wimmin--have I got to explain to your weakened female comprehension
again, the great fundymental truth, that wimmin haint included and
mingled in the law books and statutes of the country only in a condemnin’
and punishin’ sense, as it were. Though I feel it to be bendin’ down my
powerful manly dignity to elucidate the subject further, I will consent
to remind you of the consolin’ fact, that though you wimmin are, from
the tender softness of your natures, and the illogical weakness of
your minds, unfit from ever havin’ any voice in makin’ the laws that
govern you; you have the right, and nobody can ever deprive you of it,
to be punished in a future world jest as hard as a man of the strongest
intellect, and to be hung in this world jest as dead as a dead man; and
what more can you ask for, you unreasonable female woman you?’
“Then groans the woman as the great fundymental truth rushes upon her--
“‘I can be hung by the political rope, but I can’t help twist it.’
“‘Jest so,’ says the law, ‘that rope takes noble and manly fingers, and
fingers of principle to twist it, and not the weak unprincipled grasp of
lunatics, idiots, and wimmin.’
“‘Alas!’ sithes the woman to herself, ‘would that I had the sweet rights
of my wild and foolish companions, the idiots and lunys. But,’ says she,
venturing with a beating heart, the timid and bashful inquiry, ‘are the
laws always just, that I should obey them thus implicitly? There is old
Creshus, he stole two millions, and the law cleared him triumphantly.
Several men have killed various other men, and the law insistin’ they
was out of their heads, (had got out of ’em for the occasion, and got
into ’em agin the minute they was cleared,) let ’em off with sound necks.
And I, a poor woman, have only stole a sheep, a small-sized sheep too,
that my offspring might not perish with hunger--is it right to liberate
in a triumphin’ way the two million stealer and the man murderer, and
inkarcerate the poor sheep stealer? and my children was _so_ hungry, and
it was such a small sheep,’ says the woman in pleadin’ accents.
“‘Idiots! lunatics! and wimmin! are they goin’ to speak?’ thunders the
law. ‘Can I believe my noble right ear? can I bein’ blindfolded trust
my seventeen senses? I’ll have you understand that it haint no woman’s
business whether the laws are just or unjust, all you have got to do is
jest to obey ’em, so start off for prison, my young woman.’
“‘But my house-work,’ pleads the woman; ‘woman’s place is home: it is her
duty to remain at all hazards within its holy and protectin’ precincts;
how can I leave its sacred retirement to moulder in State’s prison?’
“‘House-work!’ and the law fairly yells the words, he is so filled with
contempt at the idee. ‘House-work! jest as if house-work is goin’ to
stand in the way of the noble administration of the law. I admit the
recklessness and immorality of her leavin’ that holy haven, long enough
to vote--but I guess she can leave her house-work long enough to be
condemned, and hung, and so forth.’
“‘But I have got a infant,’ says the woman, ‘of tender days, how can I
go?’
“‘That is nothing to the case,’ says the law in stern tones. ‘The
peculiar conditions of motherhood only unfits a female woman from ridin’
to town with her husband, in a covered carriage, once a year, and layin’
her vote on a pole. I’ll have you understand it is no hindrance to her at
all in a cold and naked cell, or in a public court room crowded with men.’
“‘But the indelikacy, the outrage to my womanly nature?’ says the woman.
“‘Not another word out of your head, young woman,’ says the law, ‘or I’ll
fine you for contempt. I guess the law knows what is indelikacy, and what
haint; where modesty comes in, and where it don’t; now start for prison
bareheaded, for I levy on your bunnet for contempt of me.’
“As the young woman totters along to prison, is it any wonder that she
sithes to herself, but in a low tone, that the law might not hear her,
and deprive her also of her shoes for her contemptas thoughts--
“‘Would that I were a idiot; alas! is it not possible that I may become
even now a luny?--then I should be respected.’”
As I finished my allegory and looked down from the side of the house,
where my eyes had been fastened in the rapped eloquence of thought, I see
Josiah with a contented countenance, readin’ the almanac, and I said to
him in a voice before which he quailed--
“Josiah Allen, you haint heard a word I’ve said, you know you haint.”
“Yes I have,” says he, shettin’ up the almanac; “I heard you say wimmin
ought to vote, and I say she hadn’t. I shall always say that she is too
fraguile, too delikate, it would be too hard for her to go to the pole.”
