“I have,” says I, in triumphant, joyful tones, “I have been lost in ’em repeatedly, and expect to be again. I have been destracted and melted down in ’em, and have been made almost perfectly happy, for the time bein’, to see the wonderful fruits of men’s intellects; the labor of strong heads and hearts; to see the works of men’s genius, and enterprise, and darin’; the useful, the beautiful and grand, the heroic and sublime. Why I have been so lifted up that I didn’t know but I should go right up through the ruff, (over 200 pounds in all). I have been elevated and inspired as I don’t expect to be elevated and lifted up again for the next 100 years. And lookin’ round on what I see, and thinkin’ what I thought, it made me so proud and happy, that it was a sweet thought to me that my Josiah was a man.”
“Oh shaw!” says she, “you had better be a lookin’ at the Woman’s Pavilion, than lookin’ on what them snipes have done.”
Says I, “Do you take me for a natteral fool mom? Do you s’pose I am such a fool or such a luny, that every time I have looked at the Woman’s Pavilion, and gloried over the works of her hands and brains, I haint felt jest so—only more so?” Says I, “That buildin’ stands there to-day as a solid and hefty proof that wimmen are sunthin’ more than the delicate, and helpless zephyrs and seraphines, that they have been falsely pointed out to be.” Says I, “It is a great scientific fact, that if men go to canterin’ blindly down that old pathway of wimmen’s weakness and unfitness for labor and endurance and inability to meet financikal troubles and discouragements again, they must come bunt up ag’inst that buildin’ and recognize it as a solid fact, and pause before it respectfully, ponderin’ what it means, or else fall. They can’t step over it, their legs haint long enough.”
And says I, “It is earnest thought and work that has filled it, and that is what wimmen want to do—to do more, and say less. No stream can rise higher than its fountain; a universe full of laws to elevate wimmen can’t help her, unless she helps herself. Sufferagin’ will do a good deal, but it haint a goin’ to fill up a empty soul, or a vacant frivolous mind. There are thoughts that have got to turn right square round and travel another road; there is tattin’ and bobinet lace to be soared over; there is shoulder blades that has got to be put to the wheel. Every flag on the buildin’ seems to float out like good deeds and noble eloquent thoughts, while the gabriel ends stand firm under ’em, like the firm, solid motives and principles that great and good deeds have got to wave out from, in order to amount to anything.”
“But,” says she, “the mean snipes won’t let us vote.”
Says I calmly, “That’s so; they haint willin’ all on ’em, to give us the right of sufferagin’ jest at present, and as I have said, and say now, it is mean as pusly in ’em. But it don’t look so poor in them as it does in the wimmen that oppose it, a fightin’ ag’inst their own best interests. It seems to me that any conscientious, intelligent woman, who took any thought for herself and her sect, would want a Right to—”
Here she hollered right out interruptin’ me; says she: “Less vote! less take a hammer and go at the men, and make them let us vote this minute.”
Says I, “I’d love to convince men of the truth, but it haint no use to take a hammer and try to knock unwelcome truths into anybody’s head, male or female. The idee may be good, and the hammer may be a moral, well meanin’ hammer; but you see the dander rises up in the head that is bein’ hit, and makes a impenetrable wall, through which the idee can’t go; that is a great philosophical fact, that can’t be sailed round, or climbed over. And it is another deep scientific principle, that you can’t git two persons to think any more of each other or think any nearer alike by knockin’ their heads together. Nobody can git any water by breakin’ up a chunk of ice with a axe; not a drop; you have got to thaw it out gradual; jest like men’s and wimmen’s prejudices in the cause of Wimmen’s Rights. Public sentiment is the warm fire that is a goin’ to melt this cold hard ice of injustice that we are contendin’ ag’inst; laws haint good for much if public opinion don’t stand behind ’em pushin’ ’em onward to victory.”
“I wont wait a minute,” says she, “I will vote.”
But I argued with her; says I: “Sister, you are well meanin’, no doubt, but you ort to remember that the battle haint always to the swift.” Says I, “It wont harm none of us to foller Nater’s ways a little more close; and Nater is a female that—if she is ruther slow motioned—generally has her way in the end to an uncommon degree. You don’t catch her gittin’ mad, wild, impatient, tearin’ open a kernel of corn, or grain of wheat, or anything, and growin’ a stalk out of it sudden and at once. No! jest like all patient toilers for the Right, she plants the seed, and then lets it take time to swell out, and git full to bustin’ with its own convictions and desires to grow, till it gits so sick of the dark ground where it is hid, and longs so for the light and the free air above it, that it can’t be kep’ back a minute longer, but soars right up of its own free will and accord, towards the high heavens and the blessed sunlight. But if seeds haint good for nothin’, they wont come up; all the sunshine and rain on earth can’t make ’em grow, nor cultivators, nor horse rakes, nor nothin’.