"That's it," said Aunt Jane, "but I ain't a bit wiser than I was before, for I never did find out whether that was the name of a man or a woman or a town or a river or what. I set and listened, and every now and then it'd seem like there was somethin' that I could understand, but before I could lay hold of it here'd come a lot o' big words that I never heard tell of before, and, I declare to goodness, my old brains got tired tryin' to git some sense out o' that poetry. Why, it was jest like tryin' to read at night by the light o' the fire. The fire'll blaze up, and you'll see everything plain for a minute, and then it'll die down, and there you are in the dark again.
"Well, when the lady got through readin' the poetry, she said she was goin' to read her interpretation of it. I ricollected how Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream and Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and I says to myself, 'Now, I'll find out all about it.' But bless your life, child, the poetry was hard enough to understand, but the interpretation was a heap harder; and I says to myself, 'Brownin's poetry never was intended for a old woman like me.' And I jest leaned back in my chair and looked at the hats and the bonnets the ladies had on. Pretty clothes always was one o' my weak points, and will be till I die, I reckon. When I was a child father used to question us children about the sermon when we got home from church. I never could tell much about it, except the text, and I ricollect hearin' mother say to him one Sunday, 'If Jane could jest remember as much about the sermon as she remembers about the hats and bonnets, we could have her ordained to preach.'
"There was one hat I saw at the Brownin' Club that I'll ricollect as long as I ricollect 'The Angelus.' It was made out o' white lace and trimmed with pink roses that made me think o' the roses in my weddin'-bonnet, only they was buds and these was full-blown ones, so full-blown that it looked like they was ready to shatter and fall if the wind blew on 'em, and so natural you could almost smell 'em. I declare, that hat made me wish I was a young gyirl again.
"Then Henrietta read her paper, and it was jest as pretty a story as ever I listened to; about him fallin' in love with that sick woman that hadn't walked a step for years, and how he married her against her father's will, and took her 'way off to Florence, the same place where Henrietta and Archibald went when they was in Europe, and where Henrietta got that quilt pattern for me. And she told how kind he was to her, and how he'd git up in the mornin' and gether roses and put 'em by her bed so they'd be the first things she'd look at when she opened her eyes. And thinks I to myself, 'Most men wants a woman that can cook for 'em and sew for 'em and clean up after 'em, and Brownin' must 'a' been a mighty good man to marry a woman that couldn't do anything for him but jest love him.' Somehow I can't git the thought o' Brownin' out o' my head. He must 'a' been mighty different from the common run o' men, and his life don't need interpretin' like his poetry does.
"Maybe you wonder, honey, how a old woman like me could enjoy bein' at a Brownin' Club, and I reckon I was as much out o' place as mother's old spinnin'-wheel that Henrietta had in one corner of her parlor along with all that fine furniture and the fine things she'd brought from Europe. But, then, I couldn't feel a bit bad, for there set Henrietta, my child's child; she had everything I hadn't had, and I jest laughed to myself, and thinks I, 'I'm livin' again in my children and my grandchildren, and I ain't missed a thing.'"
Aunt Jane paused for breath and leaned back in her chair, smiling and smoothing down her gingham apron. I waited in silence, for I knew that the near memories of her visit to her beloved grandchild were as vivid and interesting to her as the far memories of girlhood and young womanhood, and the tide of recollections would soon flow again.
"Well, the next thing we went to was a big meetin' of women from all sorts o' clubs. When Henrietta told me what it was, I says to myself, 'Now, I'll see if what Uncle Billy Bascom told me is the truth or not.' Uncle Billy'd been sent up to the legislature twice from our district, and when I heard he'd been elected the second time, I couldn't help thinkin' about what Sam Amos used to say, that when folks got tired seein' a man around and wanted to git shed of him a while, they always sent him to the legislature. That's about the way it was with Uncle Billy.
