society; knowin’ it would make him so mad if I told him of ’em—he never
would neighbor with us again. And in three days’ time we sot sail. We
got to the depo about an hour too early, but I wuz glad we wuz on time,
for it would have worked Josiah up dretfully ef we hadn’t been, for he
had spent most of the latter part of the night in gittin’ up and
walkin’ out to the clock seein’ if it wuz train time. Jest before we
started, who should come runnin’ down to the depo but Sam Nugent
wantin’ to send a errent by me to Washington. He wunk me out to one
side of the waitin’ room, and ast “if I’d try to git him a license to
steal horses.”

It kinder runs in the blood of the Nugents to love to steal, and he
owned up it did, but he said he wanted the profit of it. But I told him
I wouldn’t do any sech thing, an’ I looked at him in such a witherin’
way that I should most probable withered him, only he is blind in one
side, and I wuz on the blind side, but he argued with me, and said that
it wuz no worse than to give licenses for other kinds of meanness.

He said they give licenses now to steal—steal folkses senses away, and
then they could steal everything else, and murder and tear round into
every kind of wickedness. But he didn’t ask that. He wanted things done
fair and square: he jest wanted to steal horses. He wuz goin’ West, and
he thought he could do a good bizness, and lay up somethin’. If he had
a license he shouldn’t be afraid of bein’ shet up or shot.

But I refused the job with scorn; and jest as I wuz refusin’, the cars
snorted, and I wuz glad they did. They seemed to express in that wild
snort something of the indignation I felt.

The idee!




III.
“POLLY’S EYES CROWED TENDER”


Lorinda wuz dretful glad to see us and so wuz her husband and Polly.
But the Reunion had to be put off on account of a spell her husband wuz
havin’. Lorinda said she could not face such a big company as she’d
invited while Hiram wuz havin’ a spell, and I agreed with her.

Sez I, “Never, never, would I have invited company whilst Josiah wuz
sufferin’ with one of his cricks.”

Men hain’t patient under pain, and outsiders hain’t no bizness to hear
things they say and tell on ’em. So Polly had to write to the relations
puttin’ off the Reunion for one week. But Lorinda kep’ on cookin’ fruit
cake and such that would keep, she had plenty of help, but loved to do
her company cookin’ herself. And seein’ the Reunion wuz postponed and
Lorinda had time on her hands, I proposed she should go with me to the
big out-door meetin’ of the Suffragists, which wuz held in a nigh-by
city.

“Good land!” sez she, “nothin’ would tempt me to patronize anything so
brazen and onwomanly as a out-door meetin’ of wimmen, and so onhealthy
and immodest.” I see she looked reproachfully at Polly as she said it.
Polly wuz arrangin’ some posies in a vase, and looked as sweet as the
posies did, but considerable firm too, and I see from Lorinda’s looks
that Polly wuz one who had to leave father and mother for principle’s
sake.

But I sez, “You’re cookin’ this minute, Lorinda, for a out-door
meetin’” (she wuz makin’ angel cake). “And why is this meetin’ any more
onwomanly or immodest than the camp-meetin’ where you wuz converted,
and baptized the next Sunday in the creek?”

“Oh, them wuz religious meetin’s,” sez she.

“Well,” sez I, “mebby these wimmen think their meetin’ is religious.
You know the Bible sez, ‘Faith and works should go together,’ and some
of the leaders of this movement have showed by their works as religious
a sperit and wielded aginst injustice to young workin’ wimmen as
powerful a weepon as that axe of the ’Postles the Bible tells about.
And you said you went every day to the Hudson-Fulton doin’s and hearn
every out-door lecture; you writ me that there wuz probable a million
wimmen attendin’ them out-door meetin’s, and that wuz curosity and
pleasure huntin’ that took them, and this is a meetin’ of justice and
right.”

“Oh, shaw!” sez Lorinda agin, with her eye on Polly. “Wimmen have all
the rights they want or need.” Lorinda’s husband bein’ rich and lettin’
her have her way she is real foot loose, and don’t feel the need of any
more rights for herself, but I told her then and there some of the
wrongs and sufferin’s of Serepta Pester, and bein’ good-hearted (but
obstinate and bigoted) she gin in that the errents wuz hefty, and that
Serepta wuz to be pitied, but she insisted that wimmen’s votin’
wouldn’t help matters.

But Euphrasia Pottle, a poor relation from Troy, spoke up. “After my
husband died one of my girls went into a factory and gits about half
what the men git for the same work, and my oldest girl who teaches in
the public school don’t git half as much for the same work as men do,
and her school rooms are dark, stuffy, onhealthy, and crowded so the
children are half-choked for air, and the light so poor they’re havin’
their eyesight spilte for life, and new school books not needed at all,
are demanded constantly, so some-one can make money.”

“Yes,” sez I, “do you spoze, Lorinda, if intelligent mothers helped
control such things they would let their children be made sick and
blind and the money that should be used for food for poor hungry
children be squandered on _on_-necessary books they are too faint with
hunger to study.”

“But wimmen’s votin’ wouldn’t help in such things,” sez Lorinda, as she
stirred her angel cake vigorously.

But Euphrasia sez, “My niece, Ellen, teaches in a state where wimmen
vote and she gits the same wages men git for the same work, and her
school rooms are bright and pleasant and sanitary, and the pupils, of
course, are well and happy. And if you don’t think wimmen can help in
such public matters just go to Seattle and see how quick a bad man wuz
yanked out of his public office and a good man put in his place, mostly
by wimmen’s efforts and votes.”

“Yes,” sez I, “it is a proved fact that wimmen’s votes do help in these
matters. And do you think, Lorinda, that if educated, motherly,
thoughtful wimmen helped make the laws so many little children would be
allowed to toil in factories and mines, their tender shoulders bearin’
the burden of constant labor that wears out the iron muscles of men?”

Polly’s eyes growed tender and wistful, and her little white hands
lingered over her posies, and I knowed the hard lot of the poor, the
wrongs of wimmen and children, the woes of humanity, wuz pressin’ down
on her generous young heart. And I could see in her sweet face the
brave determination to do and to dare, to try to help ondo the wrongs,
and try to lift the burdens from weak and achin’ shoulders. But Lorinda
kep’ on with the same old moth-eaten argument so broke down and feeble
it ort to be allowed to die in peace.

“Woman’s suffrage would make women neglect their homes and housework
and let their children run loose into ruin.”

I knowed she said it partly on Polly’s account, but I sez in surprise,
“Why, Lorinda, it must be you hain’t read up on the subject or you
would know wherever wimmen has voted they have looked out first of all
for the children’s welfare. They have raised the age of consent, have
closed saloons and other places of licensed evil, and in every way it
has been their first care to help ’em to safer and more moral
surroundin’s, for who has the interest of children more at heart than
the mothers who bore them, children who are the light of their eyes and
the hope of the future.”

Lorinda admitted that the state of the children in the homes of the
poor and ignorant wuz pitiful. “But,” sez she, “the Bible sez ‘ye shall
always have the poor with you,’ and I spoze we always shall, with all
their sufferin’s and wants. But,” sez she, “in well-to-do homes the
children are safe and well off, and don’t need any help from woman
legislation.”

“Why, Lorinda,” sez I, “did you ever think on’t how such mothers may
watch over and be the end of the law to their children with the
father’s full consent during infancy when they’re wrastlin’ with
teethin’, whoopin’-cough, mumps, etc., can be queen of the nursery,
dispensor of pure air, sunshine, sanitary, and safe surroundin’s in
every way, and then in a few years see ’em go from her into dark,
overcrowded, unsanitary, carelessly guarded places, to spend the
precious hours when they are the most receptive to influence and pass
man-made pitfalls on their way to and fro, must stand helpless until in
too many cases the innocent healthy child that went from her care
returns to her half-blind, a physical and moral wreck. The mother who
went down to death’s door for ’em, and had most to do in mouldin’ their
destiny during infancy should have at least equal rights with the
father in controllin’ their surroundin’s during their entire youth, and
to do this she must have equal legal power or her best efforts are
wasted. That this is just and right is as plain to me as the nose on my
face and folks will see it bom-bye and wonder they didn’t before.

“And wimmen who suffer most by the lack on’t, will be most interested
in openin’ schools to teach the fine art of domestic service, teachin’
young girls how to keep healthy comfortable homes and fit themselves to
be capable wives and mothers. I don’t say or expect that wimmen’s
votin’ will make black white, or wash all the stains from the
legislative body at once, but I say that jest the effort to git
wimmen’s suffrage has opened hundreds of bolted doors and full suffrage
will open hundreds more. And I’m goin’ to that woman’s suffrage meetin’
if I walk afoot.”

But here Josiah spoke up, I thought he wuz asleep, he wuz layin’ on the
lounge with a paper over his face. But truly the word, “Woman’s
Suffrage,” rousts him up as quick as a mouse duz a drowsy cat, so, sez
he, “I can’t let you go, Samantha, into any such dangerous and
onwomanly affair.”

“Let?” sez I in a dry voice; “that’s a queer word from one old pardner
to another.”

“I’m responsible for your safety, Samantha, and if anybody goes to that
dangerous and onseemly meetin’ I will. Mebby Polly would like to go
with me.” As stated, Polly is as pretty as a pink posy, and no matter
how old a man is, nor how interestin’ and noble his pardner is, he
needs girl blinders, yes, he needs ’em from the cradle to the grave.
But few, indeed, are the female pardners who can git him to wear ’em.

He added, “You know I represent you legally, Samantha; what I do is
jest the same as though you did it.”

Sez I, “Mebby that is law, but whether it is gospel is another
question. But if you represent me, Josiah, you will have to carry out
my plans; I writ to Diantha Smith Trimble that if I went to the city
I’d take care of Aunt Susan a night or two, and rest her a spell; you
know Diantha is a widder and too poor to hire a nurse. But seein’ you
represent me you can set up with her Ma a night or two; she’s bed-rid
and you’ll have to lift her round some, and give her her medicine and
take care of Diantha’s twins, and let her git a good sleep.”

“Well, as it were—Samantha—you know—men hain’t expected to represent
wimmen in everything, it is mostly votin’ and tendin’ big meetin’s and
such.”

“Oh, I see,” sez I; “men represent wimmen when they want to, and when
they don’t wimmen have got to represent themselves.”

“Well, yes, Samantha, sunthin’ like that.”

He didn’t say anything more about representin’ me, and Polly said she
wuz goin’ to ride in the parade with some other college girls.
Lorinda’s linement looked dark and forbiddin’ as Polly stated in her
gentle, but firm way this ultimatum. Lorinda hated the idee of Polly’s
jinin’ in what she called onwomanly and immodest doin’s, but I looked
beamin’ly at her and gloried in her principles.

After she went out Lorinda said to me in a complainin’ way, “I should
think that a girl that had every comfort and luxury would be contented
and thankful, and be willin’ to stay to home and act like a lady.”

Sez I, “Nothin’ could keep Polly from actin’ like a lady, and mebby it
is because she is so well off herself that makes her sorry for other
young girls that have nothin’ but poverty and privation.”

“Oh, nonsense!” sez Lorinda. But I knowed jest how it wuz. Polly bein’
surrounded by all the good things money could give, and bein’ so
tender-hearted her heart ached for other young girls, who had to spend
the springtime of their lives in the hard work of earnin’ bread for
themselves and dear ones, and she longed to help ’em to livin’ wages,
so they could exist without the wages of sin, and too many on ’em had
to choose between them black wages and starvation. She wanted to help
’em to better surroundin’s and she knowed the best weepon she could put
into their hands to fight the wolves of Want and Temptation, wuz the
ballot. Polly hain’t a mite like her Ma, she favors the Smiths more,
her grand-ma on her pa’s side wuz a Smith and a woman of brains and
principle.

Durin’ my conversation with Lorinda, I inquired about Royal Gray, for
as stated, he wuz a great favorite of ourn, and I found out (and I
could see it gaulded her) that when Polly united with the Suffragists
he shied off some, and went to payin’ attention to another girl.
Whether it wuz to make Polly jealous and bring her round to his way of
thinkin’, I didn’t know, but mistrusted, for I could have took my oath
that he loved Polly deeply and truly. To be sure he hadn’t confided in
me, but there is a language of the eyes, when the soul speaks through
’em, and as I’d seen him look at Polly my own soul had hearn and
understood that silent language and translated it, that Polly wuz the
light of his eyes, and the one woman in the world for him. And I
couldn’t think his heart had changed so sudden. But knowin’ as I did
the elastic nature of manly affection, I felt dubersome.

This other girl, Maud Vincent, always said to her men friends, it wuz
onwomanly to try to vote. She wuz one of the girls who always gloried
in bein’ a runnin’ vine when there wuz any masculine trees round to
lean on and twine about. One who always jined in with all the idees
they promulgated, from neckties to the tariff, who declared cigar smoke
wuz so agreeable and welcome; it did really make her deathly sick, but
she would choke herself cheerfully and willin’ly if by so chokin’ she
could gain manly favor and admiration.

She said she didn’t believe in helpin’ poor girls, they wuz well enough
off as it wuz, she wuz sure they didn’t feel hunger and cold as rich
girls did, their skin wuz thicker and their stomachs different and
stronger, and constant labor didn’t harm them, and working girls didn’t
need recreation as rich girls did, and woman’s suffrage wouldn’t help
them any; in her opinion it would harm them, and anyway the poor wuz
on-grateful.

She had the usual arguments on the tip of her tongue, for old Miss
Vincent, the aunt she lived with, wuz a ardent She Aunty and very
prominent in the public meetin’s the She Auntys have to try to compel
the Suffragists not to have public meetin’s. They talk a good deal in
public how onwomanly and immodest it is for wimmen to talk in public.
And she wuz one of the foremost ones in tryin’ to git up a school to
teach wimmen civics, to prove that they mustn’t ever have anything to
do with civics.

