diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:30:20 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:30:20 -0700 |
| commit | 8c30e8ab2eb5ad68692c163af91f1771b6a3d620 (patch) | |
| tree | 3cc3462d372ef5edfaeb781a7072dcdad0a58aab /7833-h | |
Diffstat (limited to '7833-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/7833-h.htm | 4558 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 0 -> 337442 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam001.jpg | bin | 0 -> 180968 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam001th.jpg | bin | 0 -> 8705 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam008.jpg | bin | 0 -> 151848 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam008th.jpg | bin | 0 -> 6624 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam111.jpg | bin | 0 -> 129234 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam111th.jpg | bin | 0 -> 7731 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam164.jpg | bin | 0 -> 150865 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 7833-h/images/sam164th.jpg | bin | 0 -> 9684 bytes |
10 files changed, 4558 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/7833-h/7833-h.htm b/7833-h/7833-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1c67e44 --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/7833-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4558 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Samantha on the Woman Question, by Marietta Holley</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +p.caption {font-weight: bold; + text-align: center; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Samantha on the Woman Question, by Marietta Holley</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Samantha on the Woman Question</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Marietta Holley</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 20, 2003 [eBook #7833]<br /> +[Most recently updated: February 15, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Eric Eldred, William Flis and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA ON THE WOMAN QUESTION ***</div> + +<h1>Samantha on the Woman Question</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Marietta Holley</h2> + +<h3>“Josiah Allen’s Wife”</h3> + +<h3>Author of</h3> + +<h3>“Samantha at Saratoga,” “My Opinions” and +“Betsey Bobbet’s,” etc.</h3> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">I. “SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">II. “THEY CAN’T BLAME HER”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">III. “POLLY’S EYES GROWED TENDER”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. “STRIVIN’ WITH THE EMISSARY”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">V. “HE WUZ DRETFUL POLITE”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. “CONCERNING MOTH-MILLERS AND MINNY FISH”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. “NO HAMPERIN’ HITCHIN’ STRAPS”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. “OLD MOM NATER LISTENIN’”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. THE WOMEN’S PARADE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">X. “THE CREATION SEARCHIN’ SOCIETY”</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="illus01"></a> +<a href="images/sam001.jpg"> +<img src="images/sam001.jpg" width="406" height="600" alt="Illustration:" /></a> +<p class="caption">“And I wonder if there is a woman in the land that can +blame Serepta for wantin’ her rights.”</p> +</div> + +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#illus01">“AND I WONDER IF THERE’S A WOMAN IN THE +LAND THAT CAN BLAME SEREPTA FOR WANTIN’ HER RIGHTS”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#illus02">“I WANTED TO VISIT THE CAPITOL OF OUR COUNTRY.... +SO WE LAID OUT TO GO”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#illus03">“HE’D ENTERED POLITICAL LIFE WHERE THE +BIBLE WUZN’T POPULAR; HE’D NEVER READ FURTHER THAN GULLIVER’S +EPISTLE TO THE LILIPUTIANS”</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#illus04">“SEZ JOSIAH, ‘DOES THAT THING KNOW ENOUGH +TO VOTE?’”</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I.<br /> +“SHE WANTED HER RIGHTS”</h2> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Bein’ one of the best lookin’ and influential Allens on +earth now, it would be expected on him to attend to it.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="illus02"></a> +<a href="images/sam008.jpg"> +<img src="images/sam008.jpg" width="600" height="454" alt="Illustration:" /></a> +<p class="caption">“I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country.... So +we laid out to go.”</p> +</div> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And I asked her how. And she said he wuz goin’ to git a patent on a new +kind of jack knife. +</p> + +<p> +I told her that if she wanted a govermunt quilt and wanted it appropriate she +ort to have a crazy quilt. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And sure enough Elnathan Purdy wanted me to dicker for a calf from Mount +Vernon, swop one of his yearlin’s for it. +</p> + +<p> +But the errents Serepta Pester sent wuz fur more hefty and momentous than all +the rest put together, calves, hen coop, cow and all. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +And then she explained she wanted me to canvas some of the Senators. +</p> + +<p> +And I hung back and asked her in a cautious tone, “How many she wanted +canvassed, and how much canvas it would take?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And then she broke off from that subject, and said she wanted her rights and +wanted the Whiskey Ring broke up. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +She wanted the Whiskey Ring destroyed and her rights, and she wanted ’em +both inside of two weeks. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“She’s in the poor-house.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Serepta Pester!” sez I, “what do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean what I say, my sister, Azuba Clapsaddle, is in the +poor-house.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, where is their property gone?” sez I. “They wuz well +off. Azuba had five thousand dollars of her own when she married him.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why-ee!” sez I. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why-ee!” sez I agin. “And where are the children?” +</p> + +<p> +“The boys have inherited their father’s habits and drink as bad as +he duz and the oldest girl has gone to the bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“Where is your Aunt Cassandra’s girl? That pretty girl I see to +your house once?” +</p> + +<p> +“That girl is in the lunatick asylum.” +</p> + +<p> +“Serepta Pester,” sez I, “be you tellin’ the +truth?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is moulderin’ in jail,” sez she. +</p> + +<p> +“In jail? Cassandra in jail!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, in jail.” And Serepta’s tone wuz now like worm-wood and +gall. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“How did it end?” +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +I don’t believe Cassanda wuz mouldy, but that is Serepta’s way of +talkin’, very flowery. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” sez I, “do you think the weather is goin’ to +moderate?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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’. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II.<br /> +“THEY CAN’T BLAME HER”</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +It wuz the regular Pester luck. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Serepta went home about 5 P.M., I promisin’ sacred to do her errents for +her. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” says he, “an’ I guess I will get a fresh pail of +water and hang on the tea kettle for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>his</i> side.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +Philander sed, “I have always found it don’t pay to talk with women +on matters they don’t understand.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The idee! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III.<br /> +“POLLY’S EYES CROWED TENDER”</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Never, never, would I have invited company whilst Josiah wuz +sufferin’ with one of his cricks.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, them wuz religious meetin’s,” sez she. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>on</i>-necessary books they are too faint with hunger to +study.” +</p> + +<p> +“But wimmen’s votin’ wouldn’t help in such +things,” sez Lorinda, as she stirred her angel cake vigorously. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Woman’s suffrage would make women neglect their homes and +housework and let their children run loose into ruin.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let?” sez I in a dry voice; “that’s a queer word from +one old pardner to another.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +He added, “You know I represent you legally, Samantha; what I do is jest +the same as though you did it.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I see,” sez I; “men represent wimmen when they want to, +and when they don’t wimmen have got to represent themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes, Samantha, sunthin’ like that.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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). +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV.<br /> +“STRIVIN’ WITH THE EMISSARY”</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” sez I, “why don’t you make the United States do +right?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +He seemed to think it looked bad, I knew by his looks. +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Intemperance is bad for Serepta and bad for the Nation.” +</p> + +<p> +He murmured sunthin’ about the revenue the liquor trade brought the +Govermunt. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Serepta told me to tell you if you didn’t do these errents you +should not be President next year.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>do</i> wish to be President and +shall work hard for the nomination if you can understand the paradox.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” sez I, “I understand them paradoxes. I’ve lived +with ’em as you may say, all through my married life.” +</p> + +<p> +A clock struck in the next room and I knowed time wuz passin’ swift. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Who is the man or men?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V.<br /> +“HE WUZ DRETFUL POLITE”</h2> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Now can you do Serepta Pesterses errents and will you?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Am I mistaken, or is this beautiful creation pipein’ or can it be +Kensington tattin’?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” sez I. For truly a woman’s curosity, however parlyzed +by just indignation, can stand only just so much strain. “The +what?” +</p> + +<p> +“The wad. The animal from which is obtained the valuable fur that tailors +make so much use of.” +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Do you mean waddin’ eight cents a sheet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Eight cents a pelt—yes, the skins are plentiful and cheap, owing +to the hardy habits of the animal.” +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Cease instantly. I will hear no more.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is Josiah?” sez he. +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “My husband.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ahem,” sez he, “as it were, ahem.” +</p> + +<p> +But I kep’ right on, for I begun to feel noble and by the side of myself: +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! my dear woman. A sad thing for Serepta; I trust <i>you</i> have no +grievance of this kind, I trust that your estimable husband is, as it were, +estimable.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI.<br /> +“CONCERNING MOTH-MILLERS AND MINNY FISH”</h2> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Can you and will you do Serepta’s errents?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ahem—you present things in a new light. I never looked at this +matter with your eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nature is aginst it,” sez he. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>my</i> way.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why-ee!” sez I, “how you talk! Have you ever read the +Bible?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “That hain’t Bible, there hain’t no Gulliver in it, +and you mean Galatians.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="illus03"></a> +<a href="images/sam111.jpg"> +<img src="images/sam111.jpg" width="401" height="600" alt="Illustration:" /></a> +<p class="caption">“He’d entered political life where the Bible +wuzn’t popular; he’d never read further than Gulliver’s +Epistle to the Liliputians.”</p> +</div> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You spoke of Herod,” sez he dreamily, “the name sounds +familiar to me. Was not Mr. Herod once in the United States Senate?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! that was not right in Herod.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Joseph?” sez he pensively. “Do you allude to our venerable +speaker, Joe Cannon?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” sez I. “I’m talkin’ Bible—I’m +talkin’ about Joseph; jest plain Joseph.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>But she carried the Child on her bosom</i>; 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He sot demute. Silence rained for some time; and finally I spoke out solemnly +through the rain: +</p> + +<p> +“Will you do Serepta’s errents? Will you give her her rights? And +will you break the Whiskey Ring?