Marietta Holley

“ 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 [Pg 57] innocent young girl has got to pass vile saloons full of evil men on her way to and from store and factory. ”

“ The story of a "doctor of the old school" with every element which makes a novel worth the reading, plot, character delineation, setting, style—all are here. Intensely human, natural, humorous, pathetic, joyous. The originality of the plot piques the reader's curiosity and the most jaded devourer of novels will find himself irresistibly held in delightful suspense. The sentiment and suggestion and mellow philosophy which run through the story are altogether delightful. ”

“ Sez I, "A woman can't tell a story straight to save her life—but has to put in so many exaggerations and stretch out facts so you couldn't reconize 'em when she gits 'em pulled out to the length she pulls 'em. They don't seem to have any idee of plain straightforward truthfulness such as my sect has. As long as they've seen men appearin' before 'em, tellin' the exact truth from day to day, and from year to year, they can't or won't foller his example. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I tell you agin it is a perilous and agonizin' epock of time for the male sect at home and abroad. Men in America havin' to set curled up on a bench by the side of the road, and see weak wimmen, underlin's, a marchin' by 'em in the center of the street with brass bands and banners a flyin'. And in England the highest official of the Empire held by the collar and shook by a weak female jest like a spitball thrower of a schoolboy, and couldn't resent it in court owin' to his havin' so much dignity at the stake. ”

“ Which party is it in a workman's home that usually wants to buy an automobile before the little home is paid for? Mebby in some rare cases the woman eggs the man on, but I believe that it is safe to say that in seven cases out of ten, it is not the housekeeper and house mother that is willin' to risk losin' the ruff that covers her baby's pretty head, and councils waitin' a while before takin' [Pg 142] on the extravagance of the added expense. And which party is it, Josiah, that turns and twists every way to save money so her boy and girl can present a decent appearance before her mates? ”

“ It seemed that she knew every crook and turn on subjects that Bill's grandma never had heard on by name. Hygeen, books, Street Cleanin', Hospital work, Charities, Political affairs from pole to pole and Scientific subjects—Radium, Electricity, Spiritualism, Woman's Suffrage, which they both believed in. There seemed to be no end to the subjects they talked about. So different from pa and ma's talk. They eat their meals in perfect and solemn silence most all the time, ma always waitin' on him. ”

“ Oh, how aggravatin' a woman can be when she sets out to be. Much as I think of Samantha and the tendrils of my great heart are wropped completely round her, as big as she is round her waist—yet sometimes on occasions like this I almost wish I wuz a bacheldor, a fur off lonely [Pg 149] man in some distant cave, or on some lonesome mountain peak, encumbered not by a female who thinks she has a right to argy with me and irritate me. ”

“ How many millions a year duz the horse races, yot races and polo games and other manly amusements amount to? How many billions a year duz the useless extravagance of tobacco cost? Of course you can substract sunthin' for some wimmen's foolish habit of cigarette smoking, but in the great total it would hardly count. And in how many poor homes duz a woman toil into the night hours to mend and make so that her family may look respectable, while her husband is spendin' his spare hours and spare change in the corner saloon? ”

“ But I riz up my right hand and arm in a noble jester of warn, and sez I, "Not one word agin Samantha, bretheren, not a word!"
They see the stern wild glare in my eye, and turned it off by sayin', "Things have been writ by a female who shall be nameless, that has had a tendency to make us male Jonesvillians objects of contemp. And the uroneous and blasphemous idee has been disseminted in them writin's that females are equal to males, and want rights that we know they don't need or deserve, rights that will bring 'em to the brink of ruin if not held back by a manly arm. ”

“ You see my forthcomin' great work agin Wimmen Rights has excited the male Jonesvillians dretfully, and emboldened 'em, till they act as fierce and bold as lions when they're talkin' to females.
They realize that when that immortal work is lanched onto the waitin' world the cause of Woman's Suffrage will collapse like the bladders we used to blow up in childhood, jest as sharp and sudden and jest as windy. They know that them that uphold such uroneous beliefs won't be nothin' nor nobody then, and so they begin beforehand to act more hauty and uppish towards Suffragists, and browbeat 'em. ”

“ First, as any male Filosifer and female Researcher knows, that owin' to her weakness of inteleck and soft nater, a woman's mind gits ruffled up easy, and that rufflin' up affects her cookin'. And under a too severe strain a female has sometimes forgot to be promp with her meals, and not notice seemin'ly that her pies wuz runnin' out, and the cookie jar gittin' empty. Such things, no matter how strong a man's inteleck is, has a deleterious effeck on his internal systern, which reacts on his branial cranium. ”

“ Liquor dealers have got oceans of horse sense, and oceans of money, and they let that money flow along where it will do the most good, into female channels if necessary. Anything to dam up the big waters of Reform from risin' up and washin' 'em away, and stop Woman Suffragists from ruinin' their bizness, and tellin' petickulars and votin'. And I'll ask this question of any man or woman with the brains of a angleworm or caterpillar—Hain't it easier to float along with the current, than to fight agin it and go in the other direction? ”

“ Sez he, "We expect more from wimmen than we do from men; they're naterally better than men and we want to keep 'em so, keep 'em out of the dirt of public affairs."
Sez Samantha still a knittin' and still a lookin' cam, "You must use clean water to cleanse dirty things. I don't believe as you do. I think the good qualities of men and wimmen would heft jest about equal, and need equal treatment. But accordin' to your tell if men are so much worse than wimmen they need her help to clean up things." ”

