Josiah and Lorinda and I went in the trolley in good season, so’s to git a sightly place, Lorinda protestin’ all the time aginst the indelicacy and impropriety of wimmen’s appearin’ in outdoor meetin’s, forgittin’, I spose, the dense procession of wimmen that fills the avenues every day, follerin’ Fashion and Display. As nigh as I could make out the impropriety consisted in wimmen’s follerin’ after Justice and Right.
Josiah’s face looked dubersome. I guess he wuz worryin’ over his offer to represent me, and thinkin’ of Aunt Susan and the twins.
But as it turned out I met Diantha while Josiah wuz in a shop buyin’ some peppermint lozengers, and she said her niece had come from the West, and they got along all right. So that lifted my burden. But I thought best not to tell Josiah, as he wuz so bound to represent me. I thought it wouldn’t do any hurt to let him think it over about the job a man took on himself when he sot out to represent a woman. They wouldn’t like it in lots of ways, as willin’ as they seem to be in print.
Wimmen go through lots of things calm and patient that would make a man flinch and shy off like a balky horse, and visey versey. I wouldn’t want to represent Josiah lots of times, breakin’ colts, ploughin’ greensward, cuttin’ cord-wood etc., etc. Men and wimmen want equal legal rights to represent themselves and their own sex which are different, and always must be, and both sexes don’t want to be hampered and sot down on by the other one. That is gauldin’ to human nater, male or female.
We got a good place nigh the speakers’ stand, and we hadn’t stood there long before the parade hove in sight, the yeller banners streamin’ out like sunshine on a rainy day, police outriders, music, etc.
More than a hundred automobiles led the parade and five times as many wimmen walkin’ afoot. A big grand-stand with the lady speakers and their friends on it, all dressed pretty as pinks. For the old idee that suffragists don’t care for attractive dress and domestic life wuz exploded long ago, and many other old superstitions went up in the blaze.
Those of us who have gray hair can remember when if a man spoke favorably of women’s rights the sarcastic question was asked him: “How old is Susan B. Anthony?”
And this fine wit and cuttin’ ridicule would silence argument and quench the spirit of the upholder.
But the world moves. Susan’s memory is beloved and revered, and the contemptious ridicule of the onthinkin’ and ignorant only nourished the laurels the world lays on her tomb.
At that time accordin’ to popular opinion a suffragist wuz a slatternly woman with uncombed locks, dangling shoe strings, and bloomers, stridin’ through an unswept house onmindful of dirty children or hungry husband, but the world moves onward and public opinion with it. Suffragists are the best mothers, the best housekeepers, the best dressers of any wimmen in the land. Search the records and you’ll find it so, and why?