“There is one pole you are willin’ enough I should go to, Josiah Allen,”
and I stopped allegorin’, and spoke with witherin’ dignity and self
respect--“and that is the hop pole.” (Josiah has sot out a new hop yard,
and he proudly brags to the neighbors that I am the fastest picker in the
yard.) “You are willin’ enough I should handle them poles!” He looked
smit and conscience struck, but still true to the inherient principles of
his sect, and thier doggy obstinacy, he murmured--
“If wimmin know when they are well off, they will let poles and ’lection
boxes alone, it is too wearin for the fair sect.”
“Josiah Allen,” says I, “you think that for a woman to stand up straight
on her feet, under a blazin’ sun, and lift both her arms above her head,
and pick seven bushels of hops, mingled with worms and spiders, into a
gigantic box, day in, and day out, is awful healthy, so strengthenin’ and
stimulatin’ to wimmin, but when it comes to droppin’ a little slip of
clean paper into a small seven by nine box, once a year in a shady room,
you are afraid it is goin’ to break down a woman’s constitution to once.”
He was speechless, and clung to Ayer’s almanac mechanically (as it were)
and I continued--
“There is another pole you are willin’ enough for me to handle, and that
is our cistern pole. If you should spend some of the breath you waste--in
pityin’ the poor wimmin that have got to vote--in byin’ a pump, you would
raise 25 cents in my estimation, Josiah Allen. You have let me pull on
that old cistern pole thirteen years, and get a ten quart pail of water
on to the end of it, and I guess the political pole wouldn’t draw much
harder than that does.”
“I guess I will get one, Samantha, when I sell the old critter. I have
been a calculatin’ to every year, but things will kinder run along.”
“I am aware of that,” says I in a tone of dignity cold as a lump of cold
ice. “I am aware of that. You may go into any neighborhood you please,
and if there is a family in it, where the wife has to set up leeches,
make soap, cut her own kindlin’ wood, build fires in winter, set up
stove-pipes, dround kittens, hang out clothes lines, cord beds, cut up
pork, skin calves, and hatchel flax with a baby lashed to her side--I
haint afraid to bet you a ten cent bill, that that woman’s husband thinks
that wimmin are too feeble and delicate to go the pole.”
Josiah was speechless for pretty near half a minute, and when he did
speak it was words calculated to draw my attention from contemplatin’
that side of the subject. It was for reasons, I have too much respect for
my husband to even hint at--odious to him, as odious could be--he wanted
me to forget it, and in the gentle and sheepish manner men can so readily
assume when they are talkin’ to females he said, as he gently fingered
Ayer’s almanac, and looked pensively at the dyin’ female revivin’ at a
view of the bottle--
“We men think too much of you wimmin to want you to lose your sweet,
dignified, retirin’ modesty that is your chieftest charm. How long would
dignity and modesty stand firm before the wild Urena of public life? You
are made to be happy wives, to be guarded by the stronger sect, from the
cold blast and the torrid zone. To have a fence built around you by manly
strength, to keep out the cares and troubles of life. Why, if I was one
of the fair sect, I would have a husband to fence me in, if I had to hire
one.”
He meant this last, about hirin’ a husband, as a joke, for he smiled
feebly as he said it, and in other and happier times stern duty would
have compelled me to laugh at it--but not now, oh no, my breast was
heavin’ with too many different sized emotions.
“You would hire one, would you? a woman don’t lose her dignity and
modesty a racin’ round tryin’ to get married, does she? Oh no,” says I,
as sarcastic as sarcastic could be, and then I added sternly, “If it
ever does come in fashion to hire husbands by the year, I know of one
that could be rented cheap, if his wife had the proceeds and avails in a
pecuniary sense.”
He looked almost mortified, but still he murmur’d as if mechanically.
“It is wimmen’s place to marry and not to vote.”
“Josiah Allen,” says I, “Anybody would think to hear you talk that a
woman couldn’t do but just one of the two things any way--marry or vote,
and had got to take her choice of the two at the pint of the bayonet.
And anybody would think to hear you go on, that if a women could live in
any other way, she wouldn’t be married, and you couldn’t get her to.”
Says I, looking at him shrewdly, “if marryin’ is such a dreadful nice
thing for wimmen I don’t see what you are afraid of. You men act kinder
guilty about it, and I don’t wonder at it, for take a bad husband, and
thier haint no kind of slavery to be compared to wife slavery. It is jest
as natural for a mean, cowardly man to want to abuse and tyranize over
them that they can, them that are dependent on ’em, as for a noble and
generous man to want to protect them that are weak and in their power.
