'Tain't so. Who ever hearn a man purr? Purrin' is sunthin a man's nater would rebel at and scorn with perfect contemp. But I smashed that argument about vanity to once and forever. Sez I so scathin'ly that it seemed as if she must show signs of scorchin', "Did you ever see a man wear a cosset? Or carry a vanity bag?"

And then still a knittin' and still makin' exceptions of some good and generous men, she throwed the trait of selfishness in my face, said my sect had passed along down the fields of time, gatherin' up the ripe wheat and leavin' wimmen to rake up the leavin's.

'Tain't so, and even if it wuz, I presoom to say Ruth got quite a good bundle of grain out of Boazes' wheat field.

And then she took pomposity and throwed at me (still a knittin', and still makin' exceptions of some men) said lots of men stood up on a self-made pedestal lookin' down mentally on them who in many cases wuz their superiors, but she added that wimmen wuz more to blame for this trait in men than they wuz, for they had been educated to look up to men instead of lookin' sideways where they ort to find him on a level at her side.

It is needless to say to any one who knows my keenness of inteleck that I took immegiate advantage of this slip of her tongue and sez, "I am glad that you admit, Samantha, that wimmen are always in the wrong. I and my sect have always knowed it, and we've always laid the blame on 'em from Eve down to Miss Pankhurst."

And that seemed to set her off agin, and she brung up my blindness. Blind as a bat! Them wuz her words she throwed at me, at me! who has got eyes as keen as a eagle's. That injustice did rankle and make me hash and say hash things.

But she kep' cam on the outside, kep' on with her knittin' and intimidated agin that though there wuz lots of good generous men in the world, yet it had always been a trait of the average man from Solomon to Harry Thaw to look upon woman as a plaything or a convenience. And then she brung up inconsistency and how men showed it in the laws they made, criminal inconsistency, she called it. Sez she, "A girl must be twenty-one when she is considered by men lawmakers wise enough to sell them a hen, or buy a cat. But yet at the age of ten in one state, twelve in another, she is considered by them wise and prudent enough to sell them the crowning jewel of her life with the payment of lifelong shame, agony, and despair, and mebby a little candy. Men make such laws," sez she, "not for their own sweet young girls, but for some other men's daughters, just like the infamous White Slave traffic that sells every year thousands and thousands of young girls into a livin' death. And I think," sez she, "when men make such shameful barbarous laws it is high time for 'em to have help from angels or wimmen or sunthin' or ruther."

"That hain't religious, Samantha," sez I, "to speak of angels makin' laws, tendin' corkuses and such. As a deacon I object to it."

Sez she, "As a deacon you better object to the laws I'm talkin' about, and if clergymen, deacons and church members generally, would all rise agin 'em, they'd be stamped out pretty sudden." Sez she, "When the young girls of our country are considered of equal importance with cows and clover to oversee and protect, there will be different laws, and I believe wimmen's votin' will hasten that day."

There is always a time for a man if he wants to keep his dignity intack before females, to stop arguin' with 'em. That time had come to me at that juncture, and I knowed that it would be more dignified to show a manly superiority to such hullsale calumnity of my sect so I looked hautily at her, and didn't dain to reply to her in verbal words though I grated my teeth some, as I walked out of the settin' room with head erect into the kitchen, and brought in a armful of wood from the contagious woodshed with my head still held high, and hung on the teakettle with a hauty mean. For I felt that some of Samantha's good vittles would soothe my wownded and perturbed sperit if anything could and they did cam me.