“‘That is nothing to the case,’ says the law in stern tones. ‘The peculiar conditions of motherhood only unfits a female woman from ridin’ to town with her husband, in a covered carriage, once a year, and layin’ her vote on a pole. I’ll have you understand it is no hindrance to her at all in a cold and naked cell, or in a public court room crowded with men.’
“‘But the indelikacy, the outrage to my womanly nature?’ says the woman.
“‘Not another word out of your head, young woman,’ says the law, ‘or I’ll fine you for contempt. I guess the law knows what is indelikacy, and what haint; where modesty comes in, and where it don’t; now start for prison bareheaded, for I levy on your bunnet for contempt of me.’
“As the young woman totters along to prison, is it any wonder that she sithes to herself, but in a low tone, that the law might not hear her, and deprive her also of her shoes for her contemptas thoughts—
“‘Would that I were a idiot; alas! is it not possible that I may become even now a luny?—then I should be respected.’”
As I finished my allegory and looked down from the side of the house, where my eyes had been fastened in the rapped eloquence of thought, I see Josiah with a contented countenance, readin’ the almanac, and I said to him in a voice before which he quailed—
“Josiah Allen, you haint heard a word I’ve said, you know you haint.”
“Yes I have,” says he, shettin’ up the almanac; “I heard you say wimmin ought to vote, and I say she hadn’t. I shall always say that she is too fraguile, too delikate, it would be too hard for her to go to the pole.”
“There is one pole you are willin’ enough I should go to, Josiah Allen,” and I stopped allegorin’, and spoke with witherin’ dignity and self respect—“and that is the hop pole.” (Josiah has sot out a new hop yard, and he proudly brags to the neighbors that I am the fastest picker in the yard.) “You are willin’ enough I should handle them poles!” He looked smit and conscience struck, but still true to the inherient principles of his sect, and thier doggy obstinacy, he murmured—