“It could” (sez I, mad as a hen)—“it could, if it wuzn’t jined right in with them law-makers and helpin’ ’em along; and,” sez I, “now they’re tryin’ to git the poor old creeter to consent to a new idee. Some big clergymen and other wise men are a-tryin’ to have these wimmen, ruined by the evil passions of men, shet up in a certain pen to keep ’em from doin’ harm to innocent folks, and not one word said about shettin’ up the men who have made these wimmen what they are. Why don’t they shet them up? There they be foot loose. If they have ruined one pen full of wimmen, what henders ’em from spilin’ another pen full? But there they be a-runnin’ loose and even a-votin’ on how firm and strong the pen should be made to confine these victims of theirn. And how big salaries the men who keep these pens in order shall have—good big salaries, I’ll warrant you. Wise men and ministers advocate this onjestice, and laymen are glad to practise what they preach.
“There hain’t nothin’ reasonable in it; if a pen has got to be made for bad wimmen, why not have another pen, jest like it, only a great deal bigger, made for the bad man?
“Why, this seems so reasonable and right I should think that Jestice would lift the bandage offen her eyes and holler out and say it must he done! But no, there hain’t no move made towards pennin’ bad men up—not a move.”
Al Faizi sez—“I cannot understand these strange things.”
And I sez—“Nobody can, unless it is old Belzibub; I guess he gits the run on it.”
Wall, he took out that book of hisen and writ for pretty nigh an hour.
And that is jest the way he went on and acted from day to day.
CHAPTER VI.
A LITTLE FUN AND ITS PRICE.
Al Faizi got acquainted with the Baptist minister at Jonesville, and Elder Dean took to that noble heathen in a remarkable way. He wuz a truly Christian man and deep learnt, and he and Al Faizi talked together right in my presence in languages, a good many of them dead, I spoze, and some on ’em, jedgin’ from the sound, in a sickly and dyin’ state.