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Can’t the laws be changed?” +</p> + +<p> +“Be changed? Change the laws of the United States? Tamper with the +glorious Constitution that our fore-fathers left us—an immortal sacred +legacy.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that is what I said. Hain’t they never been changed?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “For instance durin’ the Oncivil war it wuz changed to make +Northern men cheap bloodhounds and hunters.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “it seemed to be a case of necessity and +economy.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, “it wuz a case of clear economy.” +</p> + +<p> +And sez I: “The laws have been changed to benefit liquor dealers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, yes,” he said, “it had been changed to enable whiskey +dealers to utilize the surplus liquor they import.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Gray matter!” sez I, with my nose uplifted to its extremest +height, “I should call it black matter!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” sez I coldly, “I’ve hearn <i>talk</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</p> + +<p> +“And tongue labor!” sez I in a icy axent. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Can you and will you do Serepta’s errents? Errents full of truth +and justice and eternal right?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“Dear madam, perhaps Senator B. will do the errents for you.” +</p> + +<p> +Sez I, “Where is Senator B.?” And he said I would find him at his +Post of Duty at the Capitol. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII.<br /> +“NO HAMPERIN’ HITCHIN’ STRAPS”</h2> + +<p> +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 <i>did</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And I told him it wouldn’t look well in onmarried wimmen and widders, and +if they should foller her example folks would talk. +</p> + +<p> +And he said, “They ort to marry.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +He wouldn’t answer, and looked sulky, but honest, and wouldn’t tell +me who to go to to git the errents done. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“You look fatigued, mom.” (Soarin’ even to yourself is +tuckerin’.) “You look very fatigued; won’t you take +something?” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” sez he, “I mean beer or wine or liquor of some +kind.” +</p> + +<p> +I riz right up in my shues and dignity, and glared at him. +</p> + +<p> +Sez he, “There is a saloon right here handy in the buildin’.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” sez he. “It is very handy for the Senators and +Congressmen, and let me get you a glass.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, you won’t!” sez I firmly. “The nation suffers +enough from that room now without havin’ Josiah Allen’s wife let +in.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Josiah’s face looked dubersome. I guess he wuz worryin’ over his +offer to represent me, and thinkin’ of Aunt Susan and the twins. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +And this fine wit and cuttin’ ridicule would silence argument and quench +the spirit of the upholder. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII.<br /> +“OLD MOM NATER LISTENIN’”</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +But I sez, “Wait and see,” (we wuz under a awnin’ and +protected). +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked kinder meachin’ but didn’t dispute me. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But I’m eppisodin’ too much, and to resoom forward. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He bein’ so good natered didn’t dispute me outright, but said he +thought the Allens made better nut-cakes than the Smiths. +</p> + +<p> +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’. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +’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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX.<br /> +THE WOMEN’S PARADE</h2> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No Middleman,” sez I, “could eat fifty dozen a week.” +</p> + +<p> +“He could if he eat enough at one time. ’Tennyrate, I’m +goin’ to New York to see about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“When are you goin’?” sez I. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m goin’ to-morrow mornin’. I’m goin’ in +onexpected and I lay out to catch him devourin’ them big eggs +himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, shaw!” sez I. “The idee!” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>ratage</i> +and <i>satage</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“Uncle Sime writ back ‘You infarnel thief, you, put in +“stealage” and keep the whole on’t.’” +</p> + +<p> +But I sez, “They’re not all dishonest. There are good men among +’em as well as bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +I told Josiah I guessed the She Aunties didn’t need no help at that. +</p> + +<p> +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’. +</p> + +<p> +The editor of the <i>Auger</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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’.” +</p> + +<p> +They said his speech wuz cheered wildly, give out for publication, and entered +into the moments of the Society. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Ratage</i> or <i>Satage</i>. 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 <i>did</i> blush for my sect to see the way some on ’em rigged +themselves out. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +Sez Josiah: “Does that <i>thing</i> know enough to vote?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should you be dyin’ on the buttery shelf, Josiah?” sez +I. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that wuz jest a figger of speech, Samantha.” +</p> + +<p> +“But folks ort to be mejum in figgers of speech, Josiah, and not go too +fur.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<a name="illus04"></a> +<a href="images/sam164.jpg"> +<img src="images/sam164.jpg" width="356" height="500" alt="Illustration:" /></a> +<p class="caption">“Sez Josiah, ‘Does that thing know enough to +vote?’”</p> +</div> + +<p> +“I don’t know as they can,” sez I, sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“Jest look at that thing,” sez he again. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Sez Josiah, “That girl would look much more modest and decent if she wuz +naked, for then she might be took for a statute.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>that</i> 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 +<i>they</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And he said he didn’t know as females had any more burnin’ plow +shares to tread on than men had. +</p> + +<p> +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.’” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” sez the other, “You broke a piece of china and laid +it to me.