HOW I WENT TO ’LECTION.
I was a makin’ Josiah some cotton flannel shirts, and I lacked enough for the gussets and one shoulder band. I had also run out of shirt buttons; and I was a tellin’ the Widder Doodle in the forenoon, that I couldn’t work another stitch on ’em till I had been to Jonesville. And she said, speakin’ of cotton flannel, made her think of Doodle. She took in work—hetchelled tow for a woman—and bought some cotton flannel to make him some shirts; and when she got ’em all done, they didn’t set exactly right somehow, kinder wrinkled in the back a little, and she had to take ’em all to pieces and make ’em over; and Mr. Doodle would set and read the Evenin’ Grippher to her, and smile at her so sweet when she was a rippin’ of ’em up. She said, nobody knew but jest her, how much that man worshipped her. Says she, “I can’t never forget his linement, and I can’t never marry again and there needn’t nobody ask me to, for no linement can ever look to me like Mr. Doodle’ses linement.”
Says I, “Don’t take on so sister Doodle; he’s most probable in a land where he’ll have justice done to him.”
Josiah looked up from the World, and says he:
“I am goin’ to Jonesville to ’lection bime by, Samantha; you’d better ride down, and get the stuff for my shirts.” Says he, “The Town Hall, as you know, is bein’ fixed, and the pole is sot up right in the store. It will be handy, and you can go jest as well as not.”
But I looked my companion in the face with a icy, curious mean, and says I in low, strange tones:
“Wouldn’t it be revoltin’ to the finer feelin’s of your sole, to see a tender woman, your companion, a crowdin’ and elboin’ her way amongst the rude throng of men surroundin’ the pole; to have her hear the immodest and almost dangerous language, the oaths and swearin’; to see her a plungin’ down in the vortex of political warfare, and the arena of corruption?” Says I, “How is the shrinkin’ modesty and delicacy of my sect a goin’ to stand firm a jostlin’ its way amongst the rude masses, and you there to see it?” Says I, “Aint it a goin’ to be awful revoltin’ to you, Josiah Allen?”
“Oh no!” says he in calm gentle axents, “not if you was a goin’ for shirt buttons.”
“Oh!” says I almost wildly, “a woman can plunge up head first ag’inst the pole, and be unharmed if she is in search of cotton flannel; she can pursue shirt buttons into the very vortex of political life, into the pool of corruption, and the mirey clay, and come out white as snow, and modest as a lilly of the valley. But let her step in them very tracks, a follerin’ liberty and freedom, and justice, and right, and truth and temperance, and she comes out black as a coal.” And says I in a almost rapped way, liftin’ up my eyes to the ceelin’: “Why are these things so?”
“Yes,” says the Widder Doodle, that is jest what Mr. Doodle used to say. He said it would make a woman’s reputation black as a coal, would spile her modesty entirely to go to the pole, and be too wearin’ on her. Says he, “Dolly it would spile you, and I would rather give my best cow than to see you spilte. Poor Mr. Doodle! there was a heavy mortgage on old Lineback then—it was a cow I brought to him when we was married, and Mr. Doodle was obleeged to mortgage her to git his tobacco through the winter; it was foreclosed in the spring, and had to go, but his speakin’ as he did, and bein’ so willin’ to give up my cow, showed jest how much he thought of me. Oh! he almost worshipped me, Mr. Doodle did.”