"But," sez I, recoverin' with a herculaneum effort a little of my usual
feelin' of male superiority, "that is very different, Samantha. Men
have bigger, roomier minds, wimmen and politics can sort o' run side by
side through 'em without crowdin' each other. But female minds bein'
more narrer and contracted they naterally can't, and hadn't ort to try
to hold more'n one on 'em.
"But," sez I with a last effort to put forth the beautious arguments
that my sect has clung to for ages, I sez in a deep protectin' axent,
"marriage is the holiest, the most beautifulest state on this earth."
"Yes," sez Samantha reasonably, "a happy marriage is, I guess, about
as nigh Heaven as folks ever git on earth, but how many do you find,
Josiah?"
"Oceans on 'em," sez I, "oceans on 'em," for I wuzn't goin' to spile my
argument entirely till I had to.
"Yes," sez Samantha, "there is once in a while one that looks so from
the outside, and mebby it looks so from the inside. But," sez she,
"the hands of divorce lawyers are pretty busy nowadays. Marriage," sez
Samantha, "is a divine institution, but its beauty has been dimmed by
the rust of unjust and foolish idees and practices. Always when time
honored customs change from the old to the new, from bad to better,
there is a period of upheaval and unrest, until the new becomes natural
and common.
"Wimmen," sez Samantha, "are beginin' to look upon marriage
differently than they used to. They look now on both sides of the
question. Instead of settin' with folded hands in a shadowy bower,
waitin' and listenin' for the prancin' steed that is to bring the
Prince to her feet to ask for her lily white hand, which she gives him
with grateful, rapturous tears of joy, wimmen are now standin' up on
their feet in broad daylight, lookin' on every side of the marriage
question and lettin' the full light of day shine on it, the same light
they've got to live under after the hazy days of the honeymoon are
over."
Them forward practical idees of hern riled me, and I sez, "I guess men
have sunthin' to complain on in the marriage question."
"Yes indeed they have," sez Samantha (with a justice no doubt ketched
from me). "Lots of silly simperin' girls look upon marriage as a means
to be supported without labor, an unlimited carnival of picture shows,
circuses and candy. But in the good times comin' when men have learned
not to look exclusively for a pretty face and kittenish ways, and seek
the sterling qualities of common sense, thrift, and industry, qualities
that will keep the domestic hearth bright when the honeymoon has waned,
girls will begin to prize and practice these traits which men find
admirable.
"And another thing, Josiah, thoughtful inteligent wimmen are getting
so they don't admire the crop of wild oats that used to be considered
inevitable, and in a way dashing and admirable. Instead of blindly
accepting what the Prince danes to bestow upon her and asking nothing
in return, she demands the same things of him he asks of her, the same
purity he demands of her, and why not the same moral and legal rights,
since they are both human bein's, made as all mortals are of God and
clay?"
I gin a deep groan here, showin' plain how distasteful them forward
onwomanly idees wuz to me. But she went right on onheedin' my sithes,
or the dark frown gatherin' on my eyebrows.
Sez she, "So many avenues of pleasant lucrative employment are open
now to wimmen, and the epithet, Old Maid, is not as of old a badge of
contumely, that wimmen won't take a ticket for the lottery of marriage,
for but one reason, the only reason that ever made marriage honorable
and respectable, and that is true love, not a light mental fancy,
nor a short lived physical attraction, but the love that in spite of
earthly shadows illuminates hovel and palace, and makes both on 'em
the ante-room of Paradise. The love that upholds, inspires, overlooks
faults, is constant in sun and shade, and lasts down to the dark
valley, and throws its light acrost it into the very Land of Light."
Them words sounded good to me, they sounded some like what I had writ
more formerly on the subject, and I jined in fervently. "Yes, indeed,
and why can't females settle down in matrimony and stay to home with
their famblys, and take care of their children?" and I quoted a few
words from the dear chapter I had writ first. "There woman is a queen,
the poorest female in the slummiest slum is a monark in that sacred
place."
"Yes," sez Samantha, "sometimes a good man makes a wife supremely
happy. But too often nowdays a bright healthy young woman finds in the
life she has pictured as the dooryard of Eden a worse serpent than Eve
found there, a loathsome souvenir of her husband's old gay life which
destroys her own health and happiness, and which she has to hand down
to her children's children, makin' 'em invalids and idiots.
"The poor workin' mother you speak on if she is well enough can stay at
home if she has a home to stay in, and doesn't have to labor outside to
sustain it. She can breathe the filthy tenement air, be frozen by its
winter, choked by its summer atmosphere, she can guide and guard the
youthful steps of her children as far as the doorstep and then she must
drop the helpless hand, and if she is inteligent and loving hearted she
can wet her pillow with vain tears thinking how her pretty innocent
young girl has got to pass vile saloons full of evil men on her way
to and from store and factory. The factory filled with gant childish
forms, with all the care-free happiness of childhood ground from their
faces by the brutal hand of Incessant Toil. Unguarded machinery on
every side that one false careless move of her girl may maim or kill.
Her pretty girl alone strugglin' with ontold dangers. Youth's wild
blood urging her to indiscreet acts, Wolves of Prey on one side, Grim
Want on the other. If the mother has a mother's heart, her body may be
at home where she is so eloquently urged to be, but her heart will be
abroad, in the greater home wimmen want to make safer; the home where
her children spend their days. It will be hantin' the factory, the
grog shop, the vile picture show, the white slaver's abode, watchin',
waitin', for what may happen, what has happened so often to other
mothers' children."
Samantha goes too fur when she gits to goin', and I told her so
plain and square, she aggravates me. And to let her see how much I
disapproved of her talk I never dained a reply to her in verbal words.
But I riz up with a hauty mean on my eyebrow, and went to pokin' the
kitchen fire. I poked it with all the strength of a strong man whose
arguments have been spilte and whose feelin's have been wownded by his
own pardner.
But I believe my soul that she thought that I did it as a hint that
it wuz about dinner time, for she went out to once and hung on the
teakettle. And as she did so she mentioned incidentally that she laid
out to have lamb chops and green peas and mashed potatoes for dinner,
with peach pie and coffee to foller. As she said this my angry emotions
settled down and grew more clear and composed, some like Samantha's
delicious coffee, when she drops the powdered eggshells into it.