She turned round quicker’n lightnin’, and as she did so, I see her hump plainer’n ever.
Says she, “Do you want to insult me?”
“No,” says I, “my intentions are honorable, mom.
“But,” says I, puttin’ the question plain to her, “would you vote for a man, that had his pantaloons made with trails to ’em danglin’ on the ground, and his vest drawed in to the bottom tight enough to cut him into, and his coat tails humped out with a bustle, and somebody else’s hair pinned on the back of his head? Would you?” says I solemnly fixin’ my spectacles keenly onto her face. “Much as I respect and honor Horace Greeley, if that pure-minded and noble man should rig himself out with a bustle and trailin’ pantaloons, I wouldn’t vote for him, and Josiah shouldn’t neither.”
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT?
But she went right on without mindin’ me—“Man has always tried to dwarf our intellects; cramp our souls. The sore female heart pants for freedom. It is sore! and it pants.”
Her eyes was rolled up in her head, and she had lifted both hands in a eloquent way, as she said this, and I had a fair view of her waist, it wasn’t much bigger than a pipe’s tail. And I says to her in a low, friendly tone. “Seein’ we are only females present, let me ask you in a almost motherly way, when your heart felt sore and pantin’ did you ever loosen your cosset strings? Why,” says I, “no wonder your heart feels sore, no wonder it pants, the only wonder is, that it don’t get discouraged and stop beatin’ at all.”
She wanted to waive off the subject, I knew, for she rolled up her eyes higher than ever, and agin she began “Tyrant man”—