Figurin’ accordin’ to the closest rule of arithmetic, there are at least
one-third mean, dissopated, drunken men in the world, and they most all
have wives, and let them tread on these wives ever so hard, if they
only tread accordin’ to law, she can’t escape. And suppose she tries to
escape, blood-hounds haint half so bitter as public opinion on a women
that parts with her husband, chains and handcuffs haint to be compared
to her pride, and her love for her children, and so she keeps still, and
suffers agony enough to make four first class martyrs. Field slaves
have a few hours for rest at night, and a hope, to kinder boy them up,
of gettin’ a better master. But the wife slave has no hope of a change
of masters, and let him be ever so degraded and brutal is at his mercy
day and night. Men seem to be awful afraid that wimmen won’t be so fierce
for marryin’ anybody, for a home and a support, if they can support
themselves independent, and be jest as respectable in the eyes of the
world. But,” says I,
“In them days when men and wimmen are both independent--free and equal,
they will marry in the only true way--from love and not from necessity.
They will marry because God will join their two hearts and hands so you
can’t get ’em apart no how. But to hear you talk Josiah Allen, anybody
would think that there wouldn’t another woman marry on earth, if they
could get rid of it, and support themselves without it.” And then I
added, fixin’ my keen grey eyes upon his’en. “You act guilty about it
Josiah Allen. But,” says I, “just so long as the sun shines down upon
the earth and the earth answers back to it, blowin’ all out full of
beauty--Jest so long as the moon looks down lovin’ly upon old ocien
makin’ her heart beat the faster, jest so long will the hearts and souls
God made for each other, answer to each other’s call. God’s laws can’t be
repealed, Josiah Allen, they wasn’t made in Washington, D. C.”
I hardly ever see a man quail more than he did, and to tell the truth, I
guess I never had been quite so eloquent in all the 14 years we had lived
together--I felt so eloquent that I couldn’t stop myself and I went on.
“When did you ever see a couple that hated each other, or didn’t care
for each other, but what their children, was either jest as mean as
pusley--or else wilted and unhappy lookin’ like a potato sprout in a dark
suller? What that potato sprout wants is sunshine, Josiah Allen. What
them children wants is love. The fact is love is what makes a home--I
don’t care whether its walls are white, stone, marble or bass wood. If
there haint a face to the winder a waitin’ for you, when you have been
off to the store, what good does all your things do you, though you have
traded off ten pounds of butter? A lot of folks may get together in a big
splendid house, and be called by the same name, and eat and sleep under
the same roof till they die, and call it home, but if love don’t board
with ’em, give me an umbrella and a stump. But the children of these
marriages that I speak of, when they see such perfect harmony of mind and
heart in their father and mother, when they have been brought up in such
a warm, bright, happy home--they can’t no more help growin’ up sweet, and
noble, and happy, than your wheat can help growin’ up straight and green
when the warm rain and the sunshine falls on it. These children, Josiah
Allen, are the future men and wimmens who are goin’ to put their shoulder
blades to the wheel and roll this world straight into millenium.” Says
Josiah,
“Wimmen are too good to vote with us men, wimmen haint much more nor less
than angels any way.”
When you have been soarin’ in eloquence, it is always hard to be brought
down sudden--it hurts you to light--and this speech sickened me, and says
I, in a tone so cold that he shivered imperceptibly.
“Josiah Allen, there is one angel that would be glad to have a little
wood got for her to get dinner with, there is one angel that cut every
stick of wood she burnt yesterday, that same angel doin’ a big washin’ at
the same time,” and says I, repeatin’ the words, as I glanced at the beef
over the cold and chilly stove, “I should like a handful of wood Josiah
Allen.”
“I would get you some this minute Samantha,” says he gettin’ up and
takin’ down his plantin’ bag, “but you know jest how hurried I be with my
spring’s work, can’t you pick up a little for this forenoon? you haint
got much to do have you?”
“Oh no!” says I in a lofty tone of irony, “Nothin’ at all, only a big
ironin’, ten pies and six loves of bread to bake, a cheese curd to run
up, 3 hens to scald, churnin’ and moppin’ and dinner to get. Jest a easy
mornin’s work for a angel.”
“Wall then, I guess you’ll get along, and to-morrow I’ll try to get you
some.”
I said no more, but with lofty emotions surgin’ in my breast, I took my
axe and started for the wood-pile.
A AXIDENT.
I have been sick enough with a axident. Josiah had got his plantin’ all
done, and the garden seeds was comin’ up nice as a pin, I will have
a good garden. But the hens bothered me most to death, and kep’ me a
chasin’ out after ’em all the time. No sooner would I get ’em off the
peas, then they would be on the mush mellons, and then the cowcumbers
would take it and then the string beans, and there I was rushin’ out
doors bareheaded all times of day. It was worse for me than all my house
work, and so I told Josiah.