Yes, old Miss Vincent wuz a real active, ardent She Aunty, and Maud
Genevieve takes after her. Royal Gray, his handsome attractive
personality, and his millions, had long been the goal of Maud’s
ambition. And how ardently did she hail the coolness growing between
him and Polly, the little rift in the lute, and how zealously did she
labor to make it larger.

Polly and Royal had had many an argument on the subject, that is, he
would begin by makin’ fun of the Suffragists and their militant doin’s,
which if he’d thought on’t wuz sunthin’ like what his old revolutionary
forbears went through for the same reasons, bein’ taxed without
representation, and bein’ burdened and punished by the law they had no
voice in making, only the Suffragettes are not nearly so severe with
their opposers, they haven’t drawed any blood yet. Why, them old
Patriots we revere so, would consider their efforts for freedom
exceedingly gentle and tame compared to their own bloody battles.

And Royal would make light of the efforts of college girls to help
workin’ girls, and the encouragement and aid they’d gin ’em when they
wuz strikin’ for less death-dealin’ hours of labor, and livin’ wages,
and so forth. I don’t see how such a really noble young man as Royal
ever come to argy that way, but spoze it wuz the dead hand of some
rough onreasonable old ancestor reachin’ up out of the shadows of the
past and pushin’ him on in the wrong direction.

So when he begun to ridicule what Polly’s heart wuz sot on, when she
felt that he wuz fightin’ agin right and justice, before they knowed it
both pairs of bright eyes would git to flashin’ out angry sparks, and
hash words would be said on both sides. That old long-buried Tory
ancestor of hisen eggin’ him on, so I spoze, and Polly’s generous
sperit rebellin’ aginst the injustice and selfishness, and mebby some
warlike ancestor of hern pushin’ her on to say hash things. ’Tennyrate
he had grown less attentive to her, and wuz bestowin’ his time and
attentions elsewhere.

And when she told him she wuz goin’ to ride in the automobile parade of
the suffragists, but really ridin’ she felt towards truth and justice
to half the citizens of the U.S., he wuz mad as a wet hen, a male wet
hen, and wuz bound she shouldn’t go.

Some men, and mebby it is love that makes ’em feel so (they say it is),
and mebby it is selfishness (though they won’t own up to it), but they
want the women they love to belong to them alone, want to rule
absolutely over their hearts, their souls, their bodies, and all their
thoughts and aims, desires, and fancies. They don’t really say they
want ’em to wear veils, and be shet in behind lattice-windowed harems,
but I believe they would enjoy it.

They want to be foot loose and heart loose themselves, but always after
Ulysses is tired of world wandering, he wants to come back and open the
barred doors of home with his own private latch-key, and find Penelope
knitting stockings for him with her veil on, waitin’ for him.

That sperit is I spoze inherited from the days when our ancestor, the
Cave man, would knock down the woman he fancied, with a club, and carry
her off into his cave and keep her there shet up. But little by little
men are forgettin’ their ancestral traits, and men and wimmen are
gradually comin’ out of their dark caverns into the sunshine (for women
too have inherited queer traits and disagreeable ones, but that is
another story).

Well, as I said, Royal wuz mad and told Polly that he guessed that the
day of the Parade he would take Maud Vincent out in the country in his
motor, to gather May-flowers. Polly told him she hoped they would have
a good time, and then, after he had gone, drivin’ his car
lickety-split, harem skarum, owin’ to his madness I spoze, Polly went
upstairs and cried, for I hearn her, her room wuz next to ourn.

And I deeply respected her for her principles, for he had asked her
first to go May-flowering with him the day of the Suffrage meeting. But
she refused, havin’ in her mind, I spoze, the girls that couldn’t hunt
flowers, but had to handle weeds and thistles with bare hands
(metaforically) and wanted to help them and all workin’ wimmen to
happier and more prosperous lives.




IV.
“STRIVIN’ WITH THE EMISSARY”


But I am hitchin’ the horse behind the wagon and to resoom backwards.
The Reunion wuz put off a week and the Suffrage Meetin’ wuz two days
away, so I told Lorinda I didn’t believe I would have a better time to
carry Serepta Pester’s errents to Washington, D.C. Josiah said he
guessed he would stay and help wait on Hiram Cagwin, and I approved
on’t, for Lorinda wuz gittin’ wore out.

And then Josiah made so light of them errents I felt that he would be a
drawback instead of a help, for how could I keep a calm and noble frame
of mind befittin’ them lofty errents, and how could I carry ’em stiddy
with a pardner by my side pokin’ fun at ’em, and at me for carryin’
’em, jarrin’ my sperit with his scorfin’ and onbelievin’ talk?

And as I sot off alone in the trolley I thought of how they must have
felt in old times a-carryin’ the Urim and Thumim. And though I hadn’t
no idee what them wuz, yet I always felt that the carriers of ’em must
have felt solemn and high-strung. Yes, my feelin’s wuz such as I felt
of the heft and importance of them errents not alone to Serepta Pester,
but to the hull race of wimmen that it kep’ my mental head rained up so
high that I couldn’t half see and enjoy the sight of the most beautiful
city in the world, and still I spoze its grandeur and glory sort o’
filtered down through my conscientiousness, as cloth grows white under
the sun’s rays onbeknown to it.

Anon I left the trolley and walked some ways afoot. It wuz a lovely
day, the sun shone down in golden splendor upon the splendor beneath
it. Broad, beautiful clean streets, little fresh green parks,
everywhere you could turn about, and big ones full of flowers and
fountains, and trees and statutes.

And anon or oftener I passed noble big stun buildings, where everything
is made for the nation’s good and profit. Money and fish and wisdom and
all sorts of patented things and garden seeds and tariffs and
resolutions and treaties and laws of every shape and size, good ones
and queer ones and reputations and rates and rebates, etc., etc. But it
would devour too much time to even name over all that is made and
onmade there, even if I knowed by name the innumerable things that are
flowin’ constant out of that great reservoir of the Nation, with its
vast crowd of law-makers settin’ on the lid, regulatin’ its flow and
spreadin’ it abroad over the country, thick and thin.

But on I went past the Capitol, the handsomest buildin’ on the Globe,
standin’ in its own Eden of beauty. By the Public Library as long as
from our house to Grout Hozleton’s, and I guess longer, and every foot
on’t more beautifler ornamented than tongue can tell. But I didn’t
dally tryin’ to pace off the size on’t, though it wuz enormous, for the
thought of what I wuz carryin’ bore me on almost regardless of my
matchless surroundin’s and the twinges of rumatiz.
And anon I arrived at the White House, where my hopes and the hopes of
my sect and Serepta Pester wuz sot. I will pass over my efforts to git
into the Presence, merely sayin’ that they were arjous and extreme, and
I wouldn’t probably have got in at all had not the Presence appeared
with a hat on jest goin’ out for a walk, and see me as I wuz strivin’
with the emissary for entrance. I spoze my noble mean, made more noble
fur by the magnitude of what I wuz carryin’, impressed him, for suffice
it to say inside of five minutes the Presence wuz back in his augience
room, and I wuz layin’ out them errents of Serepta’s in front of him.

He wuz very hefty, a good-lookin’ smilin’ man, a politer demeanored
gentlemanly appearner man I don’t want to see. But his linement which
had looked so pleasant and cheerful growed gloomy and deprested as I
spread them errents before him and sez in conclusion:

“Serepta Pester sent these errents to you, she wanted intemperance done
away with, the Whiskey Ring broke up and destroyed, she wanted you to
have nothin’ stronger than root beer when you had company to dinner,
she offerin’ to send you some burdock and dandeline roots and some
emptins to start it with, and she wanted her rights, and wanted ’em all
by week after next without fail.”

He sithed hard, and I never see a linement fall furder than hisen fell,
and kep’ a-fallin’. I pitied him, I see it wuz a hard stent for him to
do it in the time she had sot, and he so fleshy too. But knowin’ how
much wuz at the stake, and how the fate of Serepta and wimmen wuz
tremblin’ in the balances, I spread them errents out before him. And
bein’ truthful and above board, I told him that Serepta wuz middlin’
disagreeable and very humbly, but she needed her rights jest as much as
though she wuz a wax-doll. And I went on and told him how she and her
relations had suffered from want of rights, and how dretfully she had
suffered from the Ring till I declare talkin’ about them little
children of hern, and her agony, I got about as fierce actin’ as
Serepta herself, and entirely onbeknown to myself I talked powerful on
intemperance and Rings, and such.

When I got down agin onto my feet I see he had a still more worried and
anxious look on his good-natured face, and he sez: “The laws of the
United States are such that I can’t do them errands, I can’t
interfere.”

“Then,” sez I, “why don’t you make the United States do right?”

He said sunthin’ about the might of the majority, and the powerful
corporations and rings, and that sot me off agin. And I talked very
powerful and allegored about allowin’ a ring to be put round the United
States and let a lot of whiskey dealers and corporations lead her
round, a pitiful sight for men and angels. Sez I, “How duz it look
before the nations to see Columbia led round half-tipsy by a Ring?”

He seemed to think it looked bad, I knew by his looks.

Sez I, “Intemperance is bad for Serepta and bad for the Nation.”

He murmured sunthin’ about the revenue the liquor trade brought the
Govermunt.

But I sez, “Every penny is money right out of the people’s pockets;
every dollar the people pay into the liquor traffic that gives a few
cents into the treasury, is costin’ the people ten times that dollar in
the loss intemperance entails, loss of labor, by the inability of
drunken men to do anything but wobble and stagger, loss of wealth by
the enormous losses of property and taxation, of alms-houses,
mad-houses, jails, police forces, paupers’ coffins, and the diggin’ of
thousands and thousands of graves that are filled yearly by them that
reel into ’em.” Sez I, “Wouldn’t it be better for the people to pay
that dollar in the first place into the treasury than to let it filter
through the dram-seller’s hands, a few cents of it fallin’ into the
national purse at last, putrid and heavy with all these losses and
curses and crimes and shames and despairs and agonies?”

He seemed to think it would, I see by the looks of his linement he did.
Every honorable man feels so in his heart, and yet they let the Liquor
Ring control ’em and lead ’em round. “It is queer, queer as a dog.” Sez
I, “The intellectual and moral power of the United States are rolled up
and thrust into that Whiskey Ring and bein’ drove by the whiskey
dealers jest where they want to drive ’em.” Sez I, “It controls New
York village and nobody denies it, and the piety and philanthropy and
culture and philosophy of that village has to be drawed along by that
Ring.” And sez I, in low but startlin’ tones of principle:

“Where, where is it a-drawin’ ’em to? Where is it drawin’ the hull
nation to? Is it drawin’ ’em down into a slavery ten times more abject
and soul-destroyin’ than African slavery ever wuz? Tell me,” sez I
firmly, “tell me!”

He did not try to frame a reply, he could not find a frame. He knowed
it wuz a conundrum boundless as truth and God’s justice, and as
solemnly deep in its sure consequences of evil as eternity, and as sure
to come as that is.

Oh, how solemn he looked, and how sorry I felt for him, for I knowed
worse wuz to come, I knowed the sharpest arrow Serepta Pester had sent
wuz yet to pierce his sperit. But I sort o’ blunted the edge on’t what
I could conscientiously. Sez I, “I think myself Serepta is a little
onreasonable, I myself am willin’ to wait three or four weeks. But
she’s suffered dretful from intemperance from the Rings and from the
want of rights, and her sufferin’s have made her more voylent in her
demands and impatienter,” and then I fairly groaned as I did the rest
of the errent, and let the sharpest arrow fly from the bo.

“Serepta told me to tell you if you didn’t do these errents you should
not be President next year.”

He trembled like a popple leaf, and I felt that Serepta wuz threatenin’
him too hard. Sez he, “I do not wish to be President again, I shall
refuse to be nominated. At the same time I _do_ wish to be President
and shall work hard for the nomination if you can understand the
paradox.”

“Yes,” sez I, “I understand them paradoxes. I’ve lived with ’em as you
may say, all through my married life.”

A clock struck in the next room and I knowed time wuz passin’ swift.

Sez the President, “I would be glad to do Serepta’s errents, I think
she is justified in askin’ for her rights, and to have the Ring
destroyed, but I am not the one to do them.”

Sez I, “Who is the man or men?”

He looked all round the room and up and down as if in hopes he could
see someone layin’ round on the floor, or danglin’ from the ceilin’,
that would take the responsibility offen him, and in the very nick of
time the door opened after a quick rap, and the President jumped up
with a relieved look on his linement, and sez:

“Here is the very man to do the errents.” And he hastened to introduce
me to the Senator who entered. And then he bid me a hasty adoo, but
cordial and polite, and withdrew himself.




V.
“HE WUZ DRETFUL POLITE”


I felt glad to have this Senator do Serepta’s errents, but I didn’t
like his looks. My land! talk about Serepta Pester bein’ disagreeable,
he wuz as disagreeable as she any day. He wuz kinder tall and looked
out of his eyes and wore a vest. He wuz some bald-headed, and wore a
large smile all the while, it looked like a boughten one that didn’t
fit him, but I won’t say it wuz. I presoom he’ll be known by this
description. But his baldness didn’t look to me like Josiah Allen’s
baldness, and he didn’t have the noble linement of the President, no
indeed. He wuz dretful polite, good land! politeness is no name for it,
but I don’t like to see anybody too good. He drawed a chair up for me
and himself and asked me:

If he should have the inexpressible honor and delightful joy of aiding
me in any way, if so to command him to do it or words to that effect. I
can’t put down his second-hand smiles and genteel looks and don’t want
to if I could.

But tacklin’ hard jobs as I always tackle ’em, I sot down calm in front
of him with my umbrell on my lap and told him all of Serepta’s errents,
and how I had brought ’em from Jonesville on my tower. I told over all
her sufferin’s and wrongs from the Rings and from not havin’ her
rights, and all her sister’s Azuba Clapsaddle’s, and her Aunt Cassandra
Keeler’s, and Hulda and Drusilly’s and Abagail Flanderses injustices
and sufferin’s. I did her errents as honorable as I’d love to have one
done for me, I told him all the petickulars, and as I finished I said
firmly:

“Now can you do Serepta Pesterses errents and will you?”