“ He don't heed or care what females want or don't want, nor what other statesmen want or don't want. Nor he don't care what is goin' on in other parts of the world, or not goin' on. His proud [Pg 79] position is to shield England from the encroachin' army of Female Suffragists. To do what he's made up his mind to do, and nothin' can't stop him, not threats, nor reason, nor argument, nor broken winders, nor torn coat tails. A good hard shakin' from a female can't change him, nor shake his resolve out of him, nor hunger strikes, nor fleein' wimmen, nor pursuin' ones. ”

“ For years and years I've been deeply wownded in my most sacred feelin's and my reason has been outraged by my pardner, Samantha's, writin' agin the righteous cause of man's superiority to wimmen.
But though my feelin's have been rasped and almost bleedin' from the unjust wownds I've kep' still and let her go on with other headstrong and blinded females, and argey and deny man's sole and indefrangible right to oversee and order the affairs of the universe, and specially the weak helpless female sect, the justice of which, it seems to me, a infant babe might see without spectacles. ”

“ Oh, how sad, when a man has to turn to another female (and one he has always detested) for the sympathy and understandin' denied him on his own hearthstun. And though I despise Betsy Bobbett Slimpsey as a human bein' and a female, yet when torn and wownded from infringin' and cold remarks from my own pardner, I do draw a little mite of comfort from that granny iron dish-pan, and runnin' my hand through the poetry heaped up in it, and read how she looks up to my sect, and the becomin' and reverent views she takes on us, and me in petickular. ”

“ At this juncter I paused for a minute to collect my thoughts together and then I brought forth from my brain this convincin' argument.
If wimmen don't need a man to protect her and take care on her, why is she so much more ignorant of sin and depravity? Why is there five times more men in prisons and penitentiaries than there is wimmen, if they knowed as much about crime as men do?
"No," sez I, soarin' up in eloquence, "what a man has been through and been educated up to in business and political life, he knows how to protect tender females from. ”

“ What Samantha doesn't know, isn't worth knowing—will throw a little humor on a situation which is becoming too intense. We hope it may have a wide circulation in England, for Samantha, who believes in suffrage, does not believe in dynamite, gunpowder and mobs. ”

“ Yes, my sufferin' sect, we should make 'em own up to it, peacefully if we can, but if necessary let us insert it into their obstinate craniums with a crowbar and hammer. For though a weaker in [Pg 75] teleck may not grasp its importance and extreme needecessity, it is plain to the eagle eye of a Researcher and Reformer of females that if they admit this, they have got to admit all that follers, the perfect peace and rest they feel surrounded by these noble traits as by a shinin' mantilly. ”

“ WHEREIN I PROVE MAN'S COURTESY TOWARDS WIMMEN
In my tremenjous efforts to succor my sufferin' and women-hounded sect at this awful epock of time, I have already held forth on the beautiful and congenial subject of the love and protectin' care males have always loved to show towards females. But agin I take up my steeled pen to write upon this most important subject. For I agin warn my sect solemnly that this beautiful trait in me and us, is what we should enlarge upon, and insist on makin' the female sect admit at this epock of danger and revolt. ”

“ For truly these two great truths are [Pg 43] what we male men have considered the very ground work and underpinnin' of our strongest and most unanswerable arguments agin Wimmen's Suffrage, Marriage—Home—Clean Children—Housework—Good Vittles—oh, how sweet them words have always sounded in men's ears and are still a soundin', and how eminently fitted to wimmen's weak tender minds and patient confidin' naters. And how obnoxious and loathsome to every male ear have been and are now, the words Justice—Freedom—Equality. ”

“ But," sez Uncle Sime, "Adam would have been as well agin off if Eve hadn't been made, and I should have told him so if I had been there." Sez he bitterly, "Men hain't been lonesome since wimmen wuz made. Oh, no! she has kep' her clack goin', and kep' men's noses down on the grindstun ever sence."
"Well," sez I, "Simon, it wuz noble in Adam to be willin' to lose one of his ribs to make her, for who knows to what hites men might have riz up if he hadn't parted with it. If us men have riz up to such a hite with one rib lackin' who knows how fur we should have gone up with the hull on 'em." ”

“ I sez in a meachiner axent than I ginerally use, for I felt fur more meachin' than I had felt, sez I, "Samantha, wimmen ort to marry instead of votin'."
And she sez, "Why can't they do both? Men marry and vote."
"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. ”

“ ABOUT WIMMEN'S FOOLISH LOVE FOR PETICKULARS
How folkses emotions will sometimes rise up entirely onexpected and onbeknown to them, and git the better on 'em. Of course we male Americans have always foreboded and felt dretful about a certain subject. But this mornin' it come over me like a black flood, the realizin' sense of the enormous labor that votin' would bring onto weak delicate females, and how impossible it wuz for their fraguile constitution and puny strength to stand up under it. ”

“ The main thing is whether men and wimmen have got souls to-day, and use them souls for the good of mankind, instead of lettin' 'em grow hard, or wither away in indifference [Pg 162] to the woes and wants of the world, and the cause of Eternal Justice for every one, male and female. ”

“ And so lightnin' quick is my mind to ketch holt of any argument illustratin' wimmen's weakness of inteleck to transcribe in my volume, that I methought instantly how that one article of Betsy's attire showed plain the inferiority of her sect that I wuz tryin' to prove to the world. As I glanced at it, my eager soul questioned my active mind, "Did you ever ketch [Pg 27] a man wearin' anything on his head with such vain silly names," and my mind thundered back to my listenin' soul, "No! no sir!" The strong brain within the manly head would spurn such a coverin', and tread it into the dust. ”