“Although it is a scene of touchin’ beauty, to see an old gentleman, and a bald-headed one, so in love with eloquence, and to give such remarkable proofs of it at his age, still as it is the request of my young friend—and I am proud to say ‘my young friend’ in regard to one gifted in so remarkable a degree—at his request I beg to be permitted to hint, that if the bald-headed old gentleman in the linen coat can conceal his admiration, and supress his applause, he will confer a favor on my gifted young friend, and through him indirectly to Jonesville, to America, and the great cause of humanity, throughout the length and breadth of the country.”
Here he made a low bow and sot down. Prof. Todd continued his piece without any more interruption, till most the last, he wanted the public of Jonesville to “dround black care in the deep waters of oblivion, mind not her mad throes of dissolvin’ bein’, but let the deep waters cover her black head, and march onward.”
Then the old gentleman forgot himself, and sprang up and hollered—
“Yes! dround the black cat, hold her head under! What if she is mad! don’t mind her screamin’! there will be cats enough left in the world! do as he tells you to! less dround her!”
Prof. Todd finished in a few words, and set doun lookin’ gloomy and morbid.
The next speaker was a large, healthy lookin’ man, who talked aginst wimmin’s rights. He didn’t bring up no new arguments, but talked as they all do who oppose ’em. About wimmin outragin’ and destroyin’ thier modesty, by bein’ in the same street with a man once every ’lection day. And he talked grand about how woman’s weakness arroused all the shivelry and nobility of a man’s nature, and how it was his dearest and most sacred privilege and happiness, to protect her from even a summer’s breeze, if it dared to blow too hard on her beloved and delicate form.
Why, before he had got half through, a stranger from another world who had never seen a woman, wouldn’t have had the least idee that they was made of clay as man was, but would have thought they was made of some thin gauze, liable at any minute to blow away, and that man’s only employment was to stand and watch ’em, for fear some zephyr would get the advantage of ’em. He called wimmin every pretty name he could think of, and says he, wavin’ his hands in the air in a rapped eloquence, and beatin’ his breast in the same he cried,
“Shall these weak, helpless angels, these seraphines, these sweet, delicate, cooin’ doves—whose only mission it is to sweetly coo—these rainbows, these posys vote? Never! my bretheren, never will we put such hardships upon ’em.”
As he sot down, he professed himself and all the rest of his sect ready to die at any time, and in any way wimmin should say, rather than they should vote, or have any other hardship. Betsey Bobbet wept aloud, she was so delighted with it.