He leaned forward with that disagreeable boughten smile of hisen and
took up one corner of my mantilly, it wuz cut tab fashion, and he took
up the tab and said in a low insinuatin’ voice, lookin’ clost at the
edge of the tab:

“Am I mistaken, or is this beautiful creation pipein’ or can it be
Kensington tattin’?”

I drawed the tab back coldly and never dained a reply; agin he sez, in
a tone of amiable anxiety, “Have I not heard a rumor that bangs are
going out of style? I see you do not wear your lovely hair bang-like or
a-pompadouris? Ah, women are lovely creatures, lovely beings, every one
of ’em.” And he sithed, “You are very beautiful,” and he sithed agin, a
sort of a deceitful lovesick sithe. I sot demute as the Spinks, and a
chippin’ bird tappin’ his wing aginst her stuny breast would move it
jest as much as he moved me by his talk or his sithes. But he kep’ on,
puttin’ on a sort of a sad injured look as if my coldness wuz ondoin’
of him.

“My dear madam, it is my misfortune that the topics I introduce,
however carefully selected by me, do not seem to be congenial to you.
Have you a leanin’ toward Natural history, madam? Have you ever studied
into the habits and traits of our American Wad?”

“What?” sez I. For truly a woman’s curosity, however parlyzed by just
indignation, can stand only just so much strain. “The what?”

“The wad. The animal from which is obtained the valuable fur that
tailors make so much use of.”

Sez I, “Do you mean waddin’ eight cents a sheet?”

“Eight cents a pelt—yes, the skins are plentiful and cheap, owing to
the hardy habits of the animal.”

Sez I, “Cease instantly. I will hear no more.”

Truly, I had heard much of the flattery and little talk statesmen will
use to wimmen, and I’d hearn of their lies, etc.; but truly I felt that
the half had not been told. And then I thought out-loud and sez:

“I’ve hearn how laws of eternal right and justice are sot one side in
Washington, D.C., as bein’ too triflin’ to attend to, while the
Legislators pondered over and passed laws regardin’ hen’s eggs and
bird’s nests. But this is goin’ too fur—too fur. But,” sez I firmly, “I
shall do Serepta’s errents, and do ’em to the best of my ability, and
you can’t draw off my attention from her wrongs and sufferin’s by
talkin’ about wads.”

“I would love to obleege Serepta,” sez he, “because she belongs to such
a lovely sect. Wimmen are the loveliest, most angelic creatures that
ever walked the earth; they are perfect, flawless, like snow and
roses.”

Sez I firmly, “They hain’t no such thing; they are disagreeable
creeters a good deal of the time. They hain’t no better than men, but
they ort to have their rights all the same. Now Serepta is disagreeable
and kinder fierce actin’, and jest as humbly as they make wimmen, but
that hain’t no sign she ort to be imposed upon; Josiah sez she hadn’t
ort to have rights she is so humbly, but I don’t feel so.”

“Who is Josiah?” sez he.

Sez I, “My husband.”

“Ah, your husband! Yes, wimmen should have husbands instead of rights.
They do not need rights; they need freedom from all cares and
sufferin’. Sweet lovely beings! let them have husbands to lift them
above all earthly cares and trials! Oh! angels of our homes!” sez he,
liftin’ his eyes to the heavens and kinder shettin’ ’em, some as if he
wuz goin’ into a spazzum. “Fly around, ye angels, in your native hants;
mingle not with rings and vile laws, flee away, flee above them!”

And he kinder waved his hand back and forth in a floatin’ fashion up in
the air, as if it wuz a woman flyin’ up there smooth and serene. It
would have impressed some folks dretful, but it didn’t me. I sez
reasonably:

“Serepta would have been glad to flew above ’em, but the Ring and the
vile laws lay holt of her onbeknown to her and dragged her down. And
there she is all bruised and broken-hearted by ’em. She didn’t meddle
with the political Ring, but the Ring meddled with her. How can she fly
when the weight of this infamous traffic is holdin’ her down?”

“Ahem!” sez he. “Ahem, as it were. As I was saying, my dear madam,
these angelic angels of our homes are too ethereal, too dainty to
mingle with rude crowds. We political men would fain keep them as they
are now; we are willing to stand the rude buffetin’ of—of—voting, in
order to guard these sweet delicate creatures from any hardships. Sweet
tender beings, we would fain guard thee—ah, yes, ah, yes.”

Sez I, “Cease instantly, or my sickness will increase, for such talk is
like thoroughwort or lobelia to my moral and mental stomach. You know
and I know that these angelic tender bein’s, half-clothed, fill our
streets on icy midnights, huntin’ up drunken husbands and fathers and
sons. They are driven to death and to moral ruin by the miserable want
liquor drinkin’ entails. They are starved, they are froze, they are
beaten, they are made childless and hopeless by drunken husbands
killin’ their own flesh and blood. They go down into the cold waves and
are drowned by drunken captains; they are cast from railways into death
by drunken engineers; they go up on the scaffold and die for crimes
committed by the direct aid of this agent of Hell.

“Wimmen had ruther be flyin’ round than to do all this, but they can’t.
If men really believed all they say about wimmen, and I think some on
’em do in a dreamy sentimental way—If wimmen are angels, give ’em the
rights of angels. Who ever hearn of a angel foldin’ up her wings and
goin’ to a poor-house or jail through the fault of somebody else? Who
ever hearn of a angel bein’ dragged off to police court for fightin’ to
defend her children and herself from a drunken husband that had broke
her wings and blacked her eyes, got the angel into the fight and then
she got throwed into the streets and imprisoned by it? Who ever hearn
of a angel havin’ to take in washin’ to support a drunken son or father
or husband? Who ever hearn of a angel goin’ out as wet-nurse to git
money to pay taxes on her home to a Govermunt that in theory idolizes
her, and practically despises her, and uses that money in ways
abominable to that angel. If you want to be consistent, if you’re bound
to make angels of wimmen, you ort to furnish a free safe place for ’em
to soar in. You ort to keep the angels from bein’ tormented and bruised
and killed, etc.”

“Ahem,” sez he, “as it were, ahem.”

But I kep’ right on, for I begun to feel noble and by the side of
myself:

“This talk about wimmen bein’ outside and above all participation in
the laws of her country, is jest as pretty as anything I ever hearn,
and jest as simple. Why, you might jest as well throw a lot of
snowflakes into the street, and say, ‘Some of ’em are female flakes and
mustn’t be trompled on.’ The great march of life tromples on ’em all
alike; they fall from one common sky, and are trodden down into one
common ground.

“Men and wimmen are made with divine impulses and desires, and human
needs and weaknesses, needin’ the same heavenly light, and the same
human aids and helps. The law should mete out to them the same rewards
and punishments.

“Serepta sez you call wimmen angels, and you don’t give ’em the rights
of the lowest beasts that crawl on the earth. And Serepta told me to
tell you that she didn’t ask the rights of a angel; she would be
perfectly contented and proud, if you would give her the rights of a
dog—the assured political rights of a yeller dog.’ She said yeller and
I’m bound on doin’ her ’errent jest as she wanted it done, word for
word.

“A dog, Serepta sez, don’t have to be hung if it breaks the laws it is
not allowed any hand in making; a dog don’t have to pay taxes on its
bone to a Govermunt that withholds every right of citizenship from it;
a dog hain’t called undogly if it is industrious and hunts quietly
round for its bone to the best of its ability, and tries to git its
share of the crumbs that falls from that table bills are laid on.

“A dog hain’t preached to about its duty to keep home sweet and sacred,
and then see that home turned into a place of danger and torment under
laws that these very preachers have made legal and respectable. A dog
don’t have to see its property taxed to advance laws it believes
ruinous, and that breaks its own heart and the heart of other dear
dogs. A dog don’t have to listen to soul-sickening speeches from them
that deny it freedom and justice, about its bein’ a damask rose and a
seraph, when it knows it hain’t; it knows, if it knows anything, that
it is jest a plain dog.

“You see Serepta has been embittered by the trials that politics,
corrupt legislation have brought right onto her. She didn’t want
nothin’ to do with ’em, but they come onto her onexpected and
onbeknown, and she feels that she must do everything she can to alter
matters. She wants to help make the laws that have such a overpowerin’
influence over her. She believes they can’t be much worse than they are
now, and may be a little better.”

“Ah,” interrupted the Senator, “if Serepta wishes to change political
affairs, let her influence her children, her boys, and they will carry
her benign and noble influence forward into the centuries.”

“But the law took her boy, her little boy and girl, away from her.
Through the influence of the Whiskey Ring, of which her husband wuz a
shinin’ member, he got possession of her boy. And so the law has made
it perfectly impossible for her to mould it indirectly through him,
what Serepta duz she must do herself.”

“Ah! my dear woman. A sad thing for Serepta; I trust _you_ have no
grievance of this kind, I trust that your estimable husband is, as it
were, estimable.”

“Yes, Josiah Allen is a good man, as good as men can be. You know men
or wimmen can’t be only jest about so good anyway. But he’s my choice,
and he don’t drink a drop.”

“Pardon me, madam, but if you are happy in your married relations, and
your husband is a temperate good man, why do you feel so upon this
subject?”

“Why, good land! if you understood the nature of a woman you would know
my love for him, my happiness, the content and safety I feel about him
and our boy, makes me realize the sufferin’s of Serepta in havin’ her
husband and boy lost to her; makes me realize the depth of a wife’s and
mother’s agony when she sees the one she loves goin’ down, down so low
she can’t reach him; makes me feel how she must yearn to help him in
some safe sure way.

“High trees cast long shadows. The happier and more blessed a woman’s
life is, the more duz she feel for them that are less blessed than she.
Highest love goes lowest, like that love that left Heaven and descended
to earth, and into it that He might lift up the lowly. The pityin’
words of Him who went about pleasin’ not Himself, hants me and inspires
me; I’m sorry for Serepta, sorry for the hull wimmen race of the
nation, and for the men too. Lots of ’em are good creeters, better than
wimmen, some on ’em. They want to do right, but don’t exactly see the
way to do it. In the old slavery times some of the masters wuz more to
be pitied than the slaves. They could see the injustice, feel the wrong
they wuz doin’, but old chains of Custom bound ’em, social customs and
idees had hardened into habits of thought.

“They realized the size and heft of the evil, but didn’t know how to
grapple with it, and throw it. So now, many men see the evils of this
time, want to help, but don’t know the best way to lay holt of ’em.
Life is a curious conundrum anyway, and hard to guess. But we can try
to git the right answer to it as fur as we can. Serepta feels that one
of the answers to the conundrum is in gittin’ her rights. I myself have
got all the rights I need or want, as fur as my own happiness is
concerned. My home is my castle (a story and a half wooden one, but
dear). My towers elevate me, the companionship of my friends give
social happiness, our children are prosperous and happy. We have
property enough for all the comforts of life. And above all other
things my Josiah is my love and my theme.”

“Ah, yes!” sez he, “love is a woman’s empire, and in that she should
find her full content—her entire happiness and thought. A womanly woman
will not look outside that lovely and safe and beautious empire.”

Sez I firmly, “If she hain’t a idiot she can’t help it. Love is the
most beautiful thing on earth, the most holy and satisfyin’. But I do
not ask you as a politician, but as a human bein’, which would you like
best, the love of a strong, earnest tender nature, for in man or woman
‘the strongest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,’ which
would you like best, the love and respect of such a nature full of wit,
of tenderness, of infinite variety, or the love of a fool?

“A fool’s love is wearin’, it is insipid at best, and it turns to
vinegar. Why, sweetened water must turn to vinegar, it is its nater.
And if a woman is bright and true-hearted, she can’t help seein’
through an injustice. She may be happy in her own home. Domestic
affection, social enjoyments, the delights of a cultured home and
society, and the companionship of the man she loves and who loves her,
will, if she is a true woman, satisfy her own personal needs and
desires, and she would far ruther for her own selfish happiness rest
quietly in that love, that most blessed home.

“But the bright quick intellect that delights you can’t help seein’ an
injustice, can’t help seein’ through shams of all kinds, sham
sentiment, sham compliments, sham justice. The tender lovin’ nature
that blesses your life can’t help feelin’ pity for them less blessed
than herself. She looks down through the love-guarded lattice of her
home from which your care would fain bar out all sights of woe and
squaler, she looks down and sees the weary toilers below, the hopeless,
the wretched. She sees the steep hills they have to climb, carryin’
their crosses, she sees ’em go down into the mire, dragged there by the
love that should lift ’em up. She would not be the woman you love if
she could restrain her hand from liftin’ up the fallen, wipin’ tears
from weepin’ eyes, speakin’ brave words for them that can’t speak for
themselves. The very strength of her affection that would hold you up
if you were in trouble or disgrace yearns to help all sorrowin’ hearts.

“Down in your heart you can’t help admirin’ her for this, we can’t help
respectin’ the one that advocates the right, the true, even if they are
our conquerors. Wimmen hain’t angels; now to be candid, you know they
hain’t. They hain’t any better than men. Men are considerable likely;
and it seems curious to me that they should act so in this one thing.
For men ort to be more honest and open than wimmen. They hain’t had to
cajole and wheedle and use little trickeries and deceits and indirect
ways as wimmen have. Why, cramp a tree limb and see if it will grow as
straight and vigorous as it would in full freedom and sunshine.

“Men ort to be nobler than women, sincerer, braver. And they ort to be
ashamed of this one trick of theirn, for they know they hain’t honest
in it, they hain’t generous. Give wimmen two or three generations of
moral and legal freedom and see if men will laugh at ’em for their
little deceits and affectations. No, men will be gentler, and wimmen
nobler, and they will both come nearer bein’ angels, though most
probable they won’t be any too good then, I hain’t a mite afraid of
it.”




VI.
“CONCERNING MOTH-MILLERS AND MINNY FISH”


The Senator kinder sithed, and that sithe sort o’ brought me down onto
my feet agin as it were, and a sense of my duty, and I spoke out agin:

“Can you and will you do Serepta’s errents?”

