Samantha on the Woman Question

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.

“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?

“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?”

“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.