“Hain’t you never had longings, and yearnings to be free?”
“Not a yearn,” says I calmly, “not a yearn. If I had wanted to remain free I shouldn’t have give my heart and hand to Josiah Allen. I didn’t do it deleriously, I had my senses.” Says I, “you can’t set down and stand up at the same time, each situation has its advantages, but you can’t be in both places at once, and this tryin’ to, is what makes so much trouble amongst men and wimmen. They want the rights and advantages of both stations to once—they want to set down and stand up at the same time, and it can’t be did. Men and wimmen hain’t married at the pint of the bayonet, they go into it with both their eyes open. If anybody thinks they are happier, and freer from care without bein’ married, nobody compels ’em to be married, but if they are, they hadn’t ought to want to be married and single at the same time, it is onreasonable.”
He looked some convinced, and I went on in a softer tone,
“I hain’t a goin’ to say that Josiah hain’t been tryin’ a good many times. He has raved round some, when dinner wasn’t ready, and gone in his stockin’ feet considerable, and been slack about kindlin’ wood. Likewise I have my failin’s. I presume I hain’t done always exactly as I should about shirt buttons, mebby I have scolded more’n I ort to about his keepin’ geese. But if men and wimmen think they are marryin’ angels, they’ll find out they’ll have to settle down and keep house with human critters. I never see a year yet, that didn’t have more or less winter in it, but what does it say, ‘for better, for worse,’ and if it turns out more worse than better, why that don’t part us, for what else does it say? ‘Till death does us part,’ and what is your little slip of paper that you call a bill to that? Is that death?” says I.
He quailed silently, and I proceeded on.
“I wouldn’t give a cent for your bills, I had jest as lives walk up and marry any married man, as to marry a man with a bill. I had jest as lives,” says I warmin’ with my subject, “I had jest as lives join a Mormon at once. How should I feel, to know there was another woman loose in the world, liable to walk in here any minute and look at Josiah, and to know all that separated ’em was a little slip of paper about an inch wide?”
My voice was loud and excited, for I felt deeply what I said, and says he in soothin’ tones,
“I presume that you and your husband are congenial spirits, but what do you think of soarin’ soles, that find out when it is too late that they are wedded to mere lumps of clay.”
I hadn’t fully recovered from my excited frame of mind, and I replied warmly, “I never see a man yet that wasn’t more or less clay, and to tell you the truth I think jest as much of these clay men as I do of these soarers, I never had any opinion of soarers at all.”
He sank back in his chair and sithed, for I had touched him in a tender place, but still clinging to his free love doctrine, he murmered faintly,