He evaded a direct answer by sayin’, “As you alluded to the little
indirect ways of women, dearest madam, you will pardon me for saying
that it is my belief that the soft gentle brains of females are
unfitted for the deep hard problems men have to grapple with. They are
too doll-like, too angelically and sweetly frivolous.”

“No doubt,” sez I, “some wimmen are frivolous and some men foolish, for
as Mrs. Poyser said, ‘God made women to match the men,’ but these few
hadn’t ort to disfranchise the hull race of men and wimmen. And as to
soft brains, Maria Mitchell discovered planets hid from masculine eyes
from the beginnin’ of time, and do you think that wimmen can’t see the
black spots on the body politic, that darkens the life of her and her
children?

“Madame Curie discovered the light that looks through solid wood and
iron, and you think wimmen can’t see through unjust laws and practices,
the rampant evils of to-day, and see what is on the other side, see a
remedy for ’em. Florence Nightingale could mother and help cure an
army, and why hain’t men willin’ to let wimmen help cure a sick
legislation, kinder mother it, and encourage it to do better? She might
much better be doin’ that, than playin’ bridge-whist, or rastlin’ with
hobble skirts, and it wouldn’t devour any more time.”

He sot demute for a few minutes and then he sez, “While on the subject
of women’s achievements, dearest madam, allow me to ask you, if they
have reached the importance you claim for them, why is it that so few
women are made immortal by bein’ represented in the Hall of Fame? And
why are the four or five females represented there put away by
themselves in a remote unadorned corner with no roof to protect them
from the rough winds and storms that beat upon them?”

Sez I, “That’s a good illustration of what I’ve been sayin’. It wuz
owin’ to a woman’s gift that America has a Hall of Fame, and it would
seem that common courtesy would give wimmen an equally desirable place
amongst the Immortals. Do you spoze that if women formed half the
committee of selection—which they should since it wuz a woman’s gift
that made such a place possible—do you spoze that if she had an equal
voice with men, the names of noble wimmen would be tucked away in a
remote unroofed corner?

“Edgar Allan Poe’s genius wuz worthy a place among the Immortals, no
doubt; his poems and stories excite wonder and admiration. But do they
move the soul like Mrs. Stowe’s immortal story that thrilled the world
and helped free a race?—yes, two races—for the curse of slavery held
the white race in bondage, too. Yet she and her three or four woman
companions face the stormy winds in an out-of-the-way corner, while Poe
occupies his honorable sightly place among his fifty or more male
companions.

“Wimmen have always been admonished to not strive for right and justice
but to lean on men’s generosity and chivalry. Here wuz a place where
that chivalry would have shone, but it didn’t seem to materialize, and
if wimmen had leaned on it, it would have proved a weak staff, indeed.

“Such things as this are constantly occurring and show plain that
wimmen needs the ballot to protect her from all sorts of wrongs and
indignities. Men take wimmen’s money, as they did here, and use it to
uplift themselves, and lower her, like taxin’ her heavily and often
unjustly and usin’ this money to help forward unjust laws which she
abominates. And so it goes on, and will, until women are men’s equals
legally and politically.”

“Ahem—you present things in a new light. I never looked at this matter
with your eyes.”

“No, you looked at ’em through a man’s eyes; such things are so
customary that men do ’em without thinkin’, from habit and custom, like
hushin’ up children’s talk, when they interrupt grown-ups.”

Agin he sot demute for a short space, and then said, “I feel that
natural human instinct is aginst the change. In savage races that knew
nothin’ of civilization, male force and strength always ruled.”

“Why,” sez I, “history tells us of savage races where wimmen always
rule, though I don’t think they ort to—ability and goodness ort to
rule.”

“Nature is aginst it,” sez he.

But I sez firmly, “Bees and lots of other insects and animals always
have a female for queen and ruler. They rule blindly and entirely,
right on through the centuries, but we are enlightened and should not
encourage it. In my opinion the male bee has just as good a right to be
monarch as his female pardner has, if he is as good and knows as much.
I never believed in the female workin’ ones killin’ off the male drones
to save winterin’ ’em; they might give ’em some light chores to do
round the hive to pay for their board. I love justice and that would be
_my_ way.”

Agin he sithed. “Modern history don’t seem to favor the scheme—” But
his axent wuz as weak as a cat and his boughten smile seemed crackin’
and wearin’ out; he knowed better.

Sez I, “We won’t argy long on that p’int, for I might overwhelm you if
I approved of overwhelmin’, but, will merely ask you to cast one eye on
England. Was the rain of Victoria the Good less peaceful and prosperous
than that of the male rulers who preceded her? And you can then throw
your other eye over to Holland: is their sweet queen less worthy and
beloved to-day than other European monarchs? And is her throne more
shaky and tottlin’ than theirn?”

He didn’t try to dispute me and bowed his head on his breast in a
almost meachin’ way. He knowed he wuz beat on every side, and almost to
the end of his chain of rusty, broken old arguments. But anon he
brightened up agin and sez, ketchin’ holt of the last shackly link of
his argument:

“You seem to place a great deal of dependence on the Bible. The Bible
is aginst the idee. The Bible teaches man’s supremacy, man’s absolute
power and might and authority.”

“Why, how you talk,” sez I. “In the very first chapter the Bible tells
how man wuz turned right round by a woman, tells how she not only
turned man round to do as she wanted him to, but turned the hull world
over.

“That hain’t nothin’ I approve of; I don’t speak of it because I like
the idee. That wuzn’t done in a open honorable manner as things should
be done. No, Eve ruled by indirect influence, the gently influencing
men way, that politicians are so fond of. And she brought ruin and
destruction onto the hull world by it.

“A few years later when men and wimmen grew wiser, when we hear of
wimmen rulin’ Israel openly and honestly, like Miriam, Deborah and
other likely old four mothers, things went on better. They didn’t act
meachin’ and tempt, and act indirect.”

He sithed powerful and sot round oneasy in his chair. And sez he, “I
thought wimmen wuz taught by the Bible to serve and love their homes.”

“So they be. And every true woman loves to serve. Home is my supreme
happiness and delight, and my best happiness is found in servin’ them I
love. But I must tell the truth, in the house or outdoors.”

Sez he faintly, “The Old Testament may teach that women have some
strength and power. But in the New Testament in every great undertaken’
and plan men have been chosen by God to carry them through.”

“Why-ee!” sez I, “how you talk! Have you ever read the Bible?”

He said evasively, his grandmother owned one, and he had seen it in
early youth. And then he went on in a sort of apologizin’ way. He had
always meant to read it, but he had entered political life at an early
age where the Bible wuzn’t popular, and he believed that he had never
read further than the Epistles of Gulliver to the Liliputians.

Sez I, “That hain’t Bible, there hain’t no Gulliver in it, and you mean
Galatians.”

Well, he said, that might be it, it wuz some man he knew, and he had
always heard and believed that man wuz the only worker that God had
chosen.

“Why,” sez I, “the one great theme of the New Testament—the salvation
of the world through the birth of Christ—no man had anything to do
with. Our divine Lord wuz born of God and Woman. Heavenly plan of
redemption for fallen humanity. God Himself called woman into that
work, the divine work of saving a world, and why shouldn’t she continue
in it? God called her. Mary had no dream of publicity, no desire of a
world’s work of suffering and renunciation. The soft air of Galilee
wropped her about in its sweet content, as she dreamed her quiet dreams
in maiden peace—dreamed, perhaps, of domestic love and happiness.

“From that sweetest silence, the restful peace of happy innocent
girlhood, God called her to her divine work of helpin’ redeem a world
from sin. And did not this woman’s love and willin’ obedience, and
sufferin’ set her apart, baptize her for this work of liftin’ up the
fallen, helpin’ the weak?

[Illustration: “He’d entered political life where the Bible wuzn’t
popular; he’d never read further than Gulliver’s Epistle to the
Liliputians.”]

“Is it not a part of woman’s life that she gave at the birth and
crucifixion? Her faith, her hope, her sufferin’, her glow of divine
pity and joyful martyrdom. These, mingled with the divine, the pure
heavenly, have they not for nineteen hundred years been blessin’ the
world? The God in Christ would awe us too much; we would shield our
eyes from the too blindin’ glory of the pure God-like. But the tender
Christ who wept over a sinful city, and the grave of His friend, who
stopped dyin’ on the cross to comfort His mother’s heart, provide for
her future—it is this womanly element in our Lord’s nature that makes
us dare to approach Him, dare to kneel at His feet?

“And since woman wuz so blessed as to be counted worthy to be co-worker
with God in the beginnin’ of the world’s redemption; since He called
her from the quiet obscurity of womanly rest and peace into the blessed
martyrdom of renunciation and toil and sufferin’, all to help a world
that cared nothin’ for her, that cried out shame upon her.

“He will help her carry on the work of helpin’ a sinful world. He will
protect her in it, she cannot be harmed or hindered, for the cause she
loves of helpin’ men and wimmen, is God’s cause too, and God will take
care of His own. Herods full of greed and frightened selfishness may
try to break her heart by efforts to kill the child she loves, but she
will hold it so clost to her bosom he can’t destroy it; and the light
of the Divine will go before her, showin’ the way through the desert
and wilderness mebby, but she shall bear it into safety.”

“You spoke of Herod,” sez he dreamily, “the name sounds familiar to me.
Was not Mr. Herod once in the United States Senate?”

“Not that one,” sez I. “He died some time ago, but I guess he has
relatives there now, judgin’ from laws made there. You ask who Herod
wuz, and as it all seems a new story to you, I will tell you. When the
Saviour of the world wuz born in Bethlehem, and a woman wuz tryin’ to
save His life, a man by the name of Herod wuz tryin’ his best out of
selfishness and greed to murder Him.”

“Ah! that was not right in Herod.”

“No, it hain’t been called so. And what wuzn’t right in him hain’t
right in his relations who are tryin’ to do the same thing to-day.
Sellin’ for money the right to destroy the child the mother carries on
her heart. Surroundin’ him with temptations so murderous, yet so
enticin’ to youthful spirits, that the mother feels that as the laws
are now, the grave is the only place of safety that God Himself can
find for her boy. But because Herod wuz so mean it hain’t no sign that
all men are mean. Joseph wuz as likely as he could be.”

“Joseph?” sez he pensively. “Do you allude to our venerable speaker,
Joe Cannon?”

“No,” sez I. “I’m talkin’ Bible—I’m talkin’ about Joseph; jest plain
Joseph.”

“Ah! I see. I am not fully familiar with that work. Being so engrossed
in politics, and political literature, I don’t git any time to devote
to less important publications.”

Sez I candidly, “I knew you hadn’t read it the minute you mentioned the
book of Liliputians. But as I wuz sayin’, Joseph wuz a likely man. He
had the strength to lead the way, overcome obstacles, keep dangers from
Mary, protect her tenderer form with the mantilly of his generous
devotion.

“_But she carried the Child on her bosom_; ponderin’ high things in her
heart that Joseph never dreamed of. That is what is wanted now, and in
the future. The man and the woman walkin’ side by side. He a little
ahead, mebby, to keep off dangers by his greater strength and courage.
She a-carryin’ the infant Christ of Love, bearin’ the baby Peace in her
bosom, carryin’ it into safety from them that seek to destroy it.

“And as I said before, if God called woman into this work, He will
enable her to carry it through. He will protect her from her own
weaknesses, and the misapprehensions and hard judgments and injustices
of a gain-sayin’ world.

“Yes, the star of hope is risin’ in the sky brighter and brighter, and
wise men are even now comin’ to the mother of the new Redeemer, led by
the star.”

He sot demute. Silence rained for some time; and finally I spoke out
solemnly through the rain:

“Will you do Serepta’s errents? Will you give her her rights? And will
you break the Whiskey Ring?”

He said he would love to do the errents, I had convinced him that it
would be just and right to do ’em, but the Constitution of the United
States stood up firm aginst ’em. As the laws of the United States wuz,
he could not make any move toward doin’ either of the errents.

Sez I, “Can’t the laws be changed?”

“Be changed? Change the laws of the United States? Tamper with the
glorious Constitution that our fore-fathers left us—an immortal sacred
legacy.”

He jumped up on his feet and his second-hand smile fell off. He kinder
shook as if he wuz skairt most to death and tremblin’ with horrow. He
did it to skair me, I knew, but I knowed I meant well towards the
Constitution and our old forefathers; and my principles stiddied me and
held me firm and serene. And when he asked me agin in tones full of awe
and horrow:

“Can it be that I heard my ear aright? Or did you speak of changin’ the
unalterable laws of the United States—tampering with the Constitution?”

“Yes, that is what I said. Hain’t they never been changed?”

He dropped that skairful look and put on a firm judicial one. He see
that he could not skair me to death; an’ sez he, “Oh, yes, they’ve been
changed in cases of necessity.”

Sez I, “For instance durin’ the Oncivil war it wuz changed to make
Northern men cheap bloodhounds and hunters.”

“Yes,” he said, “it seemed to be a case of necessity and economy.”

“I know it,” sez I; “men wuz cheaper than any other breed of
bloodhounds the slave-holders could employ to hunt men and wimmen with,
and more faithful.”

“Yes,” he said, “it wuz a case of clear economy.”

And sez I: “The laws have been changed to benefit liquor dealers.”

“Well, yes,” he said, “it had been changed to enable whiskey dealers to
utilize the surplus liquor they import.”

Sez he, gittin’ kinder animated, for he wuz on a congenial and familar
theme, “Nobody, the best calculators in drunkards, can exactly
calculate how much whiskey will be drunk in a year; and so, ruther than
have the whiskey dealers suffer loss, the law had to be changed. And
then,” sez he, growin’ still more candid in his excitement, “we are
makin’ a powerful effort to change the laws now so as to take the tax
off of whiskey, so it can be sold cheaper, and obtained in greater
quantities by the masses. Any such great laws would justify a change in
the Constitution and the laws; but for any frivolous cause, any trivial
cause, madam, we male custodians of the sacred Constitution stand as
walls of iron before it, guarding it from any shadow of change.
Faithful we will be, faithful unto death.”

Sez I, “As it has been changed, it can be agin. And you jest said I had
convinced you that Serepta’s errents wuz errents of truth and justice,
and you would love to do ’em.”

“Well, yes, yes—I would love to—as it were—. But, my dear madam, much
as I would like to oblige you, I have not the time to devote to the
cause of Right and Justice. I don’t think you realize the constant
pressure of hard work that is ageing us and wearing us out, before our
day.

“As I said, we have to watch the liquor interest constantly to see that
the liquor dealers suffer no loss—we have to do that, of course.”

And he continued dreamily, as if losin’ sight of me and talkin’ to
himself: “The wealthy Corporations and Trusts, we have to condemn them
loudly to please the common people, and help ’em secretly to please
ourselves, or our richest perkisits are lost. The Canal Ring, the
Indian Agency, the Land Grabbers, the political bosses. In fact, we are
surrounded by a host of bandits that we have to appease and profit by;
oh, how these matters wear into the gray matter of our brains!”

“Gray matter!” sez I, with my nose uplifted to its extremest height, “I
should call it black matter!”

“Well, the name is immaterial, but these labors, though pocket filling,
are brain wearing. And of late I and the rest of our loyal henchmen
have been worn out in our labors in tariff revision. You know how we
claim to help the common people by the revision; you’ve probable read
about it in the papers.”

“Yes,” sez I coldly, “I’ve hearn _talk_.”

“Yes,” sez he, “but if we do succeed, after the most strenious efforts
in getting the duty off champagne, green turtle, olives, etc., and put
on to sugar, tea, cotton cloth and such like, with all this brain fag
and brain labor—”

“And tongue labor!” sez I in a icy axent.

“Yes, after all this ceaseless toil the common people will not show any
gratitude; we statesmen labor oft with aching hearts.” And he leaned
his forward on his hand and sithed.

But my looks wuz like ice-suckles on the north side of a barn. And I
stopped his complaints and his sithes by askin’ in a voice that
demanded a reply:

“Can you and will you do Serepta’s errents? Errents full of truth and
justice and eternal right?”

He said he knew they wuz jest runnin’ over with them qualities, but
happy as it would make him to do ’em, he had to refuse owin’ to the fur
more important matters he had named, and the many, many other laws and
preambles that he hadn’t time to name over to me. “Mebby you have
heard,” sez he, “that we are now engaged in making most important laws
concerning moth-millers, and minny fish, and hog cholera. And take it
with these important bills and the constant strain on our minds in
tryin’ to pass laws to increase our own salaries, you can see jest how
cramped we are for time. And though we would love to pass some laws of
truth and righteousness—we fairly ache to—yet not havin’ the requisite
time we are forced to lay ’em on the table or under it.”

“Well,” sez I, “I guess I may as well be a-goin’.” And I bid him a cool
goodbye and started for the door. But jest as my hand wuz on the nub he
jumped up and opened the door, wearin’ that boughten second-hand smile
agin on his linement, and sez he:

“Dear madam, perhaps Senator B. will do the errents for you.”

Sez I, “Where is Senator B.?” And he said I would find him at his Post
of Duty at the Capitol.

“Well,” I said, “I will hunt up the Post,” and did. A grand enough
place for a Emperor or a Zar is the Capitol of our great nation where I
found him, a good natured lookin’ boy in buttons showin’ me the Post.




VII.
“NO HAMPERIN’ HITCHIN’ STRAPS”


Well, Senator B. wanted to do the errents but said it wuz not his
place, and sent me to Senator C., and he almost cried, he wanted to do
’em so bad, but stern duty tied him to his Post, he said, and he sent
me to Senator D., and he _did_ cry onto his handkerchief, he wanted to
do the errents so bad, and said it would be such a good thing to have
’em done. He bust right into tears as he said he had to refuse to do
’em. Whether they wuz wet tears or dry ones I couldn’t tell, his
handkerchief wuz so big, but I hearn his sithes, and they wuz deep and
powerful ones.

But as I sez to him, “Wet tears, nor dry ones, nor windy sithes didn’t
help do the errents.” So I went on his sobbin’ advice to Senator E.,
and he wuz huffy and didn’t want to do ’em and said so. And said his
wife had thirteen children, and wimmen instead of votin’ ort to go and
do likewise.

And I told him it wouldn’t look well in onmarried wimmen and widders,
and if they should foller her example folks would talk.

And he said, “They ort to marry.”

And I said, “As the fashion is now, wimmen had to wait for some man to
ask ’em, and if they didn’t come up to the mark and ask ’em, who wuz to
blame?”

He wouldn’t answer, and looked sulky, but honest, and wouldn’t tell me
who to go to to git the errents done.

But jest outside his door I met the Senator I had left sobbin’ over the
errents. He looked real hilarious, but drawed his face down when he
ketched my eye, and sithed several times, and sent me to Senator F. and
he sent me to Senator G.

And suffice it to say I wuz sent round, and talked to, and cried at,
and sulked to, and smiled at and scowled at, and encouraged and
discouraged, ’till my head swum and my knees wobbled under me. And with
all my efforts and outlay of oratory and shue leather not one of
Serepta Pester’s errents could I git done, and no hopes held out of
their ever bein’ done. And about the middle of the afternoon I gin up,
there wuz no use in tryin’ any longer and I turned my weary tracks
towards the outside door. But as bad as I felt, I couldn’t help my
sperit bein’ lifted up some by the grandeur about me.

Oh, my land! to stand in the immense hall and look up, and up, and see
all the colors of the rain-bow and see what wonderful pictures there
wuz up there in the sky above me as it were. Why, it seemed curiouser
than any Northern lights I ever see in my life, and they stream up
dretful curious sometimes. And as I walked through that lofty and most
beautiful place and realized the size and majestic proportions of the
buildin’ I wondered to myself that a small law, a little unjust law
could ever be passed in such grand and magnificent surroundin’s. And I
sez to myself, it can’t be the fault of the place anyway; the
law-makers have a chance for their souls to soar if they want to, here
is room and to spare to pass laws big as elephants and camels, and I
wondered that they should ever try to pass laws as small as muskeeters
and nats. Thinkses I, I wonder them little laws don’t git to strollin’
round and git lost in them magnificent corridors. But I consoled
myself, thinkin’ it wouldn’t be no great loss if they did. But right
here, as I wuz thinkin’ on these deep and lofty subjects, I met the
good natured young chap that had showed me round and he sez:

“You look fatigued, mom.” (Soarin’ even to yourself is tuckerin’.) “You
look very fatigued; won’t you take something?”

I looked at him with a curious silent sort of a look; for I didn’t know
what he meant. Agin he looked clost at me and sort o’ pityin’; and sez
he, “You look tired out, mom. Won’t you take something? Let me treat
you to something; what will you take, mom?”

I thought he wuz actin’ dretful liberal, but I knew they had strange
ways in Washington anyway. And I didn’t know but it wuz their way to
make some present to every woman that comes there, and I didn’t want to
act awkward and out of style, so I sez:

“I don’t want to take anything, and don’t see any reason why you should
insist on’t. But if I have got to take sunthin’ I had jest as soon have
a few yards of factory cloth as anything. That always comes handy.”

I thought that if he wuz determined to treat me to show his good
feelin’s towards me, I would git sunthin’ useful and that would do me
some good, else what wuz the good of bein’ treated? And I thought that
if I had got to take a present from a strange man, I would make a shirt
for Josiah out of it. I thought that would save jealousy and make it
right so fur as goodness went.

“But,” sez he, “I mean beer or wine or liquor of some kind.”

I riz right up in my shues and dignity, and glared at him.

Sez he, “There is a saloon right here handy in the buildin’.”

Sez I in awful axents, “It is very appropriate to have it here handy!”
Sez I, “Liquor duz more towards makin’ the laws of the United States
from Caucus to Convention than anything else duz, and it is highly
proper to have it here so they can soak the laws in it right off before
they lay ’em onto the table or under ’em, or pass ’em onto the people.
It is highly appropriate,” sez I.

“Yes,” sez he. “It is very handy for the Senators and Congressmen, and
let me get you a glass.”

“No, you won’t!” sez I firmly. “The nation suffers enough from that
room now without havin’ Josiah Allen’s wife let in.”

Sez he, “If you have any feeling of delicacy in goin’ in there, let me
make some wine here. I will get a glass of water and make you some pure
grape wine, or French brandy, or corn or rye whiskey. I have all the
drugs right here.” And he took a little box out of his pocket. “My
father is a importer of rare old wines, and I know just how it is done.
I have ’em all here, Capsicum, Coculus Indicus, alum, copperas,
strychnine; I will make some of the choicest, oldest, and purest
imported liquors we have in the country, in five minutes if you say
so.”

“No!” sez I firmly, “when I want to foller Cleopatra’s fashion and
commit suicide, I will hire a rattlesnake and take my pizen as she did,
on the outside.”

Well, I got back to Hiram Cagwin’s tired as a dog, and Serepta’s
errents ondone. But my conscience opholded me and told me I had done my
very best, and man or woman can do no more.

Well, the next day but one wuz the big outdoor suffrage meetin’. And we
sot off in good season, Hiram feelin’ well enough to be left with the
hired help. Polly started before we did with some of her college mates,
lookin’ pretty as a pink with a red rose pinned over a achin’ heart, so
I spoze, for she loved the young man who wuz out with another girl
May-flowering. Burnin’ zeal and lofty principle can’t take the place in
a woman’s heart of love and domestic happiness, and men needn’t be
afraid it will. There is no more danger on’t than there is of a settin’
hen wantin’ to leave her nest to be a commercial traveler. Nature has
made laws for wimmen and hens that no ballot, male or female, can
upset.

Josiah and Lorinda and I went in the trolley in good season, so’s to
git a sightly place, Lorinda protestin’ all the time aginst the
indelicacy and impropriety of wimmen’s appearin’ in outdoor meetin’s,
forgittin’, I spose, the dense procession of wimmen that fills the
avenues every day, follerin’ Fashion and Display. As nigh as I could
make out the impropriety consisted in wimmen’s follerin’ after Justice
and Right.

Josiah’s face looked dubersome. I guess he wuz worryin’ over his offer
to represent me, and thinkin’ of Aunt Susan and the twins.

But as it turned out I met Diantha while Josiah wuz in a shop buyin’
some peppermint lozengers, and she said her niece had come from the
West, and they got along all right. So that lifted my burden. But I
thought best not to tell Josiah, as he wuz so bound to represent me. I
thought it wouldn’t do any hurt to let him think it over about the job
a man took on himself when he sot out to represent a woman. They
wouldn’t like it in lots of ways, as willin’ as they seem to be in
print.

Wimmen go through lots of things calm and patient that would make a man
flinch and shy off like a balky horse, and visey versey. I wouldn’t
want to represent Josiah lots of times, breakin’ colts, ploughin’
greensward, cuttin’ cord-wood etc., etc. Men and wimmen want equal
legal rights to represent themselves and their own sex which are
different, and always must be, and both sexes don’t want to be hampered
and sot down on by the other one. That is gauldin’ to human nater, male
or female.

We got a good place nigh the speakers’ stand, and we hadn’t stood there
long before the parade hove in sight, the yeller banners streamin’ out
like sunshine on a rainy day, police outriders, music, etc.

More than a hundred automobiles led the parade and five times as many
wimmen walkin’ afoot. A big grand-stand with the lady speakers and
their friends on it, all dressed pretty as pinks. For the old idee that
suffragists don’t care for attractive dress and domestic life wuz
exploded long ago, and many other old superstitions went up in the
blaze.

Those of us who have gray hair can remember when if a man spoke
favorably of women’s rights the sarcastic question was asked him: “How
old is Susan B. Anthony?”

And this fine wit and cuttin’ ridicule would silence argument and
quench the spirit of the upholder.

But the world moves. Susan’s memory is beloved and revered, and the
contemptious ridicule of the onthinkin’ and ignorant only nourished the
laurels the world lays on her tomb.

At that time accordin’ to popular opinion a suffragist wuz a slatternly
woman with uncombed locks, dangling shoe strings, and bloomers,
stridin’ through an unswept house onmindful of dirty children or hungry
husband, but the world moves onward and public opinion with it.
Suffragists are the best mothers, the best housekeepers, the best
dressers of any wimmen in the land. Search the records and you’ll find
it so, and why?

Because they know sunthin’, it takes common sense to make a gooseberry
pie as it ort to be. And the more a woman knows and the more justice
she demands, the better for her husband. The same sperit that rebels at
tyranny and injustice rebels at dirt, disorder, discomfort, and all
unpleasant conditions.

I looked ahead with my mind’s eye and see them pretty college girls
settled down in pleasant homes of their own, where sanitary laws
prevailed, where the babies wuzn’t fed pickles and cabbage, and kep’ in
air-tight enclosures. Where the husbands did not have to go outside
their own homes to find cheer and comfort, and intelligent
conversation, and where Love and Common Sense walked hand in hand
toward Happiness and Contentment, Justice, with her blinders offen her
eyes, goin’ ahead on ’em. I never liked the idee of Justice wearin’
them bandages over her eyes. She ort to have both eyes open; if anybody
ever needed good eyesight she duz, to choose the straight and narrer
road, lookin’ backward to see the mistakes she has made in the past,
so’s to shun ’em in the future, and lookin’ all round her in the
present to see where she can help matters, and lookin’ fur off in the
future to the bright dawn of a Tomorrow. To the shinin’ mount of Equal
Rights and full Liberty. Where she sees men and wimmen standin’ side by
side with no halters or hamperin’ hitchin’ straps on either on ’em. He
more gentle and considerate, and she less cowardly and emotional.

Good land! what could Justice do blind in one eye and wimmen on the
blind side? But good sensible wimmen are reachin’ up and pullin’ the
bandages offen her eyes. She’s in a fair way to git her eyesight. But
I’m eppisodin’, and to resoom forward.




