About a couple of weeks after the quiltin’, Thomas Jefferson said to Josiah, one Saturday mornin’,
“Father, can I have the old mare to go to Jonesville to-night?”
“What do you want to go to Jonesville for?” said his father, “you come from there last night.”
“There is goin’ to be a lecture on wimmin’s rights; can I have her, father?”
“I s’pose so,” says Josiah, kinder short, and after Thomas J. went out, Josiah went on—
“Wimmin’s rights, wimmin’s rights, I wonder how many more fools are goin’ a caperin’ round the country preachin’ ’em up—I am sick of wimmin’s rights, I don’t believe in ’em.”
This riled up the old Smith blood, and says I to him with a glance that went clear through to the back side of his head—
“I know you don’t, Josiah Allen—I can tell a man that is for wimmin’s rights as fur as I can see ’em. There is a free, easy swing to thier walk—a noble look to thier faces—thier big hearts and soles love liberty and justice, and bein’ free themselves they want everybody else to be free. These men haint jealous of a woman’s influence—haint afraid that she won’t pay him proper respect if she haint obleeged to—and they needn’t be afraid, for these are the very men that wimmin look up to, and worship,—and always will. A good, noble, true man is the best job old natur ever turned off her hands, or ever will—a man, that would wipe off a baby’s tears as soft as a woman could, or ‘die with his face to the foe.’
“They are most always big, noble-sized men, too,” says I, with another look at Josiah that pierced him like a arrow; (Josiah don’t weigh quite one hundred by the steelyards.)
“I don’t know as I am to blame, Samantha, for not bein’ a very hefty man.”