And after she went in Uncle Sime resoomed his unanswerable arguments. "Why, beside Bible proofs I can prove it in a scientific way. Weigh up a man's bones in the stillyards and they'll weigh one hundred pounds more or less, jest the bones. And now jest think on the preposterous idee of that one little rib bone a risin' up right in the face of science and reason, and pretendin' to be equal to the hull carcass. And worse yet tryin' to stomp on him and bring him down to her level by votin'. Why, if Adam had hearn to me and kep' that rib bone where it wuz, jest think what the world would have escaped, think of the jealousies, angers, revenges, weariness, expenses, wars, ruin and bloodshed caused through the centuries by changin' that rib bone into a female!"
I wuz astounded to see how deep Uncle Sime had doven into the great mysteries of human existence, not but what I'd have thought it out myself, if I'd had time from fambly cares.
But Uncle Sime went on, "Jest think, Josiah, of wimmen's wild and turbulent doin's and the commotions and troubles and sufferin's wimmen has caused males, and then think how quiet and peaceable that rib wuz before it had been meddled with, and brought into the woman question. A layin' there in Adam's side onquestionin' and cam. Never startin' up and argyin' with the liver or diafram, never sassin' the spinal collar, or disputin' the knee jints, that one small bone risin' up, and demandin' the rights that justly belong to the hull carcass. Oh, what lessons to female suffragists can be drawed from that scientific fact, and how fur they can be drawed."
As long as I'd knowed Uncle Sime I never had realized before he wuz such a deep thinker, and had such a fund of scientific knowledge to back up his arguments. Of course I had 'em too, all on 'em, layin' dormer inside on me.
Of course it made a tremendous stir in Jonesville when the startlin' news got out that I wuz writin' a book agin female suffrage with the settled intention and firm determination of puttin' an end to it forever. It lifted me up to such a tottlin' hite in the estimation of the male Jonesvillians that it would have gin a weaker man the Big Head and made 'em liable to fall off. But such is my strength of mind that I kep' cool on the outside, talked in a friendly and patronizin' way to Samantha and the neighborin' wimmen, associated with the folks that had the honor to live round me, and wore the same hat. The Creation Searchin' Society of Jonesville called a special meetin' to congratulate me and themselves on havin' their views on the inferiority of wimmen disseminated in my book through the entire habitable globe. I knowed my beliefs regardin' wimmen wuz the same as theirn, for we had often laid them views out side by side and compared 'em together. And Uncle Sime Bentley when I first told him on't shed tears of joy and sez he:
"At last, at last the men of Jonesville, the male men, are goin' to be hearn from, and did justice to." And he grip holt of my hand in one of hisen, and with the other he wep' onto his bandanna handkerchief tears of pure joy and thankfulness.
Deacon Henzy, Solomon Sypher, Deacon Bobbett and a lot of other bretheren in the meetin' house, talked to me about the forthcomin' book with a solemn joy and triump in their linements and told me to consider and weigh well every word I writ, up to the very ounce, "For," sez they, "the broad onwinkin' eye of the World is on you and in that eye we male Jonesvillians have been demeaned and lowered and looked down on by the abominable things that wuz writ by——"
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. Now it is in the power of a male Jonesvillian to lift his sect up on the hite he's been partially knocked off of, by them writin's, and put the weaker inferior sect down into the holler place where they belong. It is your honor and your privelige, Josiah Allen, to let the hull world see how superior to females, how noble, how grand is the male manhood of Jonesville U.S.A."