One day I went out full sail after ’em, and I fell kerslap over a rail
that lay in the grass, and turned my ancle jint, and I was laid up bed
sick for two weeks. It makes me out of patience to think of it, for we
might have a dog that is worth somethin’ if it wasn’t for Josiah, but as
it is, if he haint to the house I have to do all the chasin’ there is
done, for I might as well get the door step started on to the cattle, or
hens, as to get our dog off of it, to go on to any thing.
And he is big as a young eliphant too, eats as much as a cow, and of all
the lazy critters I ever did see, he is the cap sheaf. Why, when Josiah
sets him on to the hens, he has to take him by the collar and kinder
draws him along, all the way. And as for cows and calves, he seems to be
afraid of ’em, somethin’ kinder constitutionel Josiah says. I tell him he
might better bark ’em off himself, especially as he is a first rate hand
at it, you can’t tell him from a dog when he sets out.
One mornin’ I says to him, “Josiah Allen, what’s the use of your keepin’
that pup?”
Says he “Samantha, he is a good feller, if I will kinder run ahead of
him, and keep between him and the cows, he will go on to them first rate,
he seems to want encouragement.”
“Encouragement!” says I, “I should think as much.”
I didn’t say no more, and that very day the axident happened. Josiah
heard me holler, and he come runnin’ from the barn--and a scairter man I
never see. He took me right up, and was carryin’ of me in. I was in awful
agony--and the first words I remember sayin’ was these, in a faint voice.
“I wonder if you’ll keep that pup now?”
Says he firmly, yet with pity, and with pale and anxious face.
“Mebby you didn’t encourage him enough.”
Says I deliriously, “Did you expect I was goin’ to carry him in my arms
and throw him at the hens? I tried every other way.”
[Illustration: THE AXIDENT.]
“Wall, wall!” says he, kinder soothin’ly, “Do keep still, how do you
expect I’m goin’ to carry you if you touse round so.”
He laid me down on the lounge in the settin’ room, and I never got off
of it, for two weeks. Fever set in--I had been kinder unwell for quite
a spell, but I wouldn’t give up. I would keep ’round to work. But this
axident seemed to be the last hump on the camel’s back, I had to give in,
and Tirzah Ann had to come home from school to do the work.
When the news got out that I was sick, lots of folks came to see me. And
every one wanted me to take some different kinds of patented medicine,
or herb drink--why my stomach would have been drounded out, a perfect
wreck--if I had took half. And then every one would name my desease some
new name. Why I told Josiah at the end of the week, that accordin’ to
their tell, I had got every desease under the sun, unless it was the
horse distemper.
One mornin’ Miss Gowdey came in, and asked me in a melancholy way, if I
had ever had the kind pox. I told her I had.
“Well,” says she, “I mistrust you have got the very oh Lord.”
It was a Saturday mornin’ and Thomas Jefferson was to home, and he spoke
up and said “that was a good desease, and he hoped it would prevail; he
knew quite a number that he thought it would do ’em good to have it.”
She looked real shocked, but knew it was some of Thomas J.’s fun. There
was one woman that would come in, in a calm, quiet way about 2 times a
week, and say in a mild, collected tone,
“You have got the tizick.”
Says I, “the pain is in my foot mostly.”
“I can’t help that,” says she gently, but firmly, “There is tizick with
it. And I think that is what ailed Josiah when he was sick.”
“Why,” says I, “that was the newraligy, the doctors said.”
“Doctors are liable to mistakes,” says she in the same firm but modest
accents, “I have always thought it was the tizick. There are more folks
that are tiziky than you think for, in this world. I am a master hand
for knowin’ it when I see it.” She would then in an affectionate manner
advise me to doctor for the tizick, and then she would gently depart.
There are 2 kinds of wimmen that go to see the sick. There’s them low
voiced, still footed wimmen, that walks right in, and lays their hands on
your hot foreheads so soothin’ like, that the pain gets ashamed of itself
and sneaks off. I call ’em God’s angels. Spozen they haint got wings, I
don’t care, I contend for it they are servin’ the Lord jest as much as if
they was a standin’ up in a row, all feathered out, with a palm tree in
one hand and a harp in the other.
So I told old Gowdey one cold winter day--(he is awful stingy, he has got
a big wood lot--yet lets lots of poor families most freeze round him, in
the winter time. He will pray for ’em by the hour, but it don’t seem to
warm ’em up much)--he says to me,
“Oh! if I was only a angel! if I only had holt of the palm tree up yonder
that is waitin’ for me.”
Says I, coolly, “if it is used right, I think good body maple goes a good
ways toward makin’ a angel.”