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Josiah, with a dark, forebodin’ look on his +linement, “<i>we shall see</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” sez I, with a real radiant look into the future. +“<i>We shall see</i>, Josiah.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X.<br /> +“THE CREATION SEARCHIN’ SOCIETY”</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” sez I, “did they invite you? You are not a +member?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” sez he, “but they want me to help ’em be +indignant. It is a indignation meetin’.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indignant about what?” I sez. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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’. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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—” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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, <i>angels of the +home</i>, 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Here his knee jints kinder gin out under him, and he slid down onto the seat +and went to sleep. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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’.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“Wimmen cannot be kept from talking without endangerin’ her life; +as a medical expert I object to this motion.” +</p> + +<p> +“How would you put the objection?” sez the secretary. +</p> + +<p> +“On the ground of cruelty to animals,” sez the doctor. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +This motion wuz carried unanimously. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +And I d’no as anybody but Philander to this day knows what, or who it +wuz. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMANTHA ON THE WOMAN QUESTION ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 7833-h.htm or 7833-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/7/8/3/7833/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for +copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very +easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation +of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project +Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may +do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected +by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark +license, especially commercial redistribution. +</div> + +<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br /> +<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br /> +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span> +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project +Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person +or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the +Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when +you share it without charge with others. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country other than the United States. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work +on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the +phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: +</div> + +<blockquote> + <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most + other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions + whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms + of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online + at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you + are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws + of the country where you are located before using this eBook. + </div> +</blockquote> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project +Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg™ License. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format +other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain +Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +provided that: +</div> + +<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'> + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation.” + </div> + + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ + works. + </div> + + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + </div> + + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works. + </div> +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of +the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set +forth in Section 3 below. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right +of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™ +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, +Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up +to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website +and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread +public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state +visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Most people start at our website which has the main PG search +facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. +</div> + +</body> + +</html> + diff --git a/7833-h/images/cover.jpg b/7833-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..be13cff --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam001.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam001.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..63635d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam001.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam001th.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam001th.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e90b80d --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam001th.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam008.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam008.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7b85d0f --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam008.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam008th.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam008th.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ab1cf5 --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam008th.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam111.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam111.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3408fcd --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam111.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam111th.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam111th.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..15be63c --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam111th.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam164.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam164.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e13bffe --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam164.jpg diff --git a/7833-h/images/sam164th.jpg b/7833-h/images/sam164th.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f569dd5 --- /dev/null +++ b/7833-h/images/sam164th.jpg |
