Huldah Pendergrast wuz humbly as the old Harry, and Samantha sez that a man always puts a pretty face before reason or religion, 'tennyrate no man had ever asked her to marry I knowed, so how could she help her single state.
Amelia Burpee wuz left a orphan with five younger children that she promised her dyin' ma to take care on, and when she got them all rared up and settled down in life, she wuz too tuckered out to think of matrimony.
And Serepta Corkins wuz a born man hater, would git over the fence ruther than meet one in the road. She didn't want a man, and Heaven knows a man didn't want her.
Luella Pitkin's bo died durin' engagement, and she never wanted to look at a man after that. And her sister, Drusilla, wuz all took up with music, and no man could ever take the place with her of B flat, or high G.
And Abigail Mooney's feller she wuz engaged to got led off and married another girl, and Abigail went into a incline and the doctor had hard work to raise her up, besides all her own folks did with spignut and wild cherry bark and other strengthenin' and soothin' herbs.
And Almina Hagadone's feller left her because she fell and broke her hip durin' engagement. And Id'no but it wuz for the best, for how could she bring up a fambly with only one hip.
And so it went on, the hull train of single wimmen swep' through my brain, follered by a crowd of widders, grass, and hay, and sod. And as I mentally stared at 'em I see what I'd done on insistin' that they should every one on 'em marry a man and stay to home, when they hadn't no man and no home to stay in. Why, I wuz fairly browbeat and stumped to see what a ticklish place I would stood in with the Jonesvillians, if I had writ my chapter as I laid out to, that wimmen must marry and must not vote.
I see I had got to turn round and take a new tact. But it wuz like tearin' a bulldog from a good shank bone to uproot a man from that inborn belief. And I thought it over pro and con, con and pro, till my head got fairly dizzy and in one of the dizziest spells this thought come to me that mebby Simon's bein' a bacheldor had hampered him and colored his advice, and thinkses I before I lay down in the dust my old beloved belief for good and all, it won't do any hurt to jest mention the subject casually to Samantha agin, which I did.
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."