“What’s Paul, or Pollus, when a sinner’s dead? dead for want of breath.”
I don’t s’pose he thought of my bein’ tuckered out, but honestly s’pose he thought he was convincin’ of me; for his mean grew gradually sort of overbearin’ like, and contemptible, till he got to be more big feelin’ and hauty in his mean than I had ever known him to be, and independenter. And he ended up as follers:
“Now, we have purity, and honesty, and unswervin’ virtue, and incorruptible patriotism at the pole. Now, if corruption tries to stalk, honest, firm, lofty minded men stand ready to grip it by the throat. How can it stalk, when it is a chokin’? Wimmen haint got the knowledge, the deep wisdom and insight into things that we men have. They haint got the lofty idees of national honor, and purity, that we men have. Wimmen may mean well—”
He was feelin’ so neat that he felt kinder clever towards the hull world, hemale, and female. “Wimmen may mean well, and for arguments sake, we’ll say they do mean well. But that haint the pint, the pint is here—”
And he pinted his forefinger right towards the old mare. Josiah can’t gesture worth a cent. He wouldn’t make a oriter, if he should learn the trade for years. But ever sense he has been to the Debatin’ school, he has seemed to have a hankerin’ that way. “The pint is here. Not knowin’ so much as we men know, not bein’ so firm and lofty minded as we be, if wimmen should vote corruption would stalk; they not havin’ a firm enough grip to choke it off. They would in the language of the ’postle be ‘blowed about by every windy doctor.’ They would be tempted by filthy lucre to ‘sell their birth-right for a mess of pottery,’ or crockery, I s’pose the text means. They haint got firmness; they are whifflin’, their minds haint stabled. And if that black hour should ever come to the nation, that wimmen should ever go to the pole—where would be the lofty virtue, the firm high-minded honesty, the incorruptible patriotism that now shines forth from politics? Where would be the purity of the pole? Where? oh! where?”
I’ll be hanged if I could stand it another minute, and my lungs havin’ got considerable rested, I spoke up, and says I:
“You seem to be havin’ a kind of a enquiry meetin’ in politics, Josiah Allen, and I’ll get up in my mind, and speak in meetin’.” And then I jest let loose that eloquent tone I keep by me expressly for the cause of principle; I used the very loftiest and awfulest one I had by me, as I fastened my specks immovably on hisen. “Where is that swaller tailed coat of Father Allen’s?”
And in slower, sterner, colder tones, I added:
“With the brass buttons. Where is it Josiah Allen? Where? oh! where?”
Oh! What a change came over my companion’s mean. Oh, how his feathers drooped and draggled on the ground speakin’ in a rooster and allegory way. Oh, what a meachin’ look covered him like a garment from head to foot. I declare for’t if his boots didn’t look meachin’, and his hat and his vest. I never seen a meachener lookin’ vest than hisen, as I went on: