She wuz pickin' the pin feathers offen a plump spring chicken for dinner, and she looked up at me over her specs in the cool deliberate way she has sometimes, and sez, "Josiah, a hen don't cackle till she lays her egg."
And then she resoomed her work agin, sayin' no more. Naterally my feelin's immediately hardened more hard than they had been, for I would ask any human bein' did not that one speech show what I've sot out to prove in my book, what wifflin' onstabled minds females have got, and how onfit for votin', onjinted, tottlin', wanderin' way off from the subject spoke on, flyin' down at one jump from literatoor onto poultry. For what connection, I ask, is there between the finest fruit in literature, and hens? Hens which are known to be the awkwardes and stupidest of any liven critters. What jinin' link is there between the most scathin' and convincin' arguments ever writ by mortal man, and eggs? Mute, onfeelin', onseein', eggs.
But I only gin a moment of my valuable time to contemplate this prominent phase of wimmen's folly. And bein' driv back as I have often been by a lack of congenial sympathy into my own interior (my mind), my inteleck seemed to flow freer than ever, and I devoted this propishous time to enlargin' on a important subject I had not had time to enlarge on before, and that wuz the well known extravagance of females and how fatally fatal that trait which is exclusively confined to her own sect would be if let loose on the political world. And so harrered up my mind got in contemplatin' that gigantic danger to my sect, and my country, that before I knowed it I wuz speakin' my thoughts and forebodin's aloud.
Sez I, "Another insurmountable objection agin female suffragin', another fearful danger facin' the country if females should have a free run in the political field, is their well known extravagance."
"Josiah," sez she, "a hen don't cackle till she lays her egg."
Sez I, "To a Female Researcher of the prudent, equinomical male sect, it is absolutely appallin' to witness the blind reckless extravagance of wimmen and their well known habits of follerin' each other's fashions blindly, like a flock of sheep jumpin' over the fence. If one woman gits a new dress the neighborin' wimmen have got to git one like it, or better, not a mite of independent sperit about 'em. Why can't they take pattern of us men who always wear jest what we please, and pay no attention to what any other male wears, pay no attention whatsumever to fashion or extravagance. In fact men would hardly know there wuz any such words as them, if it wuzn't for female doin's and the dictionary."
I knowed I had got Samantha in a corner then that she couldn't git out on and I waited with a dignified stately look on my linement to hear her say, "I gin up, Josiah; you're in the right on't." But did I hear her say this? Oh, no!
She lifted up the plump yeller skinned chicken in one hand, whilst she peered under its wings for a stray pin feather. And then she laid it down gently on the pages of the World that wuz spread for its benefit over the table, I spoze to keep her dress clean, and as she looked down on the smooth crisp folds of gingham she sez: