“You jest keep blackin’ your boots, Josiah Allen, I haint a talkin’ to you. Betsey, is it any worse for a female woman to dress herself in a modest and Christian manner, with a braige viel over her face, and a brass mounted parasol in her hand, and walk decently to the pole and lay her vote on it, than to be introduced to a man, who for all you know may be a retired pirate, and have him walk up and hug you by the hour, to the music of a fiddle and a base violin?”
“But if you vote you have got to go before a board of men, and how tryin’ to delicacy that would be.”
“I went before a board of men when I joined the meetin’ house, and when I got the premium for my rag carpet, and I still live and call myself a respectable character, but,” says I in a vain of unconcealed sarcasm “if these delicate ball characters are too modest to go in broad daylight armed with a umbrell before a venerable man settin’ on a board, let ’em have a good old female board to take thier votes.”
“Would it be lawful to have a female board?” says Betsey.
“Wimmen can be boards at charity schools—poor little paupers, pretty hard boards they find ’em some times—and they can be boards at fairs, and hospitals, and penitentarys, and picnics, and African missions, and would it be any worse to be a board before these delicate wimmen,” says I, almost carried away with enthusiasm, “I would be a board myself.”
NO TIME TO VOTE.
“Yes you would make a pretty board,” says Josiah, “you would make quite a pile of lumber.” I paid no attention to his sarkastic remark, and Betsey went on.
“It would be such public business Josiah Allen’s wife for a woman to recieve votes.”
“I don’t know as it would be any more public business, than to sell Episcopal pin cushiens, Methodist I scream, or Baptist water melons, by the hour to a permiscuus crowd.”