“Josiah Allen if you have lived with me goin on 15 years, and if you haint no more confidence in me than to think I would accept a ring from old Tammany, then I will stay to home.” Says I, “Josiah Allen, I never mistrusted till this very minute that you had a jealous hair in your head,” says I, “you have fell 35 cents in my estimation to night,” says I, “you know Josiah Allen that I haint never wore no jewelrey sense I jined the Methodist meetin’ house, and if I did, do you spose I would accept a ring from old Tammany, that sneakin’ old Democrat? I hate old Tammany, I perfectly despise the old man.”
I felt so imposed upon and worked up, that I started right off to bed and forgot to wind up the clock, or shet the buttery door, for I remember the clock run down and the cat eat the inside out of the custard pies. Wall from that time I never had opened my head to Josiah about goin’ off on a tower. But I wrote Horace a letter on the subject of Wimmen’s Rights, as good a letter as I knew how, beggin’ him to follow the example of J. Allen’s wife, and all other noble reformers and put his shoulder blades to the wheel.
His answer wasn’t so satisfactory as I could have wished it was, and I knew I could do better to stand face to face with him. But as I say I don’t know as I should ever have started up agin, if that great and good man hadn’t been run up for President.
Now some thought it looked shiftless in the Democrats, and kinder poverty struck in ’em, to think they had got all out of President stuff, and had to borry some of the Republicans. But good land! where is there a housekeeper but what will once in a while get out of tea and have to borry a drawin’ of her neighbors? If good honest, smart men was skurse amongst ’em, if they had got kinder run out of President timber, and wanted to borry a little, why it would have looked dreedful tight and unneighberly in the Republicans to have refused ’em, when they was well on it too for President stuff, they could have spared two or three jest as well as not, even if they never got ’em paid back. But the Democrats only wanted to borry one, and that was Horace. The Democrats thought everything of Horace because he put a bail onto Jeff. Davis. Josiah said at the time that it raised him 25 cents or more in his estimation. At the same time it madded some of the Republicans. But it didn’t me. You see I believe jest what I think is right, and pay no attention to what the other folks who are standin’ on my doorstep may happen to believe.
Nobody that stands on my platform—let ’em stand as close to me as they are a mind to—not one of ’em is answerable to God for what thoughts and principles are performin’ in my mind and soul. Josiah Allen’s wife hangs on to nobody’s apron strings only jest her own.
As far as the party on my doorstep believe what I think is right, I am with ’em heart and hand, but I am not one to shet up my eyes and walk up blindly and hang on to anybody’s apron strings, not even Horace Greeley’s, as anybody can see in the matter of biled vittles, Wimmen’s Rights, and cream biscuit. To think you have got to believe every thing your party does, seems jest as unreasonable to me, as it would when you go out to pick greens, to pick skunk cabbage because cow cabbage is good and wholesome. Why skunk cabbage is pison, jest as pison as sikuta or ratsbane. Now the doctrine of free love as some folks preach it up, folks in both parties, why the smell of it is jest as obnoxious in my political and moral nostrals as the smell of sikuta is, and if anything smells worse than that, I don’t want to go near it. Pick out the good and leave the bad, is my theme in greens and politix.
Now about puttin’ that bail onto Jeff. Davis, though as I say it madded my party, I was glad he put it on. Jeff. was a mean critter no doubt, but I don’t know as chokin’ him to death with a rope would have made him any better. I say this idee of chokin’ folks to death to reform ’em, is where we show the savage in us, which we have brought down from our barbarious ancestors. We have left off the war paint and war whoops, and we shall leave off the hangin’ when we get civilized.
Says some to me, “Look at our poor Northern boys that suffered and died in Libby prison and Andersonville through Jefferson.”
I says to ’em, “Would chokin’ Jefferson bring ’em back? if so I would choke him myself.—not to kill him of course, but so he would feel it, I can tell you.”
No! it was all over, and past. All the sin, and all the sorrow of the war. And God had out of it brought a great good to the black Africans, and the nation, in the way all good is generally brought, through sufferin’ and tribulation. And if a nation is made perfect through sufferin’ what should be the first lesson she should show to the world?