VIII.
“OLD MOM NATER LISTENIN’”


There wuz some pleasant talkin’ and jokin’ between bystanders and
suffragettes, and then some good natured but keen and sensible
speeches. And one pretty speaker told about the doin’s at Albany and
Washington. How women’s respectful pleas for justice are treated there.
How the law-makers, born and nussed by wimmen and dependent on ’em for
comfort and happiness, use the wimmen’s tax money to help make laws
makin’ her of no legal importance only as helpless figgers to hang
taxation and punishment on.

Old Mom Nater had been listenin’ clost, her sky-blue eyes shinin’ with
joy to see her own sect present such a noble appearance in the parade.
But when these insults and indignities wuz brung up to her mind agin
and she realized afresh how wimmen couldn’t git no more rights accorded
to her than a dog or a hen, and worse. For a hen or a dog wouldn’t be
taxed to raise money for turkle soup and shampain to nourish the
law-makers whilst they made the laws agin ’em—Mom Nater’s eyes clouded
over with indignation and resentment, and she boo-hooed right out
a-cryin’. Helpless tears, of no more account than other females have
shed, and will, as they set on their hard benches with idiots,
lunaticks, and criminals.

Of course she wiped up her tears pretty soon, not willin’ to lose any
of the wimmen’s bright speeches. But when her tear-drops fell fast,
Josiah sez to me, “You’ll see them wimmen run like hikers now, wimmen
always thought more of shiffon and fol-de-rols than they did of
principle.”

But I sez, “Wait and see,” (we wuz under a awnin’ and protected).

But the young and pretty speaker who wore a light silk dress and
exquisite bunnet, kep’ right on talkin’ jest as calmly as if she didn’t
know her pretty dress wuz bein’ spilte and her bunnet gittin’ wet as
sop, and I sez to Josiah:

“When wimmen are so in earnest, and want anything so much they can
stand soakin’ in their best dresses, and let their Sunday bunnets be
spilte on their heads, not noticin’ ’em seemin’ly, but keep right on
pleadin’ for right and justice, they are in a fair way of gittin’ what
they are after.”

He looked kinder meachin’ but didn’t dispute me.

The speeches wuz beautiful and convincin’, and pretty soon old Mom
Nater stopped cryin’ to hear ’em, and she and I both listened full of
joy and happiness to see with what eloquence and justice our sect wuz
pleadin’ our cause. Their arguments wuz so reasonable and convincin’
that I said to myself, I don’t see how anybody can help bein’ converted
to this righteous cause, the liftin’ up of wimmen from her
uncomfortable crouchin’ poster with criminals and idiots, up to the
place she should occupy by the side of other good citizens of the
United States, with all the legal and moral rights that go with that
noble title.

And right whilst I wuz thinkin’ this, sunthin’ wuz happenin’ that
proved I wuz right in my eppisodin’, and somebody awful sot agin it wuz
bein’ converted then and there (but of this more anon and bom-bye). We
stayed till we heard the last word of the last speech, I happy and
proud in sperit, Lorinda partly converted, she couldn’t help it, though
she wouldn’t own up to it at that juncter. And Josiah lookin’ real
deprested, the thought of representin’ me wuz worryin’ him I knew, for
I hearn him say (soty vosy), “Represent wimmen or not, I hain’t goin’
to set up all night with no old woman, and lift her round, nor dry nuss
no twins.”

And thinkin’ his sperit wuz pierced to a sufficient depth by his
apprehension, so reason could be planted and take root, and he wouldn’t
be so anxious in the future to represent a woman, I told him what
Diantha said and we all went home in good sperits. The sun shone clear,
the rain had washed the face of the Earth till it shone, and everything
looked gay and joyous.

When we got to Lorinda’s we see a auto standin’ in front of the door
full of flowery branches in front and the pink posies lookin’ no more
bright and rosy than the faces of the two young folks settin’ there. It
wuz Polly and Royal.

It seemed that when he and Maud got back from the country (and they
didn’t stay long, Royal wuz so restless and oneasy) Maud insisted on
his takin’ her to the suffrage meetin’ jest to make fun on’t, so I
spoze. She thought she had rubbed out Polly’s image and made a
impression herself on Royal’s heart that only needed stompin’ in a
little deeper, and she thought ridicule would be the stomper she
needed.

But when they got to the meetin’ and he see Polly settin’ like a lily
amongst flowers, and read in her lovely face the earnest desire to lift
the burden from the heavy laden, comfort the sorrowful, right the
wrong, and do what she could in her day and generation—

I spoze his eyes could only see her sweet face. But he couldn’t help
his ears from hearin’ the reasonable, eloquent words of earnest and
womanly wimmen, so full of good sense and truth and justice that no
reasonable person could dispute ’em, and when he contrasted all this
with the sneerin’ face, the sarcastic egotistic prattle of Maud, the
veil dropped from his eyes, and he see with the New Vision.

You know how it wuz with Saul the Scoffer who went breathin’ out
vengeance, and Eternal Right stopped him on his way with its great
light. Well, I spoze it wuz a bright ray from that same light that
shone down into Royal’s heart and made him see. He wuz always good
hearted and generous—men have always been better than the laws they
have made. He left Maud at her home not fur away and hastened back,
way-laid Polly, and bore her home in triumph and a thirty-horse-power
car.

It don’t make much difference I spoze how or where anybody is
converted. The Bible speaks of some bein’ ketched out of the fire, and
I spoze it is about the same if they are ketched out of the rain.
’Tennyrate the same rain that washed some of the color off Maud’s
cheeks, seemed to wash away the blindin’ mist of prejudice and
antagonism from Royal’s mental vision, leavin’ his sperit ready for the
great white light of truth and justice to strike in. And that very day
and hour he come round to Polly’s way of thinkin’, and bein’ smart as a
whip and so rich, I suppose he will be a great accusation to the cause.

Well, the next day but one the Allens met in a pleasant grove on the
river shore and we had a good growin’ time. Royal bein’ as you may say
one of the family, took us all to the grove in his big tourin’ car, and
the fourth trip he took Polly alone, and wuzn’t it queer that, though
the load wuz fur lighter, it took him three times as long as the other
three trips together? Why, they never got there till dinner wuz on the
table, and then they didn’t seem to care a mite about the extra good
food.

But I made allowances, for as I looked into their glowin’ faces I
knowed they wuz partakin’ of fruit from the full branches of first
love, true love. Rich fruit that gives the divinest satisfaction of any
this old earth affords. Food that never changes through the centuries,
though fashion often changes, and riotous plenty or food famine may
exalt or depress the sperit of the householder. Nothin’ but time has
any power over this divine fruitage. He gradually, as the light of the
honeymoon wanes, whets his old scythe and mows down some of the
luxuriant branches, either cuttin’ a full swath, or one at a time, and
the blessed consumers have to come down to the ordinary food of
mortals. But this wuz still fur away from them.

And I knowed too that the ordinary food of ordinary mortals partook of
under the full harvest moon of domestic comfort and contentment wuz not
to be despised, though fur different. And the light fur different from
the glow and the glamour that wropped them two together and all the
rest of the world away from ’em.

But I’m eppisodin’ too much, and to resoom forward.

As I said, we had a happy growin’ time at the Reunion, Josiah bein’ in
fine feather to see the relation on his side presentin’ such a noble
appearance. And like a good wife I sympathized with him in his pride
and happiness, though I told him they didn’t present any better
appearance than the same number of Smiths would. And their cookin’,
though excellent, wuz no better than the Smiths could cook if they sot
out to.

He bein’ so good natered didn’t dispute me outright, but said he
thought the Allens made better nut-cakes than the Smiths.

But they don’t, no such thing. In fact I think the Smith nut-cakes are
lighter and have a more artistic twist to ’em and don’t devour so much
fat a-fryin’.

But I’d hate to set Josiah down to any better vittles. I d’no as I
would dast let him loose at the table at a Smith reunion, for he eat
fur too much as it wuz. I had to give him five pepsin lozengers and
some pepper tea. And then I looked out all night for night mairs to
ride on his chist. But he come through it alive though with
considerable pain.

We stayed two or three days longer with Lorinda, and then she and Hiram
went part way with us as we visited our way home. We’ve got relations
livin’ all along the river that we owed visits to. And we went to see a
number of ’em and enjoyed our four selves first rate. These things all
took place more than a year ago and another man sets in the high chair,
before which I laid Serepta’s errents, a man not so hefty mebby weighed
by common steelyards, but one of noble weight judged by mental and
moral scales.

I d’no whether I’d had any better luck if I’d presented Serepta’s
errents to him. Sometimes when I look in the kind eyes of his picter,
and read his noble and eloquent words that I believe come from his very
soul, I think mebby I’d been more lucky if he’d sot in the chair that
day. But then I d’no, there are so many influences and hendrances
planted like thorns in the cushion of that chair that a man, no matter
how earnest he strives to do jest right, can’t help bein’ pricked by
’em and held back. And I know he could never done them errents in the
time she sot, but I’m in hopes he’ll throw his powerful influence jest
as fur as he can on the side of right, and justice to all the citizens
of the U.S., wimmen as well as men.

’Tennyrate, he has showed more heroism now than many soldiers who risk
life on the battle field. For the worst foe to fight and conquer is
Ridicule; and he and others in high places have attackted Fashion so
entrenched in the solid armour of Habit that most public men wouldn’t
have dasted to take arms agin it.

And the long waves of Time must swash up agin the shores of Eternity,
before the good it has done can be estimated. How fur the influence has
extended. How many weak wills been strengthened. How many broken hearts
healed. How many young lives inspired to nobler and saner living.

But to resoom forward, I can’t nor won’t carry them errents of
Serepta’s there again. It is too wearin’ for one of my age and my
rheumatiz. What a tedious time I did put in there. It wuz a day long to
be remembered by me.




IX.
THE WOMEN’S PARADE


Josiah come home from Jonesville one day, all wrought up. He’d took off
a big crate of eggs and got returns from several crates he’d sent to
New York, an’ he sez to me:

“That consarned Middleman is cheatin’ me the worst kind. I know the
yaller Plymouth Rock eggs ort to bring mor’n the white Leghorns;
they’re bigger and it stands to reason they’re worth more, and he don’t
give nigh so much. I believe he eats ’em himself and that’s why he
wants to git ’em cheaper.”

“No Middleman,” sez I, “could eat fifty dozen a week.”

“He could if he eat enough at one time. ’Tennyrate, I’m goin’ to New
York to see about it.”

“When are you goin’?” sez I.

“I’m goin’ to-morrow mornin’. I’m goin’ in onexpected and I lay out to
catch him devourin’ them big eggs himself.”

“Oh, shaw!” sez I. “The idee!”

“Well, I say the Trusts and Middlemen are dishonest as the old Harry.
Don’t you remember what one on ’em writ to Uncle Sime Bentley and what
he writ back? He’d sent a great load of potatoes to him and he didn’t
get hardly anything for ’em, only their big bill for sellin’ ’em. They
charged him for freightage, carage, storage, porterage, weightage, and
to make their bill longer, they put in _ratage_ and _satage_.

“Uncle Sime writ back ‘You infarnel thief, you, put in “stealage” and
keep the whole on’t.’”

But I sez, “They’re not all dishonest. There are good men among ’em as
well as bad.”

“Well, I lay out to see to it myself, and if they ever charge me for
‘ratage’ and ‘satage’ I’m goin’ to see what they are, and how they
look.”

“Well,” sez I, “if you’re bound to go, I’ll get up and get a good
breakfast and go with you.” It was the day of the Woman’s Suffrage
Parade and I wanted to see it. I wanted to like a dog, and had ever
since I hearn of it. Though some of the Jonesvillians felt different.
The Creation Searchin’ Society wuz dretful exercised about it. The
President’s stepma is a strong She Aunty and has always ruled Philander
with an iron hand. I’ve always noticed that women who didn’t want any
rights always took the right to have their own way. But ’tennyrate
Philander come up a very strong He Aunty. And he felt that the Creation
Searchers ort to go to New York that day to assist the Aunties in
sneerin’ at the marchers, writin’ up the parade, and helpin’ count ’em.
Philander wuz always good at figures, specially at subtraction, and he
and his Step Ma thought he ort to be there to help.

I told Josiah I guessed the She Aunties didn’t need no help at that.

But Philander called a meetin’ of the Creation Searchers to make
arrangements to go. And I spoze the speech he made at the meetin’ wuz a
powerful effort. And the members most all on ’em believin’ as he
did—they said it wuz a dretful interestin’ meetin’. Sunthin’ like a
love feast, only more wrought up and excitin’.

The editor of the _Auger_ printed the whole thing in his paper, and
said it give a staggerin’ blow agin Woman’s Suffrage, and he didn’t
know but it wuz a death blow—he hoped it wuz.

“A Woman’s Parade,” sez Philander, “is the most abominable sight ever
seen on our planetary system. Onprotected woman dressed up in fine
clothes standin’ up on her feet, and paradin’ herself before strange
men. Oh! how bold! Oh! how onwomanly! No wonder,” says he, “the She
Aunties are shocked at the sight, and say they marched to attract the
attention of men. Why can’t women stay to home and set down and knit?
And then men would love ’em. But if they keep on with these bold,
forward actions, men won’t love ’em, and they will find out so. And it
has always been, and is now, man’s greatest desire and chiefest aim he
has aimed at, to protect women, to throw the shinin’ mantilly of his
constant devotion about her delikit form and shield her and guard her
like the very apples in his eyes.

“Woman is too sweet and tender a flower to have any such hardship put
upon her, and it almost crazes a man, and makes him temporarily out of
his head, to see women do anything to hazard that inheriant delicacy of
hern, that always appealed so to the male man.

