“If wimmin know when they are well off, they will let poles and ’lection boxes alone, it is too wearin for the fair sect.”
“Josiah Allen,” says I, “you think that for a woman to stand up straight on her feet, under a blazin’ sun, and lift both her arms above her head, and pick seven bushels of hops, mingled with worms and spiders, into a gigantic box, day in, and day out, is awful healthy, so strengthenin’ and stimulatin’ to wimmin, but when it comes to droppin’ a little slip of clean paper into a small seven by nine box, once a year in a shady room, you are afraid it is goin’ to break down a woman’s constitution to once.”
He was speechless, and clung to Ayer’s almanac mechanically (as it were) and I continued—
“There is another pole you are willin’ enough for me to handle, and that is our cistern pole. If you should spend some of the breath you waste—in pityin’ the poor wimmin that have got to vote—in byin’ a pump, you would raise 25 cents in my estimation, Josiah Allen. You have let me pull on that old cistern pole thirteen years, and get a ten quart pail of water on to the end of it, and I guess the political pole wouldn’t draw much harder than that does.”
“I guess I will get one, Samantha, when I sell the old critter. I have been a calculatin’ to every year, but things will kinder run along.”
“I am aware of that,” says I in a tone of dignity cold as a lump of cold ice. “I am aware of that. You may go into any neighborhood you please, and if there is a family in it, where the wife has to set up leeches, make soap, cut her own kindlin’ wood, build fires in winter, set up stove-pipes, dround kittens, hang out clothes lines, cord beds, cut up pork, skin calves, and hatchel flax with a baby lashed to her side—I haint afraid to bet you a ten cent bill, that that woman’s husband thinks that wimmin are too feeble and delicate to go the pole.”
Josiah was speechless for pretty near half a minute, and when he did speak it was words calculated to draw my attention from contemplatin’ that side of the subject. It was for reasons, I have too much respect for my husband to even hint at—odious to him, as odious could be—he wanted me to forget it, and in the gentle and sheepish manner men can so readily assume when they are talkin’ to females he said, as he gently fingered Ayer’s almanac, and looked pensively at the dyin’ female revivin’ at a view of the bottle—
“We men think too much of you wimmin to want you to lose your sweet, dignified, retirin’ modesty that is your chieftest charm. How long would dignity and modesty stand firm before the wild Urena of public life? You are made to be happy wives, to be guarded by the stronger sect, from the cold blast and the torrid zone. To have a fence built around you by manly strength, to keep out the cares and troubles of life. Why, if I was one of the fair sect, I would have a husband to fence me in, if I had to hire one.”
He meant this last, about hirin’ a husband, as a joke, for he smiled feebly as he said it, and in other and happier times stern duty would have compelled me to laugh at it—but not now, oh no, my breast was heavin’ with too many different sized emotions.