As I say, I have had these angels in my room--some kinder slimmish ones,
some, that would go nigh on to 2 hundred by the stellyards, I don’t care
if they went 3 hundred quick, I should call ’em angels jest the same.
Then there is them wimmen that go to have a good time of it, they get
kinder sick of stayin’ to home, and nothin’ happenin’. And so they take
thier work, and flock in to visit the afflicted. I should think I had
pretty near 25 a day of ’em, and each one started 25 different subjects.
Wild, crazy subjects, most of ’em, such as fires, runaway matches, and
whirlwinds; earthquakes, neighberhood fightin’, and butter that wouldn’t
come; great tidal waves, railroad axidents, balky horses, and overskirts;
man slaughter, politix, schism, and frizzled hair.
I believe it would have drawed more sweat from a able bodied man to have
laid still and heard it, than to mow a five acre lot in dog days. And
there my head was takin’ on, and achin’ as if it would come off all the
time.
If I could have had one thing at a time, I could have stood it better.
I shouldn’t have minded a earthquake so much, if I could have give my
full attention to it, but I must have conflegrations at the same time on
my mind, and hens that wouldn’t set, and drunken men, and crazy wimmin,
and jumpin’ sheep, and female suffragin’ and calico cut biasin’, and the
Rushen war, and politix. It did seem some of the time, that my head must
split open, and I guess the doctor got scairt about me, for one mornin’
after he went away, Josiah came into the room, and I see that he looked
awful sober and gloomy, but the minute he ketched my eye, he began to
snicker and laugh. I didn’t say nothin’ at first, and shet my eyes, but
when I opened ’em agin, there he was a standin’ lookin’ down on me with
the same mournful, agonized expression onto his features; not a word did
he speak, but when he see me a lookin’ at him, he bust out laughin’ agin,
and then says I--
“What is the matter, Josiah Allen?”
Says he, “I’m a bein’ cheerful, Samantha!”
[Illustration: BEIN’ CHEERFUL.]
Says I in the faint accents of weakness, “You are bein’ a natural born
idiot, and do you stop it.”
Says he, “I won’t stop it, Samantha, I _will_ be cheerful;” and he
giggled.
Says I, “Won’t you go out, and let me rest a little, Josiah Allen?”
“No!” says he firmly, “I will stand by you, and I will be cheerful,” and
he snickered the loudest he had yet, but at the same time his countenance
was so awfully gloomy and anxious lookin’ that it filled me with a
strange awe as he continued--
“The doctor told me that you must be kep’ perfectly quiet, and I must be
cheerful before you, and while I have the spirit of a man I _will_ be
cheerful,” and with a despairin’ countenance, he giggled and snickered.
I knew what a case he was to do his duty, and I groaned out, “There haint
no use a tryin’ to stop him.”
“No,” says he, “there haint no use a arguin’ with me--I shall do my
duty.” And he bust out into a awful laugh that almost choked him.
I knew there wouldn’t be no rest for me, while he stood there performin’
like a circus, and so says I in a strategim way--
“It seems to me as if I should like a little lemonade, Josiah, but the
lemons are all gone.”
Says he, “I will harness up the old mare and start for Jonesville this
minute, and get you some.”
But after he got out in the kitchen, and his hat on, he stuck his head
into the door, and with a mournful countenance, snickered.
After he fairly sot sail for Jonesville, now, thinks I to myself, I will
have a good nap, and rest my head while he is gone, and I had jest got
settled down, and was thinkin’ sweetly how slow the old mare was, when I
heerd a noise in the kitchen. And Tirzah Ann come in, and says she--
“Betsey Bobbet has come; I told her I guessed you was a goin’ to sleep,
and she hadn’t better come in, but she acted so mad about it, that I
don’t know what to do.”
Before I could find time to tell her to lock the door, and put a chair
against it, Betsey come right in, and says she--
“Josiah Allen’s wife, how do you feel this mornin’?” and she added
sweetly, “You see I have come.”
“I feel dreadful bad and feverish, this mornin’,” says I, groanin’ in
spite of myself. For my head felt the worst it had, everything looked
big, and sick to the stomach to me, kinder waverin’ and floatin’ round
like.
“Yes, I know jest how you feel, Josiah Allen’s wife, for I have felt jest
so, only a great deal worse--why, talkin’ about fevahs, Josiah Allen’s
wife, I have had such a fevah that the sweat stood in great drops all
ovah me.”
She took her things off, and laid ’em on the table, and she had a bag
hangin’ on her arm pretty near as big as a flour sack, and she laid that
down in one chair and took another one herself, and then she continued,