“Let us go forth, clad in our principles (and ordinary clothing, of
course), and show just where we stand on the woman question, and do all
we can to assist the gentle feminine She Aunties. Lovely, retirin’
females whose pictures we so often see gracin’ the sensational
newspapers. Their white womanly neck and shoulders, glitterin’ with
jewels, no brighter than their eyes. They don’t appear there for sex
appeal, or to win admiration. No indeed! No doubt they shrink from the
publicity. And also shrink from making speeches in the Senate chambers
or the halls of Justice, but will do so, angelic martyrs that they are,
to hold their erring Suffrage sisters back from their brazen efforts at
publicity and public speakin’.”

They said his speech wuz cheered wildly, give out for publication, and
entered into the moments of the Society.

But after all, it happened real curious the day of the Parade every
leadin’ Creation Searcher had some impediment in his way, and couldn’t
go, and of course, the Society didn’t want to go without its leaders.

Mis’ Philander Daggett, the president’s wife, wuz paperin’ her settin’
room and parlor overhead. She wuz expectin’ company and couldn’t put it
off. And bein’ jest married, and thinkin’ the world of her, Philander
said he dassent leave home for fear she’d fall offen the barrel and
break her neck. She had a board laid acrost two barrels to stand up on.
And every day Philander would leave his outside work and come into the
house, and set round and watch her—he thought so much of her. I suppose
he wanted to catch her if she fell. But I didn’t think she would fall.
She is young and tuff, and she papered it real good, though it wuz
dretful hard on her arm sockets and back.

And the Secretary’s wife wuz puttin’ in a piece of onions. She thought
she would make considerable by it, and she will, if onions keep up. But
it is turrible hard on a woman’s back to weed ’em. But she is
ambitious; she raised a flock of fifty-six turkeys last year besides
doin’ her house work, and makin’ seventy-five yards of rag carpet. And
she thought onions wouldn’t be so wearin’ on her as turkeys, for
onions, she said, will stay where they are put, but turkeys are born
wanderers and hikers. And they led her through sun and rain, swamp and
swale, uphill and downhill, a-chasin’ ’em up, but she made well by ’em.
Well, in puttin’ in her onion seed, she overworked herself and got a
crick in her back, so she couldn’t stir hand nor foot for two days. And
bein’ only just them two, her husband had to stay home to see to
things.

And the Treasurer’s wife is canvassin’ for the life of William J.
Bryan. And wantin’ to make all she could, she took a longer tramp than
common, and didn’t hear of the Parade or meetin’ of the C.S.S. at all.
She writ home a day or two before the meetin’, that she wuz goin’ as
long as her legs held out, and they needn’t write to her, for she
didn’t know where she would be.

Well, of course, the Creation Searchers didn’t want to go without their
officers. They said they couldn’t make no show if they did. So they
give up goin’. But I spoze they made fun of the Woman’s Parade amongst
theirselves, and mourned over their indelikit onwomanly actions, and
worried about it bein’ too hard for ’em, and sneered at ’em
considerable.

Well, Josiah always loves to have me with him, an’ though he’d made
light of the Parade, he didn’t object to my goin’. And suffice it to
say that we arrove at that Middleman’s safe and sound, though why we
didn’t git lost in that grand immense depo and wander ’round there all
day like babes in the woods, is more’n I can tell.

The Middleman wuzn’t dishonest: he convinced Josiah on it. He had
shipped the colored eggs somewhere, and of course he couldn’t pay as
much, and he never had hearn of _Ratage_ or _Satage_. He wuz a real
pleasant Middleman, and hearing me say how much I wanted to see the
Woman’s Parade, he invited us to go upstairs and set by a winder, where
there was a good view on’t. We’d eat our lunch on the train and we
accepted his invitation, and sot down by a winder then and there,
though it wuz a hour or so before the time sot for the Parade. And I
should have taken solid comfort watchin’ the endless procession of men
and women and vehicles of all sorts and descriptions, but Josiah made
so many slightin’ remarks on the dress of the females passin’ below on
the sidewalk, that it made me feel bad. And to tell the truth, though I
didn’t think best to own up to it to him, I _did_ blush for my sect to
see the way some on ’em rigged themselves out.

“See that thing!” Josiah sez, as a woman passed by with her hat drawed
down over one eye, and a long quill standin’ out straight behind more’n
a foot, an’ her dress puckered in so ’round the bottom, she couldn’t
have took a long step if a mad dog wuz chasin’ her—to say nothin’ of
bein’ perched up on such high heels, that she fairly tottled when she
walked.

Sez Josiah: “Does that _thing_ know enough to vote?”

“No,” sez I, reasonably, “she don’t. But most probable if she had
bigger things to think about she’d loosen the puckerin’ strings ’round
her ankles, push her hat back out of her eyes, an’ get down on her feet
again.”

“Why, Samantha,” says he, “if you had on one of them skirts tied ’round
your ankles, if I wuz a-dyin’ on the upper shelf in the buttery, you
couldn’t step up on a chair to get to me to save your life, an’ I’d
have to die there alone.”

“Why should you be dyin’ on the buttery shelf, Josiah?” sez I.

“Oh, that wuz jest a figger of speech, Samantha.”

“But folks ort to be mejum in figgers of speech, Josiah, and not go too
fur.”

“Do you think, Samantha, that anybody can go too fur in describin’ them
fool skirts, and them slit skirts, and the immodesty and indecensy of
some of them dresses?”

[Illustration: “Sez Josiah, ‘Does that thing know enough to vote?’”]

“I don’t know as they can,” sez I, sadly.

“Jest look at that thing,” sez he again.

And as I looked, the hot blush of shame mantillied my cheeks, for I
felt that my sect was disgraced by the sight. She wuz real pretty, but
she didn’t have much of any clothes on, and what she did wear wuzn’t in
the right place; not at all.

Sez Josiah, “That girl would look much more modest and decent if she
wuz naked, for then she might be took for a statute.”

And I sez, “I don’t blame the good Priest for sendin’ them away from
the Lord’s table, sayin’, ‘I will give no communion to a Jezabel.’ And
the pity of it is,” sez I, “lots of them girls are innocent and don’t
realize what construction will be put on the dress they blindly copy
from some furrin fashion plate.”

Then quite an old woman passed by, also robed or disrobed in the
prevailin’ fashion, and Josiah sez, soty vosy, “I should think she wuz
old enough to know sunthin’. Who wants to see her old bones?” And he
sez to me, real uppish, “Do you think them things know enough to vote?”

But jest then a young man went by dressed fashionably, but if he hadn’t
had the arm of a companion, he couldn’t have walked a step; his face
wuz red and swollen, and dissipated, and what expression wuz left in
his face wuz a fool expression, and both had cigarettes in their
mouths, and I sez, “Does _that_ thing know enough to vote?” And jest
behind them come a lot of furrin laborers, rough and rowdy-lookin’,
with no more expression in their faces than a mule or any other animal.
“Do _they_ know enough to vote?” sez I. “As for the fitness for votin’
it is pretty even on both sides. Good intelligent men ortn’t to lose
the right of suffrage for the vice and ignorance of some of their sect,
and that argument is jest as strong for the other sect.”

But before Josiah could reply, we hearn the sound of gay music, and the
Parade began to march on before us. First a beautiful stately figure
seated fearlessly on a dancin’ horse, that tossted his head as if proud
of the burden he wuz carryin’. She managed the prancin’ steed with one
hand, and with the other held aloft the flag of our country. Jest as
women ort to, and have to. They have got to manage wayward pardners,
children and domestics who, no matter how good they are, will take
their bits in their mouths, and go sideways some of the time, but can
be managed by a sensible, affectionate hand, and with her other hand at
the same time she can carry her principles aloft, wavin’ in every
domestic breeze, frigid or torrid, plain to be seen by everybody.

Then come the wives and relations of Senators and Congressmen, showin’
that bein’ right on the spot they knowed what wimmen needed. Then the
wimmen voters from free Suffrage states, showin’ by their noble looks
that votin’ hadn’t hurt ’em any. They carried the most gorgeous banner
in the whole Parade. Then the Wimmen’s Political Union, showin’ plain
in their faces that understandin’ the laws that govern her ain’t goin’
to keep woman from looking beautiful and attractive.

On and on they come, gray-headed women and curly-headed children from
every station in life: the millionairess by the working woman, and the
fashionable society woman by the business one. Two women on horseback,
and one blowin’ a bugle, led the way for the carriage of Madam
Antoinette Blackwell. I wonder if she ever dreamed when she wuz tryin’
to climb the hill of knowledge through the thorny path of sex
persecution, that she would ever have a bugle blowed in front of her,
to honor her for her efforts, and form a part of such a glorious Parade
of the sect she give her youth and strength to free.

How they swept on, borne by the waves of music, heralded by wavin’
banners of purple and white and gold, bearin’ upliftin’ and noble
mottoes. Physicians, lawyers, nurses, authors, journalists, artists,
social workers, dressmakers, milliners, women from furrin countries
dressed in their quaint costumes, laundresses, clerks, shop girls,
college girls, all bearin’ the pennants and banners of their different
colleges: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, etc., etc. High-school pupils,
Woman’s Suffrage League, Woman’s Social League, and all along the
brilliant line each division dressed in beautiful costumes and carryin’
their own gorgeous banners. And anon or oftener all along the long,
long procession bands of music pealin’ out high and sweet, as if the
Spirit of Music, who is always depictered as a woman, was glad and
proud to do honor to her own sect. And all through the Parade you could
see every little while men on foot and on horseback, not a great many,
but jest enough to show that the really noble men wuz on their side.
For, as I’ve said more formally, that is one of the most convincin’
arguments for Woman’s Suffrage. In fact, it don’t need any other. That
bad men fight against Women’s Suffrage with all their might.

Down by the big marble library, the grand-stand wuz filled with men
seated to see their wives march by on their road to Victory. I hearn
and believe, they wuz a noble-lookin’ set of men. They had seen their
wives in the past chasin’ Fashion and Amusement, and why shouldn’t they
enjoy seein’ them follow Principle and Justice? Well, I might talk all
day and not begin to tell of the beauty and splendor of the Woman’s
Parade. And the most impressive sight to me wuz to see how the leaven
of individual right and justice had entered into all these different
classes of society, and how their enthusiasm and earnestness must
affect every beholder.

And in my mind I drawed pictures of the different modes of our American
women and our English sisters, each workin’ for the same cause, but in
what a different manner. Of course, our English sisters may have more
reason for their militant doin’s; more unjust laws regarding
marriage—divorce, and care of children, and I can’t blame them married
females for wantin’ to control their own money, specially if they earnt
it by scrubbin’ floors and washin’. I can’t blame ’em for not wantin’
their husbands to take that money from them and their children,
specially if they’re loafers and drunkards. And, of course, there are
no men so noble and generous as our American men. But jest lookin’ at
the matter from the outside and comparin’ the two, I wuz proud indeed
of our Suffragists.

While our English sisters feel it their duty to rip and tear, burn and
pillage, to draw attention to their cause, and reach the gole (which I
believe they have sot back for years) through the smoke and fire of
carnage, our American Suffragettes employ the gentle, convincin’ arts
of beauty and reason. Some as the quiet golden sunshine draws out the
flowers and fruit from the cold bosom of the earth. Mindin’ their own
business, antagonizin’ and troublin’ no one, they march along and show
to every beholder jest how earnest they be. They quietly and
efficiently answer that argument of the She Auntys, that women don’t
want to vote, by a parade two hours in length, of twenty thousand. They
answer the argument that the ballot would render women careless in
dress and reckless, by organizin’ and carryin’ on a parade so
beautiful, so harmonious in color and design that it drew out
enthusiastic praise from even the enemies of Suffrage. They quietly and
without argument answered the old story that women was onbusiness-like
and never on time, by startin’ the Parade the very minute it was
announced, which you can’t always say of men’s parades.

It wuz a burnin’ hot day, and many who’d always argued that women
hadn’t strength enough to lift a paper ballot, had prophesied that
woman wuz too delicately organized, too “fraguile,” as Betsy Bobbet
would say, to endure the strain of the long march in the torrid
atmosphere.

But I told Josiah that women had walked daily over the burning plow
shares of duty and domestic tribulation, till their feet had got
calloused, and could stand more’n you’d think for.

And he said he didn’t know as females had any more burnin’ plow shares
to tread on than men had.

And I sez, “I didn’t say they had, Josiah. I never wanted women to get
more praise or justice than men. I simply want ’em to get as much—just
an even amount; for,” sez I, solemnly, “‘male and female created He
them.’”

Josiah is a deacon, and when I quote Scripture, he has to listen
respectful, and I went on: “I guess it wuz a surprise even to the
marchers that of all the ambulances that kept alongside the Parade to
pick up faint and swoonin’ females, the only one occupied wuz by a
man.”

Josiah denied it, but I sez, “I see his boots stickin’ out of the
ambulance myself.” Josiah couldn’t dispute that, for he knows I am
truthful. But he sez, sunthin’ in the sperit of two little children I
hearn disputin’. Sez one: “It wuzn’t so; you’ve told a lie.”

“Well,” sez the other, “You broke a piece of china and laid it to me.”

Sez Josiah, “You may have seen a pair of men’s boots a-stickin’ out of
the ambulance, but I’ll bet they didn’t have heels on ’em a inch broad,
and five or six inches high.”

“No, Josiah,” sez I, “you’re right. Men think too much of their comfort
and health to hist themselves up on such little high tottlin’ things,
and you didn’t see many on ’em in the Parade.”

But he went on drivin’ the arrow of higher criticism still deeper into
my onwillin’ breast. “I’ll bet you didn’t see his legs tied together at
the ankles, or his trouses slit up the sides to show gauze stockin’s
and anklets and diamond buckles. And you didn’t see my sect who honored
the Parade by marchin’ in it, have a goose quill half a yard long,
standin’ up straight in the air from a coal-scuttle hat, or out
sideways, a hejus sight, and threatenin’ the eyes of friend and foe.”