"Me and Uncle Billy has always been good friends, and after he got back home he come around to see me, and when we'd shook hands and inquired about each other's health, he looked me right in the face and says he, 'Jane, I've been to Sodom and Gomorrah.' And says I, 'Uncle Billy, that's about the hardest thing ever I heard said about a Kentucky legislature, and I've heard some pretty hard things in my day and time.' And says he: 'No, Jane; you misunderstand me. I ain't referrin' to the legislature; the legislature's all right.' Says he: 'We set sixty days and drawed our pay regular, and we passed pretty nigh a hundred bills, and might 'a' passed that many more if we'd kept on settin'; but as the constitution don't permit us to set longer, why, of course, we had to adjourn and come on home, leavin' a good deal o' business unfinished. No,' says he, 'it ain't the legislature I'm talkin' about, it's the women, the women.' Says he: 'There was a time when it was some pleasure for a man to go up to the legislature. Us men, we'd git together and resolute, and debate, and pass our bills, and everything'd go off as smooth as satin. Now and then we might git a disturbin' sort of a letter from some o' the home folks about somethin' we'd been doin' that didn't suit 'em, a dog-tax or somethin' o' that sort, but they'd be too fur to worry us much. But,' says he, 'the way the women has got to carryin' on, if it wasn't for the pay and the honor o' the thing, I'd ruther stay right here on my farm than to go up yonder to Frankfort and rastle with a lot o' women that's strayed so far from the foot-steps o' their mothers and grandmothers that nothin' but a miracle could bring 'em back.' Says he: 'We could hardly pass a bill in any peace whatsoever, for them women. If we set out to give a little money to the State College, why, here'd come a delegation o' women from Lexin'ton wantin' to know whether the gyirls would git their share of it.' Says he: 'There ain't a right or a privilege goin' that they don't want to cut it half in two, and give the littlest half to us men and keep the biggest half for the women; some of 'em even goes so far as to say that women ought to vote. And,' says he, 'they've got to clubbin' together, and what one woman can't think of, the others can; and there was hardly a man in the legislature that wasn't pestered with havin' to look after some sort o' bill that'd been hatched up in one o' these here clubs. I got so outdone with 'em,' says he, 'that whenever a bill'd' come up, I'd say to whoever was settin' by me, "Has the women got anything to do with it?" And if they had, I'd vote against it, and if they hadn't, I'd vote for it. One o' their bills,' says he, 'sounded mighty reasonable, the "forestry bill," they called it, but it never come up.' Says he, 'We had a little redistricting to do for the benefit o' the party, and made a few new offices jest to please the people, and betwixt this and that,' says he, 'we didn't git round to the forestry bill.' Says he, 'I might 'a' supported that, if it had come up, but then I don't know but what after all it'd 'a' been a dangerous sort o' thing.' Says he: 'The more you give a woman the more she wants. We give women their property rights, and now they're wantin' to vote and to manage the schools and the 'sylums and pretty near everything else. And,' says he, 'if we was to pass that there forestry bill, like as not the first thing you know, a man'd have to git a permit from some o' these women's clubs before he could chop a piece o' kindlin'-wood in his own back yard.'
"And then the old man went on to tell how he went up to Lexin'ton after the legislature was over, and that was what he meant by goin' to Sodom and Gomorrah. Says he, 'There's women up there, Jane, that don't know a water-bucket from a churn, and if you was to show 'em a potater-patch in full bloom, they'd think it was some sort of a flower-gyarden.' Says he, 'The clubs was more numerous than the children, and it looks to me like the race is dyin' out, dyin' out, Jane; and maybe it's jest as well,' says he, 'for there ain't any women nowadays like the old-time ones, for instance, my mother and grandmother,' says he."
Aunt Jane broke off with a laugh. "I knew as soon as he started out that he was comin' to his mother and grandmother. Uncle Billy couldn't talk twenty minutes with anybody without tellin' 'em how his mother had fifteen children, and cooked and sewed and washed and ironed for 'em all, and how his grandmother was one o' the women that carried water at Bryan's Station, and how she fought a wildcat one night on the Wilderness Road when her husband was away killin' some game for their supper.