Some men, and mebby it is love that makes ’em feel so (they say it is), and mebby it is selfishness (though they won’t own up to it), but they want the women they love to belong to them alone, want to rule absolutely over their hearts, their souls, their bodies, and all their thoughts and aims, desires, and fancies. They don’t really say they want ’em to wear veils, and be shet in behind lattice-windowed harems, but I believe they would enjoy it.
They want to be foot loose and heart loose themselves, but always after Ulysses is tired of world wandering, he wants to come back and open the barred doors of home with his own private latch-key, and find Penelope knitting stockings for him with her veil on, waitin’ for him.
That sperit is I spoze inherited from the days when our ancestor, the Cave man, would knock down the woman he fancied, with a club, and carry her off into his cave and keep her there shet up. But little by little men are forgettin’ their ancestral traits, and men and wimmen are gradually comin’ out of their dark caverns into the sunshine (for women too have inherited queer traits and disagreeable ones, but that is another story).
Well, as I said, Royal wuz mad and told Polly that he guessed that the day of the Parade he would take Maud Vincent out in the country in his motor, to gather May-flowers. Polly told him she hoped they would have a good time, and then, after he had gone, drivin’ his car lickety-split, harem skarum, owin’ to his madness I spoze, Polly went upstairs and cried, for I hearn her, her room wuz next to ourn.
And I deeply respected her for her principles, for he had asked her first to go May-flowering with him the day of the Suffrage meeting. But she refused, havin’ in her mind, I spoze, the girls that couldn’t hunt flowers, but had to handle weeds and thistles with bare hands (metaforically) and wanted to help them and all workin’ wimmen to happier and more prosperous lives.
IV.
“STRIVIN’ WITH THE EMISSARY”
But I am hitchin’ the horse behind the wagon and to resoom backwards. The Reunion wuz put off a week and the Suffrage Meetin’ wuz two days away, so I told Lorinda I didn’t believe I would have a better time to carry Serepta Pester’s errents to Washington, D.C. Josiah said he guessed he would stay and help wait on Hiram Cagwin, and I approved on’t, for Lorinda wuz gittin’ wore out.
And then Josiah made so light of them errents I felt that he would be a drawback instead of a help, for how could I keep a calm and noble frame of mind befittin’ them lofty errents, and how could I carry ’em stiddy with a pardner by my side pokin’ fun at ’em, and at me for carryin’ ’em, jarrin’ my sperit with his scorfin’ and onbelievin’ talk?
And as I sot off alone in the trolley I thought of how they must have felt in old times a-carryin’ the Urim and Thumim. And though I hadn’t no idee what them wuz, yet I always felt that the carriers of ’em must have felt solemn and high-strung. Yes, my feelin’s wuz such as I felt of the heft and importance of them errents not alone to Serepta Pester, but to the hull race of wimmen that it kep’ my mental head rained up so high that I couldn’t half see and enjoy the sight of the most beautiful city in the world, and still I spoze its grandeur and glory sort o’ filtered down through my conscientiousness, as cloth grows white under the sun’s rays onbeknown to it.
Anon I left the trolley and walked some ways afoot. It wuz a lovely day, the sun shone down in golden splendor upon the splendor beneath it. Broad, beautiful clean streets, little fresh green parks, everywhere you could turn about, and big ones full of flowers and fountains, and trees and statutes.