“Beware of bein’ infringed upon!”—and then followed another almost dangerous blow—“Beware of that terrible and fearful day, when men and wimmen shall come in contract with each other.”
He stopped perfectly still, looked all round the house with that wise and almost owl-like look on him, and then in a slow, impressive, and eloquent manner, he raised his hands and struck his breast bone with both thumbs and sot down. Some of the speakers seemed to be real envious of his gestures, but they ort to have considered that it was all in knowin’ how; it was all in practice. He’d probably studied on every motion for days and days, and they hadn’t ort to have begreched ’em so to him. But if he hadn’t never studied on elocution and impressive gesturin’; if he hadn’t looked a mite like an owl for solemnity and wisdom, his talk would have been dretful impressive and scareful to some, he painted it all out in such high colors, what a terrible and awful thing it would be for the two sects to ever come in “contract with each other.” I s’pose he meant contact,—I haint a doubt of it.
SUNDAY SLUMBERS.
Why, to have heerd him go on, if there had been a delegate present to the “Creation Searchin’ Society,” from the moon—or any other world adjacent to Jonesville—he wouldn’t have had any idee that men and wimmen had ever got any nearer to each other than from half to three-quarters of a mile. I s’pose I never could have made that foreigner believe, if I had talked myself blind, that, for all Solomon Cypher showed such deadly fear of men comin’ in “contract” with wimmen, he had lived with one forty years; drinked out of the same dipper; slept together Sundays in the same pew of the same meetin’ house; and brought up a big family of childern together, which belonged to both on ’em.
Howsumever, them was the facts of the case; but I let him go on, for principle held me down, and made me want to know how it would end; whether freedom, and the principles of our 4 fathers would triumph, or whether they would be quirled up like caterpillers, and be trod on.
I knew in my mind I shouldn’t git up and talk, not if they voted me in ten times over, for reasons that I give more formally; and besides them reasons, I was lame, and had ruther set and knit, for Josiah needed his socks; and I have always said, and I say still, that a woman ort to make her family comfortable, before she tackles the nation, or the heathen, or anything.
So they kep’ on a fightin’, and I kep’ on a knittin’; and upheld by principle, I never let on but what I was dyin’ to git up and talk. They got awful worked up on it; they got as mad as hens, every one on ’em, all but Josiah. He sot by me as happy as you please, a holdin’ my ball of yarn. He acted cleverer than he had in some time; he was awful clever and happy; and so was I; we felt well in our 2 minds, as we sot there side by side, while the fearful waves of confusion and excitement, and Cornelius Cork and Solomon Cypher, was a tostin’ to and fro about us.
And oh, how happyfyin’ and consolin’ and satisfyin’ to the mind it is, when the world is angry and almost mad at you, to set by the side of them you are attached to by links considerable stronger than cast iron. In the midst of the wildest tempests, you feel considerable safe, and some composed. No matter if you don’t speak a word to them, nor they to you, their presence is sufficient; without ’em, though you may be surrounded by admirin’ congregations, there is, as the poet says, “a goneness;” the biggest crowds are completely unsatisfactory, and dwindle down to the deepest lonesomeness. Though the hull world should be a holdin’ you up, you would feel tottlin’ and lonesome, but the presence of the one beloved, though he or she—as the case may be—may not be hefty at all, still is large enough to fill a meetin’ house, or old space himself without ’em; and truly, when heart leans upon heart, (figgeratively speakin’) there is a rest in it that feather beds cannot give, neither can they take away. My companion Josiah’s face shines with that calm, reposeful happiness, when he is in my society, and I—although I know not why I do—experience the same emotions in hisen.
Finally, at half past eleven—and they was completely tuckered out on both sides—the enemies of wimmen’s suffragin’ and justice, kinder all put together and brought in a motion, Solomon Cypher bein’ chief bearer and spokesman of the procession. They raised him up to this prominent position, because he was such a finished speaker. The motion was clothed upon in eloquent and imaginative language. Solomon Cypher never got it up alone. Cornelius Cork, and the Editor of the Auger, and probable two or three others had a hand in it, and helped git it up. It had a almost thrillin’ effect on the audience; though, by jest readin’ it over, nobody can git any clear idee how it sounded to hear Solomon Cypher declaim it forth with appropriate and impressive gestures, and a lofty and majestic expression onto him. This was the motion: