“Why I’m a thinkin, on full dress,” sez be in a pert tone, a kinder turnin’ himself before the glass, where he could get a good view of his bones. His thin neck wuzn’t much more than bones, anyway, and so I told him. And I asked him if he could see any beauty in it, and sez I, “Who wants to look at our old bare necks, Josiah Allen? And if there wuzn’t any other powerful reeson of modesty and decency in it, you’d ketch your death cold, Josiah Allen, and be laid up with the newmoan. You know you would,” sez I, “you are actin’ like a luny, Josiah Allen.”
“It is you that are actin’ like a luny,” sez he bitterly. “I never propose anything of a high fashionable kind but what you want to break it up. Why, dumb it all, you know as well as I do, that men haint called as modest as wimmen anyway. And if they have the name, why shouldn’t they have the game? Why shouldn’t they go round half dressed as well as wimmen do? And they are as strong agin; if there is any danger to health in it they are better able to stand it. But,” sez he, in the same bitter axents, “you always try to break up all my efforts at high life and fashion. I presume you won’t waltz to-night, nor want me to.”
I groaned several times in spite of myself, and sithed, “Waltz!” sez I in awful axents. “A classleader! and a grandfather! and talkin’ about waltzin’!”
Sez Josiah, “Men older than me waltz, and foller it up. Put their arms right round the prettiest girls in the room, hug ’em, and swing ’em right round”—sez he kinder spoony like.
I said nothin’ at them fearful words, only my groans and sithes became deeper and more voyalent. And in a minute I see through the fingers with which I had nearly covered my face, that he wuz a pullin’ down his shirt sleeves and a puttin’ his jack knife in his pocket.
That man loves me. And love sways him round often times when reesun and sound argument are powerless. Now, the sound reesun of the case didn’t move him, such as the indelicacy of makin’ a exhibition of one’s self in a way that would, if displayed in a heathen, be a call for missionarys to convert ’em, and that makes men blush when they see it in a Christian woman.
The sound reason of its bein’ the fruitful cause of disease and death, through the senseless exposure.
The sound reason of the worse than folly of old and middle-aged folks thinkin’ that the exhibition is a pretty one when it haint.
The sound reason of its bein’ inconsistent for a woman to allow the familiarity of a man and a stranger, a walkin’ up and puttin’ his arm round her, and huggin’ her up to him as clost as he can; that act, that a woman would resent as a deadly insult and her incensed relatives avenge with the sword, if it occurred in any other place than the ball-room and at the sound of the fiddle. The utter inconsistency of her meetin’ it with smiles, and making frantic efforts to get more such affronts than any other woman present—her male relatives a lookin’ proudly on.