“Tyrant man shan’t never rule us.” Says I, “I haint no objection to your makin’ tyrant man better, if you can—there is a chance for improvement in ’em—but while we are handlin’ ‘motes,’ sister, let us remember that we have got considerable to do in the line of ‘beams.’” Says I, “To see a lot of immortal wimmen together, sometimes, you would think the Lord had forgot to put any brains into their heads, but had filled it all up with dress patterns, and gossip, and beaux, and tattan.”
ON A LECTURIN’ TOWER.
“Tyrant man has encouraged this weakness of intellect. He has for ages made woman a plaything; a doll; a menial slave. He has encouraged her weakness of comprehension, because it flattered his self love and vanity, to be looked up to as a superior bein’. He has enjoyed her foolishness.”
“No doubt there is some truth in what you say, sister, but them days are past. A modest, intelligent woman is respected and admired now, more than a fool. It is so in London and New York village, and,” says I with some modesty, “it is so in Jonesville.”
“Tyrant man,” begun the woman agin. “Tyrant man thinks that wimmen are weak, slavish idiots, that don’t know enough to vote. But them tyrants will find themselves mistaken.”
The thought that Josiah was a man, came to me then as it never had before. And as she looked down from the cealin’ a minute on to my dress with that scornful mene, principle nerved me up to give her a piece of my mind.
Says I, “No wonder men don’t think that we know enough to vote when they see the way some wimmen rig themselves out. Why says I, a bachelder that had always kept house in a cave, that had read about both and hadn’t never seen neither, would as soon take you for a dromedary as a woman.”