“And you didn’t see many on ’em in the Parade,” sez I agin. “Women, as
they march along to Victory, have got to drop some of these senseless
things. In fact, they are droppin’ em. You don’t see waists now the
size of a hour glass. It is gettin’ fashionable to breathe now, and
women on their way to their gole will drop by the way their high heels;
it will git fashionable to walk comfortable, and as they’ve got to take
some pretty long steps to reach the ballot in 1916, it stands to reason
they’ve got to have a skirt wide enough at the bottom to step up on the
gole of Victory. It is a high step, Josiah, but women are goin’ to take
it. They’ve always tended to cleanin’ their own house, and makin’ it
comfortable and hygenic for its members, big and little. And when they
turn their minds onto the best way to clean the National house both
sects have to live in to make it clean and comfortable and safe for the
weak and helpless as well as for the strong—it stands to reason they
won’t have time or inclination to stand up on stilts with tied-in
ankles, quilled out like savages.”

“Well,” said Josiah, with a dark, forebodin’ look on his linement, “_we
shall see_.”

“Yes,” sez I, with a real radiant look into the future. “_We shall
see_, Josiah.”

But he didn’t have no idea of the beautiful prophetic vision I beheld
with the eyes of my sperit. Good men and good women, each fillin’ their
different spears in life, but banded together for the overthrow of
evil, the uplift of the race.




X.
“THE CREATION SEARCHIN’ SOCIETY”


It was only a few days after we got home from New York that Josiah come
into the house dretful excited. He’d had a invitation to attend a
meetin’ of the Creation Searchin’ Society.

“Why,” sez I, “did they invite you? You are not a member?”

“No,” sez he, “but they want me to help ’em be indignant. It is a
indignation meetin’.”

“Indignant about what?” I sez.

“Fur be it from me, Samantha, to muddle up your head and hurt your
feelin’s by tellin’ you what it’s fur.” And he went out quick and shet
the door. But I got a splendid dinner and afterwards he told me of his
own accord.

I am not a member, of course, for the president, Philander Daggett,
said it would lower the prestige of the society in the eyes of the
world to have even one female member. This meetin’ wuz called last week
for the purpose of bein’ indignant over the militant doin’s of the
English Suffragettes. Josiah and several others in Jonesville wuz
invited to be present at this meetin’ as sort of honorary members, as
they wuz competent to be jest as indignant as any other male men over
the tribulations of their sect.

Josiah said so much about the meetin’, and his Honorary Indignation,
that he got me curious, and wantin’ to go myself, to see how it wuz
carried on. But I didn’t have no hopes on’t till Philander Daggett’s
new young wife come to visit me and I told her how much I wanted to go,
and she bein’ real good-natered said she would make Philander let me
in.

He objected, of course, but she is pretty and young, and his nater
bein’ kinder softened and sweetened by the honey of the honeymoon, she
got round him. And he said that if we would set up in a corner of the
gallery behind the melodeon, and keep our veils on, he would let her
and me in. But we must keep it secret as the grave, for he would lose
all the influence he had with the other members and be turned out of
the Presidential chair if it wuz knowed that he had lifted wimmen up to
such a hite, and gin ’em such a opportunity to feel as if they wuz
equal to men.

Well, we went early and Josiah left me to Philander’s and went on to do
some errents. He thought I wuz to spend the evenin’ with her in
becomin’ seclusion, a-knittin’ on his blue and white socks, as a woman
should. But after visitin’ a spell, jest after it got duskish, we went
out the back door and went cross lots, and got there ensconced in the
dark corner without anybody seein’ us and before the meetin’ begun.

Philander opened the meetin’ by readin’ the moments of the last
meetin’, which wuz one of sympathy with the police of Washington for
their noble efforts to break up the Woman’s Parade, and after their
almost Herculaneum labor to teach wimmen her proper place, and all the
help they got from the hoodlum and slum elements, they had failed in a
measure, and the wimmen, though stunned, insulted, spit on, struck,
broken boneded, maimed, and tore to pieces, had succeeded in their
disgustin’ onwomanly undertakin’.

But it wuz motioned and carried that a vote of thanks be sent ’em and
recorded in the moments that the Creation Searchers had no blame but
only sympathy and admiration for the hard worked Policemen for they had
done all they could to protect wimmen’s delicacy and retirin’ modesty,
and put her in her place, and no man in Washington or Jonesville could
do more. He read these moments, in a real tender sympathizin’ voice,
and I spoze the members sympathized with him, or I judged so from their
linements as I went forward, still as a mouse, and peeked down on ’em.

He then stopped a minute and took a drink of water; I spoze his
sympathetic emotions had het him up, and kinder dried his mouth, some.
And then he went on to state that this meetin’ wuz called to show to
the world, abroad and nigh by, the burnin’ indignation this body felt,
as a society, at the turrible sufferin’s and insults bein’ heaped onto
their male brethren in England by the indecent and disgraceful doin’s
of the militant Suffragettes, and to devise, if possible, some way to
help their male brethren acrost the sea. “For,” sez he, “pizen will
spread. How do we know how soon them very wimmen who had to be spit on
and struck and tore to pieces in Washington to try to make ’em keep
their place, the sacred and tender place they have always held
enthroned as angels in a man’s heart—”

Here he stopped and took out his bandanna handkerchief, and wiped his
eyes, and kinder choked. But I knew it wuz all a orator’s art, and it
didn’t affect me, though I see a number of the members wipe their eyes,
for this talk appealed to the inheriant chivalry of men, and their
desire to protect wimmen, we have always hearn so much about.

“How do we know,” he continued, “how soon they may turn aginst their
best friends, them who actuated by the loftiest and tenderest emotions,
and determination to protect the weaker sect at any cost, took their
valuable time to try to keep wimmen down where they ort to be, _angels
of the home_, who knows but they may turn and throw stuns at the
Capitol an’ badger an’ torment our noble lawmakers, a-tryin’ to make
’em listen to their silly petitions for justice?”

In conclusion, he entreated ’em to remember that the eye of the world
wuz on ’em, expectin’ ’em to be loyal to the badgered and woman
endangered sect abroad, and try to suggest some way to stop them
woman’s disgraceful doin’s.

Cyrenus Presly always loves to talk, and he always looks on the dark
side of things, and he riz up and said “he didn’t believe nothin’ could
be done, for by all he’d read about ’em, the men had tried everything
possible to keep wimmen down where they ort to be, they had turned deaf
ears to their complaints, wouldn’t hear one word they said, they had
tried drivin’ and draggin’ and insults of all kinds, and breakin’ their
bones, and imprisonment, and stuffin’ ’em with rubber tubes, thrust
through their nose down into their throats. And he couldn’t think of a
thing more that could be done by men, and keep the position men always
had held as wimmen’s gardeens and protectors, and he said he thought
men might jest as well keep still and let ’em go on and bring the world
to ruin, for that was what they wuz bound to do, and they couldn’t be
stopped unless they wuz killed off.”

Phileman Huffstater is a old bachelder, and hates wimmen. He had been
on a drunk and looked dretful, tobacco juice runnin’ down his face, his
red hair all towsled up, and his clothes stiff with dirt. He wuzn’t
invited, but had come of his own accord. He had to hang onto the seat
in front of him as he riz up and said: “He believed that wuz the best
and only way out on’t, for men to rise up and kill off the weaker sect,
for their wuzn’t never no trouble of any name or nater, but what wimmen
wuz to the bottom on’t, and the world would be better off without ’em.”
But Philander scorfed at him and reminded him that such hullsale doin’s
would put an end to the world’s bein’ populated at all.

But Phileman said in a hicuppin’, maudlin way that “the world had
better stop, if there had got to be such doin’s, wimmen risin’ up on
every side, and pretendin’ to be equal with men.”

Here his knee jints kinder gin out under him, and he slid down onto the
seat and went to sleep.

I guess the members wuz kinder shamed of Phileman, for Lime Peedick
jumped up quick as scat and said, “It seemed the Englishmen had tried
most everything else, and he wondered how it would work if them
militant wimmen could be ketched and a dose of sunthin’ bitter and
sickenin’ poured down ’em. Every time they broached that loathsome
doctrine of equal rights, and tried to make lawmakers listen to their
petitions, jest ketch ’em and pour down ’em a big dose of wormwood or
sunthin’ else bitter and sickenin’, and he guessed they would git tired
on’t.”

But here Josiah jumped up quick and said, “he objected,” he said, “that
would endanger the right wimmen always had, and ort to have of cookin’
good vittles for men and doin’ their housework, and bearin’ and
bringin’ up their children, and makin’ and mendin’ and waitin’ on ’em.
He said nothin’ short of a Gatlin gun could keep Samantha from speakin’
her mind about such things, and he wuzn’t willin’ to have her made sick
to the stomach, and incapacitated from cookin’ by any such
proceedin’s.”

The members argued quite awhile on this pint, but finally come round to
Josiah’s idees, and the meetin’ for a few minutes seemed to come to a
standstill, till old Cornelius Snyder got up slowly and feebly. He has
spazzums and can’t hardly wobble. His wife has to support him, wash and
dress him, and take care on him like a baby. But he has the use of his
tongue, and he got some man to bring him there, and he leaned heavy on
his cane, and kinder stiddied himself on it and offered this
suggestion:

“How would it do to tie females up when they got to thinkin’ they wuz
equal to men, halter ’em, rope ’em, and let ’em see if they wuz?”

But this idee wuz objected to for the same reason Josiah had advanced,
as Philander well said, “wimmen had got to go foot loose in order to do
the housework and cookin’.”

Uncle Sime Bentley, who wuz awful indignant, said, “I motion that men
shall take away all the rights that wimmen have now, turn ’em out of
the meetin’ house, and grange.”

But before he’d hardly got the words out of his mouth, seven of the
members riz up and as many as five spoke out to once with different
exclamations:

“That won’t do! we can’t do that! Who’ll do all the work! Who’ll git up
grange banquets and rummage sales, and paper and paint and put down
carpets in the meetin’ house, and git up socials and entertainments to
help pay the minister’s salary, and carry on the Sunday School? and
tend to its picnics and suppers, and take care of the children? We
can’t do this, much as we’d love to.”

One horsey, sporty member, also under the influence of liquor, riz up,
and made a feeble motion, “Spozin’ we give wimmen liberty enough to
work, leave ’em hand and foot loose, and sort o’ muzzle ’em so they
can’t talk.”

This seemed to be very favorably received, ’specially by the married
members, and the secretary wuz jest about to record it in the moments
as a scheme worth tryin’, when old Doctor Nugent got up, and sez in a
firm, decided way:

“Wimmen cannot be kept from talking without endangerin’ her life; as a
medical expert I object to this motion.”

“How would you put the objection?” sez the secretary.

“On the ground of cruelty to animals,” sez the doctor.

A fat Englishman who had took the widder Shelmadine’s farm on shares,
says, “I ’old with Brother Josiah Hallen’s hargument. As the father of
nine young children and thirty cows to milk with my wife’s ’elp, I ’old
she musn’t be kep’ from work, but h’I propose if we can’t do anything
else that a card of sympathy be sent to hold Hengland from the Creation
Searchin’ Society of America, tellin’ ’em ’ow our ’earts bleeds for the
men’s sufferin’ and ’ardships in ’avin’ to leave their hoccupations to
beat and ’aul round and drive females to jails, and feed ’em with
rubber hose through their noses to keep ’em from starvin’ to death for
what they call their principles.”

This motion wuz carried unanimously.

But here an old man, who had jest dropped in and who wuz kinder deef
and slow-witted, asked, “What it is about anyway? what do the wimmen
ask for when they are pounded and jailed and starved?”

Hank Yerden, whose wife is a Suffragist, and who is mistrusted to have
a leanin’ that way himself, answered him, “Oh, they wanted the
lawmakers to read their petitions asking for the rights of ordinary
citizens. They said as long as their property wuz taxed they had the
right of representation. And as long as the law punished wimmen equally
with men, they had a right to help make that law, and as long as men
claimed wimmen’s place wuz home, they wanted the right to guard that
home. And as long as they brought children into the world they wanted
the right to protect ’em. And when the lawmakers wouldn’t hear a word
they said, and beat ’em and drove ’em round and jailed ’em, they got
mad as hens, and are actin’ like furiation and wild cats. But claim
that civil rights wuz never give to any class without warfare.”

“Heavens! what doin’s!” sez old Zephaniah Beezum, “what is the world
comin’ to!” “Angle worms will be risin’ up next and demandin’ to not be
trod on.” Sez he, “I have studied the subject on every side, and I
claim the best way to deal with them militant females is to banish ’em
to some barren wilderness, some foreign desert where they can meditate
on their crimes, and not bother men.”

This idee wuz received favorably by most of the members, but others
differed and showed the weak p’ints in it, and it wuz gin up.

Well, at ten P.M., the Creation Searchers gin up after arguin’ pro and
con, con and pro, that they could not see any way out of the matter,
they could not tell what to do with the wimmen without danger and
trouble to the male sect.

They looked dretful dejected and onhappy as they come to this
conclusion, my pardner looked as if he wuz most ready to bust out
cryin’. And as I looked on his beloved linement I forgot everything
else and onbeknown to me I leaned over the railin’ and sez:

“Here is sunthin’ that no one has seemed to think on at home or abroad.
How would it work to stop the trouble by givin’ the wimmen the rights
they ask for, the rights of any other citizen?”

I don’t spoze there will ever be such another commotion and upheaval in
Jonesville till Michael blows his last trump as follered my speech.
Knowin’ wimmen wuz kep’ from the meetin’, some on ’em thought it wuz a
voice from another spear. Them wuz the skairt and horrow struck ones,
and them that thought it wuz a earthly woman’s voice wuz so mad that
they wuz by the side of themselves and carried on fearful. But when
they searched the gallery for wimmen or ghosts, nothin’ wuz found, for
Philander’s wife and I had scooted acrost lots and wuz to home
a-knittin’ before the men got there.

And I d’no as anybody but Philander to this day knows what, or who it
wuz.

And I d’no as my idee will be follered, but I believe it is the best
way out on’t for men and wimmen both, and would stop the mad doin’s of
the English Suffragettes, which I don’t approve of, no indeed! much as
I sympathize with the justice of their cause.






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