“Yes Horace, I have seen clingers, here is one.”
Betsey riz right up, and come forrerd, and made a low curchy to him, and set down tight to him, and says she,
“Beloved and admired Mr. Horace Greeley, I am Betsey Bobbet the poetess of Jonesville, and you speak my sentiments exactly. I think, and I know that wedlock is woman’s only true speah. I do not think wimmen ought to have any rights at all. I do not think she ought to want any. I think it is real sweet and genteel in her not to have any rights. I think that to be the clinging, devoted wife of a noble husband would be almost a heaven below. I do not think she ought to have any other trade at all only wedlock. I think she ought to be perfectly dependent on men, and jest cling to them, and oh how sweet it would be to be in that state. How happyfying to males and to females that would be. I do not believe in wimmen having their way in anything, or to set up any beliefs of their own. For oh! how beautiful and perfectly sweet a noble manly mind is. How I do love your intellect, dearest Mr. Horace Greeley. How is your wife’s health dear man? Haint I read in the papers that her health was a failing? And if she should drop off, should you think of entering again into wedlock? and if you did, should you not prefer a woman of genius, a poetess, to a woman of clay?”
Her breath give out here, and she paused. But oh what a change had come over Horace’s noble and benign face, as Betsey spoke. As she begun, his head was thrown back, and a eloquent philosofical expression set onto it. But gradually it had changed to a expression of dread and almost anger, and as she finished, his head sunk down onto his breast, and he sithed. I pitied him, and I spoke up to Betsey, says I, “I haint no more nor less than a clay woman, but I know enough to know that no man can answer 25 or 26 questions to once. Give Horace time to find and recover himself.”
Betsey took a bottle of hartshorn and a pair of scissors, outen her pocket, and advanced onto him, and says she in tender cooin’ tones. “Does your intellectual head ache? Let me bathe that lofty forwerd. And oh! dearest man, will you hear my one request that I have dreampt of day and night, will you—will you give me a lock of your noble hair?”
Horace rose up from his chair precipitately and come close to me and sot down, bringin’ me between him and Betsey, and then he says to her in a fearless tone, “You can’t have a hair of my head, I haint got much as you can see, but what little I have got belongs to my wife, and to America. My wife’s health is better, and in case of her droppin’ off, I shouldn’t never marry agin, and it wouldn’t be a poetess! though,” says he wipin’ his heated forwerd,
“I respect ’em as a Race.”
Betsey was mad. Says she to me, “I am a goin. I will wait for you to the depott.” And before I could say a word, she started off. As the door closed I says in clear tones, “Horace, I have watched you for years—a laberin’ for truth and justice and liftin’ up the oppressed, I have realized what you have done for the Black African. You have done more for that Race than any other man in America, and I have respected you for it, as much as if I was a Black African myself. But never! never did I respect you as I do this minute.” Says I, “if every married man and woman had your firm and almost cast iron principles, there wouldn’t be such a call for powder and bullets among married folks as there is now. You have riz in my estimation 25 cents within the last 7 or 8 minutes.”
Horace was still almost lost in thought, and he didn’t reply to me. He was a settin’ about half or 3 quarters of a yard from me, and I says to him mildly,
“Horace, it may be as well for you to go back now to your former place of settin’, which was about 2 and a half yards from me.” He complied with my request, mechanically as it was. But he seemed still to be almost lost in thought. Finally he spoke—as he wiped the sweat off that had started out onto his eye brow—these words,