“But how would it be with a child that a mother left as a souvenir of her deathless love, a part of her own life left to a broken-hearted husband? Would a man who held such a child, such a little daughter to his achin’ heart, do and make a law by which the child could be lost and ruined forever?
“No; the men that make these laws make ’em for other folks’es children, not their own. It is other fathers’ girls that they doom to ruin. When they license shameful houses it hain’t their own pretty daughters that they picture under the infamus ruffs, despised playthings for brutality and lust. No; it is some other parents’ daughters.”
“MY TONE RIZ UP.”
My tone had been awful eloquent and riz up, for nobody but the Lord knew how deeply I felt all I had said, and more than I ever could say on the subject.
And I spoze I looked lofty and noble in my mean—I spoze so.
Anyway, Senator Coleman quailed to a extent that I hardly ever see quailed in my hull life, and I have seen lots of quailin’ in my day. And I pressed home the charge.
Sez I, “You say this law wuz made for girls; but what if this boy that your sweet Kate Fairfax left you had happened to be a girl, and had gin away all that makes life worth living, how would you have felt then, Senator Coleman?
“How would you feel a thinkin’ that you had got to meet her lovin’, questionin’ eyes up in heaven, and when she asked you what you had done with her child you would have to say that you had spent all your life a tryin’ to pass laws that wuz the ruination of her darlin’; that you had done your best to frame laws so that them that prey upon innocence and childish ignorance could go unpunished, and that the blood of these souls, the agony of breakin’ hearts wuz a layin’ at your door?
“How could you meet them sweet, lovin’ eyes and have to tell her this?”